A/N: This wouldn't leave me alone. I find it particularly easy to write from Olivia's "in her own head" POV, so that's what we've got here.
Disclaimer: Everything that you've seen before belongs to someone else. I can show you my bank statements if you need proof that they're not mine.
There were nights when the wind was so cold
That my body froze in bed
If I just listened to it right outside the window
Ten Years Ago
On a cold December evening in 2011, the wind whipped through the streets of Manhattan with a vengeance. She wondered if it had always sounded this ominous, like someone wailing, crying, suffering in pain.
Of course, maybe it wasn't the wind at all. Maybe it was just her imagination, personifying her own feelings back out into nature.
On a rare night off, Olivia laid in bed. The curtains were drawn, the blankets pulled over her head. Not a sound in the apartment except for the tortured wind and her tortured mind.
It had been six months since Elliot left the force. Six months since she'd heard from him. She stopped trying to reach him in November and she'd been in a miserable mood ever since. Not that she'd been in a pleasant mood before that, but she still had hope that maybe he was in some kind of funk and eventually he'd snap out of it and ask her to meet him at the diner on her lunch break. But it never came. No call, no text, no carrier pigeon. Just a big void of silence.
As the wind howled on, so did her thoughts. She could picture every detail of Jenna's shooting. Sister Peg, lying there on the floor. Elliot yelled for Jenna to just drop the gun. That idiot Eddie, taunting her from the cage. Every time it replays in her head it seems to be in slow motion. She hears Elliot's voice call Jenna's name and then it's as if the bullet is suspended in midair. If she could just reach out and grab it, put it back in Elliot's gun. Do something, anything.
But of course, life doesn't work that way, and the wind doesn't howl in pain. It's all just an illusion.
There were days when the sun was so cruel
That all the tears turned to dust
And I just knew my eyes were drying up forever
Nine Years Ago
June 2012 was a particularly hot month. Record temperatures in the northeast with consecutive days over 100 degrees. Even her lightest dress pants were doing nothing for her in this heat. And though she had warmed to her new partner, Nick Amaro, over the last year, she was minutes from backhanding him right across the mouth just to get him to shut up about the weather.
"I can't believe how freaking hot it is," he kept saying, as if somehow that would magically make it start to rain, or snow, or melt the whole damn world and call it a day.
"We need refreshments," he said, pulling over at a nearby bodega. He didn't ask her what she wanted. Her old partner always asked, even though he knew what she'd say before she said it. When Nick got out of the car, she turned up the AC as high as it would go. For someone who continuously complained about the heat, he was completely averse to using tools to make it better to the best of their abilities.
When he hopped back in the car, Nick had two cups and a bag in his hands.
"Got you an iced caramel latte and a ham and cheese sandwich," he said, pushing the items into her hands.
Just looking at the ham and cheese made her stomach do a little turn. She hadn't felt the same about meat, particularly ham, since her undercover stint in Oregon. Being around all those vegans, being subjected to watching that footage of how people treated the animals, and worse, how they were slaughtered. Ham never appealed to her much in the first place, but it was a big non-starter now. Elliot knew that.
He also knew that she rarely drank coffee anymore, preferring caffeinated tea instead, another habit from Oregon. What's more, she would rather drink hydrochloric acid than drink a flavored iced coffee. Elliot would have brought her a cranberry iced tea, her new favorite.
Nick didn't seem to notice, as he ate and drove, that she returned her sandwich to the brown bag and took just one sip of the coffee. But Elliot would have. And a few months ago, just realizing how different Nick and Elliot were would have sent tears prickling to her eyes. But today, for the first time in a long time, they didn't.
I finished crying in the instant that you left
And I can't remember where or when or how
And I banished every memory you and I had ever made
Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Maybe it was the sheer acceptance that this was now her life. Either way, Olivia knew she wasn't going to be spending any more time comparing Nick and Elliot. It wasn't fair to Nick and it wasn't fair to her.
There would be no more thinking about late night stakeouts or undercover operations or blinking her lights when she got in at night. As far as she was concerned, she no longer had memories of… what was his name again? She wouldn't think about it anymore.
But when you touch me like this
And you hold me like that
I just have to admit
That it's all coming back to me
Present Day
Of all the ways she expected this would go down in that first year, and all the ways she stopped herself from believing it could go down in the nine years after, this scenario was never on the list.
