A/N: set just after the intervention, before Elliot finds out about Angela's involvement in Kathy's death.
For a second she just stood there, staring at the door. It wasn't doubt that stayed her hand; she knew she was doing the right thing. Someone had to do something; Elliot was spiraling out of control, lost and angry and riding right on the edge of ruin. His life - his kids' lives - seemed to hang in the balance. If someone didn't intervene, and soon, something catastrophic was going to happen. She knew it, just knew it, felt it in her bones, an old familiar tension, an old familiar warning stirring in her gut. Like when she was young, and her mother would get that look in her eyes, the one that made her blood run cold, the one that meant there's a storm coming; she felt the same way now, staring at his door, the way she'd felt then, staring at her mother. Like something was gonna break, and she was just steeling herself for the fallout.
But she'd come all this way. Yeah, it was late, and maybe she should have waited 'til morning, but with the hours he worked - and no Eli at home to depend on him - she wasn't sure he'd be there, once the sun rose. He might not even be there now, but she was hopeful; he'd have to sleep sometime. Have to go home sometime. Not that this place was home; this place was one of those long-term hotels, intended for visiting businessmen, nice but impersonal. Chrome and beige and boring, a place to sleep but not a place to live. No, she didn't think he'd be spending too much time here, somehow.
She double checked the number on the door, and then knocked on it once, hard. For a heartbeat, two, ten she waited, but there was no sign of movement from inside. Frowning, then, she knocked once more, hit the door so hard her knuckles hurt, and then she heard it, finally, the stomp stomp stomp of Elliot's feet, still marching decades after he'd left the service, drawing closer and closer.
"Goddamn it, Liv," she heard him grumble as the door swung open, "I thought I told you-"
He froze mid sentence, the expression of thunderstruck confusion on his face almost comical, and she grinned at him.
"Expecting someone else?" she asked him archly. Liv wasn't a name she recognized, but then she wasn't a fool. She knew there was plenty about his life he'd never shared with her, plenty of secrets he'd kept to himself, plenty of darkness and regret lurking under his familiar blue eyes. He crossed his heavy arms over his chest, and she watched the movement, and thought then that if he was anyone else, he might have scared her. In that white tank top, all muscles and tats and hard edges, his eyebrows settling into a scowl, his powerful body tense, anger building behind his eyes, he might have been fucking terrifying. Might have been, but wasn't, because whatever secrets he was keeping, whatever had become of him over the last few months he was, still, Elliot, and he would never, ever hurt her.
"What are you doing here, Anne Marie?" he asked her through clenched teeth.
"What, a girl needs a reason to stop by and see her big brother?" she answered. It was a put-upon playfulness, a forced sort of cheer; she was pissed as hell, and scared for him - for him, but never of him, not Elliot, not her favorite big brother - but she didn't want to put him on the defensive right out of the gate. They'd always teased each other, the two smartasses of the family, and she wanted that back, now. She wanted to see him smile, wanted to hear him crack jokes, wanted to know that he hadn't been put in the ground with Kathy, that he wasn't entirely lost to her just yet.
"Annie-"
"Don't call me Annie," she said reflexively, pushing past him and into the suite of rooms he called home these days. Elliot grumbled something unintelligible as she went, but she wasn't paying attention to him; she kicked her shoes off by the door, taking note of the fist-sized hole in the drywall, and then she drifted deeper into the room, coming to an abrupt halt when she caught sight of the collage he'd pinned to the wall behind the dining table. Big, glossy, horrific crime scene photographs, a mural of violence, drew her eye and refused to let her go. She stood there, held in thrall by his grief, for the longer she looked at them the more little details began to stand out, and it crashed into her, the realization that these were photographs of the crime scene. The explosion that had taken Kathy's life. The accident, as the family called it, that had not been an accident at all, but had instead been the willful, malicious act of some nameless, faceless person who wanted to kill her brother but had killed a woman who was as good as her own sister instead.
"Jesus, Annie, don't look at that," Elliot said from somewhere over her shoulder.
"You do," she said. "You look at it every day."
Every day. He walked by those photos every day. Sat down at that table with his microwave supper and stared at the images of the burnt out car where his wife had been attacked, had been hideously, unspeakably injured. She'd lingered for a time, after, but that bomb had killed her, and what he saw in those photographs was the beginning of the end, the seed that blossomed into her death, even though she'd still been breathing when the ambulance drove her far from that place. He'd been there, a few yards from that car, had heard it, smelled it, seen it, had rushed to his wife and...and what? What had he done while he waited for the ambulance? Had he touched her, held her hand? Had people gathered round to try to help him? He'd probably shouted at them, she thought. He'd probably pushed them away. Elliot never wanted anyone else's help.
But Jesus Christ did he need it.
"You got beer?" she asked him when he didn't answer. He grunted, and she figured that meant yes; he walked away, and she heard the sound of the fridge opening and closing, the crack of two bottle tops popping off, and then he was beside her, offering her a beer and keeping the other for himself.
"You coulda called," he grumbled.
