A/N: I know it's been pretty much forever, and I thought that this story was complete, but it wouldn't leave me alone in my head. So I've been working on the continuation, and finally have the second chapter completed. Hope you all enjoy. Stay tuned for the next chapter! Pairing is E/O! Bensidy and Tuckson fans - I have nothing against your ships. I just can't write them. Sorry.

Spoilers: Listen. Pretty much anything is fair game from Season 13 on - especially anything related to Liv's personal life. So if you haven't watched since then, or aren't caught up to Season 18, and you don't want spoilers, you should avoid.

Rating: T for this chapter, will quickly turn to M

Disclaimer: Because I'm old AND old school, I still include one. None of these characters are mine, I just like to play with them. Dick Wolf owns them.

Talisman: 2

So I wait for you, like a lonely house, 'til you will see me again, and live in me. – Pablo Neruda

A lot of things had changed in six years. But then again, a lot of things had stayed the same.

In the days, and then weeks that followed their reunion in the coffee shop, Liv and Elliot began texting each other. Slowly at first: How was your day? and Traffic sucks at this hour. Sometimes just Goodnight.

Then it was more like really talking. It was You'll never guess what Noah did, and Are you getting enough sleep? More and more often, Olivia found herself shutting the office door, eating her lunch with her phone in one hand, texting Elliot.

With a smile on her face.

It took no time at all for Fin, then Rollins to notice, but when asked, Liv was surprised to find herself shrugging it off. Why wasn't she angry? She had every right to have dragged El through the proverbial ringer. Olivia supposed, if asked, that she'd have said she always just assumed she and Elliot would have been partners until they retired – at the same time. Or, God forbid, until one of them died in the line of duty, as morbid as it might sound. But, the truth was that she had never given it much thought. After twelve years together, what the end looked like wasn't something they had discussed. Even their growing older wasn't a topic they broached.

In a blink, it had all been over. Twelve years of working side by side, talking every day, a lifetime worth of hours spent in cars, on stakeouts, in the squad. Then nothing.

They had spoken every day for more than a decade, and he had walked out of her life without so much as a "kiss my ass" to tuck under her pillow. She had heard that nowadays it was called "ghosting," but for her it had simply been ruinous. The aftershocks had rippled outward in her life for years. Elliot had been – as he had once pointed out – her longest relationship with a man, and more than that, her longest relationship, partnership, friendship . . . with anyone.

In the years following Elliot's departure, Olivia watched the legacy and foundation of the 1-6 begin to shift, as if her pairing with Elliot had been the last thing preventing the squad from aging. Munch finally retired, new detectives came and went, while Liv found herself drifting, longing for the past. So she'd dug in her heels and tried, for the first time, not to run. While she would never deny that she had fallen in love with David Hayden, a part of her knew all along that it had been about proving Elliot wrong.

Anxious to fill the empty part of her life that was accentuated by El's leaving, Olivia had fought hard to finally go for the right, healthy thing, instead of the right-looking thing. Instead of the thing that hushed precinct rumors about her relationship with her partner. In the end, it was just another failed attempt at normalcy that left her numb and directionless.

ii.
It was then that Brian had reappeared, giving Liv what felt like a chance to go back in time. The familiarity of it was a comfort to her, and for a while, she could imagine that it was 1999 again, and it was just about sex and the job.

When it came to sex, it was as it had always been between her and Cassidy: there was lots of it, but not much of a meeting of minds elsewhere. Nevertheless, for a time it seemed to work, and after her abduction she found herself moving in with him.

The truth, however, was that when she had found herself wondering if William Lewis would kill her, it was Elliot she had ached for, not Brian. It was Elliot she wanted to cry out for, that she prayed would save her. And when Lewis had seen right through her, it had terrified and enraged her. Nobody was allowed to touch that wound – not even her.

After the abduction, even as they began living together, Olivia felt herself quietly packing away parts of herself that she was too tired to share anymore. It was a place she could easily have remained in, indefinitely, if Brian hadn't pointed out that they were moving in opposite directions. Something inside her that had been idle for years had turned over again, and Liv knew that Brian wasn't going with her on the journey.

iii.
Donald Cragen had been Olivia's C. O. for more than 15 years when he announced his retirement. He had been kind enough to tell her in advance – and shrewd enough to put her onto taking the Sergeant's Exam.

