a/n: yeah...I know. I'm a total ass. Once again, it's been another year between updates. I swear I will finish this fic before I die...preferably before 2012 is over, especially if you believe all the Mayan calendar crap (which I don't, just a thought, haha). I've had some lovely beta-help with this chapter from TheTBone, LaoevenSVU, SVUaholic and Stabson. Yes...apparently I need that many people to break me out of my writer's funk...don't ask me why, but they've really helped get my juices going and were great at answering queries about where to take this story. I suspect only one or two more chapters before I wrap this up (hopefully I can within the semester...haha). If anyone is still following this story, I'd love reviews and comments, even flames that it's taken me so long, because really I deserve that. lol. Also...there's a paragraph in this chapter, towards the start of Olivia's POV, that alludes to a season 10 episode...and I tried to figure out how to work it in without mentioning Elliot's mom, and it just didn't work nearly as well. So if anyone gets irritated that this goes out of cannon a bit...sorry. Maybe I'll have to add in some kind of disclaimer oh like... 6 chapters ago stating how long it's been since the Undercover epi...I don't know. Anyway, enough rambling. Get back into the heads of our favorite characters!
~TangoSVU
Elliot misses her, a lot. Even when he tries not to. It's not the dull ache in the pit of his stomach either, like an old wound that still prickles. Rather, it is a visceral pit eating away at his organs. Elliot can literally feel the distance between them because each mile rips another piece of his heart away.
He's got a new partner, guy named Will. Had a couple of different partners in the space of time since Liv's departure, actually. He wonders how long this guy will last. Nobody seems fit for the job. They're too emotional, too angry, too unattached, too black and white, maybe. And while you could label any of them in the unit with those terms, everything has degrees and extenuating circumstances. Some cops just don't understand that; don't realize what they're getting into. Sometimes, Elliot wonders if they can't take the cases, or can't take him. He knew he had a great partnership with Liv, yeah, but he hadn't realized just how great; that there was nobody else that could even amount to a small portion of her.
There's something between them that binds them, maybe that damaged mother childhood, but whatever it is it's a string that circles over and over, twisting tighter and tighter; an ever increasing pain with no relief of breakage. But that's too simple…everything without her is simple on paper but complicated as hell in execution. When they're together, at least he has a rhythm. They're an eye of a hurricane, raging around each other for a while and then spreading the damage outward in their silence. Then the calm, just enough time to recoup before the second wave hits. That wasn't something he'd ever planned to change, and now he doesn't even have a choice.
He's trying to spend more time at home, not because Olivia's not at the precinct, but because he's suddenly realized that without her, his kids are all he's got. Sadly though, he discovers he doesn't even have that anymore, not really. He was too hard on them, too protective and he knows it, but he can't change it because he knows exactly what dangers are still out there. He just wishes his kids knew it was love, and a distrust of the world, not of them. Maureen's twenty-three now, out of college and biding time as a receptionist at a real estate job. He learned too late that when kids go to school out of state, they never come back. Occasionally she calls, but she's got her own life now, a steady boyfriend, and he just wishes she'd come home for Christmas. Kathleen's nineteen and spending all of her time with her college friends. She's close enough to come home on weekends but never does. She calls less than Maureen, actually, and he's at a loss for what to do with her. He wonders if he should worry about her, or if it's time to give her space.
The twins are still home, thank goodness, but they're not as close to each other as they used to be. They have different interests now and Elliot doesn't know if that's just because they're fifteen and it's lame to like your siblings, or if they're actually growing apart. Lizzie's in the drama program at her school and is always having rehearsals or performances (that he never seems to make). Dickie's always watching the history channel and keeping NASA as his homepage on the computer. But even on the rare times he asks, Elliot doesn't want to talk to his son about the military. It's something Elliot did because he had to, to provide for his wife, his family, and yeah it changed him and yeah he doesn't regret it, but it's sure as hell not a path he wants for his son. His son deserves better than Elliot ever got.
But Eli, Eli is another story entirely. In his youngest son, his namesake, Elliot has found his sanctuary. He wasn't around much when his other kids were little, but with Eli he has a chance to erase all the mistakes he made before. Eli's the only one who's ever preferred his dad instead of Kathy, and Elliot doesn't even mind the long night hours spent rocking him to sleep through his coughs when he's fighting a cold or the fever and drool that comes with teething. The boy's still got two months before his first birthday, but Elliot swears he says "da da" already even though Kathy thinks he's just muttering sounds. It's like women always say the first smiles are just caused by gas, but all of this time he's spent with Eli in-between shifts have made him certain that the boy understands there are some things only he and his father know. Such as home cooking shows will not put you to sleep, blue eyes are the most sensitive to the sun, and clothes are the most comfortable when they're one hundred percent cotton. Elliot wants to make sure that Eli's life does not resemble the disaster he rode in on. But he has help with that, because he finds the best parts of her radiate from Eli's skin and sparkle from the boy's three-toothed smile. Elliot swears Eli's laugh is just like hers. Because father and son both recognize the fact that home is not in a man-made house, but in a person. And Eli and Elliot's home is in the same arms that held Eli when he first entered this world: Olivia's.
