A/N: Couldn't leave you all hanging too long after that. Also couldn't restrain myself from starting on the falling action here.

Disclaimer: Still not mine.


Elliot had faced a lot of terrifying things in his life: combat situations in the Marines, his father, watching Kathy give birth to the kids, getting shot at by scumbag perps. But this… walking into the cribs with Kathy after Olivia's complete and utter ass of a husband told her in the middle of the squad room that he had another child with his partner? No, this was likely the most terrifying moment of his life.

Kathy wouldn't look at him. She crossed the room to the dirty windows to stare out at Manhattan, or what she could see of it from the precinct. They weren't in a high rise, so she was likely just staring into the same floor of the building across the street.

He didn't know what to say to her or how to start this conversation. "I'm sorry" felt too little too late, and quite frankly, too vague. What was he sorry for? For cheating? For not telling her? He surely wasn't actually sorry about Chelsea's existence, and if he was being honest with himself, he wasn't actually sorry about the night he spent with Olivia either.

It had been a fun little tryst and secret for him up until they met again, but after he got to know her, it became even more important. Once he got to know her and trust her as his friend and his partner, he never regretted knowing what she looked like, what she sounded like, what she felt like in the middle of a sweet surrender. He was never sorry he had the memory of her curled up against his chest with his nose buried in her hair, holding her close to him. Because he knew if they'd met under strictly professional circumstances he would have always wondered what it would have felt like. She wasn't so important to him because of what they did in that motel. She would have been important to him in any position, any form, any life, any universe. And at least in this one he didn't have to live with that ache of not knowing.

He was still fumbling for what to say when Kathy finally spoke.

"Do you think if we never had Maureen we would have gotten married?" Kathy asked, not turning from the window.

The question was something he didn't want to picture, a life without Maureen. Sure, she had been a surprise, a shock even. But she was the best kind of surprise.

"What?" Elliot asked, not daring to get any closer to her, gripping the bars of one of the bunks with his hand.

"I said, do you think if I hadn't gotten pregnant with Maureen would we have gotten married?" she said again.

"Of course," Elliot said on instinct. "It's what we planned on. Don't you think so?"

Kathy brought her hand up to the glass slowly and touched something only she could see.

"No," she said. "I don't. I think we would have led very different lives."

He paused for a moment, trying to see if he understood what she was saying.

"You mean, you regret…" he started. "Did you want to have a…"

"No, Elliot, I didn't want to have an abortion," Kathy snapped, finally spinning around to look at him. "The second I realized she was in my stomach I loved her. But if she hadn't come along I think things would have been much different. I can't believe you don't."

His head was reeling. This wasn't necessarily what he'd expected to talk about at all.

"I mean I still would have gone into the Marines, Kath," he said. "I wasn't really college material. And I still probably would have come back and become a cop and put a ring on your finger. And maybe Maureen and the rest of them still would have come along, just later. I mean, how do you think it all would have gone?"

He could see the tears in the corners of her eyes and her lip quivering as she shook her head.

"I would have gone to Yale, like I'd planned all my life," Kathy said. "Not to Queens Community College. And I would have studied abroad in Rome, and become a library director, or a museum curator, or hell, who knows, even an author. I had dreams Elliot. Dreams I didn't get to live while you lived out everything you expected to do, and then some."

He knew she'd always wanted to go to Yale, and they'd talked about it. She'd been accepted and everything. The plan had been for her to go to school and him to go into the Marines and they'd finish up about the same time and move home to Queens and get married. Never once back then or since had she ever expressed a desire to go overseas or have some big career.

"You still could have done all that," Elliot said. "We could have found a way to make it work. We would have found a way."

"No Elliot," she said. "We wouldn't have."

"I know you're hurt right now," he said.

"I'm numb," Kathy said, cutting him off. "I don't actually have the mental capacity to be hurt right now because I haven't processed it all yet. But since we're sharing secrets today, the day I found out I was pregnant with Maureen, I was going to break up with you that night at the bonfire. I was going to tell you that I was going away to school and you were going to boot camp and we needed some time apart to figure out who we were as individuals because we'd been a couple since we were 14. But I never got the chance because the stick turned pink."

It was too much for Elliot to take in at once and he sank to the bottom bunk where he was standing, still facing her.

"So these last 30 years have all just been a lie?" he said.

"No," Kathy said. "I loved you. I still love you even though that little performance downstairs has me questioning why I do. But I just don't think if things had been different we would have ended up here."

"This isn't the conversation I expected to have," Elliot finally admitted.

"Me either, to be honest," Kathy said. "I'm stalling. I want to ask you how and where and why everything happened with Olivia, but I don't know if I actually want the answer because it's going to bring all these insecurities to the surface, and I don't know if I can handle them."

