Author's comments: Geez, y'all, I can only write so fast.

Better Days

Chapter Nine

Part One

After days of getting nowhere, Elliot finally made a breakthrough. He had approached Jet a few days earlier, asking for her help despite Sargent Bell ordering him off the case. She had reluctantly agreed to help him secretly search through Wheatley's financials for any clue on his whereabouts. Today they struck paydirt.

Jet found a deserted warehouse in the Garment District of Manhattan. The warehouse was concealed by a series of shell corporations, but they all led back to Wheatley. There was no telling what was in that warehouse, but Elliot at least had someplace new to look. If Wheatley wasn't hiding out there, maybe he could at least find another clue.

Elliot wanted to go straight there, but he had one problem. He had been trying to text and call Olivia for over an hour, with no reply. Maybe she was asleep, but he doubted it, because she had hardly slept at all the last week. He felt propelled to check in on her, even if she was just taking a long bath.

When he got to her apartment, he was greeted with a deafening silence, and he instantly knew something was wrong. "Liv?"

But he was only met with the eerie quiet in the living room. He looked in her bedroom and the bathroom, and she was not there. His heart began to quicken just as he saw her phone and the note. He picked up the small square of paper, with her hastily scratched writing on it.

"Oh God, no." He shook his head. "Liv—"

He snatched up her phone and clutched it with the note as he raced to his car. Should he even bother to check the location she had written down? She wouldn't be there, he knew. He decided to go straight to the warehouse.

"Come on, come on, come on," he beseeched the turtle-paced traffic. He got stuck at a light, and looked down at Olivia's phone. There was an exchange of texts, and it didn't take long to figure out what had happened.

After nearly rear-ending several cars, he finally reached his destination, parking down the street a little way so he wouldn't be spotted. There were very few windows. He prayed nobody was watching the cameras, because he knew Wheatley loved a good security system and would have video monitoring.

Finally, he found an entrance, and he approached the door cautiously. He turned the handle, and it was unlocked. He opened it a crack and peered in, but he couldn't see much from this angle. All he knew was that the door led straight into the warehouse.

Before going in, he closed the door once more and said a small prayer. Let her be okay. And have mercy on us both.

Slowly, he opened the door, peeking in and to the left. Nothing. He threw the door open and swung around to his right, but there was nobody. A glimpse of movement straight ahead caught his attention, and he pointed his gun straight at the source, every muscle taut.

And then he gasped, lowering his pistol.

Right in the middle of the giant room was a cross—an actual, honest to God, wooden cross. Someone in a gray hoodie and sweatpants was hanging by their arms, and by the long hair hanging from a lowered head, Elliot thought for a second that he'd been transported to Jerusalem in the first century.

And then the reality struck, in this moment that felt anything but real. "Oh. My. God."

He ran to her, watching her helplessly as she tried to push herself up by her feet so she could catch a breath. She desperately inhaled and exhaled twice, and then lost her strength again and sunk down, whimpering as she collapsed in on herself.

"Liv…Liv, hold on."

Just before he reached her, Wheatley jumped out from behind her, the barrel of his Glock pointing straight at her. "Put the gun down, Elliot."

Elliot instinctively drew his gun up, aiming it at Wheatley, but he knew it was game over. He couldn't let Olivia get shot now. For all he knew, this would be their last moment, because Wheatley could take her out and follow up immediately with Elliot. The best outcome would be for Wheatley to toy with them a both a little longer, giving Elliot a fighting chance.

Elliot slowly lowered his gun and set it on the floor. Pressing his lips together in a thin line, he held his hands up. "You got me, Wheatley," he said softly. "But please, you gotta get her down from there."

Wheatley just stood there smiling, obviously savoring Elliot's torment. "I think she'll live a little longer. We'll just leave her like that for now." He looked up at her with reverence, as if they were in a church. "Isn't she beautiful? She's been at this for hours. My favorite part is right now, in between breaths, when there's that long pause and you wonder if this is when death takes her."

"Please…" Elliot whispered.

He gripped the back of his neck, unable to move to her, to lift her up, to save her. All he could do was watch and pray that she would lift herself up again so she could take that next necessary, urgent, desperate breath. She raised her head and looked at him, but he wondered if she could actually see him in her torment. With her arms outspread and her hands drooping and useless behind the rope, she looked as if she was ready to fly away. His angel.

She made a jerking motion, and he knew she was just trying to move her ribcage again, forcing the stale air from her gasping lungs. She began to move her feet, and he silently muttered, Come on, come on, come on, lift yourself up.

Somehow she did—with shaky legs she pushed against the cross and raised her body up just an inch or two. It was just enough, and she opened her mouth and sucked in the precious air. She took one more wheezing breath and slumped down again. And now Elliot said another prayer, that she would live long enough to take another breath.

Part Two

What had seemed like a plan at the time now revealed itself as a desperate attempt to control an uncontrollable situation as soon as Wheatley pulled the platform out from under Olivia's thrashing feet.

Why did I do this again? she asked herself. Oh, yeah, to kill Wheatley. She knew that the only way to ensure his death was to anger Elliot enough to pull the trigger on Wheatley without hesitation. She knew he was capable. It wouldn't be the first time he shot someone.

