His lungs need a break. He's been hollering for help for a quarter-hour, during which time he has had to hold Olivia in a vice grip as she flays wildly, unbearably distressed by the cacophony. Even at her best, he is a lot stronger than she is and so he's easily able to restrain her without hurting her. Still, he's disgusted with himself for having to do this to her, for being one more man who flaunts his physical power over her. There's just simply no choice.
Still, doing this is certainly better than Plan B, the need for which he had heretofore hoped would be obviated by his screaming. Alas; holler after holler has been met with empty silence, and he has come to realize it will be necessary: as soon as she's calm enough, he's going to try to find a passageway to the outdoors.
It's no longer precautionary, a matter of preventing things from getting worse. Because her condition is deteriorating. Even her frantic attempts to get away from him have lacked the sort of energy he knows she's capable of. The abuse she's suffered is taking a very real physical toll on her body and he's petrified that the infection on her back is only the tip of the iceberg.
For the third time in as many minutes, he compulsively reaches to her and feels her forehead. It's burning hot; possibly hotter than before, though that could just be his own mind playing tricks on him. Still, he has five children; he knows a high fever when he feels one.
He loosens his grip on her gradually, trying to get her to settle down. "Okay, okay, I'm not gonna scream anymore, okay?"
As soon as she's free, she makes a beeline on her hands and knees for a nook several feet away, where she parks herself against a steel beam and curls into a ball, knees to her chin, breathing heavily. Even in the terrible lighting, he can see her eyes are wild with fear.
He puts both hands up and approaches her cautiously, on his knees. "Olivia? Okay, just relax, no more screaming okay?"
She nods slowly, understanding.
"Good. Good. Do you know who I am?"
She nods again.
"Who am I?"
"You're Elliot," she whispers.
He sighs in relief. "Yeah, that's right. That's right. I'm not going to hurt you, okay?"
He waits.
He tries again. "Do you understand? I want to help get you out of here. I want to bring you somewhere safe. That's all I want to do."
She stares.
He cocks his head. "Do you trust me?"
She thinks about it for a second. "Yes."
"Good. So this is what I need to do: I need you to stay here, while I go see if I can find some help. Do you understand?"
"No," she moans, like a child who's been told it's bedtime.
He inches ever closer to her, careful to still give her some buffer. Patiently, he lays a hand lightly on her bicep. "Olivia? Honey, look at me. Look at me. I'm not going to go for long."
She buries her face in her knees. "Don't leave me," she whispers.
"Honey, it won't be for long, I prom –"
"Don't leave me don't leave me don't leave me don't leave me don't –"
"Olivia, I –"
She halts her chant abruptly, looks up at him, her eyes desperate. "P-please don't leave me here," she pleads, her voice squeaking. "I'll do whatever you want."
Hearing his proud partner beg so nakedly breaks his heart. Tears well up in his eyes, and it's all he can do to hold it together. "Okay," he says finally. "Okay, I won't go anywhere."
"I'll do whatever you want," she repeats.
He shakes his head sadly. "You don't have to do anything. I'm right here. I'm here for you. For you."
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Olivia has fallen asleep again, about four feet away on the dusty, ashy floor. She's on her side in the fetal position, her back to him. He tries not to think about all the toxic chemicals her lungs are inhaling.
He tiptoes to the far end of the cavernous space, where he squints at the debris, trying to discern if the path he spotted earlier leads anywhere. He doesn't know what he'll do if he finds an actual passageway – he will not break his promise to her – but he tells himself he'll cross that bridge when he comes to it. Maybe he can take her with him. Maybe she'll let him carry her. He thinks about that for a moment. He could carry her. It's not a terrible idea. And it would certainly be less risky than leaving her alone in what he presumes is an unstable structure.
As he inspects the wall of junk and rubble, it seems to him there is, indeed, a small space beyond.
Suddenly, he hears a rumbling directly behind him and the floor shakes beneath his feet. The faint ray that has provided all of his light flickers, as the angle of its penetration shifts. He whips around and dives back to the spot where he left Olivia, cocooning himself over her body. For nearly ten seconds he covers her, wheezing into her shoulder blade.
The rumbling ceases; nothing has happened. He waits a full minute before he sits up again, panting, his heart racing, watching her as she continues to sleep peacefully on the floor, as if nothing in the world is amiss.
He stares down at her and touches her shoulder. "Liv?"
Nothing.
His heart leaps into his throat. "Liv?" he repeats, with more energy, as panic engulfs him. He shakes her a little. "Come on, Liv, wake up."
He swallows a lump, pleading in his head with a God he's no longer sure he believes in.
