Prompt #37: After the events of Smoked, instead of going away with his family, Elliot went undercover with the Albanian KO without saying a word to anyone. The case against Gabe Navarro brings Olivia to a warehouse in Long Island and she's being confronted with the undercover agent from the Organized Crime Control Team.

The Immense Design Of Things

~oOo~

Their case, despite any potential witnesses claiming they haven't seen anything, is pretty solid. They've been able to convince Tara to testify and their suspect, Gabe Navarro, is already in custody. All Liv has left to do is place him at two other crime scenes while Carisi takes Tara's case to a grand jury for an indictment. As Carisi tells Liv what he needs from the squad, the Captain's cell phone rings.

"Captain Benson," she says upon answering the call. "What?!"

Carisi can't hear who is on the other end, but he can tell that whoever it is, has not called to deliver good news.

"I see. Well, I'm with ADA Carisi right now, so we'll head down there. Oh, I understand, Sergeant, but this is our case."

A befuddled Carisi stands in Liv's office, attempting to piece together the minimal information he can get with his former Captain still on the phone. In any other scenario, Dominick would take his leave and give Olivia the privacy she needed to tend to the call, but since he now finds himself involved in whatever situation is unfolding between the SVU Captain and the mystery caller on the other end of the line, he decides to stay until he's told otherwise. From what he can pick up, it seems as though his case - their case - against their suspect waiting in the tombs is about to be ripped out from underneath them.

A clearly frustrated Olivia ends the call with an assurance that the pair are on their way before a ragged sigh leaves her lips and she glances toward her trusted prosecutor. "Son of a bitch… that was Sergeant Ayanna Bell with the Organized Crime Control Bureau and Joint Investigative Task Force. It looks like we're not the only ones with our eyes on Gabe Navarro."

~oOo~

Their drive takes them across the East River to a dingy, seemingly abandoned warehouse in Long Island City, the supposed headquarters of the Joint Task Force. Special Victims has worked with Ayanna and Organized Crime on a few cases in the past, and it looks like they will be doing that again, so Olivia and Carisi make their way into the warehouse without a second thought.

Upon entering the surprisingly spacious area housing desk chairs, bulletin boards, and what seems like endless racks of shelves, the pair finds themselves approaching the familiar figure of Sergeant Bell, who appears to be just as thrilled to see them as they are to see her. She's flanked by an FBI agent as they make their way to the middle of the room.

Fantastic. The Feds are involved. That's definitely a promising sign as to where this is going.

"Thanks for meeting us," Sergeant Bell offers politely.

"Sergeant Bell, what's going on?" Olivia immediately asks, only to be followed up by Carisi's own question.

"Where's Gabe Navarro?" he presses, though the pair has a pretty good idea of where their suspect is, thanks to the abundance of Federal agents scattered around the room.

"Allow me to explain," comes a voice from another part of the room that makes Olivia's heart drop to her stomach. "Liv, you're not gonna like this."

The source doesn't even need to walk into her field of vision. She knows that voice. Hell, how could she not recognize it? It was etched into her soul the moment she heard it for the first time twenty-plus years ago. She knew from the first syllable that it belonged to him.

It doesn't matter that he's ten years older, or that he lost his babyface. It's of no consequence that he shaved his head, or that he grew a goatee, or that he has an entirely new build; the lean, bulky physique of his twenties and thirties now replaced with one that could only be described as absolutely jacked. She knows that voice in late-night doorstep confessionals, in whispered promises of safety on airport tarmacs, in hopelessly disconnected voicemail greetings. She knows his voice as well as she knows her own because as much as she may hate to admit it, he's a part of her.

For all the loneliness, anguish, and pain he's caused her - the sleepless nights she's spent staring at the ceiling, the pre-dawn mornings she's walked into the bullpen to an uninhabited desk, the fleeting moments she looks into the bright blue eyes of her son only to see glimpses of him gazing back at her - hearing his voice and seeing him standing in front of her completely shatters her into a thousand pieces and builds her mosaic back together all in one breath.

