A/N: When every card in the deck is stacked against you, the only way to win a hand is to break the rules. - Paul Auster

DISCLAIMER: If I owned the characters I wouldn't need to write a disclaimer. And also, the show would need to be on HBO after 11PM…

Walking through the stark white hall made Elliot uneasy, his eyes darted from the pristine walls and floor tiles to the back of Olivia's head. "Where are we going?" he asked in a harsh whisper, trying to give the other agents the impression that he knew and was helping to lead the way.

Olivia chuckled, flicked her bangs out of her eyes, and eyed him for a moment as she smoothed out the sides of her purple blazer. "They found Decker," she said, "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"

"It was him," Elliot assumed, tilting his head. "He's trying to, what, sell this magic pill to…"

"It wasn't him," she interrupted and rolled her eyes. She placed her thumb on a metal plate against the wall to her left, then pulled Elliot with her as she stepped back. The doors in front of her opened and closed immediately as she and Elliot walked through them. "He, uh, was continuing his research, even after we told him the project was redlined." She tilted her head, smirked, and said, "He didn't use monkeys this time."

"Uh oh," Elliot knew what the look in her eyes meant, and he shot a perturbed glance in Decker's direction. "So, what, he got someone to be his guinea pig?"

"Yeah," Olivia nodded once. "Us." She rubbed a hand down her face and cleared her throat. "That's what the money in our accounts was for. Some the Econ Agents finished tracking and tracing the cash, it led back to him, not our wannabe hacker. He was paying us…" she blinked twice, a hand shot to her stomach. "Um, he administered the drug by using our…"

"Us?" Elliot paled, his eyes widened, and he shook his head. "No, we haven't been any faster or stronger than...usual...have we?" He squinted and he took a sharp breath. "What the hell did that son of a bitch do to us, and how did we not fucking know?"

Her head turned, she met his worried fury with calm acquiescence. "According to McGowen, Decker injected heavy doses into the water bottles we had delivered. For the…"

"Cooler," Elliot finished, nodding. He gasped, then, and said, "The kids drink that! He...he drugged our kids?"

She felt a heavy weight drop into her stomach when he called the children ours and not his, but she cleared her throat again. "It's probably why Dickie scored four runs in his last game, why Maureen scored off the charts on all of her benchmarks...I was assured it was nothing that would hurt them, since the dosage was diluted in a few gallons of heavily filtered water, but enough to press some serious charges." She saw the flames in his eyes, the intense burning desire to kill Decker. "And he reformulated it, no fertility drugs to speak of, so…" her hand ran over her stomach again, dropping almost sadly to her side. "Don't worry about…"

"Funny," Elliot hissed, "That's the one thing that would make me happy about this and keep me from fucking killing him." He smirked, then reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. "I'd rather that be something we do without anyone's help, though, so…" he winked and then whispered, "You're sure that shit didn't hurt the kids?"

She shook her head. "No, its effects, I'm sure you remember, are short-lived. It wears off and it's not addicting, they're fine. I already had Monroe and Felndnick being new water to the house, replace the cooler, we're fine." She tossed her head back a bit and said, "We'll handle it, later, but right now it's the person who was snooping around in Decker's computer that we're interested in, anyway."

Elliot nodded, turned, and set his sights on Decker, slumped over a long marble table with genuine fear in his eyes.

Olivia watched him move, the way his muscles flexed and twitched under his suit. She ignored his fierce threats and violent gestures, her mind wandering off to evaluate and think. There was so much of herself, of who she was, that didn't exist before him. Her interest in sports was only piqued because he watched and played every game under the sun. She only liked pastrami sandwiches because he bought her one during their first lunch break together. Before him, she'd never ridden a motorcycle and she didn't have any tattoos before he convinced her to get one and promised to lick it and kiss it every night afterward. Her taste in music was basic at best until he played classic rock and jazz and blues and country, dancing with her, singing to her, every song. She closed her eyes and smiled, saying a final goodbye to the woman she hadn't been for over three years.

