A/N: Thank you for sticking with me, with them and for pushing me to find time to write and be accountable with every review. I love knowing what resonates. Jess, thank you for making me work harder and think more with every chapter, I'm trying to put the things you teach me into practice. JessR, Amy and Lucy - thank you for letting me run motivations by you. You know the "why" drives me crazy. Song I wrote to for this chapter: Look After You, The Fray
The hot mug of coffee she's wrapped her hands around is doing nothing to warm her fingertips. Her scalding hot shower had similarly done nothing to warm her skin, and maybe it's because her blood is the thing that feels chilled.
She won't cry in front of him. She needs to get to the precinct and take back her squad or everyone will keep treating her like a victim, and she isn't. Not this time.
This time the victim is Don.
She sets the mug down too hard on the counter, and a bit of the liquid splashes over her fingers. She stares at the innocuous spill, pressing her lips together to ward off the insistent nausea. She'd emerged from her room dressed nearly twenty minutes ago and found Elliot sitting at the counter, a cup of coffee waiting for her.
He'd been expressionless. Too still. He'd looked at her for too long, and she hadn't looked away for too long and she can't examine why it has always felt like he's the center of gravity in the room.
Don had been attacked, he'd finally told her in a somber monotone. Lost three fingers and a friend, and he was in surgery to save his left hand. Coast Guard had found him two hours ago, covered in blood and vomit, his body showing signs of dehydration and shock.
The numbness settles into her bones, but she doesn't ward it off. It dulls her senses, and she desperately needs that protection. She's too aware of the wide span of Elliot's shoulders, his gravelly voice, the way he makes her apartment feel too small at all times.
He's here. With her. And she has no idea how to even begin to assimilate that reality with the one she's endured for the last nine years.
The overall devastation within her is growing, and her traitorous head keeps telling her it would be okay to simply trust him now, because the truth is that despite his absence, she's probably never stopped. Her mind is twisting and tumbling, playing time warp tricks on her that compress the impossible years he's been gone until every memory of them feels like it was yesterday.
Olivia wipes her wet fingers off with a towel and gives up on the coffee. She'd reheated it twice already and hasn't been able to drink it anyway.
"Let's get going." It's all she's able to say. There's no chance she will have an opportunity to go to Florida to see Don until this is all over, but she can't help but feel like she should be there. She knows Eileen is at St. Lucie Medical to be with her husband, and the FBI will interview him post-op, but she feels helpless. Responsible. It's barely eight, yet she has no right still being home when everyone around her is being hunted. "We should be in by now."
Elliot is showered and dressed too, and he's in the living room holstering his gun beneath his sport coat. He's wearing jeans and a henley again and it gives her insight about where he fits in with the Bureau. The casual attire means he's a street agent - narcotics or gangs maybe. She doesn't ask.
She isn't sure she is ready to know anything about his life during his blatant absence from hers. Knowing he'd gone on living without her is one thing. To know he'd been in law enforcement without her is another.
This is my partner, Detective Stabler. How she'd said that thousands of times, anchoring herself to it. Their past together had included every version of hell, but that time seems almost innocent compared to what the last years have brought. She's proud of making Captain, but the job itself has isolated her even more. The responsibilities are hers alone, the walls of her office keep her apart.
She doesn't know why her mind is roaming this morning. It's the last thing she needs. He's watching her and that means she's going to have to reign in the mental wandering.
Elliot gives her a soft, teasing half-grin that doesn't make it to his eyes. "Perimeter alarm is still on, I'm at your mercy until you disarm it. Probably a good idea that I have the code if I'm staying here?"
Staying here. Her stomach knots as shakes her head just a little bit. "No."
His smile instantly fades. "Why? You can change it when this is over, Olivia." He cocks his head as he comes closer to her, the kitchen counter between them. "What good does it do to keep that from me?"
Dread slips between her shoulder blades. He's right and they both know it. He's going to push this and there's no way to change it now before he finds out. She glares at him in warning, but he's not backing down. He locks eyes with her, and she knows the exact moment when he figures it out.
