It knocks the wind out of her, seeing Kathy Stabler lying in that hospital bed. Kathy, banged up, bruised and burned, Kathy so out of it from the pain and the meds she can hardly talk, her voice hoarse but still sweet, still trying to make the people around her smile, even when she's falling apart. Elliot reaches out, smooths his hand over her hair, and his eyes are warm and soft and terrified, and this, Olivia thinks, is love. It is love, that he feels for his wife. It is a love she remembers, because it hasn't been that long since she buried her husband. What she wouldn't give, to have had the chance to hold Ed's hand in a hospital room, the way Elliot is doing now. What she wouldn't give, for a piece of hope, for a chance to say goodbye. Ed hung up on her before she got the chance to say it, and she still thinks about that, sometimes. Still wonders if he just didn't want to hear it. I'll see you later, baby, those are the last words he ever spoke to her. Ed didn't believe in heaven or hell or God or angels, but he'd said I'll see you later, knowing he never would. Maybe he did believe, at the end. Maybe he wanted to, wanted to believe there was a chance they'd see each other again, after. Elliot believes in heaven, and so does his wife. What if they're right? She wonders now. Is there a heaven, and will she get into it, and if she does, will it be a place where Elliot is holding on to Kathy, and Olivia is holding on to Ed, and they are staring at one another over their lovers' shoulders, the way Elliot is looking at her now, close and yet not ever close enough? That, she thinks, doesn't sound too much like paradise.

It feels like a dream, this night, this man, this woman, this room, this rage and this fear and this pain. There is a shimmering, unreal quality to the air, and every breath she takes is full of memories.

You son of a bitch, she hears herself shout, looking at him. For better or worse, she hears him say. It was raining, the day they met. The sun was shining the day he walked out on her. And Jesus, it hits her then that he didn't say goodbye, either, and it makes her want to scream. Why are all the men she knows such fucking cowards? Ready and willing to take a bullet to save the life of a stranger, too chickenshit to tell her to her face that they're leaving.

"You really didn't talk for ten years?" Kathy says, and she sounds shocked, and sad. Like she doesn't want to believe it, like she doesn't understand it. Kathy knows, the same way Olivia knows, the same way Elliot knows, that the two of them were more than partners, that they were bound more closely, more intimately than that word suggests. That they were one heart split into two bodies and Kathy Stabler is a fucking saint, because she never made Olivia feel guilty for owning so much of someone else's husband.

"I didn't even know that he was back on the job," Olivia tells her. She wants to reassure this woman. Kathy is in pain and they're all split open, old wounds, old weaknesses, old regrets oozing in the dim lights above her hospital bed. They are all raw, and one wrong word could break them. The truth is this: Elliot has been gone for ten years and Elliot is back. But he did not come for Olivia, did not come to sweep her off her feet, did not come to make his apologies and devote himself once more to the manic, all-consuming fervor of their previous partnership; Elliot came for a trial, for meetings, brought his wife as if he needed a reminder that he had a life to get back to, a life that Olivia is not a part of. She wants to hate him for it, and maybe she does, but she can't be cruel to him, just now.

"That's what Elliot told me," Kathy says. "I didn't believe him." There is a note of regret in her voice that makes Olivia shift uncomfortably on her feet. How often did they discuss it? She wonders. How did the topic of her even come up while they were living their fairytale life in Rome? Did Elliot's eyes go distant, sometimes, thinking about the life he left behind? Did he grow quiet and angry, the way he used to do when his heart was breaking; did his wife blame his coldness on the woman he left behind? All this time, she's been trying to forget him, thinking he'd forgotten her, but now she starts to wonder if maybe forgetting just wasn't possible, for any of them.

"It's true, Kathy."

It's true. It's true; he left her, without a word, and no matter how hard she's tried she has not forgotten him, not for a second, but she has taken her grief and her rage and her sorrow and her longing for this man and tucked it away deep down inside her chest and she has learned to live with the memory of the pain, and she has been fine, but now he's back and holding his wife's hand and Olivia is standing just outside the circle of love and devotion they have drawn around themselves, an outsider, still, after twenty-two fucking years. She can't breathe, suddenly; the weight of this room, of these people, is suffocating her.

