Garland told her to take some time, so she does. Let someone take care of you, he'd told her, and she'd just nodded, because she was too fucking tired to fight him. Who is she supposed to call? Her husband is dead, and Amanda is dealing with personal problems of her own, and Elliot has lost his goddamn mind, and Fin is happy with Phoebe and he has carried too much of her burdens, in recent days, and she doesn't want to trouble him further. She is meant to be the steady one, the one who takes care of other people, and there is no one for her to lean on now. Or no one she is willing to drag down into heartache with her, at least. Everyone is so fucking sad, these days. No one needs to add her weight to their own.

So she takes Noah to school, and then she goes and buys a nice cup of coffee, and then she drives her car out to the graveyard. It is mid-morning, and chilly, and her breath fogs up the air as she marches down a familiar path to the stone beneath which her husband's remains are buried.

She doesn't come out here, much. Her mother is buried several rows away; the graveyard is like its own city, laid out in a grid. Three blocks down and two blocks over, she thinks, that's how far her mother is from Ed. Her mother never met Ed Tucker, never got to see Olivia married, never got to meet her grandson, but they reside in the same suburb now, Ed and Serena. If there is life after death, maybe they've met. They'd probably hate each other, she thinks. Ed would be too rough for Serena's tastes, too direct and too grim. His mouth would be too smart for her; Serena always hated Olivia's sharp tongue. And Ed, he wouldn't have time for Serena at all, because half the people in his family were drunks and he resented the hell out of them. Then again, maybe they'd understand each other; Ed let bitterness and heartbreak direct his steps for too long, and he found something Serena never did, found something worth living for. Maybe he'd pity her, and speak to her kindly.

The stone just stands there, silent. Olivia doesn't talk to it; it's been months but she still doesn't know what to say. Ed got the last word, and he left no forwarding address for Olivia to deliver her response. Melinda brought her the letter, a few days after that night when Olivia's whole world imploded; the scene of his death looked like a duck and quacked like a duck but he was an influential player, once, with more enemies than anyone could count, and he was married to an NYPD Captain with plenty of enemies of her own, and the crime scene techs, they had to be sure. They had to test the letter for fingerprints, and make sure it wasn't a ruse, and when the work was done and the case was closed and all the evidence pointed to Ed pulling the trigger himself, Melinda turned up at the hotel where Olivia was staying, and pressed the letter into her hands.

I'm sorry, she said. I'm sorry.

In those days everyone was sorry, and all Olivia could say back was thank you, and the call and response had formed a horrifying dirge she never wanted to hear again. The letter had been tucked inside an envelope with her name on it, written in an unsteady hand. The final testament of Ed Tucker, delivered to his wife by a friend. It brings her little comfort but she cannot be parted from it, will not ever forget the first time she read it, and the way her heart shattered. In it he told her the truth, told her about the cancer that had come for him, the death sentence that had been handed down. Told her he couldn't have her wasting her life taking care of a dying man, a man who in a few months wouldn't even know her name.

I don't want you to remember me like that, he wrote. I want you to remember Paris. I want Noah to remember playing catch with his dad, not visiting some frail old man lying in a hospital bed, too weak to take a piss by himself. I love you, sweetheart, and I can't do that to you. To either of you.

He couldn't do that, couldn't grant her a few months to get used to the idea of losing him, couldn't give her a chance to care for him, as he always cared for her. The truth is he was proud, and stubborn, and he couldn't do that to himself. She wants to blame him for it, wants to hate him for it, but she wonders what she'd do if she had been in his shoes, if she'd known there was no way out, that all that waited for her was a long, undignified slide into oblivion during which she'd lose everything that ever made her who she was. She wonders if she'd rather leave the people she loves grieving and lost, or quietly relieved that she was gone. Mostly she just wishes he hadn't left, but then she thinks of Elliot, and wonders how this whole fucking mess might have played out if Ed was still with her.

"I miss you," she says to the stone, because she does. She's confused and angry and choking on regrets, and there are so many things she doesn't know, right now, but she knows that. She knows she misses her husband. She places her palm against the stone, and it is cold, and offers her no comfort, and so she turns away. Tucks her chin into her coat and starts to walk slowly back towards her car, thinking sad thoughts about words unspoken and lost opportunities.

