3 - NOSTALGIA
"Betty was my neighbor. She lived right next door, and she had a boyfriend who came over every night. I had to listen to her moan and scream while the headboard hit the wall right behind my own bed."
"Did that make you mad?"
"Yes, at first. Then I started wondering what it would be like to be the one with her, making her scream like that, fucking her so hard the whole building had to know about it."
"She didn't go to the police?"
"I don't know if she did. She never saw my face. After Jackie, I realized I couldn't be that impulsive… At the very least, I needed to hide my face."
"Angela worked at this coffee shop I used to go to. I just wanted her to notice me, but she never did."
"And so you stalked her?"
"Then there was Becky… She never even saw me coming."
"After a while, I didn't even know who they were. I would just get this urge…and go out, looking for the perfect opportunity."
"The way it made me feel… It gave me a thrill that nothing else did. It was like an addiction. I didn't want to be like that, but I've learned a long time ago that there's no changing who you truly are. So I made peace with it and went on with my life."
"I wish I could tell you I felt bad afterwards. But I didn't. I felt accomplished. Proud, even."
He spoke like he was telling old war stories at the dinner table. He spoke like he missed those moments, like he wished he could relive them. He spoke like he was dictating his life's work so an attentive writer could portray every detail as accurately as possible in his forthcoming memoir.
In a way, that was exactly what those strange interviews felt like to Olivia. Like she was responsible for taking inventory of this man's past glories and making sure they were remembered after his passing. So far, that was about the extent of what she was able to do about them. In her mind, she wanted those victims' stories to at least be heard, known. She'd be their witness even if there was nothing else she could do for them.
But then again, she was also witnessing his story, as much as she tried to escape it or remain immune to whatever trace of humanity he might still hold, buried under so many layers of unfathomable acts.
"I never imagined myself getting married…but then I met Elise," he told her at one point. "She was…just a good person, all around. Everything I wasn't. But for some reason…she saw something in me. I'll never know what it was. Oh, and she was so beautiful. Beautiful like you, Olivia. She was… Whenever I saw her, I just couldn't keep from smiling."
Olivia could almost picture this beautiful woman who was all good, seeing a broken man she could fix. Blind to his deep-seated hatred of women. "Did she…know?" she couldn't help but ask, shying away from specifying what she was referring to for some reason, like she was helping him protect Elise. Like she was protecting him. Keeping the secrets he was entrusting her with.
He bit his thin lower lip with his slightly-yellowed teeth. "No. I did everything I could to keep it all from her. She knew there was a darkness inside of me, she tried her best to shed light upon it. But she didn't know what it was."
Olivia's heart broke for Elise, for just how dark the darkness she was trying to brighten up with a single, flimsy candle was. She could taste some disappointment of her own as well, even though she didn't understand the reason for it. "So you didn't stop after you met her?" she asked, sounding pathetic to herself with the implied notion that falling in love would have fixed a rapist.
She knew better. She should know better.
His huge smile at her glitch of innocence made her feel like a stupid, little girl, and she had to look away. "There's no such thing as a magic cure for this thing I have, Olivia. I was surprised I was even capable of loving someone like that. I was pleased with myself for it, too."
She nodded her defeat, her glance slowly making its way back to him as she noted that he kept referring to his wife in the past tense. "What happened to her?"
"She died…five years ago. Cancer, too. I got to see it happening to her, and now, I get to experience it myself. Talk about karma, huh?"
Olivia wished her heart wouldn't ache for this man, but it did. It saw no difference between his pain or anybody else's, it had complete disregard for the fact that maybe he deserved it. Her heart only saw the pain, and ached with it nonetheless.
"You and Elise never had children?" she asked, and she could almost feel Elliot's what are you doing? radiating from the wall.
The old man shook his head vehemently. "No," he stretched out his vowel sound to emphasize the negative. "I'm a bad man, Olivia. Maybe even a terrible man. I wouldn't want to…pass it on. When I die, the world will be a tiny bit better than the day before."