Please. Please, just let her be alive. I promise, I'll be a better person. I promise, if you let her live, I'll –
He stops himself abruptly, angrily. Because the prayer is pure selfishness, its empty rhetoric serving only to soothe his own disquieted mind with the false hope of intervention, while also serving the ulterior purpose of giving him permission to put off for precious seconds learning her fate and therefore the searing, agonizing pain that will be inevitable if the worst has already come to pass. But if it hasn't, if it hasn't, seconds expended pleading with a being who's proven not to care a whit about Olivia could be spent taking productive steps to revive her, by a person whose whole world is Olivia.
He must take the risk of experiencing such pain before he's psychologically ready.
And so through sheer will, Elliot now forces himself to buck up, to brace himself for the action he knows he must take.
One. Two. Three. Do it.
Without further cogitation, he thrusts his hand forwards, his fingers making contact with the bruised column of her neck.
And just like that, the moment of anguish is over: she's still alive.
His plan abandoned and his nerves shot, he pulls her limp body into a sitting position in his lap and holds her closely against his chest, listening to the rhythm of her breathing. As long as she's breathing, he can survive.
As his autonomic nervous system recovers from this most recent exigency, he realizes that Olivia is too sick to transport. At least here in this pocket, the structure is more stable and the air is breathable. Who knows what lies beyond.
And so he has no choice but to be passive now, to wait for help to somehow find him.
He knows he needs to accept that Olivia might not make it. For some reason, the fact that he might not is perfectly palatable to him. He knows it's not rational to have been in denial with respect to his partner but not himself, especially when she is the one whose physical condition is already so precarious.
Which brings him to his latest insight: there is virtually no circumstance under which he would die but she would survive.
He grimaces, thinking about this.
About the reality that Olivia might die, here in the ruins of her prison, the site of her abuse and torture for a full week.
He's thankful for one thing: that he can be with her now. That he can tell her things he wants her to know, that even if she's not awake to hear them, her mind will process them nonetheless and provide her with soothing dreams.
Because he's always thought dying alone has got to be the worst thing – to have no chance left to ever communicate with a loved one, to know for sure that a loved one loved you. To have no idea how much you meant to the people in your life. In his former career, he saw a lot of people who died alone. Some so gruesomely he sometimes couldn't wrap his head around how they possibly endured it. To have life ooze out of them, with only the faces of their murderers to keep them company. Those people haunted his dreams for decades.
He arches forward and plants a kiss on her hairline. If he can't do anything else for her, at least let her enjoy the comfort of another person.
And if this is to be the end, at least let her be with someone who loves her.
Even if she still doesn't know it.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Across the table, his teenage son snidely asks Olivia if she's ever slept with his father. It's a vicious, below-the-belt accusation, full of malice and misplaced rage that makes Elliot fume. Never mind that he would love to sleep with Olivia; the insinuation – the fact that his son thinks she's fair game in his mission to get his father where it hurts – demeans her more than it does him. But Olivia stands her ground, and, without missing a beat, she tells his son point-blank that she hasn't.
Elliot doesn't question why he has a second chance to make this right by his partner; rather, he jumps at the opportunity: This time, he barges into the room and yanks his son up by the collar and forces him to look her in the eye and apologize to her. And when that's done, he pulls her aside and apologizes to her himself, but not before telling her she needn't have even dignified Dickie's question with a denial. Because she has nothing to answer for.
Olivia accepts Elliot's apology at face value, which is very nice for him, but all the same he wishes she would get a little more pissed off. After all, why should she have had to put up with his mean-spirited son? He starts to tell her this, that she shouldn't have answered Dickie at all, but she interrupts him. She tells him it's okay, she deserved the attack! She deserved it, because –
He awakens with a start. It takes him several seconds to realize where he is, that he is not reliving an event from two years ago, but rather that he is still trapped below ground with his injured partner. He must have dozed off. It's no wonder, he supposes; he hasn't slept in days and biology always ultimately trumps mental fortitude.
It doesn't take him long to figure out what awakened him: there is a sharp glare aimed directly at his face. Squinting tiredly, he realizes a sliver of light is penetrating the tiny space in which he and Olivia are entombed. Suddenly, several beams of light are travelling conspicuously around the space, like alien spaceships scouting the perfect landing spot.
"Elliot! Olivia!"
Elliot looks up at the ceiling in astonishment. "Captain!"
He hears a gasp, and then a shriek, and then a pair of eyes peaks down at them from a tiny gap in the ceiling. "Oh my God, they're alive!"
The voices manage to awaken Olivia. She freezes against Elliot, her muscles primed with fight-or-flight instinct.