It doesn't take him long. A flare of recognition flashes in his eyes and it takes her breath away how well they can still read each other.
She's at a disadvantage on this side of the counter, but she moves fast and hopes he will back down or be a step slower than she anticipates. It's a lesson in futility because he's already turning on his heels and as a result she reaches the keypad a split second after he does. He puts his left elbow up against the wall, effectively holding her back from it.
"Stop it, Elliot," she says. "You're going to set it off if you're wrong." She wants to push him, to shove him straight out the front door but she paces her breathing instead. She won't touch him again, not even over this.
He's already punching in four numbers.
His old NYPD badge number. 6313.
Olivia closes her eyes as the alarm emits a small sound, indicating it had successfully been disarmed.
She remembers how she'd felt when she had programmed the code. Brian had just moved out, and she'd needed something – anything – to make her feel insulated. The elaborate alarm system, the code – it had been a surrogate cocoon around her. In the shattering absence of Brian's warm body or the unequivocal shelter of Elliot, it was the only remaining ally she'd trusted.
My old partner, he'd know what to do. He'd break your teeth in. Break your arms, break your legs, break your back, break your face.
Her need to have someone take over her safety both during and after those first days with Lewis had been embarrassing. A weakness she wouldn't ever admit at work or to Brian or Nick. She hadn't even confessed the depth of that need to Lindstrom. But late at night in the weeks after Brian had moved out, alone in her bed, she had self-soothed the vivid nightmares away by tucking every one of her pillows around her body until she hadn't felt exposed.
The shape of the pillows had never been a stand-in for Brian. In the darkness, she'd had wordless conversations with someone else. Some nights she had slipped from her bed and pulled on an old hoodie of his she'd once worn home after a case and never returned. It had taken the warmth of the familiar fleece and the weight of the pillows to make her sleep.
On the worst nights she'd clutch her phone, debating whether or not she had the right to breach his privacy and call him. Sometimes she would pretend that would be the night he'd call her instead.
Elliot never had.
She's so close to him now that she can smell her soap on his skin and she's involuntarily warming from the mesmerizing, enveloping heat that radiates off him. Elliot turns a moment later, facing her in the absolute silence.
"Don't make it more than it is," Olivia pleads quietly, silently willing him to let it go. It says too much about her that it's still the same code, the same humiliating need.
He doesn't say anything. Instead he slowly pulls out his cell phone from his coat pocket and holds it out to her, offering her the chance to take it from him. It's a late model iPhone, and the illuminated screen now indicates it requires a six-digit code.
It's an offering, and it's easier to just take it from him than to speak. Her hands shake just a little as she holds it. Six numbers.
She takes a deep breath and taps in her birthday. 02.07.68.
The phone unlocks.
Something inside of her does, too.
"Same, Liv," he says softly. "Okay?"
Her eyes prick with tears, so she drops her gaze to the floor until she can control her reaction. She hands him back his phone. Her breaths slow down and even out. For the first time in what feels like forever, she fully exhales.
When her eyes finally return to his, the blue is achingly familiar despite the new depths within it.
Olivia will not admit it, but the silence that sits heavy between them as they gather their things and head for her sedan feels oddly, inexplicably like the comfort she'd coveted all those years ago.
-o0o-
He's staying out of this one.
Elliot has so narrowly avoided arguments with her in the last hour that he's not taking this particular one on, because there is no fucking way he will win. For some reason he feels like her guard has come down a little bit with him since last night, and he isn't going to jeopardize that unless absolutely necessary.
He'd wanted to make an overt, baiting appearance with her on the way to the precinct by getting a cup of coffee together at the Starbucks near her apartment and she had refused, citing a need to get to her office. Olivia's anxiety had skyrocketed the second they had stepped out of her building - her eyes darting left and right, her head swiveling to watch their back – that he had let it go.
She'd wanted to drive and since he didn't have his vehicle yet, he'd been forced to let that go too.
He'd tried to encourage her to eat one of the muffins ADA Carisi had apparently brought in for the team and left in a box on Rollins' desk, but Olivia had warned him back with a look.
This fight was much bigger – and it was all Porter's.