She doesn't even realize she says it, an aching prayer falling from her lips. "Elliot…"

He's an open wound in a decade-long state of bleeding; the slow, steady, torturous drip of sorrow, resentment, and emptiness that she's tried for so long to unsuccessfully clot, eventually flowing uninhibited into every fiber of her being. But now, in his presence, the bleeding has finally stopped.

Olivia wearily blinks her eyes, and for the first time in over ten years, Elliot's image is still there when her eyes open.

"I'm sorry, please excuse me…" the Captain mutters before hastily making her way back to the corridor through which she entered, her footsteps carrying her through the warehouse exit, practically on autopilot.

As the cool September air hits her face, Olivia struggles to catch her breath, the minuscule intakes of oxygen she manages burning desperately in her lungs.

She isn't sure how long she's out there, her back pressed to the concrete of the building as she searches the hazy, periwinkle sky for answers to questions she can't even begin to formulate.

Olivia only notices she's not alone when the gravely, yet soft voice of Dominick Carisi Jr. penetrates the silence, his strong Staten Island accent bringing her back to the present.

"Captain?"

"Hey, Sonny." The way she addresses him only confirms that despite her typical I'm fine attitude, right now, she's anything but. She usually only refers to him as Sonny when the situation calls for it, and he knows that in her own way, this is her telling him she doesn't want to be alone right now. "I'm sorry I got up and left you in there like that."

Brow furrowing, Carisi takes a couple steps in the direction of his former boss, joining her against the exterior wall of the building. "Nah, don't worry about that. I just wanted to come check on you. You okay?"

"Thanks," she says, wiping a stray tear from her eye and giving him a sad smile. "I'm good."

Carisi is about to say something else when Elliot walks outside, pausing a few feet away from the pair. "Liv… can we talk?"

Sonny still doesn't know who this man is, aside from the fact that he knows the Captain well enough to call her by her nickname as many times in the past 10 minutes as he himself has probably his entire career.

Olivia can sense Carisi's hesitance to leave her with the equivalent of a complete stranger as he looks to her for direction. "I'm okay, Sonny. I'll be inside in a few."

Giving her a nod of assurance, Carisi heads back inside the warehouse without even considering the man standing in front of him.

Olivia can't bring herself to look at him quite yet as he leans his shoulder against the wall, closer than he was but still giving her space. "Let me see your badge," she asserts, her eyes trained on the gravel at her feet.

Unfastening the badge from his hip, Elliot holds it out to Olivia, who tentatively takes it into her grasp.

Her fingers touch the cold metal of the NYPD medallion, delicately tracing its 6313 badge number.

"You left me." A whisper. She almost thinks he doesn't hear it.

"I'm sorry."

Her gaze finally shifts, and she makes sure she's looking into his crystal blue eyes when she asks him. "Why did you do it, Elliot? You were the most - the single most - important person in my life, and you just… disappeared."

"Do you remember all those years ago, when you went to Oregon?" Despite the contentious subject, his voice is gentle. "While you were there, I heard some rumblings about this new sector and its task force, and I guess they were interested in swiping me from Special Victims. I… didn't even consider it, because something in my heart told me that you were coming back."

Olivia lets out an exasperated, dry laugh. "So you, what, Elliot? Decided to wait a few years? Really twist the knife?"

"No. Olivia, I swear to you, that was not my intention. I didn't even think about it again until after—"

"Jenna Fox," Olivia realizes.

"Yeah. Liv, I— after Jenna, I went into a tailspin. I still think about her every day. I had a hard time coming to grips with it, you know? I had nightmares for weeks, I couldn't stop picturing Maureen, or Kathleen, or Lizzie in her place. It was really bad. I felt like I was losing it, like it was just an uphill battle. I put in my papers and shut everything out. After I think two months, Kathy, she couldn't do it anymore. She left, took the kids back to Jersey so she could be near her sister. That was what made me see how bad it was. I ended up in therapy, and it took me a while, but eventually, I realized that what fucked me up so bad in the first place was you."

Olivia feels like she's been hit by a freight train. The question that's never given her a day of peace since he walked away, the one she thought she'd never have answered, is finally unraveling before her. And now that she has an answer, she wonders if it would have been less painful to go to her grave without one.