Elliot's joy is eclipsed by the need to comfort Olivia, who is obviously agitated by the introduction of new sounds, however musical they are to his ears. He lays a fingertip on her wrist, tapping it lightly. "It's all right," he soothes. "Nobody's going to hurt you, okay?" She seems a little more alert than earlier. He's heartened.
Twenty feet above their heads, his former captain peers down at them, the relief palpable on his face. "You guys all right?"
Elliot hesitates. "I'm fine." He glances warily at Olivia. "She's…. she, uh, she needs some help."
Cragen nods, his eyes jumping worriedly to Olivia, who is perched in Elliot's lap, and is seemingly unfazed by the specter of a rescue. "You doing ok, Olivia?" he calls.
"C-captain?" she asks uncertainly.
Cragen's eyes light up at her responsiveness. "Yeah, Liv, it's me. We're gonna get you out of there, okay? You just hang on."
She clenches her eyes shut, shakes her head.
Cragen nervously clears his throat, addresses Elliot. "EMTs are standing by, but the structure's too unstable right now to come in. It's gonna take some time to dig you guys out. Think you can hang on a few hours?"
Elliot pales. "Hours?" His eyes flit to Olivia. "She… she, uh…"
Cragen gets the message. "Tell you what. I can have some supplies thrown down. Are you injured?"
"No."
"All right. Good. Think you can help her on your own?"
"I think so."
"Tell me what you need."
Elliot nods gratefully. "She needs… she needs first aid. The works. Antiseptic, bandages. She's got a badly infected wound plus a high fever. So antibiotics too, the sooner the better. And we could also use some food and water."
"No," she mumbles. "No food."
Elliot sighs.
And maybe while you're at it can you throw down a good psychiatrist?
"You got it," Cragen calls. "I'll get a doctor on the phone and see about the antibiotics."
"Oh, and as many flashlights as you've got."
"Roger that."
Just as Cragen jerks his head back out, Elliot stops him. "Oh and Captain?"
"Yeah?"
"Can you get her… can you get her a shirt please?"
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
They expect it to be a good three hours before they're able to plow through the rubble safely, let alone bring medics in. In the meantime, Elliot has been thrown a lifeline: food, bottled water, towels, flashlights, penicillin and a full supply of first aid. He's still terribly worried, but at least the outlook now is one of hope.
He's laid out a beach-towel-covered workspace on the floor, complete with six flashlights, beaming eerie rays at the ceiling. He feels like he's about to conduct a séance.
He approaches Olivia, whom he's left perched against a steel beam while he's been getting organized. He hesitates for a moment. He hates talking to her like he would a child, but unfortunately it's the only tone she seems to respond to.
"All right, I need you to lie down on the towel on your stomach, can you do that?"
She lets out a small sound of protest, but he can't read her.
He looks at her anxiously. "Are you… are you hurt…" he points at her belly-button "… there?" He reaches out to her slowly, shows her his hand. "Can I check?" She follows his gaze downwards, as if her own skin is alien to her. With her implicit green-light, he shines a flashlight at her exposed front, feeling around the taut flesh of her abdomen with his other hand. She lets him. Detecting no abrasions, he pushes down carefully. "Does that hurt?"
She stares blankly at him, and he takes the absence of a flinch as a positive sign.
"Can you lie down then?"
She swallows nervously, then musters to follow his order. She uses her palms to propel herself gingerly forward, towards the towel. Seeing her like this, he chides himself for making her maneuver on her own. He immediately intervenes, grasping her by the armpits and guiding her to the beach towel. In the process his pinky skirts her breast, still covered only by a bra. He freezes, terrified she'll freak out, but she doesn't register any reaction.
Once on her stomach, she rests her cheek flat against the towel, trembling, waiting for whatever's next. It occurs to him she may not understand why she's been placed in this position.
"I'm going to clean your wounds, okay?"
Training his flashlight, he takes in a sharp breath at the full sight of her back. The welts almost completely blanket her flesh and they are vicious. They're in various stages of healing, some doing better than others. Incredibly, one is still bleeding. It's clear she's not only been beaten repeatedly, but also with a variety of instruments.
His eyes inadvertently wander lower, to where her bare back disappears beneath the coverage of the white skirt, its delicate lace so incongruent against the violence of what's been done to her. He suppresses an impulse to grasp its waistband, see how far down the welts reach. But even if it's for her own good, he can't expose her like that. She's been abused terribly and he just can't cross that line. Not unless it's absolutely necessary.
He spots the infection. It's at the lower right corner of her back, nearly at her hipbone. It is a sickening green, and oozes thick pus. Which suggests that this was done to her no more recently than two days ago. He furrows his brow. How is it she's not writhing in pain from this?