"You have to take a step back, Olivia," Porter was telling her, his voice nearly irritatingly calm. "You can send someone into the box with my agent, but it won't be you."
Fin and Kat had located Annabella, Moore's soon to be ex-wife of twenty-five years, in Chicago last night. In the throes of a messy, public divorce, she'd been only too willing to come to New York via private plane this morning on the FBI's dime if it meant sticking it to Tobias.
She is currently sitting in Interrogation One, in full-makeup and wearing ten-thousand dollars worth of Gucci as she crosses her legs next to Harper Troy, her very high-profile, very high-powered attorney.
There's no way in hell Porter is going to let Olivia be the one to question Annabella's knowledge of Moore's whereabouts. Olivia might not classify herself as a victim or a target right now, but the FBI and the NYPD both unequivocally do.
"This is a joint investigation," Olivia fires back, nearly snarling as she raises one eyebrow. In her black slacks, button down shirt and black leather boots, she looks far more formidable today than she had in that dress yesterday. "I haven't been asked to sit out by my own superiors. I'll be damned if you're going to keep me out of my own interrogation room."
Elliot lets out a deep breath and leans back, supporting himself on Rollins' empty desk behind him. He's thankful that the only ones witnessing this right now are Carisi and Fin. He's sure that Rollins is with her kids at the hotel, and he doesn't know where the fuck everyone else is but he will take the small win that this argument isn't playing out in front of a wider audience.
Porter takes a step closer to Olivia. "The FBI flew her here, Captain Benson. Procedure dictates she's now ours."
He knows what throwing out rank and titles is going to do. It's akin to tossing kerosene on a fiery pile of shit. There isn't enough fire retardant in the world to get all of them through this day safely.
"Captain, you can't formally be on the record as having interrogated any of the witnesses," Carisi interjects carefully. "Hadid made that clear."
But both Olivia and Porter are going toe-to-toe now, and if the rookie ADA had an ounce of self-preservation, he'd go dig out one of the chocolate muffins and get some milk and just sit down and wait for the dust to settle.
As expected, Olivia ignores the interruption, stepping even closer to Dean. "The FBI is on a really thin leash with me right now. You want to discuss procedure? Do you normally go pulling files on NYPD detectives and passing them around the break room over at Fed Plaza?"
Shit. He should never have confessed who gave him the Lewis file last night. The room feels almost combustible now, and even Fin takes a sharp breath. Elliot tries to shake off the building dread because he knows Olivia far better than Porter every will, and he knows how close to the edge she is at this very second.
He's the one she's throwing on the pyre, but it's a small price to pay to watch her slowly coming back.
This is who he remembers, this is his fierce as hell former partner. Elliot watches her and how she owns this room now, even on the losing end of an argument and in the middle of her own personal abyss. She's a daunting opponent, unwilling to back down when she believes in the cause.
Captain Benson.
He's so goddamn proud of her. She'd always been stronger than all of them combined. She'd taken her hell and elevated herself to nearly untouchable status in the NYPD in the aftermath. She was the face of Special Victims for the force. She'd survived Lewis, negotiated hostage situations, dismantled trafficking and prostitution rings, adopted a victim's child and navigated hundreds of cases to one of the best close rates of any department in Manhattan.
He knows the highlights and none of what she'd looked like in those moments. What she'd sounded like. What she had feared or how she had fought.
He swipes his hand down his face, knowing he can't erase what he'd done by walking away.
Porter, as usual, doesn't flinch or acknowledge her accusation. He does shoot Elliot a quick pointed look, but he doesn't let it change his demeanor. His face remains impassive, unperturbed by Olivia's anger. "Based on your lack of cooperation, I'll move Annabella Moore to my office. We can take it from there."
Olivia is visibly gritting her teeth, but she relents just in time to strategically keep things on her turf. "She stays here, and I want Sergeant Tutuola in there."
"Fine," Porter agrees, quickly smiling a little too amiably at her acquiescence. "Agent Stabler will take lead and your Sergeant can join him."
