II.
This morning she was there.
She sat at her desk, her image just like the photograph of her that he had captured in his mind from so many years ago. Her back was curved, her head resting in her hands as her eyes combed over reports.
He didn't want to feel entitled to anything.
He didn't want to feel like he should walk in and she should turn to him with a smile like she had done so many times before. He didn't want to feel like she should offer him a cup of coffee, ask how his night went.
He didn't want to feel like this was right, because it wasn't.
The man sitting across from Olivia today was another stranger Elliot had stumbled upon in his short visit thus far. A younger man, blonde hair and brown eyes, and his spirit seemed oddly elevated, he seemed like he still had some innocence in him, that he managed to keep some sense of livelihood in the middle of such a mess.
"So, anything? I mean this guy comes into the apartment, what he says was hours after the time of death, but he manages to track blood all the way through the house, which wouldn't have been as easily transferable at the time he claims to have been there." Elliot heard the man say, the young man who had stolen his life, who he had practically handed his life to. The little plate on his desk said that his name was Matthew Anderson.
"I think it means he did it." She sighed and moved her chair out from her desk, leaning back as she ran her hands over her face, massaging her temples in small, quick circles.
She wanted to ignore the fact that she could feel his eyes on her, that she knew that he was there, a few feet away, watching her. She wanted to hate the fact that he was doing it, that she felt as if she were in a glass box and he was gawking at her, trying to find something that was or wasn't there. She wanted to love the fact that she knew his mind was reeling, that he was adding up dates, looking at the images of Noah he had seen in his head, trying to piece something together. She wanted to ignore the fact that she wanted him to be hurt by this, that she wanted every ounce of him to break in uncertainty the way that he made her.
"Olivia." Cragen's voice came resounding through the room from his office, and Olivia dropped her head momentarily before getting up, intentionally not looking to Elliot as she did so, and called back to Matthew to double check the man's alibi of the case that they were working on. "Elliot, I'll be with you in a minute." Cragen gave him a nod after Olivia was already inside his office, and then shut the door.
"What now?" She was short with him, and Cragen excused it.
"Fin's in Chicago." He said it quickly, quietly, and Olivia shook her head no. "His aunt died last nite, he took the red-eye, and someone needs to work with Elliot-"
"Anderson, or Munch." Olivia cut him off.
"Munch is in court with the Denison Case until Thursday. I don't think Elliot intends to stay that long."
"Exactly." He didn't intend on staying that long, he was coming to talk to a couple of leads, and then he was leaving, back to North Carolina and everything that he needed more than Olivia.
"I'm stuck, Olivia. Anderson is still trying to catch on, you've seen some of the mistakes he's made already, and I don't want to be embarrassed if he pulls anything like that with Elliot." Cragen begged her with his eyes, he really was stuck, she was sure, but she couldn't let herself do this. She knew herself; she knew that even if she fought it, if she pretended not to be fazed or affected by it, working with Elliot again would still get to her.
"You can't ask me to do this!" She threw her hands up in exasperation. There was always an option C, you just had to look a little harder sometimes. "You - what about you, Cap?" She walked around to the chair in front of his desk and backed up until she felt it against her legs before sliding down into it and putting her head in her hands.
"Olivia, I'm sorry." He apologized for what he was sure would be the beginning of many. "We don't have any other options."
"So then he's just allowed to walk back in here, after four years of nothing – hell, he could have been dead for all we know, and just play with us for a little while when he has the chance? How is that fair?" She paused for a minute, pressing her fingers into her temples, her headache intensified. "Why can't he just do this on his own? He's a good cop, he can handle it."
"He's better when he's with you. You want this over, work with him, work fast, and get him out of here." Olivia jumped up when he was done, kicking the chair out from under her.
"Whatever." She threw her hands up in resignation, she knew that she really didn't have a choice, that he was telling her as a courtesy, but he was going to make her do this. Without another word she walked quickly out of the office, not looking at Elliot, who was standing outside when she left.
