Sarah Anne might not have believed in personal expression but she sure as shit had always preached personal accountability and so even though Gabi was scared, even though guilt clawed at her and made the prospect of this journey all but untenable, even though it made her feel like a child forced to admit to breaking her mother's most cherished vase, she straightened her shoulders and went to her fate like a prisoner condemned to the gallows.

The minute Elliot learned that Olivia had been hurt he did not rage, or weep, or call her, had instead simply run, and there was no doubt in Gabi's mind where he'd gone. He'd said it himself, he didn't think they should be talking about Olivia behind her back, and the last time she'd been hurt he showed up at her door telling her how he couldn't stand to lose her. There was only one place he'd be heading now, and he had a head start; it was too late to contain the damage, too late to stop him. All she could do was deliver a warning, and so she did.

Or tried to.

As she drove through the city, her heart racing and cursing every red light she encountered, she called Olivia from the car. Called her three times in a row, and Olivia never answered, not once, and Gabi caught her bottom lip between her teeth, worry nipping at her. Olivia was back at work but she'd promised her doctor and her daughter that she wouldn't go out into the field, not for a few weeks at least. Olivia had to be at the station, but she wasn't answering her cell, and Gabi didn't have her office line. Maybe it was a good thing that Olivia wasn't answering, maybe that meant Olivia was busy, and that Elliot wouldn't be able to turn her whole world upside down. Maybe Elliot had called her, too, and Olivia wasn't answering because she was too busy listening to her old friend lose his entire goddamn mind.

The thing Gabi couldn't understand, really, was how Elliot could have been in the dark about Lewis. How could a man who cared so much for her not know that she had been kidnapped, maybe raped, definitely tortured; how could he not know that she had gone on tv and confessed to perjury? How could he not have known that a grand jury was conveyed to determine whether or not she was a murderer, that she had thrown herself at the mercy of her own personal demon in an attempt to save an innocent girl? Two trials, two horrific events, and yes it was a few years ago now but surely it still bothered Olivia. Surely it had wrecked her, at the time, and cops loved to gossip. The stories would have spread like wildfire through the ranks and even if Elliot and Olivia hadn't been partners anymore, there was no way he wouldn't have heard about the manhunt when she was kidnapped the first time. Surely her friends would have been there for her, taken care of her, and Elliot, he was her best friend, wasn't he?

It's not a sweet story.

There were some stories that shouldn't be told. That was perhaps a strange belief for a reporter to hold, an unusual tenent for someone whose fierce curiosity and devotion to the truth had shaped her whole life, but she believed it, nonetheless. Some stories belonged only to the key players in them; some stories caused harm in the telling. This story, this story of Elliot and Olivia, Gabi wanted it to be a story worth telling, but what if it wasn't? The man had been married to someone else, had children with someone else, while Olivia remained completely alone, and he didn't know what had been done to her - she had not told him what had been done to her - and maybe there were secrets lurking in their tired eyes that were best kept locked away. What had Gabi unleashed here, and would any of them still be standing when the storm passed?

Though she hadn't been back to the 1-6 since her first meeting with Olivia she found the place easily enough, and rushed right up to SVU, bypassing the desk Sergeant and cramming into the elevator, bouncing on the balls of her feet as an anxious sort of energy coursed through her. She didn't know what she'd find when she got there; Olivia was a private, careful sort of person, and Gabi couldn't see her airing all her dirty laundry in the middle of the squadroom, but Elliot had been so devastated he might not have given her a chance to pull him into her office, to calm him down. When the elevator doors opened and Gabi rushed into the squadroom she half expected to find it shattered, as if a bomb had exploded, half expected to find desks overturned and coffee cups thrown against walls, but it was quiet, and still, and that was alarming in its own way, because a squadroom was never quiet.

There were only three people about, the Sergeant Gabi had met before, and another man and a woman. The two strangers were cops, too, badges and guns at their hips and grim expressions on their faces, and the three of them were standing around in a little half circle unspeaking, their eyes fixed on the windows of Olivia's office.

The blinds were up on the windows, and afforded Gabi a clear view of the scene unfolding just beyond the glass. Elliot had beat her here after all, was standing in Olivia's office with his back to the door, his posture stick-straight and unmoving. Olivia had turned her back on him, was standing by her desk with her face hidden from view, and Gabi stuttered to a halt, staring, wishing she could only see her mother's face, could only look and know how she was feeling, how much damage Gabi had wrought.

"Hey," the Sergeant called out to her, and Gabi's attention snapped back to his face, found all three of the detectives looking at her mistrustfully.

"Now's not a good time," he said bleakly. He must have remembered her from before, but Gabi didn't know if Olivia had told the man the truth, told him that the reporter who'd come looking for her was actually her long lost child, and Gabi had already caused enough carnage for one day. She wasn't gonna tell him who she was, not until he indicated he knew it already.

"I know," she said, approaching the detectives cautiously. "That's my fault." She waved her hand at the Captain's office, at the two people frozen in horror inside it. "I just…I came to apologize."

"Who the hell are you?" the woman asked.

"Reporter," the Sergeant answered for Gabi. "She's been sniffing around Liv the last few weeks."

So he didn't know, then, or if he did he wasn't about to tell his friends.