"You weren't answering your phone," she shot back. They'd taken turns trying to call him, Anne Marie and Joey and Mark and Jenny and Ryan, but he'd never answered the phone, not for any of them. Didn't even tell them when the funeral was; Anne Marie had found that out when Mo called, wanting to know why no one else had been there. He didn't tell us, Anne Marie remembered saying. Mo, we kept asking, baby, but he didn't answer. We didn't know he'd had it already. It had all come out, then, how Elliot had told his children he was handling everything, and not to worry, when the truth was he wasn't telling anybody jack shit. Everything Anne Marie knew about Kathy's accident, about how the kids were doing, she'd learned it all from Katie and Mo. Big brother wasn't talking.
"Been busy," he said, and then took a long swig of his beer so he didn't have to say anything else.
For a minute she just let it be, just stood there with him in the kitchen, looking at his face. He looked tired. There was a healing cut just over his brow, and his face had never seemed so worn. He'd never looked so fucking old.
Elliot was the oldest. He was four when Anne Marie was born, and then Joey came along not quite two years later, then the twins Mark and Ryan two years after that, and then Jenny, the baby of the bunch. Jenny had been barely five when Elliot left home, and Anne Marie remembered hating him, just a little, for that. For leaving her all alone with four little kids to worry about, daddy drunk and withdrawn and mama out of her fucking mind half the time. She hadn't understood, then, the choices Elliot had been faced with. Seventeen, fresh out of school, Kathy pregnant, parents had no money to help them and no inclination to, either, seeing as how they'd gone and gotten themselves into that mess. Elliot'd had to choose, then, which kids to look after, his siblings or his children, and he'd chosen his children. Now that Anne Marie had three of her own she understood, but back then, when she'd been thirteen and convinced her big brother was some kind of superhero, him walking away had felt like nothing so much as a betrayal, and it only got worse, because he never came back. They saw him at Christmas, short visits squeezed in between his work schedule and visiting Kathy's folks, but he always lurked on the edges, standing by the wall, quiet, watchful, ready to leave from the minute he walked in the door.
Kathy, bright, blonde, sweet Kathy, she knew how to work a room, how to use the babies as a distraction to keep from revisiting old hurts, how to keep mama away from Elliot, how to make everybody feel comfortable. Kathy had been a godsend, really; if it hadn't been for her, Elliot probably never would have come back at all. And as angry as that made her, Anne Marie still looked forward to those visits, because she was the only one who could get him to talk, and he'd make her laugh, and she'd think there he is. There's the big brother I remember.
There was no sign of that man now, though. The Elliot standing beside her was a stranger. Too quiet, too distant for her to reach. She had no idea what was going through his head, what he was thinking, what he was feeling. She had no idea how he'd been spending his time, how he was managing his grief. All she knew for certain was that his kids were worried about him, that Maureen had taken Eli into her own home because she didn't trust Elliot any more, and how, Anne Marie wondered, how could it be that Elliot was no longer to be trusted with his own children, when he had always been such a fierce protector, such a strong provider, so determined to do the right thing? Just what the hell had happened to him?
"Who's Liv?" she asked him after a time. She really did want to know; Elliot never talked about his work, about his friends, about his life. At family gatherings Kathy only ever talked about the kids. Anne Marie didn't know anything about what life had been like for Elliot in New York, about why he'd left the police department when he'd seemed so determined to stay a detective forever, about why he'd chosen to work overseas, and run so far from his family, and his home. Maybe, she thought, maybe he didn't talk because there wasn't anything to say. Maybe he didn't have anybody here, anybody at all, because he'd been living in Italy for four years and Kathy was the one who made friends and Kathy was fucking dead. Only he'd said Liv, and she'd thought maybe he did have at least one friend. At least one person who cared about him, since he thought that Liv had turned up at his door in the middle of the night.
"Leave it alone, Annie," he said, and then he turned and walked away from her, closing the door on that topic of conversation with a sweep of his broad shoulders. He drifted into the living room and she followed, watched as he sank down onto the sofa and stared up at her balefully, his lips wrapped around his beer bottle.
I don't know who the fuck he is, she thought.
"All right," she said slowly. "You wanna tell me what the fuck is wrong with you?"
He barked out a laugh, a sharp, cruel sound, and shook his head, as if he'd never heard anything so stupid in his entire life.
"Haven't you heard?" he said darkly. "My wife's dead."
"But you're not," Anne Marie reminded him mercilessly, stalking towards the couch where he sat watching her with an expression on his face like he wanted to hit something. Maybe he did. He'd already taken his anger out on at least one of the walls in this place; what was to stop him from doing it again?
That thought chilled her to the bone because Elliot, her Elliot, her brother, had never been a violent man. He'd loved those kids, and loved Kathy, and he'd never raised a hand to them, because he'd grown up under Joe Stabler's fist, and he knew better. When she thought about Elliot, she thought words like safe and good. She remembered that first Christmas after Maureen was born, when her own heart was still bitter over Elliot leaving, watching the soft expression on his face while he held his sleeping daughter in his arms, remembered wishing like hell that someone would look at her like that, remembered wanting it so bad that she nearly started to cry, until Elliot looked up at her, and that warmth, that softness in his face, it didn't change, not for a second. He'd looked at her just like he'd looked at his daughter, like he loved her, and she'd felt like maybe things were going to be ok. At least until he left again.
