Chapter 2

"You've got a hold of me, don't even know your power, I stand a hundred feet, but I fall when I'm around ya" - Mercy - Shawn Mendes

This time when she awoke, she was well aware she hadn't gotten enough sleep. Fatigue, both physical and emotional, made her eyes so heavy it was a struggle to open them. But she had to in order to stop whatever was shaking her shoulder enough to annoy her into a begrudging consciousness.

It took her a moment of blinking to realize that rather than her son, the person she was used to waking her in the middle of the night, it was Elliot - who incidentally made a wonderful body pillow - that was fully dressed and sitting next to her. The surge of adrenaline-fueled worry that coursed through her woke her fully in a second. "What's wrong?" It was still too dark to get up, telling her there had to be reason to panic. She tried to sit up, but his hand remained on her shoulder, preventing her from moving.

"I got called in. Nothing's wrong, I just didn't want to leave without telling you. Go back to sleep."

She felt a pang of regret, missing those days when they would get called in at the same time, spend their late nights and early mornings in each other's company, but she remembered that they could spend other time together now, like the previous night. She still hated the idea that he was headed to something potentially dangerous without her by his side, but if that meant she could look forward to more nights cuddling with him in bed, well, she trusted his team.

She caught his hand and squeezed it. "Be careful."

He nodded, leaning down to press his lips against her forehead. "I'll call you later."

She smiled up at him, once again marveling in the soft side of him she'd only just discovered. "Ok, I lo-" She stopped herself before she said it, before the words could escape in a commitment she wasn't ready to acknowledge. "I'll talk to you later then."

If he caught her slip, he gave no indication. And in another minute, he was gone.

Unable to get back to sleep, Olivia found herself lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering how things were going to change, how Elliot had already changed. He knew how badly he'd hurt her by leaving without a word and she appreciated that he'd taken the time to wake her instead of letting her sleep in and draw paranoid parallels to the other time he'd left her without a word.

But this new side of him? If the evening prior had been any indication, she was just settling in for the most intense ride she could imagine. She tried to resist, but she couldn't help imagining the next time he stayed the night, when he'd come for dinner and meet her son and it would feel perfectly normal to have him there again in her space, in her home, in her life and not have to send him home to a wife when she wanted to ask him to stay. She thought about Eli getting to know her as his siblings did, grinning madly at the idea of Noah having an older brother. She thought about someday sitting down to a Thanksgiving table full of family and laughter and happiness.

She shook her head hard, reminding herself that her poor heart had been through enough already with the man and that she needed to be the one to keep her feet on the ground. She was the one who stood the biggest chance of getting hurt. She tried to remember how she felt when he'd abandoned her, when she'd been so desperate for any little crumb from him, but the only things that came to mind were his declarations of love and his tight hugs and the almost contact of his lips to hers a few hours earlier.

Having learned from her mistake the night before, she didn't scold herself for checking her phone. She didn't care if she looked desperate; she wanted to know the minute he called or texted. She wasn't about to admit she was disappointed when she hadn't heard anything by the time Noah finished his breakfast, but such mental protestations didn't stop her from waking up her phone every few minutes. She told herself that he'd been called into work in the wee hours and was likely busy and she knew, as a boss herself, that supervisors frowned on detectives ignoring them and showing up late to meetings because they were on the phone to their whatever-she-was-to-him in the middle of important cases.

By lunch, however, she decided it was ok to be irritated that he hadn't been able to find two seconds to text her. There was a lot of hurry up and wait in police work and she figured he should have had ample time while sitting in a car with Bell and drinking coffee for a quick word. Especially when he'd seemed so protective and worried not twelve hours earlier. She gave him the benefit of the doubt still, recognizing that he might really be unable to get in touch. She thought about how horrible she'd feel if he was distracted during a dangerous situation and got hurt. Besides, she tried to convince herself, he'd said he'd call her later. That didn't mean by a certain time.

And by lunch the next day, she decglare ided later didn't necessarily mean the same day. Although, she thought with a at her phone, he certainly could have found some way to contact her in two days, considering he'd been the one who was pushing so damn hard for more than she was ready to give. His radio silence also made her glad she hadn't given in to him the night before because as much as it already hurt, it could have been so much worse.