Olivia wasn't surprised when it pierced her heart like the thickest, sharpest needle. A wicked adrenaline injection, bringing her worst fears back to life. "Do you really believe that? That evil can be…passed on?"
He chuckled while she asked herself why ask his opinion. "Oh yes. And good can be passed on, too. I'm sure you inherited a lot of good genes from someone."
"I wonder who," she found herself muttering inside an honest, surprisingly flattered laughter, and her inner voice of judgment told her that her own bad genes were making her laugh with a rapist and feel illegitimately validated by his opinion of her.
She was drowning in contradiction.
And then, he would just flood the grey room with black and white all over again, and his darkness would envelop her like a thick, suffocating coat of mold.
"Annie was our neighbor. I knew I shouldn't mess with someone who lived so close, but I couldn't help myself. I remember Elise telling me about what had happened to that poor girl, and knowing she had no idea that I had anything to do with it made me feel…like a god."
With her energy quite low after hearing about yet another victim she didn't have enough information about to do anything tangible, but just enough information about for her stomach to reject any possible plans for lunch, Olivia walked out of the interrogation room. It was the third day of interviews with the man they only knew as Paul. As expected, Elliot's eyes were boring holes into her as she moved, so she avoided his stare and focused on Dr. George Huang's instead.
If it were up to Elliot, she knew Paul would be long gone, and she'd be sitting safely at her desk across from him, catching up on a pile of perfectly harmless paperwork. "I just don't understand why we keep giving this guy what he wants," he said the moment the door clicked closed.
Olivia turned to look at Paul through the glass. He sat there with his paper cup filled with water, his fingers around it, squeezing slightly, careful not to spill any of the contents. He groaned as he stretched out his legs under the table while Olivia felt her own muscles strained with the tension of it all.
She knew Elliot had good reason to be worried, but his concern could be overwhelming, especially when it came along with his touch and the lowest registers of his voice — they were dangerously disarming when she already felt robbed of her basic defenses.
You know you can talk to me, right? His hand still weighed on her shoulder.
"What do you think?" she addressed Dr. Huang, walking past Elliot, his apprehension, and his remark.
"He's very collected," Huang replied, his eyes never leaving the subject of his analysis. "He acts like he has everything under control, every step of the way. Except for his illness. That's his only vulnerability."
Olivia nodded at the FBI psychiatrist, wondering if he was about to confirm — or deny — any of the other hypotheses going through her mind. What were the chances of some of those stories having been concocted solely to entertain her, play with her? "Do you think he's making any of this up?"
Huang started shaking his head before she even finished speaking. "Absolutely not. That's probably the thing I'm most certain about. Maybe the names, the timeline, that kind of detail could be made up, but it just doesn't seem to me like he's lying. He doesn't show any of the common indicators."
"Maybe he's just very good at lying," Elliot countered, his chin tilted up challengingly as he crossed his arms.
Olivia sighed, her eyes rolling back impatiently. "What does he have to gain by lying?"
Elliot arched his eyebrow at her. "What does he have to gain by being here at all?"
He was right. Three days in and they were no closer to finding anything concrete about the man or the crimes he claimed to have committed. He was careful to only use first names for all the people he mentioned, and there was no guarantee that those were even real as Huang had just pointed out.
The only leverage they had been able to gather was a pair of chopsticks and a couple of plastic cups from the day before, when Olivia had made sure Paul stayed longer by ordering them chinese. Not that she had been able to swallow a lot more on top of the stories he was telling her — he hadn't been able to eat much either, blaming it on the queasiness brought on by chemo.
Olivia knew this was not the type of perp to overlook things. He knew they were getting his DNA and prints. If he had been able to rape so many women for so many years, flying under the radar, that meant he knew exactly what to avoid to make sure he wouldn't get caught. Maybe he just knew for a fact that his DNA and his prints had never made it into the system. Maybe he was counting on that as he slathered those chopsticks with his spit and used all his fingers to play with the plastic cups while he only pretended to sip on the water.
