"Your Jenna?" he says, putting the emphasis on Jenna. Like his surprise is not that she committed some fatal mistake in her past, but that said mistake is in the same vein as his. "What does that mean?"
"Nothing, Elliot." She knows he'll pummel her till she explains herself – and rightly so, it was a weird thing to say – but suddenly she's exhausted. She doesn't want to get into it and sorely regrets the statement.
Predictably, he whines. "Come on, Liv. You can't just drop something like that and not tell me what you mean. Especially because … that girl is alive."
"I just meant, I failed to save her, and it haunts me to this day."
"She was raped?" he whispers. It's telling that that's where his mind goes, especially since Jenna wasn't raped. And it's even more telling that, of course, he's right.
"Yeah. She was raped."
Elliot scratches his cheek. "But … not to state the obvious, Liv, but that's most of your cases. What made this one special?"
She hesitates. "She wasn't … a case."
He clears his throat. "You'll have to explain that."
She sighs. "One morning about six years ago, Noah's nanny alerted me that the other family she worked for was acting strange. I went to check it out and walked straight into an active home invasion. Three perps holding a family of four at gunpoint."
"Jesus," he whistles. He's mute for a full second. And then: "Were you hurt?"
She turns to him, annoyed. "Was I hurt? Missing the point, El."
He narrows his eyes. "Am I? It's not appropriate for me to ask if my partner was hurt in a hostage situation that involved a gun and a rape? The woman I was closer to than my own wife for more than a decade? I'm automatically supposed to care more about a family of strangers?"
He's not wrong, but dammit if his protectiveness isn't exactly what got them both in trouble so many times.
And yet, they're not partners anymore. He's more … allowed to feel this way now. And if she's being honest, after all the shit she's been through, all the men she's been with whose caring always felt just short of authentic, his feels so, so good.
"I was banged up a little," she admits. "I had some bruises, a concussion."
"A concussion isn't nothing, Liv."
"I know."
"But you weren't …?" He lets the question dangle.
"No, I wasn't. But she was."
He inhales, exhales. "So why do you call her your Jenna?"
She realizes she might as well tell him. This, she can talk about. Lewis, she can't. "Because … the ringleader, his name was Joe, decided during a lull that he was going to rape one of us. Me, Tess, or his accomplice girlfriend. He picked Tess."
"So?"
"So, she was sixteen, Elliot! I should've stepped in to help her!"
He comes to a dead stop on the street, tugs at her elbow, stopping her too. "Stepped in, how? Wasn't he holding you at gunpoint?"
She looks down. "I should've …" She can't say it.
Elliot's face goes ashen, because he knows exactly what she means. "No … No. You can't be serious, Liv. You think you should've volunteered yourself to be raped instead of her?"
"Keep your voice down!" she hisses, glancing around the sidewalk.
"Liv," he warns. "Answer me. Is that what you think?"
"She was sixteen!"
"Which is tragic. But under no circumstances does that in any way mean it should have been you instead."
And now she sees why she's so drawn to him. Why, despite how he's treated her this past year, his seeming self-centeredness, his apparent apathy towards her, she can't not forgive him.
Because she owes this man a great debt.
He's the reason that, after twenty-three years of witnessing the worst of humanity, of experiencing it herself more than once, she still has faith in men. Sure, there are others she respects and trusts: Fin, Carisi. Nick, Cragen, Munch, once upon a time.
All good people. Solid gold.
But Elliot. Elliot. He was the first. The first to stand up for her, to have her back under any and all circumstances. He was willing to break rules for her, and, yes, get in trouble for it. All without any expectation of getting something in return. Of getting in her pants. He was the first to understand her. To understand her needs, to defend her perspective even when he didn't agree with it. And in her rookie years, when she was wracked with insecurity about her career choice and her ability to succeed, filled with hatred for her father and righteous indignation on behalf of her mother, his appearance in her life was a tonic. Taught her whole life to hate men but stuck in a career where she expended immeasurable energy to impress them, his instant acceptance of her as his competent, capable partner enabled her to thrive. Not just as a cop, but as a woman. She could be herself around him; she trusted him completely.
And he really would've lain down in traffic for her.
"Tell me you understand that, Liv."
She starts, having lost the thread of the conversation. He has stopped walking, is facing her head-on in the middle of the sidewalk, his eyes boring into her. Jesus Christ, those blue eyes … "What?"
"Tell me you understand that it shouldn't have been you."
"I do," she lies. "I do understand that."
He nods, starts to walk again. "You're lying," he mutters, shaking his head.
