When she finds him slumped on the cold sidewalk, it takes her back years; to a November night when she tried in vain to staunch the steady flow of his blood with her bare hands.
Two bullets to his shoulder (with her foolishness), then. Two attackers in the dark (with her absence), tonight.
She'd already been on her way when his son had called, three blocks east and following some bizarre uneasy hunch she will never be able to define, except that her connection to him has yet to fail.
Something is wrong.
"Olivia!"
She hears Eli's frantic voice shout out to her from yards away and she runs faster. She is already out of breath before she sees him, anxiety combined with exhaustion threatening to suffocate her, but when she finally reaches them she gasps, choking on the cold night air.
She takes in the scene before her as if in slow motion then, because though he is dazed and bleeding on to the concrete, his son is her first priority. Triage.
She is a mother now, after all.
She is a cop, too. She knows shock when she sees it.
"Eli," she says his name quietly, cautiously.
She presses her hand to his trembling back, his shoulder as she slowly moves closer, steps into the space between where he kneels and where his father lays.
This close to him, she can see that he is shaking so hard his teeth are chattering furiously.
"Eli."
He is breathing, but his inhales are too shallow, his exhales too short.
Hyperventilating.
He can't seem to take his eyes off his father and she needs him to look at her, to see her.
"Sweetheart," she presses her cold palm to his pale freezing cheek and he nearly convulses into her hand. He falls against her and he is pliant enough that she can use the motion of his body to help him to stand.
"Eli, I need you to stay with me," she tells him, giving his shoulder a shake. He tries to nod, but his tremor is too much and his neck jerks as though from whiplash.
"Stay right here with me."
She needs to ground him, to root him, to keep him there beside her. She pulls him closer to herself, cradling him the way she did on the day he was born.
She lost his wife, she won't lose his child.
She turns them so that Eli's back faces his father, so that he can no longer see, but she can assess as quickly as possible what Elliot needs.
He needs EMS, he needs a hospital, but she knows he will never go. Not this soon, not when the invisible wounds are so blisteringly fresh, the nightmares so raw and vivid.
She wonders if she has lost her damn mind, if his rogue rebellious streak has rubbed off on her already; the way he continually defies the customs, ignores the protocols. She is a captain now, only yesterday she reminded him, but together they have never played by the rules.
To hell with it.
She has to take care of him. It's her job. She may outrank him in the hierarchy, but he is her partner for better or worse and forever.
She should have seen this coming. She should have had his back. She should have pushed him harder, come earlier, put a detail on his place. She knows from experience, there is a crushing recklessness he takes on when he believes no one needs him. No one loves -
"Save him, 'Livia."
His son's voice snaps her from her terrified reverie.
"Help Dad. I'm all right."
She lets him go because this is Elliot's son and she believes him when he tells her things, the same way she believes his father.
She is on her knees then, falling to his side with the cold concrete biting into her palms, her denim covered legs. She is tearing the scarf from her neck to press to his bleeding temple. She learned long ago that the fabric will staunch the blood far better than her palms.
"Elliot."
She lost his wife, his children their mother.
A November night so long ago, she almost lost him to gunshot wounds, but tonight is all the more horrifying.
She has seen it coming in his eyes, heard it in his aching voice, sensed it in his restless surrender...now, she is losing him to himself.
He doesn't know how long he sits there. It could be seconds or days. He can't be sure.
The moments are blurring together.
The pain in his head is splitting, his shoulder is searing, his ribs are pounding along with each erratic beat of his heart.
His son's frantic hands are on his shoulders, his terrified voice is on the phone.
Eli needs comfort, he deserves more than the haze of agony which Elliot watches him through, but he can't bring himself to move.
He hears his son's shout in the dark, his cry of her name. And then she is here. Right here. With them. Beside them.
She is talking to his son. He can't make out her words, but the cadence of her voice is low, soothing, gentle. It's the voice she uses to talk to victims, to individuals in distress.
It's the one she used yesterday in the car...when he'd closed his eyes against the desperate burn of ten years worth of missing her to just listen to her voice.
"My job is to take care of my people, to make sure that they're good, and they're solid, and they're together enough to do the work."
It's the voice she used when she told him she was worried about him.
He wonders how she feels now.
He feels something soft press to the side of his head and he forces his stinging eyes open through the indistinct fog of pain when he hears her say his name.
"Elliot."
