The next night, his cell buzzes. He pauses the game – Mets are getting clobbered anyway – and answers without checking who's calling, a luxurious habit he's developed post-retirement. "Hello?"

"El?"

God, the voice is such a far cry from the spunky and assertive one he's used to. "Liv?"

Breathing. And then, "I'm sorry… It's okay. I'm sorry I called you so late."

"It's only ten-thirty."

She doesn't say anything, but he knows she's devising a way to recant the call gracefully. He won't let her.

"He's on a night shift?" he ventures intrepidly.

"What?"

"Brian. Let me guess. You're alone in the apartment."

Pause. "Yeah."

"I'm on my way."

A beat. "Thank you."

When he arrives at Brian's eight minutes later – he walked; go figure, the schmo only lives ten blocks away from his own shoebox bachelor pad – Elliot knocks, announces himself plainly. He hears her shuffle to the door, but several seconds pass before she opens it. Even though she recognizes his voice, she's checking the peephole. Twice.

She's white as a sheet when she finally lets him in.

"You all right?"

She nods. "I'm so sorry, El, I feel like an idiot."

"Don't be. You shouldn't be alone."

"Please don't say that."

He helps himself to a seat on Brian's couch, gestures for her to do the same. "Why?" he says. "Because you're a cop?"

"Yes."

"So you can't feel vulnerable?"

"No, I can't."

At least she's honest.

He knows he won't win this battle, so he lets it go.

"Anyway," she continues. "I'm not feeling vulnerable. I'm just upset."

"Wanna tell me about it?"

She glances around, not focusing on anything in particular. Her expression is spacey, if not a little frazzled. "I, uh, I got a call just now."

"From whom?"

"From Vanessa Mayer, the lawyer who represented Lewis."

Every nerve in his body tingles as furious adrenaline surges through him. "Don't tell me that bastard –"

"No, no, it's nothing like that. Anyway, she's not representing him anymore."

His brain isn't able to turn the physical reaction off quite so fast, and his body still rumbles with now-misplaced rage. It takes effort to return his voice to evenness. "Okay, so what did she say?"

"Her mother… she died."

"When?"

"A few hours ago."

He takes a moment to process this news, trying to understand why this matters. He knows he's missing something, but he wants to be supportive. "I'm sorry to hear that. May I ask, Liv, why did the lawyer tell you about this?"

"She thought I would want to know."

He tries to sound tactful; this is obviously significant in some way. "Okay… but why?"

"Well, she died of acute blood poisoning stemming from an infection."

He decides to come clean. "Liv, I'm sorry, I'm just not following what this has to do with you."

Olivia's distress has obviously impaired her judgment, because she still fails to appreciate he doesn't have enough information to connect the dots. "Well, it seems… um, it seems one of her wounds got infected."

Wounds? What's she talking about?

"Okay…" he offers coaxingly. And?

She shoots him the most devastating look he's ever seen. "From the burns."

And now it clicks. This is the woman Olivia was forced to watch being raped and tortured. The other victim. "I'm so sorry, Liv. But I hope you're not somehow blaming yourself for this."

It's precisely what she's doing, apparently, for her eyes suddenly widen with ferocious energy. "Are you kidding?" she exclaims, almost shrieking. "He burned her every time I looked away! He wanted me to watch, that's all I had to do! Her life was at stake, and all I had to do was keep my damn eyes opened!"

"And you didn't?"

It's not an accusation; he's just hoping to lead her to the logical conclusion: if she didn't, there was surely good reason.

She falters. "I…I tried."

"But you couldn't."

"I didn't try hard enough."

He inches closer to her on the couch, careful to give her buffer. "That cannot possibly be true."

"It is. I let her down. A victim is dead because of me."

He reaches out to her, cups her elbow. "Tell me, Liv. Why did you close your eyes? Did you decide to take a nap?"

This gets her attention. "Of course not," she snaps. It was clearly a provocative question, but he's disturbed nonetheless that she's taken it at face value. She crumples back into the soft leather of the couch. "I just… I was feeling so woozy."

"Woozy?"

"He'd, umm, he'd forced me to binge-drink vodka and swallow pills."

"What kind of pills?"

She shrugs helplessly. "I don't know. They were different colors. They made me sweat and hallucinate."

"And you had to drink vodka, too?"

"The first day, it was whiskey. Then he switched to vodka."

"How often did he force you to drink?"

