A/N:
Thank you all SO much for the reviews, the support, the incredible feedback. Every single one of them makes a difference and is so encouraging. Thank you Mousie, for always being there to hold me accountable. xoxo
Chapter 5
The water lashes his face and the nausea makes him want to roll over and vomit again.
By the violent rocking beneath him, he knows he's still on the boat.
He's been laying in this cesspool of blood and bile for god only knows how long. He's been out of it more than his pride cares to admit, but he's seen the sun rise once since the attack so he knows it's been more than a day at the very least.
He starts coughing, the fire in his lungs nearly an inferno. It's dark as hell again out here on the water, and the rain batters his aching body. He knows he's lost a decent amount of blood, so he's got to open his mouth and absorb whatever water he can because he's not strong enough to go below deck and find the water bottles. He squeezes his eyes shut to try and clear the fog; he can't give in to the void again.
He tries to peel his eyes open again as he catches some of the water on his tongue, but they refuse to open now. It's black all around him, ominous and loud, the ocean twisting and turning. His left hand feels like he'd dipped it in lava and –
His hand.
His arm is crossed over his chest because he'd been cradling it even as he'd laid here unconscious. He tries to form a fist and nearly vomits again from the pain. The boat dips and turns, anchored in place despite the anger of the Atlantic.
His fingers. Some of them feel like they are gone, he just doesn't know how many. He remembers trying to tie them off with the strap from the life vest. He'd managed to cut the nylon strap off with the knife from the survival pack, fighting the blackness every second of the way. He'd tied his fingers together so tightly that he's sure whatever is left of them is dead now.
Kenny.
He'd watched the impact throw Kenny off the back and into the water, and he'd killed the engine immediately, ignoring the fate of the jet skier that had shockingly hit them hard and fast. Rescuing his friend was first. Kenny was nearing seventy-eight and he wasn't a big guy. He'd been standing close enough to the edge of the boat that he'd gone over instantly. The collision had thrown him hard, and his friend had gurgled in surprise, the water turning red around the boat too damned fast in the seconds before he had been able to kill the blades of the underwater motor.
He hadn't had time to do more than try reach for him before he'd realized his friend was sinking too quickly. He'd jumped over, determined to pull Kenny back onboard but the water had been so dark with blood that he hadn't been able to see him.
That's when he had realized the jet skier hadn't been on the vessel when it had hit. The black wet-suit clad skier had jumped him from behind in the water, a serrated fishing knife in hand and doing everything he could to slice into his skin. He'd worn a mask, and he had been agile, pushing down on his back to hold him under as he'd swung the knife in front and around his neck.
He had fought him, grabbing the knife in a last defensive measure as he kicked to keep his head above water. He'd felt the sear of shock across his fingers, felt the pull of the water. He'd known then that he wouldn't win the battle. For some reason the jet skier had been on the attack, coming around front of him in the water where his blue eyes had glittered with determination.
None of it had made sense. It had been a perfect January afternoon until then. He had realized they had been targeted. There was nothing on the boat to rob, yet the ambush had come at them fast and violent. He remembers thinking about how the air had still been warm, but the water had been too cold to be in it long and he'd been at a disadvantage without a wetsuit or weapon.
He groans in pain now, fighting the blackness as he tries to catalog the details, knowing he will need to relay them if he survives. The attacker had brought the knife up yet he had managed to hold it away from his face, feeling it slice through his hand and seeing the water turn a thick crimson. Kenny was gone, he'd realized, and now –
Spinner sharks. Behind the attacker, he remembers two fins lurking forty feet out, drawing closer towards them, lured by the promise of the blood-saturated water. It was the right time of year, that's the only reason they were this far out from the shore. They were migrating south from the Carolinas.
The insane improbability of the attack had nearly sent him into stunned shock, and he had felt the water close over his head again. He had focused on simply not letting their assailant win.
