22 - DAMAGE CONTROL

"How did you know Anna? I was lying here thinking about it, wondering. Was she your girlfriend?"

"What makes you think I would tell you about it?"

"Because you're a detective, and so am I. You know what it's like; I want to understand it. Is that how it all started?"

"What makes you think there even is a story?"

"There's always a story. You know that as well as I do. Or maybe it all started with Olivia. Your mother."

"So Freudian. You want to talk? Let's talk."

"Tell me about her. What was she like?"

"We're not here to talk about her."

"Of course we are. One of the first things you ever said to me was she had my name. You want to tell me things."

"Don't forget I'm a trained interrogator too. I know what you're trying to do."

"Humor me. Tell me anyway."

"Tell you what. Why don't we do this quid pro quo? You tell me what I want to know, and I'll tell you what you want to know."

"Sounds fair."

"It's a courtesy none of the others had. You should feel special."

"Not even Anna?"

"Didn't you want to hear about my mother?"

"I want to hear about them all."

"It's a long story."

"I've got time. Doesn't look like I'm going anywhere anytime soon."

"It's just our weekend away. A huge step in our relationship. Me first. Tell me about your parents."

"You know all about that; you researched me, stalked me."

"I want to hear it in your words."

"Well… My father raped my mother. A few weeks later she realized she was pregnant, and she decided to keep the baby. But she only told me about it when I got older, and when she did, a lot of things made sense."

"Like why she intrinsically hated you, no matter how much she wanted to love you."

"Like why she had become an alcoholic."

"It made you feel undeserving. A baby hated by its own mother… How can it grow up to believe it deserves to be loved? Made you want to be anything but that, anything but vulnerable to anything. Made you intrinsically afraid of men, afraid someone would hurt you like your mother had been hurt. Made you keep your distance, never let yourself really fall for someone."

"I never thought about it like that. It's a good analysis."

"Do you really believe your own lie? Do you really believe you can keep that distance, look at it from outside? You act like you've sorted it all out, but the truth is you only swept it under the rug, shoved it into a box. When someone opens it…"

"Okay, my turn now. Tell me about Olivia."

"There's not much to tell. She didn't hate me like your mother hated you, it was more like she didn't care enough to hate me. It bothered me for a long time."

"Not anymore?"

"She's dead now, and I don't hold a grudge. She walked away from my father and never looked back, taking me with her was never an option. Don't you think it's amazing how everyone has a problem with their mother or father? Or both, like you? I mean, everyone. I think that if it weren't for that, people wouldn't have personalities."

"It's a cycle. They grow up to be parents and damage their own children, and they will be damaged too, and in turn damage their own children."

A baby hated by its own mother… How can it grow up to believe it deserves to be loved? How indeed. And Eric knew what he was talking about. During the course of the almost twelve hours it had taken Olivia to be examined and treated at the hospital and afterwards interrogated at the precinct, the crime scene in the beach house had been processed, and the evidence had been analyzed and catalogued. It turned out that there were more journals there in addition to the ones found along with the photo wall and then later in Eric's apartment – he had kept the most personal ones, the ones in which he delved more deeply into his childhood and his parents, with him at all times. Olivia read all of the journals and, through them, in addition to gaining more perspective on the case and understanding Eric and his connection to each victim better, she was also able to figure out that Olivia Downey and Serena Benson had a lot in common.

Eric's memories were fuzzy, and he had the bias of a small child watching grown-up things he wasn't yet prepared to fully understand. While he'd had enough time to process those memories when he wrote those journal entries as an adult, the bias was still clear; he had clung to it on purpose, trying with all his might to defend his father and hold his mother responsible for everything, desperate as he was to understand that man who had been the only person he could count on in his life for a long time, to identify with him, to blame his mother's departure on her intrinsic foulness other than on anything that might have been understood as his father's fault – or his fault.

But there were moments when it seemed that, on some level, he knew his father wasn't that much of an innocent, inadvertently letting more information come through in his writing. It didn't take very long for Olivia to figure out that Eric had quite possibly been a child of rape like her, except that his mother's attacker had been her own husband instead of a stranger.