But as those were their only leads, Olivia chose to hang onto them for the time being, hoping that all the listening to crimes that she could do nothing about was somehow going to pay off.
"You buying him lunch again today?" Elliot asked, the sarcasm pointedly poised as they followed Huang out into the hallway, an annoyed chuckle her only reaction to his implied criticism.
Captain Cragen seemed eager for the psychiatrist's evaluation when the three of them walked through the doors of the squad room. "So what do you make of our mystery guy and his desire to confess his sins to Olivia, Doc?"
Huang nodded with an enigmatic smile as all heads turned in his direction. "Whatever he has in mind, Olivia is the target for sure. He's playing with her the whole time, the typical cat and mouse routine. It's like everything he says has the purpose of getting a specific reaction from her."
"It's what I've been telling you…" Elliot muttered under his breath, loud enough for Olivia to hear it as she sat in her chair.
"But he's telling the truth," she pointed out, based on the doctor's previous statement that her partner had heard just as well as she had.
"Yes," Huang confirmed with a hand gesture. "I believe the experiences he's talking about have really happened, and that this is the precise reason he's so careful not to give any details that would allow us to identify anybody."
Cragen snorted a dry chuckle. "What's the point of confessing if he doesn't want us to be able to do anything about it?"
"We just can't keep wasting time on this guy," Elliot shook his head as he sat on the edge of Olivia's desk and rolled up his shirtsleeves, a rare occasion these days in which he was wearing a suit and a tie. He shrugged at her. "He's not giving us anything."
Olivia huffed, spinning her chair to face him. "Well, it's not like we have any urgent matters to tend to, so I say we keep listening to him until he slips up and gives us something."
"Well, that's not exactly the case anymore," Cragen intervened. "While you were entertaining our special guest, we were called in for a double homicide in Washington Heights. Fin and Munch are at the crime scene now, and I'm gonna need the two of you, too. And you, Doc."
Olivia felt her stomach sink. She knew this was bound to happen sooner or later: an urgent case would come in and take precedence over her wild goose chase, but her gut told her to insist. "Captain…"
Cragen waved his hands and pursed his lips. "I'm sorry, Liv, I know you're invested in this, but you gotta admit it's not going anywhere."
"Did Warner or forensics get back to us with anything on the prints or DNA?" she asked, desperately seeking the smallest justification to go on.
Elliot scoffed, looking way too satisfied. "Take a guess… His prints are not in the system. No word on the DNA yet."
She ignored him once again. "Captain, let me at least take a last crack at him… I'll tell him if he doesn't give me anything concrete, I can't continue working with him."
Elliot stood up straight in a rushed move. "Let me go in with her this time."
Olivia and Elliot both stared at Cragen with pleading expressions, each making their own silent request.
"Do it," the captain conceded, turning his stare from her to him. "But let's change it up a little bit. Elliot, I want you there as well. Make it clear it's his last chance."
Seemed like her last chance, too.
"No lunch today?" Paul asked with a smirk that disappeared when Elliot walked in right behind Olivia, and she couldn't help the smile at the fact that the latter had asked her the same question earlier.
"You said you weren't hungry," she replied like nothing out of the ordinary was happening, dropping on the table a bag of chips and a soda can and deliberately disregarding the unwelcome feeling of safety granted by Elliot's presence as it invaded her. "But I got you this in case you've changed your mind."
"I haven't," Paul rasped, his eyes glued on Elliot, and Olivia knew lunch was not what he was talking about. "Who the hell is he?"
Elliot grinned widely, that hint of sarcasm he loved hitting perps with. "We've met, don't you remember?"
"This is my partner, Detective Stabler," Olivia explained, diplomatically.
"I do remember, but I wish I didn't." His focus changed back to Olivia. "I don't like him. I thought I made myself clear when I said I would only speak to you."
She grinned to herself. "Oh, no, Paul. You've made yourself perfectly clear. The thing is, you haven't really given us much to go on here."