He recalls twisting himself backwards in the water, holding the knife with whatever flesh remained on his hand. His attacker had seemed to have youth and strength on his side, so he had pushed back and to his left, letting go of the knife as he had tried to simply get his body weight on top of the assailant.
That's when he had felt the other man's body go rigid, likely noticing the fins.
For one frozen moment they had locked eyes. Irises the color of a European sea, he remembers, widened with fear for the first time. Deciding whether to stay and finish the job or save himself.
The man had decided to give up the fight. He had pushed off, launching into a strong swim stroke back towards the boat that had drifted a dozen feet to the south.
He had expected the boat to pull away as soon as the attacker had pulled himself on board, leaving him with Kenny's body somewhere nearby and the predators in the water. After all the close calls in his life, he remembered marveling at the irony that this would be the way he went. A shark attack statistic and nothing more, because no one would know what had really happened to them.
He'd heard it then. The thrashing of the first shark as it must have found Kenny's lifeless form and the sound of the jet ski miraculously roaring to life.
The boat wouldn't be pulling away.
The horizon line had woven in front him; his eyelids weighted down with shock. His focus had remained on the bright white hulk of his boat, and on using one arm and his feet to kick himself closer.
He'd been struggling for breath when his good hand finally hit the smooth fiberglass of the One Six. When he had tugged on the rope of the emergency sea dog ladder, he had told himself there was nothing left of his neighbor. He knew that in his gut, but the horror of pulling himself aboard without his friend nearly made him throw up the saltwater he had swallowed.
It had just been a regular fishing trip. Nothing out of the ordinary. Until now. Kenny had been enlisted Navy over fifty years ago and this was his unfathomable burial at sea.
He blinks back the rain now. He needs to stay focused on survival, even now.
He's alone at night out here, and there's nothing assuring him that his attacker won't come back to finish the job. He's got to get to the radio. He needs help out here, storm be damned.
He tries to roll over, and the pain is ferocious. If he can just crawl up the single step that will take him to the radio, he can get some help.
He has to fight for every minute of lucidity. Eileen. She's home and he doesn't know if she's worried yet or if she's blissfully oblivious to what they'd encountered out here.
It's ironic, he thinks, that he'd retired yet here he is, still trying to get back into the Captain's chair once again.
-o0o-
It's a familiar sound that wakes her.
She knows that particular noise, it comes from across Noah's bedroom, near the closet – a floorboard that often creaks when she puts his clothes away.
She keeps her eyes closed, despite the fact that her heartrate quickens. She doesn't want the intruder to know she's awake yet until she can get her bearings. She's curled on her side, away from the closet, with Noah's pillow scrunched beneath her head. Her gun is behind her, on the end table and she probably won't be able to get to it before whoever it is –
Elliot.
She lets out a hard breath as she remembers. There is no relief in knowing its him, the reality of his presence is still so overwhelming she can't touch it yet. No matter what, he has no right to be in this room. She'd explicitly told him to leave her alone. She needed time and space to grieve tonight, so she could at least be marginally functioning by morning.
She doesn't know what the hell he's doing in here, but the defeat is overwhelming. It had taken everything in her just to fall asleep, and he's not only going to come barreling back into her life, but into her son's room while she's sleeping.
She's going to set some hard boundaries with him. There needs to be a limit to what she's expected to withstand.
Olivia tries to roll over to check the small clock on Noah's desk, but she can't seem to turn over. Panic explodes beneath her skin as she realizes she's strangely immobile, as if the blankets above her have weighted her down so heavily that she can't lift her arms or move her legs.
"Detective Benson, did you miss me?"
No!
Rationalization kicks in, but not fast enough to slow her wildly ricocheting pulse. There's no way that voice is real. Not in her apartment. Not in any way. Someone is playing a sick game, and if she can turn over she'll be able to face them head on. The voice is impossible, the fact that anyone had made it into her apartment is impossible.
She's paralyzed, without feeling even in her fingertips. It's only this dark because she hasn't even been able to open her eyes.