His parents' relationship was abusive at best, it was clear from the fights he described, and the sexual encounters he had witnessed had all been forced, even though he would describe that as a normal thing, relaying statements from his father that this was their way of showing love for each other, that the struggle was actually passion, the rushed, disconnected explanations to a child caught peeking through cracked doors, unable to comprehend what he'd seen, requiring that reassurance, that don't worry, mom and dad are just playing a game. What were the chances that Eric had been the result of that same game years earlier?

Eventually, Olivia Downey had made it out; Eric didn't have a clear recollection of when and how, and he never really referred to the event of her departure directly, it was mostly contained between the lines, assumed and implied in the way he told every other story, described life, saw the world. He had woken up one day to find she was gone, and his father had never elaborated on it much further than it's just you and me now, pal and if I ever find this bitch, I'll kill her. Those were clear statements of her guilt, or at least that was how they were read by a six-year-old, quite literal verdicts, for which the sentence was served by them poor men, left behind in the wake of that evil woman's path of destruction.

Surprisingly, reconnecting with Eric was the one thing that helped. After rushing out of the precinct, disturbed by Elliot's news about his marriage and the underlying guilt implicitly assigned to her, Olivia realized she didn't have anything on her – no house keys, no wallet, no ID, nothing. She couldn't even make it back into the precinct, she had to ask the guard to call Cragen's office and have the captain himself come down to authorize her to come back into the building. But instead of authorizing her entrance, the captain had come down with her stuff, which had been retrieved from Eric's rental car and shoved into evidence bags, and his car keys: he was driving her home and that was the end of the discussion.

The ride home was silent, and for the most part of it, Olivia just sat still in the passenger seat, holding on to the evidence bags and watching through the window as the sun went down projecting several beautiful hues of color through the cloudy sky on its way, but she had the impression Cragen wanted to talk to her about something; he didn't, though. If he found it so important that she went home and rested right away, whatever he had to say could probably wait until the next day, so she decided to worry about that later.

"Are you sure you don't want me to come up?" the captain offered again when the car came to a full stop, double parked in front of her building.

"I'm sure," she forced a closed-mouthed smile. "Plus, if I need anything, I can ask them," she nodded towards the patrol car that had been following them and was now parking across the street.

"Sorry, Liv," Cragen sighed. "It's just a precaution. Just this first night back, okay"

"Why? Downey's dead."

"Who said the detail is supposed to keep someone from getting in?" Cragen laughed. "I want them to make sure you don't get out."

Olivia smiled back at him. "Thanks for looking out for me, Captain."

"Olivia?" Cragen called before she could leave. "Try to get some rest. Take a few days, as long as you need."

She nodded and got out of the car, carrying the plastic bags, the evidence that all of this was really happening. She found her keys in one of them and quickly got past the main entrance door without looking back, seeing through her peripheral vision that Cragen waited until she was inside to drive away.

Olivia climbed the stairs and walked to her door, unable to shake the feeling that it all felt so weird, so surreal. She had doubted she would ever make it home again, thought that she might never recover from her injuries, that she could be killed, that this could be the end of the line for her. So it was weird when she walked into her apartment and it felt so incredibly familiar, even with the mess, the black stains everywhere CSU had left after dusting for prints, everything out of place, so many broken items, mirroring her, her body, what she looked like after what had happened to her. It was all so familiar, both the memories of what it had all been like before and what it all felt like after, and through it all, she was hit with the realization that she was alive, well and home.

She wasn't sure if the strongest emotion that took possession of her was the relief or if it was the grief over all the violence she had been subjected to, so well-translated visually into the complete chaos in her apartment. It was as though someone had walked into her, searched, exploited, broken, stained, and left, leaving the mess behind for her to deal with. Either way, she closed the door and stood there, just barely inside, immobile; it was a crime scene, it was a car crash, it was a tragedy, and she couldn't move. She only realized she was crying when her chest started heaving so heavily that it became hard to breathe.

As she let herself slide to the floor against the door, dropping the plastic bags, and as her muscles relaxed from the need to keep her standing upright, her voice found its way out through her throat, her cries now audible, and she decided not to do anything about it, just let go of control and let it all come out, whichever way it was supposed to. She allowed herself to cry, whatever the reason behind it. She was strong and she would come out stronger on the other side of all this, but right now, she just needed to let it out, and let it out she did, so loud that her throat hurt.

