AN- This chapter has been the most difficult thing I've ever written and it's caused many a tantrum so I apologize for the delay.
We have the usual trigger warnings. Thank you so much for all of the reviews, you all really helped me not only get through this chapter but also really take my time to get it put out in the best way possible.
Thank you so much for the beta Ashley. You are amazing as always!
Also thank you to Alex and Aubrey for helping me realize that sometimes in writing an elbow is ok to just be an elbow. Lol.
"Nice of you to finally join us Detective Stabler."
Elliot doesn't falter; he keeps his eye contact, position, his stamina.
"Drop the gun and slide it over here," Lewis cautions, the look on his face displaying his obvious excitement.
"Click, Click," Lewis sings as he drops the latch on the gun pressed to her head, his sadistic grin causing Elliot's jaw to tighten as he watches Olivia recoil from the sound.
It's too painful for Elliot to watch; he can't see her suffer for a moment longer, and he hopes, above all else, that at this moment in time, he appears composed and in control. He hopes she can't see it written across his face how distraught he is on the inside, how nauseous and lightheaded he is.
"Drop the gun Elliot," Lewis repeats.
Elliot lowers his head in compliance, unloads the weapon, places one hand in the air as a display of obedience, and drops it to the floor; the metallic sound scraping against the stone as he kicks it over. His former reluctance is still prominent in his tone.
"I did what you asked now get the gun away from her Lewis."
Olivia has said it many times over the years; emotional responses can not only emerge when you least expect, but they also don't have to conform to the situation. She had read once that it was your body's way of communicating things you couldn't make sense of in your mind.
Every unexplained feeling, pain, emotion, and unexpected, unwanted memory appearing at a time of peace and happiness was all a communication from her body, reminding her that she was clinging onto past experiences.
She had sat with a psychiatrist and, begrudgingly at first, discussed things she never would have imagined discussing out loud with someone, in depth, raw conversation about what she knew of her father, her mother, traumatic incidences from the job and Lewis. She found it brought her emotional clarity, helped her see clearer, and when the unexplained emotional responses took over her body, she was able to mostly pull herself back.
The most difficult topic to discuss, and she did it sparingly, was Elliot. Those feelings she liked to keep tucked away, harbored inside because ultimately the potential truth was too difficult to deal with.
The reasons behind his departure were then and still are a mystery to her. The years of wonder, distress, and embarrassment over what she did to deserve his silence haunted her every day, just like Lewis knew, just like Lewis had accounted for.
As she watches Elliot disarm, rendering himself a complete vulnerability in the path of a madman, she can't help the overwhelming wave of wholeness. Lewis had tried to use Elliot as his ultimate weapon, tried to torture her mind into believing she was worthless to him, her own mind had led her to believe the same, and it had all started to become too much, too much to battle against and too much emotional stress. But then Elliot appeared in front of her, after all these years, completely alone in a bid to protect her, and it was as if she was lined with this fresh bout of courage.
"What now Lewis?" Olivia's confidence is propelling through her words. "Is this what you wanted? Both of us here?"
She can feel the chills mixing on the back of her neck with the warm air of his breath. She hated that air, she despised it, and the memory of it had planted itself deep inside of her, manifested to become a painful trigger that affected the everyday normality of her life.
A trigger would come from nowhere; on a usual working day, how could she turn around and tell an innocent person in a packed elevator not to stand too close because their breathing will cause her hurt and distress? She couldn't, and the fact she's stood here with him breathing on her again is nauseating.
So she shivers, a small involuntary shiver, but it's still not lost on Elliot, and he sends her the tiniest of smiles. If she had ever wondered if her unmatched emotions would take over when and if she saw him again for the first time, then now she has her answer, because even with a gun positioned to her head, she was filled with a sense of liberation, protection and unexplainably safety.
Lewis begins another rant. She picks up on a few of those relentless words he continues to spit, but honestly, she's not listening anymore. Her mind is elsewhere, contemplating a move she never would have considered alone, a tactic that wouldn't work if it wasn't Elliot stood there in front of her, if it wasn't someone who could innately understand the unspoken plan.