"Time to wake up. We have to get a move on, you're just wasting the night away."
She shudders, the voice so accurate it's haunting. Her mouth isn't covered in duct tape, but whatever he's done to her, she can't seem to scream. Maybe she's been injected with a paralytic. Dana Lewis had described exactly this years ago when she had been raped. She's horrifyingly fully awake and cognizant, but unable to move a single muscle.
If she could only yell for help and take the walls down with her voice until one of her neighbors calls the police. But it's not an option because her lips will not fucking move.
The terror starts to crowd in and she wills it away. Terror has never solved anything, it's never given her an edge, she reminds herself. She has too much experience with it to let it win now.
Her head feels detached from her body, as if she has zero control over the stone that has taken up residence in her limbs. Elliot is out there; he'd said he was taking the couch. There's no way someone could have made it this far. Not past the alarm, past the doors…past him.
Unless Elliot had finally used her room and doesn't know yet what is happening in here. Or maybe he's injured or dead. She feels the cold, thick emptiness start to spread through her. He would never, ever have let someone past him unless he'd fought and lost. That's what this is. She had lost Simon, Ed, David. Now she will lose herself, too, if he's gone.
"You lied, Olivia. He was your partner, right? You said your partner would have known what to do." The voice clucks in an amused admonishment once, twice. "He didn't."
The scream bubbles up, out of her stomach, her chest, her lungs. It gurgles past her tongue and her lips, her skin on fire in the seconds before it will char and peel off from this incinerator. Only nothing comes out. The scream is trapped inside of her, and the pressure of it feels like it will make her explode into tiny little bits.
She pushes past the paralytic, whatever he'd done to her. She fights it, if not with her fists then with her lungs.
The sound finally echoes in the room, and it's not for her, it's for him.
"Elliot!"
-o0o-
Fucking hell.
He sits up on the couch too fast, throwing off the blanket he'd found. He'd listened to her murmuring with agitation in Noah's room for the last thirty minutes, and he'd somehow talked himself down from going in there half a dozen times. He's been doing his damndest to take his cues from her, and she'd explicitly told him to stay out of the room, no matter what.
But fuck this. She'd screamed his name, and that gives him the right to go in there.
He grabs his t-shirt off the coffee table as he stands, pulling it over his head despite the fact that his hands are nearly shaking with frustration and fear. He rolls his neck, trying to calm himself down. It's a nightmare, he reminds himself. No matter what, she's physically alright in there and he cannot flip the fuck out.
The echoing sound of her terror is reverberating in his ears and his throat locks as he pads in bare feet towards Noah's closed door. It's quiet in there now, but he's not turning back.
How many times had she yelled for help while she'd been with that animal? How many times during the nightmares that would have followed? How many of those times had it been his name? Never, maybe. Once or twice.
He scrubs his hand down his face hard just outside the door.
Jesus.
He knocks lightly, despite his instincts to just let himself in. He knows enough about trauma to know that her boundaries will forever be tightly woven with her sense of self-protection and control, and he wants to make her feel safe, even if it kills him.
Some things will never fade.
"Olivia?" His voice is too low, so he clears it and knocks again. "Liv?"
He is about to try the handle when the door whips open. He steps back into the light of the hallway, unable to process the way she is looking at him.
Her eyes are flat, her pupils dilated. She's wrapping her robe around herself and tying the belt tightly but her hands are shaking so badly he can see it. Her skin is almost wet with perspiration, some strands of her hair sticking to her neck.
"I told you," she rasps, as if she's lost her voice. "I don't need your help."
He can barely hear her, but not due to her lack of volume; the rushing in his ears is so loud. She's lost some color to her skin, as if she's disappearing in front of him.
"How often does this happen?" he manages.
Olivia shakes her head and she starts to push past him towards the kitchen. It takes every ounce of his self-control not to reach for her and stop her so that she will talk to him. Instead he follows, leaning against the counter as she reaches in the fridge for another bottle of water.