As she walks, though, she catches movement out of the corner of her eye, and when she looks she sees that there is a shadow dogging her steps. He is black against the brilliant blue of the sky in early spring; dark coat, dark pants, sunlight throwing shadows across the deep grooves of his face.

Elliot is here. She doesn't know why, or how, and she doesn't know if she's ready to speak to him or not, but she's pretty sure she has no choice. She does not stop, does not wait for him to catch up; she keeps walking to her car, with him trailing along behind her. When they reach it she will invite him in, and they will talk. She does not want to have this conversation with him out here in the graveyard; she does not want any witnesses for the battle that's coming. Not even the dead.

Maybe it was stupid, following her out here. He'd gone to the school, thinking he'd slide into her passenger seat once Noah trundled off to face the day, but he'd lost his nerve. The thought of being alone with her in close quarters made him nervous, and he was thinking maybe he'd just go to work. But then she'd taken a left instead of a right, turned away from the 1-6 and her responsibilities, and he'd been curious, and he'd trailed along after her until she led him here.

It is the middle of the morning and surely they both have more pressing matters to attend to, but Olivia has come to a graveyard, and Elliot is still conflicted, about her, about her marriage, about Ed fucking Tucker, about Tucker and Kathy both being dead and buried while Olivia and Elliot carry on. There is so much about the quagmire of grief they've found themselves in that doesn't make sense to him. He doesn't understand how Kathy can just be gone, how something as inconsequential as a spleen could have spelled the end of her, when she had so many more grievous injuries. He doesn't understand how someone could have done that to her, when she is - was - good, and kind, and harmless. He really, really doesn't understand how Olivia could have married Tucker, could have let him touch her, could have wanted him to, could have had a child with him. And Tucker is gone, dead by his own hand, and that doesn't make sense, either, and Jesus. All he has, right now, are questions.

And he's hoping that maybe he'll find some answers here. Maybe Olivia has come here in search of them.

It would be unkind to intrude upon her in this place, and so he doesn't. He stands back, and watches her. She has come all this way to stand in silence by a stone carved with the name of a man Elliot hates. Does she find solace here? He wonders. He has not visited Kathy's grave once since he buried her. He wonders if she misses him.

After a while Olivia reaches out, and places her hand on the stone. It feels intimate, and terrible; she used to touch her husband with those hands, and now she touches only cold and unforgiving marble, not a man flesh and blood but a memory. If he didn't already hate the guy, Elliot thinks he would hate him for this. For leaving Olivia alone, with nothing to hold on to. For walking out on her, deliberately. Didn't he know, Elliot thinks angrily, what that would do to her? She was his wife; didn't he know that all her life she has been alone, and longing for family, and Tucker gave that to her and then took it away and didn't he know that was gonna break her in half? How could he do that to her?

You did, he reminds himself, and winces. Sure, he's not dead, but he left her without a word, and maybe it isn't fair, him hating Tucker for doing the same thing. Maybe it's himself he hates.

After a while she turns away, and he follows her. He doesn't call out to her; this moment is a private one, and he feels like an intruder in her life for the very first time. Was this how she felt, he wonders, for all those years, standing just outside the circle of his family, observing love and yet not having it for herself? He hopes not, because it makes him feel like shit. His presence doesn't go unnoticed, though; she senses his proximity, because of course she does. She always could. They can feel each other, orbiting the same sun, exerting their own sort of gravity on one another. She is the moon, he thinks, and he is the tide, and she is always calling him back to her.

Olivia looks at him, for a second, and then she turns away, and he knows, now, that he will have to speak to her. He can't pretend he wasn't here, and she can't pretend she didn't see him. They have so much left to say to one another, and they can only choke on the words for so long before it kills them both.

When she reaches her car she waits for him, catches his eye before she opens the driver's side door, and he knows then that an invitation has been extended, and he accepts it. He slides in next to her, settles into the seat, and takes a deep breath. A storm is brewing.

