Hello again. Thanks for checking into Ch. 4. Let's take a deep dive into Elliot's perspective. Tell me what you think in a review. I love it when y'all talk to me.
He could smell the heat coming off of the radiator. It created a dense, heavy fog of hot air that hung in the room. Elliot lay shirtless on his back with the top sheet down at his waist and the comforter folded at the foot of the bed. The city lights peeked in at his chest, almost bare except for the scars Stuckey gave him and the neatly trimmed hairs that lay flat between his pecks, reaching and wrapping around the edges of his areolas. The window blinds cast shadowy rows across his body and barely furnished bedroom, like the bars of a cell.
Sleep, though welcomed, did not welcome him back. Rather, it stringed him along. He was trapped, suspended in a plane somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness. It was like sleep paralysis, except he could move - he just didn't want to. In this half-sleep state, since he'd concluded hours ago there was no chance he'd fall completely, he thought about work and his family.
He was alone in this short-term lease apartment. He'd asked Kathy to come with him and bring now fourteen-year-old Eli. After Richard joined the Marines and Elizabeth went abroad in the Peace Corps, he and Kathy decided to downsize. They got a smaller home in upstate NY, and thankfully, he was able to stash away some of the liquid equity from their old home and so felt confident they could sell again and find a decent place in the city. Perhaps Queens again. But Kathy refused, complaining that they'd finally gotten away from the city and from the job that was driving a wedge between them.
She didn't care that this was a different job. His work in Italy between retirement and their return to NY was also a different job. Less consuming, yes. But still dangerous. "Elliot, every victim is going to be special to you," she'd pleaded with him. "And you still won't be able to save them all." He assured her that once he's promoted, which he promised would happen quickly, he'd have a steady schedule and be home much more often. "Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains- they don't pull the all-nighters, honey," he'd sworn to her. "Believe me, I know. It was hard watching Captain Cragen mosey on out the office while the rest of us had to keep the wheel turning all night."
In the kitchen of their upstate 2-bedroom home, she'd wiped her hands on a towel and rubbed his jaw. Her eyes were regretful. "That won't matter to you," she'd said. And even though he was home when he retired, and he belonged exclusively to the family rather than having to be divided among parties, he was always far away. He'd only opened up once, after their priest went out on a limb and recommended Elliot consider outside counseling separate from his wife. And when he did open up, he only said how he was missing SVU. It gave him a deeper purpose, he'd told her. He took trauma and folded it, and molded it, and he could stretch it into some sort of resolution and justice that could help someone heal. And he said he felt alone. Nobody has been where he's been, and she knew he had a point. He could see how his words had hurt Kathy by the childlike expression of rejection on her face. She'd told him, "I hoped our family would be purpose enough. God knows there's still enough demand for healing."
That was when he went back to the job, but in Italy. After four years he chose to take a sabbatical of sorts. But now that international work was bringing him back to NYC, Kathy had to re-draw the line at the city boundaries. So, she and Eli stayed in their home outside of the city. They agreed that every Thursday, when Eli has soccer training, and every weekend he would make the drive back. He was three weeks strong into that promise.
His daughter Kathleen was most sympathetic of his misery. As happy as he'd wanted to be and should've been, he'd begun to look lonely in the eyes. Before, he was just angry all the time, and trying and sometimes failing to repress it. In retirement, he was lonely. As she grew older and matured, Kathleen began to better understand her father. She may have begun to understand him even more than his wife because, unlike Kathy, she recognized that his mood was sometimes depressed. After all, he was a combination of his father and his mother and a product of the condition under which they'd raised him. There were times, after he'd entered therapy, that she could not only ask him about his relationship with his late father, but he would actually answer in truthfulness.
He was not so open when she once asked about Olivia. She only asked because she'd found a photo of him and Olivia, smiling endearingly together, in a shoebox in their shed. She tried to remember a time he smiled like that at home. And though he did smile, and often, they always seemed to be smiles of obligation. Children do a good thing - fatherly pride. Wife presses her body against his - dutiful husband. A joke is told - social etiquette. He was an anti-depressant commercial. Kathleen had gone into the social work field and wanted to reach out to Olivia for work-related advice. Elliot had nearly bitten off her head when she told him she wanted to do that. "Do NOT bother Olivia," he had demanded, turning red with a vein making an appearance near his temple. He wasn't asked about her again.