She is touching him now, ever so gently. Her palm cups his cheek, her fingers skim his neck, his shoulder, his chest. He doesn't know whether she is shivering or he is shaking, but one of them is trembling. Maybe both.
"El," she whispers his nickname for the first time in a decade and the hurt that blazes through his chest has nothing to do with getting the life kicked out of him and everything to do with her giving it back to him.
Her full brown eyes are rapidly spilling down her cheeks now and he wants to reach for her. To hold her, to comfort her, but he can't; not when he has been the cause of so much of her pain. He wants to tell her he is not worth her tears, her time, her tenderness, but somehow -
"El, can you stand? We need to get you inside."
Her question is so simple, the task looms monumental, but he'll try. For his son, for her. He'll do anything.
He feels her lift the soft fabric from his bleeding forehead and he realizes - her scarf. It's just another casualty of the wake of destruction he has brought with him from Rome, back to Manhattan, back to her. He thinks he will have to ask her what color it was so he can replace it.
After all, he owes her...for so much more than this.
With Eli under his left arm and Olivia under his right, he can pull himself up. He can't help the way he leans heavily on them both. He wonders if she knows he has never truly been able to stand without her.
The dizziness in his head makes his stomach roll violently at the sudden change in position and he turns his head to the right, buries his face in her hair so the scent of her shampoo calms him the same way it did on the night his wife died. She smells the same, like coconut mixed with a subtle kind of fancy fragrant something.
When she turns to look up at him, she is close enough that if he were allowed he could kiss her.
He smells the hint of spearmint gum on her breath as through she'd been nervously chewing a piece on the way and discarded it in her haste to rush to his side.
She is always rushing to be with him and he can't fathom why.
He doesn't know how they got upstairs to the apartment, but suddenly she is gone from his side.
The two of them, Olivia and his son, are a flurry of movement around him, too fast for him to keep up so he closes his eyes. Olivia is on the phone speaking quickly to someone on the other end. Before he knows it, she has hung up and is making a second call, then a third. One after another, all in the name of protecting them.
His son is helping him out of his coat. He bites back the cry of pain that shoots from his collarbone and then Eli is carefully propping him up on the couch, with a repeated rushed mantra of, "We're gonna be all right, Dad. We're gonna be all right."
He wants to nod, he wants to believe his boy, to reassure him, but -
Eli is gone across the room, across the apartment, gone to help Olivia.
And then they're back together with supplies...towels, water, gauze, ice, and what looks like every last band-aid he has to his name.
Eli pulls the coffee table up beside the couch and helps Olivia organize while she shrugs off her coat and her violet cardigan down to her white t-shirt.
"Liv, do you need anything else?"
Olivia reaches for his son's arm and some sort of earnest unspoken communication passes between them before she speaks.
He misses when she talked to him that way.
"If anyone rings the doorbell, let me answer it."
Eli's dark eyes widen ever so slightly before he nods his understanding and backs out of the room, moving toward his own.
Both God and Olivia know his son has been given more than enough to handle for tonight.
The feeling of Olivia's shaking fingertips ghosting against his jaw bring him back beside her.
"Melinda's on her way," she whispers anxiously, "but I have to get you cleaned up."
Her dark eyes search his face as if she is unsure which wound to tend to first. He can't imagine what he looks like, what a mess he has made.
She starts then, dipping the soft washcloth into the clean warm water and wringing it out before pressing it gently to his cheek, his temple, his jaw. She doesn't wait for his permission or for him to be ready and it makes him think about how they used to be; confident, cocky, and comfortable enough to touch each other. She doesn't preface her actions with how much it's going to hurt because they both know that nothing can hurt worse than the hell where he lives and she is a blessed reprieve he doesn't deserve.
He wants to cry for her sweetness, her tenderness, her care. He wants to cry for her protection, her nearness, her staying here.
Her hands are moving downward to his chest, unzipping his favorite gray sweatshirt. It reminds him of the old one they used to pass back and forth during grueling cases. He'd find her wearing it when she fell asleep at her desk, when she ran out for coffee, when the squad-room got chilly at night. They never spoke about sharing it and he has no idea where it is now except that he hopes she has it and it still keeps her warm.
The one he wears now is covered in his own blood and he hadn't even noticed.
He can't take his eyes off of her.
His head is pounding enough to make him vomit, but he is not so delirious that he doesn't notice how singularly beautiful she is.