That evening, after she made Noah dinner, the same meal she'd mostly pushed around on her plate due to the nauseating discomfort that had taken up residence in her stomach, after she watched a movie and tried desperately to listen to Noah's excited rambling about comic book characters she'd never heard of, Olivia started to get worried. She realized that it was unlikely she'd be among the first ten people notified if he got hurt. While Noah was taking his bath, she told herself that Ayanna would absolutely call her. When Noah settled into bed, she told herself if Ayanna and Elliot had both been injured and unable to contact her, certainly one of the Stabler kids would get a call and Kathleen would tell her.

And when she gave up and got into bed herself, she stared at the phone with an unhappy scowl. The anger and resentment began to fester. She'd had a rare quiet evening at home with her son and she'd been mentally checked out through the whole thing. Elliot wasn't hurt. His phone battery hadn't died. He wasn't swamped with work. He was an asshole. The same inconsiderate prick he'd always been, stringing her along when it was convenient. He knew she'd never turn her back on him. He knew she would let him break her heart over and over and she would always, always, answer his calls. Even if later meant a decade.

She tossed and turned all night, wondering how much of the pain she knew she was covering with anger was well deserved for bringing it on herself. Had he been angry because she'd turned him away? Was it because she hadn't shut him down completely with his romantic overtures? Perhaps the entire night had simply been about foreplay and he wasn't interested when she didn't carry through. She tried to understand, tried to find some way to blame herself, but she had followed his lead. She hadn't been the one asking him to dance or hugging him or telling him she loved him. She had absolutely not tried to instigate a sexual encounter in her sleep. She certainly hadn't promised that she wasn't ever going to leave him again.

At least she could cling to the idea that she hadn't told him she loved him, not in so many words. Sure she had a million times with her actions and with her eyes and with her suddenly easy smiles. But she hadn't said the words. She had that thought to hold onto. She'd be able to look him in the eye the next time she saw him. While she strangled him.

She stayed good and pissed for a solid week. Every day she struggled with the conflicting urges to call him and tell him off or to swear she would freeze him out if he ever tried to contact her again. She analyzed every bit of every interaction she'd had with him since he reappeared in her life and tried to figure out which one of them had been completely insane. She couldn't believe he'd honestly expected he'd get away with playing her before leaving her high and dry again, but he had, and she couldn't find any tells in his words or behavior that he'd been dishonest with her, but he had been.

It took ten days before she decided it had been her fault after all. First, she hadn't shut him down. Yes, he'd been the one to make the moves and flirt with her, but she'd been receptive. There had always been a safe pattern between them, if one of them flirted, the other withdrew. She'd thrown off their cadence by encouraging him. Second, she knew full well the man was and always had been an emotional disaster and she would have seen his rejection coming from a mile away if she'd taken a damn minute to think about it with a clear head. The third problem, the big one, which stemmed in part from the second in that she never had a clear head around Elliot, was that she'd trusted him. As much as she warned herself against it and pretended it wasn't true, she'd trusted the asshole who'd blown her the fuck off for ten motherfucking years while he fucking paraded around fucking Italy with his fucking wife on their second fucking honeymoon.

Her poor squad suffered through the brunt of her fury at herself simply because there was nowhere else she could put it for the next several days. Her desk drawers took severe punishment as did a filing cabinet drawer, not to mention the copier which dared to get jammed. She knew her team was talking about her, could feel the weight of their stares when she slammed her office door one too many times, and it only served to upset her more. She'd embarrassed herself in front of them, let them see her acting stupid and staring at that son of a bitch Stabler with big doe eyes, and she had to sublimate that mortification into anger or she would die.

One afternoon the following week, Fin had the balls to knock, park himself close to the door just in case, and say what he'd clearly been thinking for a while. "What'd he do this time?"

She was tempted, oh so tempted, to immediately ask who, but she wasn't sure she could pull that off. Instead she looked her friend in the eye and told the truth. "Nothing." Out of context maybe, but utterly true. Elliot had done nothing out of the ordinary and Liv knew it was her own responsibility for opening herself up to him. Again.

