V.
She felt like she was living in a black and white movie.
She felt like she was living inside of a black and white movie where she would cry when she saw him and he would smile and they would meet on the top of the empire state building at sunset and life would displace itself from what it was to what it is.
A black and white movie where everything was in slow motion, and she didn't want to be hopeful and she didn't want to be restored but she was anxious and waiting and she knew that if he didn't stay this time, she would disappear, too.
Disappear into a formless shell, robbed of every emotion, good and bad, that he had ever given to her. This time, there would be no moving on, moving past, making it a regret.
Today she wanted to believe in such a thing as a happy ending, in such a thing as fairytales and castles and forgiveness.
The forecast for today was dark and cloudy with the potential for loss.
---
He didn't pack anything. He had one bag with a few pairs of clothes, but that was it.
Elliot Stabler, the nomad, was going home.
Elliot Stabler, the living dead, was coming back to life.
He wouldn't let himself feel the hope inside of him, the scattered pieces that were coming back together as he walked out of the airport, back into the Manhattan air. He wouldn't let himself feel entitled to this, that because she hadn't told him no that that automatically meant yes, because she hadn't told him that, either.
She had told him that she couldn't stop him, that she could have never stopped him. That if he came back today, three years ago, four years ago, or four years from today, she could never have stopped him.
Today he was glad that he couldn't feel anything. Glad that he couldn't feel the pile of regret in his gut, the tangled mass of left turns instead of rights, glad that he couldn't feel his fear for what this not working would and could do to him. The potential for him to return to this life and be turned away, back to the land of the dead, back to the mass of timeless days and reflection less eyes, was something that he would rather not process.
In the absence of life, there is death.
In the absence of death, there is life, existence, or routine.
In the absence of Olivia, both were interrupted.
Elliot Stabler, interrupted.
Today he would go home again, he decided, and pound down the doors to the house, rip apart the locks and break through the windows and crawl inside. Add to his scars, add to his pain and bruises and scrapes and crawl through the broken glass windows to get inside Olivia, those were Elliot Stabler's plans for today.
---
She took Noah to Eric's for the night because this was not going to be easy.
She felt like a million pieces, like she was comprised of one million broken pieces, and she didn't know if all the kings horses and all the kings men could ever put her back together again.
She didn't know what she was supposed to do; she was a pile of uncertainty placed on fear, covered by hope, which sat beneath pain and was squashed by love, and she didn't know if she was supposed to look at him and take him coming back – him asking to come back and getting on a plane and flying back to New York, not for a job, not for a case, not for a victim –she didn't know if she was supposed to forgive him for that alone, for at least taking that step.
And then she was scared- scared because she was stupid enough to think that he wasn't coming back for a victim, because he was. He was coming back for a broken piece of life, with a broken pair of eyes and a heart that could or could not have still been beating – she would have had to have the ability to still feel in that way to know.
The phone wrung at the same time as the doorbell, and she froze, picking the phone first because it required less effort. It was less personal interaction; less of his eyes, his body, his life (or death), his constant reminder of broken promises and memories and hope.
She was tired of being broken, she didn't mind scars, if they couldn't get her back together again completely, then she understood that there would always be scars, scars of what had happened, of what hadn't happened. Scars that reminded her that for every good thing there was something equally as bad – scars that would keep her going, scars that would remind her that you could piece life back together, a broken menagerie of pieces, to create a masterpiece.
Olivia answered the phone with a shaky breath, expecting to hear Elliot, but instead startled by Eric.
"Liv, it's Noah, he fell and I think he might have broken his wrist."
Hello, disaster. Olivia started breathing fast, running her hand over her face and not knowing how to handle this whole thing now.
"Wait, what?" She was already moving, grabbing her coat, slipping on her shoes, trying to find her purse.
"I'm taking him to Mount Sinai."
"Okay, okay, I'll be there." Olivia hung up the phone, throwing it to the couch, and then ran towards the door, throwing it open and not pausing to acknowledge the pieces of Elliot standing outside.
"Olivia?" She ran to her car, and Elliot spun on his heels and walked quickly down to her.
"Get in," she offered no immediate explanation, but Elliot followed her directions.
He could see her again; see her in the dark, clouded city with low clouds and artificial light. He closed his eyes for a moment in the car and took a deep breath, taking her into him and giving himself a minute to remember exactly why he was here – exactly why he was anywhere.
