I.

"Stabler!" The older man threw his office door open and then perched himself in the doorway, looking around the grey-green room until his eyes fell on the detective. "Get in here." He grumbled, and Elliot sighed silently, pushing himself up from his chair and walking quickly across the room to the man's office.

"Captain Doolin." By the time Elliot reached the office the white-haired, 50 something year old Joseph Doolin was already sitting behind his desk.

"What's going on with the Leeland case? Do you have any leads yet?" Elliot turned away momentarily before looking back to him slowly.

"There's a sister in Manhattan, works as a preschool teacher, I thought maybe she might know something." He explained, and waited silently for what he was sure would be coming next.

"What are you waiting for?" The older man looked to him expectantly, and Elliot backed up until the wall supported his body.

He was waiting for this for the past four years, some case, some person, some link that would drive him back to everything he had walked away from four years ago. Something that would bring him home, because, as he looked around the empty station, to all those who worked there, who made this their lives, he couldn't help but feel lost.

This was not it for him. The work was everywhere, of course, the people who hated others enough to commit heinous acts against them – they were in every city of every state, but that meant nothing to him – he thought that he could avoid everything in Manhattan, which he had done for the past four years, but now this single case would make him go back.

He felt nauseous, though, because he knew that he could never go back.

"I, uh," He stumbled over his words as if he were searching in a dark cluttered room for some answer that may or may not exist.

"You'll leave in the morning. I'll call SVU in Manhattan and let them know so that they'll be expecting you, it'll be better if you have a base there for whatever you could turn up."

Part of him had been waiting for this, part of him had resented each time a case did not lead him back to New York, but the other half was scared to death of what he would or would not find there. Four years is a long time to be gone – a long time for new ghosts to appear in the space of old ones.

He couldn't speak, the fear blocking every word that could have been pulled from his lips, and he nodded an okay before heading back out into the station, into the cold place he had convinced himself he had fit –into the cold place he had never allowed himself to settle.

Working sex crimes in Manhattan was so much more than brutality and hopelessness, he actually felt as if he was fighting for something, with something, instead of simply always against it. In New York he had a life, not a job. In Raleigh, North Carolina, he had an existence. He had his children, his failed marriage, a job he hated, and a thousand miles between he and Olivia.

Sometimes he wondered how he could ever get so lucky.

---

"Olivia." She spun around in her chair slowly when she heard Cragen call her, he was standing a few feet behind her, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

"What's up?" She got up out of her chair and noticed the long glance that he placed over her. "Everything okay?" She was nervous, although she did not know why.

"Let's talk in my office." He nodded his head towards his door, and Olivia gave him a half smile, following him in and letting him close the door behind her while she sat herself down in front of his desk.

"What's going on?" Olivia chewed nervously on her bottom lip, and Cragen hung his head, but his eyes rose to meet hers.

"You heard anything about the Leeland case?" He asked her slowly, and Olivia shook her head no. "It's a mother and daughter, Ellen and Jessica, who're missing from Durham, North Carolina. So far the case has turned up cold, nothing from her parents, friends. It's been amplified by pornographic pictures that the station down there has been receiving-"

"Not to be rude, Captain," Olivia cut him off, her mind was racing, the possibilities scattered everywhere, what he was about to say, what he could say. He couldn't send her to North Carolina, he knew what had happened with Elliot – he knew she wouldn't go. But she didn't think that that's what he was getting at, he seemed almost apologetic, almost scared for her. "But what does this have to do with us?"

"He was working on the case in Raleigh, and there's lead to the little girl's aunt, the woman's sister – she works as a preschool teacher in Manhattan." Cragen's words were laced with ambiguity, but they spoke directly to Olivia.

"And?" There was more, she felt it in the air between them, the thick air lingering with everything that was still left unsaid.

"He's coming tomorrow. He'll be here in the morning, he's going to be investigating some leads he has with that, and they've asked for our co-operation." Her mouth was open, she felt the air dry her tongue and she wondered how she should react. Should she tell him that he couldn't come? Should ask why he had every agreed to let him come? But those questions made it seem like she had some sort of choice in this whole thing, and the one thing that she had learned in the past four years was that nothing had ever happened to her by choice.

"So what do you want from me?" Olivia was scared for the answer.

"I wanted to let you know." He looked at her expectantly, and she turned away from his eyes. She wasn't going to deal with this. He had made his decisions, she had lived with them. This was the game they played, even though neither had participated in years. "He's going to be here in the morning, Olivia. He needs our co-operation, he has to work with someone-"

"No." She got up quickly; her body was hot with everything that was about to happen. He left; he shouldn't get the chance to come back. "Not me." She made her voice fill with conviction so that he would know that she would not be the one to do this. If Elliot had to come back, she knew that there was nothing she could do to stop that, but she wouldn't do this with him. She wouldn't pretend that things were how they used to be, she wouldn't play along and act like it was still okay, like he didn't really tell her he loved her and then left her.