"Agent Benson?" A younger agent tried for her attention.

"Yeah," she nodded, the spark of professionalism brightened in her eyes. She took four form steps, grabbed the back of Elliot's collar, and yanked him backward away from Decker. She waited until the scientist stopped heaving and gagging, watched the color of his face return to normal, and then said, "You do realize how badly you fucked up, don't you?"

Decker nodded. "I thought I'd have more time," he wheezed, his hands still rubbing his neck where Elliot had been squeezing. "I made sure the cameras were frozen, no one was supposed to see…"

"No one saw you," she interrupted with a little too much disdain in her voice. "You trapped yourself like we knew you would. You deposited an awful lot of money into the two accounts that you knew would set off warning bells." She raised one eyebrow and smirked. "You knew someone had their hands in your files and you knew the only way to find them was by making sure we'd have a reason to scour the system."

Decker sighed as he nodded and he ran a hand over his sore neck again. "I'm guessing you know, then," he croaked out. "Please. Tell me, before you kill me, who...I put a lot of trust in the wrong people. I need to know who it…"

"I'm not going to kill you," she interrupted again, and she rolled her eyes when she heard Elliot crack just knuckles and say he was going to do it. "Decker, you are incredibly smart. You knew Stabler and I had already agreed to be your human lab rats for this, but...you did it without our knowledge or permission this time, and you didn't know that you were dosing his kids, too." She eyed him for a moment. "You'll have to deal with a few unpleasant consequences but they won't kill you." She paused. "Probably."

Decker let out a whine and straightened his glasses, looked up at her, and said, "Okay, I deserve that." He shot a brief but fearful look in Elliot's direction. "Who was after…"

"You took your company computer home," she bit her lip and recalled a time long ago when she made a similar mistake for an entirely different reason, causing more damage. "You let her walk right into the restricted section."

Decker blinked once. "Of course," he said with a hurt shake of his head. "I thought dating someone outside of this agency...someone who I thought didn't have any idea who I was or what I did for a living…" he inhaled and the tears fell. "I thought I was safe." He looked up at Olivia. "Why was it so hard for me…and so easy for you?"

The question came as a shock and Olivia stood up straight. She looked at Decker for one long moment, and then she turned to the three agents, in black suits with white ties, and she said, "He's too invaluable to lose. Call the A-Team, everything about this incident, that drug, and the two women who...broke his heart." She then looked at a fourth agent, her black tie in a perfect Windsor. "In the next data room, that girl...she's a threat, you need to make sure she's...neutralized."

Elliot looked at the white-ties and watched as they dragged Agent Decker through sliding doors. He turned his head just in time to see Olivia moving through an opening wall. He ran to catch up and grabbed her arm as they walked through the archway. "The A-Team," he said with a narrow-eyed glare, "The memory guys?" He saw her lick her lips and nod. "You never told me what, uh...what those guys did to Cragen."

She cleared her throat, knelt down to pat an IAN on its metallic head, and then she shrugged once as she said, "I couldn't let him live with the guilt anymore. When we walk into that station house, he won't have any idea that we're…"

"James and Julie Bond?" He offered a joke and a laugh but she didn't smile at all. "Hey, why are you…"

"He won't remember a damn thing about killing my father, he'll just be…" she closed her eyes and then looked at Elliot as she opened them again. "Fine." She reached for him and smoothed her hand over his short hair. "Decker was right," she whispered. "Falling in love with the right person, trusting you so fully...it was easy for me. But he doesn't know...how hard it was to hide, sneak around, how fucking miserable I was because you went home to…"

"I went home to see my kids," he corrected, holding her hand as they walked out of HQ. He tilted his head and watched her type a few buttons on her watch. "I never went home to Kathy. Since the first time I kissed you...fuck, I knew it was wrong, but damn it...you were my home. You know that," he narrowed his eyes and remembered the way Agent Nelson had lured him into the gig by making false claims, ones she'd promised were false. "You do know that, don't you?"