"What insecurities?" Elliot asked. "I'm the one who should be ashamed here. Not you."

"You picked another woman over me," Kathy said, her voice getting louder. "You slept with your gorgeous, perfect, incredibly sexy partner who looks nothing like me and then you acted like you didn't even know her. You encouraged me to invite her into our home after you'd already been in her bed. Call me crazy, but that's just a floodgate for insecurities."

"It wasn't like that," Elliot said. "It didn't… I didn't intend to cheat on you and it was only one time."

"Right, sure," Kathy said. "You expect me to believe you slept together one time, had a kid, then became partners at work and spend all that time alone together in squad cars and on stakeouts and not once has anything else happened?"

"I mean, I guess you don't have to believe me," Elliot said. "But it's true."

"I think I need to know the whole story," Kathy said, sitting down on the bunk across from him.

"It happened the night I interviewed for detective," Elliot said. "We'd finished dinner and you told me you wanted to break our engagement and move back with your parents. You took the car and I was walking home in the rain and this girl pulled up and offered me a ride. I didn't want to bring a stranger to the front door so we drove around for a little bit and before I could ask her to drop me off, a deer ran in front of the car and she hydroplaned into a curb and popped the tire. She took the car to an all-night service station who told her it wouldn't be ready until morning, and we went to the motel next door to wait. I thought we were done Kathy. I thought it was over."

"So within hours you jumped into bed with the first beautiful woman you found?" she said.

"I never meant for it to happen," Elliot said. "I never meant to be in a motel room with her and let things take over like that. But I was hurt. You were going to leave and take Marueen and Kathleen who we hadn't even named yet away from me."

"It's always really been about them, hasn't it?" Kathy asked.

"The kids are my world, Kath," he said. "The fact that I get to be their father. That I get to be everything to them that my father wasn't to me. It's the most important thing in my life. It's above my job, it's about everything."

"Even me," Kathy said, as a statement, not a question.

"Yes," Elliot admitted. "They're above everything, even you."

"And that includes Chelsea," Kathy said, another statement.

"It does," he admitted, dropping his eyes to his hands.

"How did you find out that she was yours?" Kathy asked. "And when?"

"The next morning when I woke up, Olivia was gone. I didn't even know her name at the time," Elliot said. "And I didn't even recognize her at first when I met her for the first time in Cragen's office. But then she laughed and it triggered something in my memory, and she had Chelsea with her. And when I knelt down to say hello to her, I saw my own eyes staring back at me and I put it all together."

"And Olivia?" Kathy said.

"Got Chelsea and Cragen out of the room and told me she was married and she'd work too hard to get to SVU for me to ruin it, so we were going to keep things a secret," he said. "Honestly, if I hadn't recognized her, I still probably wouldn't know. I don't think she ever would have told me."

"So all this about wanting her to meet the kids and everything, it's because she's their sister?" Kathy asked.

"Yes," Elliot said. "I wanted them all to get to know one another. Even if it was just as friends."

"And who else knows?" Kathy asked.

"Aside from everyone in the squad room now?" Elliot asked. "My mother, and that's it."

"Your mother knows?" Kathy yelled. "She's been living with us for six months and she's known all this time? You told her but not me?"

"She figured it out on her own the day we picked her up from jail," Elliot said. "Asked Olivia to see a picture of her family and put it all together."

Kathy rubbed her temples with the tips of her fingers, looking as if she was trying to turn back time.

"I feel like such an idiot," she said. "I went to see Father Hogan because we'd been growing apart and he suggested getting to know you better before entering a separation. And that's why I invited them to Kathleen's party. I'm so stupid."

"You wanted a separation?" Elliot asked. "Since when?"

"Apparently since you started keeping secrets from me," Kathy said. "Couldn't you feel it, how far apart we were growing?"

Elliot thought about it. He hadn't felt it. Of course, he hadn't been home much to feel it.

"I felt you trying to be a lot more understanding lately," he said. "It was nice. It had me thinking about telling you all this anyway, without that dickwad's help."

"What, you were going to tell me you had another child out there and what?" Kathy asked.

"I don't know, beg for your forgiveness?" Elliot said, scratching the back of his neck. "Let you know why sometimes I'd be picking up Olivia's daughter from school."

"So you never planned on getting a divorce?" she asked. "You just planned on telling me like you told me you bought extra cereal at the grocery store and we'd just keep moving on with our lives as normal?"

It sounded ridiculous when it came out of Kathy's mouth. He knew it had all been a pipe dream, that he could have all five kids, and his wife, and his partner. But hearing her break it down made everything sound just that much more insane.

"I hadn't really gotten that far yet," he said.

Kathy paused for a minute and rubbed her lips together before speaking again.

"Are you in love with me?" she asked.

"You know I love you," Elliot said.

