Author's note; I know I said there would only be one more part, but I ended up splitting it into two parts because it got too long, so, there is an epilogue that will follow after this. The lines in italics are from the song 'Keep Me in Your Thoughts' by Stephen Kellogg. Enjoy.
For All of This;
seven.
He didn't like saying goodbye to her.
She drank the last of her coffee, placed the empty cup into the cup holder, and looked to him knowingly.
She didn't like saying goodbye to him.
i I know it's morning and that you have to go /i
He knew now what Kathy must have felt when she said goodbye. They said their parting words while the sun fought to rise from its sleepless night, and they were laced with fear for what the hours that they were apart could bring.
i You look so lovely in the morning glow /i
At least before he could have saved her.
At least before she could have been with him.
i The only thing I ask is that you know
That I will keep you in my thoughts throughout the day /i
"Be careful," she cannot look at him and she wraps her coat tightly around herself.
This morning, masqueraded in the early hours of darkness, he saw the regret in her, and he says, "you don't have to keep doing this, you could talk to Cragen, you could-"
"Hey, El, just be careful." She doesn't want a discussion or to think about this before she has to go in.
"You want to get dinner tonite?" He asks after leaning over and kissing her forehead quickly, lingering close to her for an instant before pulling back, his eyes mirrored in hers.
"Um," she stumbles. It has been 7 weeks, and she feels as if they have eaten at every restaurant in the city or tasted every selection of delivery or take-out. "How about I cook?" She says as she gets out of the car.
There is a lot to talk about.
And as he watches her run inside before he heads towards the garage, he tries to remember when they became so domesticated. When he didn't think twice about them driving to work together, coming home together, sleeping in the same bed together.
Her coffee cup is white, but a mark of her lipstick, light red, sits painted on the lid, and he wonders when he started needing her as much as she needed him.
&&&&&
Four o'clock.
Her headache, normally under control, is pounding with full force, her fingers pressed deep into her temples.
She thinks he is talking to her, but she doesn't know.
She wishes she were home watching Oprah.
He makes her want to take a drink. Rum and Diet. Two ice cubes.
"You become your parents, that kid, he's going to turn into his father," he doesn't seem concerned, just like he's talking to fill the space between them.
He doesn't care because it isn't his father beating the shit out of his mother. It isn't his father leaving bruises on him without ever touching him. It isn't his father who never comes home without first taking a drink and second making sure he's wiped the smell of sex off of him.
His father gave him his money. His father fed him from a silver spoon. His father was a businessman who made a few good investments and he was doing this work because he wanted to "help".
Olivia could see that all he really wanted was people to flatter him, to be in awe of his gesture.
His wife was blonde and small and wore Chanel and his son had blue eyes and blonde hair and his name was something far too big for someone his age. Harrison or Clinton or something like that – something that let you know that he was better than you were ever going to be – and he was two.
"You don't always become your parents," she doesn't want to talk to him, to know that if it comes to it, this is who she has to give her life for.
She feels like he would never do the same for her. Because of Lanceton, or is it Addison? She doesn't care. His kid, he only likes to wear cashmere Ralph Lauren sweaters, he informed her one day after they left a house where a woman had beat the life and love and innocence out of her three year old and then left him in a wool sweater that he was allergic to, because it would make him learn.
"It's all these kids see, they don't know anything else. You know that whole nature nurture thing. It's like, these kids have the violence in them anyway, because their parents clearly do, and then, they're raised in the environment where it's all they see. It's all they know."
"Then what are we doing?" She doesn't like him, but he makes her wonder what she would be doing right now if her father had raised her. If she saw him, if he was the nurturer and not the alcoholic.
She tries to remember all the times Elliot tried to convince her that she was not two separate parts, one of her mother and one of her father, but this asshole, he is wearing a Rolex, he let's her know that she is everything he tells her she is not.
"What?" He leans forward, elbows resting on his desk, his eyes looking her over.
