A/N: Still not sure how far I'm taking it, but thanks to all of you for sticking with it anyways :)

The weight of the envelope in his pocket feels like an anvil. It had been in his jacket for three days now, initially placed there in anticipation of the ceremony and then lugged around through the stress and anxiety of everything that happened before they could make it there. Elliot thinks again of how eager Kathy was to attend after her initial hesitation. Thinks again of the contents of the letter and wonders what she hoped would transpire. Did she hope that the letter would put an end to things, at least on his side?

But once more the thought of her death tightens around his throat with a sudden urgency and he thinks for a minute he will fall apart again.

Across the snow covered field he spots Liv, her black jacket, the woolen cap on her head, her dark hair glistening with snowflakes and he relaxes, breathes.

He wonders again if he should give her the letter. Remembering its contents, he oscillates, but she's just steps away now, so he stops thinking and he takes her in.

The image of her just like this has been in his head for years now. Her coat, her breath frosting in the cold air, her nose pinking as the snowflakes land across her cheeks. But she looks better than his memory, better than his imagination and he smiles softly at her as she joins him.

All those years expecting never to see her again and now not only is he here with her, but everything is different. The force of it hits him, a parallel universe, and his heart quickens. He tells her she would have loved it in Rome, one of those many parallel universes, and she pulls away, shuts him out.

And he can't help but wonder if she's really moved on. If there's no part of her clinging to him the way he's held fast to her.

The letter suddenly seems like the perfect solution. The out if she wants one, if she's let go. The reframing of their relationship telling her that she owes him nothing. That he doesn't expect her to care for him, to look out for him.

But that last line is there, if she hasn't moved on, if she's still there thinking of him the way he's thinking of her. Giving her something to continue to hold on to while he finds Kathy's killer, while he gets his life sorted out so he can really tell her that he wants her.

And when he watches her move away across the field with her son, he thinks about the parallel life they could have had, the children that would have been theirs. He thinks about the parallel life he's standing in now and he hopes fiercely that she wants it too.

Olivia manages to ignore the letter until Noah is tucked in bed, fast asleep. But once the door to her son's room is closed, that moment standing under the falling snow returns to her. The look on Elliot's face comes into her mind, apprehension and urgency, like there was something he needed to say but was afraid to do so. And then she has to know what it is.

She goes back to her coat, pulling it out of her pocket, her fingers smoothing the edges as she moves to the kitchen and pours herself a glass of wine. And then, once seated on the couch, wine in hand, there's nothing left to do but open the envelope. But she sits there for a long moment and wonders if she should.

Read it. Don't read it. Throw it away. Whatever you decide I understand.

But of course he doesn't. How can he understand what it was like to be abandoned the way he left her? Elliot's returned so suddenly, so chaotically, that she hasn't even had time to register it. Hasn't really worked out what it means that he's in New York, a phone call away. For the first time in ten years, he's within reach, a place she had expected him to never be again.

She thinks with time she'll go through the emotions; the anger and resentment, the fear and confusion, the regret and sadness. But right now she's numb. Her mind, body and soul immobile like rocks in the wake of this tumult. A part of her is still standing in the middle of a police cordon, taking in her ex-partner after a decade.

All of this gives her pause, but ultimately she needs to know what he has to say. Can't stay in the limbo of finally having something, anything, from Elliot and not knowing what it is. So Olivia takes a fortifying mouthful of wine, steadies her hands against her thighs, before picking the envelope up off the coffee table. She tears it open, slowly, gently, like something fragile that may wither in her grasp. And then she unfolds the pages and sees Elliot's scrawling script.

Dear Olivia,

Congratulations on your award and all of the amazing achievements of your life since we parted ways. I hope these years have treated you well. That you're happy and fulfilled.

I still think of our time together fondly and it's amazing to see you now as a captain after all our years as partners.

The time away has helped me realize that what we were to each other was never real. It was just the job, the stress we were always under. It made us feel close, pulled us in the same direction. But I can see now how that got in the way of our separate lives. How we got in the way of each other being who and where we needed to be. It seems so clear to me now, seeing where you are, how far you've risen without me. I think maybe I held you back and for that I am sorry.

I hope you have all the things you always wanted. And if there is a man in your life, I hope he's the kind, faithful and devoted man that you deserve.

But in a parallel universe, it will always be you and I.

Elliot

Olivia's eyes get stuck at what we were to each other was never real. And she has to force herself to keep reading, to not put down the short letter before she finishes. She pushes herself past we got in the way of each other. But when she gets to it will always be you and I she stops hard, reads and rereads, sitting forward without realizing it. She skims back over the letter again, registering the brevity, the strange distance in the words. She can't make it line up with the conversation in the hospital, the despairing way he apologized to her.

She reads it three more times but she can't decide what to make of it. On one read she thinks the way he left suddenly made sense; that he thought they were stuck and needed to move on, had decided he needed to be away from her and not look back. And she can't deny that she had felt that too; had wondered if he filled too many spaces in her life for her to seek anything else. Except wanting other things felt less important when he was there in some way.

The next read she realizes that he'd felt something for her the way she'd felt so much for him. Otherwise why say anything about what they were to each other. Maybe he no longer thinks it was real, but at one point he did. And somehow it makes her feel better that she wasn't alone in it.

The last time through she can't do anything but stare at the final sentence. She'd thought it too; that they had met at the wrong time. That maybe there was a life she wasn't living where he was hers. The thought had brought a strange comfort over the years. The idea that some version of herself was living a life of happiness that she didn't quite know. And the fact that Elliot thought it too…the hope of that knocks her sideways.

For days she thinks about it, lying in bed unable to sleep as the words from the letter bounce back into her mind. It's there in her mind at Kathy's funeral and she has to pull away from Elliot's grasp before the words spill out of her mouth. She reads and rereads the letter, every day, multiple times a day. And after a week or so she can't take it anymore. The confusion and the questions of what to believe are piling high, blocking her view of everything else. She's sure she will be stuck like this until she talks to him, until she knows why he wrote this combination of words.

Olivia takes a seat in the lobby when the doorman tells her he's not in and she waits. She wants to pull out the letter and read it again, but she doesn't really need to open the paper to know what it says. Every word is etched in her brain, the mundane, to the confusing, to the breathtaking. But then he looks all wrong when he walks in the door and turns towards her. And when he brushes her off she can't help but wonder if it contextualizes the letter. So she does what she does best, removes herself from the picture and prioritizes his well being.

Olivia is used to taking a backseat for everyone. Used to caretaking, mothering, captaining and it's easier to do all of these for Elliot than to keep wondering what the letter meant. There's a part of her that wants that last line to be the meaning. There's a part of her that is frightened by that and would rather focus on the rest. But she recognizes that even that scared part is only the response to the vulnerability of letting someone love her.

And then when the conversation in the car happens, when Kathleen comes pleading to her to come to the intervention, when he says those words in front of his kids, Olivia decides to put it all aside. He's clearly in trouble, needs time and help and won't take it from her. And maybe that's for the best. Maybe for once she doesn't need to be the one taking care of everyone else. And maybe she's spent enough of their partnership taking care of him in particular.

So even though the 'I love you' makes her think of the last line of the letter, she decides to let it go. And even when he starts to look better and they start to talk just a little more, she doesn't bring it up. And when he tells her he's staying in New York and they finally spend some really good time together, she tries not to feel hopeful.

So when he texts her not to worry, that he won't be around for awhile, she can't even find a feeling of surprise. Because of course he's pulling away, leaving again. She hates it, but she's been expecting it.