"What the hell? I've been telling you my whole life. Everything I've done. You think that's easy for me?" Olivia recognized his feigned outrage, but it still affected her more than she would have wanted to admit even to herself — for some reason, she didn't like the idea of letting him down.
She scoffed to cover any outward signs of discomfort. "Something tells me you know very well that there's nothing we can do about the crimes you've confessed to so far. They're all well outside the statute of limitations and quite possibly outside of our jurisdiction, too."
Elliot approached the table from the other side, leaning on the surface with splayed palms. "So you see… It's starting to feel like you're just wasting our time, and that makes us wonder if we should keep complying with your demands."
"Olivia… I don't like this guy," Paul reiterated, and she was astounded by the intimacy he instilled into his words this time, like he knew her much longer than three days, like Elliot was the intruder. She was dumbfounded by the fact that the offending notion didn't seem so far-fetched. "Can you please ask him to go?"
"Well, what a coincidence," Elliot quipped, banging on the table with his hand for effect as he kept his voice controlled. "I don't like you either!"
With a deep breath of apparent resignation, Paul leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms, his head turned exclusively toward Olivia. "Is he always this annoying? Quite the short fuse, I gather. Pretty territorial, too, all ruffled feathers around you. Please tell me you're not seeing him? 'Cause I would have to say, Liv, this is not the guy for you."
The next second, Elliot's hands were curled around the collar of Paul's shirt, pulling him from his laid back attitude. "You think you know her? You think you can call her Liv after three days of pointless chatting?"
"Elliot!" Olivia hissed, and he immediately let go of the man, straightening out his shirt and giving him a pat on the shoulder with a wide smile, smoothing out his momentaneous outburst before turning away like nothing had happened. He started pacing around the far side of the room toward the barred window with his hands behind his back.
Paul coughed a couple of times, recomposing himself and fixing his posture in his chair. "Pointless, huh? Well, I was saving this one for last, Olivia, but since I don't see you setting your partner straight, I'll tell you something you won't find pointless at all."
Olivia smiled, eyeing her perp with a glimmer of doubt from where she still stood, immobile, next to the table on his right side. "Please, I'm ready."
"But he has to leave. And I don't want him watching from the other side of the window either. I know he's been watching."
"Sorry, pal," Elliot pulled a chair for himself and sank down, mimicking Paul's position with stretched out legs and crossed arms. "Not an option this time."
Olivia hesitated, looking away as she felt Paul's stare burning her. She pulled the other chair and sat next to Elliot, raising her head and crossing her arms to match both men's stances. "Start giving me more than made-up first names from cases I can't prosecute, and I'll consider asking him to leave."
She couldn't do anything to hide the heat that colored her cheeks with something closely adjacent to panic as Paul clearly saw right through her and into the cracks in her resolve. In a delayed reaction, he straightened out his previously-disturbed collar patiently, letting his head hang forward and starting to very slowly and almost imperceptibly shake it.
He hoisted his head upwards again, scratching absentmindedly at his chin. "Sorry, Liv," he said, his eyes focusing on Elliot only momentarily, and Olivia saw from the corner of her eye as her partner smiled at the purposeful use of her nickname. "I understand your boss must be pressuring you, not to mention your partner going on and on like a broken record about how you need to be careful around me when, in fact, what he means is that you can't take care of yourself."
"You think you know everything about everyone, don't you?" Elliot cut in, and Olivia knew by his tone that he was trying to be playful, like he was completely unaffected by Paul's rushed yet remarkably observant analysis, but she also saw it in Paul's expression that it had the opposite effect.
It also didn't do much for the impact the observation had when it landed on her. What he means is that you can't take care of yourself. She knew she shouldn't listen to it, but she did.
Both men were smiling at each other, and while Olivia could feel the heat of Elliot's anger burning just below the surface, she detected no distress whatsoever in Paul's demeanor.