Olivia's eyes darken as she turns now to glare at Elliot. The fact that he will be in that room and she will at best observe is very obviously grating on her already brittle nerves. He shifts uncomfortably when she looks at him just a little too long, with something akin to betrayal in her eyes.
He knows what she's thinking. He's on this case, but he's not technically on her team. She doesn't understand that no matter which badge is in his wallet, he's only here – he only went after the new badge in the first place – because of her.
"She hates her husband," she snaps at him, walking towards her office. "He's humiliated her with the rape accusations and infidelity. She wants to take the money and run before the civil suits wipe them out. Use that."
Elliot nods, cracking his neck as he straightens. Years ago he would have rolled his eyes at the obvious direction, but right now he's on such thin ice that he just needs to escape the room.
He stays silent, and she rewards him by turning her focus onto Porter.
"My office. Now."
Technically Special Agent Dean Porter had no reason to listen to the directive, but as he walks by Elliot now, heading towards Olivia, he finally looks annoyed. "This is your personal shitstorm I'm walking into," he mutters.
Shitstorm doesn't begin to cover it, Elliot thinks as he follows Fin to an interrogation room.
This whole situation is a damned landslide, and it will bury all of them if even one of them makes a wrong move.
-o0o-
It's just after ten a.m. and she already has a splitting headache.
It doesn't help that all she wants is to go see Noah. She'd Factetimed with him, but there's no substitute for the chance to hold him, hear him laugh or listen to one of his wildly imaginative theories. Her arms ache for him to the point of pain. She'd heard Kathy and Eli in the background when she'd been talking to her own son, and she can't even begin to comprehend that the baby she'd once held in an ambulance is the same pre-teen she'd heard arguing with his mother.
Every minute of the day feels like a Mack truck coming straight at her. The collision of past and present is overwhelming.
One hour until Cragen is expected out of surgery. One day since they had buried Ed. She wants to get to the scene of David's…
Murder.
Her throat locks with the searing agony. This is how the grief keeps coming at her, in relentless waves that come barreling in out of nowhere. She wants to apologize to David's children and his family but nothing will be adequate. She wants to call Tracy and make sure Simon's stepson and the niece she sickeningly doesn't even really know are alright. She has to look out for the children her brother will never see again, despite the fact that he'd been working towards rebuilding his life so he could be a part of his family. Nausea spreads across her chest again and she flattens her fingertips on her desk until they turn white, bracing herself so she doesn't falter.
The list of what and who she owes seems insurmountable.
Dean walks into her office behind her and he shuts the door, aware of what's coming.
She needs an outlet and she won't disappoint him.
"You want to play the protocol game, Dean?" She cocks her head, narrowing her eyes at him. "Why don't we discuss rules and procedure? Did you give Elliot my file before or after he joined the FBI?"
Standing and facing her from across her desk, Dean remains stoic. He looks the same as the last time she saw him, save a few more lines around his eyes and the gray at his temples. The stagnancy in his appearance grates on her nerves, because absolutely fucking everything has changed since she'd last seen him. Nothing should be familiar after all this time. The familiarity will sink her. "What difference does that make?"
His lack of emotion is so infuriating that she wants to specifically unleash on him, as if he alone has blown up her world. "When?"
"When what?" He presses his lips together, and it almost seems like he's amused.
"When did he join? When did he get my goddamned file?"
"Why don't you ask him?"
"Because if you gave him that file before he joined, then I'm going to file a grievance with your ASAC." Olivia straightens, despite the dizziness that is closing in around her.
Dean glares at her, crossing his arms over his chest. "Go ahead. Holmes gave the green light. Stabler had something the Bureau needed."
"What did he have?"
His stubborn silence starts a slow bass beat within her temples. The anger has continued its ascent now though, and the control she's been ruthlessly holding onto is starting to break. She stalks around her desk, coming to stand right in front of her former case agent. "You traded me?"
"Not you. Your file." He unfolds his arms, almost daring her to come closer.
Her fists starting to curl inward. "Why did you have a file on me in the first place?"
"We have ongoing files on all our borrows."
