A/N: Oh boy, they make me hurt. I've been listening to Be Still by The Fray, if you need music as I do when I write. J - thank you for going at this chapter hard and showing me how to make it better. Love you. Thank you everyone for the reviews, they make my life and make me want to quit my day job and just dive deep into this. Thanks for trusting me with them. 3

Chapter 4

She stands just on the inside of the door to his apartment, unwilling to immerse herself any deeper into his life. His apartment is nineteen blocks south of hers, and it's just one more thing on the list of the unimaginable things today has brought.

For years, he has been walking distance from her.

At some point she will process that, but right now she's too numb to comprehend anything more. Especially anything that has to do with him, or any of this.

It's still raining out, and she shivers in her wet coat and heels as she leans back against the door. It's been hours since Ed's funeral, but she's still wearing the miserable black dress. Elliot is in his bedroom changing now, and she's vaguely aware that she too wants her own warm clothes.

What she really wants is Noah. She wants to take him home, curl into bed with him and sleep against the perfect scent of his hair. As it is her son is in a hotel suite with her ex-partner's ex-wife and that's another level of messed up that she just can't process.

She closes her eyes now against the invasive light flooding his apartment. When they had first walked in, he'd flipped every switch on and cleared three rooms before holstering his gun. He'd held a weapon she is no longer familiar with. Years ago they used to go to the range together, switching weapons so that they were as proficient and accurate with the other's gun as they were with their own. Just in case they found themselves in that situation one day in the future.

They'd once made contingency plans that they hadn't needed. She hadn't known there wouldn't be a future for them to worry about.

He's only here to change and grab some clothes and his go bag, but even the few minutes here are enough for her to see too much.

There are framed photos of his kids that sit on the coffee table, the end table. Even from here she can see how they've grown, become adults. Maureen is in photos with a dark-haired man, there are images of Richard tossing Eli around. Olivia wraps her arms around her waist, trying to stop the shaking. Her eyes scan the rest of the photos. Kathleen in front of some building that looks like it might be in Europe, Elizabeth in a black cap and gown.

There's another photo in a white wooden frame on the far table. She's freezing again as she looks across the room at it. She doesn't need to be close to know what that one is.

It's a picture of them. How they'd been. She'd laughed too much one night after a case, when the squad had been out having beers to celebrate a rare win. It's grainy because their phone cameras hadn't had great resolution back then, but she'd leaned into him, nearly knocking him off his feet. He had grinned, one hand bracing her as Fin had snapped the image. They hadn't been afraid to touch each other yet.

He'd taken that framed picture with him after one of their last cases together. They'd had to pretend to be a married couple buying an infant. They'd staged a brownstone with old photos showing their life together, hoping to convince the trafficker that it was their marital home.

Her temples throb. She has to quiet the history of them in her head.

She wants to leave. She's too tired, too overwhelmed. This day has been endless, and now that Deputy Chief Garland and Holmes have taken command of her case, there's nothing more she can do other than just go home for the night, as they'd instructed.

Only he's been ordered into her home with her.

There will be no crying tonight. She won't let Elliot hear her tears for Simon, for Ed. For David. She won't give in to her fear for Cragen. Her terror for her son. She won't let Elliot watch her break again, despite how badly she needs to just let it all out.

He comes out of the bedroom now, shutting off the light while carrying two duffel bags. She can't look at him. There are hardened changes to him that she's already processed, but it is unsettling that too much is still familiar all the way into her bones.

"You ready?" He keeps his voice low and calm, and his easy control is almost infuriating.

His voice, that's one of the familiar things. How he stands too close. That's another.

"Just let me have a night to myself," she says, trying to keep her words steady. "I need-" but she stops herself. "Forget it." She knows it's impossible. Moore isn't going to take a night off, so neither can she. Neither can any of them.

Her needs are a waste of words.

She retreats, deliberately giving him a blank stare.

He drops his bags near her feet, and she feels cornered between the heat coming off him and the solid door behind her. "Tell me."