"Shoulda been me," he said, and then a pained expression crossed his face, like he hadn't meant to say it out loud, and something small and terrified began to shriek deep inside Anne Marie's heart.
How could it be, she thought, that he could even think such a thing? Did he mean that he would have been better off dead than without his wife, that his children needed a mother more than a father, that he would have taken Kathy's place, and gladly, if only to spare her the pain? Or did he really mean it, really mean that whatever had happened to Kathy was meant to happen to him instead? And if that were true...why? He was just Elliot. Just another retired cop. Who could hate him that much? What could he have done, to make somebody that mad? How could Elliot, who played flag football with the kids at Thanksgiving, Elliot who had two grandchildren, Elliot who loved his wife so much, whose wife loved him so much, that even divorce wasn't enough to keep them apart, have done anything to warrant that kind of retribution?
It didn't seem real, somehow. It didn't seem like the sort of thing that happened to real people. Anne Marie was a schoolteacher; she'd been shouted at plenty of times, gotten irate emails, been badgered at school board meetings - and that had been happening more and more recently, and her eye was firmly fixed on retirement - but no one had ever wanted to kill her. Why should they? Who lived a life where the stakes were that high, outside the movies? Yeah, Elliot was a cop, and plenty of people hated cops, but how could someone hate him that much? He was just...he was just a guy.
"Well, it wasn't. And you got kids who need you, and me and Jenny and the boys, we're worried about you, and-"
"Everybody's fucked worried about me!" he was shouting, suddenly, shooting up off the couch and pacing, running the hand not holding his beer over the back of his head. "Don't put that shit on me. I got enough on my plate. I can't do my job and...and...and everything else, and carry you, too. You guys are gonna have to pick up the fucking slack."
Anne Marie just stared at him, dumbfounded. She'd never seen him like this, this full of rage, this jittery, explosive and unpredictable. Has he always been like this? She asked herself. She'd wondered about it years ago, when word spread that Kathy had left him. Not that he'd told his family; Anne Marie had found out from Kathy's sister Lisa, who'd found out when she'd gone to visit her mom and discovered Kathy and the kids staying there. She remembered being shocked, when she heard that, because Elliot and Kathy, they'd been together more than twenty years, had always seemed so solid, so steady, so in love with each other, so united in their devotion to their children, and then wham Kathy was staying at her mom's and Elliot was all alone and none of it made any sense. He hadn't picked up when she'd called him back then, either, and she'd been left trying to work it out on her own, trying to figure out what had happened. Mama said it had to have been the job; a detective is married to his work, Mama said and everybody else comes second. Jenny was convinced he was having an affair but that was only because she'd just found out her own husband had cheated on her and her faith in men was at an all time low. Anne Marie hadn't believed that, not for a second; he wouldn't have done that, she'd told herself, not Elliot, and then he'd gotten back together with Kathy and that seemed to prove her right, because why would Kathy take his cheating ass back years later? But maybe, she thought now, maybe she really didn't know him at all. Maybe she didn't have any idea what he was capable of.
"How is people trying to help you not picking up the slack?" she asked him, angry and scared both at the same time. "We're right here-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said. "Everybody's right here, holding out their fucking hands, and all you're doing is pushing me underwater."
"We're trying to pull you up," Anne Marie insisted. She felt almost silly saying it; I think maybe we're getting a little carried away with the metaphor, she thought.
"You don't get it," he said, shaking his head. "I gotta be strong for my kids. I gotta show them where to go, how to get through life, I can't put my burdens on them. And it's the same with you. I'm supposed to take care of you, and I can't have you caught up in my shit. And Liv, Jesus…"
His voice trailed off, and Anne Marie just watched him, watched his shoulders slump, watched the fight leave him, watched him age ten years in the feeble glow of the 60 watt bulb screwed into the wall behind him.
Who is she? Anne Marie wanted to scream. Who is she, and why does she get a spot on that list with me and your kids, and why have I never heard her name before?
"Liv thinks I've got PTSD," he said, and she startled, just a little, because damn if it didn't feel like he'd read her mind. "And that means I'm just another fucking problem for her to solve."
"What is she, your shrink?" Anne Marie asked him faintly. Maybe this Liv, whoever she was, was right in her diagnosis. Maybe he was falling apart, but if what was wrong with him was something with a name, that meant it was something they could fight. Soldiers got PTSD. There were programs out there. Medicines. Shrinks. There was no shame in it, she thought, surely there wasn't, because Kathy had been blown up right in front of his eyes and surely he deserved a little grace.
He laughed, shook his head. Not his shrink, then.
"Something's gotta give, Elliot," she told him quietly. "You can't keep going like this."
"You think I don't know that?" he snapped, but his eyes were more desperate than angry. Like he wanted, more than anything, to stop, and he just didn't know how.
"I'm trying to help," she said. "So will you just talk to me? Will you just tell me what you're feeling?"
Maybe, she thought, maybe if he could just get it all out, unburden himself, maybe if he just had someone to turn to, he might feel a little better, after. Maybe he just needed to speak, instead of bottling everything up inside until it came bursting out of him like lightning. Maybe if he just started talking she could listen, and maybe she'd find some way to help him through this labyrinth of pain he'd found himself in. Then again, maybe she was seriously in over her head here.