She doesn't need to mouth anything, she doesn't need to blink, and she doesn't need to alter her body language. She looks at him, just like any human being would look to another, and yet, he knows.
Elliot twitches his mouth. Lewis is intelligent, but right now, he is just pouring of cockiness, he's reeling in his success too soon, and Elliot understands the opportune moment.
"Hold back," Elliot shouts over his shoulder through the doorframe he just recently entered. "He's got a gun pointed at Captain Benson's head," he bluffed.
Lewis looks at him, disbelieving. "What do you take me for Stabler? A fool? If anyone had entered this building, I would have seen them through the window." He lazily points to the window behind him that shows a clear view of the car park.
Elliot ignores him, knowing how his blatant disregard will fuel the rage of the beast, and he looks over his shoulder again, shouting to the imaginary backup hidden round the bend. "Maintain your silence, I'll need everyone to take a step back."
Olivia feels Lewis shift; it's as if his confidence in himself has dropped slightly, and it's apparent through the atmosphere in the air. She knows they don't need him to believe the act entirely; they just need him to doubt enough to make him second guess himself and briefly drop his guard.
Elliot continues his performance and raises his voice in commanding authority. "You need to leave the building, I can handle this."
It's enough, it's just enough to pique Lewis' curiosity, and he directs the gun away from the head of Olivia, and as soon as he does, she swings her shackled arms as forward as they will go and fiercely drags them back, plunging her elbows into his ribs. The harsh blow throws him off balance and he stumbles back.
Watching Olivia's spontaneous burst, Elliot's own impulses kick into full force, and he dives towards Lewis, sending the gun scattering. Both male bodies collide with the wall behind, and they together drop to the floor from the impact of the stony wall. The effect has longer-lasting results than it would have done ten years prior, and Elliot momentarily lapses of his quick reflexes, giving Lewis the opening he needs to attempt supremacy over this encounter, and he lands Elliot with huge blow.
The hard hit incites the images of Olivia flashing through Elliot's mind, the files, the scars, her bloodied face, and torn clothing. The anger and aggression he has saved up for all this time explode with his own retaliation of a direct strike; except Elliot doesn't stop with one. He repeatedly channels his fist into Lewis' face over and over until the tingling sensation in his wrist and forearm he expected to be absorbed by the adrenaline causes him to pause and cradle his wrist.
Again the momentary lapse in impact is all the younger man needs to propel himself forward and lunge into Elliot, sending him hurtling backward again.
Olivia despairingly watches on, desperately alert to the inherent dangers. She tries to stretch out towards the gun, but the skin around her restrained wrists rip and burn with every fraught and dedicated tug against the metal. She shrieks a pained cry in hopelessness when she realizes there's no way to stretch any further. The panic and growing escalation of the situation cause her to move down to her knees, and although her fastened together ankles are seemingly impossible to maneuver around, she still tries to outstretch them to reach the weapon.
Amidst his own desperate attempt to subdue the situation, Elliot notices Olivia's efforts to retrieve the weapon. Unluckily, so does Lewis, and as Elliot attempts to scuffle the fight closer to the gun, Lewis makes his own power play. Immediately jumping up from the ground, Lewis scrambles over his weakened legs to move toward it.
"Elliot!" He overhears Olivia's scream as he gathers up his energy to jump from the ground after Lewis, who is too far away for Elliot to get a hold on him. Elliot uses the strength in his shoulders to barge him back down into the ground, his foot landing next to the unattended gun he manages to nudge it slightly further towards Olivia's position.
Out of the corner of his eye, Elliot sees Lewis standing up over him, and he hastily tries to scramble his hands to the ground to provide structure, except it's lost because before he registers what is happening, Lewis lays two solid punches into the side of his face. The impact severely distorting his vision, Elliot instantly blurs in and out of dizziness.
Fumbling through the lack of clear vision, he can feel the beast's grip around his neck, his thumbs pushing and digging into the muscles around his throat forcing Elliot to release a strained cough of reflective action against the pure strength.