"Now might be a good time for you to leave," the woman said, murder in her eyes.

"I'm not leaving," Gabi answered as firmly as she could. "I made a mistake but I'm not going anywhere until I talk to Olivia."

Voices rumbled up from the office, muffled through the walls but loud, and they all turned to look, to watch Olivia wheeling on Elliot, to watch him waving his arms as their conversation grew more heated. Gabi winced; she never meant for any of this to happen, couldn't bear the thought that they were fighting because of her, because she'd put her foot in her fucking mouth the way she always did.

"What the hell did you say to him?"

Elliot's Sergeant had asked the same thing, and Gabi hadn't answered then, and she wasn't sure she should answer now. But Olivia's Sergeant had worked with her for twenty years; he knew about Lewis, she figured, and whatever was happening in that office, it was gonna wreck Olivia, and maybe her people deserved to know.

"I asked him about Lewis," she confessed in a small voice.

"Jesus," the woman said.

"Son of a bitch," the Sergeant agreed.

"Who?" the younger man asked.

His colleagues ignored him; they were looking at one another, sad and worried.

"Did he not know?" the woman asked quietly.

The Sergeant shrugged.

"Man's been gone a long time," he said.

Gabi didn't know what the fuck that meant.

"Yeah, but he's been back more than a year. She didn't tell him?"

"Would you?"

"You weren't fucking here!" Olivia's voice rang out sharply from the office, and all four of them winced, listening, turning to see Olivia right up in Elliot's face. As they watched she hit him, her fist colliding with his chest, drawing back to strike again but Elliot moved quickly, much more quickly than she did, wrapped his arms around her, and she struggled for a moment like she wanted to get free but then she sagged against him, and they both went still, holding on to one another.

When Gabi had watched Elliot and Olivia together that night in Olivia's apartment they had been warm and affectionate with one another, had smiled softly, touched each other easily, and it was strange to see them like this now, to see them fight, to hear Olivia - who had only ever been calm and patient and compassionate with Gabi - scream, and hit him. To see her hit him, as if she were angry, as if she blamed him for something, and maybe she did. Olivia had been assaulted, maimed, had damn near lost her life and then damn near lost her career, and Elliot hadn't been there, and she screamed at him for it, still angry, still hurt by his abandonment, all these many years later. Had she wanted him there, when Lewis took her, wrecked her apartment and ripped her life wide open and left scars all over her body? Where had he been, while she was bleeding?

"That fucker won't just stay dead," the woman grumbled, her eyes still fixed firmly on the office, on Olivia and Elliot, still locked in a fierce embrace.

Had she been on the team when Lewis came for Olivia? Gabi wondered. Maybe these two, the Sergeant and the woman, these two people who worked with Olivia, protected her, called her Liv, maybe they knew more about that nightmare than anyone else did; maybe they were the ones she should have come to, and not Elliot.

Inside the office Olivia pushed Elliot away, stalked off to a corner, her back turned towards him again like she needed the space, needed a moment to get herself together. The squadroom was quiet, so quiet, and then Elliot was turning, opening the door, stomping out with a face like a thundercloud. He saw them, Gabi and the detectives, standing around looking at him, and he stopped in his tracks, ran his hand over his head the same way he'd done when Gabi first broke the news to him, and then he was marching towards them, making a beeline for the Sergeant.

"Fin," he said, and the man stepped forward to meet him, but Elliot just held out his hand. "Thank you," he added, as Fin took his hand, as the two men shook once, firmly, sadly. "Thank you for bringing her home."

"I've always got her back, man, you know that," Fin said.

"I know," Elliot said. "I know."

He turned to Gabi, then, and she stepped forward, apologies on her lips, wanting to tell him just how fucking sorry she was, how she'd never meant for any of this to happen, but he just shook his head, his eyes grim and unforgiving.

"You should leave," he said to her.

"I can't," she answered. "She's my-"

"I know," he said, stopping her before she said the wrong thing and fucked everything up again. "I know. But this isn't a fucking game, Gabi. You can't talk to her right now."

"I have to."

For a long moment they stared one another down, Gabi trying to remain firm and Elliot looking like he was debating the odds of success if he just picked her up and carried her away. Elliot cared about Olivia, and he didn't want to see her hurt, and Gabi understood that, of course she did, but Elliot was also a father, and she hoped, desperately, that some part of him understood. Understood what it meant to be a family, what it meant to Gabi to have found hers, how hard she was willing to try to make that family good, and strong, and something worth having. Family hurt, sometimes, but Gabi wasn't about to give up on her family, and something told her Elliot wouldn't, either.

"You're as stubborn as she is," he said finally. "You gotta do what you think is right. But…be careful with her, Gabi."

Be careful with her. Olivia was a thirty year veteran of the NYPD, a fucking Captain, a woman who had killed people, who had fought and bled and raged, who had survived untold horror, and Elliot was looking at Gabi now, Gabi who had never been in so much as a fistfight, Gabi who had never known what it was to fear for her life and had certainly never caused that fear in anyone else, Gabi whose life had been comfortable and quiet and safe, and telling her to be careful like he thought she was the dangerous one. Maybe she was.

"I will," she promised, and then they parted ways, Elliot moving towards the elevators while Gabi approached the office where her mother waited, weeping.