The chill is in her blood now. She'd wanted to go to the crime scene to see David, but they'd stopped her. She'd needed to stay with Noah - they made it clear her presence would only endanger him. She wants to go home alone, and she's faced with Elliot being in her space after so long.

There's nothing in her control, so she doesn't say anything. She feels the fight drain from her.

"Olivia, this isn't on you. None of it."

She doesn't care that he can still read her, the weight of the collective loss is devastating. She can't even begin to open the Pandora's box of fear that is unfurling within her chest because he is trying to use himself as bait.

The unimaginables tonight just keep piling up, again and again and again.

She raises her eyes to his, unable to say anything. Her irises burn. He's so close, and it's been so damned long that she wants to both cry for the comfort and rage at the pain, but she doesn't have the energy for either one of those responses. She focuses on the tiger-flecked blue of his eyes, the flicker of his eyelashes.

Elliot looks at her for too long. He's immovable. She knows that years don't matter, he still sees too much all at once.

"You can hate me," he says softly.

"I don't." She responds too quickly, and the rush of air it takes makes her shudder. She gives him the truth. She can't hate him for needing to be gone from her. She was a reminder yet again of another night gone horribly wrong. She'd been that for her mother, she would have never let it come to that for them.

He'd ghosted her. She'd understood.

His gaze is unrelenting. His eyes narrow and he probably doesn't realize that he's crowding her. She needs him to back up and just give her a few feet of space at all times.

"I should have been there." It's the way he says it that crushes her. It's the implications, the self-recriminations. It's the roughness of his words that tells her the sheer depth of them. They both know exactly who and what he's talking about it and it's more than she can handle tonight.

At least he already knows, so she won't ever have to be the one to tell him.

Olivia can't look at him, so she ducks her head. She focuses on the fact that her clothes are still wet. Her feet hurt. Her skin, it's covered in unforgiving goosebumps.

But in the face of her silence, he lowers his chin and doubles down. "I should have been there, Olivia."

Rougher still, and her throat locks. There is a well inside of her of things she needs to give over to him, things she's saved in the depths of her psyche for too many years. But it's not the time or the place, and it's too late anyway. In truth, she's buried too much of it too deep to ever examine it again.

"It doesn't matter," she whispers.

He's so close to her that despite the grief, the anger, the pain – her skin starts to finally warm. That's the only reason she doesn't protest when he steps even closer and stands up straight, until his mouth nearly brushes her forehead.

The years have blurred all the lines.

"It matters, Liv." His hands ever so lightly skim her arms, and she can feel him talking against her skin. She wants to grip his shirt and absorb his heat but she won't. She can't.

"I'm fine."

He steps back then, cocks his head a little and bends lower until she has no choice but look him in the eyes. "Yeah? Then that makes one of us."

She feels dizzy and too lightheaded to face down his sarcasm right now. She'd been at the end of her rope after the funeral hours ago, with no idea that her hell was just starting. She hadn't awakened that morning with any idea that today would be the day it would all come crashing down.

That today would be the day she would see Elliot again.

After all these years, she needed some warning. Some time to prepare herself, to comprehend it.

Then again David hadn't known what today held, either. She's got no right to question how much pain one day could deliver. Her head starts to throb, and it occurs to her that she doesn't know who will tell David's ex-wife. His children. It's not her place to go, but she's cost them everything too and the realization sends a new wave of nausea through her veins.

Elliot is standing inches from her, his hands on her arms and his eyes searching hers. He's got a badge that is different from hers and he's edgier, more chiseled if that's possible. There is a darkness in him now that hadn't been there before and she thinks yes, me too.

"Are you done packing?" she finally asks, trying to moisten her lips and break the literal hold he has on her. "My place, it's nineteen-"

"Blocks north of here," he finishes for her.

Her gaze flies to his. "You-"

But he cuts her off again. "Don't ask that yet, Liv."

She thinks maybe she's supposed to be angry or push him away. Maybe she's supposed to be so furious she yells. Maybe she's supposed to shove him away from her and tell him he's fucked up for knowing things about her when his absence has been a black hole in her life, devoid of any details. But the day has been too gray, the night too dark. She rubs her palm across her forehead, then over her closed eyes, trying to clear her mind.