"That's not what I asked," Kathy said. "I asked if you were in love with me."

Elliot thought about it for a moment. What was the difference? Was there a difference?

"Are you in love with me?" Elliot asked.

"No, I don't think so," Kathy said, and it stung.

"I need more than that," he said.

"I care about you very much, Elliot," Kathy said. "You do a hard job to keep a roof over our heads, and you've been trying to be home more. You're truly an amazing father and you're many of the things I hope our girls look for in their spouses and Dickie emulates as he grows into a man. I am comfortable with you and I know I'm safe with you. But those aren't the same things as being in love."

"I don't think I understand the difference," Elliot said. "That is the actual definition of love, isn't it?"

It surprised him when Kathy laughed.

"Honey, no, that's only part of being in love with someone," she said. "True that all comes along with the package. But being in love is like when you look at someone and they're the only other person in the room. You want to be right next to them all the time, tell them all your secrets and share with them all your greatest accomplishments. Your eyes search for them in every crowd, and your hand or your arm, or your body finds them and wants to make them as physically close to you as possible whenever you can. There's just a spark to it that you can't explain. That's being in love."

Elliot felt his stomach churn because then no he wasn't in love with Kathy. But he was in love with Olivia.

"Elliot, you don't have to sit there looking like that," she said. "I already know your answer. You're not in love with me either."

"But I want to be," Elliot said.

"I've known for a while that you're in love with Olivia," Kathy said.

Elliot sputtered and was going to try to deny it.

"Don't," she said. "Trust me. I understand that you've been trying not to be. And the writing has been on the wall for a while now, but I didn't want to admit it. But I think it would be better for us, for all of us, if we owned up to the truth."

Elliot couldn't take it any more and he crossed to sit on the opposite bunk with her.

"But I don't want you out of my life," Elliot said. "And I don't want you to take the kids away because I screwed up. Thirty years is a hell of a long time, Kath. I can't just lose you."

"Things change, El," Kathy said.

"I think this conversation would have gone better if you cussed me out," he said. "Not been such an absolute saint."

"It hurts that you didn't tell me yourself," Kathy said. "It hurts that it happened at all. But maybe this is the push we needed, the fresh start we needed."

"To do what?" he asked.

"To be the people we were always meant to be," Kathy said. "To be where we were always supposed to be in the world."

"I think I am where I'm supposed to be," Elliot said. "For the most part."

"But I don't," Kathy said. "And honestly, letting you be the one to screw up and not having to tell you I want to go find myself makes this sound a whole lot less selfish."

"Are you asking for a divorce?" Elliot asked.

"Not today," Kathy said. "I think we've had enough excitement for today. But soon."

"Please don't serve me the papers at work," he said, leaning his head on her shoulder. "That's what started this whole thing in the first place."

"I'll hand deliver them, if that's allowed," she said, wrapping her arm around his shoulders.

"I meant what I said about not wanting to lose you," Elliot said. "You're a great mother and a wonderful person."

"Elliot, we have four high school and college graduations, four weddings, countless holidays, and hopefully a boatload of grandchildren to go," she said. "You're never going to be able to get rid of me that easily."

"Good, because I don't want to," he said.

They sat there in silence for a few minutes.

"I truly am sorry, for all of it," Elliot said.

"I'm sad about it," Kathy said. "And I'm scared to start something new. But what if this really is for the best?"

"I guess that's all we can hope for," Elliot said, leaning up to press a kiss to her forehead.

Just then, the door to the cribs squeaked open.

"Have we calmed down up here?" Cragen asked, entering the room.

"By we I assume you mean me," Elliot asked.

"Always," Cragen said.

"Yes, we've calmed down," Kathy said.

"Well then you're both free to go," Cragen said. "Elliot, take the day. I'm going to tell your partner to do the same."

"Alright," Elliot said, as Cragen turned around to leave.

"I'm going to head home," Kathy said.

"If you can give me 10 minutes or so to get my desk in order, maybe we could go to lunch," Elliot said. "Maybe talk things over some more. Discuss options."

Kathy let out a deep sigh, but nodded.

"Okay," she said. "I'll just hang out up here until you're ready."

"Thank you," he said, pressing another soft kiss to her forehead before heading for the stairs and the bullpen.

He wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel now. The secret was out and Kathy had taken it much better than he expected, but his marriage was about to end. Everything he'd built for himself was in complete turmoil, but something inside him felt like everything was going to be okay eventually, even if it had to get worse before it could get better.


A/N: Spoiler Alert: I highly doubt the next conversation we see is going to be as nice as this one. Lemme know what you think, and thank you for the overwhelming response with the last chapter! I was NERVOUS that climax wasn't going to live up to your expectations. Hopefully you'll be just has happy with the rest. 11 more to go!