His fingers grip the Formica so that he doesn't try to touch her.
"Please just go to sleep," she says quietly.
It's 4:30 a.m., and he's pretty sure he's not getting any more shuteye. He shifts, folding his arms across his chest to distract his hands. He just wants her to still. To look at him.
Nine years. He knows all the major milestones in her life, but she knows nothing of where he's been, or why. She's not going to give him jack shit, and she shouldn't.
He tries anyway.
"Liv, what happened in there?"
She takes a long sip from the bottle in her hands and then looks up to him, and the defensive spark is back in her still swollen eyes. "It's called sleep paralysis. It happens. I'm fine. I'm going to bed."
He can't let it go. He moves to his right first, not touching her yet effectively nearly blocking her way out of the narrow kitchen. "Tell me what that is."
She lifts her chin then, narrowing her gaze. "Google it. I don't owe you any explanations."
"How often does it happen to you?"
"None of your business," she shoots back, gripping her bottle of water so tightly he hears the plastic cave in a little bit.
He knows exactly what this is. She's trying to stonewall him into leaving her alone. Years ago, it would have worked. But he's not her partner anymore, and he's not afraid of blowing up their relationship, whatever it is at this point. He'd already blown it to all hell by disappearing on her for nearly a decade.
He searches her eyes and stops tiptoeing. "It was my name. Why?"
He can tell his blunt question surprised her by the small suck of air she takes in, but she doesn't break eye contact. The wariness and defeat start to creep into her expression, despite her best efforts to mask it with anger. "I had a bad dream," she says flatly. "He was in the room. I couldn't move. You were dead."
Oddly, his heartbeat slows. His hands itch to smooth her damp hair off her forehead, so he moves his fingers at his sides, trying to stretch them, curl them, anything that helps him to give her the physical space she is practically demanding. He wants to wipe the clamminess off her skin, pull her up against him until the throbbing of her pulse stops visibly pounding in her neck.
"Moore?" he asks, swallowing thickly and bracing himself. "Or Lewis?"
She takes a step back, flinching hard as if he'd struck her. He can see her eyes start to fill, her breathing getting harder. But she doesn't peel her gaze from his, even as she blinks once, twice. Then she comes closer to him, lifting her chin. "You don't ever, ever get to mention him to me, do you understand me?"
He'd gone over this conversation a thousand times in his head in the years since, but he's never figured out how it would go. He doesn't care what she wants to throw at him now, how she will want to tear him apart. It doesn't matter, he deserves it. Nothing she could ever do to him will ever compare to what she's been through.
He's been assigned to this case now, by a jurisdiction that is beyond her control. No matter what happens her tonight, she can't avoid him.
It's that safety net that makes him push it.
"I know your file inside and out, Olivia. I made Porter get it for me. Probably have every word committed to memory. But I know that doesn't mean shit. I know you well enough to know everything isn't in there." He chews on his lower lip, looking past her at the cabinets so he can try to find words that will somehow explain the unthinkable. "It's my fucking fault, because if I hadn't…detonated after Jenna, I woulda been the one to have your back. I would have never left you alone, knowing he was gunning for you like -"
"Shut up," she hisses, stepping even closer to him. "I said shut up." The color is back in her cheeks, even if she still sounds shaky. "So that's what this is? You're gonna sacrifice yourself now to make up for the fact that you left? You think this is your big chance to make it up to me?" She gets even closer, tipping her chin up further as her words hit like hot pockets of air against his skin. "You think it's like missing a birthday, El? Just gonna go big now and all is forgiven?"
"No-" he manages thickly. "I-"
"Aren't you lucky?" she cuts him off. "That Moore is…" she trails off, her voice catching as her eyes spill over. She blinks it away, ignoring her physical reaction. "That he's killing people I care about? Perfect chance to roll in and play hero with the big bad FBI behind you."
"Jesus, Olivia."