She'd picture him maybe coming back to the squad one day after he got his head sorted out. He'd ask for a job back because he's Elliot freaking Stabler, the NYPDs toughest problem child. She thought maybe he'd show up at her door one night, as if it was just another night after a case, with a six pack and a pizza, like no time had passed. She even once had the fantasy of passing him in an airport, headed to different terminals but catching each other's eyes along the way, spending too much time in a crappy TGI Fridays, missing their flights to drink light beer and watch the planes take off from the window.
But a 10-13 for a car bombing with Kathy Stabler as the victim was NEVER an option.
She realized later, in the aftermath, that her getting called in on the 10-13 was no accident. The call didn't come over the radio, it came straight to her. She realized that he told someone to page her the 10-13. After ten years and no contact, somehow he still sought her out in an emergency. And she showed up every. single. time.
She spent so much time crafting this wall, brick by brick, in her mind. Turning the man she knew into Rapunzle, sticking him in that tower where she couldn't reach him and he'd never be able to come out. But one measly little call and that was all shattered.
She couldn't just leave, of course. Not after encountering Kathleen and Dickie by the front doors. Plus, as much as she wanted to forget about Elliot's existence, she wanted to check on Kathy. Though Kathy had never been Olivia's biggest fan, they were almost somewhat friends in their own right before everything went to hell, and she needed to know Kathy was okay.
But he was still there, lurking on the edges of it all. Touching her arm or the small of her back as instinctively as it had been ten years ago. As Kathy said, always so in sync. And it bothered Olivia to her core.
But the worst was the night Kathy died, when Elliot pulled her into the bone-crushing hug and began to sob onto her shoulder and into her neck. Though Elliot would touch her from time to time, a hand on her shoulder for comfort, a yank on any upper extremity to avoid walking into a person or a trashcan on the sidewalk, the occasions where they held each other were rare. Eli's birth, Sonia Paxton's death, and now Kathy's death. Did someone have to be born or die for them to hold one another? Maybe, perhaps they did. Because no matter how much Olivia wanted to keep them locked in their tower, every memory came flooding back, and there was nothing she could do about it.
It was lost long ago
But it's all coming back to me
If you want me like this
And if you need me like that
It was dead long ago
But it's all coming back to me
It's so hard to resist
And it's all coming back to me
I can barely recall
But it's all coming back to me now
And like that, this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a… well actually yes. It did end with a bang, but also a fight, and a blaring heart monitor, and a bone-crunching hug.
And somehow, though completely different than ten years ago, it was as if no time had passed, and also that eons had passed. Her instincts were still there, to go to the funeral, to reach out. He needed someone, and in those olden days, when he needed someone to yell at, or talk to, or finally collapse in front of when a family problem got too heavy, she was always the one to do it.
A part of her that she thought had long died was coming back to the surface. She couldn't stop herself from seeking him out, no matter who told her not to, no matter how many times he himself told her to back off. It was like she couldn't remember those 10 years she spent shoving him into the darkest corners of her mind. He was back, and everything was coming back to her in waves.
There were those empty threats and hollow lies
And whenever you tried to hurt me
I just hurt you even worse and so much deeper
Fifteen Years Ago
"So this is my fault?" she asked, incredulous that he could even think for a second that her doing her job was what killed that child.
"I can't do this anymore," he yelled as he started to walk down the hallway. "I can't be looking over my shoulder, making sure you're okay."
It was like a punch to the stomach, especially given how many times she had to bail his ass out of an interrogation or a takedown that could have gone too far.
"You son of a bitch, you know that's not true," she yelled.
"I need to know you can do your job and not wait for me to come to your rescue," he snarled, whipping around to face her before Cragan came out and broke them up.
She couldn't believe after all the years on the job together that this was how he thought of her. She'd always assumed he saw them as equals, macho as he may be. But maybe he was just like all the rest, though she couldn't figure out how she'd missed it for all those years.
"I want a new partner," she said to Cragan.
She was convinced it was the end. That computer crimes would be good for her. Then the undercover assignment in Oregon. She needed to get away from him. To show him that she didn't need a partner, didn't need him. She could watch her own back. She didn't need him anymore.
There were hours that just went on for days
When alone at last we'd count up all the chances
That were lost to us forever
Fourteen Years Ago
"You're his partner. You give him stability," Kathy said. "Elliot can't move on until he feels like he's on solid ground."
She felt horrible after the case. They way they ripped into each other, her using his failing marriage against him, and the way he all but taunted her, saying he was the "longest relationship she ever had with a man." Right or not, it still stung.
"When love warps into hate, there's nothing you won't do," he'd said as they sat on the cold hard steps.
