Author's Note: This chapter didn't go entirely as I'd originally planned it. Whether or not that's a good thing, I'll let y'all decide.

Elliot's been home – really home this time, not at the camper van - from the hospital for a few days, after spending a week and a half in the ICU. They wanted to monitor him and make sure his skin's healing, especially around his right elbow, which seems to have gotten the worst of it, and required a skin graft. He's tough, he knows, but he's far from indestructible; his initial wounds looked a lot worse than they ended up being.

The four older kids seem to have some sort of rotation set up on which one will spend the day with him, make sure he changes the dressings and applies the ointments the burn specialist sent him home with. Also, to give him some company while Eli is at school, and his mom is in and out of her room and sometimes goes to spend the day at Kathleen's, where her cats are being watched over.

Somehow, they all know that if left strictly to his own devices, he wouldn't even put peroxide on a cut.

Today, he thinks it's Liz's turn to play nurse; yesterday, he and Rich sat and watched old sports highlights online and talked about how the Knicks are looking this year, between that surprise playoff run last season and signing Kemba over the summer. He's not sure what he and Liz will do, but he always enjoys spending time with his youngest daughter.

He's lying on the couch, waiting for the next time he can take a pain pill, when he hears a key turn in the lock, the door open and close, and light, tentative footsteps make their way toward him.

"Hey there," he hears a very familiar voice say, and he pokes his head up from the couch. Sure enough, Olivia's dropping a tote bag on the kitchen island and walking over to the couch.

"Olivia?" She's wearing a plaid flannel shirt and blue jeans, and if she's wearing any makeup, it's barely noticeable; even in her simplicity, she's stunning. Not for the first time, he wonders what she looks like when she first wakes up in the morning, and not after a stuffy night in the crib. "What are you doing here? I thought –"

"I called Liz, gave her the day off of Dad duty, and put Fin on duty." She kneels down next to him and clicks her tongue softly, reaching out to brush her fingers along his forehead, with a gentle and tender swipe. "I had to make sure you were okay."

"How did you –" As far as he knows, Olivia's never been here before, not to his new apartment.

"The girls gave me a spare key while you were in the hospital." She smiles, looks around a little. "This place looks amazing. They've done a really great job with decorating it."

He laughs, watches as her eyes take in everything around her. "How do you know I didn't have anything to do with it?"

"Call it a hunch." She withdraws her hand, but still continues to look at him. "You hungry?"

"You cook, now?" Her specialty, at least in the years they were partners, was always finding the best takeout and street food available to them, but ten years has changed things. For one, she has Noah now.

"Still not that great. But," she pauses, "I do know how to do things with eggs. And oatmeal, but you obviously figured that out, if you found Maggie's number." She flips her hair over her shoulder and smiles. "Want me to make you anything?"

"Whatever you want, 'slong as it's edible," he says, smirking at her.

And when she playfully tosses a throw pillow in his direction, he can only grin. It's the most he's felt like himself in a long time, since before he went under. In the kitchen, he can hear her puttering around; there's the click of the burners turning on, the sound of plates rattling in the cupboard, and eventually, there's the smell of something cooking.

She returns, a short time later, with two plates of sunny-side-up eggs and sliced fruit, with two coffee mugs with orange juice in them. "Nothing fancy," she says, "making do with what you had. And I wasn't about to figure out that fancy coffee pot you have."

His yolk is perfectly runny, oozing onto his plate. "It's called a moka pot," he says. "I can teach you sometime, it's not hard. And it makes the best coffee you can have at home."

"I'd like that, yeah." She smiles at him, spearing a slice of pear with her fork and delicately biting into it. "So, Eddie is no longer."

"That's what Bell says, and they were able to identify one of the other men they found as Eddie Wagner." He pops a grape in his mouth. "Some detectives came to my hospital room and got my official statement the other day, and apparently I was able to give them enough information that they'll be able to arrest all the key players. They've already moved in on Albi and Flutura, from what I've heard."

"Are they the ones who tried –"

He's the one who cuts her off this time. "No, no. That was Kosta, the head of the organization. He – normally, that's something he would have delegated to one of his underlings."

"He saw you as a threat." Olivia covers her mouth to hide her expression, but he can see the hurt welling in her eyes, the thought of someone hurting him unbearable to her. As it would be for him, if the situation was reversed. The thought of anyone hurting Olivia, even with the mere sting of sharpened words, never fails to bring up every defensive thought he's ever had.

"Yeah, well, it's going to take more than that to knock me down for good."

"Guess it's a good thing your hard head is also fireproof?" she says, laughing as she sets her plate down and looks at him. "We've had a lot of close calls over the years, you and me."

He nods, not breaking eye contact with her. "Too many. I told Bell when I was in the hospital, I'm done with undercover work. If they need me to pose as a kindergarten teacher to take down a drug lord, then maybe I could deal with that, but no more of this." He motions to the tray of ointments and bandages Kathleen's made up.

"Isn't that the plot to Kindergarten Cop? Real life isn't an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie." She sighs, sets her plate aside, and leans in on her hands to look more closely at him. "Elliot, I – when Ayanna called me and told me you were in the hospital, I dropped everything to speed down there. I probably ran a few red lights."

"If they fine you, I'll pay the ticket."

"It's not about the money, or the tickets, or even the fact that you were in the hospital." A pause, and then. "It's the fact that when I thought you were in danger, nothing would stop me from getting to you. And – and when I needed you, you were nowhere to be found." She covers her face with her hand, and lets out a choked sob.