"I don't know!" the words ripped out of him, and it hurt her to hear them, but she was in this, now, and she wasn't backing down. It was too much for him, she could see that. He was feeling so many things it was tearing him apart, and he didn't have anywhere to put it, so she opened her hands, and asked him to give it to her instead. She could put it down for him.
"Just pick something," she said. "Just start, somewhere. It doesn't even have to make sense, just...just talk to me."
His jaw worked, tightly, lips opening and closing, but no sound came out. His eyes darted around, from her face, to the crime scene photos, back again. He took a sip of his beer. Shuddered. Everything about him made him look, in that moment, like a man on the verge of running away. But where he was gonna go? Five kids, five siblings, mom still out in Jersey, his friends from the police, Liv; there were people, so many people, who loved him, worried about him, wanted to help him, and they weren't gonna let him go. Not without a fight.
"She wasn't even supposed to be there," he said finally, and for the first time since she'd seen his face Anne Marie drew in a deep breath. "You know we talked about it," he continued, walking back to the couch, sinking into it with a groan. Anne Marie leaned back against the wall, watching him, waiting. "I had to come. Had to testify at a trial, take some meetings. We figured you know, I wasn't gonna have that much free time anyway, and with covid and everything, it was best she stay in Rome with Eli. We agreed she wasn't gonna come."
"What changed?" she asked him curiously. Kathy had sent an email, two weeks before they landed at JFK, letting everybody know they were going to be in the city, asking if anyone wanted to come to dinner. And Anne Marie, she'd been too concerned about her own kids, and her work, and fucking covid, and she hadn't even answered. It was the last communication she'd ever received from her favorite sister-in-law. By then Kathy had obviously changed her mind about coming, but why? What could be so important to her that she'd leave Eli behind, and come all this way in the middle of a fucking global pandemic? Was it just that she'd wanted to see the kids? Anne Marie wouldn't put it past her. No mother wanted to be an ocean away from her children.
"She saw the letter," he said heavily.
What fucking letter? What could possibly have been in a letter, Anne Marie wondered, that would convince Kathy Stabler to leave her thirteen year old son alone in Rome and fly all the way to New York? What kinda letter? From a divorce attorney, maybe? From -
"I don't wanna do this," Elliot added, and he looked up at her then, and for all that he was six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier and four years older than her, he somehow managed to look small. Small, and scared, when he'd never been scared of anything.
"I think you gotta," she told him softly. "Whatever this is, it's killing you, Elliot. Just tell me. It's me. What do you think I'm gonna do, huh? I'm not gonna walk out on you. I'm your sister. You're stuck with me. Jackass."
He didn't smile, exactly - she was pretty sure he couldn't have smiled then if he tried - but his face softened, just a little.
"Yeah, I am stuck with you, aren't I?" he said. "The kids, they can decide never to speak to me again. Liv can walk out on me. God knows she's got every right to. But we're stuck, aren't we?"
Siblings stopped speaking to each other all the time, Anne Marie knew that. Everybody knew that. Plenty of folks didn't talk to their brothers. But they were different, always had been different, because any time she got anywhere near him she remembered. Remembered that they were the same, deep down. They had the same scars, and the same memories, and they laughed at the same jokes, and even if they only talked on the phone a few times a year the time and the distance hadn't changed a goddamn thing, and never would. They were stuck. Maybe because they wanted to be. Maybe because they'd decided a long, long time ago that they always would be.
"Like glue," she told him.
Across the room from her he just nodded, and took a deep breath.
"It was a letter from the brass," he said. "There's an award they give out every year. Outstanding leadership by women in policing. They gave it to Liv, this year. There was gonna be a big ceremony. They wanted me to speak."
That was not at all what she'd been expecting, mostly because it didn't seem like that big a deal. So some higher ups in the NYPD wanted Elliot to speak at his friend's ceremony. Why did that matter? Why would that make Kathy change her mind about flying around the world?
"Who is she?"
Elliot cocked his head to the side, studied her face for a minute.
"I'm sure I talked to you about her," he said. "Olivia. Olivia Benson."
"Nope," she told him, trying not to let her frustration show. Decades spent in the company of hormone-addled teenagers had taught her some restraint. "Never heard of her."
"Huh. How 'bout that." He ran his hand over his head again. "She uh, she was, she was my partner. For...for a long time. For thirteen years."
Thirteen years. He had spent all day, every day, with the same woman, for thirteen years, and he'd never mentioned her name to his sister, and Anne Marie didn't quite know what to make of that, but she couldn't help but feel hurt, just a little. Couldn't help but feel as if he had kept a secret from her, and couldn't help but wonder why.
"You had the same partner for thirteen goddamn years and you never told me her name?"
So much for restraint.
"It's not like I know the names of the people you work with. Your principal, or whatever."
A principal was not a partner, though, and Elliot knew it. Elliot knew it, and Anne Marie knew it, because they had both grown up listening to their father grousing about the betrayal of his own partner, the violation of a sacred bond, and no matter how much time passed he never got over it. A partner was more than a coworker, or a friend. A partner was more like a brother. It seemed Elliot had himself another sister, one he'd kept tucked out of sight, and Anne Marie tried, really she tried, to ignore the small, selfish part of her heart that recoiled at the thought that her brother could have cared for a stranger as much as he cared for her. That he could have loved and protected his Liv the same way he did his family. The same way he did for her.