"Noah fell, he hurt his wrist, Eric's taking him to the hospital." She explained hurriedly as she pulled out into traffic.
"Jesus, is he okay?" He leaned forward and turned his head to look at her, to see the mother's fear that she was displaying, and he didn't want to smile.
"I don't know, Elliot!" She broke in panic, for Noah, for Elliot, for what they were trying to do.
She didn't want to play house.
She didn't want to be toys, plastic people in a plastic house with plastic limbs and hollow bodies. Plastic limbs that broke easier, absent hearts that hurt less.
For all the pain she felt at the moment, for all of the blacked out pain that she wouldn't let herself feel, she still wanted the capacity. She didn't want to be robbed of that if this whole thing came falling down again.
She didn't want to be left numb.
The forecast for tonight was overcast with a high chance of destruction.
"Okay, okay. It'll be okay. He's going to be okay." She didn't know if she should let him comfort her, if they were there yet, if his asking to come back and being back really meant that he was back.
Elliot Stabler, optical illusion.
"Can we just not talk until we get there?" She didn't want filler conversation, she didn't want him comforting her or trying to make this okay because she wasn't ready to let him do that.
"Uh, yeah. Yeah," Elliot cleared his throat, ignoring the pain he was starting to feel.
When you're dead, you can't feel pain, he remembered with a smile.
---
He stayed a step behind Olivia when she asked where Noah was, stayed a step behind as they took the elevator to the pediatrics floor, and waited while she talked to the doctor.
This was the place he had assumed four years ago, and he didn't want to jump into this next to her because he knew that he had no right.
"Olivia!" They turned around at the same time to see Eric walking towards them, and Olivia ran to him, her eyes questioning.
"I just talked to the doctor, it's broken?" She looked Eric over slowly.
"Yeah, Liv, I'm sorry, he was running upstairs and he just tripped and landed on it," he apologized, and Olivia nodded.
"It was an accident, Eric," she watched as Elliot wandered down the hall to the room at the end – Noah's room. "You can go home, thank you for watching him, though." She wanted to ignore the look in Eric's eyes that was fearful that he was about to lose this displaced family. She had to ignore it because he wanted to give it to Elliot, and she couldn't hurt for Eric and Elliot and Noah all at the same time.
---
"They have blue ones?" Noah looked at Elliot through his tears, but his face was smiling.
Elliot was glad he had Olivia's eyes and not those of a stranger.
"Yeah, they have all different color casts. They're pretty cool. And we can write stuff on them, draw pictures." Elliot wanted him, he wanted every part of him and he wanted for him to come from him, if not biologically, then in every other way possible. He wanted to love him and mold him and be his father – give this son a dad.
When Olivia walked into the room, when she stood in the door and watched her son and Elliot she didn't want to think that this was right, because she was still holding onto the uncertainty.
"How are you, buddy?" Olivia stopped their conversation and walked to Noah, kissing him sweetly.
"Good," Noah nodded. "Mom, look, it's 'tective Stabler, he came to see me." Olivia was scared because she couldn't reserve part of Noah for the uncertainty of Elliot. "You said he wasn't going to come back, but he did, Mom, see, this is him," Noah pointed to Elliot.
Elliot swallowed his guilt.
"Yeah, Noah," Olivia sat on Noah's bed and ran her hands through his hair before wiping at his tear stained cheeks.
"The man said I broked it," Noah looked to his mother with a confused face, his head tilted sideways and his eyebrows arched.
"You did. He's going to give you a cast so that it can get better, like a big band aid," Olivia answered.
"I know, 'tective Stabler told me about that. But mom, you never said you could break bones." Noah's eyes were blinking rapidly with question.
Olivia refrained from telling him everything that you could break; bones, dreams, promises, emotions, feelings, love. She wanted to spare her son that, for now, she wanted to keep his innocence intact while he still had time.
And then she looked to Elliot, he had his hand placed protectively on Noah's knee, and she had to turn away.
These were the only two men that she had ever loved; an innocent child and a bruised cop.
And again she remembered that she had never had a choice.
---
Noah's cast was blue. They got chicken and a toy on the way home from the hospital, and he was sleeping now, tucked away with the realization that what's inside you can be broken.
"I should go," Elliot cleared his throat and ducked his head. The air between them was laced with a mixture of awkward and need and neither knew what to do with this moment.