"You following me?" she asks him after a moment. She is staring straight ahead, her hands wrapped tight around the wheel, though she hasn't even bothered to turn the car on. Her keys swing uselessly from the ignition. Her jaw is tight, and her shoulders tense, and he hates that he has this effect on her. He doesn't want her to dread him.

"Had to do something," he says with a shrug. "You're not answering my calls. Again."

The last time he saw her he told her that he loved her, and that went over about as well as the first flight of the Hindenburg. She's been ignoring him ever since and he can't really blame her, but he misses her. He told her, told his family, that they made him feel like he was drowning, and maybe that was true, but he'd rather have the anchor of her tied around his waist and sinking him than be buoyed by isolation. This is something he has learned, in this time without her. He wants her back, and he doesn't know how to make that happen, or even if he deserves it.

"Have you ever stopped to think maybe that means I don't wanna talk to you?" she sounds a little bitter, and a little wry, and raw, they are both still so fucking raw that every word they say to one another stings like salt in a wound.

"You ever stop to think maybe you should?"

Everyone is offering him advice, these days. Everyone he knows is a fucking therapist now, full of platitudes and sage wisdom. The experts agree, he thinks grimly, that avoidance is not the way to go, and now that he's finally listening to them Olivia looks like she'd rather chew her own arm off than have this conversation with him.

Though he hates to admit it, though he'd never confess it aloud, part of the reason he wants to talk to her now is that he thinks she's the only person he knows who could understand him. Olivia, she knows him, inside and out. She knows about his family, his upbringing, knows where he came from and how he became the man he is. She knows he'd never eat sushi, and that if he ever gets gunned down in the street he doesn't want the place where he died to turn into an altar of public mourning. She knows he doesn't believe in soulmates, and that he has the same blood type as her. She knows him, but she knows this, too. She knows what it is to lose a spouse. She knows it is not the same as losing a parent, or losing a child the way Angela Wheatley did. She knows that each grief tastes different, and she is a connoisseur when it comes to this one. That's the thing that no one else can help him with, that no one else can understand, the scope of what he has lost. It binds them, now. Not just the years they spent together, the meals they shared, the blood they've shed; now there is this, too. This particular cataclysm has claimed them both, and the only person who can show him the way out of this hole, he thinks, is one who has clawed her way out and remembers the path she took.

"Say what you wanna say, then," she tells him, still not looking at him. "Let's get it over with."

What he wants to say is how did you do it? What he wants to know is this: how did you comfort your son, how did you guide him through losing someone he loves for the very first time? How did you learn to sleep alone again? How did you deal with everybody looking at you like you're broken, like you're missing a limb? Where's the fucking exit, Liv?

The questions stick in the back of his throat, though. He's not sure he has a right to ask them. He's not sure he wants to hear the answers. He's not sure he can talk about Tucker like he was a man and not a monster. He's not sure he can handle Olivia talking about how much she loved someone else. He's not sure he has a right to the possessiveness he feels for her, the jealousy that burns through his gut every time he thinks about Ed Tucker's hands on her skin.

"Elliot," she calls his name softly, frustrated, and the question that spills out of his mouth then is not the one he intended.

"Did you love him?"

That's what he's been wondering, since the moment he first saw that picture of Liv and Tucker together. On their fucking wedding day. She looked so beautiful, in that picture. So beautiful it made his heart ache. Dark hair, dark eyes, warm smile, the white dress and the flowers, her son and her man beside her. She looked comfortable, with Tucker touching her. And Tucker...in that picture Tucker just looked like a man who loved his family, and Elliot can understand that, because he loves his own. In that picture Tucker looked like the kind of man Elliot might like to know, and that's been fucking him up ever since.

He doesn't want to believe it, that Olivia could fall in love with someone, could fall in love with him. He doesn't want to confront the fact that he missed it. He doesn't want to think about what it might have been like, if only he'd been around. Could he have just stood by and let her fall for that rat bastard? Or whatever made Olivia love him, would Elliot have seen it, too, and come to regard the man as a friend? He thinks about her wedding; would he have been invited? Would he have brought Kathy with him; would Tucker have danced with Kathy, while Elliot danced with Olivia? Would he have been happy for her? And her son, Jesus; he knows now, from looking at that picture, that Noah was born before his parents married. Did Tucker just propose because he knocked her up? Somehow Elliot doesn't think so; Tucker isn't buried at a church, and they didn't get married in a church, and maybe Tucker was no more religious than Liv is, and Liv wouldn't have settled for being someone's duty, anyway. She must have loved him.