Left her broken, each piece of her sharp edged and jagged with no new place to fit. She wouldn't let him come back and play house and pretend that this was all real again, because it wasn't.

It would never be.

"Olivia, you and him-"

"I said no." She ran her hands back through her hair.

This couldn't be happening.

She had wanted him to come back for so long, she had missed him and needed him and wanted him back for so long, but not like this. Not as a visitor who would leave again, who would play with her for a little while and then put her back.

After all, in the scale of things, she was what he needed least, and she would make him live with his decisions.

"I just wanted to let you know, for-"

"He doesn't need to know about him." She glared at Cragen with the protectiveness of a mother.

"Olivia." He cocked his head, looking her over expectantly as she paced back and forth.

"How can he just come back?" She stopped moving and turned to him quickly, embarrassed by the emotion pouring from her eyes.

"I'm sorry." And he was, but it was no consolation to Olivia, her demons went beyond his apologies, she went to say something, but her words were lost in her tangled thoughts, in the black sea that her mind had become at the prospect of him coming back.

No.

He wasn't coming back. He was teasing her. He was visiting her, bringing himself back only to take himself away. That was the only part of him that she had ever had, a brief visit in her life.

Regret.

---

Whoever said that you can never go home again was right, he noted, as he stood outside the door of the station, taking deep breaths, inhaling the city into his lungs. He didn't know why he didn't protest, why he didn't say that he wouldn't come back, why he didn't ask them to send someone else – he didn't know, but he felt. He felt that he needed to come back here eventually, that he needed to see what he had walked away from, that he needed something in his trail of questions finally justified.

He walked through the doors slowly, trying to avoid how familiar it was, trying to avoid the fact that after four years he was coming back to something he had never really abandoned. Elliot had talked himself out of being there, but he knew now, as he took the steps two at a time, as he paused only briefly before opening the door to the SVU room, that he had never been gone.

This was too safe. It felt too right. It may not have been home anymore, but it was a memory he was returning to, a room full of people who he had only seen in his mind.

Once inside he looked to where their desks used to be, to where their desks used to sit facing each other, pressed together with a seamless part. The desks were there, but she wasn't. No one was, at least no one that he knew.

He wondered, even though he didn't want to, where she was. If she was still there, if she was getting coffee, out on the streets, what. He didn't like that two minutes into this and she was no longer just in his mind, but now his body. Her memory was now fast-forwarded to the present, and he feared the uncertainties.

"Elliot." He didn't turn to the direction of the voice; he didn't need a face for it to be identified.

"Captain Cragen." His eyes were still combing the room for some sign of her, for some sign of life.

"Elliot." He said his name again, and this time Elliot forced himself to move from his position, he walked across the room to where Cragen was standing and offered him his hand as a hello.

"How've you been?" Elliot smiled, and Cragen nodded, stepping aside so that he could enter his office.

"Good." He answered simply, and Elliot found himself strangled by the familiarity.

"Wow, this is so – strange." He spoke honestly, and Cragen nodded.

"I never thought we'd be doing this." Cragen gave a half smile as he sat down behind his desk. "What do you need, Elliot? I've set you up with Fin; he'll help with whatever we need to do. But as far as anything beyond that, it's your call."

He wanted to ignore that he was disappointed to be working with Fin. He wanted to ignore the questions it aroused. He wanted to ignore his need to be back with Olivia. To be a cop in Manhattan again, without her, even if it was only for a little while, would not be the same.

He wanted to ignore that he ever thought that this would be the same.

"That's fine, thank you. I assume anything else I need, though, will be okay? Information, all of that?"

"It still works the same, Elliot. Nothing's changed." Cragen reported, and Elliot resisted the urge to call him a liar.

Nothing was the same.

---

"So how do you want to do this?" Fin looked at Elliot expectantly, every question that he had for him pushed aside for the familiarity of their job. Part of Elliot was somewhat okay with working with Fin, if nothing else because he knew that he would resist any questions that he did have and concentrate on what they needed to do.

"I don't want to go right to Julia Aston." He referred to the woman that he was here because of. "I was thinking of asking around first, I have a list of the kids in her preschool class, I was going to talk to the parents, see if they've noticed anything strange."

Fin nodded. "Okay. Do you want to split the names, get it done faster, then we can meet back at the station in a couple of hours and see if anything comes up?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure." Elliot opened the manila envelope in his hand and leafed through a few sheets of paper, handing the last few to Fin. "The kids names, as well as contact information is all on there." He informed him.

"Got it. Anything else you think we should check out?" He questioned, knowing that this whole thing would be him following Elliot's lead.

"I think this is good for now." He felt guilty and wanted to ignore the fact that he may have been procrastinating, that he may have been trying to hang around a bit longer.

You can never come home again, he remembered as he looked around the clouded city, but he was sure as hell going to try.

---

She had called in sick that morning. It was a cop out, she knew, and Cragen knew, but he didn't question her.