And then she decided it was too much too soon. She stood back up, supporting herself against the door, opened it and left the apartment without having really gotten in. When she reached the street, she was able to take a full deep breath for the first time, remembering to dry her tears as they stung on her face in contact with the cold air. She walked up to the patrol car, and while she would normally get annoyed by the protective detail, in this specific instance she found it useful, because she unceremoniously got into the backseat and asked the officers to drive her back to the 1-6, claiming there was something she needed to do urgently. They hesitated at first, but she convinced them, after all, what was safer than being at the precinct, surrounded by her brothers in blue?

Now bearing her ID and badge, she was able to enter the building without the need for summoning anyone, and there was no one to summon. Of course, everyone had worked nonstop while she was gone, Cragen had told them all to go home and left too. Which, again, was useful, as Olivia was sure he wouldn't have let her go through the evidence if he was there. Without anyone to oversee her actions, she only needed to request the stuff she needed to have it brought to her desk. She had seen those tokens Eric had kept from each of his victims, but she wanted the whole story. She had a feeling that if she fed this information to her rational side, her emotional understanding of what had happened would naturally follow.

I need to go home. Elliot's words kept coming back to her uninvited, followed by her own mind's voice, who had some very ugly things to say about it all. It was a harsh voice, providing the worst judgment, and purposefully ignoring or doubting other things he had also said, like I love you. Had that really happened? Her mind put everything in question. Kathy and I were supposed to talk. That talk could be happening at that very moment. Her mind could picture it, it wrote the whole script, acted out their parts, quite in character, and the ending of the movie was crystal clear to her.

Maybe he had really meant to break up his marriage at one point, certainly motivated by the guilt he must have felt for not having figured out in time that Eric was their perp all along, resulting in Olivia's kidnapping. Elliot was a proud man, who hated to admit he was wrong, but she knew him well enough to know that he would blame himself for this, and that, when he felt guilty, he was the most rigorous judge. Like a good Christian, he believed in the absolving powers of penitence and was great at prescribing them to himself, taking them like over-the-counter medication, palliating the headache of his sins with the effectiveness of a painkiller.

And there were several reasons for guilt this time. Guilt over her kidnapping, over having cheated on his wife, over torturing her, over not having heroically killed Eric to save her. To Olivia, it was clear that this crazy idea of breaking up his marriage was the penitence he had settled on assigning himself. It was his way to fix his mistakes, not only the betrayal of his vows to Kathy but also whatever he might feel like he owed to Olivia for the mistakes that had affected her. In that ambulance, through the relief of escaping the danger unscathed, retrieving her alive, he had felt like he owed her that, but she knew how things really worked, how he really worked. She knew it. Maybe better than he did.

Maybe he had arrived home with that intent, of kneeling on rice and taking the blame for everything, offering his body in self-flagellation, excommunicating himself from his family again to pay for everything he had done wrong. But she knew, Olivia knew it too well: reality would hit. He would enter the house and find his happy home, his safe haven, everything he knew. He would find his kids, his cute little baby named after him, his loving wife with open arms, relieved to see him back home unharmed, her fair skin not marred with any bruises, her soul equally immaculate, her mere presence the ultimate healing miracle, capable of putting everything back together, even the damage done by the heinous home-wrecking figure Olivia had always sworn she would never become. Reality would hit, and Elliot was never going to go through with this.

But the case. She was there to read the material on the case, to get some closure. She needed her dose of reality, too, she believed its healing powers as well. Reality was what kept things going, what moved you on when you couldn't move on for yourself. It was the sun that kept going down and coming up again every morning, the snow that fell regardless of anyone's readiness to withstand it, the clock that kept ticking life away at the same speed, unaware of anyone's need for time to go faster or slower. Reality was relentless and honest, it didn't sugarcoat anything, and Olivia needed to know that what had happened to her had been just as inevitably real as the rain that had just started pouring outside.

She read from the reports about how Eric had been stalking her for years, and about how he had stalked every single one of his victims. She saw the surveillance pictures, including the ones that had adorned the shrine dedicated exclusively to her across from his makeshift bed in his rented apartment – she saw that in crime scene photos too. She read through Angela Stevens' notes describing Eric's behavioral patterns and the complete remake of all the forensics in the case, now with all loose ends beautifully tied up, the M.O. consistent in the smallest details – until her. It was a relief to look at all of it as a detective, not a victim.