"If all of these kids are destined to be their parents, then what are we doing? We're not stopping anything, we're just putting in hold for a few hours, maybe years, but it's not really doing anything," she shrugs, wondering when everything became so hopeless.
She wonders what Elliot is doing.
"I'm just saying, science has proven-"
"Science has proven a lot of things. And disproven a lot of things. That cross around your neck, Mark – science has disproven that. Evolution, the big bang. Why the hell are you doing this if you think science has proven that all we're doing is stopping the inevitable for the time being?"
He isn't her partner; he's the thing she has to work with. He doesn't understand, and he doesn't care to. Being away from Elliot she comes to realize how unique he is. How unique they are.
Looking to Mark, blinking at him, trying to see him through the asshole in front of her, she wonders if he would ever take the time to understand her. She wonders if everything that she will ever do is in vain. She wonders if one life really is enough to make her stay – if saving the world will come one by one, if everything takes forever.
For all of this, she knows how much she needs him.
"Make it better for a kid for a day," he sits back. "Sometimes that's all you can do, Olivia. You can't save everyone. You can't save the world."
Elliot would have never told her that.
&&&&&&
"Gone already?" Fin sits down at the empty desk across from Elliot.
"He looked like her kid," he offers simply, sitting back, running his hands over his face.
"It's a tough unit," he doesn't know what else to say, doesn't know if brining up Olivia is okay yet.
It's easy to see that he can't do this without her. That he's crippled without her. It doesn't take a detective to see that, it takes a person, a friend.
"Yeah, I know. I don't blame her." He understands for all the times he saw his children in the victims.
"How's Olivia doin' in domestic?" He treads lightly, letting Elliot draw his own conclusions.
"If she doesn't want to be here, it's not going to be a help. She doesn't feel the same about it that she did," he says simply, and Fin gets the hint.
"Elliot!" Cragen is standing in the doorway of his office, and Elliot nods at Fin before getting up and heading towards his office.
"What's up, Captain?" He shuts the door behind him and falls into the seat in front of Cragen's desk.
"With Jill being gone, it's back to the desk for a few days until we can figure something out, find a replacement," he explains, but Elliot has heard it before, so he knows this is nothing more than a technicality.
Jill's eyes, they were green, anyway, and when he looked at her across the desk – they were thick with green envy and not a chocolate ocean.
"Yeah, yeah, I know." His head falls back, and he lets out a breath.
"You seen her lately?" Cragen is looking at his desk when Elliot looks to him.
He wonders if he is playing dumb, if he really doesn't know that he and Olivia, that she is the last thing he sees before he goes to bed, the first thing he sees when he wakes up.
Elliot, he doesn't know when living with Olivia, when fusing their lives together, became normal and the default.
"Yeah, I've seen her a lot," he nods, and Cragen sits back in his chair.
Cragen doesn't look like he knows that they've been playing house.
"Good," the word is genuine, and Elliot bites the inside of his cheek, looks to the far wall, wonders what she's doing. "Well, if you need anything –" he starts, but Elliot stops him.
"I'll let you know," he finishes for him and pushes himself up out of the chair, and when he opens the door to the office, he stops abruptly at what he sees.
"Hey, we wrapped up early, so I thought I'd just come by to see if you were done," Olivia spins around in her chair, looking at him, and he has to look away because he had forgotten how much he missed this until this moment.
He missed all of her.
"Oh, um, uh," he didn't have the words; this was the first time since she'd transferred that she was back in the department. At her desk, across from him. He would like to think that she could feel all she was missing.
"Where's your partner?" Olivia turned around to her empty desk, remembering how it was when she was there, where her pictures were, how her papers were scattered about.
Elliot felt how empty it was.
"Elliot," a woman said, almost on cue, and Olivia turned around quickly to see a brown haired woman with green envy eyes approaching.
Her stomach dropped.
"Jill, hi, is everything okay? You forget something?" Elliot takes a step towards her, and Olivia feels like she is intruding, like she is a visitor in this part of his life, and she hates it.
