"Yeah, maybe…" She could hear from Elliot's voice he was thinking hard, but then he started walking again, nudging her lightly with his shoulder as he passed her. "Come on, it's getting dark soon. You ready to go to sleep again, Liv?"

Liv.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Two years earlier:

Beeping.

Bright lights.

Pain.

Pain everywhere.

Where am I?

Elliot slowly opened his eyes, groaning in pain as he tried to move. His field of vision was blurry, and he had to blink to see his surroundings more clearly.

He recognized the place immediately, as he had been there countless times before. There was no mistaking the sterile smell and the uncomfortable bed.

He was in the hospital.

However, he couldn't find out from the room which hospital he was in, so he began to look around. Next to the bed was a small table with a few magazines on it. He reached out to take a magazine, and a sharp pain shot through him, but he wasn't about to give up, and with gritting his teeth, he managed to reach the magazine.

But it was in Spanish. Frowning, he began to eye the room more closely, and noticed that the signs in the room were also in Spanish.

What the…

He turned the magazine he was holding and looked at the mailing address at the top of the back cover. When he saw it, he almost dropped the magazine at the mere astonishment.

Hospital Universitario Dr. José Eleuterio Gonzalez, Mexico.

Then a sudden violent headache nearly paralyzed him, and he squeezed his eyes shut and buried his forehead into his hands. The pain clouded his thoughts, and for a moment he was unable to do or think about anything. Just as the pain started to ease, the door opened.

"¡Buenos dias! Te has despertado."

"Excuse me?" He answered in a rough voice, having to clear his throat. Judging by the voice, he hadn't spoken in a while.

"Oh, sorry, Mr. Murray. I forgot you were from the USA.

"Mr. Murray? Sorry, but I…" But the words got stuck in his throat because he didn't know what to say. What the hell is my name? Why don't I remember my name? He felt the panic start to build up inside him, and with it, the headache started to tighten its grip again. "Sorry, what's my name again?"

"Don't you remember that?" The nurse frowned and looked at him more closely. "James Murray, does it sound familiar?"

No, no, that's not my name. It can't be…. Or can it?

"W-what happened?" He tried to fight the ever-increasing headache with little success, and the nurse looked at him with concern.

"Maybe I should call the doctor…"

"No, please, tell me first what happened," the panic made his voice stifled, and he looked at the nurse pleadingly. A look of hesitation lingered on her face for a moment, but then she sighed.

"Uh, okay. You have been here for three days; you were brought here in very bad condition. You had been shot and beaten, and it's a miracle you're still alive."

Shot.

Beaten.

Three days.

Is someone worried?

Why am I in Mexico for Heaven's sake?

"Unfortunately, we cannot say who brought you here. You were found at the door of the hospital, with only a backpack with your passport in it. As a result of the abuse, you had been hit on the head, so it is possible that you suffer from amnesia a little."

A little?

I don't remember a damn thing!

Elliot began to feel dizzy, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut. From somewhere in the distance, he heard the nurse's voice:

"I'm going to call the doctor, he needs to examine you again."

And then the door closed, and Elliot was left alone, and he had never felt a loneliness like this.

He was just a shell, a living body with no past or future.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Liv.

Elliot's words stopped Olivia in her tracks. There was no way he knew her nickname, because she had never mentioned it once.

"W-what did you say?" She stuttered, and Elliot turned to look at her in confusion.

"I don't… I don't know. What did I say?"

"You said "Liv"," she answered, and took a step closer towards her former partner, whose expression had visibly tensed. "Why did you say it?"

"I… I…" Elliot was glancing nervously around and seemed to have lost his ability to speak. "It… It just felt… Right," he stammered. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No!" She stopped because Elliot looked like a prey animal ready to run away at any moment. Olivia couldn't say what had scared him so much, but she was sure of one thing:

He hadn't done anything wrong.

On the contrary, hearing her nickname come out of his mouth had felt better than anything people had said to her over the past two years. Just one word, three letters, and it was like a key that fit one of the countless locks whose keys had been lost, and which had chained the darkness inside her. Tears welled up in her eyes, and it clearly gave the wrong impression as Elliot took a few steps backwards.

She wanted to tell, oh God how much she wanted to. She wanted to tell Elliot about everything: about SVU, his family, his "death", their friendship. She would have liked to tell him about the past two years, about the grief, about how the light had disappeared inside her with him...

