Ten years.
Ten (fucking) years.
It took ten (long, frustrating) years to build the wall of silence between them. And Elliot had to admit, the silence was more on his part – she'd stayed, if he wanted to contact her during any point in those ten years, he knew exactly where to find her.
He couldn't chance it.
He knew all too well that being around Olivia was an everlasting, free-flowing assault on his senses – hearing her voice teasing him, seeing her smile while she spoke, feeling the occasional touch that lingered a second or two longer than strictly necessary, smelling the indeterminate flowers from her body wash. He could only imagine what the privilege of tasting the salt on her skin would feel like – so he never allowed himself to imagine, except in the darkest recesses of his mind.
To go back would be to give in.
So, he never could.
Life was good in Rome. It was the honeymoon and all the family vacations he and Kathy and the kids never got to have because of his job, and the cost of raising a family in New York. They splashed in the warm waters of the Mediterranean, took quick weekend trips to cruise the canals of Venice, and ate enough pasta to permanently redefine the very meaning of the word. And when he watched his family take in the sight of paintings that were older than their entire country back home, he could almost forget what – or who - else was also back home.
Life was good, and then, in a flash, in a bang, in a pounding hailstorm of powder and explosives and shrapnel, it wasn't. Not anymore.
And then, ten (excruciating) years of silence were destroyed in ten (agonizing) seconds of eye contact.
Even on the worst of days, somehow, she was always there to be his salvation.
Ten years.
Ten years of asking herself the same one-word question – why?
Eventually, she'd had to move on with her life. It was increasingly clear that whatever was going through Elliot's mind, that she was not a part of It any longer. The litany of ignored voicemails and text messages recorded in her phone's history were a testament to the effort she'd put in, and the glaring lack of a response was a hollow, bitter echo showing his lack thereof. She believed the kids these days called it "ghosted," which was fitting because even though he was gone, his image still flickered along the edges of her mind.
Ever since the day she'd met him, they'd been drawn into each other's orbits like two planets caught in gravity's grasp, and even though she knew in her heart that Kathy was always the number one woman in his life, she couldn't ignore the unmistakable, undeniable pull she felt toward him. She'd never be able to testify, even in a court of law, to what exactly the pull consisted of, but it was there, and it was real, even if only in her own mind.
It wasn't as though the criminals stopped their horrifying antics just because her partner – her best friend, her confidante, her Elliot - was gone, though, and so life had to move on, and so did she. Throwing herself headlong into her work was the best balm for what ailed her, it turned out.
Even after years passed, she still wanted to reach out sometimes. When something major happened in her life – like when she became the new Captain, or with Tucker, or when Noah came into her life and never left, or even when she had a really shitty day with some lowlife in interrogation – her finger would linger over his contact in her phone, her breath would catch in her throat, and she'd allow herself to contemplate what would happen if she hit the call button.
Most likely, it would be silence – the soundtrack to their relationship of the last ten years. She couldn't believe it'd been ten, it was almost as though she'd blinked and missed the last nine and a half sometimes.
But maybe, if she were lucky, she'd hear the easy rumble of his voice instead. Consoling, congratulating, criticizing – somehow, she (almost) didn't care what he said as long as she was hearing his voice say it to her.
And then – it was a routine emergency call on what should have been a special night for her, what with the flouncy award and heaps of gauzy praise that would be piled on her and all, but something nagged at her gut that this was anything but routine. Maybe that was why she was the one to respond. Except it was really anything but routine, which she almost should have expected.
Ten years since she'd seen the victim's face, or any of the others she freely associated with it.
Ten agonizing years of silence broken with a single word piercing through the night and ripping it entirely to shreds.
"Liv!"
This wasn't supposed to be the end.
Maybe their end should have come long before, but something – whether it was the kids, or some practical form of love and devotion – had kept them together this long, and this was God's way of saying that their reprieve had been long enough.
But he never imagined such a violent end for a person who never did a thing in her life to deserve it.
Granted, considering the work he did, he knew most victims didn't get the ending they deserved – they deserved to die happy and warm and old in their beds with their entire extended family surrounding them and showering them with love. And the reality was anything but.
