Author's Note: Surprise! (I swear it was a surprise to me as well…damn these characters and the life of their own they lead.) Also, thank you, love you.

The waves were less high than he remembered them, the sea much calmer than he would have expected it to be during the season of fall storms. He felt the need to point this out over and over again, which led her to explain sensibly that it really wasn't that surprising, since he had been a child at the time. But not a wimpy kid, he pointed out, and from here on, the conversation turned in circles, which only ever ended when she checked her phone for about the tenth time this afternoon.

"He's fine" Brian groaned. "My mom has done this before, you know."

"Not for the whole day, and she's looking after three kids under five, that's cra- that's pretty exhausting."

"It'll be good for him to be around other kids." If he were being honest, he was a little worried himself, because his baby cousin Rosa's kids were running pretty wild and Noah was the youngest among them. He had never had the pleasure of babysitting them, and he wasn't keen on it, but he felt it best to leave that part out. His poor mother probably wouldn't make this offer again anytime soon, as crazy as she was about Noah. He would never hear the end of how she had lost all hope that she would ever have grandchildren (this statement was usually accompanied by her eyes growing misty), and he just wished for the sake of his dignity that she would stop emphasizing to his girlfriend that she was so glad he had finally "found a woman", that they had "worked it out". "He can play with them."

"More like parallel play beside. Or be treated like a living doll by."

"He'll survive."

"He'll survive?" She raised her eyebrows. "I'm not the one who suggested we should run a criminal background check on everyone Noah ever meets, including Nick's mother."

"You never know." Truth be told, that suggestion had probably had a lot to do with Amaro's holier-than-thou attitude, the way he liked to point out that he was a parent –congrats on spreading your sperm around, man!- and how good he was with Noah, as Olivia liked to tell him.

"I hope she doesn't let them watch TV…"

"Otherwise he'll clearly turn out nearly illiterate, like me. Man, it's a wonder I grew up good."

She nudged his arm with her elbow, finally distracted from her phone. "Who says you turned out good?"

"You're lucky that water is too cold to throw you in." He reached for her hand, and their fingers interlaced loosely as they were walking side by side, facing the strong wind. "Can we just have some time off and enjoy…fucking…nature without stressing out?"

She exhaled deeply. "Okay, okay."

This whole walk along the beach thing had actually sounded more romantic in theory than it was in practice. The beach was pretty damn cold around this season and widely deserted except for them. You couldn't gaze too far out onto the water due to the fog closing in, and grey sand seamlessly transitioned into grey water, which melted into grey sky with clouds hanging low over them. But this wasn't about romance. In his mind's eye, he had the memory of sun, of summers spent running and splashing around in the ice cold water, the sensation of the warm, dry sand under his soles, a visual image of the tide washing in and standing in the water until his feet were buried in the ground, seeing who could hold out the longest. He had never won against the older boys. This walk didn't match that image. Instead, he had sand blowing into his face, hiding between his teeth whenever he opened his mouth to speak. Only the smell was the same as always, that salty, fishy smell of the ocean. Nowadays, it reminded him of other things, of driving around a different beach aimlessly, listening to the radio non-stop, searching for the needle in the haystack without knowing what the needle looked like. He hated that his childhood memories had been replaced like that.

"We should bring Noah here next summer" she suggested thoughtfully. "He'll be old enough to enjoy it."

"Yeah." He was surprised by this idea coming from her, especially given how calmly she inserted it into the silence between them. But Noah was safe; Noah was what they could always fall back on as a subject. "We'll build sand castles."

"You mean you'll build sand castles while he gets bored after five minutes."

"There are plenty of things to do. This place is where I had my first ice cream hangover. I'm serious, too much ice cream can give you the worst headache and nausea." He was babbling now, avoiding the quiet.

"We'll watch the ice cream intake. Exactly how often did you come here?"

"It varied. A lot when I was little, almost every weekend during the summer, less after my dad took off and Mom started working again."

"That had to be hard" she replied softly.

He shrugged. He hadn't thought about this in so long, and he didn't want to make a big deal of it. His childhood had been pretty good, as far as he was concerned. "Not really. I got to go along with my cousins after. I liked it better here in those days, before every stretch of it became this exclusive place for yuppies with vacation houses."

"Mom didn't like coming here. She thought it was a little frivolous."

"Frivolous? It's a beach."

"Yeah, that was just…Mom." She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. The hair at the front was too short to be held in place by her hairclip, and the wind really made it impossible to sustain any style besides his own shortly cropped hair.