She couldn't imagine what that would feel like. Either emotion actually. Having a love so real that seeing it all crumble you'd be willing to set someone on fire and lie up until your last breath to get revenge for the pain you felt.
Then she looked to her left and thought, maybe she did know all about it, and more.
But you were history with the slamming of the door
And I made myself so strong again somehow
And I never wasted any of my time on you since then
Eight Years Ago
Lewis had been right. He'd been wrong about many things, and she'd worked through it all in therapy, but there was one thing he'd been right about.
There was a man she was picturing as she was chained to that bed. There was one man she would have given anything to see again, even if he might have told her, yet again, he couldn't look over his shoulder to protect her. She'd rather see him angry, screaming at her, calling her names he really didn't mean, as long as she could see him again.
But in the weeks following the kidnapping it became abundantly clear that he wouldn't be coming back. If he knew about the incident, and everyone in the state of New York did at this point, he didn't care. Or, at the very least, he didn't care enough to come check on her, call her, send her a letter.
In the past two years she really had tried to forget him, but the trauma brought everything back to the surface, but part of her healing had to be putting him, or rather his lack of presence, back in that tower. Though she had Brian, Fin, John, Amanda, Nick, and Cragan, she didn't have her partner. No matter how long she worked with someone else, that term would always really belong to him. And without him, it would be up to her and her alone to become strong again.
When you see me like this
And when I see you like that
Then we see what we want to see
All coming back to me
The flesh and the fantasies
All coming back to me
I can barely recall
But it's all coming back to me now
Present Day
She couldn't deny all the little things that were different since Elliot had been back, but some never changed. Just talking to Gianna felt like slipping back into an old pattern, but also different in some way. Talking to her together, working to comfort a scared child, a victim. They always knew how the other was going to react. His eagerness to get her a chair so she could do what she does best. The way he was looking at her while she was talking to the little girl, which Ayanna had told her about later.
Something about their little conversation in the hallway, the way she didn't want to let go of his hand. It was everything she'd tried to suppress for years, flowing out of her. Maybe it was the emotion from Simon's death, or just the insanity of the last few years. Things weren't exactly what she remembered, but more of how she had always thought they might be if they didn't have to restrain themselves, protect the people around them, and themselves, from each other.
If you forgive me all this
If I forgive you all that
We forgive and forget
And it's all coming back to me now
She was convinced they'd never get through to him. That she'd never get through to him. The disaster of the intervention, the recklessness when they found out Kathy and Simon's cases might have been connected. She thought that just maybe, despite her instincts, 10 years apart was too much time to get back to a place of normalcy.
"Are we good?" he asked her in the parking garage. He had refused to talk about the intervention, or the fact that he told her he didn't ask her to come, or that he told her to back off, yet balked at the thought of someone telling her to stay away from him. At the time, they weren't good yet.
But standing at the railing on the water at Fin's non-wedding, dressed to the nines, him going to locate her coat, her grabbing him a glass of wine, it was… different. Ten years ago this could have very well been a downtown bar with no view, the two of them sitting there worn out from the day in their work clothes, her knowing there was nothing waiting for her at home but expired takeout Chinese, and him knowing he shouldn't spend too much time away from home for yet another night.
But the change wasn't unwelcome. They'd both grown in different ways the past 10 years, and even in just the last few months. But standing here now, with the soft lighting, the music, the shine off the water, it felt like maybe there was no other way this could have happened. Maybe they needed 10 years and mountains of hurt to be in this place right now.
"To partners," she said, raising and clinking their glasses. They both stared across the water until they heard Fin step up to the microphone, and they turned to the stage. Olivia didn't hear what Fin was saying. Something about thanking everyone for coming and staying. There was too much to process when she turned around.
She first noticed Rollins and Carisi huddled in the corner clinging to each other like teenagers, and she smirked because everyone but the two of them had seen that coming. But there wasn't much time for her to process that either because she felt a hand slip around her waist and pull her closer.
She turned her head slightly to look up at Elliot. His glass was to his lips and his eyes were trained on Fin, but his left arm wound its way around her back and his hand landed on her left hip, like it always belonged there. Taking a small breath, Olivia let her right hand splay across the middle of Elliot's back, and she saw him smile over the rim of his glass before giving her hip a quick squeeze.
Olivia decided that she didn't know what would come next. Elliot and Eli were looking for apartments in the city. Fin wasn't getting married. Crime would still be rampant in the city tomorrow. But for now, she knew she was going to forgive Elliot, and maybe even herself, for the last 10 years. It might take longer to forget, but if there were more nights like this in the future, she'd be willing to try.