"I married him, Elliot," she says, like that alone should be enough to answer his question. "He was good to me, and we were good together. He's my son's father. What the fuck do you think?"

"I just don't see how you could after he made our lives hell for years."

That's the part he can't figure out. How did this happen? He was gone ten years, but Liv was grieving for the last six months of that, and married four years before that, and so he thinks that for much of the time he was away Liv must have been with Tucker. Dancing slowly into love, and he wonders what that must have looked like. He can't imagine it, but he has long since learned that just because he can't imagine something doesn't mean it isn't possible; his imagination is limited, and the world is vast, and terrifying.

"You ever stop to think maybe IAB wouldn't have given us so much shit if we hadn't fucked up so much?"

That isn't what he wants to hear.

"Oh, so we deserved it and you're on his side now?" It burns him up inside, thinking that Liv believes Tucker was right to try so hard to oust them. Yeah, a lot can change in ten years, but not that much, he thinks. Surely, he thinks, she can't have gotten so hard, so sucked into the politics of the brass and the necessity of keeping up appearances that she now disdains the work they did together. Thirteen years is more than ten, more than four; I should matter more, he thinks petulantly.

"It isn't about sides, Elliot!" she snaps, and looks at him for the first time, and her eyes are hard, and sad. "Jesus," she swears, like just the sight of his face is upsetting her. "Look. I grew up." He tries not to let that hurt him, the insinuation that the Liv he knew hadn't finished growing, that she thinks about their time together as nothing more than a stepping stone to get her to where she is. "I got my own command. I had to take responsibility for my people. And Ed always had my back. He saved my life. He...he took care of me. We respected each other professionally and personally... personally he was," her voice cracks and she looks away because there are tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, and his heart breaks, just a little, watching her. "He was steady, El. He held me down when I needed it. He was warm and he was safe and he was here."

Warm, and safe, and here. Kathy was those things to him, once. She was comfort; she was home. In those days Olivia was a wildfire and he was a match and they burned together, but Kathy was the one who kept him steady. In those days Liv didn't have anyone to hold her steady at all, had no one to go back to when the cases got bad and she needed a reminder that there were still good things in the world. Elliot had Kathy, and the kids, had a piece of something normal, something wholesome, something real, and all Olivia had was an empty apartment and a gun at her hip. Maybe, he thinks, he doesn't have a right to resent her for the ways she chose to comfort herself after he left. Maybe she deserved that much. Maybe Ed Tucker was decent, the way she seems to think he was. Maybe Tucker did for Elliot what Elliot could never do himself, and took care of her. He doesn't hate the bastard so much, any more, because now he knows that Liv had love, and he thinks she deserved it.

"And now he's gone," Elliot says heavily. Tucker was warm and safe and here and now he is gone, same as Kathy as gone. And it isn't fair, he thinks, that the good ones are dead and he and Liv are still breathing. No, that's not quite right; Liv is better than he is, deserves her life and her son more than he deserves his own. It should have been him in that car, not Kathy, and if the kids had to lose a parent he thinks they would have handled losing him a whole hell of a lot easier, and Kathy would have been better at all of this, he thinks. She would have known what to say, what to do. She wouldn't be pushing everyone away, isolating herself. She'd be...he thinks she'd be like Liv, who keeps her grief to herself except for when he confronts her about it, who is steady for her son and her squad and just keeps fucking going, while he feels himself frozen in place.

There is a hole in the center of his life, and there is a corresponding hole in the middle of Olivia's heart, and they sit, for a minute, in silence, thinking about what they've lost. He appreciates the silence; everyone else just seems to want to talk, all the fucking time, when what he really needs is a chance to breathe. Maybe that's what Olivia needs, too. Maybe that's why she's giving it to him now.