But then she found the journals, and that was what she had been hoping for all along; she had wanted to hear it from him. The way he had died had seemed to leave way too many questions unanswered, and she wanted to understand. She read everything, including the new journals from the beach house, and after a while, she could almost sympathize with Eric, understand how he had felt cheated on by life and everyone around him. At the end of the day, he was just a lonely person, just like her, but who had chosen to look at the cards he'd been dealt from a different perspective than the one she had chosen.

Maybe that was what he had ultimately been unable to face; he had been a child of rape, but refused to look at it from his mother's perspective, choosing to side with his father and reproduce the violence that had sent her away, that would send anybody away, while he was left there all alone, unable to understand why none of those women would stay for him. He had grown up to learn that rape was the love he had to give and that was how he knew how to show it, instead of believing his own instincts. He was capable of love and tenderness, Olivia had witnessed it herself when he had been pretending to be a good guy to gain her trust, but he didn't know that, he didn't know that his pretending could be the real way to show love and to earn love in return. He had been fooling himself all along, and he had died without knowing. Or maybe he had died because he had figured it out and been unable to face how wrong he'd been.

Maybe Olivia fooled herself about a lot of things, but she knew why she was better off alone and why she wanted to keep it that way. Unlike Eric, she didn't blame other people for her loneliness, she knew it was ultimately her own choice, whatever the hidden beliefs of unworthiness that motivated it were. She didn't know how to act differently, but she knew she was the one keeping everyone at arm's length. Maybe she didn't believe she was worthy of love, but she loved herself enough to protect herself from getting hurt and be fine with being in her own company – it was what she knew, what she was used to, and she had never let herself down.

Reading about herself in the journal entries, she eventually found an entry describing that night at the bar, when Elliot had kissed her for the first time, right before they caught the case; Eric had left Angela's body in the alley for them to find, then followed them there from the precinct. She realized this would have gotten what had happened between her and Elliot on the record, which meant that everyone in the squad knew – maybe that was what Cragen had wanted to talk to her about when he'd driven her home. She decided she would worry about that later; now, she allowed herself to think back to that night.

She remembered what it was like when her biggest worry concerning Elliot was that he had been finding excuses to stay away from home and using her as his alibi – which had radically changed when he had kissed her. It hadn't occurred to her that maybe he wasn't looking for excuses to be away from home, maybe he was looking for excuses to be around her; at least that was what Eric believed. Her mind quickly dismissed it, though; he had drunk too much, that was what had made him kiss her.

And then, parallel to that whole rationalization, she was invaded by the sensorial memories of that moment, his blue eyes looking down at her lips, then closing, his face approaching slowly, the hot air coming from his mouth against hers a second before they touched, the surprisingly soft touch of his lips, his tongue cold from the beer he'd just sipped.

"Liv?" A soft voice brought her crashing back to the present; it was Huang. He was standing close by, the light behind him projecting his silhouette onto her desk, where the journals lay scattered. "I didn't expect to find you here."

"I was…" she looked at all the material around her. "Trying to make sense of all this."

"You were reading those?" He asked, slowly walking closer.

"Yeah," she confirmed, gesturing towards the chair next to her desk.

Huang took her invitation to sit down. "I actually came for the new ones," he explained, then paused, watching her. When she raised her eyes at him inquisitively, he spoke again. "What are you doing?"

She sighed, exhausted. "I need for this not to be something that happened to me," she explained. "I can't be a victim, I just can't. I need to understand what happened from a cop's perspective."

"Do you feel like it detaches you from what you've been through?"

"I don't know." She paused, thinking about it. "But I think it helps me get back to reality."

Huang sighed, pressing his lips together into a small smile as he leaned closer, putting his hands together and interlacing his fingers. Eventually, he looked up at her again.

"Liv…" he started, carefully. "What happened is also reality… And it affects what reality is like from now on. You can't go back to before."

She looked down, biting her lip and nodding. "I know… I know."

Huang waited for her to look up at him again to speak. "Maybe you should go home now, digest everything you've read against everything that happened."

"I…" Olivia started to protest, but nothing else came out as a justification.

"Sooner or later you'll have to deal with the damage…" he said softly, almost whispering, and Olivia wondered if he was able to read her mind, if he could read that she didn't want to deal with the mess in her apartment, with the internal and external damage.