But she hadn't anticipated this, she realized as she hung there, struggling harder and harder to breathe. At first, it was if something was sitting on her chest, slowing her lung. But her body began to sag even further, eventually immobilizing her ribcage altogether. And then panic coursed through her bloodstream, causing her heart to strain and throb. Her only solution was to push against the cross with her feet, raising herself up just enough to exhale a few times. At first, she could stay like that for a minute or so, guaranteeing a decent passage of air. But as time wore on, her strength began to fade, and each time she stayed up a few seconds less.

It had been a bad plan, she knew all along. Maybe it had been the lack of sleep, or just the sheer rage and fear and need for a reprisal, but putting herself right in Wheatley's path had been doomed to fail. Nevertheless, she couldn't sit around and wait for him anymore. A part of her just wanted to get the inevitable confrontation between them over, and maybe she would get lucky and Elliot would take him out in the meantime.

She knew there was a low probability of success, and a high possibility of dying. What she hadn't anticipated was that Wheatley was even more obsessed than she was, so much that he even built this contraption she was hanging from now just to make her suffer. And all so he could witness Elliot languish in guilt and grief.

At any rate, he was getting his wish—she was enduring a special kind of hell, one where she alternated between alarm at struggling for enough oxygen and writhing in pain. The worst part was the feeling that her arms were being ripped out of her sockets. In fact, she was pretty sure one of them had already reached that point, when she heard a snap and felt like a barbie doll in the hands of sadistic boy.

After a while, she lost all sense of time, every second dedicated to summoning up enough strength to lift her body up and catch another breath. She felt herself starting to give up. She had no idea how long she'd been there, but she started to let herself sag for longer periods, thinking about how easy it would be to just let go and stop trying. And just when she thought she'd slip into unconsciousness, she would summon up just enough energy to push herself up for a few more precious seconds, allowing herself to slip in another gasp or two.

She looked up during one of these brief interludes of desperate sighing, and couldn't tell if she was hallucinating. Because standing before her was Elliot, gazing up at her with worshipping eyes. She wanted to say his name so bad—oh how she wanted it to slip from her lips one more time, but there wasn't enough air or energy to get it out. So she just watched him, watching her, as long as she could keep her head up.

Part Three

For a second, Elliot thought he saw recognition in her gaze. She moved her lips, and he thought he saw her mouth his name, but it was hard to be sure. He mouthed slowly back at her, I love you. She smiled weakly, and now he knew she'd received the message.

But soon, her head dropped again, and this time he unconsciously began to count one, two, three, four…. He got up to twenty before he even realized what he was doing. He had to stop this, now, or she was going to die within the next few minutes.

He rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Wheatley, can I at least say goodbye to her?"

Wheatley laughed. "Yeah, from right where you are."

"Come on!" Elliot shouted. Tears came from his eyes, and he wasn't faking those. "You've made us both suffer. I get it, you win—we're both dead. Just please, have the decency to let me tell her goodbye close up."

Wheatley's eyes narrowed into slits, mistrust hanging on his thin lips. But he stepped back and waved his gun toward Olivia. "Go on, then." He took several steps back and trained the gun on her. "But nothing funny, or she'll be the first to go."

Elliot nodded his feigned gratitude and started toward her. Once his back was to Wheatley, he slid his hand down to his pocket and slid out a pen. With a quick flick of his wrist, he casually tossed the pen to the side as far as he could. The noise caused Wheatley to jerk his gaze to the direction of the pen, and Elliot used the second of distraction to lunge at Wheatley and tackle him before he could get his bearings.

It was a risky move, but it worked, and he knocked Wheatley to the ground before the gun went off. Quickly realizing he hadn't been shot, Elliot wrestled with Wheatley, knocking the gun out of his hand. A few quick punches to Wheatley's face gave Elliot just enough time to scramble for the gun and then slam it into Wheatley's temple, knocking him out.

He slammed the gun into Wheatley's head a few more times, hard, just to make sure he stayed down. And then he ran to the podium and pushed it underneath Olivia's limp body, but she wasn't moving and her eyes were closed, so Elliot knew he was going to have to hold her up. He scrambled onto the podium and stood next to her, using all his power to hoist her up. Her head lolled back, and she still didn't move or make a sound.

He looked down at her chest—not moving. The bullet may have hit her, but he didn't see any blood. He wasn't sure how long it had been since she'd last taken a breath, but they weren't coming now, and he knew he would have to act fast. Still holding her up with all his might, he reached into his pocket and found his knife. He fumble with it, fingers trembling, until he could get it open and start sawing away at the rope.

It took forever, even though his knife was sharp and serrated. Finally he got the damn thing cut through on one wrist, and then he cut the other, and she still hadn't taken a breath. She collapsed into his arm, but she was dead weight. He lowered her down as far as he could, hopped off the pedestal, and then lowered her the rest of the way to the floor.

He checked for a pulse but couldn't find anything. Brushing her hair away from her face, he lowered his ear to her mouth and listened, but only heard a frightening silence. He touched her face and said calmly, "Come on, honey. Breathe. You can do it."

With shaking hands, he straightened her up on the floor, preparing to do CPR. Her lips were blue, her skin a waxy gray. While he lowered his lips to hers to loan her his life-giving breath, he prayed one last time, that he wasn't too late.