She opens her mouth again as if she's going to say something more, but then she suddenly stops as if startled that she'd even fought back in the first place. She looks lost in her own hallway, unfocused as if she's confused as to what just happened.
Grief. He recognizes it because he knows it well. It is the fiercest foe, striking out of nowhere and without warning.
She teeters a little bit and because he is the thing closest to her, her hand comes up and flattens against his chest to brace herself. He can feel the heat of her palm through the thin cotton of his t-shirt and he freezes, staring at her.
She doesn't look up at him, instead her gaze is trained on her hand as if she too is stunned by where it is.
He can't look away. His heart is slamming in his chest, and he wonders if she can feel it beneath her fingertips. Everything slows as her fingers start to close around the fabric of his shirt, fisting it instead of pushing him away. He doesn't know if she's going to come back from wherever she is right now and haul off and shove him, or if she's going to completely break.
It's the latter that is terrifying.
He doesn't move. He tries not to breathe. His hands curl into themselves as he denies them the reach he's desperate to make. He's had years of watching her, seeing her. He's kept tabs in a way that she will never forgive him for if – when - she finds out. It goes well beyond the Lewis folder. He hasn't had much to hang onto when it comes to the last nine years of her, but the glimpses have still been something.
She's had absolutely nothing of him. That's what he'd left her with.
The regret and failure that he'd lived with for years is back again, but he ruthlessly tempers how it threatens to sink him. He can't drown, not now. Not ever again. Self-loathing had never helped anyone, especially them. He's had more than enough time to fall and bounce back, and in his gut he knows he's cost her far too much in the process.
The seconds tick by, neither of them moving. His jaw grits involuntarily as he absorbs the weight of her hand, the slight dragging of his shirt beneath her fingertips. In the recesses of his mind he knows what the heat spreading through him is, and he does his best to will the blistering awareness away.
He's still failing in every way.
She's beautiful.
No makeup, bare feet, red eyes, with the horrors of the day still on her skin, and Olivia is every bit the warrior she'd been for all the years he'd been by her side. That she'd been by his. The time apart has taught him that this isn't love. It's never been anything as simple as that. Love is linear, organized.
She's spilled all the way into him, into every crevice of his life and head.
"Liv." It's as quiet as he can make it, and he doesn't know what he's about to say, but there are a thousand things that are vying to go next.
The sound of her name jars her, and she lifts her chin. Her fist remains, balling even further. "Why?" she whispers, cocking her head. He knows what she's asking. It's in the tumbling black shadows in her eyes.
The defensiveness is gone, and its place is something far more formidable.
Vulnerability.
The answer he's come to after all these years will never amount to much, but he has to say it, still has to give her his reasoning even if she doesn't understand yet. The urge to grip her hand is strong, just so she can feel how truly sorry he is.
"You were better off," he says, and that truth sounds like he's swallowing sand.
She takes a step back, pulling her hand off of him and cradling it with the other against her chest as if she's hurt it. She's focused on his neck and the shadows in her eyes fade, replaced with a hollow charcoal.
"My life, it was spiraling. My 'chute," he grates, licking his lips and pushing the panic aside as he tries to make her understand. "It wasn't opening, Liv. You woulda tried to save me and we would have both gone down. I had to…cut the cord."
She is breathing, but that's all he knows. He doesn't even know if she hears him.
"Our partnership." He shakes his head a little, despite the fact that his eyes are burning and his chest feels like it's been cut away where her hand had just been. "It was costin' you. You just didn't see it. I took too much. With me gone, you got Noah. You got promoted." He blinks hard, because the anger over who she'd been with has no place. Not here. Not tonight. "You fell in love, Liv."
Olivia comes back then, in little bits and pieces. Her pain-filled eyes focus again, her hands drop, and the corner of her lips lift in a sad smile. "I got two of the three." Her shoulders fall and she juts her chin out just a little bit. "Despite the fact you left, not because of it."
And before he can even dissect what she'd said, she's turned and stepped into Noah's room, closing the door and locking it behind her.
-o0o-