---
"Where are we going?" She still didn't look directly into his eyes, her hands were shoved into her coat pockets, and she breathed out the cold city air in tiny white puffs.
"Did you send him – Is he, uh, Is-" He wasn't bothered by her not looking at him, because he couldn't look at her, either. He couldn't let himself fall back into this. He couldn't let himself accept that things had changed, that he was standing here with a mother, aged four years, and who had lived so much more than that in that time, he was sure.
"Noah is staying out of this." She shot back sharply, and she started walking towards the car.
"He's in the class, Olivia." Elliot dropped his head when they reached the car. He didn't want to have to ask questions, he didn't want to assume, he didn't want this to all come crashing down around him like he was sure that it would.
"He's with Eric." She offered no further explanation, and Elliot got into the car, turning it on and trying to let the engine drown out the fact that he was jealous of the man, of the life that he had found Olivia living - of the little boy with his mother's eyes and no recognizable traits of his own.
Stop.
He mentally scolded himself, and he turned to Olivia before he pulled out of the parking space, turned to her back as she was positioned away from him, looking out over the city.
He wanted to know why he felt like no time had passed, but everything had changed.
He wanted to know why everything in him came crashing down when he saw her son – her Noah.
He didn't want his whole body to ache, his chest to feel tight and his thoughts to scatter when he thought of the possibilities of what he had really left in New York.
"Look Elliot," She turned to him sharply, and his breath caught in his throat. He was embarrassed that every woman he had seen for the past four years had never measured up to her, that he had looked for her in them only to come up with nothing each and every time.
"I'm sorry, Liv." He snapped out of his daydream and pulled out into traffic.
She didn't like that he used her nickname, that he still felt entitled to be that close to her. That he still thought of her like that, and maybe it was because it triggered everything inside of her, everything that she had been suppressing that she felt – every feeling, memory, thought, that made her that close to him.
"I don't want to be doing this. You have to be here, I don't." She knew it was a lie, but she wanted him to feel obliged, as if he owed her something – which he did. "The quicker we can just deal with this, the better." Her headache had moved from her temples to her forehead, and she laid her head back on the seat, closing her eyes.
"You okay?" He asked softly, and she didn't want him to care.
"Where are we going, Detective Stabler?" He felt the distance when she rolled his name from her tongue, and he wanted to say that they could go wherever she wanted, back four years, up two. Back to her place, back to his, back to every memory he still kept of her, back to the little boy and an answer that he had to have, but instead he remained quiet as they drove to Julia Aston's apartment.
---
Julia Aston cried the minute the brought up her sister and niece. Olivia stood in the background while Elliot did the questioning. This was not a case they were both working on, this was his. She was just his liaison to the Manhattan SVU.
That's all she was.
Back in the car her cell phone cut through the silence of absent words.
"Hello?" She sounded worried, Elliot noted. "You're mom can't watch him?" She turned away from Elliot. "Okay. Okay, yeah, no, I understand." She said goodbye and then hung up the phone, letting out an exasperated sigh.
"Everything okay?"
"We need to go to 2135 Bainbridge." She looked to Elliot, but she didn't want to give him any more information, and he was afraid to ask for it.
"Okay." Again, there were no words until Elliot pulled up to the old brownstone and parked the car, looking to Olivia expectantly.
"I'll be right back." She got out of the car without looking at him and ran to the front door, knocked a few quick, short times, and then the door opened, the man Elliot recognized from yesterday standing in the doorway with Noah. She hugged him quickly and then took Noah from him, resting him on her hip and then running back to the car.
Elliot got out quickly and walked around to the backseat door behind the passenger's side, opening it for her.
"Eric's getting his car seat." She kissed Noah's cheek quickly and then turned to greet Eric, who approached the three with the little boy's toddler seat.
Olivia didn't introduce them, and Elliot took that as something.
"Bye Eric!" Noah called to the retreating man who was a stranger to Elliot, and Elliot looked to Olivia sharply, who smiled at him slowly.