Maybe Kathy's mortal sin was being married to a man who stared down the face of violence every day and taunted it, daring it to strike at him so he could land the glancing blow.
And instead of protecting her, like he should have – like he'd always managed to before, as both a dutiful husband and servant of the law would – she took the final, devastating blow on herself.
What kind of guy would let his wife make such a sacrifice, and why was that him?
She folded over the letter in her hands again and again, the paper worn along the folds to the point it almost tore if she touched it. No, his words didn't make up for the years of silence and the conversations they'd left unspoken in the wake, but if they were ever going to start to find themselves again, this would be a way forward.
It wasn't everything she'd ever wanted him to say.
His thick scrawl expressed pride and praise in the woman she was – always had been, according to him. From anyone else, they would have rung as false and suffocating, but she would wash herself and bathe in the words when it came from him. "Thank you," the letter had concluded, "for always being there for the people of this fine city and never giving up on them. Thank you, Olivia Benson, for always being you."
She could imagine, in some alternate universe, hearing these words for the first time in a room crowded with people like them. In a world where Kathy was still there, sitting in the audience, proud of her husband and his friend.
At the bottom, in a jerky, panicked dash of a pen, obviously added sometime later, probably by the dismal light of a hospital room, he had added, "Liv, thank you for never giving up on me." The word was underlined five or six times, and she could almost sense the emotion that choked him as he wrote. The loop of the L was smudged a little, as if the letter had captured a rogue tear and preserved it.
She'd never seen him express his emotions often, but she knew he felt them strongly when he did – the grief would eat him alive, if the demons that had chased him for his entire career didn't get to him first.
He'd told her to back off, but he had to know, if he still knew her at all, that she never could. Not when someone needed help, and especially not when that someone was someone she cared about – and above all else, when that person was him.
Maybe she could ease on the gas a little, not tear down the streets at a breakneck speed to find the son of a bitch who injected this misery into their lives, but she couldn't back off.
Not entirely.
It was against her very nature to do otherwise.
Late one night, Elliot arrived home – not that this was what he'd consider home, not really, but the family home where he and Kathy had raised their kids was haunted by too many memories and phantoms of the past; he was in a temporary apartment until he could sort out what came next for him and Eli. It was a blank slate, which felt like an all-too-apt analogy for his life.
He knew Eli was long asleep; it was a blessing, all things considered, that the kid could manage to snatch even a few precious moments of quiet, because he knew he would not. Even if he managed to sleep for more than a few fitful moments, it wouldn't be peaceful.
He changed out of his work clothes and into boxers and a t-shirt, heated up some rubbery leftover lo mein and turned on the TV to search for a distraction.
Nothing was on this late but reruns and informercials that would have felt dated twenty years ago, like he suspected, but the silence that existed otherwise was too deafening for him to turn it off. He finally settled on an old black and white sitcom that he'd seen a thousand times and tuned out the world around him. If only all of his problems could be solved in thirty minutes - or less, with commercials - with some goofy hijinks and impossibly wise words from someone who might as well be God.
He'd never been a man to have a true crisis of faith, but now he understood where the impulse came from.
From somewhere in the darkness, he heard two short knocks at his door.
Every instinct in his body, distilled to their purest forms by decades in law enforcement, told him to take caution answering the door this late at night, especially with who knew what goons running around with his name forefront in their minds, itching for his blood to stain their hands tonight. He could – maybe should – grab his gun, just to be safe.
Even still, he fought against the impulses and cracked the door open, and instead of seeing some lackey or staring down the barrel of a gun, he saw Olivia curled against the doorframe, looking smaller than she usually did, bundled in a warm winter peacoat and gloves. "Hi."
"What are you doing here?" It was all he could think to say – not even a greeting, but he was a man of questions anymore with precious few answers, and Olivia was always the person who could supply them. It was the give and take of their relationship, when things had been good and easy between them. Before he left and made things impossibly complicated.
"I called the sitter, told her I had an emergency," she said, with a small laugh. "I think she's used to it by now, and she adores Noah." She waited a beat, and then looked at him – making that damned eye contact that always managed to send scattered sparks shooting down his core – and continued, "can I come in?"
"Pardon the mess."
"Always."
-to be continued-