What if she's been drugged?
He startles at the thought, shocked this is the first such a thing is occurring to him.
And now it all makes sense. The bizarre comments. The blind obedience. The relative imperviousness to pain. That would explain why she succumbed so easily, and why she's so compliant now. Only drugs could make his partner so pliable, could so radically change her personality.
It's not Stockholm, it's not brainwashing.
But as he stares at her bloody back, her body shaking, the terror on her face evident, the brief moment of relief is surmounted by a pall of dread, as he once again faces the reality. He shudders, the full realization sinking in. Another tear leaks out of his eye. He wipes it instinctively, even though there's no one to see.
Because his theory does nothing to change the situation.
She's still been brutalized.
And whether she admits it or not, she's still been raped.
Once again, emotion wells up forcefully and he fights desperately not to break down right here, right now.
Pull yourself together. She needs you.
He takes several measured breaths, determined not to let anything else distract him. He can't let her down again.
He pulls out a packet of rubbing alcohol from the kit, hesitating before he makes contact with the toothbrush-sized welt. "This might sting a bit, okay?"
"Okay," she says robotically.
He notices that her eyes are clenched tightly shut and that she's breathing laboriously. With the back of his hand, he touches her temple to comfort her, but she flinches so violently he jumps.
"I'm sorry!" he exclaims. "I didn't mean to startle you. Here, just relax, okay?"
He studies the profile of her face closely, puzzled. He touched her temple earlier, with no such reaction.
The answer hits him with a jolt: She thinks you've laid her out like this to beat her.
He leans forward on his knees, his mouth at her ear. "I'm not gonna hurt you, okay?" He uses his most soothing tone, the one he used to reserve for the children he interviewed.
He waits for a response, but even in profile he sees she's still paralyzed in terror. He tries again. No matter what, he will not touch her against her will. "It's me, it's Elliot. Not Gunther. Do you understand?"
He waits. Nothing, save for a nearly inaudible whimper.
"Do you understand, Olivia? You are not going to get hit again, okay?"
He lays a hand around her forearm, which continues to tremble in tempo with her body. "No more beatings." He pauses, cringing at the term he realizes he must use to get through to her. "No more… punishments."
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
It takes him nearly a full hour to dress her back. She lies still throughout the procedure, seemingly unfazed, but beneath the veneer he senses a simmering terror that his words have failed to assuage. And so every time he touches her, he reassures her. Step by step, he explains what he's going to do, and, more importantly, what he's not going to do. It requires a lot of patience, a lot of repetition. But he's happy to do it. He'll do anything to put her at ease. "I'm going to cover one more wound, now, the same one I just touched, okay?" he tells her. "It's just a little bandage." He pauses. "I'm not going to hit you."
When he's finally done, he helps her turn over and then carefully pulls her into a sitting position. He shows her the t-shirt Cragen has provided. It is white and fresh and oversized and clean: exactly what she needs.
She stares at it, like she's never seen such a garment before.
He asks the obvious. "Do you want to put it on?"
Her failure to respond no longer fazing him, he takes further initiative. He scrunches the material up around the neck hole and aims it at her head. "Let's get this on you, okay?" he says quietly.
When she doesn't object, he proceeds to push the t-shirt over her head. She sits limply, not helping out, as he takes each of her arms like a rag doll and pulls them through their respective sleeve holes.
With that done, he sits back and takes her in, feeling a weight unexpectedly lifted from his shoulders: with this $5 piece of material, she has instantly regained some semblance of her dignity.
He turns, now, to the bottle by his side and shows it to her. "Here's some water."
She narrows her eyes. He can't be sure, but he thinks her breathing quickens.
"You're not thirsty?"
Her eyes flit from the bottle to him, back to the bottle, then settle back on him. Her suspicion is evident.
"Liv?"
She seems paralyzed in indecision.
He shows her the bottle again, as innocuously as possible. Her eyes skirt to the clear liquid inside and she swallows, eyeing it with lust. She's definitely thirsty.
He slowly moves his other hand towards her and gently grasps her wrist, dodging the bruises that encircle it. He then guides it to the bottle. Her fingers automatically clamp around the cool plastic. "Here," he says. "Take it, it's okay."
She hesitates again.
"Drink."
At this, she tentatively brings the bottle to her mouth, her eyes nervously meeting his.
He nods encouragingly. "Go ahead, have some."
She's still frozen, the bottle hovering a half-inch from her lips, not making contact.
He sighs, realizing with a heavy sadness how he must treat her. "Olivia, take a sip. Now!"
She obeys.