Every fiber in his being wants her back. His fingers itch to dial a number, buy a plane ticket, find her and bring her home where she belongs. But as he reaches for his cell, he realizes that, even if he had her new number, he can't call and force her to talk to him. If it doesn't happen on her terms and in her time, he guesses it just wasn't meant to be. He hates saying that though, because the connection between them is too strong to just be over, finite, finished.
He doesn't just miss Olivia, either. He misses all the little things, the things he never thought would mean everything. His mind keeps flashing through the last ten and a half years with her on this beat and it's not the highs and lows of the cases that he remembers. What he yearns for are those blink-and-you-miss-them moments: the way she tucks her hair behind her right ear, how she pumps her left fist into her right palm when she's thinking, the silent companionship on stake-outs, the smell of her "coffee with a flower in it," the way they sign off on each other's case files without even reading the reports because there's no need, the shine of her eyes when she won't let him see her cry, the way she will cling to him in the briefest of flashes when her guard is down, the fierce bravado that can even scare him (though he'd never admit it), the unconscious seamless movements as they work on the streets – the matching of their steps no matter the terrain – and even her small scribbled handwriting. Liv used to pass him little notes during meetings or when they were sitting in on trials, making him think they had somehow regressed back to elementary school. They weren't full of fluff, but they also weren't usually direly important. Things like: Munch says Judge such and such is in the pocket of so and so, watch for….Or perp hates eye contact, stare him down!Even wear the brown suit with the green shirt. Victim's favorite color is green, will find it calming.These little tidbits that he would never have noticed otherwise. He misses those. But most of all, Elliot misses the way he always knew what she was thinking, the way he could always look at her to understand his world, because he found his thoughts by reading her own.
The truth is, Elliot wants to find her and stay with her, because no matter where she is, as long as he is with her that will be enough for him. This job doesn't make sense without her. His six always feels unprotected and the cases seem worse and the victims don't open up to him the way they always did to Liv. All he sees now is the darkness, and he was never lost in that before because he had her right beside him in it. Olivia's his foundation, and maybe it's the bastard arrogance she helped him keep in check, but he always felt like if he needed to leave to put his life in order, she'd still be waiting for him there, handling the job. And he realizes now just how damned selfish that really was, because if she is his center than why wouldn't he be hers? But he's never thought about her leaving at all. He never thought she'd be able to give up the job, to give up that purpose in her life. Now that Elliot's without her, he's tempted to just pack up and move divisions or even retire, but he has to stay because this is where she'll show up first when she comes back for him. Even just a chance of Olivia returning is worth all the pain of staying.
XxXxXxXxXxXxXx
Olivia's trying not to miss him, miss anyone. It's been a few months now; the seasons have turned to fall again. At first she traveled, as if in relocating she would find a home, a place her heart could finally rest. While all those years on the police salary never seemed like much, without a family or social life outside the job, she'd never had anything to spend much of it on. She's done some freelance writing – mostly thanks to her Oregon hippie days as Persephone Jones – but that's mainly just something to do. Usually she simply finds herself discovering parts of the world she forgot existed.
She volunteers at soup kitchens, takes long hikes deep into the woods, and reads novels she doesn't remember buying – indeed, she suddenly finds hours pass while she's in the library. She's so desperate to find the parts of humanity that are still good; to experience every day people's purity. It sounds cliché, but out of the confines of the huge congested city, it's as if some kind of peace and goodwill thrives. Or maybe she's just slowed down enough to finally see it.
Back there, she couldn't see the ground anymore. What do you stand on if you don't know where you are?
It's why she had to get out. Out of the precinct, out of the job, out of New York, out of her life, essentially.
Elliot would go to the beach. He's never said as much but she knows it just the same. After meeting his mother, so much of his personality makes sense. Pieces that were always missing before, she now sees almost like holographs. At the beach, the consistency of the tide comes hand in hand with the changes of the waves. And that is Elliot in a nutshell. Unendingly present and reliable, yet the calm gentleness so contrasts with his violent intensity. Plus, the only way to see through it is to put yourself right in the middle of everything. It's why his mother lived her life by the sea when her son took her out of his. It was as close to him as she could stay.
But for Olivia, the ocean has no end. And worse than that, no bottom. She's never been in the ocean because she can't see the ground, and she has to know where's she's going before she'll move.