She didn't know how anyone expected her to do this, how they expected her to work with him there, how they expected her to do anything with him in such close proximity. Part of her felt like running, like packing up and using all of the vacation that she had never had a need for.

The doorbell cut off her thoughts, a wanted distraction to everything that she was trying to avoid feeling. She walked quickly to the door and opened it without thinking, her entire body stopping when she met the blue eyes on the other side.

"Elliot?" She choked out. How the hell had he found her?

"Jesus Christ." He wasn't expecting her to be on the other side of the door, he wasn't expecting everything that had happened to come down to this single moment, to an unexpected pair of chocolate brown eyes that held everything he had been avoiding for the past four years.

He suddenly didn't know why he was there. He suddenly forgot the paper in his hand that had given this address as one of the children in the preschool class; he suddenly blacked out completely, not sure what he was supposed to do now.

The air between them was heavy, the silence eating away at them, much worse than any words that could have potentially found their way out.

"I, you, it –" He couldn't remember anything except for four years ago, except for making love to her in her old apartment, except for feeling her on him, except for feeling her heart beat onto his chest, except for feeling that he needed to run and remain all at the same time.

"How did you get my address?" Her question was bitter, cold, distant, and she wrapped her arms across her chest, making them a barrier between them. She couldn't let him be there. She couldn't let him do this again.

"Olivia." He didn't know what to say, he didn't know how he could be so sure of something and so unsure of something at the same time, and he noted as she stepped towards him, leaning herself against the doorframe as to keep him out her home.

"Leave." She looked away from him, away from every memory she had buried of him, of every regret that she had chalked him up to.

"Olivia." Every other word he had was lost.

"Goodbye." She turned around and started to shut the door, but he moved forward in a single motion and pushed the door open, not allowing her to shut him out.

"Wait." He stopped her and held the paper in his hand up to her; it was the list of names from the preschool. She walked away from Elliot, ignoring hearing him come into her home, ignoring everything he was surely trying to comprehend as he looked around the little foyer at pictures of a blonde haired, brown eyed little boy. "What the hell is going on here?" His voice was so soft, so scared, that it was foreign.

He had just walked in on a life he would rather have been oblivious to.

"What is it?" She didn't know how she was talking to him, how she was standing in her house with him and actually formulating words that made any sense. She nodded towards the list in his hand, and Elliot looked down at it again.

"I'm here investigating a case –"

"I know why you're here." Her words were bitter, and Elliot couldn't help but feel them. She knew why he was here - for work. She was smart enough to know that he wasn't there for her.

"I'm investigating Julia Aston." He felt her movement stop from where he was. "I have a roster of all the kids in her class, this is where- this is the address – Noah Benson?" He choked out nervously, and Olivia chewed on her lower lip. Elliot was scared of the possibilities; at first he thought that the name was just a sick joke, a way to shove this whole guilt a little deeper.

He never thought that it would lead him here – to her. Either that or he didn't want to think it.

He couldn't think it.

"What?" Part of her came crashing down when she heard the cold way in which Elliot had said Noah's name.

"Is he yours?" His voice shook, and he wasn't sure that he wanted the answer, he wasn't sure that he could handle the answer.

He was stupid for thinking that he would come back to find things unchanged, stupid to think that she would be waiting for him, but as he looked around the house at the various pictures of the little boy he couldn't help but regret everything, regret that this wasn't his house, that this wasn't his family - that this was just some life that he had unknowingly walked in to.

"What do you need to know?" Olivia was sharp, she wanted him out of her life, at least tangibly.

"Is he yours?" Elliot asked again.

"What does that have to do with anything, Elliot?" She was defensive now; defensive for every part of her that wanted him there as opposed to the few that didn't. She wouldn't give him this.

"How old is he?" He didn't know where he had found the question, but it left his mouth before he could stop it, and then it started to sink in, all of this started to sink in. The little boy with big brown eyes and blonde hair and his mother's complexion, this toddler with his mother's last name.

He silently heaved for air, and the door opened behind him. Elliot turned slowly to see a man, maybe a few years younger than himself, with a toddler in his arms. The little boy in the pictures.

Noah.

"Mom! We saw a gator!" Noah squirmed out of the man's arms and ran to Olivia.

Elliot's questions were answered.

Elliot's mind turned off as he observed Olivia and her son, and he felt trapped between them and the man still to his back. Noah's words, his ramblings about the day at the zoo with man standing behind Elliot, accompanied his thoughts.

He had to get out of whatever he had just stepped in to.

"I, uh," Elliot stammered. It hit him then, in Olivia's home, with Olivia's family, that you could never go home again.

"He's three." Olivia called to Elliot's retreating form, answering his question about the boy's age.

He heard her call to him, heard her tell him the age of the blonde toddler, and he kept running, down two blocks, up three, until his legs couldn't carry him any farther.

And when he stopped, gasping for air and adding everything up frantically, he realized that he didn't even know where home was anymore.