He successfully manages to grip his own hands against Lewis' face, and as he tenses the muscles in his arms and hands to squeeze as tight as his limited strength will allow, it's just sufficient to relent the grip Lewis holds on his neck.
Lewis pulls back, standing up and for a split second, Elliot thinks he can regain control. But before he can consider his next move, Lewis has leant across him, grabbed Elliot's wrists and brutally twisted them to the sides. The unnatural direction of the movement forces Elliot to release a low groan of expressed pain.
Olivia is clambering, her heart racing through her chest. She can't lose Elliot, not now, not after all of these years.
She's frantically stretching her legs out towards the gun, over and over, dragging it slightly closer with every movement. Elliot didn't quite kick the gun far enough, and she watched in anguish as Lewis cornered him. When Lewis twisted Elliot's wrists, she had this burst of adrenaline, and all the aches and pain inside of her body disappeared; she began to give more than she physically thought she had to get the gun.
It is just within her grasp.
Her breathing is rapid, the concoction of sweat and blood is dripping into her eyes, but she can't relieve herself of the distortion because she's solely focused on the retrieval of the weapon.
"You're an old man now detective," Lewis darkly whispers into the ear of Elliot as Olivia watches out of the corner of her eye.
She needs to keep her focus on getting the weapon, but it's difficult to not look, to keep a check on what is happening, and when she notices Lewis grabbing Elliot's head and neck, she stops.
Her body is still as she pleads with Lewis. "Lewis, please. It's me you want. I'll do whatever you ask, just please stop."
Lewis doesn't look at her, he doesn't speak, and he doesn't even shed his murky little laugh. He slowly pulls forward Elliot's head before quickly and intently sending it backward, smashing into back into the wall.
As Elliot's vision moves into darkness, he can hear the ear piercing screams of Olivia reverberating throughout the room.
"Nooo!"
Her own cries are immediately deafeningly masked by the shrill, menacing sounds of Lewis' cackling laughter.
She's managed to drag the gun just close enough to be in reach on her bound hands, and with one final shuffle of her body, she takes it. The moisture from the precipitation on her hands losing her steady grip, she attempts to take her aim.
Lewis is once again pulling the head back of the unconscious Elliot; she knows he can't withstand another blow to the head, and without a second's thought, she pulls the trigger.
The sound is more emotionally striking than it's ever been before, and she draws a deep breath, watching Lewis go down, his body crashing into the stony ground.
"Damnit," She speaks out loud as she watches the cockroach still moving. Lewis quickly tries to right himself and shift towards her, and it's not solely fear that makes her squeeze out another shot. It's her training, her protective teachings that taught her how to defend not only herself but also others who are in immediate danger.
Olivia drops the gun to the floor because this time, she knows the bullet she released took on a deadly journey. Her attentions now are fully focused on Elliot. He's hunched over himself, an unconscious huddle on the floor with traces of fresh blood dripping from the back of his head.
"El!" she screams. "El, please, please, please talk to me!" she cries, pulling relentlessly again at the forever nonmoving restraints. She can really feel the pain now, every movement excruciating. The dropped pain perception from her recent fight-or-flight mode increasing from the break of Lewis' death, but she doesn't care if she's worn her wrists down to the bone because her only goal now is to reach Elliot.
"Help!" she yells, her voice laced with desperation and adrenaline. The loud screech of her own pleads sends a lonely echo back to her ears, and she lets out a hysterical cry.
The tears fall faster and quicker than they have throughout this whole ordeal.
"El, please," she whispers. Bowing her head down in hopelessness, she gives into her pain and sorrow and sits down, looking desperately for any movement from her old partner, her old partner who knew exactly what to do, who came for her, who gave his everything for her.
It was only seconds later, but those seconds felt like forever minutes, and when the sound of quick paced footsteps were running through the hall, she wasn't sure if she was entirely coherent.
The steps grew louder, closer and with the realization that they were real, her heart started hurriedly beating the thumps of hope again.