I can't live without you, El.

Without you, nothing matters.

But she couldn't. Not now, when she was supposed to work undercover to find out who was killing innocent children. She needed James Murray for her job, and she couldn't just blurt out the truth to Elliot out of nowhere. She was still a stranger to him, as much as it hurt to think about it, and she had to earn his trust.

Detective Benson needed James Murray, but Olivia Benson… She needed only one thing. And it wasn't James.

"Ell… James," she tried to speak in a soothing voice, as panic had suddenly appeared in Elliot's eyes. She had never seen him like this; his body was here, but his mind was somewhere else. "James, it's alright. I was just surprised, because Liv is my nickname. Breathe, it's okay."

"But how… How do I…"

"It was probably just a coincidence," Olivia heard herself answer, even though her heart was screaming for her to tell the truth. But since she couldn't do that, she allowed herself to touch his shoulder reassuringly. It worked, because Elliot first turned his restless gaze to her hand and then to her eyes. And for a moment, just a fraction of a second, something familiar flashed in his blue eyes.

"But…"

"Come on, it's already late," she forced herself to remove her hand from Elliot's shoulder, and started walking forward.

And he couldn't help but follow.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The moon cast long shadows in the living room as Elliot lay on the couch with his eyes open. He couldn't sleep because it felt like his soul was not giving him peace. It was as if something had ignited inside him for the first time in two years the moment he had called Olivia "Liv". It hadn't been on purpose, it had just escaped his lips, but as soon as his lips had formed the word, it had felt right.

Familiar.

The vague feeling that he knew the woman sleeping in his bedroom had grown stronger throughout the day. The feeling was so new, yet so comforting, that he had to resist the strong urge to get out of bed, and just go look at her, wrap himself in the feeling that he wasn't alone anymore.

Because even though he had met new people during the two years, something seemed to be missing. Maybe it was the history, the feeling of detachment, the idea that he couldn't connect them to anything.

Because he had nothing.

But when he thought of Olivia, Liv, her brown eyes and brown hair, the feeling that he needed to be able to connect her to something was missing. She was enough just the way she was. And when he looked at her, he felt like he could read her quite differently than the others. No words were needed, just one look, and…

I must know her from somewhere.

I have to remember.

"El?"

A soft voice breaking the silence interrupted his thoughts and he flinched. El. Elliot. Why did she keep calling him that name? Did he really resemble her friend that much?

But why hearing that name felt like something stirred deep inside him?

"I mean… James?"

He didn't answer, just compared the names in his mind. James sounded familiar; it was the name he had come to know. It was the only thing that had carried him for two years, when he had had nothing else to lean on.

But Elliot... The name felt somewhere deeper. And the way Olivia said it… He felt tears welling up in his eyes, even though he didn't think he was emotional.

The dark figure in the doorway clearly assumed he must be asleep, because he had not reacted to her in any way, and she quietly turned on her heels.

"Liv, I'm awake."

The figure stopped. "Sorry, did I wake you?"

"No, I couldn't sleep."

Then Olivia quietly stepped back into the living room and sighed deeply as she sat down on the couch next to him.

"Me neither. Must be the Moon."

However, in the moonlight, she noticed the tears running down Elliot's cheeks which he didn't notice himself, and she frowned.

"What's wrong?" She asked quietly, her soft voice hitting somewhere deep in his heart. And without further thought, on a whim, the words escaped from his mouth before he could stop himself:

"Nothing, I just… Could you hold me?"

He would have liked to slap himself immediately after the words echoed from the walls, and he waited for Olivia to get up and go back to her room. But he didn't want her to leave, he wanted to look at her and feel an inexplicable warmth move inside him for the first time in two years.

And that's probably why he was so surprised, when Olivia moved closer to him without saying a word and wrapped her arms around him. The grip was tight, the same desperation in it as when she had clung to him hysterically crying at the station, but this time she let out a deep sigh. The faint scent of her hair reached his senses, and he took a deep breath.

And that was when it hit. It felt as if someone had thrown ice cold water on him, or as if lightning had struck him from a clear sky.

The same scent, the same tight grip, the same desperation.

The same familiarity, the same relief, the same warmth.

"I'm really glad you're back."

"I should have come back sooner."