She wants a drink. Vodka and sprite. One ice cube.
"No, actually," she looks to Olivia before continuing, and Elliot backs up into Olivia's old desk, Jill's old desk, and he sits himself down on the corner.
He feels the opportunity closing, and wonders if Olivia feels it too.
"Oh, Jill, this is Olivia Benson, she used to be my partner here, transferred over to Domestic a few months ago," he explains, a sad excuse for an introduction, but Olivia can feel that it's all business.
"Nice to meet you," she leans forward and shakes Olivia's hand before adjusting the leather backpack she has slung over her shoulder.
Unconsciously, Olivia checks her finger for a ring.
"Everything alright?" Elliot crosses his arms across his chest.
"Actually, I just came back to talk to Cragen. I was at the park with my son, and I realized that he's the reason I should be doing this, not the reason that I shouldn't be," she tucks her hair behind her ear, and Olivia wants to tell her that her optimism, it will not last.
She cannot stop another murder; she cannot help the death of another child.
She wants to yell, too, scream loud and hard because she misses seeing Elliot across from her, she misses this and him and she doesn't want him falling into Jill and protecting her because she needs him to do that for her.
"I'll be in the car," she says as she gets up and heads out of the station, Elliot's head falling as he admits to himself that he too is disappointed.
&&&&&&
"You know I didn't replace you," he says after hours without communicating. She is finishing dinner, the table set for two, Elliot leaning against the wall of the kitchen as she places a bowl of pasta and one of salad in the middle of the table.
"Never said you did. I left, I understand," she confesses her mistake, and Elliot nods. "I never even said I wanted to come back."
He feels beaten.
"If you did, I mean, you could always talk to Cragen, Liv," he says the words timidly, and Olivia stops for a minute at the counter, her back to him. She takes a deep breath, her back arching as it fills with the air between them, fills with pieces of words still unspoken.
"Daniels is an asshole," she starts, spinning around, leaning up against the counter. "I don't mind the unit that much, but he – he's such an asshole," she shakes her head, looking away from him, and he goes to her slowly, looking her over as if he could see all the cuts and bruises that have been acquired.
"What did he do to you? Want me to talk to him?" She lets herself smile at the intensity of his words, at how she feels him protecting her.
"No." The word is firm, hard, telling. "No, El, he just needs to get his head out of his ass," she shrugs, and Elliot understands that her eyes are holding thoughts, secrets, dreams, that she cannot say.
He understands because his are holding them, too.
"He say something to you? Overstep anything?" He starts to feel the jealousy building within him, realizing that he no longer has all of her.
"Nothing like that, Elliot," she swears he looks relieved. And he is. He wants to let her know what he tells himself before they fall asleep, he wants to let her know that everything in his life has been made better because at 4:30am she is next to him, breathing in time with him.
She wants him to hold her, and she knows, in that one thought, that this has gone where it shouldn't. She knows that this is where she isn't supposed to be. Playing house, making dinner, sinking farther.
"Let's eat," she turns around and takes two pieces of chicken from the pan, placing them on a plate and carrying them over to the table.
Halfway through his dinner, halfway through his pasta and chicken and make believe game with Olivia, he says it, he leaps, his heart in his throat, he says, "Liv, you've been here for a while, you think about staying? Maybe move in for a while?"
The fork hits the plate with a loud clang, and she looks to him, her eyes searching him for his intention.
"Um, what?" She is caught off guard, unprepared, blindsided.
"I didn't mean to, or, I don't know," he sits back, putting down his fork, wiping his mouth with his napkin, "just thought maybe you could lease your apartment or something, sublet, even, maybe you'd like to have more than a few outfits here. It makes sense," he tried to defend the proposal.
"Oh, Elliot," she knows she has to do this alone. "El," she reaches across the table and takes his hand, runs her fingers throughout the valleys of his knuckles, "I, uh, or, actually – Elliot," she looks away from him, "I wanted to let you know I need to go," she can't be strong because here, with him, this is how she started to build a foundation again.