"Help! In here! Help!" she screams again as the steps are closing in on the doorframe. One after the other, the soles of whoever's shoes are running into the ground emitting a sound of treaded velocity.
The sudden recognition of the profile rounding the door frame radiates a fast paced exertion of breathlessness.
"David," she whispers, her voice hitching with delight to his familiarity.
"Olivia, thank God!" he calls out, slowing stepping into the room and taking in his surroundings.
The shocked and desperate look of David as he enters the room causes her heart to race, a mixture of relief, elation and desperation to get help to Elliot and get out of this place.
"Olivia," he repeats again, his eyes immediately assessing over her, slowly registering her bruised and cut face, her torn clothes, her restrained arms and the gun dropped just in front of her.
His gaze lingers back to the ripped pants, and he burrows his shaking head towards the floor. "No, please no, please don't tell me he-"
"He didn't," she assures him. "David, you need to look at me," she instructs him, pulling at her restraints through the pain.
"Oh god O, I'm so sorry." He looks to her as he moves closer, sweeps the bloodstained hair from her face, and drops his head to fall into her shoulder as he releases his inconsolable sobs.
"David, I am fine. He didn't touch me, and it's a long story I will tell you about later, but for now, I need you to pull yourself together." Her tone is professional; she's trying to get through to him in the best way she knows possible and that's void of all emotion.
"Ok, I'm sorry," he sobs again. "I'm so, so sorry."
"David, listen to me now," she speaks slowly. "Lewis did not do what you think he did. You need to understand that."
She locks her eyes onto his. "I really need you now David. I need you to go over and check on Elliot. I need to know if he's ok. Can you do that for me?"
David yanks his body away from hers, and for just a small moment, she has a strike of fear at his manner. 'It's David,' she reminds herself, the years of trauma and PTSD messing with her rational thinking.
David actively looks around the warehouse until he spots Elliot hunched against the wall, head bowed down into his neck. He slowly makes his way over to Elliot, and as Olivia stands helpless with bated breath, she uncontrollably shouts "Hurry up!"
Breathing a loud sigh of exhaustion as he crouches down, David checks Elliot's pulse, and after standing back up again, he makes a conscious effort not to look at Olivia. Carefully lifting Elliot up from under his arms, he lays him horizontally on the floor.
"David? Is he ok?" she pleads.
Still not responding, he removes his jacket from his body, folds it over, and gently cushions it between Elliot's head and the ground.
"David, please tell me, is he ok?" There's over a million things racing through her head right now. Why won't he tell her?
"Is he ok?" she yells, yanking ruthlessly at the restraints. "David, you need to undo these restraints...NOW, you need to get me out!"
"I will O… I will, I promise, but first you need to hear me out?" His voice has lost the blubbering from before, and he's now professional.
"Hear you out? David, what is going on? This isn't like you." A different type of panic starts to creep in, and she finds herself doing something she has never done before. She backs away into the cold chill of the radiator, away from her husband.
"Please don't do that Olivia. Please don't back away. I just want to explain," he says, his hands held up in the air, gesturing for her attention.
"No David," she says, her voice becoming threatening. "Release my wrists now. I need to check on Elliot."
"This is it with you, isn't it Olivia?" he spins around on the spot to point over to Elliot. "Him, it's always about him."
"Why are you doing this now?" she sharply queries, but before she can carry on with her questioning, he shouts over her.
"No Olivia, you need to listen to me now!" he demands, pointing back to himself and moving away from Elliot lying on the floor. "Not him! For once can this please be about us?"
"Ok, ok," she soothes her tone, "but I feel like I need to tell you…that you're really scaring me right now."
"What, scared? Olivia? No please. You've no need to be scared, I just I…I …I fucked up, Olivia, and I'm so sorry."
Olivia screws her eyes closed and shakes her head. "Oh no David, what did you do?"
"You need to fully hear me out, ok? Please Olivia, promise me?"