"Every hour, on the hour. He would wake me up if I'd passed out, point at the clock, tell me it was time to take my medication. That's what he called it."

"How much would he force you to drink?"

"Whatever he could get down my throat. I would fight it, but he was patient. He didn't care how long it took, he wouldn't ease up till I'd downed at least four or five gulps. He would remind me that the longer I struggled now, the shorter the break I'd get until the next hour's 'feeding' came along."

"Did he give you anything else to eat or drink, besides the alcohol?"

"No."

"How long did this go on for?"

"The whole time."

"Four days."

"Yeah."

"And when did you visit the lawyer's mother?"

"I think we were on the third day."

For the sake of what he's trying to do for her, he manages to keep his expression even, though inside, he is shattering. "Okay. What else, Liv?"

"What do you mean?" She seems genuinely curious.

"Well, by the time you visited this woman, you'd endured more than two full days of round-the-clock forced drinking. What else had he done to you?"

"El, that's not –"

"Had he beaten you?"

"No."

"No?" He reaches out to her forehead, to the glaring cluster of stitches that mar her beautiful face. "Where'd those come from?"

"Well, he'd hit me in the head with his gun."

"How many times?"

She pauses. "Three."

"He'd knocked you out."

"Yeah."

"Okay, so you'd been beaten and force-fed pills and alcohol. What else?"

"Nothing else."

He waits a beat. "Liv," he starts softly. "By day three, how many burns did you have, on your body?"

"That has nothing to do with –"

"Olivia. How many?"

She can't meet his eyes. "I don't know."

"So let me get this straight: By the time you were taken to this woman's house, you had been drugged, and beaten, and tortured, for three days straight. Not to mention dehydrated and starved. And you were supposed to keep your eyes open. Does that sound reasonable to you?"

But the message won't get through; she is an impenetrable fortress of guilt and shame. "I was supposed to protect her."

"No, you absolutely were not. That was not your responsibility."

She ignores him, intent on her monologue. "She kept looking at me, and her eyes… oh God, El, they were pleading with me to make it stop. And I… I passed out! I let her down. I let an innocent woman die! How can I – how… how… how can I –"

She's practically hysterical.

"Liv. Olivia! Stop. STOP!"

Startled, she gapes at him.

"He would've done it anyway," he says softly. "He knew your weakness: that you care about other people more than you do yourself. And so he manipulated you into thinking you had control over the situation. He didn't do this to torture her, Liv, he did it to torture you."

He grasps her by the shoulders, feeling the despondency reverberate through her. She is an empty shell. He shakes her gently, willing her to meet his eyes. "I need you to listen to me: No matter what you did, he was going to hurt that woman."

Under her breath, her head hung low, she whispers, "I don't know how I can live with myself."

No no no no no, he thinks desperately. He cannot let her go down this path. Not on top of everything else.

"This was not your fault. You were just as much his victim as she was."

"I just… I keep replaying it in my mind. I could feel my eyes closing, and my brain was yelling at me – don't do it! Don't do it! But I did it anyway, and as soon as I did, I heard this horrible, piercing scream. Maybe this was the burn that got infected? Maybe if she hadn't gotten that one burn, maybe –"

He has to put an end to this. She's headed for a breakdown. "C'mere," he interrupts quietly but sternly.

She abruptly halts what she's been saying, too drained, perhaps, to continue. "What?"

"Come with me."

He pulls her up from the couch, and his eyes skirt the room. At the end of the short hall is the bathroom, where he sees what he's looking for. He leads her to it, and parks in front of the door, on which hangs a full-length mirror. He holds her steady in front of it, and, his gaze trained on her reflection, he points to the bottom of her shirt. It is a baby-blue man's button-down, likely Brian's. "May I?"

Trancelike, she nods.

He grasps the hem of her shirt in his fingers, deliberately slowly, to give her a chance to tell him to stop. When she doesn't, he proceeds to lift the shirt, a few inches, revealing her belly-button.

Underneath are angry-red circles of blotchy, discolored flesh. One glance tells him there are at least a dozen marks. It is flesh that will never heal. "Look at what he did to you."

Tears silently stream down her face. "It's different."

"No, it's not."

"It's just skin," she argues lamely.

"Who was there to watch it happen to you? Who was there to help you?"

She weeps unreservedly, her shoulders trembling with shame, as her eyes stare at the terrible marks. She reaches down to her stomach, delicately touches the destroyed skin.