"Hey, hey," he says, reaching for her; he manages to grab hold of her arm, and strokes his thumb over her shirt. "I don't know when you needed me, but if I would have known, I'd have been there. You know that. No matter what it was." He's heard her name in hushed, awed whispers; he knows there's a respect for her that transcends her being a female captain in SVU, but what that respect entails, he's never asked and no one has ever volunteered. "You're here with me, now."

"Yeah, well," she says, her hand sliding away to reveal the tracks of her tears down her cheeks, "we both had to walk through the fire to get here."

And then he knows, he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that whatever she's had to endure was worse by orders of magnitude than anything he could imagine. Because he knows her, knows her in a way he's never known anyone else, and he knows that she would never reveal a crack in her armor unless it's too large to otherwise conceal.

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to say," he says; he takes hold of her, bundling her in his arms, embracing her, and he holds her in his arms and dares anyone to force him to let go. It feels right holding her. Not for the first time, he wishes he'd been doing this for years. He allows his lips to graze along her hairline, dropping a tender kiss somewhere along the way, and he feels her stiffen for a fraction of a second before easing.

Her voice is soft, barely above a whisper, as she breaks her own silence. "It's not that I don't want to tell you," she says; her voice quavers slightly, before steadying, as she continues, "it's that I don't know how to find the words."

If he listens closely enough, he can almost hear both of their hearts breaking: hers, for the words she cannot find, and his, for those he cannot say.

He holds her, rocks her against him, eases her into the comfort of his embrace. "I'll be here when you do," he says.

"I know." Her face is pressed against his chest; her words are muffled by the fabric of his shirt, but he can hear her as clear as anything. "Thank you."

He continues to hold her, because there's nothing else he'd rather do, and eventually, he feels her head grow heavy against him and he realizes she's fallen asleep there, curled in his arms. And he allows himself to succumb to the healing power of sleep as well, knowing she'll still be there when he awakens.

Some time later, he blinks his eyes open, and sees Olivia looking up at him with sleepy brown eyes that remind him of melted chocolate and long days spent together. "You're awake," she says, stroking the edge of his beard between her fingers.

"I am." The beard represents Eddie Wagner, and the undercover work he did but is now done; it's a shackle around his face, holding him in the grip of that persona. Until the hair is gone – and it is just hair, after all – he still holds onto remnants of Eddie like souvenirs of a time he'd rather forget. "Like the beard?"

She hums, traces her hand over his jaw; her touch is featherlight and graceful, and he can feel it radiate even through every strand of hair that tickles her fingers. "I do, but it's not you," she says, finally. "I could get used to it, though."

"I want it gone," he says. "I can grow it back, later, maybe, but – I need it gone. I need Eddie gone. Now."

The smile on her face at his words could light up an entire room on its own. "Come with me, then," she says, taking his hand in hers and pulling him up with a slight groan.

The porcelain in his bathroom is cool to his touch, as she sits him down on the closed lid of the toilet seat and takes out his shaving cream and razor. With a gentle and precise touch, she smooths the cream over his jaw and neck, making sure to cover every hair. "Last chance to duck out," she says, wielding the razor in her right hand and smiling at him.

"Do it." It'd been nice, for a time, to lose himself in the sensation of being someone outside of who he's always been, but he's more than ready to come home and fill in the blanks that have been empty for too long. "Please," he adds, as a measure of politeness.

She sticks her tongue out of the corner of her lips, in concentration if nothing else, as she delicately takes the razor and swipes away at the physical manifestation of Eddie Wagner with a skilled and practiced precision. She's careful not to nick him with the razor, and before long, he can feel wisps of cool air on his chin once again.

"There we go," she says, tapping the razor against the sink a final time to dispel the last of the hairs and cream.

He stands, turns toward the mirror, and admires her handiwork. Olivia is as skilled with a razor as she is with everything else in her life, and he's glad he entrusted her with the duty of shedding the final layer of Eddie. "Looks good," he says, grinning, and it's a strange sensation to see his own smile looking back at him again unimpeded, but it's far from unwelcome.

"You think so?" she says, light and airy, as if she's teasing him, before continuing, "I agree. You look more like you. More like my Elliot." The light reflects in her eyes, dancing, casting sparks across the room as she gazes at him.

Her Elliot. Likely, she means my partner Elliot or the Elliot I know, but his heart only hears the possessive and not the qualifier.

He yearns to reach out and kiss her, to let her know how much he truly remembers of being Elliot and how he, in whatever form, has always felt about her. Because it's always been him and her, the two of them against the world, since the beginning, even when it didn't always appear to be the case.

She was right, all those weeks ago. He's never been the one to make any of the choices in his life; he's always had them made for him, by other people, and he's gone along with what others have decided. Out of a sense of duty, or honor, perhaps, is how it's meant – but it comes across as him being unable to decide anything for himself.

And she's a giver – she gives of herself, without end, without anyone reciprocating in kind. She'd give until she bled dry and apologize for not being able to do more.

That all ends here; that ends today.

"Olivia." He says her name low, almost in a feral growl; he loves the sound those syllables make as they crash over his lips and make themselves heard.

She whips her head around to look at him when she hears her name, and his hand reaches out like a shot, grasping her wrist and pulling her toward him.

"If you don't want this, tell me now," he says, holding her in his arms, taking in her beauty from such a close proximity. "Tell me now, and I won't be upset. Because I want you, and we can find the words together, but only if you let me. This isn't the end, it's only the beginning."

She shudders slightly under his touch, but reaches up and caresses his newly-shaven jawline with her hand.

"I want this," she says, softly, and anything she says after is lost in the crush of his lips against hers, finally giving her what he's always wanted to give. There's no other choice, not for him. Not now.

-to be continued-