He watches her silently while she works. Her ponytail is coming undone and wavy strands of her dark hair cascade against her neck. He can feel the way her soft hands are still shaking against him and he wants to reach for her, to calm her, soothe her, but he can't seem to move.
She continues to clean him up, to care for him. Her gentle touch contrasts with the sting of the hydrogen peroxide, the burn of the Neosporin, and she inhales sharply at the same instant he does, wincing along with him as if his pain has transferred to her body.
He wonders if this is what happens when your soulmate isn't your wife.
His feels his throat constrict at the thought of Kathy and he leans back against the pillows to close his welling eyes. Olivia continues to work, touching him ever so gently.
Warm water and washcloths, band-aids and gauze, hydrogen-peroxide and antibiotic ointment over and over until...
"El..."
He hears her whisper and in the cadence of her voice his name sounds like a prayer. He realizes her needs to open his eyes to see her. She has moved from his side to let Melinda occupy her space before him. His throat is too dry to speak and neither woman seems to mind. Olivia stands close listening to Melinda's assessment, her careful check of all of his wounds. She is pulling out her own first aid kit now, more medical than the simple one he keeps on hand, the one Olivia has been using to patch him up.
She brushes her palm lightly across his shoulder before she leaves him in Melinda's capable hands. He watches her walk away and he knows without her telling him that she is going to check on his son.
Melinda stays silent before him, working calmly and quietly to put him back together.
The apartment is small enough that he can hear the sound of Olivia's knock on Eli's door and his son granting her permission to come in. He can hear the soft hum of their voices, his son's and Olivia's. Eli isn't much of a talker (he isn't sure where he got that particular trait from), but he seems to be talking to Olivia.
Of course he is.
In the week since his mother died, the kid has shut down to everyone in the world except the woman he still thinks of as his partner.
He hears it then, his son's sob and the sound breaks him. He wants to get up, to go to him, to be with Olivia, but Melinda is still diligently working and he can't move. If Melinda notices his tears, she doesn't let on. He closes his eyes, swallowing hard, and tries to remind himself how to breathe. His ribs are killing him and Melinda seems to notice the stilted way he inhales, so he knows that's next on her list.
She has given him something for the pain and he thinks he is falling asleep, drifting as she works. He can just make out the quiet fall of footsteps, but they sound far away. They start and stop suddenly and he can't be sure whether he is dreaming when he hears his son's tearful whisper...
"I just lost my Mom, Olivia. I can't lose him, too."
It is her reply that leads him out to sleep.
"Eli, I promise you. I won't let anything happen to him."
In the safety of her vow, he lets himself rest.
When he wakes for the first time, she is dozing; curled up in the chair across the room. He tries to glance at the clock to check the time, but his neck is brutally sore.
"Liv."
Her name is barely a rasp against his parched throat, but she wakes with a start.
"Are you okay?"
She is up and at his side in an instant, inexplicably bringing with her the glass of water from the coffee table as if she has read his mind.
She perches on the edge of the couch near his shin, her knee bumps against his thigh.
Her fingers brush the back of his when she presses the glass into his grasp. His knuckles are bloody and he can't touch her with that kind of stain on his skin. The cool water soothes his aching throat and he breathes through his painful ribs. He knows she doesn't miss his flinching because she is already up and heading toward the kitchen for more meds and an ice pack.
When she returns, she tips the anti-inflammatory into his palm and gives him time to him swallow before she places the ice pack into his lap for him to situate on his abdomen.
She stays beside him in the silence.
She doesn't say a word, just sits with him through the pain. He can sense over the last however long he has been dead to the world that she has been awake. She won't meet his gaze and he has to try to find out why. He knows what he has done, everything he has done and he doesn't deserve an instant of her time, an iota of her care, but he needs -
"Liv."
He follows her gaze to the sleek lines of the coffee table before them. She won't look at him and he has to apologize, for what he doesn't know anymore. He can't keep up with all of his mistakes, but he has got to make this one thing right.
"Liv, I'm-"
"I swear Elliot, if you tell me you're sorry one more time..."
Her agitation flares and though he doesn't understand it, he figures it's better than her silence.
"You can't do this," she whispers, shaking her head and studying the broken skin on the back of his hand that rests in his lap beside her.
He bites down hard on his split lip and tries to figure out what the hell she is talking about before she fills him in.