That's why it doesn't surprise her that, after all of her thoughtless wandering, she's ended up here in Southern California, lead climbing one of the many Joshua Tree rock faces with the sun beating down on her back.
She needs the physical challenge just as desperately as she needs the clearing of her mind that comes in the focused numbness. When all she hears is the screaming of her leg muscles and all she feels is the undeniable, ungiving earth beneath her nails. No matter what move she takes out here, this rock won't budge. Olivia could disappear for decades and come back to find this place almost exactly as it is now.
Sure, the earthquakes could shave a boulder off here and there, and years of rain pour could soften edges, but this mountain will remain. And that's Olivia in a nutshell. She's just as hard and just as stubborn, with more sedimentary layers than the Grand Canyon, yet with enough cracks and ridges for you to grab hold and reach the top. She is strong enough for you to stand on, supportive enough to save you from the elements, and unmovable in her convictions and her perseverance. If you don't count the ever-lingering nightmares from a previous life, that is.
The route she's climbing now is probably a 5.10, maybe a 5.11, which makes her glad that she paid extra for the quality shoes. Nobody goes cheap on ropes and harnesses, but they always forget about the shoes. The next bolt is about two feet up and to the right, but it's at the top of the outcropping she is currently clinging to, so it's not as easy as it sounds. She will have to hold all of her weight in the pinch hold of her left hand and swing her entire body up and over to hopefully find a solid foothold that will allow her to stay there long enough to get the next quickdraw carabineer in. The trick is only doing it once so you don't tire out, or heaven forbid, miss the hold entirely and find yourself falling all the way back to the last bolt. It's why most people don't lead climb solo. There's no belayer at the other end of the rope to catch your weight and minimize not only the impact but also the distance of your fall.
But like Olivia's ever lived her life without risk (and Elliot's been her only back-up for anything anyway and she doesn't know how to replace him. No, that's wrong, even if she knew how, she couldn't.).
She takes a breath, lets her left hand off the hold momentarily to massage the fingers, and then lunges. Her right arm manages to side squeeze the outcropping but all of her weight is still on her left hand, which she can't keep up for long. Both feet search frantically for purchase but there is nothing to find. Olivia's fingertips are literally on fire. All of the muscles in her left arm and back are shaking with effort and she can tell she is about to fall. In desperation, she wedges both of her feet vertically into a three centimeter crack along the wall face and pushes her knees into the rock in order to release her hand. Olivia grabs for the next carabineer to clip her rope into, but her feet are continuously slipping down a little farther with every passing second and if she can't do this quickly, she's going to lose what little foothold she has. The last bolt she clipped in to was about ten feet down, and as her brain starts to panic she begins to calculate how far she will fall: twenty-four to twenty-six feet depending on how much the rope stretches. The rock is rubbing her right elbow raw but she ignores it to dig in deeper and gets close to the clip, carabineer open, when the rock disappears from beneath her feet. The whole front side of her body scrapes against the rock as she feels for a hold. Before she can even register the pain or doubt the security of her anchor tied to a tree at the bottom, the carabineer catches in the clip and she stops a mere foot below where she had been.
Olivia's heart is pounding, her muscles are humming with adrenaline and the rush of blood through her ears is deafening, but she just tilts her head back and laughs. Flat out laughs so loudly it echoes in this mountain desert range. She laughs because this is what it feels like to be alive. The darkness, murky humidity and back alleyways of New York City with its never-ending crimes and perps had tried to take this feeling out of her but she has brought it back. She just wants to exist somewhere outside of all those shadows, all the crestfallen lives. She's tired of always showing up just a little too late, with not quite enough strength or evidence or willpower or truth. But out here on this rock, this is the meaning of existence and if she can just keep climbing long enough and high enough, she might just figure out what she's supposed to do with her life.
"Anyone ever tell you this cliff is for suicide, not lead climbing?"
The voice catches Olivia completely off-guard and she almost loses her hold on the rock face due to pure shock. She looks up to see who it is but the sun just blinds her. "Anyone ever tell you it's not smart to startle someone when they're eighty feet high?"
She hears a chuckle but continues the last bit of the climb easily now that she's over the outcropping, and finds a powdered hand reaching down to help her onto the top. "I'm Valerie. You gotta name or am I just gonna hafta call you 'Miss hogging my cliff'?"
Now it's Olivia's turn to scoff as she dusts her hands off on her dark green capri's. "I'm Olivia, although the other has a nice ring to it." Then she gets a good look around their little view of the expansive Joshua Tree landscape, and she can hardly breathe. It's hard to believe, but the sight is even better than the trip to get there. The towering trees are actually green here, and numerous, unlike the rest of Southern California. Sunlight glints through the leaves where the rock doesn't cast a shadow, and any onlooker wouldn't believe the LA metropolis is mere hours from here. Sure, New York has Coney Island beach and the lakes up north, but it takes so long to even get out of the city that she never bothers unless she has a case.