Maybe, he thinks, maybe it doesn't matter so much that Tucker was a son of a bitch and Elliot hated the guy. It's in the past, now. Olivia found it in her heart to forgive Tucker, to care about him, to love him, to have a child with him, and Elliot knows Olivia, knows her better than anyone else alive, and if Olivia could find something to love about Tucker, maybe Elliot should trust that. Maybe he shouldn't hold it against her, the ways she's changed, the things she's had to do to survive these last ten years. If Tucker never did anything else in his whole godforsaken life he gave Olivia a family, and the magnitude of that gift outweighs Elliot's hurt feelings. For the moment.

After a minute he shifts in his seat, and then laughs, softly.

"Ed," he says, shaking his head.

"Elliot-" she sounds weary, like she thinks he's gearing up to fight her again, and he rushes to explain himself.

"It's just funny," he says. "I don't think I ever heard anyone say his name before. He was just Tucker. I never thought about him having a life outside of work. Being someone you could love."

Calling him Ed makes him seem more human, somehow. Tucker is a Bond villain; Ed is just a guy. A guy who loved Olivia, and killed himself.

Because he ate his gun last year, that's how Liv broke the news to him. Angry, and hard, and lashing out, not just at him, he thinks, but at Tucker, too. Someone else killed Kathy; someone did that to her. Someone took her from him. He will find out exactly who, and he will find out why, and he will hold them accountable for their crimes, and maybe then he will find peace. Olivia has no such hope; the only person responsible for what happened to Tucker is Tucker himself. She can't put his corpse on trial, and wouldn't want to, anyway. Elliot can barely even wrap his head around it, the idea that a grim, stubborn, self-righteous son of a bitch like Tucker would just give up on life one day. What makes a man that hopeless? He doesn't know. He's lower now, more beat down and lost and fucking sad than he's ever been in his life, but he can't imagine just walking away.

"Why'd he do it, Liv?"

"Elliot, please-" she sounds like she's gonna start crying in earnest now, but he has to know. They need this, he thinks. She deserves a chance to unburden herself, and he needs to hear it, not just for himself but for her. The only way they're gonna get out of this shitstorm they've found themselves in, he thinks, is if they're honest with each other. He needs to know what she's been through, and she needs to tell him.

"I mean it. He's got a gorgeous wife who loves him, he's got a son, he's got... everything. Why would he throw all that away?"

Tucker had everything, that's the part that Elliot can't understand. Professional success, and a sweet little kid, and the most beautiful goddamn woman Elliot's ever seen up close in his bed every night. Tucker's wife is a fucking warrior; she's funny and she's whip smart and she's tough as nails, she is fierce and she is fearless and she loves so deep and so strong and so wide that she's spent the last twenty-two years saving the entire fucking world, and she poured out all that love on him. Tucker had the best partner a man could ever hope to find, Elliot knows, because Elliot spent thirteen years walking through life with her by his side. Tucker had it all and Tucker walked away. And shit, yes, Elliot walked out on her, too, but he never had what Tucker had. He never got to touch her, to hold her, to fuck her, to come home to her every night. He never got to see her lying in his bed, smiling, with their child in her arms. If he'd ever had that much...Jesus, if she'd ever given that much of herself to him he never could have left her.

"Brain cancer," she tells him brokenly. "It was starting to affect his memory. The prognosis was...not good. He said...he said he didn't want me to spend the best years of my life taking care of a dying man. He said he didn't want Noah to remember him that way."

He wishes it didn't, but that makes sense to him. He understands, now. He's seen his fair share of dementia patients and cancer patients and every other kind of patients over the years, and he's thought, more than once, that if his mind ever starts to go he'd rather get pushed in front of a bus than slowly fade away. Suicide is a mortal sin, and the church won't forgive it, and so he's never really considered it as a way out before, but maybe Tucker didn't have the same hang ups he does. Tucker knew his time was up, and he decided to punch his ticket on his own terms. If Elliot wasn't sitting here, witnessing firsthand the wreckage Tucker left behind, he might have privately agreed with the man's choices. As it is, though, Liv is starting to cry, and his heart is breaking in his chest.