He'd been married to Kathy for forty fucking years. How the hell did she think he was ever going to recover from that? He'd lost the love of his life a few months earlier. He wasn't ready to date. He'd never be ready to date. No one would ever compare.

By sixteen days, she had fallen into a pattern. In quiet moments, she would remember the way he'd been looking at her since he'd returned, the way he'd opened up to her like he never had before, the way he smiled at her and reached for her and told her he loved her. She'd remember how she felt that night when they danced, how being in his arms felt like home and how much he'd given her every indication that he felt it too. She'd remember how he'd panicked when he didn't hear from her and how he'd come running to her. She'd remember the feeling of his arms around her while they lay in bed. She'd remember the way he'd kissed her goodbye and told her he'd call. And then she'd be worried, ignoring all the reasons why it was preposterous that she wouldn't find out if he'd been hurt, and reach for her phone. Her thumb would hover over his name while she told herself there was nothing wrong with checking in after not hearing back. It wasn't being clingy if she'd waited over two weeks. She wasn't calling to discuss their relationship. She was merely a concerned coworker and friend who wanted to touch base with him.

She couldn't, wouldn't, do it. She wasn't going to call him. She wasn't going to leave a hundred messages that grew in urgency. She wasn't going to keep calling until his voice mail was full. She wasn't going to experience the pain of hearing that his number was disconnected. For a second, she'd contemplate deleting his number, blocking it altogether, anything to spare herself the rehashing of the pain that he had caused her all over again. She'd ultimately, at least six times a day, decide to leave it there, just so she could know if he ever did call. Not that she was going to answer, but she still wanted to know.

It was a solid three weeks after Fin hadn't gotten married that her phone finally lit up with his number. She was sitting at her desk and somehow, despite three weeks of checking her phone what felt like every single second of every single day, the sound, the name, the reality of it took her by surprise. She stared at the display, frozen in place as she tried to make up her mind. She tamped down her immediate reactions - relief and excitement - and watched as the call clicked over to voicemail. She tried to tell herself she wasn't being petty. She'd decided he wasn't right in the head, he was still grieving, after all, so maybe it wasn't right to exact revenge. But she was so hurt and angry and ashamed of herself. She needed to know what he wanted, if he was calling to apologize - which she told herself she wouldn't accept even while she knew full well she'd fold the moment the words left his mouth - or to discuss some new case while completely ignoring what had happened or almost happened between them - which she knew would hurt like hell and would thus be better to know before she actually spoke to him.

She waited for a chirp that he'd left a message. It seemed to be taking a while and her heart leapt at the idea that he knew he'd been wrong and was calling to beg for her forgiveness and was leaving her an extremely detailed explanation of why he'd been an ass and how sorry he was and how he was going to make it up to her. She tried to guess how much time she would devote to deciding whether or not to listen to it. She wondered how she would feel if she deleted it, if she determined no amount of groveling was going to fix what he'd broken - again - in her. She was really fucking mad at herself for waiting so long before she realized there was no message.

The call had come later in the day and she wondered when he'd try again, if he'd wait until morning or if he'd just call over and over until he annoyed her into answering. It was Elliot, after all, and he wasn't known for taking hints. Honestly she wasn't sure which option would hurt less - if he kept calling or if he stopped.

Her phone didn't ring again until she was back at work the next day. She responded the same way, ignored it, waited for a voicemail that never came, and then tried to tell herself she'd done the right thing.

He was worried, she decided, when she didn't answer the third time or the fourth, because while several hours passed between calls, the window between them was getting smaller. He must have been very worried because instead of what would have been the twentieth call from Elliot in three days, the next time her phone rang, the name on her screen was Ayanna Bell.

She really struggled with that one. There were even more options now, creating a complicated matrix in her head that was more difficult to figure out before the call flipped to voicemail. Maybe he had borrowed her phone. Maybe he'd convinced her to call. Maybe he really was hurt this time and it was the call she'd told herself to expect from her friend if anything had happened. Maybe it had nothing to do with Elliot, maybe it was actually work related and she was letting her personal feelings get in the way of her job. By the time she realized she needed to answer it, she'd missed the call. But unlike the previous calls, a voicemail notification popped up almost immediately.