Olivia flinches at the casual way he described her grueling weeks undercover for the Bureau. As if she'd been nothing more than a library book the FBI had used and returned. As if those weeks hadn't cost her dearly. "So you gave a civilian my file?"
The twist of his lips is neither amused nor angry. "Didn't say he was a civilian at the time. Nice try. Regardless, I didn't have a choice."
"We all have a choice!" she hisses at him.
"Do we?" Dean cocks his head. "I thought you understood that our personal feelings don't matter on the job, Olivia. Whether I wanted him to have it or not is entirely irrelevant. It got the job done."
She can't do this today. This stone wall he is putting up is more than she can batter herself against. But she needs answers, she needs something to make sense in a world that doesn't seem to have any order anymore. "Why did Elliot join the Bureau?" she asks, far quieter than she'd hoped she would be.
The look he gives her is incredulous, as if he's assessing whether or not she's serious. "You had all night with your partner. You didn't ask him?"
The room feels like it's swaying. Her throat won't work. Not my partner, she wants to scream. It's been years and years and he chose to work with you when he came back!
"It's confidential," he tells her, finally easing his stance.
"Just like my file was," she whispers, rubbing her temples. Needing something solid beneath her, she leans back against her desk, praying it gives her the stability she is desperate for. "So he shows up one day, asks for my file and you just give it to him?"
"No."
She fights the urge to lean over herself and cry. The anger isn't working, and the lack of answers is grating against her skin. Every pore feels raw. She wants Elliot to disappear and at the same time she wants him in here right now, and she is too vividly aware of why people throw themselves against walls in padded rooms.
Olivia's chest feels like it's forming fissures, the cracking fingers easing outwards and weakening everything in their path.
"Just tell me." Her voice is too small but she doesn't care now. She needs the agent who had been her friend over a dozen years ago, not the one in front of her who tows the company line.
Dean must take some level of pity on her because he exhales deeply. "I'd been looking for him, Olivia."
She lifts her head then, not understanding and praying that Dean will simply lay it out because the fight is quickly draining from her.
He looks at her for too long and he must see something pathetic because he uncharacteristically softens. "Two weeks after you got away from Lewis, I had to look for him. Can't tell you why so don't ask." Dean pauses, as if carefully considering what he is about to say. "I couldn't find him. Looked for three days, but his wife had no idea where he'd been so I staked out the one place I figured he could be counted on to show up." He smiles ruefully. "I got lucky."
Olivia grips the edge of her desk, the sounds of everything beyond her office dulling into a soft roar. "Where?"
"Your apartment. Apparently he still had a key."
Her chest splits, her lips are too dry. She lets her head drop so he doesn't see the way her eyes suddenly burn with the sheen of tears. She thinks she's going to be sick, because she remembers what her old place had looked like after Lewis. The way it had been left as if frozen after the fight because she hadn't let anyone clean it for her for months. Broken tables and chairs, overturned plants and the curtains coming off the walls. One particular chair still had the duct tape stuck to it; a half-burned hanger had remained in the middle of the floor. Evidence of her battle for survival had permeated every inch of that nightmarish house of horrors. "It was completely destroyed," she whispers.
Dean nods. "Yeah, and…" He pauses, considering what he's about to say. "So was he, Olivia."
She bends over a little, praying air will reach her lungs. Her arms wrap around her waist. The bedsheets in the apartment had all been ripped away, and she wants to rock herself a little bit just thinking about what Elliot must assume.
She's gutted that he'd seen that much of her battle. Then again he'd had absolutely no right to go there. No right at all. He knows too much and she's too exposed and she just can't get a break because the shaking is back.
He'd been inside that apartment.
The skin above her left breast itches, as if it is still healing from the burns. Her face feels wet, as if she's being waterboarded beneath the onslaught of vodka. The paralyzing fear that the animal would light her up when she was soaked in alcohol is back again, crowding the edge of her vision.
She wishes her mind would just go dark now, just for a little while so she could get her bearings. The time continuum of her life has been crumbled into a tiny ball, and she's crushed somewhere in the middle of it.
