A/N: Again, thank you guys for the encouragement! In writing this, and with you reading this now, I'm just going to assume you know what happened in the past, so all the episodes are fair game to pop up. I'd also like to say, again, that I don't know who the hell Olivia's nanny is in the show - but for this story, her name is Lindsay. And whoever it was who wanted to know if Liv has Type 2 diabetes and wondered if that's why she was so thirsty: she may indeed be diabetic, but she isn't in this story. She's just thirsty, okay? Here we go...

Lunch couldn't come soon enough, and yet it was something impending on Olivia's body and mind, like certain doom. She didn't know if she wanted it, but she couldn't not want it.

He was not going to come here, to the 1-6. She wouldn't let him, though he didn't even mention that possibility on the phone. And she was not going to tell anybody where she was going, either, though they probably already knew.

It seemed she couldn't trust anybody around her. Not that they were bad people; not that they didn't have her back when it mattered. She knew they were looking out for her – probably why they never told her they were in contact with Elliot. If she knew he was still out there somewhere alive, if she was conscious of his existence, then she couldn't have functioned. Not moved on. Functioned.

It was December 2011, twelve years into their partnership, after Olivia had lost Calvin, before a child's dead body was found on a carousel. It was late at night – the most important parts of their relationship had always been at night – their time was always in the dark – when Olivia had taken Elliot home to her apartment, to her bed, under her body, between her legs. It was December and Olivia has been alone, cold. Elliot was done with his marriage—for good now, though not yet officially.

After that first release—and God, it had been a release—they stayed up all night, just touching, looking, smiling quietly, and taking from each other. Because they could. Olivia remembered Elliot's index finger trailing over her body, beginning its path at the tip of her forehead, over that vein that had become more pronounced over the years, down to the bridge of her nose, stopping at her open mouth, where she inhaled and bit down—just a little—on that finger before he flipped her over onto her back, kissed her mouth, her cheek, her chin. With his lips, with his hands.

He explored the column of her long neck, inhaled at the apex of her shoulder, brought her long leg around his hip, and it felt good. It had felt really good. His hands, everywhere, encompassing her—steadying her—holding her down, bringing her up. It wasn't multiple orgasms and perfect stamina. At times he stilled on top of her, or she on top of him, because they needed the rest, the calm. But they lumbered along for months. Not long enough, but too long for it not to have mattered.

It was the greatest comfort Olivia had ever known, it was the consummation of a relationship that had started a long, long time ago. Forever ago, and she didn't think about it stopping. She didn't inhibit herself, moderate her feelings. Neither did he. It felt too right to need each other that way.

And then it was the middle of May, and Elliot wasn't there anymore. Olivia felt like a limb had been ripped from her, quick like a band aid. Like tape from a mouth. That fast and unexpected and painful as fuck. She could still feel that limb, but she could not touch it, and she shattered in the most damaging of ways. He didn't come to her for comfort; he didn't come to comfort her. He had given up. He had quit—something she never imagined he would do. She had wrapped his love around her like a chain, and when that chain was cut, she fell.

Summers in the city had always been stifling, but Olivia had never felt one like that. It was a long while before she stood back up.

She had always thought that everyone was replaceable. You see enough people come in and out of your life. You see how fast loved ones die. You see people moving on. But she was wrong. Rollins and Amaro and Fin and Barba were her dearest allies now. They were great detectives and friends, but they were not Elliot. Elliot was gone. And the person she had been with him—because of him—she was gone, too.

Until William Lewis had put a gun to her head, kidnapped her, drugged her, tortured her, taunted her. She found that Olivia again. The strength and desperation of her pain. Just as urgently as Elliot had ripped himself away from her, Olivia had plunged back down into herself. Until that was over, too. And then she stood back up, got dumped by Cassidy, and moved on. Replaceable.

In the elevator, Olivia stood rigid with her hands in her jacket pocket, because she didn't know what else to do with them, or how to stop them from shaking.

In the squad car she turned up the heat and opened the window, because the car was cold and so was her body, but she needed the air in her lungs. Is this what Noah felt like, she wondered, when his lungs did not work.

They met at Skylight Diner on West 34th street. Olivia got there first and ordered coffee. She sometimes drank tea, but tea is calming, and she needed to be tense.