She motions over her shoulder toward the dining table, toward the chaos of the display he has erected on the wall.
She has seen it, of course she has.
"You can't do this," she repeats. "You can't keep a fucking murder board in the middle of your apartment."
He swallows hard. She is angry with him and this is what he has been waiting for. This is what he deserves.
Olivia takes a deep breath and her inhale catches like a sob before she speaks again.
"Kathy is gone, El and I'm so sorry. But your son still lives here."
He gasps out loud into the silence around them as if she has hit him herself. The punches Olivia throws are the ones he needs to take.
"You have a son who loves you more than anything, who needs you now more than ever and you're..."
His son. Her son. The thought jolts through him and he tries to sit up too quickly. Her hands automatically fly to his shoulders, pressing him back against the couch.
"What are you doing?"
"You can't be here," he rumbles, grimacing through his pain as he tries in vain to move away from her.
"Let me be the judge of that," she says breezily. She isn't listening, she is moving closer, examining his treated wounds.
She is ignoring him and it's terrifying.
"Olivia," he manages. He can feel himself starting to shake again. He ducks his head to try to get her to look at him. He can't force her, can't hold her face in his palms the way she had with his because he has blood on his hands in every possible way.
He has to keep talking. He has to make her see...
"They killed Kathy gunnin' for me. They came after Eli tonight. What's to stop 'em from coming after you? And Noah?" He is desperate now. To nearly lose his own son is enough, but to put hers in danger by his proximity is another story entirely. He'll never forgive himself. The guilt is already eating him alive.
"This isn't your fault."
She reads his mind, offers him absolution he doesn't deserve.
Olivia meets his gaze. She is glaring at him, but at least she's looking.
"Elliot, I'm a captain now," she says, déjà vu washing over him. He has heard this line before.
"You're not the only person who can keep people safe," she explains, turning away from him to organize the medical supply mess on the table behind her. He waits for her to elaborate and she does.
"I have protective details on your children."
He struggles to take a deep breath. She knows. Somehow she knows everything without him ever telling her.
"And mine," she adds, nodding with an certainty he doesn't understand, but fiercely wants to.
"That's not gonna stop 'em, Liv," he tells her, trying to reason, but she is back to ignoring him.
"It's better than nothing and we'll figure it out," she replies, leaning forward and examining the gashes to his temple. He wonders if this is the same tone she uses to speak to Noah when he is anxious. This comforting, maternal salve as if there is nothing in the world she can't fix.
He wants to believe her and thinks he would be soothed if he weren't so distressed, so determined to control the world spinning around him.
"There is no we, Liv," he says, the words scratch against his throat because they contradict everything he wants in life, but he has to protect her. He has to make her understand. "This is my fight."
"To lose?" She snaps, her dark gaze skimming his expression, his beaten face.
He crumbles before her because he can't take it. He can't take her closeness, her scrutiny, the way she knows him better than anyone else in the entire universe.
He tries to turn his head to the back of the couch so he can break without her watching, but she grabs his jaw to hold him steady, pressing clean gauze to his temple.
"I just got you back," she whispers, her voice lilting with emotion. "I won't let you lose yourself because Kathy's gone."
He is too surprised to sob so he sits before her in strangled silence and listens.
"You can't do this to yourself to atone for what happened. Losing you isn't gonna bring your wife back and you can't leave your children. You can't leave me."
"Liv," he rasps her name, watching the way she closes her eyes and her perfect dark lashes brush her cheeks at the sound of his voice. He has to tell her, tell her he would never - not when he loves her so - but he realizes she is right.
It's been a convoluted agonizing descent over the last week, slow to him but rapid and unsettling to anyone watching. Losing larger and larger pieces of himself without stopping to pick them up until now, until there's hardly anything left of him. Except Olivia is looking at him like he is still here.
Like there is still something in him worth seeing.
He opens his mouth to speak to try and talk to her, but he suddenly tastes copper and his swollen bottom lip must break open because she is glaring at him again, sprinkling her jeans with water as she reaches for the cool washcloth and presses it to his mouth.
"Stop talking."
She stays with him, beside him. Her hand pressed to his shoulder, her gentle fingers on his lips.
He looks up at her and meets her dark gaze in the dim light. He wonders what she sees when she looks at him, but he knows it can't be pretty because her eyes fill and spill over onto her cheeks.