"I-I would have taken care of him," she says, brokenly, and he wonders then if she's said that to anybody else. If anybody else has been allowed to see this much of her hurt. Or if she's just been waiting, all this time, for the right person to unburden herself to. He wants to be that person, for her. "I would have been right there with him, until his last breath." He knows she would have, because he knows her. That's just who she is; Olivia has spent her whole life taking care of other people. "But he just left me. Just like everybody else."

Olivia grew up alone and anxious with a drunk for a mother and a question mark for a father. Her mother disappeared; one day she was fine and the next day she was just gone, and Liv had no time at all to prepare for it. Boyfriends left, friends moved on. She found out her father had another child, a child he loved enough to raise, when he never bothered with Liv. She met her brother and formed a connection with him and then he blew his whole life up and disappeared. She had Calvin, for a little while, and then he was taken from her. The ACS people gave her no warning, just showed up and yanked him out of her arms. Elliot didn't give her any warning when he left, either, just turned in his papers and refused to pick up the phone. She hasn't said but he knows, somehow, that Tucker didn't give Liv any indication of what he was planning, that he just pulled the trigger one day, and left. She must wake up every morning, he thinks, wondering who she's gonna lose next.

"I'm sorry," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say. "Liv, I'm sorry."

"I know," she tells him heavily. "Everybody's always fucking sorry. I'm sure you've heard it enough yourself over the last few months."

He nods, because she's right; he's heard sorry so much that sometimes he thinks he's gonna deck the next person who says it. He won't, but he'll want to.

"I don't wanna be somebody people feel sorry for," she says. "I don't wanna be alone."

It is a stunningly honest confession; the Liv he remembers was proud of her independence, and balked at any insinuation that she wasn't perfectly happy on her own, even when she was visibly miserable. She's had a taste of sharing her life with someone else now, though, and maybe that's made her willing to acknowledge just how much she needed it. Needed to be seen, to be held, to be part of a pair, to know that someone had her back and she had his.

"I know," Elliot says. "It's too fucking quiet, and every little thing is just that much harder. There's not as much laundry to do. Don't have to buy as many groceries. Hell, most of the time we just eat takeout. Feels like there's no point in cooking for just two of us."

Olivia scrubs the tears from her cheeks, and then leans her head back against the seat. She closes her eyes; she looks as exhausted as he feels.

"I had to rehire Noah's sitter," she tells him. "Ed had been retired for a while, and he was the one picking Noah up from school, taking him to dance class."

"Dance class?" Elliot asks, and Liv smiles wryly.

"Don't start," she says. "It was baseball first, but he decided he wanted to do ballet, and we decided that as long as he was getting some exercise it didn't matter what he was doing."

"No, that's great, Liv. You're a good mom."

"You're a good dad," she counters. "When you're not out of your fucking mind."

He laughs, though there is no humor in it. If anyone else had said those words to him he would have been angry, and defensive, probably would have shouted, or struck them, but Liv has always been the one to call him on his shit, has always been the only one he listens to when no one else's voice can penetrate the noise in his head.

"I think I'm allowed to lose it, just a little," he says. "Didn't you?"

"I didn't sleep for months," she confesses. "Ed made sure suicide wouldn't void his life insurance policy, and he left me a decent little payout on purpose, because he knew we wouldn't be able to stay in that apartment. That money paid for our move, and I put the rest into a college fund for Noah. But Jesus, I couldn't even walk back through my front door for weeks. When it...when it happened, Fin had to go inside for me. He packed a bag for me and Noah and took us back to his place. He let Noah sleep in his bed and stayed up on the couch with me all night."

"I'm glad he's been there for you," Elliot tells her honestly. "I'm glad you had somebody."

And he is glad but it's hard to picture, somehow, Fin being the one who took care of her, the one who sat up with her all night long, the one who walked into her home and saw her husband's blood sprayed all over the walls and protected her from it. It should have been me, he thinks. I should have been there.

"You need somebody, too, Elliot," she tells him then.

"I've got you, don't I?"

For a second she's quiet, looking at him. Turning the question over in her head. Asking herself if she can do this, if she can carry him and her both, if she can trust him, after everything. If the answer to that question is no he can't blame her, but he doesn't want it to be. He wants her with him. He wants her heartache, and her rage, and her tears, wants them as much as he wants her smile.

"Yeah," she says. "You've got me."