The latter let his smile fade during the short path his glance took moving from Elliot to her. "As I was saying, I know that you're under a lot of pressure… But you know very well that I can walk out of here whenever I want and never come back again, and I think I already know you well enough to know that you'll never stop wondering about the things I didn't get to tell you."
Olivia nodded, puckering her lips and letting her eyes wander about the room as she tried to conceal just how much she recognized his words to be the truth, hoping to gather as much calm and indifference as she could to glare at him again. "Is that what you wanna do? Just get up and leave?"
In an unexpected move, Paul let all the smugness and presumptuousness wash away from his face as he leaned in and took a hand to his chest. "Me? Of course not. Otherwise, why would I be here in the first place?"
"Then what do you want?" Elliot scowled at him, too impulsive and edgy in Olivia's opinion.
Paul answered Elliot's question, but his eyes remained locked on Olivia, as though she'd been the one to ask. "I want to tell you everything, like I've been saying from the first moment I walked in here. But you need to understand that I have to do this at my own pace. And the only way I feel at ease to tell you these…horrible things about my past that I'm definitely not proud of…is if you're the only one here listening to me. You make me forget I'm at a police station." He paused, turning to Elliot. "You don't look like a heartless, robotic cop."
Elliot laughed, turning his head in Olivia's direction. "Can you believe this guy?" He stood up, not even waiting for her to return his stare. "Unfortunately, we can't stay here any longer listening to your…stories. Us heartless, robotic cops need to go out and do heartless, robotic cop things, like investigating actual cases."
Olivia heard the shuffle of his feet walking away and the door swinging on its hinges. "Detective?" Elliot called when she didn't move an inch from her sitting position.
"I'll stay a bit longer, El," she informed him, still unmoving, using his nickname as a shortcut, a trust me tucked in between the sounds. Upon his lack of an audible reaction, she turned to face him. "I'll be right out. Paul says he has something important to tell me, so I'll listen to it." Her head spun to send Paul a warning look, then turned back to Elliot. "If it turns out to be another pointless story, then I'll show him the door myself. I think it's pretty clear that it's his last chance to give us something we can actually use."
Elliot didn't reply, his face contorting in a look that mixed disappointment and worry. She knew he had meant to get her out of the room, not leave her alone in it, but it had backfired, because she hadn't done what he'd expected of her. What he means is that you can't take care of yourself. After a brief staring contest, he admitted defeat and left without a word, but she knew she hadn't heard the end of it.
For now, she just waited for the sound of the door closing, with a strong feeling she was doing the right thing despite her partner's disapproval. "Okay, it's just you and me again."
"How do I know nobody's there?" Paul asked, still perfectly collected, and not amused in the slightest.
After a moment's hesitation, Olivia swallowed, standing up: she knew she was either all in or out of the room. She walked toward the glass and stood there, looking at her own image and contemplating her own reluctance, quickly disputed by determination. Her round, brown eyes stared back at her questioningly, sending chills up her spine as she saw something in there that she hadn't noticed before: familiarity. She glanced at Paul, whose own brown eyes watched carefully for her next move.
In that moment, it was clearer than ever to her that she needed to listen to whatever it was that he had to say.
When her hand wrapped around the bead chain, three quick, urgent knocks startled her, making her face tremble in the mirror before she pulled, bringing the blinds down. Next, she turned the handle, tilting the slats closed and blinding her to all apparent brown eyes and hidden blues. She could no longer see into her own stare and question her commitment to this. She turned to Paul, angling her face at him as her fingers also curled around the button that turned off the microphones. He nodded with approval.
He watched her go back to her seat in front of him and only then reached for the soda can she had brought him. "I assume you don't have any beer," he chuckled.
"Nope," she said, tilting up her chin, waiting.
Paul placed his right hand's index finger under the ring and his thumb on the tab, but his fingers lost their grip when he tried to lift the backside of the tab and he winced. "Stupid, tingly fingers."
Olivia leaned in and wordlessly offered to open the can for him. He nodded a thank you and watched her opening it with ease before sliding it carefully back toward him, his eyebrows knit with what looked like disappointment in himself for his inability to carry out such a simple task. He inspected his fingers for cuts, but didn't seem to find anything.