Elliot has always been able to read her like a book, apparently a skill that's only strengthened with the passage of time. He chances a step closer, and when she doesn't back away, another follows. He's standing only an arm's length away from her when he speaks again and this time, somehow, his voice is more broken than before. "Olivia. Can you— can you look at me for a second? I need to know that you're going to hear what I'm about to say… please."

His soft pleading breaks her of her thousand-yard stare, and the eyes that he sees looking back at him are eyes he's only ever seen once before, in a warehouse not dissimilar from the one their bodies are currently leaning against.

"Olivia, when I saw Jenna point that gun in your direction and couldn't stop her in time to save Sister Peg, I… I panicked. I couldn't let her shoot you, too. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself. But I knew that when I shot Jenna, I chose you over the job. I chose you, Liv, because I was in love with you, and I couldn't watch the love of my life die. And I decided that I would rather disappear and have you be alive and hate me than put you in another situation like that. I know it was wrong. I know that I hurt you, that I betrayed your trust and our partnership when I abandoned you. I was terrified and made the cowardly choice to run. And I'm so fucking sorry."

"But Elliot," Olivia breaks, her eyes brimming with tears at everything the past ten years have conjured up within her. "It was a decade… where the hell were you the past ten years? I needed you, and you were just gone without a trace! Where were you while I was here picking up the pieces?!"

If Elliot is surprised that Olivia completely skirts around his impromptu confession of being in love with her, he doesn't show it. Maybe it just didn't register, he thinks, clearing his throat before he continues his explanation. "By August, I couldn't keep living the way I was, letting everything eat me up inside every waking moment. I reached out to Lieutenant Moennig. He was able to pull some strings, and by the time I started with Organized Crime that September, I practically went right under. They were short a few detectives, so I tried to help as much as possible. But it Liv, it wasn't supposed to last this long. The guy we're after, Kosta, keeps figuring out ways to walk. It's taken us ten years, and we're still on him. When it became a sex trafficking case, and my Sergeant made it known that 'Captain Benson and Special Victims' would join us on the case, I knew I had to try to see you before anything happened. I didn't want you to see me and think that I was… involved in any of it."

No matter how much has changed in ten years, the one thing Olivia Benson knows for sure is Elliot Stabler's heart. "I could never think that. Ever," she assures him.

Olivia takes a breath, a sigh, and runs her fingers through her hair, her mind trying to make sense of everything she's learned in the last ten minutes at light speed. It's almost imperceptible the exact point in time the full weight of his words register for her. If he didn't work side-by-side with her for thirteen years, if he didn't know her like the back of his hand, he wouldn't notice it. He wouldn't pick up on the way the light behind her eyes flickers and returns just a little bit brighter, or how the tension in her shoulders just barely eases, or the slight twitch her mouth makes when all the thoughts screaming in her head die on her lips.

But he does. Because he's Elliot.

"Liv?"

"You… no," she says, shaking her head as she pushes herself off the wall. "I can't do this right now, Elliot. Not when our teams are waiting on us. Not when there are girls being trafficked that need our help." She goes to make her way back to the double doors of the building when she stops and turns on her heel, looking directly at the brooding, 6-foot tall detective. "And it might have been nice to know ten years ago that you were in love with me. Maybe we could have done something about it."

Without thinking, he can't stop himself from saying it. "I still am! I have been for twenty-three years, Olivia!" He doesn't mean to yell, he really doesn't. So when she retreats back to her previous spot against the building, he takes a calculated breath and looks into her eyes, his voice coming out much softer now that she's in his proximity. "I know this is a lot, trust me, this is not how I imagined coming back to you. It shouldn't have taken this long. I should have come home sooner. I shouldn't have fucking run in the first place. It's a decision that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I know I don't deserve it, but please, give me another chance."

Maybe it's the adrenaline coursing through her veins, or maybe it's the utter relief that he's still living and breathing and standing right in front of her. Maybe it's the pain she sees in his ocean blue eyes, or maybe it's the years of worry that are etched into his features. Whatever it is, Olivia takes the jump and doesn't fear the fall.

And finally, after twenty-three years of enchantment, of heartache, of salvation, of love. On a Friday afternoon, under the autumn sky, she kisses him.