"You should know," Dean continues, starting to head for her office door. She thinks he stops and turns back to face her right before he walks out, but she can't lift her head to look at him. His voice is oddly gentle. "I don't think it was the first time he'd been there, Olivia. He was sitting against the wall in the dark, drinking a beer as if he'd been there before. I offered him a one-time job because we needed him for a UC, and I convinced him it was a way out of whatever corner of hell he'd found in that place. He works child trafficking for us now, think it might be the only way he knew how to help you."
My old partner? He'd know what to do. He wouldn't question himself after what you've done.
She'd been wrong. Elliot had viciously punished himself with the self-recriminations too. In the middle of a nightmare, he hadn't known what to do any more than she had.
She closes her eyes then, and a few seconds later Special Agent Dean Porter mercifully closes her office door behind him.
-o0o-
He holds a single cup of rooibos tea as he enters Interrogation Two.
The room is cast in shadows despite the fact that it's barely one p.m. The observation window to the hallway had been closed, so he hadn't known what to expect when he'd carefully opened the door.
Nearly two hours in the other room with Annabella had netted them permission to search half a dozen residences without pulling federal warrants, which would save them a lot of time. She'd agreed to allow them access to the security footage at each location in exchange for a promise that her final divorce proceedings – currently slated for sixty days out – would be expedited to next week. She hadn't been privy to any of Moore's obsession with Olivia, but it was enough to be helpful.
None of it matters in this moment though.
He'd gone looking for Olivia and instead found Kat in the bullpen. She'd told him that shortly after hearing Cragen was out of surgery and wouldn't lose his hand, Olivia had slipped into this room.
Over an hour ago.
The blinds are closed throughout and the room is bathed in small strips of light that criss-cross over the floor. It's too warm in here and he wonders if she'd adjusted the temperature. It's a trick they'd used on perps for years to make them uncomfortable, but he assumes she'd just been trying to stop shivering.
He steps inside and closes the door quietly behind him, silencing his phone.
Without the light from the hallway, Olivia is illuminated only in shades of gray as she sits huddled at the table. Her elbows rest on the metal surface in front of her, her palms cradle her face. She doesn't lift her head if she hears him.
She's silent, unnaturally still. In the darkness he has to rely on faith to know she's breathing. It's possible she's sleeping, and if she is then he doesn't want to wake her. The sheer torture she's been through in the last twenty-four hours is numbing, and she hasn't taken any time to process or grieve.
She doesn't know that as of five minutes ago, he'd convinced Porter to call Garland to get an official order to send her home with him. The directive hasn't come through yet, but he prays she won't fight him on it when it does.
Elliot sets the tea on the table as quietly as he can.
He swears he can hear the ticking of his watch bounce between the soundproof hollows of the room. For a moment he remains frozen, just watching her. As his eyes adjust to the darkness he can see the rise and fall of her shoulders, and he focuses on the way her hair falls forward, the loose waves of it spilling through her hands.
Olivia.
He desperately wants to touch her, but he's learned how to live with the way his need haunts him. He's had a lifetime of practice when it comes to her and restraint.
The last nine years have been a hell he can't comprehend, but nothing he's been through compares to what she'd experienced. He'd instantly give his life for her, but he hadn't been willing to give her the mess of him for years. She's let people love her, but from what she said last night she'd only fallen for her son.
Look how great you turned out.
She'd fought to build a life for herself in the midst of horror. She always known how to rise above the adversity; he'd always sunk deeper.
She'd been right early this morning when she said the Moore case had saved him. He hadn't known how to walk back into her life, he doesn't know if he would have ever had the guts to shake up her world again. But he's here now, and he doesn't want to examine just what it has cost to create this moment.
Standing in this interrogation room with her nearby, he's more rooted than he's been in nearly a decade.
He hears it then, the quietest sound of a single sniffle.
She's been awake for the last few minutes and she hasn't asked him to leave or told him to go screw himself, and that has to mean something.
Elliot makes his way around to her side of the table, slowly pulling out the chair next to her. She doesn't shift or flinch even as he lowers himself into it.