Elliot walked in ten minutes later in jeans and a long black wool jacket. She didn't look away as he walked toward her. She smiled with her mouth closed as he took off his jacket and slid into the booth next to it. She sniffled a little bit and let out a small breath from her mouth when he looked back at her. She knew her nose was red and her eyes were wet. This is what it was like.

"Hi," he said, getting comfortable in the booth and leaning toward her with his elbows on the tabletop.

"Hi," she said back, almost in a whisper. She was blinking too much, breathing too hard. She looked down at her hands in her lap, shook her head, and let out a small laugh, which was not so much a laugh as a forced exhalation.

"Coffee," he said to the waitress, and added, "please. Have you ordered?" he asked Olivia.

"No," she said. "I was waiting for you."

"I'll give you a couple minutes to decide?" Elliot nodded, and the waitress went away.

The Skylight Diner was called Skylight Diner because—not so ironically—of the massive skylight in the ceiling. Olivia had never been there at nighttime, so she didn't know how the place was lit without sunlight. She didn't think it had a heater, either, because the light from the ceiling made the diner too stifling to need one. She rolled up her sweater sleeves and sat back in her seat.

"Do you know what you're gonna get?" Elliot asked.

"Yeah," she said. "You?"

"Yeah. I think."

Olivia tapped her fingers on her coffee mug until the waitress came back to bring Elliot his coffee and take their orders. Olivia got the tuna salad sandwich on wheat with a fruit cup side, and Elliot got chicken fingers and french-fries. They both ordered waters.

"Well, you look good," Elliot said. He was relaxed. The fucker was relaxed.

"Do I?" asked Liv, only looking up at him for a moment before returning her gaze to the coffee.

"You do," he said.

Olivia looked back up, rolled her eyes a little—not all the way, just to the right a bit, shrugged, and said, "Well." It wasn't a statement so much as a question, like, "well, what're you gonna do?" She didn't have much say in how she looked. It had been years since he had last seen her. A lot had happened. A lot had happened to her, physically. Emotionally. She'd aged, but so had he.

She wasn't going to give in, she thought, though she didn't exactly know yet what it was she would be giving in to.

"So," started Elliot, with a small smile on his face. "What do you do?"

"What do you do?" she asked back.

Elliot made his face serious and said, "I asked first."

"You know what I do," Olivia answered.

"I used to," he said. "Tell me what you do now."

"I work in sex crimes," she said, coolly, making and holding eye contact. "Now you."

"I'm a grandpa," he said, and Olivia gave in with a small laugh. "And a dad."

"Do you work?" she asked.

"That is work," he answered.

Olivia bit the tip of her thumb, and then asked, "What were you doing in Norfolk?"

"Consulting," he said. "Military."

"Oh yeah?" she asked, casually. But this was not casual. "How long were you there?"

Elliot answered, "A while," and then they shifted upright as the waitress laid their food in front of them.

Olivia dug into her sandwich and was very aware of Elliot's eyes on her. It should have made her feel self-conscious, but it didn't. He'd seen her eat before. He'd seen her before. She looked at him while she chewed.

"I don't what this to be so difficult," Elliot confessed in a quiet enough voice so that only Olivia could hear. "I know it's difficult, but I don't want it to be."

"I don't know," Olivia answered, and put her sandwich down. She looked at her lap. "How else can it be?"

"I didn't have a choice…" he said.

"Bullshit!" she exclaimed, aggressively, defensively, as if calling bullshit, and it was loud enough for the people in the booths around them to hear. She lowered her voice and moved closer to him across the table. "You had a choice, Elliot. I know it was a messed up situation. I know how fucked up it must have made you. I know you did what you felt you had to do, but you had a choice, Elliot. You always have a choice."

"I couldn't let you talk me out of it," he explained. "He's probably scared to talk to you, Liv," and she was back in that bar with Fin.

"Talk you out of what?" Because she still couldn't believe he had quit.

"I couldn't go back," he said.

"What about me?" she asked, in the tiniest voice he had ever heard. Tinier than the time she had asked him that same question once before. This wasn't a surprised voice; it was a defeated voice.

"I never stopped thinking about you, Liv. Never." He said it desperately, like he meant it, but what good had it done her?

"Then why didn't you talk to me?" She didn't want to cry in this diner. That's why she agreed to go there in the first place. The light was so bright and the chatter so loud that she didn't think it would be possible to cry. "I needed you to talk to me, El." And she was crying, silently, but visibly—because that's all she could give him.

TBC