Had a case.
But she promised herself not to compare California to New York. She figured they (they) were almost three thousand miles apart for a reason.
So instead, she categorizes Valerie's flaming orange hair that matches her climbing shoes, and her long arms with the rainbow glitter nails resting on her hips. The gray climbing harness blends in to her cargo pants, and the purple tank somehow manages to compliment all the orange. But during her look around, she hasn't seen anyone besides Valerie and herself. "And where's your belayer, "Miss this cliff isn't for lead climbing'?" Olivia asks.
"Yeah, well, ya know," Valerie winks, "Do as I say, not as I do." She seems to size Olivia up in similar fashion to the way Olivia just had. "Haven't seen you around these parts before. I would say newbie, but newbie's don't lead climb, and you can't be local or you'd know that nobody takes this cliff solo –"
"Except you," Olivia interjects.
Valerie ignores her. "so what, traveler? Don't seem to have much of an accent."
"Uh, yeah," Olivia mutters, not wanting to delve into the matter. "I'm not from around here."
"Well, no sense being shy now; let's hit the next route!" Valerie tightens her harness and then off-handedly comments, "I assume you're comfortable with both top and bottom belays?"
They settle into this easy kind of camaraderie. There's just enough talk during the climbs to keep them from feeling lonely, but the nature of rock climbing prevented anything deeper.
So Olivia climbs, breathing in the fresh air and invigorating sunshine, letting herself relax into this new companionship built on its own kind of automatic trust.
XxXxXxXxXxXxXx
"Don't worry when you feel something, worry when you don't." That's what Cragen had said. But Elliot had long since missed the mark. He couldn't feel any of his own feelings anymore, wasn't sure if he even had any. All he could feel now was her worry, her sorrow, her pain. It was as if the time apart hadn't cut the strings at all. Instead it had strengthened the bond between them and pulled the string tight like a tin can telephone.
"Eli asleep?" Kathy draws him out of his thoughts.
"Yeah, about thirty minutes ago." He replies.
Kathy slips off her white robe and climbs into bed beside him. "I'm sorry," she says softly, turning towards him and brushing her hair out of the way.
"What for?" He's usually the one apologizing, or at least the one that should be, anyway.
"I always knew," she starts, and then stops, collecting her thoughts. It takes her so long he thinks she's fallen asleep. "I always knew you'd be different, without her. I just didn't comprehend how much." And she stops again, momentarily, placing her hand on his bare chest. "No, I knew how much, just not how."
Elliot wants to ask her where she's going with this conversation, but he finds he's holding his breath in anticipation, in fear of being discovered. "I thought she was the reason you couldn't leave work at work, and I blamed her for our problems. But you're not the same without her. She has some connection to you that I'll just never be able to compete with. Only I can see now that it never had anything to do with me.
I've always known who you were, Elliot, way before Maureen. And I love your protective spirit. I just should've realized that it would be your weakness, too. That it would keep me from you. And for some reason I won't ever understand, Olivia can break through that barrier of yours. And you may be here with me now," she blinks up at him, simultaneously doe-eyed and yet full of wisdom. "and with the kids – and that's all I've ever wanted – but I never recognized before that when she's not there, when she's not under your shell," Kathy's voice breaks here, and he hears a sadness and a desperation he hasn't seen in her since the beginning. "You're not actually here, at all."
For all the arguments they've had when he was sure he was right because he was doing what he had to do, it's in this moment with her quiet resignation, that he discovers just how much he's damaged her by trying to protect her. He wants to hold her, to apologize for his personality, but he finds his hands frozen, disconnected from his brain.
"When we first met," Kathy continues gently, "I tried for weeks to get you to see me, to fall in love with me. But you've always seen Olivia, without even knowing you did.
I understand her more, since the accident. And that's why I have to apologize now. She didn't take you from me, after all. She gave you back to me, time and time again." She searches his eyes, wanting him to take what she's giving him, letting him in on her thoughts. It is a catch-22. If he takes her gift, it eliminates one problem, and causes ten others. "She hasn't just saved you, Elliot. She saved Eli, and she saved me."
Elliot kisses the tears away from her face, lets his skin speak his plea of forgiveness; an acceptance of her offering as much as a sacrifice of himself. He fills his mouth with her, truly listening to her desires, melding his passion to hers. And she gives herself to him in an incomparable honesty and a raw vulnerability. This is the moment – as she blossoms – when he truly knows that he's lost his wife.
