"I need help!" she heard an anguished Elliot cry into the absence as Bell frantically checked Angela Wheatley's airwaves.
"Liv, if the nurse doesn't come soon I don't think she'll make it, and if she doesn't he isn't gonna either." Bell said knowingly. Looking up from where her eyes had been fixated on Angela's weakening jugular, Liv nodded in reply before making a swift exit into the corridor. She walked with a steely determination to where her former partner stood like a monument in anticipation of an earthquake.
"El, El" she approached from the side, giving herself space for manoeuvre should any of his immense limbs make an unforeseen advance in her direction.
"Liv, I - I called" he stammered.
"I know, I'm gonna head down and find help, do you think you can go back in there?" Olivia could see from the red rings and the fog of his blue eyes that he was not there with her in the moment. He needs to stop thinking like a widower and start thinking like a cop. "Bell is trying to stabilise Angela, but I need you to go in there to be a witness," she emphasised, leaving Olivia in Angela's room, and emerging to him as Captain Benson.
He snapped his face to mirror hers with equal alertness. "Witness? For what?"
"A dying declaration? If it comes to that, Bell is going to need you in there with her." She explained, not that she should have to, he should know that from all the times they have had to bear witness. Tentatively Oliva reached for his forearm, applying just enough force to point him in the direction of Angela's room and give him a push of encouragement.
"I-I" he began but was cut off with four words that carried the weight of one thousand. "She is your partner." Stoic now, he strung together an "I'm on it," before hurrying back to Bell.
Taking a second to compose herself and absorb the gravity of the situation, she ran her hands through her tressed hair before tucking a loose tendril behind her ear and heading for the duplicitous elevator that had led her to this moment. The weight of the uncertainty as to what she would face on her return was plenty to expedite her descent.
After what seemed like an eternity, Olivia returned with two nurses and a doctor in tow. Her eyes darted to where the hall met Angela's room and found a depleted Elliot slumped against the stark wall; his head hung between his bent knees.
"El, the doctor's here now. We got here in time, she'll be ok" it was a necessary lie for Liv had no way of knowing for definite, but she wasn't about to tell him that. Elliot's eyes rose to meet the brown depths of hers; he thought they were beautiful enough to almost convince him she was right.
"Help me up?" he offered her his hands as he stiffly ascended from the cold laminate. Accepting without hesitation, she ran her thumb over his knuckles for reassurance and Elliot found himself smothering his appreciation in a smile and an accepting swallow.
An awkward cough from Bell alerted them to the fact that they were no longer alone in the hall. "Angela's stable," Bell stated matter-of-factly, "I'm gonna head down and ring for CSU to come and deal with…" Elliot and Olivia followed Bell's gaze to the lifeless body of Morales beside them.
"It's ok Ayanna, I'll call them." Liv reached out for her friend, giving her forearm a gentle squeeze. "You and El- Detective Stabler should go down and get something to drink."
Bell took a deep breath and relaxed into a sad smile "Thanks Captain".
Liv furrowed her brow in acknowledgement, Bell retreated to the elevator, but Liv hung on to Elliot before he could depart: "I'll see you later?" it had come out as a question, but she wasn't asking, not really. There was a lot the two of them needed to discuss, and boy was she still reeling from his return, but Olivia could not subdue the worry that each goodbye they said would lead to a decade of silence.
Elliot nodded, turned and set out on a jog to catch up with his Sergeant as Olivia pulled out her phone, "SVU portable to CSU this is Captain Benson…"
Thirty minutes later Olivia found Elliot in the cafeteria, alone in a booth staring emptily into his coffee. She approached him from behind and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Anything happening in there I should know about?" trying, and failing, to alleviate some of the tension with humour. Although she was talking about the trance set on him by the Styrofoam cup, they both knew she meant in his oppressed mind.
"Liv" Elliot sighed. "El" she volleyed. It dawned on Olivia that he was completely alone in the cafeteria and, as if he was reading her mind, Elliot whispered "Bell's gone back to the station, she's pretty rattled I'm sure she just wants to be with her wife."
Olivia circled the table, positioning herself opposite him "I get that" she mused.
Elliot took her hands in his, grabbing onto them as though to not to would lead to him floating into the abyss. "I cannot, cannot, begin to tell you how sorry I am for dragging you into all of this. I did everything I could to keep you out of Wheatley's sights".
"El, I'm not sure it is me that is the victim in this" she pointed her finger to the roof, gesturing to where the scarcely alive Angela Wheatley lay six floors above them.
"She's not a victim." He grimaced.
"What do you mean?" Olivia's eyebrow rose in bewilderment.
"She put the hit on Kathy" Elliot took a swig of his coffee before continuing "Wheatley had manufactured that I, of all people, had catalysed the series of events leading to her son Rafik's murder, and she wanted me to know what it felt like to lose the person I loved more than anything in this world."
"Oh my god El" Liv squeezed the hardened hands in front of her.
He blushed with guilt the remnants of Wheatley's accusation buzzing in his mind – the one true love of his life. He shivered, and it didn't go unnoticed. Olivia had been a cop long enough to know there was more to this story, and she knew him - ten years apart be damned- well enough to know he was lying by omission. That being said, part of her didn't want to address the elephant in the room, but the increasing flush of Elliot's cheeks was a silent pleading to do so. "What aren't you telling me Elliot?"
"Tell me" Elliot says, into this face, which now looked across from him in suspended apprehension, "Did you think of me every day when I was gone, or was it just me who couldn't breathe for a decade?"
The oxygen left Olivia's lungs and she knew she had let the proverbial toothpaste out the tube.
"I guess, what I'm trying to say is, with every cup of coffee I sat alone on my apartment stoop drinking, with every orange juice I sipped lonely outside a café, with every Chinese takeout I had in Rome, ordering your usual just to feel close to you, I failed you. With every second I spent with you and not by Kathy's side in the hospital, I failed you. By giving you that letter, I failed you."
"El…" Olivia's face is contorted by pain, thwarted by love and anger as tears begin to pool in her eyes.
"My actions since I got back have put you at risk, seeing you has put you at risk - " he continued, cut off by Olivia clearing her throat to negate his apology.
"The other week outside Warner's office, when I told you that people had warned me to stay away from you, I would have thought that my presence was telling you that I was accepting the risk of being in your orbit El" she gave a soft closed lip smile to reassure him of her agency in this.
"It's not just that" Elliot removed his hands from Olivia's and scrubbed his head, as though to stir up the courage to tell her what he really meant. "The reason you're at risk is because I did a stupid, stupid, stupid thing. I kissed Angela Wheatley."
Elliot watches as the colour drains from her cheeks, stunned into silence. "You're an idiot" she scolds.
"I know." He agrees unreservedly.
Silence hung between them for what felt like an eternity until Liv shifted in her seat, bringing her hands together in front of her. "But you're grieving, trying to manage your kids, PTSD, a new job, and…" she gestures her hand between the two of them, "So whilst as a Captain I cannot condone you for jeopardising Kathy's case like that, as your… friend I get it, I don't like it, but I get it. What I don't get though, is why that has put me at risk?"
"Cause Wheatley is a narcissist, obsessed with his ex-wife, who, for some time, happened to be obsessed with me. He thinks he can provoke her, and beat me, by dangling you in front of us because he knows, and I don't know how he knows, that I, erm-" Elliot halted to gauge the brown eyes which were deliberately exploring every inch of the room to avoid meeting his own.
"Liv." He quips, forcing her to engage with him.
"El" Olivia inhales, raising her brows as if mustering the final shreds of her patience with him for the evening.
"That I love you."