He missed her. She was his best friend. Before Olivia, there'd never been anybody, man or woman, he could be vulnerable with - granted, the times he was vulnerable he didn't really want to be. But she accepted him for his flaws and his issues. She was right: she never did judge him. Even when he was uncertain, she proved time and time again that he was safe with her. He'd felt like a little boy sometimes, helpless and unable to hide himself. When he felt that he couldn't live up to the portrait he painted of himself for her eyes, he felt ashamed. He feared she would finally come to the same conclusion as his father: that he was a failure. Unworthy. A fraud. But she didn't. He'd never thought that when someone sees more of what you hate about yourself, it could bring them closer to you.
She loved him harder the lower he fell. He wasn't sure if love was the right word. He didn't like to think about it. Because what would it mean if Olivia had loved him? And what would it mean if she didn't love him anymore? Would it mean that he ultimately failed her, becoming a self-fulfilled prophecy, and he'd been so blind he didn't see how rich his life was with her in it - how depleted his life was without her? Would it mean that he's killed any chance of rectifying his mistakes? He had hurt her, because he himself was hurting so. He couldn't help but think maybe Olivia had been his last frontier and he'd sabotaged himself for the last time, and there'd be no more possibilities. No more horizons. That in the pursuit of happiness, whatever that meant for him, he was at the end of the line, and he couldn't go backward to start again. He sighed heavily. He heard his father again. His mother, wife, and children. He heard dying marriage and a history of violence. All these voices and stories swirling in his mind at once. He heard When was the last time you thought about eating your gun?
He'd been repairing Eli's bicycle, a red Huffy with a horn, in their upstate driveway when Sergeant John Munch pulled up in a black sedan. He was still tall, lanky, and stylish in his sunglasses and black suit and tie. He still walked with a swagger. They shook hands, and Elliot pulled him into a manly embrace, touching his left shoulder to Munch's right. "What're you doin round these parts," Elliot asked him. Munch told him about his retirement, to which Elliot replied that he knew. "I get the paper," he said.
"All the way out here in old sunny land?" Munch jabbed.
Elliot confessed that maybe he missed it. Munch's advice was, "Don't. How many times do I have to say it? The job'll never love you back." Elliot wiped his hands on his dingy white tank top, marring it with black oil smudge. "I know it. I know," he claimed. "It's just- I'm feeling kinda..." He looked around, making sure none of his family was within earshot.
"Useless?" Munch asked. Elliot nodded, disappointed in himself for feeling that way when he has a whole family to tend to and to fulfill him. Munch continued, "It's a natural stage of retirement. I think retiring is one of the best parts of any job. Can't wait to do it again, so I can see what other mess I can get into." Elliot was shocked that he'd retired, but not too shocked. He'd long ago learned not to let anything Munch does surprise him. Whatever thing seemed least appropriate for Munch is the thing Munch can be expected to do. He smirked reverently when he remembered catching Munch at the sheep pillow fight protest. Munch said, "After you finish the stages of grief, in whichever order you prefer, just know that I exercised my power as an experienced public servant and D.A. special investigator to nominate you to head up Organized Crime. Some of us little people caught wind of your work in Italy."
Elliot had been dumbfounded. "So," Munch finished up, leaning down to ring the bicycle's bell, "study up for the exams you'll need to pass. You'd still have your same rank, but they be able to fast-track you if you get the job." He squeezed a card with his contact information into the front pocket of Elliot's tightly fitting jeans. "I don't even know if I can take it," he'd called out as Munch was walking back to his car. Elliot looked back apprehensively at his two-story home. Munch understood that to mean his reservations about the job was family. Munch shrugged. Elliot's a big boy - Munch knew he'd figure it out. "Good to see you," he said, pausing at his car door. Elliot said the same, and Munch ducked into his car, backed out, and drove away.