"I wish I'd met her." In his imagination, meeting Liv's mother would have explained so much. It was like the key to her soul, or rather, to the guardedness of layer upon layer of secrets. Olivia through the looking glass. Or maybe it wouldn't have explained a thing. She rarely talked about her mom, but it still felt like she was there in a lot that had happened, there in parenting decisions she made about Noah, another person in their relationship.

"She pretty much tried to scare off all my boyfriends, so that would have been a disaster."

"Or a Romeo and Juliet style romance enhancer."

"Romeo and Juliet died" she commented drily, walking off towards the edge of the water.

"What are you doing? Liv?"

She crouched down many feet away from him, taking a fist full of pure, grey sand and letting it trickle through her fingers, blowing away in the wind. He watched her as she remained in the doubtlessly uncomfortable position, her back turned towards him.

He is standing on the beach, forced to stop in his tracks as he doubles over, panting with his hands on his knees. His chest aches, his head is pounding, last year's wound is acting up again, slowing him, disabling him. It feels good to hurt, to do something at all, but he can't let himself be disabled. What the fuck is he doing running on sand? The right house isn't going to have a red X painted on the door. It's pointless, pointless, that voice inside him shouts, and oh God, maybe he should have stayed back at the precinct for news, unable as he is at this point to keep pulling shift after shift at the courthouse. They are searching for her, he tells himself over and over, they will find her. Dead or alive?, the evil voice adds, the voice that he wants to strangle. They are searching with cadaver dogs. He can't afford to lose it now. She is not dead. She is not dead. She is not dead. Lewis displays his victims, he gets off on the pain he inflicts, the victory over the NYPD, if she were dead, they would know. Lewis also discards whatever doesn't entertain him anymore. She is not dead.

The beach is deserted on a cloudy, windy day like this. No one will have seen a thing. There is no one and nothing left in the world, and suddenly the empty sky feels oppressive above him. He is alone in the world, and he knows with a flash of certainty that there is nothing out there, because if there were a God, then fuck him. "Fuck you!" he shouts, the wind swallowing his scream, but it doesn't feel good to scream. It doesn't feel like anything except irrational remorse, because the vengeful God who doesn't exist might be enough of a dick to hurt her just because he has insulted him. Because that's how fucked up the world is. It's the same Gods he makes mental bargains with, offering himself up, promising to never waste another chance again if he gets just this one, promising that it doesn't matter what happened to her as long as she is alive. But no answer comes. He is alone, and she is out there somewhere, and there is nothing he can do about it but torture himself by imagining what Lewis might be doing to her at this very moment. Because if he can imagine it, then she is not dead.

He resumes his pointless run along the beach, scanning the houses for signs of…what? Human inhabitants? His phone rings, and his brain goes into overdrive, because they've found her, they've found her, they've found her! It is Nick, and in one millisecond, he'll know, and that might be the destruction of all hope. He answers in a bark. "What?!"

Nick doesn't waste words. "We got her. Alive. She called, and the officers are with her right now, she's safe."

His brain has stopped processing at "alive". "Fuck…what…fuck…" A weird noise escapes his mouth, and he realizes it's a dry sob, and another. He is losing it. The world around him is blurring, the waves are crashing in, his knees feel wobbly.

"She's alive, Brian."

"Where?" She might be close to him, her feet could be touching the same ground.

"At the crime scene." From the noise in the background, his hyperalert brain can deduce that Nick is on his way to her at lightning speed. "She called, so I assume that's a good sign." Nick sounds cold, professional, although his voice is extremely strained. He's in work mode.

"She called? How…God…how did she…"

"I don't know. I'm gonna call her, stay with her on the phone now, so I gotta go. Just wanted to let you know."

"Wait-"

"I'll call you back."

"Thanks" escapes him as the line clicks, and Nick is gone. The sky is oppressive above him, he has to find his car, he has to get out of here, he has to see her, he has to do something.

He approached her carefully after giving her a moment to herself, crouching down beside her because it felt weird to tower above her. She was staring straight ahead, her face wet with silent tears, which she brushed away with her hand quickly.

"Liv" he repeated gently, trying to make sure she knew where she was. But this wasn't a flashback or an intrusion. He didn't know what exactly this was, and how much exactly he was allowed to say about it. "You're here with me, not back there with him."