Without conscious thought she reaches out, brushes her fingers through her hair, and from the bed she hears Kathy gasp.

"Olivia," she says, breathless but happy, somehow. "You got married."

Olivia's hand is still frozen in the act of touching her own hair; she lowers it slowly, and realizes that Kathy must have seen the shine of her rings. She still wears them; it's been less than a year since Ed left her, and she hasn't found the strength to take them off, yet, to admit to herself that she is no longer married. All her life she'd been dreaming of family, of the man who would love her and stay, and she found him, and she was so fucking happy, and it is hard, harder than she wants to admit, to bury that dream. Be careful what you wish for, isn't that what people say? Olivia wished for love, and she got it, and it was taken from her, and sometimes she thinks she would have been better off if she never had it at all, and she wonders if that makes her a cold-hearted bitch.

On the other side of Kathy's hospital bed Elliot looks up at her sharply, and she sees it, sees the moment his eyes land on the rings and he processes what they mean. They mean that someone else loves Olivia, someone he doesn't know - because he doesn't know, she's sure, that Olivia was married, or who she was married to - and he doesn't like that. There is something very like self-loathing in his eyes, and he doesn't speak.

"I did," Olivia says. She did get married. She was happy, for a time. But her husband is dead and she won't raise the specter of her own widowhood in this room while Kathy is fighting for her life. There is no room for Olivia's grief here. There has never been room for Olivia at all, between these two people, but for thirteen years she wedged herself inside of Elliot's life anyway. Becoming a wife herself has raised her estimation of Kathy Stabler immeasurably, because she thinks if Ed had a woman in his life who meant as much to him as Olivia meant to Elliot she would have left him, but Kathy stayed. Staying takes work, Olivia knows. Staying takes strength, and compromise, and courage. She doesn't have it herself, and Elliot doesn't either, because Elliot just fucking left her. And so did Ed. Everybody fucking leaves her.

"I'm glad," Kathy tells her honestly. "I'm glad you have somebody. I always felt bad for...for taking Elliot away."

But Olivia doesn't have somebody, not anymore. Olivia has a stone in a public graveyard beneath which Ed's ashes are buried in a biodegradable urn. Olivia has the memory of holding her son in her arms beside the fresh dug earth, and feeling him flinch at every shot as the honor guard fired their weapons into the air. Olivia has a bed that feels empty, with no one there to share it with her. And Kathy doesn't know any of this but she still feels guilty. For taking Elliot away; but it wasn't Kathy who did that, or not only her. It was Elliot, killing a teenage girl. It was Elliot, firing one shot too many. And it was Ed, too, and that part makes Olivia feel nauseous. She knows it was Ed's fault, in a way. That Ed was part of the team who'd decided Elliot couldn't be trusted with the job anymore. Ten years ago she hated him for it, but now she understands. Now she is a Captain, and she has her own squad to run, and the entire country is reckoning with the cost of police violence, and if Elliot was on her squad now she would have taken his shield herself. The time has changed her in more ways than she can count.

It has changed Elliot, too, because he is watching her with heartbreak in his eyes, but he is not defending himself. He does not rise to his feet with a mouth full of accusations, does not make her feel guilty for choosing another man over him, when he was never really hers to choose in the first place. He does not insist that his wife played no part in his leaving, or that he belonged to Kathy, and so could not be taken from Olivia. He just sits, and holds Kathy's hand, and stares at Olivia. Just like the old days.

She has to speak; she has to say something, to dispel the quiet accusation Kathy has made, the acknowledgment that Olivia owned a piece of Kathy's husband, that Olivia grieved for him when he was gone. She doesn't want to admit how much it hurt her; admitting to the hurt would be admitting to the depth of her feelings for him, and she cannot do that here, in front of his wife.

"I have a little boy, too." She speaks the words to Kathy, but she is watching Elliot's face, and as she delivers this news his expression goes soft, and proud. Elliot knows. Elliot is the only person alive who knows just how much she wanted a baby, and for how long. Elliot is the one who held her back when they ripped Calvin from her arms, and Elliot is the one who comforted her when she confessed that the adoption agencies wouldn't even entertain the notion of giving her a child. Elliot knows she gave up on that dream, and now he knows that it has come true anyway, and she has to look away from him because the affection she sees in him now makes her want to cry.