With a heavy sigh, she played it, knowing what it would say since it was too short to be anything else. "Hey, Liv, it's Ayanna, call me back."

Several deep breaths later, during which Olivia swore she was not somehow responsible for Elliot getting hurt because she hadn't answered the phone over the three days he'd been trying to reach her, she called Ayanna back.

The younger woman answered immediately, piling on more guilt. "I've been trying to reach you."

"I just got your message, what's up?" She tried to keep her voice steady and her tone normal, but even she could hear the edge that had snuck into it.

"I think we should talk in person."

Her heart stopped. Her heart fucking stopped beating right in her chest. Which was good, she realized, because a heart needed oxygen to work and since she wasn't breathing, she imagined that would be a problem at some point.

"Is he ok?" She barely forced out the raspy words, fighting the urge to sob until she had an answer. Shit, if he'd been reaching out to her, hurt or scared or depressed or whatever the fuck had compelled him to call, and she'd been too busy being hurt and angry to listen, and then something happened… No. That would not be ok. Not ever. She couldn't imagine how she could live with it.

"He's fine." Ayanna sighed, a heavy, tired sound that Olivia recognized from her days of working closely with Elliot. "Like I said, I think we should talk in person."

With her guilt assuaged, Olivia felt her temper rising back up. "Talk about what?" She didn't want to be a royal bitch to her friend, but if Elliot had dragged Ayanna into helping him, well, Olivia had enough friends. She'd survive losing two.

"Liv, really, I-"

The tone told Olivia everything she needed to hear. "No, Ayanna. If it's not about work, it's off the table." She could only dream of what crazy bullshit he'd come up with to drag a coworker into his nonsense. Ayanna wasn't one to fall for that sort of trick.

"Fine, we can do it over the phone, but will you hear me out?" Ayanna's voice had changed from determined to desperate and Olivia had no idea what that meant.

"Is it about work?" She barely waited for the answer she already knew before she continued. "And Elliot is physically unharmed?" Fear gripped her for another moment until Ayanna voiced her second assurance he was uninjured. "Then there's nothing to talk about and by all means, please pass that along to him."

She hung up before she could lose her nerve. She made excuses about Noah being sick and left work early so no one would see when her tears finally broke free.

She was tempted to call Ayanna back, torn as to whether she would cry or scream or give the woman an earful to relay to Elliot. But she was too strong to give in. She'd had no choice but to be strong when he'd frozen her out and now that she had the option of calling him, even just to yell at him, it was the right time to display that strength, to show him how much fortitude she'd developed in ten years of silence. She expected more calls, figured when his attempt to rope Ayanna into the mix fell flat, he'd go back to annoying her. It was truly a surprise that her phone remained quiet.

One of the worst parts of being a captain was the political aspect. Olivia had loved being a detective and hadn't envied Cragen one bit when he'd been forced to attend events that sounded like social affairs on the surface, but in actuality were lobbying and schmoozing and vying for resources to save detectives' careers and trying to escape the blame for something that truly hadn't been anyone's fault. So while a blanket invitation to the ranking members of the department and anyone who'd worked with Captain Jenkins in his thirty years with the NYPD sounded like an optional request, Olivia knew it was not. She dreaded the gathering and the chatting up of whichever important brass decided to show and she deeply resented the hour or so she'd have to give up with her son to spend there even if she wasn't the target of the bureaucratic bullshit that was going to occur.

She arrived late, aiming to have most attendees already present when she walked in so they would have no choice but to witness her arrival and give her credit for being there. She begrudgingly mingled with a few acquaintances and reluctantly made eye contact with superiors from across the room. None of them were particularly interested in her, it appeared, when they simply nodded or smiled, and so she let out a sigh of relief. It was always hard to know for sure who was going to be the next victim of a random witch hunt. Olivia turned her attention to counting the minutes before she could reasonably leave. Fifteen minutes shy of her one hour deadline, she had grown desperate. She wasn't in the mood for making small talk at a party for someone she wasn't sure she'd ever met in a room that felt a bit overcrowded while she was recovering from the emotional rollercoaster ride of the century.