She nodded, her lip still caught between her teeth. She jutted her chin forward when the self-driving car pulled up to get them. "Get in," she said, "I'm too tired to drive and you...you're still so fucking pissed off that you'd step on the gas and kill us."

He scoffed, rolled his eyes, but nodded as he opened the back door and slid into the car. "So what's really…" he sighed and hooked an arm around her as she sat beside him. The door closed by itself, the car greeted them with surprising politeness, and as they rode away from HQ, he prodded again. "The look in your eyes back there, baby, it was killing me, too. Why do you think I jumped at the chance to...fuck, when Nelson made that offer, it was my way out of the hole I dug for myself. You and your team of string-pullers…"

"I know," she mumbled, but she dropped her head to his chest and nuzzled a moment. "All I was saying...falling in love with you, trusting you...that was so easy. Everything else was fucking hard, and for him to look at me the way he did and assume…"

"A lot of people assumed shit," he interrupted, brushing her hair back. "And every fucking one of them was wrong." He looked over her shoulder, out the window, figuring out they were only a minute or two from the station. "Liv, with things...calmer now…" he cleared his throat and dropped his eyes to hers. "Ya know, with Cragen conveniently forgetting the shit that could get us all in some hot water, the safety of the Control Hub, the kids, this whole bionic drug…"

"Things are calmer, what's your point," she injected, smirking. She needed to stop him from listing every adventurous detail of the last few weeks of their lives.

He smiled, cupped her cheeks, and leaned into her. He kissed her once, and just as he opened his mouth to whisper what he so desperately wanted to ask her, he heard the beeps. "Um...is that your watch?"

"No," she shook her head. "Yours?" She looked around and her heart started racing as he told her it wasn't his either. "Oh, fuck, we need to…" she yelled, "Stop the car!"

The brakes screeched. The car's APA spoke in its tinny drone. "I sense danger, Benson." All four doors opened as the beeping grew faster and louder. Olivia and Elliot got out of opposite sides of the car, running as fast as they could and shouting to nearby pedestrians to back away. They'd only made it to the middle of the street before the car blew up. The force of the blast was strong, sending them flying to the other side of the street.

Bits of metal and plastic rained down around them as they wheezed and coughed and checked each other for any sign of injury. They looked from each other to the car, the angry orange flames engulfed the remains of the vehicle, black smoke billowed up from it as the sirens in the distance became loud and clear.

A small beep sounded, making both of them jump. "Okay," she huffed, "That's my watch." She raised her wrist to her mouth as she looked back toward Elliot. "Go for Benson," she said, and she licked her lips as her other hand smoothed over Elliot's chest. She let him pull her into him as she heard, "Are you and Stabler all right? We were alerted as soon as the bomb was armed."

"We're fine," she breathed, her head half-buried in Elliot's neck. She dropped a soft kiss to his skin, feeling his racing pulse under her lips. "I want every available Incendiary Agent on this, I want to know who fucked with my car, and why."

"Me, too," Elliot spat loudly, hoping whoever was on the other end of the ComLink heard his voice.

"Yes, Ma'am, Sir," the agent replied. "We have a team on their way to meet you. An ambulance en route and your secondary transport. I will review all surveillance and security footage from your primary transport's ComStat system."

"Thanks, Sanderson," she said, and she sat up a bit straighter as she heard the sirens getting louder. "We have to tell two different stories, El," she said with a final cough, seeing a squad car pull up the curb in front of them.

"Yeah," he nodded. "The NYPD gets half of it, our guys get the truth," he said, proving he knew just how above the law he truly was now. "Liv, baby?"

"What?" she turned at the waver in his voice and closed her eyes. "I'm fine, we're fine," she leaned in and kissed him.

He kissed her back eagerly, but said, "I know, I was just asking you...when we find this asshole…" he brushed her hair back and looked into her shimmering eyes. "Will you please...let me fucking kill him?"

She laughed, kissed him again, and said, "Baby," she paused. "I'll fucking help you do it."

A/N: Who tried to kill them? What was Elliot going to ask her?