"It's pathetic," he said, moving his fingers as if trying to get them to work properly. "Watching life run out like this. You'd think death would just come and take you, not that you'd die a little bit every day, losing your ability to do the most ridiculously easy things."
"And the ridiculously hard things as well, I imagine?" she asked, doing a commendable job of keeping her sympathy at bay, she noted. "I'm assuming a man who can't open a soda can can't rape a woman."
For the first time, Paul seemed taken off guard. "That was uncalled for."
Olivia grinned, shaking her head, thinking about how outrageous it sounded that he would be offended when called out about his physical inability to continue terrorizing women.
Still, she softened her tone. "When were you diagnosed?"
His illness, she heard Huang's voice pointing out in her head. That's his only vulnerability. It made her feel proud of herself that she was using it against her perp, even though she knew that the question had actually stemmed from genuine curiosity and maybe even…concern?
Either way, she'd definitely stricken a chord; she could tell by the way his chin twitched as he spoke, his inability to completely relax while making an effort to lie back, and the irritation in his voice. "Three years ago, and why are you suddenly so interested in my health?"
"Just a simple way to estimate if I can actually try to get justice for any of your victims," she replied, as detached as she could.
"Did my prints and DNA come back yet?" he shot back immediately, looking unfazed and eager to reacquire the upper hand.
Elliot seemed to whisper into her ear: his prints are not in the system. "No," she lied, still hopeful for the DNA.
"I'm not in the system," he stated arrogantly. "I told you, I never got caught."
"Well, who knows…" she said.
It was his turn to shrug, taking a swig of his soda. "I'd be surprised if you found anything. Incriminating, I mean. 'Cause, you know, there are other things you may find. Like you said, who knows."
"What is it you want to tell me about that I won't find pointless?" Olivia pushed, ignoring his teasing. She wanted to let him know she fully expected him to hold his end of the bargain after she'd made such an effort to keep anyone else from watching or listening to their conversation.
The adamant request made him put his beverage down, sitting back in his chair and fidgeting to find the most comfortable position. "Sarah. I wanted to tell you about Sarah."
The sibilant sound of that name echoed in her head, wheezing inside her ears and erupting goosebumps all across her skin. With a quick look down, she scrawled it on her legal pad, and even the scratching sound of the pen swirling against the paper seemed to carry hidden meanings.
She swallowed with a conscious effort. "Who was she?"
Paul paused for a second; he seemed to be bracing himself for something, too. "This beautiful girl who worked at the campus library."
Olivia's pen dropped from her hand when her fingers froze, as though she'd lost control of her hand. Her heart was thumping in her chest with such violence that she could almost feel her torso moving back and forth after each strike.
Her breathing was shallow, and when she spoke, the amount of air was barely enough for a whisper. "Go on."
"I liked following her. Sometimes she went home really late, and I worried that something might happen to her, so I followed her from far away, just to make sure she got home safe."
Safe. Olivia could taste bile in the back of her throat as a fine coat of warm tears covered her eyes against her will. "And…"
"One night, she left the library even later than usual, after midnight. So I followed her but…that night…I wanted to do more than just watch her. I wanted to get close to her."
Just as soon as a tear escaped her eye, Olivia wiped it out, focusing to add some strength to her voice to urge him on, even though she knew what was coming.
The next four words out of her mouth seemed to consume what was left of her energy. "What happened next?"
"I waited for the right opportunity… She was walking down this really empty street, so I blitzed her from behind, hit her in the head with a piece of wood I found and took her to this landing, below street level. It was the perfect spot."
There was a knock on the door, but Olivia wouldn't have heard it if it had been an explosion.
"Detective Benson," Elliot's voice rumbled, informing her the door was open and he was inside, but the sound was slow to reach her.
"Benson," Paul repeated, his nostalgic smile making a triumphant comeback.