Unfortunately, right as she was making her excuses - poor Noah was getting blamed for everything - the door opened and Ayanna walked in. Liv was hopeful that it was a coincidence and stood her ground despite having just excused herself for several long minutes. She was quite happy that she hadn't yet been spotted by her friend, but with the way the sergeant had positioned herself a few steps from the door there was zero chance for Olivia to escape without being seen. She knew the conversation would resume exactly where they'd left it because she knew how unfathomably difficult Elliot could be. She didn't envy Ayanna for having to deal with the bastard.

And she flat refused to admit she missed dealing with the bastard herself. He wasn't going to get another chance to break her heart. The several hundred times he already had were enough.

It seemed like eons before Ayanna finally moved far enough that Olivia could dare make her exit. She heard her name, but she pretended she hadn't, unwilling to have an argument in front of so many people, especially not about Elliot. That was precisely what they were looking for as evidence that she couldn't function in her role.

Her phone started ringing less than a block from the restaurant, the perpetual fear that it might involve her son making her look even though she knew better.

Irritated by the combination of being tired and staying too long at a party she hadn't wanted to go to and needing to dodge a friend and trying to ignore the heartbreak she refused to recognize, she answered the call. "Was I unclear when we last spoke?"

"I'm not going to pretend I understand what's going on here, but it's really important that I explain-"

She interrupted the younger woman before she could feel any worse than she already did. "I am not discussing Elliot with you, sergeant, do you understand?"

Her tone left no room for an argument and she felt guilty, suspecting she was destroying a friendship she didn't actually want to lose.

She hated the defeat she heard in Ayanna's voice. "Yes, ma'am. Have a good night."

She nearly threw her phone into the street in frustration. Damn him. God fucking damn him for doing this to her. For turning her inside out again. For dragging a friend and coworker into it. For making her believe, however short lived it had been, that they really had a chance to be happy together after all those years of hurting each other.

The pain hit in that moment, the crushing weight that he'd done it again, that he'd fucking screwed with her and that she'd believed it and that she still fucking loved him and that he knew it and that he fucking used it and that she would never know one fucking day of peace in her life because she had fallen in love with him the day they'd met and she would love him until the day she died and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it and no matter how many times he broke her heart she would always, always, let him do it again.

She could barely see when she climbed in her truck. All she wanted was to go home and hug her baby and then cry herself to sleep. In the morning, she would have to be Captain Benson again, tough and resilient and impervious to pain. Tonight, she needed to be Olivia, the woman who'd dared to give her heart to the same man who'd broken her so damn many times and was somehow still hopeful enough to have had it happen once again.

She took a breath, dried her eyes, and headed home. She would come up with a plan in the morning, a way to deal with the situation. She wouldn't be able to avoid him forever and she knew that eventually, he'd get bolder, he'd show up at her office, her apartment, a courtroom, somewhere she wouldn't have the liberty of responding the way she wanted. But that was a problem for the morning, when she would have a little sleep and the comfort of her son's presence and would feel a bit clearer.

Her phone began ringing halfway home and she told herself not to look. There was no emergency that she couldn't ignore for twenty more minutes. And yet, she was a glutton for punishment, so she glanced at it.

Kathleen Stabler.

For the fucking love of God. Forget being mature and handling it like an adult. The next time she saw him, she was going to kill him. There was no way to win, no way to be the adult when the opponent just kept sinking lower.

Her empty promise about emergencies being able to wait until she got home still fresh in her mind, she answered and tried to take the hard line she had with Ayanna. "I'm sorry, Kathleen, this is really not a good time." She steeled herself to ignore the pleas that would follow. As much as she cared for Kathleen, she was absolutely not able to handle her dramatic bent under the circumstances.

Kathleen's voice was choked with tears. "Olivia, please, you have to tell us if he's ok."

"I'm sure he's fine, honey." She gritted her teeth and reminded herself of Ayanna's words, that Elliot was uninjured.

"But you don't know?" Already not getting what she wanted, Kathleen's voice raised in pitch, taking on the familiar hysterical tone that Olivia didn't have the energy to handle.

"Kathleen, I can't talk right now."