She nods, even though she doesn't want to hear him out. She has no idea what he's going to say, but from the way this situation is playing out, she knows it can't be good. Olivia looks away from him as he prepares to speak. Her eyes are naturally drawn to Elliot, and when she looks over she notices his neck twitch slightly and he absently rolls his head side to side against the material of David's jacket.
Although she is encompassed by a sudden sense of relief, she doesn't want David to know Elliot is coming to, not yet, not until she knows what this is. She very slowly speaks with clarity.
"David before I listen to you, I'm going to need you to assure me that Elliot was breathing when you checked him over." She hopes that if Elliot is listening, somehow, he will catch her play and stay put.
"For fuck sake…yes!" he shouts. "Yes, your precious partner is fine! He's just out!"
She looks over to Elliot who subtly raises his fingers in the air and drops them down again.
He gets it.
"Ok thank you. Do you want to remove these for me?" She continues her clear, slow tone, but David ignores her, pacing the room of the floor backwards and forwards, rubbing his hands over the back of his neck in a form of pattern before he stops and looks to her.
"Olivia, I love you so much and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for all of this."
As he speaks, the chills that left her body when Lewis died begin to re-surface.
"Sorry for this?" she says as she darts her eyes around the room.
"Yes, all of it. I just, it wasn't supposed to happen this way."
She stares at him, not in aggression, not in anger, not in despair but in sheer surprise. Surely he doesn't mean all of this. The knot in her stomach is twisting again making her dizzy, and it's as if her body is spent and she can't handle anymore.
It's all too much.
Her legs and knees are weak, and it's a different weakness to what she experienced earlier so she lets them fall to the ground. She doesn't tumble, doesn't plummet, doesn't collapse. She just simply slumps.
"It was just supposed to scare you, the date, and the flowers. I was desperate, Olivia. It was all just supposed to remind you that I'm one of the good guys, that I was the one there for you after Lewis, I supported you, I loved you and gave you everything you needed to get through...but then last year he called." He throws his arm behind him implicating Elliot. "And that's when I knew you would finally leave and we would be over."
Concentrating on the stone floor next to David's feet, she can't bring herself to look up at him. Her voice cracked and broken, she says, "so you what, David? You sent Lewis after me because you loved me?"
Dropping to his knees to face her in desperation, he grips his hands around her still restrained wrist. "God no Liv, no. I'd never do that. You have this all wrong."
"So," she seethes, drawing her words out. "Tell me, what is right then, David?"
"I hired Darryl," he blurts out. "He's just some random nobody I found online. I asked him to ask you out for a drink, be a dick, and then send you flowers saying what the card said."
"Oh David, no," she cries.
"That was it, I promise. I swear to you Olivia, that's it. It was just so that I could be there for you again. I just thought it would be one momentary painful flashback, I'd be there for you, and you would remember what we had."
"You manipulative son of a bitch!" she growls towards him. "You, I- David...I just can't." Olivia looks over to Elliot. His fist is clenched but he's still lying flat.
'Please don't El,' she thinks before directly her newfound hatred towards David.
"So you're telling me...you did all of that because of one phone call. One phone call that I didn't even know about." She looks at him, and her fury is unwavering.
David backs up and quickly takes his stand, looking around the room. "Where's the key Liv?" He nods towards her chains.
"You'll have passed the body of your friend on the way in, Darryl. Check his pockets."
"Olivia please, you don't understand." David implores her to comprehend how much this all just got out of hand. "I just couldn't escape Elliot. First when we got together all I heard was whisperings and rumors of the infamous Benson and Stabler, their unending chemistry and love for each other...it was exhausting, O. I had to listen to it everywhere I went, and it only just started to simmer down, and then Lewis happened. Right after I'd proposed, that monster took you."
He looks over towards the body of William Lewis and holds his hand against his stomach, an attempt to show how repulsive Lewis was to him, Olivia assumed.
She rolls her eyes, too furious to interrupt as he continues.
"I was going to marry you, I was going to be there for you, and I had to listen with every other person in New York City about how you shared sexual fantasies about Elliot with him, with Lewis."
"You know it wasn't like that, David! You know what he was like, what he did in that courtroom to me!" she shouts back.