This is what ten years, six together and four apart, had brought them to.
Elliot felt like he was in a dark room, a room of lamps without light bulbs, a room of boarded up windows and locked wooden doors and he wanted to light a match and watch it burn.
"Elliot," she started, but couldn't finish. She wanted to be strong enough for now to erase everything that had happened before, but she knew that that would never be.
He said nothing, but he moved to her, slowly, and reached for the sleeve of her t-shirt, lifting it slowly and pushing it up over her rounded shoulder. Biting his bottom lip so that he could taste the crimson blood that spilled into his mouth he ran his thumb over the bruises he had left – the visible marks of his journeys in and out of the life of Olivia Benson.
"Can you forgive me?" Elliot asked softly, and Olivia closed her eyes, leaning her head back and taking a deep breath as Elliot moved so that he was completely in front of her and with his other hand he moved her other sleeve up over her shoulder and ran his thumb over the marks he'd left there.
Olivia didn't know what he was asking her.
She didn't know if he was asking for forgiveness for everything, or only for the external, tangible marks that he could see. She didn't know, either, if forgiveness existed for something like this, if it was forgiveness they were dealing with or some other form of fighting past demons, some other way to get past the marks that he had left her with.
"Olivia," He breathed her name, and he watched a single tear roll from cheek, down her jaw line and into the well of her collarbone.
"What am I supposed to say to you, Elliot? What am I supposed to do with this?" She didn't want him touching her anymore; she didn't want him coming through to her in that way yet because it tore her down and left her open and defenseless and she still felt like she had something to fight for.
"I left, and I shouldn't have-" He stopped because he saw her have a physical reaction to his words, a slight shiver and she looked away from him.
He felt the guilt roll over him, through him, but he smiled momentarily.
When you're dead, you can't feel guilt.
"Please," Olivia turned back to him and placed her finger over his lips. She didn't want that memory anymore, she didn't want the memory of him walking away, of him not looking back and not coming back and not calling and leaving her in pieces that she had never fully been able to recover, because he had taken them with him. She wanted that part of the movie, of the silent movie filled with ghosts, to stop.
Elliot moved to her, but she backed away.
"Don't," He shook his head and put his hand out to her, a bridge between them, a bridge to join them and shock the life back into him. "To feel nothing, but still be alive," Elliot looked to her, his jaw clenched as he shook his head back and forth.
"You made the choice, Elliot," she shot back at him.
"The wrong choice, Liv," he liked that her name doubled as the action.
"But it doesn't change it, it doesn't change this." Olivia was glaring at him, and Elliot took a forceful step towards her.
"No, Olivia, the whole world changes, but this doesn't change. This hasn't changed, okay? Can you believe me? Can you forgive me? Can we do this? Jesus, Olivia, I want to do this. We've been waiting to do this for 10 years, and now-" Olivia's tears stopped him.
"And now everything else is out of the way. You dealt with your other responsibilities and now you can come back to me, to us. Do you know what that feels like, Elliot? What it feels like to have to wait until you take care of everything else that is more important to you before you can come back for me?" She challenged him, her tears running frantically down her face, and Elliot shook his head.
"No." He fell to the floor, sat down with his feet out in front of him, his hands running over his face, and through his fingers he looked up at every mistake he had ever made.
Olivia looked down at the broken dream that had stolen her soul away, and she didn't know if she should break or mend for the sight of him, sitting lost in her home.
"Can you forgive me?" He asked her again, reaching his hand up to her, his heart beating in his throat for the choice that she was about to make.
"Elliot."
"Damn it, Olivia, this is it! This is what we have now. You have a son and I have regret and mistakes and an existence. This is where we are, this is where we're at, take a left or right or turn around and sprint like hell, I don't care, but do something, let me know what this is, Olivia, you said I could come, that I could come back and you would let me in and we could see –" He stopped when she put her hand in his, linked her fingers in his and fell to the ground next to him.
"I can't forgive you, Elliot," she said honestly, and Elliot pinched his eyes closed, and this time he felt himself fall apart, this time, this half living man felt himself die. "But we can try to do this, anyway, because I can't let you leave again, either," she shook her head, and Elliot opened his eyes slowly.
Olivia leaned to him, met his lips with her own, and breathed the life back into him.
This is what it felt like to be home again.
Doors opened, windows opened, locks broken, life reinstated.
Welcome home.
---