He knows where she lives and far beneath the layers of her skin, she knows that he didn't just read it in a file somewhere. She should call him a coward for never actually showing up, but she's too tired to confront him tonight,

She doesn't look at him, she just shifts uncomfortably against the door. "How long?"

There's a long pause, an expelling of air. And then, "Since you moved in."

Over six and a half years ago.

Ever since.

She's going to break again, and she cares less about what is coming now than she did in her office. But she has to know. It's imperative that she knows. "How many times." Its flat, hollow. Not a question.

"Can't count."

Blink your lights when you get upstairs.

A lifetime ago. And still.

She can feel his punctuated breath hitting her skin. She's different again, just by this. It's the other half of her in the room with them again. The before of her. The before of him. There are so many versions of them in the room all at once.

He'd watched her.

She wants to scream at him that he's sick but the truth is that the relief viciously comes barreling out of nowhere. It explodes across her skin, her chest, her fingertips. It cascades down her spine, floods across her shoulders. It's almost painful, as if her limbs had all fallen asleep and the pricking awareness is circling back through every inch too damned fast.

She had spent so many nights believing he had wholly erased her from his life. But he hadn't washed his life of her. He hadn't given up, boxed her up. Stored her away. He hadn't seen the news for those horrific days and simply thought not my problem anymore.

Her thoughts are jumbled as they come at her. Shock, she thinks. She's been battling it all day.

She sees David spilling out onto a sidewalk because that's what they had told her, and Simon's blue lips on Melinda's table, and then there's Ed and it had been a closed casket today and everyone had known why.

It's all coming at her then, the moments she so desperately wanted to forget. Her wrists bound, the chemical plastic smell of the tarp over her, a gunshot and a body smacking the back door of the car before it hit the ground. Her stomach turns recalling the smell of raw burning flesh, and it might be hers, it needs to be hers because there are too many other people dying and it's all her fault. It's Welcome home, Detective Benson, the soundtrack of his voice that starts up again after all this time, repeating itself in her head over and over.

Elliot had watched her.

"El," comes out of her and its strangled. It's not his full name, and that's an admission that scorches her throat when she says it.

He steps into her then and his hands are in her hair for the second time tonight. He gathers her up that way, her forehead pulled against his lips and she doesn't care if its been nine days or nine years because there will be time for all of that later. Her eyes well and if she could just, just please hold it together right now that's all she would ask of whatever God exists up there.

"Fuck," he grates. "Liv."

She presses her face into his neck then and one of his hands slides down her back. She's gripping his coat and he's gripping hers and he's whispering something incoherent and maybe, just maybe if she stays like this she will open her eyes to find out he's only been gone minutes after all.

That's it, that's what she tells herself as she inhales the scent of him hard, willing away the effects of shock and exhaustion. The rough skin of his neck rasps against her face, and for just a moment, Jenna is somewhere on the floor nearby, they both know she's gone.

This is it, she pretends. In the aftermath he hadn't run.

In the aftermath, she imagines, this is what they had both done.

-o0o-

For the first time tonight he takes a deep breath. Or maybe that's wrong. Maybe it's the first time in years he's really used his lungs like this.

He's trying not to pry in her apartment, but while she's showering he has too much freedom. There were too many nights he'd sat in his car, watching the lights of these windows, just wondering.

Now he's in her space, and fuck, he's just got to breathe.

Two bags of Chinese takeout sit on the kitchen counter – he'd insisted – but they sit next to a basket of fresh fruit, a pile of markers, a pair of children's mittens and a half-eaten bowl of kids cereal. The shelves along the wall are filled with children's books, a truck, photos and Noah's artwork. There's a magnet on the fridge holding a permission slip for a museum trip from Noah's school, and a newly started puzzle is scattered across the coffee table.

The bare cupboards and sterility of her old apartment is long gone. She'd found a life and built herself a family without him around, and he's examined that far too often. Then again, he also knows why she moved here in the first place and that's something he hasn't ever been able to process.