"What if…" her eyes started to water, but she didn't try to conceal it as her voice came out tearful, cracking. "What if I can't put the pieces back together?"

"It's okay to just acknowledge them for the time being," he assured her. "When you're ready, you'll put them back together."

Olivia smiled, nodding, taking a deep breath and wiping her tears. "You know what's funny?"

"What's that?" Huang asked with a small smile.

"Eric fit his own profile," she said, gathering the latest journals to give them to the doctor. "After Anna, he became a strong, independent man who didn't need women. Deep down, he was a lonely boy without a mother who wondered if anybody was ever going to be able to love him."

Huang's eyes moved as he took the information in, then rested on hers again as he nodded, looking fascinated. "Full circle," he said.

Full circle indeed, and Olivia felt like reaching that conclusion was what she had come to the precinct for, that it was what she needed, so she decided to go back home, sneaking out on her detail. Once she was inside the apartment, tears started rolling down despite her efforts to contain them, but this time, she didn't let them paralyze her. She went straight to the bathroom, tiptoeing around the broken pieces of the mirror on the floor to take a shower.

Then, she put on a comfortable pair of panties and a t-shirt, chose a bottle of wine as her ally and got down to business. She filled several trash bags with pieces that had once been lamps or vases or glasses, with unimportant papers that had been gone through, with everything that she saw in front of her, keeping her from her home, from her life. She filled a bucket with water and a cleaning product, soaking a washcloth in it and rubbing it against the dark stains of dust all over the walls and doors.

Soon, the apartment looked and felt like a home again. Maybe it was a lonely, empty home, but it was her home, and she was there, alive, breathing life into it. Putting the pieces slowly back together, one fine, fragile coat of glue at a time. After the cleaning was done, she opened all the windows to let the air come into the apartment, purify it, renew it, and went to bed. She was convinced she wasn't going to be able to sleep, but the physical exhaustion barely let her make it under the covers before she passed out. It was a dreamless sleep, and when she woke up, she had the impression she had just laid down.

Olivia remembered the captain's words, telling her to rest, but she needed to feel like life was still as much the same as possible, at least concerning the things she could control, so she got dressed to go to work, put on some light makeup and a lot of concealer to cover her bruises. She stared at her badge for a long time, it was as much a part of her as anything else, and it represented who she was much more than any photo ID. Eventually, she hooked it up to her belt, got her keys and the cell phone she'd left charging overnight after finding it dead in one of the plastic bags and left.

In the squadroom, the whole team was gathered, wrapping up the last details of the case; Melinda Warner arrived right after her, bringing her final report on Eric's death and ruling it as a suicide beyond a doubt. Cragen took that as a cue to put a lid on the case for good, leaving only the paperwork left to be done – and pulling her and Elliot for a quick talk. Olivia knew what it was going to be about. She had read Eric's journals, and he had mentioned her kiss with Elliot at the bar; that had to be it. It was the last loose end from the case left for them to deal with.

She had carefully avoided Elliot since she had arrived, keeping her eyes off him as much as possible even though she was acutely aware of his presence. She couldn't deny that sitting across from him was familiar in a good way, it gave her a sense of normalcy, a sense of security, it added another coat of glue to the broken pieces in the reassembly process. On the other hand, there was everything that had gone on between them, it was all up in the air and it made her anxious and uncomfortable. Maybe Cragen would make them deal with it now; maybe it was going to be quick and painless, a clean break, they'd be split up and that would make everything else so much easier. She would lose him as a source of security and familiarity, but it would help her move on, it would give her a good reason to, a nice path of how to.

Olivia stood up and walked behind Elliot, the physical proximity more powerful than she had anticipated, sending shivers down her spine, making her heart race. When he turned to take a seat, he bent down with his hand on the chair's arm and she felt her stomach plunge, not flutter, when she noticed he wasn't wearing his wedding ring. She held her breath and took the seat next to his.

Cragen addressed the issue head on, taking a file and opening it to them, but what Olivia didn't know was that Eric hadn't only written about that night, he had also taken pictures, which she was now looking at. It hit her hard, the image of them together, so close, her arms around his neck, his hands pulling her close to him, the eagerness in his expression, the surprise and receptiveness in hers. She could vividly feel his lips on hers again, the memories quickly escalating to the night in the cribs, his heat surrounding her, his hands touching her naked body, the feel of him inside her.