"Tell me it wasn't true Olivia!" he yells back. "Tell me that you didn't talk about Elliot! Tell me it was me, your future husband that you wanted!" He pauses and watches as Olivia redirects her head to the ground in silence before gathering the sternness in her voice.
"The key, David. You were getting the key."
David ignores her comment and begins on a rant. "You know during your flashbacks you asked for him, I had to comfort you. Me, while you called out for someone who walked out of your life and abandoned you, someone who didn't give a shit anymore."
Elliot can't lie there and listen to anymore. He's tried for Liv to play his part, but this is going on too long. He sits up, and the sudden movement must have alerted David, because within seconds, David's taken off, he's rounded the corner, and the sound of his footsteps gaining further distance fills Olivia with both reprieve and sorrow.
"I'll kill him!" Elliot barks, sitting up and swiping his hand across the back of his head. He draws his fingers into view and looks at the stained blood that has transferred to them.
Locking eyes with Olivia, he realizes that those three words are the first words he's spoken solely to her in all of these years, and when she looks back, he can see that's she knows it too.
"Please El, don't, please just stay here with me." She wasn't pleading, she wasn't even asking; she was drained, low in energy and she didn't want to have anyone else with her now except for Elliot.
His anger quickly dissipates when he looks over how tired she is. She can barely keep her head up, but he smiles to her. She's hasn't changed one bit over the years. Even after all of this, she's still fighting. It may just be sleep that she's battling against at this very moment, but she's not giving in.
Elliot pulls himself around and looks for Darryl's body
"I'll get the key," he announces and he crawls over, finds the key, and returns to finally free her from her attachment to the radiator.
Olivia lets out a gasp of relief and rubs at the sore skin around her wrists.
"Liv I-" he stammers, attempting to find the right words to say.
"Not now El," she whispers back, struggling through the shattered state of her body and mind. "Please, can you just hold me?"
"Always," he softly replies, his word mixed with compassion and adoration.
Elliot moves beside her, his own batted and injured body also needing some form of rest, and he wraps his arms around her and pulls her in tight.
He holds her like he should have held her the first time this happened, becoming her body pillow, her safety blanket, her shoulder to rest on, and he inhales a deep breath in complete disbelief that she's safe.
Here in this warehouse, in this situation, after hearing all those awful things, he wants to tell her how grateful he is that she's alive, how much he regrets ever leaving her, and how much he loves her. But it will have to wait because she's fallen asleep against his body, and for now he can take comfort in knowing that after everything she's been through, she feels safe enough to let her guard down and rest with him.
He didn't know how long it had been since he fell asleep, but when he woke again, the room was filled with the dark night sky from outside. In fact, if it hadn't have been for the increasing volume of the sirens closing in, Elliot doesn't think he would have woken at all.
"Liv," he whispers as he gently nudges her.
"Hmm?" she stirs, her eyes still closed.
"I'm gonna get you outta here now ok?"
She nods, still bringing herself around from her over tired state.
Elliot gently moves her to the side as he stands up, composes himself, wraps his arm under her legs, his other behind her neck, and picks her up.
He was thankful to his years of keeping fit, healthy, and lifting heavy weights because carrying her to safety right now was all he wanted to do.
As he takes her through the hallway of the warehouse and out the doors into the cool air, the bright lights of the police and ambulance sirens shine out as he makes his way to the steps. The abundance of relieved eyes of her coworkers all waiting by their cars look on as the EMT's hurriedly rush over.
He takes this small second of peacefully holding her to himself. Before anyone can get to them, he looks down at her in his arms, his whole being entirely overcome with love for her.
Olivia's aware of what's going on. She heard the sirens, Fin and Amanda's voices shouting out, and she can see through her half closed eyes the flashing red and blue. But she wants this feeling to last as long as she can have it, so she buries her face into his chest because this hold is the safest and most secure she's felt since he held her after Sonya died. She rests her eyes, locking out the real world for just a moment longer.
She's not asleep and despite all this pain and trauma she feels warm on the inside.