Or maybe not the same, because when Anne Marie called he didn't answer, but clearly he was still talking to Liv. He'd expected to find her when he opened his door tonight, like she turned up here all the time. Like she was allowed the grace to be a part of his life, when his family was not. She might be a woman worth knowing, this Liv, if she meant so goddamn much to him. But Anne Marie hadn't come here to talk about her; she'd come to talk to Elliot, about Elliot, and so she tried to focus, tried to piece together what he'd told her so far, tried to sort out what was important, and what was just noise.
"Ok, all right, fine," she said, letting the topic of his keeping Liv a secret drop. "So Kathy found out they wanted you to speak at her ceremony. So what? She decided to come to New York just 'cause of that?"
Maybe they had been friends, Liv and Kathy. Maybe Kathy had met the woman, spent time with her, gotten to know her, when no one else in the family had. Maybe Kathy just wanted to support her, and that was why she'd decided to make the trip back home, and that was kinda nice, Anne Marie thought, except Kathy had ended up dead because of it. And Elliot; just now Elliot looked like he was about to come out of his skin. Evidently he was tired of sitting on the couch because he stood up, started pacing, his left hand twitching down by his side, fingers plucking nervously like he was playing a nonexistent guitar, his right hand drifting over and over his head, like he was trying to wipe away something dirty, and he tried to answer her question, he really did, but he couldn't get the words out.
"It was...it was...Jesus, I really can't-" his voice was unsteady, and his eyes were wild, and she had never, ever seen him like this, and she was more scared now than she had ever been in his presence.
"Elliot-" Anne Marie called his name softly, took a tentative step towards him with her hand outstretched, hoping to soothe him, but he just looked at her, miserable, tortured.
"She knew," he said heavily. "She knew if I saw Liv's face I wasn't gonna come back."
Holy shit, Anne Marie thought, recoiling in shock, in dismay, from his confession. Had Jenny been right? All these years, Anne Marie had defended her big brother, sworn that there was no way he'd cheated on Kathy, but now he'd as good as told her that he had. That all it would take was one look at another woman's face, and he would have left his family behind. Who could hold that kind of power over him? Who could make a man like Elliot forget his vows and his duty, cast it all aside for the sake of someone else? It's like I don't even know him, she thought, but he was still speaking, and she tried her best to listen.
"Or I wasn't gonna come back the same. She didn't want me alone with Liv. She said I should go, that I couldn't just turn my back on her, but she wasn't gonna let me go alone, because she couldn't trust me. She's dead because she didn't trust me."
It was no wonder, Anne Marie thought, that he was coming unglued. It was no wonder he was breaking in half beneath the weight of his guilt. It wasn't just that he believed the bomb was meant for him, that he should be the one dead instead of Kathy; he thought it was his fault she'd ever been in the car in the first place, because he hadn't been a good man. Because he hadn't been good enough for her to trust him. Looking at him now, the self-loathing in his eyes, the bruises on his knuckles, was like seeing him for the first time, seeing not the big brother she'd idolized, the one she'd always trusted, the one she'd always believed was better than anyone and everyone else. Looking at him now, she saw his failures, his longings, his heartbreak, and the ground beneath her feet seemed to tremble, as what she thought she knew fell away, replaced by a dark and uncomfortable truth. The truth that he was only human, and not a superhero, after all.
"What did you do, Elliot?" she asked him, very quietly.
Did you sleep with her? Did you leave your wife for her, that first time? Would you really have done it again? Did you really kill your wife, Elliot?
"I never did anything," he said earnestly, desperately. "Hand to god, I never did anything. I never touched her." The way he said it, it was like he needed her to believe it mattered. Like he needed to believe that it mattered, that he'd never slept with someone else, but in the next breath he contradicted himself because maybe he'd never slept with her, maybe he'd kept that part of his vows, but Jesus, he had fucked up in other ways.
"But Liv...Liv was the only force on earth that could make me wanna come home and Kathy didn't want that to happen. She was happy in Rome. I was happy there. We were happy there."
They had been, Anne Marie knew. She'd seen the pictures, talked to them on zoom calls. They'd been happy, Elliot and Kathy, always smiling, always holding one another's hands, and she'd envied them their easy affection, the familiarity and trust borne of a nearly forty year long relationship, had looked at them and thought that's what a marriage should be. Only that wasn't true at all; her vision of a perfect home, a perfect family, the one couple that had made her believe that maybe love did last a lifetime if it was nurtured and well cared for, had just been shattered, because all that time Elliot had been thinking of someone else, and Kathy hadn't trusted him, and the only way they were ever gonna be happy was if they lived on a different continent, a world away from her. Anne Marie wanted to hate this woman, this Liv, just for that. For shattering a dream.
"She didn't want me to come back here, and see Liv, and decide I wanted to come home." He kept saying that word home. And home, she knew, didn't mean Jersey, didn't mean the house they'd grown up in or the house where their mother lived now, didn't mean old familiar roads and the high school they'd both graduated from, where Anne Marie taught now. Home to him meant something different than what it meant to her and that didn't feel right, somehow. He was her brother, and they were meant to share the same home, but when he thought of home he thought of this city, and a woman she'd never met.