"I've been holding on to this," Cragen said, pulling her forcefully back and raising his eyes from the illegal image. "I decided to wait, see, I wanted to make sure this was crucial evidence before I did anything about it."

"Captain," Olivia started, but he told her to wait and listen with a simple movement of his hand.

"Everything happened so fast that I even forgot these were here," Cragen continued, then his mouth turned up in a crooked smile. "When Lieutenant Tucker showed up here, I was immensely glad these had never gone on the record, I mean, forget the kidnapping, the torture, the suicide; the rat squad would've had a field day with these, maybe they'd even recommend I get a promotion just for giving them this ammunition against you."

Olivia risked a quick, tentative look at Elliot, who was immobile beside her, looking at the captain, his brow furrowed. She looked for any signs that he knew where this was going, because the more she listened, the less she could predict it.

"So you're saying no one knows about the pictures?" Elliot asked, and she heard the anxiety in his voice.

"Yes," Cragen said, calm, assuming a relaxed stance, his hands in his pockets. "And I think it should stay that way. Downey mentions this in a journal entry, but no one seemed to read too much into it, and I don't think IAB has read it at all. I gotta tell you, if I hadn't seen the pictures, I would think Downey had made it all up in his head, the crazy son of a bitch."

"I don't understand…" Elliot started, but the captain continued like he hadn't heard him.

"Whatever this was," Cragen said, "as far as I'm concerned, it was a one-time thing that happened off-duty, in your own time, and I want to have absolutely nothing to do with it. Actually, I'd appreciate it if you took these from my hands and let me forget I ever saw them."

"But you did," Olivia pointed out.

"Are you going to split us up?" Elliot blurted out the question screaming in her mind; this was what they'd been called into this room to discuss after all, wasn't it?

But the captain didn't say yes. Instead, he took a deep breath.

"You haven't been objective about each other for a long time now, if you ever were," he said, clearly uncomfortable talking about this, but his overall stance was still calm. "I'm not going to pretend I didn't know that. You know I've considered splitting you up many times before. I have split you up. I've had shrinks evaluate if I should split you up for good, more than once. But time and time again, the answer I get is you two are better together than apart."

"So you're saying…" Olivia realized how anxious she was as well; she had been counting on the end of their partnership to help her stay away and move on from him, but she realized then that she really didn't want to lose him as a partner.

"Bottom line is… If I thought your subjectivity towards each other was a good enough reason to split you up, I would have done that a long time ago," Cragen reasoned. "What I'm saying is that I'm not aware of any inappropriate relationships between any of my detectives and, as far as I'm concerned, the squad should stay exactly as it is. Is that clear enough?"

Olivia involuntarily sighed with relief, and she heard Elliot do the same.

"Yes, captain," he said, standing up, but then another hand gesture from Cragen made him stop in his tracks.

"But let me make something very clear," the captain warned, looking from one of them to the other and back. "I trust you to come to me the minute you think this isn't going to work out anymore. Got it?"

For the first time since entering the room, Olivia and Elliot exchanged a look; for the first time in a while, it was a look of complicity, of agreement, and Olivia couldn't help acknowledging the relief of realizing he also didn't want to be split up. Maybe they could still fix this, move past what had happened and go back to being partners and friends.

"Got it," Elliot replied, taking the file the captain was holding out to him, and Olivia nodded her agreement.

They were already at the door when the captain stopped them again. "One last thing: you're both on leave, effective immediately. I don't want to see you here until you've both passed your mandatory psych evals, but do me a favor… Actually take some time off to rest, will ya?"

Olivia nodded, her head still spinning. As they were walking out, Elliot touched her arm lightly, making her jump like she'd been shocked.

"Can we talk?" he said softly, starting to direct her to walk with him; she didn't resist.

Olivia knew what he was going to say; he wasn't wearing his wedding ring, he was going to tell her about it, and as much as she wanted to avoid this subject, she figured it was best to deal with it sooner rather than later. They had just been given a chance to rekindle their partnership, and she took it as a sign that they could fix everything, make everything go back to normal, his marriage included. Things didn't have to blow up completely, there was a lot they could still salvage, and that gave her hope that she could still control the damage of this whole experience. Elliot led her into the locker room with an electric, soft touch on the small of her back and closed the door.