Cragen was the closest thing to a father that Liv had known. He had guided her, watched over her, and taught her. Her Captain had handed down discipline, when necessary, to keep her in line, and also given her leeway to push the line every now and then.

She had loved him, as a father, for almost as long as she had known him – loved his office with its hidden candy, his old-man distrust of technology, and the sound of his voice with just the two of him in his office, when she was still a green detective. More than that, Olivia loved that Cragen had overcome the struggle that had consumed her mother.

With her relationship with Cassidy winding down, and two years of silence from Elliot under her belt, she hadn't taken the news of Cragen's retirement well. It was the biggest of SVU's foundational stones finally giving way, and she was tired of being sad. Donald Cragen had built, in Olivia, a legacy he wanted to leave behind – wanted her to now command. It brought her age into clear, sharp focus. And then, as life would have it, she laid eyes on Noah.

From the first time she saw him, somehow Liv knew that he would be her son. She also knew it wouldn't be easy. But the dream of being a mother that she had boxed neatly away in what felt like another lifetime had caught fire and this time Olivia knew it would not ever make it back to the shelf. It was a dream that she had really only ever discussed with Elliot. Maybe because he was well-known in the squad to be a father of a big family, or maybe because he had always quieted her fears regarding her genes and motherhood. They worked a hard unit, a unit that marched out every reason imaginable as to why bringing children into the world was asking for trouble – and still, Elliot had insisted that he would stand behind her if she wanted them. Not since 2010, when Gladys Dalton had left her tiny daughter's life literally in Liv's hands, had motherhood been front and center.

iv.
Cragen retired. They kept in touch; he'd send post cards from his retirement cruises, and pictures of his girlfriend's grandkids, holiday cards. Every now and then, he'd even call – but it wasn't the same. His voice was always so light, so far away from the dark of sex crimes, and while she would never begrudge him the peace he had worked for, that divide between them was hard to bridge.

Her Cassidy phase was over, and her time not spent on her future at the 1-6 was spent on the journey of becoming Noah's mother – on paper, as well as at home. After Lewis, Liv finally found a way to make the therapy stick, and it was doing her a world of good.

Then, after the ceremony that celebrated her change in rank to Lieutenant, a card had arrived at the precinct, with a single red rose. If it hadn't been for the fact that she still recognized his handwriting, it never would have stood out among the flood of congratulatory messaged she had received.

Her heart had pounded painfully as she'd read the single word – Congratulations – over and over. Holding the rose in her unsteady had, she had lifted the receiver on her desk phone, imagining his low, familiar voice filling her ear.

But what do you say, when years have passed? The weight of all that time was so heavy. It seemed easier, to let the one-word card serve as a sweet placeholder between them.

So things continued to change, but finally she seemed to find a routine, and a calm in her new role as Mom. Olivia stopped resisting change, and tried to find ways to relate to her new squad as she commanded them. Life began to flow more organically, and before she knew it, time was flying as it always had. Noah got bigger and more beautiful every day, while Elliot seemed to recede into the back of her mind – a memory box that she'd take down and dust off every now and then. She convinced herself she was learning to let go.

v.
Once, Olivia had imagined what she might say if Elliot ever asked her how after seventeen years in SVU, she found herself dating Edward Tucker.

Ed Tucker, who had been despised by Cragen, Munch, Fin, Elliot – and even herself, for years. Tucker from IAB, who had thought her guilty of murder and sent her to Rikers. He had been eager to sink Elliot's career – going toe to toe and spitting fire with everyone in the unit at least once.

Her taste in men was never something that she and El had discussed. If they had, it would have been a short and telling conversation. When she wasn't going for men in positions of power, she was usually going for any man who was convenient, to stop the rumors and looks she received, or men who were emotionally unavailable. "People change," she could say, but it wasn't the whole truth. Perhaps Liv would give some excuse about her age, not wanting to spend her life without a partner. But she was not so stupid as to think any answer would be satisfactory if Elliot ever did ask.