"Kathy wanted to be there to remind me where I was supposed to be. And if I'd just been a little bit stronger, a little bit better, she wouldn't have been so scared, and she wouldn't have come, and she'd still be alive."
As much as this conversation had challenged her understanding of the man, she still loved him. Still loved him, would always love him, no matter how bad he fucked up, no matter what he'd done, not just because they shared the same blood but because when she had been small and scared he had looked after her, and she was never, ever gonna forget that. When she'd needed him he'd been there, and by God, she'd be there for him now.
"Somebody else did this, Elliot," Anne Marie said it as much for herself as for him, a reminder that the blame did not actually rest on Elliot's shoulders, no matter how hard he tried to take responsibility for it. "Somebody else built that bomb, and put it in that car-"
"And if I'd been the husband she deserved it would be me dead, and not her. And the kids would be better off, and she'd still be breathing."
"You don't get to make that call," she told him sharply. Maybe he thought his children would have been better off with their mother and without him, and maybe he was right, but Anne Marie damn sure wouldn't have traded him for Kathy. God forgive me, she thought, but I wouldn't.
"You're not God, Elliot. Who lives, who dies, that's not a choice you get to make. You don't know what would have happened if things had gone differently, and you can't say it would have been better."
"Yeah, I can."
He'd always been stubborn. So fucking stubborn, the worst of mama and daddy both. The best of them, too. He sighed, flung himself down on the sofa and took a long swig from his beer. His eyes had cleared, a little, like telling the truth, just owning up to it, had helped him in some way, and Anne Marie really, really hoped it had. They'd never really done this before, she realized, never talked at length about him, where he went, what he did. They talked about their family and they talked about the kids and they talked about her, and whatever was going on in Elliot's head he kept it to himself. For a man so convinced of his own selfishness, he sure did spend a lot of time putting other people's needs in front of his own. Or maybe, she thought, maybe he had been selfish, keeping these secrets. Maybe he'd wanted them - wanted Liv - all to himself, and that selfishness had cost him everything.
"Kathy was the one who wanted the divorce," he said quietly. "I was working all the time and I was angry as hell when I wasn't and I'd go days not saying two words to her and sleep at the station because I didn't trust myself at home and she left. I was the one who wanted her back. I was the asshole who knocked her up and then she had to take me back. And if I'd just...if I'd just let her go when she wanted to go none of this would have happened. If I'd just seen what was right in front of me...you know she tried to leave me again? After Eli was born but before I quit the job? Twice. I should have let her fucking go."
No, Anne Marie hadn't known any of that, and she hadn't known it because he hadn't fucking told her, and now she was left just standing there, wrestling with this. When Kathy came up pregnant with Eli everyone talked about how sweet it was, how their love could have survived so long, could have survived so much, how after everything they were still made for each other, but Elliot talked about that pregnancy like it was a curse, not a blessing. Like it was something they'd never asked for, never wanted, something that had forced them into a life they didn't want to live, and how, Anne Marie wondered, how could he have spent so many years swallowing all this pain, all this grief, all this misery? How could he have spent so many years being the man she thought she'd known, strong and brave and steadfast, while inside he was ripping apart? It was no wonder he'd put his fist through the fucking wall.
"Kathy made her choices," she told him. Really she was just repeating his own words back to him, hoping that he'd just fucking listen. Kathy had left, and Kathy had let him fuck her, and Kathy had let him come home to her again; if they were apportioning blame, Anne Marie figured there was plenty to go around. "She didn't have to take you back if she didn't want to."
"Yeah, and look at what it got her."
Burned and dead and buried, that's what it got her, and Anne Marie looked away. Kathy had been family, a part of her life since childhood, and she'd loved her sister-in-law, really she had, and she didn't know what they were all supposed to do now that the one person who'd held them all together was gone, but Jesus. They had to keep moving. Elliot couldn't stay here, in this fucking hotel with his forearms on his knees, his head hung low on his shoulders, beating himself up for an affair he never had and a condom he never wore. Time kept moving, and life kept going, and if they didn't go with it they were all gonna fucking drown.
"So what are you gonna do?" she asked him harshly. "You gonna sit around here feeling sorry for yourself? Leave your kids to clean this mess up on their own?"
One of the perks of siblinghood was that she could talk to him like this, honestly and maybe even a little cruelly, and know he would not throw her out. They could fight - Christ, could they fight, Jenny remained, to this day, the only person who'd ever punched Anne Marie in the face - and they could reconcile, after. And right now, this moment, what Elliot needed, she thought, was someone to fight him. Someone to fight him, but to fight for him, too.
"Gonna kill yourself?" she added angrily. If it made her angry it was only because the thought scared her, because when she turned up at his door tonight she never would have believed him capable of such a thing but when she looked at him now she could almost see it happening, and she couldn't take it. The thought of losing him was unbearable, to her. What Kathy's death had done to him, his would do to her, and I won't let you, she thought. If I have to spend the rest of my life holding your hand I will, just to keep you safe.