She doesn't saying anything, keeps walking next to him, her ankle throbbing.
He wants to shake her.
A half-block up, he stops again. He can't let this go. He turns to her, cups her arms, forcing her to look up at him. Her eyes are so, so sad. "Look, I know I missed a lot. And I … realize there's a lot you haven't told me. And I hope you do, I hope you still trust me like that. But however much I've fucked up, and I know I have, please believe me when I say I care about you, Liv. A lot."
"I do believe you."
No, he thinks. You don't. "A lot," he repeats, his eyes trying to find hers. She looks at the ground. "Liv, please."
She fidgets in place, pivots from one foot to the other.
He tries again. "Don't take this the wrong way, but – "
"Don't start a sentence like that, Elliot."
He hears the jokiness in her voice. She's desperate to get away from the weight of this. He won't let her. "I just need to get this off my chest, okay, without worrying you'll take it as condescending, especially since you're, a, uh, Captain, and uh – "
"Jesus, out with it!"
"Okay." He takes another step toward her, his chin practically brushing her forehead. She's wearing flats, and he's a lot taller than she is. From anyone else, his stance might border on menacing. "Don't you ever, EVER, think you screwed up because you didn't get raped." His voice is nearly a growl.
She inhales sharply. She'd never tolerate anyone else talking to her like this. She almost considers slapping him.
But she doesn't have it in her. Not least because of those gorgeous eyes, looking at her with such unflinching care. The words were patronizing, to be sure, but she knows in her heart how much he respects her.
And she's not really angry at him. Because he's reacting exactly the way any good partner would. The way she would, if any of her people ever confessed the same thing. "That's not what I said."
"But it's what you meant. I know you, Liv. You think every victim is your responsibility. You think because you're a cop that that means that your wellbeing, your life, is worth less than theirs – " He gestures around, to indicate the civilian world. "This girl wasn't your responsibility, and her rape wasn't your fault. You were innocent. She's not your Jenna, okay?"
Tears budding in her eyelids, it's all she can do to nod, pull away from him, start walking again.
"Jenna wasn't your fault either," she says quietly, after a few yards.
"She was different."
"Why? It was a good shoot. She may've been an innocent teenager when she walked into the precinct, but she wasn't by the time you shot her."
"I know."
She turns to him. "Do you know? Because it seems to me that if you knew it was a good shoot, you wouldn't have destroyed your career and our partnership and disappeared off the face of the planet for a decade."
"I said I knew she wasn't innocent, not that I think it was a good shoot."
"You did what you had to do, Elliot."
Tell her, he thinks. Take a chance. After everything she's done for him, for his family, he knows he owes her the truth, at last. "Liv, do you remember what we talked about after Gitano?"
"Gitano?"
"In 2006. The psychopath who – "
"I remember the case," she snaps.
"Okay. Do you remember I said, we could never choose each other over the job again? That if we did, we couldn't be partners?"
"What does that have to do with Jenna?"
She really doesn't get it, he thinks. After all these years.
He squares his jaw. Is about to say it, can't.
"Well?" she says, impatient.
"I chose you." The words come out hoarse.
She stops, dead in her tracks. "What?"
"I was going to tackle her," he says quietly. "In that moment, when she raised the gun again, I thought I had enough time."
"You were across the room, way too far away."
He puts up a hand, talks over her. "I had my vest in my desk drawer. I wouldn't have had time to put it on, but I was going to grab it, hold it over my chest, and rush her."
She's shaking her head, has taken a step backward, is already rejecting what he has to say. "There's no way," she insists. "She would've shot you if you'd done that."
He takes a step closer, unwilling for her not to hear. "Maybe," he acknowledges. "It would've been risky."
"Exactly."
"But that's not why I changed my mind."
"Elliot, you shot her because she was refusing to drop the gun and was about to pull the trigger again. There was nothing else you could've done."
"Not. True." He needs her to understand. "In that moment, Liv, I'd decided to tackle her."
"It would never have worked. She'd have shot right at you. Holding your vest up against your chest wouldn't have protected you."
"Probably. But I would've taken the chance, to save her life. I figured, between holding my vest up, and the fact that that girl wasn't a great shot, I thought my odds were decent."
"That would've been an insane risk to take."
"But I would've taken it," he insists. "I didn't want to shoot her. She was just a teenager. She was a baby." He's crying now. "But I changed my mind because you were there. Right between her and me. I changed my mind because if she shot at me, she might've hit you. That was the risk I wasn't willing to take."