"Eli is worried about you." She says it in the same perfectly tender cadence she used to tell him that she was, too.
"He knows what's happening, Elliot. He says you're up all hours working this case and when you do fall asleep you're having night terrors."
She pauses as if to give him a moment to interject, like hell he will because she isn't wrong.
"He says you're not sleeping, you're not eating-"
"Not true. I had waffles last night," he mutters. A meek defense, but still...
"For dinner?" Olivia asks, her anger dying for a moment in her pure confusion. Her question so familiar it almost makes the corner of his mouth lift.
She is still his best friend in the whole world.
She watches him carefully, curiously, cautiously as though he is a ticking timebomb and all at once he knows she is right.
"You're scaring me, El," she admits bleakly. "You're scaring your son."
He knows this, but hearing her say it makes it real.
The sight of her blurs before him and he leans forward to stifle his sob into his hands. His ribs protest with each violent inhalation and exhalation, but he can't seem to stop. He feels her moving closer to him then her gentle hand lands on his back, rubbing small soothing circles.
"El," she whispers his name and he has to regain some shard of control so that he can listen to her, hear her every precious word. "I don't think you know."
He swallows heavily into the quiet. Her warm weight against his side, grounding him while he waits for her.
"You don't know," she whispers again cryptically. "Yesterday in the car when you said you needed to hear me tell you I was worried about you. You don't know, do you?"
He turns his head ever so slightly on his protesting neck so that he can look at her. Her brown eyes are wide with a haunted realization and he wonders what he has unwittingly confirmed for her. She takes him in with her gaze and he is sure he looks a wreck of pitiful confusion because that is what he feels.
She has never been intimidated, never shied away.
Instead, she leans closer and presses her lips to his broken temple, a kiss to the swollen rise of his cheekbone. He closes his eyes at the sentiment, the sensation, her unwavering gentleness with him.
"Your children need you, El. They need you for the rest of their lives."
He nods avoiding her gaze with his rapidly filling eyes, he knows she is right.
His children need him.
They need him to be their father, their provider, their protector. He is no good to any of them if he isn't well himself. He doesn't know where to start, but he trusts that she will help him to find out. He attempts to take a breath, to try to find words for what she has done for him, but she isn't finished speaking.
"I need you, too."
He reaches for her then because he can't help himself. He needs to touch her. His palm drops heavy on her thigh and he squeezes her denim-covered knee with his aching hand.
He has prayed for this, but he has never been able to fathom a world where she still-
"I'm going to take care of this," she promises, as if his situation can be tied up in a neat diplomatic little bow, but he also knows she isn't naïve.
He knows by this she means his family, his case, and by the grace of God he doesn't deserve, she means him, too.
He can tell her to back off, to stand down as many times as he wants, but he knows she won't because he wouldn't either.
He doesn't have to like it, but he has to let her.
Her determined expression tells him he doesn't have a choice. He learned long ago that he can't fight city hall and he has never been able to fight her.
She isn't leaving. Neither is he.
She is his partner for life.
He falls back to sleep and slumbers through the night for the first time since his wife took her last breath. The knowledge that Olivia rests nearby keeps the nightmares at bay. She has always been his nightlight in the dark.
When he wakes for the second time, the morning sun is pouring through the blinds.
The first thing he notices is that the locked cabinet on the top of the bookshelf is open. She knows where he keeps it, his service weapon.
It is gone and so is Olivia.
He won't read into it because he knows everything she does stems from the care that courses through her veins. She knows him better than he does himself. He knows they'll talk about it. He trusts her with his life. He trusts her to trust him with her own.
His son sits at the kitchen table eating take-out breakfast from the pancake place down the street. He is sure Olivia had something to do with the appearance of the food. He can smell his favorite coffee and though he is stiff and hurting and sore as hell, his stomach growls loud enough for Eli to glance over and give him a tentative grin.
He makes his way to the kitchen, slowly but surely and plants a kiss to the top of his son's head. Eli nods toward the wall before them and Elliot looks up to find it empty. The pictures, the articles, the police reports are all gone, but cardboard file boxes line the floor along the wall.
He prods the top of one with his foot and sees all of his paperwork piled neatly inside.
She hasn't taken them from him, just put them away where they belong. There is a bright orange sticky note in the center of the wall in place of all of the darkness.
Call me when you can.
-Liv
He can and he will.