Now here he was, chasing some thing and still conflicted. The only thing he was sure about was that he wanted to solve this case of his. He wanted to share that victory, too, with Olivia. He created this rationalization that if he worked near or parallel to SVU, then he could take advantage of some of the rewarding aspects of the job while keeping it at a distance. The trick, his mind had reasoned, is to be fulfilled but not overcome. To take only what you need. Being able to touch that dark world and create a rightness from the brokenness of it without being touched by it. He'd been imbued enough as is. He couldn't afford to get lost in the shadows again. At the same time, he couldn't afford to be idle in a world where victims' screams are being stripped of their voice. Their voices, live and cold victims alike, deserved to be restored. Not only did they deserve restoration, but it was a requirement in order to reconcile the ugliness in the world to the goodness others get to live. It's a job that somebody's got to do. He doesn't trust just anybody to do it well.
He had in his hands, or rather in SVU's hands, a young, mutilated, murdered woman and her dead baby, and a missing baby. A hell of a first case back - trial by hell fire. He felt the pride he used to feel in rising to the occasion. Not many can do the job like him. One elite unit to the next, he thought this must be what a calling feels like - a relentless pull from within the belly tethering one to some destination. He was willing to put in the work again, to be the best and even better than before. And to cope better.
With Olivia he was willing to put in the work also. He understood her anger, but he had his excuses. As much as she empathized, he felt defensive because she could never fully put herself in his place. She'd never had a family, and family is everything. It was his responsibility to do the noble thing, which looks different for everybody. Without family, he's nothing; yet he felt, in retrospect, that he'd really just been too weak to face her. He didn't want to say goodbye - forget leaving. He wouldn't have been able to look her in the eye and say: "I'm leaving. This is the end for us." Somehow, his heart manipulated him into believing as long as he didn't say his goodbyes, he wasn't truly leaving her. And that was partly true because she'd never left his mind. He'd thought about her every day. He constantly shifted between hoping she thought about him as often and hoping she never thinks about him again, since he'd believed they'd never see each other.
Throughout it all, he'd hoped she was doing well. He scoured the Manhattan paper all the way from upstate for any heroics, commendations, or promotions relating to Olivia Benson. When she'd been taken hostage by William Lewis he was sick. He had spiraled into a depression so gripping it scared his wife and child. It had caused him to fall ill. The hypertension led to a kidney cyst which needed to be surgically removed. Maybe if he told her how she's already tormented him, that'll be enough vengeance and she'll forgive him.
His phone jingled on the nightstand. He turned his head and looked at it quizzically. Kathy and Eli were asleep, he knew for certain. He didn't have a squad yet and wasn't officially part of SVU's investigation, so he was confused about who it could be. He picked it up.
"Were you sleeping?" a woman asked dryly.
"Olivia?" Elliot questioned, sitting up in the bed. "It's... 3am."
"So, you weren't sleep," she concluded, definitively. She was right, somehow.
"What's up?" Elliot asked.
"I need you to fill in for Fin. Kat can pick you up wherever you are-"
"That's okay," he interrupted, eager. "I'll drive."
"Okay. I'll send you her number. Mercy Hospital's got a BBA newborn we need to check out."
"You're not gonna be there," he said. It was a statement with a tinge of disappointment and questioning.
"No," she stated. "I'll be at the precinct in the morning."
He went to say goodnight but the line clicked. He placed his feet on the floor beside his bed, legs bare, and rubbed his neck. "Well," he said to himself in a gravelly whisper. "At least she said 'I need you.'" He decided he'd take what he could get and only what he needed to cling to hope.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I did want to take a moment to analyze Elliot, and I figured a restless night was the perfect time to get inside his head. My intention was to clear up a little why Elliot was a bit defensive in the previous chapter. This isn't the end of that explanation, so stay tuned. Forgive me if you thought Elliot would be divorced. As much as I really want that, I also want to keep this fanfic as close to reality as possible and then deviate from there. Now that we've seen the first two episodes of OC, you know what to expect. Also, did the kidney cyst ring any bells? I plan for that to come back up in a later chapter or story.
By the way, do you feel that the following is true of Olivia's relationship to Elliot: He'd never thought that when someone sees more of what you hate about yourself, it could bring them closer to you... She loved him harder the lower he fell.
Thank you for reading.