"How are you holding up?" he asked.

Olivia sighed. "Good… Better," she said, pressing her lips together. "You?"

"Same," he nodded, with a small smile, then took a step towards her, making her automatically take a step backwards. "I wanted to come see you, but I didn't want to… crowd you."

Olivia didn't reply; she was having difficulty breathing. She looked deeply into his blue eyes, lost in them, and it was unbearable how she wanted to get close to him, touch him; it went against everything she was trying to keep in mind.

"I'm moving out," he said, just like she'd been expecting.

"Elliot…" she started, but he interrupted her.

"Kathy had talked about how we didn't love each other anymore," he explained, slowly restarting to walk towards her. "How she knew I've had feelings for you for years and how I was the only one who couldn't see it."

"Please…" she whispered, but it didn't seem to have any effect on him. She took another step back and hit the bench, giving him the advantage.

"I told her about what happened between us and that pretty much sealed the deal," he went on. "When I got there last night she had already packed a bag for me."

"It's not too late," Olivia protested. "She can still take you back. You have to tell her it was this case, how fucked up it was, how it…"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Elliot countered.

"You're making a mistake," she warned. "You can't make this decision in the heat of the moment, you both need some time, but we can still fix this."

"We?"

"Elliot," she raised her voice. "You heard the captain, he's right! This was a drunken, drug-induced mistake, a one-time thing. He's giving us a chance to correct this, he's not splitting us up over this, he understands it's not a big deal!"

"That's not at all what he said," he protested.

"And so will Kathy! The dust will settle and everything will go back to normal."

"Olivia…" he started to close the remaining distance between them, but she put a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.

"Please, Elliot," she shook her head. "Let's take this opportunity to undo everything that happened, move on from all this and go back to before!"

Elliot shook his head, looking disappointed. "Is that what you really want?" he asked in a low, faint voice.

It was, it was what she wanted, why couldn't she say yes? She just looked down, away from his eyes, pushing him lightly, but it was enough to make him back off.

"It's okay, Liv," he said, breaking contact with her and taking a few steps back. "I'm sorry, I know you need some time, I don't want to pressure you into anything."

Olivia breathed, relieved but also a bit disappointed. "Cragen wants us out of here," she started, preparing her escape plan.

"You're right, Cragen is keeping us together, let's just take the win," Elliot smiled. "One step at a time."

Olivia nodded, confused, and Elliot started pacing slowly.

"Look, I'm not expecting anything from you," he stopped walking when he seemed to have settled on what to say. "I was just telling you what's going on with me. All I want from you is that you don't shut me out. There's a lot you need to sort through, and I don't want you to be alone. Let me help you."

"I'm fine," she said, and he gave her a big smile that told her he knew she was lying; she bit her lip, looking away.

"Can I drive you home?" he asked softly, and she wanted nothing more than to say yes and let him take her, let him drive her, let him take control off her hands for a minute, but he started moving towards his locker and she saw the suitcase right next to it. "I'm going to check into a hotel or something later, don't worry," he rushed to clarify.

"Why don't you go ahead and do that first?" Olivia said, smiling again, a sudden idea making her face light up. "Get a room, get settled, and we'll talk later today, you can come over to my place. To help me… with whatever."

Elliot nodded, squinting, and Olivia knew he was assessing the veracity of her promise to let him help her. "I can still drive you…" he insisted.

"It's okay, I have an errand to run. Okay?" she started to rush out. "We'll talk later, I promise."

It was a bit colder outside than Olivia had predicted when she'd chosen her outfit this morning, a light hoodie and a leather jacket, but that wasn't the reason she held herself with both arms as she waited; she was trying to calm her breathing, slow the thrumming in her chest. She didn't hear any movement coming from the other side of the door, and she was considering ringing the doorbell again. When she had decided to do so, the door opened.

"Olivia," said Kathy, looking confused and maybe a little frustrated to see her.

"Can we talk?" she breathed, anxious. "I really need to talk to you."

Kathy nodded, never letting go of the door with the clear intent of closing it again as soon as possible. "It's okay Olivia, please," she said, starting to move the door. "There really is no need for you to explain anything…"

"I think you're making a huge mistake," she interrupted, stopping the door with her hand. "If you hear me out, I think you'll understand and reconsider."