"I know that" she snapped angrily, like he had guessed she would. "Just give me a minute. I'm done, done with all this stuff. It's over."

"Okay" he muttered cautiously, because literally anything he could say now would infuriate her further. This wasn't him and her, this was her and Lewis and he wasn't about to step into that.

"I won. He didn't win, I did."

"You did. But we didn't have to come here to prove that." It had been over two years, and still, she needed to win.

"But we did" she said in a softer tone. "He doesn't control this place for me. I can go anywhere I want. He will not always be with me."

He was nearly holding his breath at this amount of self-disclosure, afraid that any move on his part could ruin this moment of openness.

"I've let him go."

Don't say anything, he reminded himself. Just don't say anything. Let her do this. She needs this. Why now? He had no clue as to that. She hadn't brought it up in ages, and he had learned not to bring it up at all. It was what it was, and he liked to tell himself that maybe, she simply wasn't thinking about it all that often anymore.

She had composed herself and was gazing out onto the sea with a distant expression. "I mean he's changed things, but he doesn't control that anymore."

They remained silent for a while, and his knees had started to ache, so he lowered himself down onto his butt, embracing his legs in front of him loosely. She followed suit a moment later until they sat in the cold sand side by side without touching, the breeze washing over them.

"I was at the beach when, uh, Nick called to tell me they'd found you" he finally told her after rehearsing the sentence a hundred times in his head. He had never discussed this with her. "Not this beach, another one. I was so…relieved." The word seemed wholly inadequate.

She cocked her head, hugging her legs a big closer to her chest. "A different beach. Mine was different, too."

He frowned. As far as he knew, she had been at a beach house, not actually on a beach.

She noticed his confusion. "Oh, I was inside the house, but he went out to get salt water from the ocean. Because it hurts, you know, when…" She looked down, unable to finish the sentence. "Anyway, what kind of nutjob risks that? Going outside just to grab some water?"

"A sick one." He could have been seen. It could have been over quicker, or more people could have died. Lewis didn't like to leave witnesses.

"He made me drink it, too. Just because. But not enough so I'd…"

Fuck. After two years, after all the scars he had seen, it was the shit that didn't leave visible scars that still surprised him. She had told him some things, mostly whenever he had dared to ask a question about a concrete piece of evidence, and whenever she felt like answering, and whenever it wasn't about anything remotely sexual. He clasped one hand over his mouth. What did you say to that? "Shit…"

"Yeah." She stretched a bit, reaching forward to where the sand was wet, and drew a circle into it with her finger.

"Did you want to…?" His heart leapt into his throat as he asked the question. This was dangerous territory.

It took her a moment to answer. "At some point." She looked at him now, calm as hell, and he didn't think he would ever be able to get this moment out of his head. More fucked up beach memories. "But I thought it was going to happen, anyway, so I just wanted it to come quicker. I didn't want him to win. I didn't really want it, not then."

The "not then" left an implied "but" that hung uneasily between them. She didn't need to state what it meant, this "but later, after". He accidentally bit the inside of his cheek, which he had been chewing on. "You know, it doesn't mean that he won. That you did."

She sighed an annoyed sigh, as if they had been over this a million times before. "I know."

"To make it through all that and come out at the other end-"

"Okay, thanks, Dr. Cassidy." It was the sudden switch to flippant that acted as a "no further" sign.

"Seriously, I'd often look at you and think how amazing it is that you got through all that, how strong you are."

Now she was intensely uncomfortable, brushing some wet dirt off her shoe. She was done talking. "Thanks. For…" She took a deep breath. "…you know. Everything."

He acknowledged it with a silent nod, not entirely sure what "everything" was, because everything had sure felt a lot like fumbling around in the dark, constantly bumping into things. It would probably remain dark forever.

"Now can we stop this and enjoy some…fucking…nature?"

He let out a throaty laugh, not because it was particularly funny, but because she was trying here. "I think nature's overrated. My ass feels cold and wet."

"Yeah, plus it's going to rain." She studied the sky. "Let's go."

He was grateful at the suggestion. It was time to move, time to shake off this sadness so they could go home and tell his mom about the wonderful time they had had, and cuddle Noah and continue the life that was so unlike that other life. They would resume. They must resume. He took hold of her hand again out of physical need. She squeezed it as they turned to leave, before glancing back over her shoulder once more.

The waves break multiple times, losing some of their impact far out on the sea as the spray rolls in. If he can make the next wave swerve left, it was all a dream.