I've got this, Stabler. Do her a favor. Turn around and disappear so you give her a fucking chance! You can't do shit to fix this! Look at you, you're a goddamned mess. You think she needs that?

She'd moved in here with Cassidy four months after that night he'd shown up at the hospital. He'd taken it as a sign that Cassidy had been right. With him out of her life, she'd found a relationship, and she had support.

After he'd left the squad, his marriage had steadily crumbled along with everything else. The week before Lewis had taken Olivia, Kathy had finally asked for a divorce for the last time and he'd let that be the nail in the coffin he'd occupied since he'd killed Jenna. Half-drunk, he'd holed up in a motel for a few days with some Xanax to quell Jenna's surprised face and Kathy's blank one.

He'd surfaced to hear the news droning in the motel room. Words that took far too long to become clear. The NYPD had recovered their missing detective.

He hadn't showered or shaved. The first press conference had taken place from the hospital, so he'd had an address and he'd been out the door before the news segment was over.

He'd gone off-grid for two months after the confrontation that night with Cassidy at hospital.

His phone rings, so he grabs it and finds a place on the couch. He's avoided this call so far, and he doesn't deserve the space his ex-wife has given him tonight. She'd been a police wife for long enough that she'd stayed out of his way until now, and he owes her something. Anything.

"Kath."

"I'm just checking on you."

That's who she is. How she is these days. He'd scared all of them so badly after the shooting all those years ago that she just seems be happy when he's holding it all together for the most part. "I'm fine. How're you and Eli? Liz?"

She chuckles quietly, but there's an edge to it. "None of the kids are happy about the surveillance on them, but I'm glad for it. The more the better. Liz is staying at Kathleen's. Eli thinks this is a vacation."

He scrubs his hand over his face more than once. "I'm sorry."

"They won't tell me much, Elliot. Just that someone is after Olivia and they are taking precautions. I'm assuming you're in danger too?"

He can't answer that. He can't tell the mother of his children that he'd just offered himself up as the primary bait to draw out a killer. Then again she is used to not hearing from him for days during the undercovers. She already lives in a constant state of wondering if he's alive or dead.

He wonders the same thing sometimes. "I'm fine. You'll be okay there. Just don't ask to leave or push boundaries. Please. We'll have to tell Eli's school he's on vacation."

"I already emailed them." Her breathing is heavy, and he can tell she's debating her next words. After the things he's said and done, she shouldn't ever have to tiptoe around him. "He's a beautiful boy, Elliot. Noah, I mean. He just went to sleep in the other room with Lucy about an hour ago, but Eli took a liking to him."

He scrubs his hand down his face. There's no limit to things he asks of her, yet she isn't giving him any anger or frustration despite the fact that he'd just turned her life upside down. Again. He's silent, but she doesn't let that deter her even though he can hear the exhaustion in her voice.

"Tell her I'll take good care of him. Tell her…I owe her and I wish it wasn't under these circumstances, but I'm glad to get to know him."

Her tone has become more delicate over the last few years. She always chooses her words carefully with him, so he knows this is important. "Owe her?"

It's a soft, sad laugh. "She took care of Eli and I through the crash. And," Kathy pauses, as if searching for the right words. "She took care of you better than I could. Look what happened when all of you was left to only me."

"Kath-" He closes his eyes. "I was lost without the job."

The long moments stretch out. He can hear his ex-wife breathing, shifting on the bed she must be laying on. "Not just the job. How're you taking it? Seeing her?"

He can't do this. Not tonight. Not when he's got no idea of what the next moment is going to bring with Olivia. There are no explanations that will make sense.

"She hasn't killed me herself yet, if that's what you're asking."

He imagines her there, in a hotel suite with children she doesn't know, with federal agents watching her every move. She hasn't killed him either, and he doesn't deserve her patience. Maybe he never has.

"She won't," Kathy finally says gently. "Keep yourself safe. Olivia safe. Okay? Night, Elliot."

He's still holding his phone when the line clicks. A second later he realizes the shower must have been off for a little while, because Olivia's bedroom door opens.

She's standing there then in her bare feet, wrapped in a big white robe. Her hair is wet and her face is scrubbed free of the last bit of makeup. Her eyes are redder than they had been, and he realizes she'd spent the extra time in there crying.

