A/N: Another processing fic. I'm not sure if I actually like it or not. Written in about 20 minutes and based on the Maddie & Tae song "Friends Don't". Setting is the night Olivia reads the letter before she goes and tries to talk to Elliot the first time, with the PTSD episode and whatnot.

Let me know what you think. This definitely isn't the only time I'm going to cover this topic. It deserves better justice, but this is all I've got right now. Within here, you'll find me trying to process the nightmare right alongside Olivia.

Disclaimer: I'm seething and blindsided by that letter. Enough said. Clearly, I own nothing.

"What we had wasn't real."

Out of all the lines in the letter, that was the one Olivia kept coming back to over and over again.

All the rest of it she could rationalize.

The part about them getting in each other's way may have been true. She's often wondered if she ever would have taken the sergeant's exam if they'd still been partners. And if she hadn't taken that first step, would she be where she is now? Maybe the comfort and security of being together, being SVU's best detective pair, would have been enough for them, but would in fact have been holding her back.

Even the part about her finding a kind, faithful, and devoted man she could understand. Despite the tough exterior he put on for perps, and the fountain of rage that always seemed to spew from him, she always knew, or thought she knew, that Elliot wanted the best for her. It's why he quipped about her never having food in her fridge, or why he made her blink her lights when she got inside when he dropped her off. One of his missions in life was to make sure that everyone had someone to care for them, and she could see how even after he left, he hoped someone had stepped up, picked up the slack and looked out for her, whether she thought she needed it or not.

But that one line, "what we had wasn't real," haunted her.

Olivia never knew love like most people growing up. When she was really young, she thought for sure she didn't have a father because she did something wrong. She must have done something to make him want to leave, and that's what made her mother cry at night when she thought Olivia was sound asleep in bed.

As she got older, she noticed that she didn't receive the same kind of motherly affection that her friends did. She didn't get hugs and kisses when she came home from school, or home-cooked meals. Her mother cared to some degree about her grades, her appearance, but it wasn't the same as what she saw with her friends and their mothers.

Because of that shifty foundation, Olivia had always had a skewed view of love and trust, what they were and what they could be. She'd thought she was in love with an older man when she was in high school. He'd even proposed and when she planned to run away with him, her mother tried to assault her and it ended with both of them in the hospital, and him running as far away as he could.

Until she met Elliot, she'd never even understood what a solid foundation could be. She saw it in action when he was around his wife and kids. He made her promises that he kept for years, and slowly over time she learned what it meant to trust, and understood what it was to love.

After all this time, she couldn't deny that Elliot was the first person to teach her what love really was, even if she couldn't admit it. Because of her partnership with him, she learned how to love Fin, Cragan, and Munch. She learned how to love her brother. She learned how to love Noah in a way that a mother should love her son.

So how could he tell her that what they had wasn't real?

Even if they were just partners, just friends, that isn't nothing.

She thought about all the times one of them had canceled plans for the other. Whether she broke a date so he could get home in time for dinner, or he rearranged his schedule to come check on her when she was sick.

She thought about all the times they could communicate without words. He could somehow sense what she was thinking just by looking into her eyes, and she could do the same. Munch had joked more than once that they'd solve a case someday just through telepathy.

She thought about the times after he'd left when she'd hear his name, whispered in a corner of the squad room, or come across it in an old case file, or when Lewis was taunting her about the only person she wanted to see before she died. It was like she couldn't think straight. Like someone had tapped into her nerves and electrified her entire body with hurt and rage.

Friends don't do those kinds of things. But they did, they did them all the time. And they felt as real to her as anything she'd ever experienced.

Olivia told herself for years that Elliot never felt the same way she did. He never wondered what it would be like to get all dressed up and go out for a night of fancy food and dancing. Never dreamed about waking up in each other's arms on a lazy Sunday, arguing over whether to have pancakes or waffles for breakfast. He never let it cross his mind what it would look like to sit together on the couch on Christmas morning and watch their children rush to rip the paper off brightly colored packages.

She was sure of this, because he had it all already, at home, with his wife and his family.

But there would be times she'd look in his eyes and she'd wonder. She'd wonder if he was going to say something, do something that would break that cover. Would admit to her that it had at least crossed his mind.

Now here he was, telling her that it was nothing.

She thought back to the way he looked at her that night in the hospital, sitting in the waiting room. His "I'm sorry," so broken, so heart wrenching that she had to turn around and have the conversation she'd been dreading all night.

She'd tried to rationalize it as grief over what happened to Kathy. The shock of the evening bearing down on him. But the look on his face when he said "if I'd heard your voice I wouldn't have been able to leave," that wasn't nothing either.

Olivia folded up the letter and placed it in her coat pocket. She'd been out at Hunt's Point, reading it, seeing the lights glisten off Riker's Island thinking about how many people they put there together over all those years. Thinking about how all that hard word wasn't nothing.

She knew she had to see him tonight, and talk about this. Maybe then she could understand just what it was all supposed to mean.