His heart constricts and expands slowly, as if unwilling to make a noise that will jar her. He rests his forearms on the table next to hers, careful not to touch her despite the overwhelming urge. He's pretty sure that she can hear his pulse now, and if he could quiet his breaths he'd hear hers in a matching beat.
He'd gone across the street to the Blue Line to get her the tea he hoped she still ordered, and as much as he wants her to finally get anything at all in her stomach, he isn't willing to break the glass of silence to ask her to drink it. He doesn't know what is on the other side of that fragile window.
It's Olivia who finally speaks, in the barest of whispers pushed into the cavern she's made of herself. "You went to my old apartment."
The shadows seem to darken into blackness. The smell of the fragrant tea now makes his stomach turn, the same way the vodka-soaked carpet had in the hours he'd spent inside those walls, just trying to grasp how it had come to this. He wants to close his eyes now too, but he's afraid he will see it again. Long strands of her hair on the kitchen counter, the open, half-torn off the hinges cabinets because she'd fought near the stove. The burned key on the counter, the blood on the cracked glass of a painting, head high. The single blood-formed handprint on the counter, just the size of hers. The six-inch piece of cut rope that lay grotesquely on the middle of her white rug, right next to a dark red stain.
Olivia's blood, spilling again and again.
The pressure in his chest could form diamonds, and he chews on his lower lip to try and release it. He doesn't know what the hell to say. Even divinity would fall short.
"El." Then she says it again, testing it. "El."
In the heated stillness he feels it. Her body starts ever so slowly to slip to the left, towards him. Her hands still cover her face, but she lets her left arm come to rest against his right one. By some miracle Olivia is leaning into him and not away, and for the rest of his life he will never understand why. Her covered face pushes into the top of his arm and then he can't withstand the confines of his self-imposed discipline.
Her knee hits his as he shifts just a little bit towards her, and Olivia's fingers fall to wrap around his elbow, near where his shirtsleeve is rolled up. He can smell the faint citrus of her shampoo and feel the way the top of her head bumps into his chin when he turns his head to the right. She finally settles, her left temple resting on his shoulder.
He's alarmingly aware of her. He's got a savior tattooed on one arm, and Olivia pressed against the other and he's going to go to hell because he doesn't ever deserve absolution from either one of them.
"Why did you go there?" She exhales the question into the thick air around them.
He can tell she's been crying hard by the ragged sound of her voice. At least she has one. He's not sure he will have his own if he tries to verbalize an answer.
The silence ticks between them, and he can't tell her why he'd gone there. He'd used his old key one night and the lingering smell of the alcohol and burned flesh had hit him as soon as he had stepped in the door. The echoing sounds of her fighting back had been loud and cacophonous in his head, and he'd internally catalogued every displaced, broken thing in that apartment. He'd visualized her struggle again and again, and he had absorbed the words Cassidy had said to him when he'd shown up at the hospital to see her as an edict. A mantra. Stay away from her, she's better off.
Had he not left her after Jenna, he'd have had a detail on her place. He would have sat outside himself. But he'd left, and he'd caused her to be left vulnerable and exposed.
His fault. Those two words have banged around in his head like a drum for years and years. He wakes to them, and tries to sleep despite the fact that they get louder in the middle of the night.
Olivia's fingers move against his skin, pushing into his arm. "None of it was your fault."
Words will not fucking form and he feels like his own larynx is going to suffocate him.
The regrets, the apologies, the insanity that he had failed her so spectacularly all become a jumbled mess in his head. "I should have been there, Liv." It's pathetic how only that comes out, and how he's too weak to move his lips from near the top of her head when he admits the deepest valley in him.
"You were," she murmurs, her breath hitching. "You…gave me permission to go after him. And I needed it. I had to…I wanted to kill him."
His cheek twitches in pain, his jaw is grinding his teeth to dust. He has a terrifying need to both pull her into him and destroy the room around them all at the same time. His fists ache for the contact with the walls because something, anything has got to give. There is a pressure cooker heating up between his temples. He holds her tea in between his palms in an effort to keep still. "You shouldn't have had to. It should have been me."