Part of her wanted him to think that this was his, that this little boy, his big brown eyes and overflow of innocence, she wanted Elliot to hurt for it like she had hurt for him. She wanted him to explode with uncertainty, his mind caught between reality and imagination and she wanted every part of him to want him. She wanted him to burn for him, his curiosity eating at every thing that he had left.
Olivia wanted Elliot to need Noah- to need him more than his next breath.
And after Olivia had strapped Noah in and got back into the passengers seat she looked at Elliot, he was bright red, his eyes concentrated on the rearview mirror, looking to Noah.
He wanted him.
"Mom! I made a macaroni necklace!" Noah kicked his feet against the car seat as he held his creation, a little necklace with colored macaroni's on it, up so that Olivia could see.
"Wow, Noah, that's awesome." Olivia congratulated him, and Elliot clenched his jaw.
He wasn't supposed to walk in in the middle of her life.
He was supposed to be the beginning of it, like she was his.
But he didn't need her enough then, or at least wasn't strong enough to.
"Who're you?" Noah pointed to Elliot, and Elliot looked straight out of the window, not wanting to have to introduce himself.
He couldn't breath because of the guilt.
"This is Detective Stabler, Noah." Olivia said quickly, and her stomach churned, she didn't want to introduce her three year old to Elliot, to the incarnate of every pain, love, emotion that she'd ever had. She introduced him instead to the man that she was forced to work with.
If Noah ever met Elliot, he would love him.
"Oh. Hi then." Noah laughed, and Olivia didn't like that she was smiling. "Mom, can we get chicken and a toy?" He asked innocently.
"What?" Elliot couldn't help but laugh at the question, and Olivia joined him with a soft chuckle.
"A happy meal, you know, how they come with a toy? Chicken and a toy." She explained with a smile, and Elliot took a picture of her in his mind, and then looked back to the little boy – to Noah.
Elliot was scared to think that Noah could possibly save them.
"You like McDonalds?" Elliot called back to the little boy, and Noah smiled brightly.
"Their chicken is the best ones." He yelled back.
"Elliot, you don't have to stop. You can just take us home and I can take him, I know you have stuff to do." She refrained from apologizing, because the truth was that he had inconvenienced her, not the other way around. But, she was nervous as she felt herself start to soften, as she felt herself settle into this alternate reality.
"I have time." He smiled, and Olivia had to turn away, having to remind herself that he was the one who left.
---
"'Tective Stabler coming to eat?" Elliot stood behind Olivia as she reached into the car and took Noah from his seat, setting him down on the sidewalk before turning to Elliot, who was holding a brown McDonalds bag as well as a happy meal box.
"No, Noah. He has to go." Olivia answered immediately, and Elliot took a step back, removing himself from this for one moment to observe Olivia's broken family.
You never forget what it's like to love someone, he noted sadly as she watched her reach back into the car to get Noah's car seat.
"We're near the street." Noah was talking to Elliot, and when Elliot looked down to the little boy he saw his hand reaching up towards him.
"Uh," He didn't know what to do.
"I need to hold your hand." A lump formed in Elliot's throat for everything that he had left behind. "Because of the street." Noah explained further, and Elliot took his free hand and placed it around Noah's.
This façade of a family, even if only for a moment, felt right, and he felt the red crawl up his neck when he couldn't avoid the fact that it wasn't allowed to be.
"Okay, Noah-" Olivia stopped short when she saw Noah holding onto Elliot's hand, swinging it back and forth playfully.
There were no words between them as Elliot's eyes locked with Olivia's, her heart pounding in her ears at the sight, her heart breaking at the hope mirrored in Elliot's eyes.
She didn't want to love him.
"He said he needed to hold someone's hand because of the street," Elliot started to explain, and Olivia looked away, his need to explain anything clearly hurting both of them. This was not how this was supposed to be, her son holding a strangers hand, only he was more familiar to her than anyone she'd ever known.
"Are you coming in to eat?" She balanced Noah's car seat on her hip, and Elliot looked down to Noah for a moment, and then back to Olivia.
He was scared because he knew exactly where he was but was lost at the same time.
With a smile he nodded.
She had invited him in.