"Give me a minute," she pleaded without even turning her head, just raising her hand defensively, exasperatedly in Elliot's direction, while her request addressed both men.
Elliot had no idea what he was stumbling into. He had no business trying to save her from what he didn't even know about.
"I need you out here, Detective," he raised his voice slightly.
"Elliot, please, I can handle this."
"Now, Detective."
"You know what?" Paul's smile widened with a tinge of annoyance as he pushed himself up from his chair into a standing position with surprising speed despite his painful grimace. "I'm going," he panted, finding his balance to start walking away. "It's the second time this guy comes in without an invitation. We had an agreement."
"No!" Olivia's voice broke and her legs faltered beneath her weight worse than the old man's had as she stood up. "You can't leave, we're not done."
"Oh, we're done," Paul smiled again, narrowing his eyes at her. "I'm sure you heard enough, too."
"No!" she protested. "I'll make him leave, just wait here, and I'll talk to him and—"
Stopping just before Elliot, Paul turned his head towards Olivia, who approached the two men with hesitant steps. "He doesn't understand what's at stake, Olivia," he said, his voice now calm. He faced Elliot again, eliciting a confused expression from him. "He doesn't understand what this means to you. Can you move, Detective Stabler?"
Elliot sneered, taking a step into the room to clear the exit. "Anything to make you leave, sir."
"Wait, Paul," Olivia heard herself begging, and it was only when she heard them in her voice that she realized she had tears instantly spilling from her eyes. "Please, don't go."
"Olivia!" Elliot called, his voice distant, as though muffled by water. "What's going on?"
Already outside, Paul turned to look at her one last time, a benign smile slowly emerging from his lips. "I was getting tired anyway. I need to take my pain meds."
Her eyes widened with hope. "But you'll come back tomorrow, right?"
The man just sighed before turning to leave. "Bye, Olivia."
"Paul!" she called again, charging through the door, but Elliot's hand wrapped around her arm and deterred her.
"Olivia!" he roared at her face, his voice seeping through her stupor this time and throwing her into the reality that he had made the most important revelation of her life leave.
"Let me go!" she yelled, immediately starting a physical struggle to free her arm. "I need to talk to him, you don't understand!"
Elliot's voice raised while he fought to immobilize her. "He's getting to you and you're not seeing it! You're just repeating what he said now! What don't I understand? I understand what talking to this son of a bitch is doing to you."
"I guarantee, you don't," she said, but even through angry, clenched teeth, her words still shuddered on their way out, her fragility blatant from the ease with which Elliot was able to restrain her, hugging her body with both arms. Her tears assaulted her again, and her voice broke inside the protection of his arms. "Why didn't you trust me? I said I needed a minute."
Elliot loosened his hold around her a little, seemingly affected by her tearful question. "That's not why I pulled you out… Cragen wants us at the ME's office right away for the new case," he explained with hushed caution. "Are you alright? You look…pale."
She looked up at him. Anything to make you leave, sir. She tried her best to hate him while she desperately craved his comfort. You look pale. She felt pale. His pale, blue eyes were asking a million questions she didn't have the answers to. The answer to her biggest question had just walked out, and it was his fault.
What happened next?
Before she realized what she was doing, Olivia had already sunk into him, the navy blue of his shirt so inviting, the heat of him as her cheek connected with his neck, the solid wall that bent to accommodate her as his arms softened to turn their grip into an embrace. From last resort, touching had quickly become a better language than English.
"What's wrong?" he insisted, speaking into her hair. She felt his hand cupping the back of her head, the immediate relief frighteningly powerful as it spread warmth and chills throughout her body at the same time. "It's okay. I told you this stuff was getting to you." He squeezed her a bit tighter, and it made her feel a bit safer. "What did that bastard say to you? You're shaking."
What had he said? It was lost in the haze of her mind. It was nothing specific, but it was everything. She struggled to fish for the words in the muddy waters flooding her mind, only one certainty remaining unharmed.
She barricaded against Elliot's chest so she could look into his eyes. "He raped my mother."