"His name is Noah," she tells Kathy. "And I would love for you to meet him."

Really, she wouldn't. She doesn't want Noah anywhere near the Stablers. Her life has been broken into two pieces, the before where she was with Elliot, and the after where she overcame her grief and made a family, and she does not want those two halves of herself to collide. But Kathy is in so much pain, and Kathy may not live, and Olivia is determined, as Elliot is determined, to pretend as if they have no doubt at all about Kathy's recovery. In this room they will speak of the future as if it is a given. It's superstitious, maybe, but they will not make room for tragedy to slide past their defenses. They will not speak of horror, lest horror hear them, and come.

"I'd really like that," Kathy says, but then she gasps, and her eyes flutter closed, and Elliot is rushing to touch her, sensing that something is wrong.

"Kathy," he says, urgently. "Hey, Kathy?"

Olivia was married for four years, but Elliot and Kathy have been married for nearly forty. Four years was long enough for her to learn her husband inside and out, for her to know, instinctively, that he was not well. Forty years means that Elliot feels Kathy's pain himself, and he knows that she is fading, and Olivia swallows against the lump that forms in the back of her throat as she watches him touch her tenderly.

They leave Kathy to rest, Elliot and Olivia, drift back to the waiting area, circle each other warily. There are so many things she wants to say to this man. She wants to curse him. She wants to tug down the collar of her blouse and show him the scars on her chest and blame him for them. She wants to pound her fists against the solid wall of his chest, wants to rage, because anger would feel so much better than grief, and she is tired of weeping. But she can't; she can't. The sight of his face, and the strange, supernatural horror of this night have stolen her voice away.

He looks at her. Just looks at her. Tries to soak in all the ways that time has changed her, tries to reconcile the vision before him with the Olivia he remembers. She is sadder, now, and there is a darkness that hangs over her. Dark hair hiding her face, dark eyes hiding her grief, dark coat, dark pants, dark boots. He remembers her in a kaleidoscope of colors, a blue sweater, a purple blouse, a tight dress in a print of brown and gold. He remembers the flash of her smile, the sparkling necklaces at her throat getting tangled up when she ran. He remembers her hair cut short, and the curve of her cheek. He remembers her lighter, brighter than this, and it is harder, harder than he ever imagined, to see her fading into black.

There is one thought he can't shake, one question that has replaced all the others in his mind, and as he looks at her it trips from his lips before he has a chance to stop it.

"You got married," he says. It doesn't come out like a question but it is one, and she knows it, and he can tell by her frown that she hears it. That she has heard him ask - who? How? When? - and she doesn't want to answer. Olivia is married, now, and she doesn't want to talk to him about it, and he wonders what that means. If she is holding back the truth of her life because it is too precious for her to waste it on him, or because she knows that it will hurt him, and she doesn't want to do any further damage.

"Is that so surprising?" she asks, sharply. She is defensive about it already, and maybe she has every right to be. He has a history, he knows, of being harsh about the men she chooses, and maybe she is already gearing up to fight him about this one. Or maybe, maybe she has misinterpreted his surprise. It's not that he thought she'd never find somebody; it's not that he believes her too broken for marriage and babies, but he's sure she's thought that herself, over the years. Christ, he's been gone a decade but he can still see it in her face, the hurt, the anger, the little girl insecurity she can never quite shake. A part of her will always be an unwanted child, left behind by the world, and Elliot, he left her, too, and that is a sin no amount of penance will wipe clean.

"I just...I never thought you'd want that. Being tied to one person forever like that."

God knows, she had always run from commitment in the past. Any man who was halfway decent, she'd bolt the first time he started talking about the future. Kept wasting her time on one-night stands and men who'd never ask anything from her because she was too fucking afraid to give it. In his memories of her she is wild, and free, utterly unbound by convention or personal ties. Except, of course, the ties that bound her to him. Those ties have been broken, by his own hand, and someone else has taken his place. No, he thinks, that's not right; someone has taken more of her than he has ever had, will ever have, and he has no right to feel cheated, and yet he does.