"I'm gonna find the bastard who did it," he said grimly, and for the first time she found herself looking not at Elliot, but at Detective Stabler. Vengeful, and angry, and bound to the pursuit of justice. She didn't like what she saw.
"What good is that gonna do?" she asked him bluntly, and he looked up at her with shock in his eyes, like he'd never heard such a stupid question in his entire life, like he couldn't believe she'd say something like that to his face. "Whoever did this, going after them isn't gonna bring Kathy back. It isn't gonna put your family back together. Jesus, Elliot, look around you!" she let herself shout, waved her arms around that stupid fucking hotel suite. "Where is Eli? Where are your children? Why are you here, alone, staring at those fucking pictures -" she pointed towards the kitchen angrily - "instead of with your family?"
"I have to-"
"Why does it have to be you?"
The NYPD was full of detectives, full of people who could hunt killers and arsonists and bombers, and there was no reason, as far she could see, for Elliot to be the one so doggedly pursuing Kathy's killer. Was that even allowed? She wondered as she looked at him now. Surely there were rules against this sort of thing.
"It has to be me," he answered grimly. "It has to be me because this is my fault, and I have to make it right."
"You didn't do this, Elliot. You aren't responsible." She was starting to feel like a broken record; why wouldn't he just listen?
Because he loves someone else, a terrible voice whispered in the back of her mind. Because he loves someone more than Kathy and he thinks this is his penance.
"She was in the car because I'm an asshole. The bomb was in the car because someone wanted me dead."
"Why is that? What did you ever do to make somebody so mad?"
If he was so fucking certain that the bomb was meant for him he must have some suspicion, she thought, some inkling of a reason why, and it might be more useful to talk about that than to keep going on and on about what an asshole he was. Or maybe she was just being selfish. Maybe she just didn't want to hear the full litany of his failures. It hurt, losing a hero.
"Been working some investigations into organized crime," he shrugged. "Those guys have deep pockets and long arms, and they hold a grudge."
"You've been investigating the fucking mob?" It was like something out of the movies, dark and romantic and not at all the kind of thing that happened in real life. At least, not in Anne Marie's life. Elliot's life, she was beginning to see, was a hell of a lot more exciting than hers.
"I thought you knew that," he said slowly. "I thought everybody knew that. It's why we wouldn't let the kids tell anybody we were coming. These guys, they've got hackers, they've got informants, they could be reading emails, watching us, we couldn't risk anyone finding out I was stateside."
Why wouldn't let the kids tell anybody -
"Kathy told us," Anne Marie breathed, suddenly struck by a sense of dread. Elliot had made his children promise to keep their mouths shut but his wife had talked, and Elliot thought this whole thing was his fault but what if it wasn't? What if he wasn't the only one to blame?
"She sent an email to me and Jenny and the boys. And Lisa and all of them."
Kathy sent a nice, friendly email to all of Elliot's siblings and all of her own, telling them when she and Elliot would be in town. A nice, friendly email that some mob-owned hacker could have read, and used to track them, and oh shit, the world seemed a darker, more terrifying place now than it had an hour before.
"Excuse me?" Elliot looked thunderstruck. Horrified, disbelieving. Anne Marie kinda knew how he felt; she'd felt that way for most of the night.
"She sent us an email, wanted to see if we wanted to go to dinner."
"Jesus Christ." He buried his head in his hands for a moment, shoulders shaking, and then he started pacing the perimeter of the room, and his fucking hands were twitching again.
"Elliot -"
"I thought it was my fault. I thought they found out I was going to the ceremony, and that's why they chose that night to hit us."
"Yeah, well, maybe you aren't responsible for every fucked up thing that happens."
All his life, Elliot had been the responsible one. Looking after Anne Marie and Jenny and the boys, putting himself between them and daddy's fists. Marrying Kathy so she didn't have to live in shame, joining the Corps to keep her and Maureen fed. Becoming a cop to make daddy proud, and to prove he could be better than him, both at the same time. Going back to Kathy, never really leaving her, loving her and all their kids and putting their family above everything else. He'd been steady, when everything else was shaking. How many times, she wondered, how many times had he wanted something different, and pushed that want aside in favor of taking care of someone else? And this one thing he wanted, this Liv, this woman he'd never touched, he thought that want had killed his wife. The man needs a shrink, she thought, looking at him, because that was a neurosis she didn't think she was gonna be able to untangle in one night.
They were standing at opposite ends of the sofa, now, staring at one another, both of them still clutching bottles of beer they hadn't bothered to drink, but he went still, and his expression went soft, and warm, and fond.
"You're a good kid, Annie," he said.
Kid. She was fifty-three fucking years old. Maybe he'd always see a kid, when he looked at her. Maybe that was ok.
"I love you," she said. "Even if you are an asshole."
He barked out a laugh, and she breathed a sigh of relief. He's gonna be ok, she thought, looking at him. Maybe this was what he'd needed, a chance to tell the truth, and to hear it. To know that he wasn't the only one who bore a piece of the blame, to know that he wasn't the only one who'd made mistakes. To know that he wasn't alone.
"Can we sit down? My feet hurt."