She looks fragile. Softer than he ever remembers her.

Olivia remains there, as if she doesn't know what to do with herself. She shoves her hands into the pockets of the robe. "I'm going to sleep in Noah's room. You can have mine. The bathroom connects between them, so I'll close the bathroom door on my side and if you want to shower…" Her voice trails off, and she looks off towards the kitchen, jutting her chin out. "There are clean towels on the counter."

It's all perfunctory, emotionless.

"I'm not taking your room, Liv." There's no way he's going to waltz in here and slide into her bed. He needs some sleep at some point and that's no way to try and get it.

She blinks at him. "I need Noah's room."

The emptiness in her voice makes him drop the sleeping arrangements.

He gets up, making his way to her despite the wariness in her expression as she turns to watch him approach. "Kathy called. She said Noah's doing great. He and Eli are getting along. Kids went to sleep about-"

"Yeah," she interrupts. "I talked to Lucy." Every word is hollow.

"Liv, you gotta eat something. Gonna have a long day tomorrow." He makes his way into the kitchen and he can feel her eyes on him. He reaches for the Chinese and starts unpacking the bags.

She doesn't move an inch. "I can't. I'm good. Just gonna call it a night. Just wake me if you hear that Don is safe."

He doesn't want her panicking about Cragen right before bed, so he ignores her. He's going to check in with Porter on that search anyway after she goes to sleep. "Just try some of the soup at least. A full stomach will help you sleep. I'll pour you a bowl of it." He's moving too fast, opening the cupboards to find a bowl and spoon.

"I can't, Elliot."

But she's so still and quiet that it scares the hell out of him. Fuck. He finds what he's looking for and starts opening the container.

"Stop, please."

He finally stills, looking to his left at her. Her eyes have that sheen again and she looks lost in her own home. "Liv, just have a little."

She shakes her head then, the void deepening. "You can't do this, Elliot. You don't get to come in here and tell me what to do. I'm not angry, I'm not. I just can't do this either."

She's right. He doesn't have any rights here, at all. She hasn't given him the anger he knows he deserves yet, but that doesn't give him any leeway when it comes to her personal space in the meantime.

But his hands have touched her today, and all he wants is the chance to do it again.

"You're right," he gives her, reluctantly.

She seems a little relieved, as if the panic that she would have to fight him has receded. "I know we have two details outside but," she hesitates, swallowing as if her throat is sore. "You should know every room has a panic button. Goes straight to the squad and Fin. The blue ones on the wall. The windows are resistant acrylic but stay away from them anyway. Front door and the bedroom doors are reinforced and I'm setting the perimeter alarm now, so if you need to go out, let me know."

She'd described the fortress she'd constructed for her and Noah in a monotone. As if it's perfectly normal to live in a virtual bunker. She doesn't give him the alarm code, and he doesn't question it.

It makes his skin crawl that she'd felt the need to live like this. As if she couldn't trust the outside world to keep her or her child safe. The truth is, she isn't wrong.

He's fucking failed her in a thousand ways.

He stands perfectly still as she opens the fridge and takes out two bottles of water. She puts on one on the counter in front of him and then steps back, recreating her perimeter of space. "There's one other thing." She doesn't look at him. Instead she fidgets, opening the water bottle and shifting a little. Olivia finally thinks better of it and starts to walk out of the room, stopping only when she's almost in the hallway, one hand gripping the edge of the wall and the other holding her water.

Her back is to him when she speaks. "I talk sometimes. In my sleep. I take something to help with that most nights, so that I don't wake Noah. But I don't…want to be even the slightest bit groggy while this case is going so," She finally looks back over her shoulder. "If you hear me, I'm okay." Her flat, empty eyes lift to his. "I don't need rescuing."

She disappears around the corner then, and he doesn't follow her.

He can't move, frozen in place by the matter-of-fact admission and fully without an appetite too. For all the nights he'd sat outside and watched the lights in this apartment, he hadn't truly understood the depths of hell she'd been fighting within.

Alone.