"Things change," she tells him with a shrug. "A lot's happened in the last ten years."

That is, he thinks, a fucking understatement.

Things change; for thirteen years he was prouder than he should have been, knowing he was the most important man - the most important person - in her world, knowing that she was with him, always, that this beautiful, fierce, relentlessly independent woman belonged to him, and maybe it made him a son of a bitch but he loved it. He loved knowing that she would follow him anywhere, that he would do the same for her. He loved the way they could share their thoughts with just a look, loved being known, being seen, by her, loved working with her late into the night, knowing no one else was going to come along and take her from him. But he left, and someone did come for her, and she let this man, whoever he is, have her. She belongs to someone else, now, but she is still standing here with him, and he wonders if she will tell her husband about this. He wonders if her husband knows his name. He hopes so; he wants the son of a bitch to know who he is, and what he has taken from Elliot.

He knows what's happened to him, in the last ten years. He knows the work he's done, the places he's seen. He knows how he's watched his own son grow up. What has Olivia seen, over the course of a decade? He tries to gather his thoughts, tries to sort through the things he has learned about her.

"You got married, you have a son, you made Captain. it sounds like you did good for yourself, Liv."

It sounds like she did a hell of a lot better than good. He thinks about her son, and wonders if the boy looks just like her. Dark hair, dark eyes, that jawline, that mouth. He imagines a child with a face like hers and something twists low in his belly. Is her boy sweet? Growing up with two parents who adore him and no siblings to take their attention from him, is he so soaked in love that he reflects it back at the world around him? Or is he like his mother, all sharp edges and quick hands, determined to have his way?

"It wasn't all good," she tells him darkly, heavily.

And he wonders what that means. In the last ten years he's been hurt, a few times; he'll tell Fin later he was doing private security overseas, which is what he always says when someone asks, which is code for I was a mercenary, for a while, and they paid me more money than you can imagine to guard asshole politicians in the desert. Kathy hated that work. She hated him being gone for weeks at a time, and not telling her where or why, but he'd come back with a paycheck and a kiss on the cheek for her, and she settled for that. Settled for him leaving, as long as she knew he'd be back eventually. Settled for it, and never asked him why he was running away from his family. Maybe she should have asked. Maybe if she had she'd never have gotten hurt.

That's where he's been, for ten years. Getting cynical and rich in the muscle-for-hire game until a chance came along to get back in the NYPD's good graces, and he took it not for the pay, which honestly was shit, but for the chance at redemption. Took it because he knew if he played his cards right one day maybe he'd be able to come home. He wants to tell Olivia all of this. He looks at her, beautiful, brave, broken Olivia, and he wants to tell her I been trying like hell just to come home, but he doesn't, because she doesn't need to hear it, just now.

Just now what he wants to do is ask her. Ask her what the past decade looked like for her. Ask her what was bad, and hear her tell him, hear her lay all the horrible things she's seen at his feet, and blame him for them. Because she does; she hasn't told him what happened to her but he can see the accusation in her eyes. Like she believes, deep down, that if only he'd been with her, maybe all that bad shit never would have happened. Maybe she's right.

"Liv, I'm sorry," he says, and she shakes her head, holds her hands out like she's warding off an attack.

"Elliot, we don't have to do this," she says.

In the old days, she would have been the one fighting to confront him, he knows. Before, she wouldn't let him get away with shit. She would have dug in, told him exactly how much of an asshole he'd been. Things change, though. She has changed.

She's older, sadder, softer than the last time he saw her. She looks warm, and tired. Her voice is deeper, her clothes more professional and not as form fitting. She's a mom now. A wife now. Someone has more of Liv than he ever will. Someone gets her soft, at home, curled up on the sofa with him. Someone gets to watch her put their son to bed. Someone gets to hold her, every single night. She has a whole new life he never imagined. A whole new life he's not a part of, and he can't even allow himself to acknowledge the jealousy he feels, not while his wife lies in a hospital bed a few yards away, fighting for her life. He has no right to Olivia, now, and he wishes that didn't hurt him, but it does, Jesus, it does.