Nor was she so stupid as to not see that what she was doing with Ed was mostly going through the motions. Yes, she was happy to have someone in her life, to see at the end of the day and unwind with. Liv was grateful, for how well he treated her and the things that they experienced together. The relationship brought another long-overdue degree of normalcy to a life lived in an intense, chaotic unit. But if confronted, she'd be lying if she said it was passionate. What it was, at best, was the emotional equivalent of comfort food: it was warm, it was easy, it was temporarily filling.

And predictable. It was a relationship of connect the dots – each step happened at the right time, at the same pace, toward eventualities that Olivia preferred not to dwell on. She didn't talk about dating Ed, either before or after being forced to confirm it among her squad, and that was her choice as well; a level of privacy that she had worked to maintain even before all of the changes in the unit.

Ed had helped Noah serve her a lovely (predictable) breakfast in bed the first Mother's Day that they were together – complete with a bouquet of flowers and a card that Noah had scribbled in. She kissed Ed goodbye and hurried off to work afterward, narrowly avoiding being late.

As she stepped into her office that warm May morning, that memory box where Elliot stayed had fallen off the shelf, scattering emotions and thoughts across the floor of her mind.

An impossibly large bunch of sunflowers sat on her desk, with another card, bearing the handwriting that was burned into permanent memory. Happy Mother's Day it said this time. Liv began breathing heavy just from reading it. How did he know? How could he know? Was he purposely trying to get her to reach out? Her belly tingled and contracted with pleasure and confusion.

And just like that, it was the beginning of the end of things with Tucker.

vi.
After the sunflowers she would have dreams of him. Mostly odd dreams that she couldn't untangle, but every now and then, an erotic dream would insert itself among them. On those mornings she would wake up flustered, and always wet between the thighs. It was foolishly pubescent, and she chided herself, as she had mastered hiding those feelings about Elliot for longer than anyone could imagine possible.

Things with Tucker continued on a little longer, a few dots left to connect. Liv knew something was coming before Ed brought it up, although, she had imagined that it was going to be a marriage proposal. Maybe it was, in his very cordial and old-fashioned way, she supposed. But putting down her shield? It wasn't even a thought that had ever crossed her mind. She saw herself much like Cragen – working until One PP handed down the ultimatum to retire, 'or else.' As hard as she tried, to look ahead to the next dot with Ed – travelling, raising Noah, aging into the sunset – she couldn't see it. And despite the past, he deserved more than that; deserved someone who was going into those golden years with him for reasons more compelling than, "nobody else ever asked me."

So then it was over.

In the shifting light of dawn, before Noah was awake and the mundanity of dressing, eating, leaving were closing in, Olivia still woke with web-like threads of dreams of El on her skin. She unapologetically indulged herself, her fingers gliding, hips arching. But she refused to even breathe his name, convinced that it was the talisman that would beak her in the end.

vii.
It was Elliot who had turned around in the coffee shop. By then, there were six years between them. Too many, for things to be immediately comfortable, but not enough for either of them to walk away without speaking. She watched the way El kept sneaking looks at Noah, his eyes glowing with pleasure and curiosity. The weight of the things that she wanted to tell him was immense, but her need to know that he was okay – to ask why he had left her was more important.

But it was just an exercise; it was just getting it out of the way so that they could say it had been brought up. In their own, minimalistic way of communicating, it was an apology. With the way they had been used to interacting, she knew it could be months, even years, before they asked each other anything difficult. Liv wanted to enjoy the ability to just talk to him, for now.

She told herself that she wasn't disappointed when he had mentioned Kathy, and she fought hard to remember how it had been – six years before, when the knowledge of Kathy's existence was just background static that rarely manage to make her upset. But she stopped touching herself after her dreams, as though the mere fact of Elliot being back in her life was its own condemnation.

viii.
After a long day, as Liv found herself packing up to go relieve Lucy, her cell chimed with a text from El. She pulled it open as she shouldered her purse, pausing to lock the door to the office on her way out.

WANNA GRAB A BEER TONIGHT?

They hadn't seen each other in person since the coffee shop, and just reading the text caused Liv's belly to flop.

IS MY PLACE OK? she replied. Declining hadn't even crossed her mind.

YES.

MEET ME THERE, I'LL PUT NOAH TO BED. Taking a deep breath, Liv sent him her address.