From beside her, he pulls her close. He feels the tremors that wrack her body in waves. "It must've hurt like hell," he whispers.

She lets out a strangled sob. "It-it did."

"The first time he burned you, what did you do?"

She answers through hiccups. "I-I-I… was shocked by how… fierce… the pain was. I'd never felt… anything…. like that. I almost passed out."

He clutches her carefully. "What did he do next?"

"He lit up another cigarette, and he burned me again. In a different spot."

"How long did he wait before he did it again?"

"A few seconds. He did it a bunch more times. I lost count." Through vision blotted by tears, she laughs mirthlessly. "I guess when they heal, I could count the scars."

He senses the flippancy is for his benefit, to put him at ease. "I'm not going anywhere, you know."

"What?"

"This story, these burns, won't scare me off. You can talk to me, tell me anything, show me anything, and it's not going to spook me into leaving you again. I want you to know that."

She seems to think about it. "I believe you."

"Liv, do you think that if you'd trained better, that you would have more easily withstood being deliberately and repeatedly burned by lit cigarettes?"

"That's not what I'm saying."

"Okay, then that you should've… I don't know…. been able to take it?"

"I should've."

"How? How could you have possibly prepared yourself for something like this? And even if you could have, why would you have? Being subjected to this kind of extreme abuse is not in the job description of a cop."

"I just felt so weak, so helpless."

"Yes, because that was his intent. That was why he did it. To make you feel that way."

"Well it worked."

"Yes, it did. But the point is, it would've worked on anyone."

"I tried to be stoic. I tried to take it."

He is certain nothing could be truer. "I know you did. But even the most hardened people can't take that kind of mistreatment."

She seems, finally, to digest his words. He's hopeful he's broken through.

Indeed, she starts to volunteer more. "He…he, um… "

"Tell me, it's okay."

"He sensed I was trying… to endure it. To dissociate, I guess. I'd started to. After a few hours, I'd started to…. to acclimate to… to the cigarettes."

"So how did he respond?"

"He… h-h-he…. um, he…"

"Tell me, honey, what did he do?"

"H-h-he fired up the stove."

He swallows a lump. "Go on…"

"A-a-and he… found a pan…" At this memory, she chuckles bitterly. "You know, I own, like, one frying pan that I use, like, once a year, and it was tucked away who-knows-where in the kitchen, and he managed to find it."

"So what did he do?"

"He put the pan on the stove..."

"Okay… and what did he cook?"

"My housekeys."

A chill runs up his spine. Even in the context of this brutal story, she has shocked him. "What?"

In lieu of a verbal response, she now moves her good hand to the top button of her collared shirt. With only one hand to work with, she fumbles briefly with the button, but manages to unfasten it. As she diligently gets to work on the second button, he's inclined to stop her, wondering if she's in her right mind, if she'll later regret this. But she's intent on her mission, and before he knows it, most of her cleavage is exposed. She then reaches to the now-loose flap of the shirt and pulls it down further, so that only her nipples remain covered. With so much physical damage, she is not wearing a bra.

And there it is: On the swell of her left breast, a perfect imprint of the key to her apartment. He recognizes it instantly, because he has a duplicate on his own chain.

He can't suppress a sharp gasp. "Oh my God."

Eyes averted, she pushes the cotton flap back in place, but without re-buttoning, it hangs listlessly, threatening to re-expose her at any time.

In this moment, he makes a decision. "Olivia, I want you to let me stay over tonight."

"El – "

"It's that, or I call Brian right now and tell him to come back. Your choice."

"He already missed days because of the kidnapping. He can't skip out on his shift."

"Then I'm staying."

As she hesitates, he realizes he has pushed her too far, that his reaction may have been too severe. Relaxing his face, the corner of his mouth rises in an impish grin. "What, you're not allowed friends over?"

"El, come on. It would be weird."

"Olivia, you were brutalized. Nobody should be alone after this kind of trauma. This shouldn't even be a question. So either you call him and tell him to come back, or I sleep out in the corridor, but I'm not leaving you here alone tonight."

"I'm a big girl."

"Who was tortured and assaulted for four days straight. You need support."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine."

She's silent.

"Do you want to come to my place?"

It's a Hail-Mary, but to his delight, she seems to take the idea seriously.

He counts to five in his head, waiting, praying.

Finally, she whispers, as if the walls might judge her, "Yes, please."

He exhales in sheer relief. "Roger that."