"He missed my birthday. It's my first one since mom died and he swore he'd be here and he's not here and he didn't call and I called everybody and nobody has heard from him in weeks, not even Mo and Eli! Please just tell us he's ok!"

Olivia felt her heart constricting painfully in her chest. Elliot could and would and had dicked her over plenty, but his kids were everything. He wouldn't have missed Kathleen's first birthday since losing her mom. He wouldn't have been out of contact for weeks. "When's the last time you heard from him?"

Kathleen was sobbing and it took Olivia a minute to recognize Maureen's voice when she took over the call that was obviously on speaker. "He went looking at apartments with Eli a couple weeks ago and then dropped Eli off to stay for the night. He said he was going to a friend's wedding and he was supposed to pick Eli up in the morning. None of us have heard from him since."

The words made no sense. She reminded herself of all the times he'd called, all the times she hadn't picked up, the way she'd refused to listen to Ayanna, a trusted friend, when she wanted to talk in person about Elliot. She'd been too busy being selfish to remember he was still healing from a damn mental breakdown. He'd been reaching out to her like she'd asked and she'd ignored him.

She fought back her tears, if only to spare the kids she knew would hear. "I'll find out where he is and I'll call you guys." She didn't wait for the answer, she couldn't. She disconnected the call and immediately called Elliot.

She was shocked when a female voice answered; it took her too long to understand the words that she was hearing, to recognize the voice speaking them.

"Liv? You change your mind about talking?"

A chill ran through her as the tears spilled over. "Ayanna, you said he was ok, but his kids haven't heard from him in weeks. Why are you answering Elliot's phone?"

"We need to talk, Liv, in person."

She couldn't think. She couldn't understand. All that energy she'd spent being hurt and angry had been a waste. Something was very, very wrong and he'd been trying to get in touch with her when he hadn't been able to call his kids. The tears that hadn't stopped falling doubled in intensity, freely running down her face while her hands gripped the steering wheel.

"You said he was ok." It would have been an accusation had her voice been steady. Instead it was a desperate plea for reassurance, the same way people always responded to the news of a death by saying they'd only just talked to the person.

"He was the last time I talked to him."

Belatedly, Olivia noticed the traffic light she'd been about to sail through had turned red and she slammed on the brakes. "Which was when?"

"About four weeks ago. He gave me his phone, asked me to call you if he couldn't."

She was dead. She was absolutely sure of it. Or maybe she was dying. Her heart had stopped. She couldn't breathe. Her entire body was numb. The only thing that seemed to be working was her hearing. She could hear the horns from the unhappy drivers behind her. She could hear Ayanna's voice, but couldn't make out the words. She could hear the rush of blood pounding in her ears.

No one had heard from Elliot in a month. Not since the morning he'd left her bed and promised to call her later. Since the morning after he'd been so gentle and sweet to her. Something had fucking happened to him and she hadn't noticed because she'd been too busy being pissed off to sound the alarm. The memory of him pounding on her door came to her, the way he was crying and hysterical because she'd been an hour late to let him know she was safe. She could practically feel the tight hug he'd given her, the way he'd clung to her as his fear receded and her presence calmed him. The way he'd been too upset to leave her after that and had silently asked to stay with her, to hold her, to know she was there with him.

God, she was a self-centered bitch.

She tried to form words, tried to ask Ayanna where they could meet to talk about whatever it wasn't that apparently couldn't be shared over the phone. But the words wouldn't come.

She needed to go home, to be somewhere safe in case there was bad news coming her way. She couldn't even process that all those calls she'd been ignoring hadn't been teaching Elliot a lesson, she'd been stopping Ayanna from getting help for him. She couldn't understand her own thoughts anymore. Panic had taken over her completely and her body was operating on pure adrenaline. She completely forgot she was on the phone. She forgot where she was. She forgot she was driving.

And suddenly there was a crystal clear moment of silence, a loud stillness, where nothing happened. Time had stopped. She saw the grill of a truck on her left side and she knew it was too close and moving too fast and there was nothing to do but wait for time to catch back up.

That instant of quiet only served to highlight how very loud the crash was when time started moving again.