This is where she found everything that she thought she had lost. In these walls, in this place that she felt deserved the title of home.
But, she couldn't hide here forever.
"Go?" It was the only word he could find, and he pulled his hand out from hers.
"Elliot, what you've done for me, what you've – all of – for everything," she cannot finish her thoughts because she feels like this is goodbye, like without working with him or living with him this is saying goodbye.
Not forever, but for what they had.
"Stay," he begs, and she feels him breaking, because she is too.
"I can't stay here forever, I need to work on me, I need to not have to have you around, because you're not always going to be around."
He resists yelling that she is wrong.
"I want whatever is best for you, but this isn't – you can't just expect to pick up and leave and we'll talk every once in a while, I mean –"
He remembers what it was like when his children started walking, when he had no other choice than to watch them stumble and fall and do it on their own and he knows that now he has to do the same for Olivia.
He cannot hold her hand forever.
"This isn't because of you, Elliot, I don't want you to take this personally. I just need to know that I can do this on my own, that I can be okay out there," she motions towards the window, the outside world, all that they have hidden from.
He knows that she is right, but he isn't okay with it nonetheless.
"Oh, hey, yeah," he clears the emotion from his throat, blinks the tears from his eyes, shakes the disappointment from within him, "yeah, I know that. And I want whatever is going to be best for you, Liv, I do," he is trying to convince himself, too.
"I couldn't do this without you," she starts, but Elliot cannot do this. He refuses to make this a period. He refuses to accept the punctuation to what they were, he can't let them say goodbye.
"Hey, want to go get ice cream?" Elliot pushes himself up from the table and begins clearing the plates from the table.
"Elliot, El," she gets up and puts her hand on his arm, stopping him, "we can talk about this," she offers, and he gives her his smile.
"I don't think we can," he says honestly, because he knows that he cannot do it. "So, ice cream? Dairy Queen has these new things I wanted to try –"
"Elliot," she says his name slowly, catching the broken pieces of him in her eyes.
"C'mon," he is heading out the door, and all that is left for her to do is follow.
&&&&&&
"So, uh," he stands in the doorway, in the threshold of yesterday and tomorrow.
She says nothing, wraps her arms around him, her head nuzzling up to his neck, her tears falling into the well of his shoulder. He grabs at her, pulling her as close to him as she will go, and he kisses the top of her head with short, rapid kisses.
"I'm gonna miss you, kid," he says as she pulls away, and he kisses her forehead softly.
He wants to tell her that everything is going to be okay, but he knows that he cannot lie to her.
She missed him already.
"Call, anytime, if you need anything, or want to talk or anything like that, okay? Anytime." He needed her to know that he was still there, that she could not get rid of him so easily.
He didn't like saying goodbye to her.
He could do it in the morning because he used to know that he would see her at nite. He could do it at nite because he knew that he would see her in the morning.
But today, a mid afternoon on Sunday, he was assured of nothing. He did not know what he would find when he saw her again. He missed her right there, looking at her, standing before her.
"Thank you, Elliot, for everything. I love you so much," she said the words, but both knew their context, and Elliot hid the disappointment from her, and Olivia hid hers from him.
"Love you too, Olivia," he pulled her in for one last hug. "You're the strongest person I know," he clears his throat and places his hand on her cheek.
In another place, and at another time, this would mean so much more, the words, their meanings, they would all be different. He wonders, looking at her, if there will ever be a right place for all of that, for all of this.
"You need to go," she can't stand here with him, like this, forever, because she knows that she will fall apart.
And the words, for all that he knows, he cannot find any, because he is shaking, he knows that he is about to leave the one thing that kept him together, the one thing that made him get through this – the only person in the entire world that he considers his friend, the only person he knows he would die for, do anything to save, and when he goes to say something he can find no words, but rather he takes her in his mind, takes a picture of her tears and her eyes and her – and she does the same of him.
A picture says a thousand words.
&&&&&&
epilogue to follow.