"No," Olivia turns her forehead into his shoulder. Her voice is soft but steadier than he can comprehend. "It was mine to do. If I had finished him, there wouldn't have been any more vics. That's on me."
It's the quietest conversation he's ever had and every word is the loudest noise he's ever heard. She's embedded into his skin now, and he wants to never, ever walk out of that door without her again.
Because she's always been more than him, she again breaches the silence.
"He didn't rape me."
She offers him the truth so simply and so bluntly in this dark cocoon of a room that he prays no one comes in for hours. She's saving him again, and he's an asshole because he needs this, needs her talking to him so much that he can't stop her.
"It took me awhile, but I figured that out," he rasps. "I read the court transcripts…after. He would have told everyone if-"
Olivia's short fingernails finally dig into his arm to suddenly stop him. "No more."
He lifts his head and nods, unable to say anything. He knows this conversation isn't over, but for now she's right. Neither one of them can take too much at once. It's only that knowledge that keeps him from turning completely into her and urging her onto him.
For over twenty years, she's been a part of him. He doesn't know when she let go of him, but he's never been able to do it with her.
"Tell me what happened with Annabella." Her tone is forcibly even as she straightens then, breaking contact with him. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and reaches for the tea. He pushes it towards her, and he can hear her struggle to swallow the first sip she takes.
He wants to make up for every single day he's been gone. Day by day by day.
The way she asks him about Annabella reminds him of a lifetime ago, when she'd sit across from him late in the evening, questioning him about their case, wholly unaware of what the lamplight would do to illuminate her eyes.
"She gave us access to the security cams at the residences. There are over six hundred of them, the guy made a damned movie out of every moment of his life. Profilers at the Bureau last night think this is one guy. Moore wouldn't trust many." He clears his throat, trying to keep the cadence of his voice low so as not to jar her. "With the attack on Cragen and Haden less than a day apart, we're tracking all private planes between Treasure Coast airport and pulling commercial passenger lists between Palm Beach and NYC metro airports."
He has a thousand questions for her and they all remain silent, willing to wait.
But the door opens then, too fast and too loud. She jerks a little bit, nearly spilling her tea as light from the hallway floods the room. Elliot wants to kill Fin for breaking the sanctity of whatever was happening in here, and niceties fail him. "You should have knocked," he bites off.
Fin drags his gaze back from where it had rested on Olivia. "You should have called."
Jesus.
He's got nothing.
It's Olivia who saves all of them, grabbing her tea and standing but still woozy enough that Elliot notices her hold onto the table. "What do you have, Fin?"
Fin flicks the lights on, and she blinks once or twice, trying to refocus. He knows what Fin is doing by trying to re-center Olivia, but he'd have done anything for even five more minutes alone.
"Cragen's awake. Said the guy who jumped him is late twenties, early thirties. Wore a wetsuit and mask, but his eyes were distinctive. They've got a sketch artist on their way to him now. Also tracking jet ski rentals in a five-mile radius."
Elliot stands now too, knowing that with a basic description it will be easier for the team at the Bureau to analyze the passenger lists on the planes. "Hold Annabella until we get that sketch, lets see if she recognizes him."
"Let me know when it comes in, Fin," Olivia says quietly, starting to make her way out of the room.
Fin stands there, as if guarding the exit. "I'll have to call you," he says without looking at her, instead giving Elliot a flat, disgusted look. "Because your buddy here asked to have you both sent home. Chief Garland's now made it official orders. Not sure how being cooped up with Special Agent Stabler is going to help you any, but that ain't my call."
By the suddenly rigid, frozen posture of Olivia's back, Elliot knows that whatever progress they'd just made together has just been shot to hell.
"Liv-" he starts.
But she turns on him, her wide eyes filled with anger and disbelief. He can see the way her hand starts to close tightly around the tea before she tosses it hard into the trash can that sits next to the door. "Fuck you, Elliot. You've got no right. I don't need you to protect me." Her eyes dart angrily back and forth between his, making sure he's paying attention. "You gave up that right a long time ago."
And before he can say a word to defend himself, she's gone.
-o0o-