"Come 'ere," he said, and they went to the couch together, flopped on it and swung their feet up onto the coffee table in unison. She sighed, and he took a swig of his beer, and they both relaxed deeper into the couch cushions, the tension slowly easing out of them. They'd covered a lot of ground tonight and Anne Marie was tired, and she knew he probably was, too, but there were still a few questions tumbling around in her mind, questions she wanted answers to, and it might make him mad if she asked him now, but honestly what were siblings for, if not to drive you a little crazy?
"Can I ask you something?" she said, staring straight ahead, at the black screen of the tv and the bare white wall behind it. Elliot grunted, and she took that as permission to continue.
"What's she like?"
"Who?" he asked. He was staring straight ahead, too, but it looked to Anne Marie like he was looking at their feet, his and hers together. His were bigger than hers, and her toes were painted red, and they looked kind of silly, propped up on the table like that.
"Liv."
Liv. Olivia. His partner, his friend, the woman Kathy thought he wanted to leave his family for. The one he thought had turned up here tonight, looking for him. The one who was such a good cop they gave her a fucking award for it. The one he'd never touched. Liv thinks I've got PTSD: they must have been talking, Anne Marie thought, and Liv must have noticed what a mess he was, and must have tried to help him, same as Anne Marie was now. Anne Marie wanted to believe that Liv, whoever she was, was a good woman. That she was good, and that she hadn't led him astray, and that she'd be kind to him now, when he needed it. She wanted to believe it, because the alternative made her skin crawl.
"She's Liv," he said, shrugging, like that explained everything. Such a fucking man, Anne Marie thought.
"Is she pretty?"
"Don't go there, Annie." There was a warning in his tone, but she breezed right past it.
"Take that as a yes."
"You're such a brat," he said, shaking his head. "But yeah. Yeah, she's…yeah. She's pretty."
"What else?"
Pretty alone wouldn't be enough, she thought, because Kathy was pretty, too. Because as long as he'd been with Kathy, he'd been with Liv a long time, too, and after so many years pretty didn't matter so much, not as much as heart, or character, or a sense of humor. Would he like a woman who was funny? Anne Marie wondered. Did Liv make him laugh? Was that enough to make him care for her, after thirteen years beside her and the decade that had passed since he left the NYPD? Or was she just kind to him, and him so desperate for a piece of kindness he'd take it wherever he could find it? The glimpses of Detective Stabler she'd seen tonight made her wonder what face he showed to Liv, and what kind of woman would put up with a man like that for so long.
"Annie-"
"Use your words," she nudged him with her elbow. "Just talk to me, El."
"She's...she's my best friend. Even now, after everything. I hurt her. I walked out on her. I left her alone, for all these years, and I come back and just shit all over everything she's built and she's still my best friend."
After everything. Somehow she thought everything didn't just mean the bomb, and Elliot's spectacular unraveling. Everything, she figured, probably meant a whole lot of shit she didn't know, wasn't ever gonna know. She couldn't begrudge him his secrets, not really. We've all got baggage, she thought. Some more than most.
"She's good to you?"
That's what really mattered, to her. Elliot deserved someone who was good to him. Someone who would fight for him. Someone who wouldn't bring him down, or take advantage of him. And if this Liv, if she didn't realize the gift she had been given, the gift of Elliot's trust, his heart, well. Anne Marie would always fight, for the ones she loved. She learned that from her big brother.
"Better than I deserve. She's been helping me, even when I didn't want it. She's been helping the kids."
That surprised her, somehow. That this woman who meant so much to Elliot, this woman he had hidden from her for so long now, was spending time with his children, interacting with them, looking after them. That he'd let her into his family's lives, those lives he'd always been so protective of. That took trust, she thought, but then they had been partners for more than a decade; maybe there was nobody he trusted he more, and maybe Liv had more than earned that trust.
"She sounds nice."
He laughed again, sharply, and she turned to look at him, at the expression on his face, rueful and fond.
"She's not nice?" Annie asked.
"No, she's nice, she's nice. She's just…she's tough. She's real tough. Tougher than me, I think."
"It's a pretty low bar."
"Yeah, yeah," he shrugged off her teasing, not rising to the bait. "I want you to meet her, some day."
"I think I'd like that."
It would be something, she thought, to meet this Liv in person. To see just how pretty she was, how good. It was hard to imagine, though, Elliot turning up with someone else in tow for the family Christmas. Christ, what would mama say? Maybe Anne Marie could just come back to the city, meet them for dinner some time. Maybe that would be better, safer, than exposing Liv to the whole Stabler clan. Yeah, Elliot had said she was tough, but Jesus. Some things no one was strong enough for.
"But right now, it's late, and I'm fucking tired." He was done talking, and she couldn't blame him because he'd said so much already, and so she didn't fight him, this time.
"Me, too," she confessed, sitting her beer down on the sidetable and crossing her arms over her belly. "Is there a game on?"
Probably, she thought, probably he'd told her he was tired because he wanted her to leave, because he'd had enough of introspection and emotion and coming apart at the seams, but she wasn't going anywhere. He was her brother, and she loved him, and she didn't want him to be alone, not any more than he had to be.
"I think so, yeah," he said, and then he turned the tv on, and they fell asleep together in front of the flickering blue light of the tv screen, her head on his shoulder, just like they used to do when they were kids. Safe, and warm, and together.