Before Elliot could lose it and let the tears fall, he heard the door to the roof open behind him. Not looking round, he guessed at the person coming towards him just from the sound of the steps, and he was almost glad of the company. Almost, but not quite.
"Figured you'd hide up here," Don said, standing with his hands in his pockets, close enough to be companionable but far enough away to not become consumed by the stress and tension radiating off Elliot.
"I needed a break from being down there. I....I didn't think it would feel like this," he admitted.
"Are you going to be able to hold it together?" The question and tone were reminiscent of their roles as captain and detective, during those days where various cases had pummelled their emotions and Elliot had threatened to go off the rails, again. "I don't need another Munch on my hands."
Elliot felt a flash of sadness as John was brought into the conversation. He was yet another example of how much things had changed, how far down the road they had come without Olivia.
"He called me, just now. Wanting to know if there was any news yet."
"Yeah, Fin said he had let him know during the drive down there." Don said, a strange edge to his voice as he continued, "I'm glad that they made it through, are still friends."
Elliot nodded, and visions of a midnight scene spiralled before his eyes: the moment the team seemed to stop holding their breaths and began the tumultuous roll downhill, that lead to where they were now.
"Elliot looks up at the clock and sees that it is 1a.m, six hours since Warner had walked into the squad room and dropped her bombshell, four hours since official missing person flyers had gone out on the streets, and three since Kathy had called to demand to know why he wasn't home, and why he hadn't been in touch.
It was unreal to hear her voice, confused and accusatory, but surprisingly simple to snap out that Olivia had gone missing, and he didn't have time to come home, of even call.
Of course, she had sounded hurt that he hadn't told her, and in the back of his mind there was a growing mountain of guilt forming, made up of needlepoint remarks issued to those who only cared, and the overwhelming contrition that he hadn't had his partner's back, hadn't stopped this hellish day from occurring. But he buried it, hung up, and moved on.
Now he's sitting upstairs at the table, hearing the phones ring and the murmur of voices below as uniforms and off duty detectives from all over the city answer the hotlines for information, provoked by the posters. So far, there has been nothing, and after two hours of listening to psychics telling him she was residing with Elvis or with aliens, and idiots asking if there was a reward, he had excused himself and retreated to work through some of the doubtful information already offered.
It has quietened ever so slightly from the hectic hustle that had sandwiched the revelation of the DNA evidence, chaos occurring until organisation had returned and the hotline set up.
Previous to Melinda's arrival there had been the franticness of uniforms coming and going, bringing in witness statements of Olivia arriving at her building; her passing a middle aged bachelor with his dog on their way out for a evening walk; and a CCTV image of her car waiting at a light as someone else blew through a intersection.
After, there had been rapid hunting for the files of their three linked rape victims, inputting the data back into VICAP for any new leads on who this guy was, and the start of trawling through old cases for anything that might tie together previous perps with a cause for revenge, these new crimes, and Olivia.
Despite the rising tension and foreboding that filled everyone's actions, no one had broken. Elliot, of course, had come close a couple of times. The first was when Cragen, Munch and Fin all walked back into the squad room that afternoon without any leads and, more importantly, without Olivia with them. Anger had risen at the sight of them, at them coming back instead of continuing to search, but he swallowed it and listened to logic.
The second came when an unsuspecting uniform dared to suggest that maybe they should call psychiatric facilities, that perhaps the strain of the job had got to her. Elliot nearly resorted to showing him what a breakdown of stress and rage would look like, but he took a breath and stepped away, only holding it together by thinking of Liv's disapproving, calming stare being directed at him. Weirdly, it worked even better without her there than it would in a normal situation.
He blinks and realises that the clock now says 1.04 am and he has wasted four minutes of looking through witness statements and the few, possible leads that they had. Perhaps he could have found the clue by now, if he hadn't been distracted. He could be on his way to finding her.
He looks down but before he can focus on the words, a crash below and a raised voice make him jump with a start to look over the bannister.
Fin is glaring at Munch, fury written all over his face, and the remnants of his desk phone are scattered across the floor. The rest of the room stand staring at them, two people holding their phones in the middle of a conversation. Cragen is a step away from Fin, but not acting.
Elliot moves half way down the stairs, but Fin is yelling again before he can make it all the way.
"What is your problem? Eh? You're the king of conspiracies, of looking at facts in different ways, of weird, fucked up lateral thinking and now you decide to only go for the possibility right in front of your face??"
They have rarely heard Fin this angry, his voice raised so loud. Fin argues with punctuated remarks, swear words and disparaging looks, he doesn't shout and he certainly doesn't do so at his partner. But, regardless, this is the scene playing out in front of his face and Elliot can hardly believe his eyes. This has to be a surreal nightmare, he's going to wake up and this whole fateful day will be wiped out.
Munch is sitting, head bowed, as Fin continues his tirade.
"How many years you been doing this job? How often do you know that things aren't as they seem and you're sitting there crying, assuming the worst, assuming she's dead?!?"
Elliot takes the last few stairs at a run and he isn't the only one who moving. Cragen has stepped in, braving the still gesturing arms and placing a hand on Fin's shoulder, but it is shrugged off.
"You really think that little of Liv? How many times has she got out of sticky situations with no more than a scratch? God dammit, she's the only one of this sorryass bunch that ain't even got a bullet hole in her and you think she's dead!"
Cragen puts both hands on Fin now and pulls him away, muttering in his ear as he pushes him out of the room. Everyone is still staring, but they get back to work as the Captain barks at them before he vanishes.
John is unnaturally silent, his head bowed, cast in stone. Elliot braves getting closer but waits until he is sure the focus has been diverted before speaking.
"You okay?"
There is still no movement and he crouches down, painfully aware that this is the pose he takes with victims, with those he feels need support and comfort. Looking at his face, he is shocked, despite Fin's words, to see there really are tears in John's eyes.
"Hey," he says louder, reaching out and shaking his shoulder. Finally he gets a reaction, and John lifts his head to rub his eyes.
"I haven't given up on her. I just...." Elliot doesn't know what to say or how to react so he stays silent, "I'm losing her. I've been sitting here and we're dissecting her life piece by piece, her face is on a missing poster and this all feels so far from the Liv I know."
He shakes his head. "How are we supposed to not get emotionally involved when the victim is someone we've seen nearly every day for ten years?"
Elliot can't speak but this time it's because he can feel his own emotions welling up inside at Munch's words, and if he breaks now then he will never pull himself back together. Victim. Olivia is now a victim.
John's phone rings and they both stare at it for a second before he answers and begins taking notes, not looking at Elliot still crouched beside him. The hubbub in the room is now back to normal and when he looks up, Cragen has come back in and is standing to one side. Elliot moves to him.
"Fin is pummelling the punch bag. How's Munch?" Elliot shrugs.
"I dunno. Not coping." Cragen nods and steps towards his office. "Think it's time to call Huang." he says, disappearing in and shutting the door.
Elliot stands in the middle of the room, looking round at the people answering phones, the pictures on the board, the homicide detective sitting at Olivia's desk, and knows that the Captain is right. The cracks are starting to show, things are disintegrating, and he's going to as well."
John's words reverberated through his head, standing with Don beside him, and made him blurt out a question without even thinking.
"When did you start losing Liv?" As soon as he had voiced the words, he wanted to take them back. What right did he have to ask? But the man beside him answered anyway, the quiet, calm demeanour still there.
"After I called George, that night."
"He sits in the solitude of his office, the dial tone resounding faintly in his ear before he put the phone down. On the desk there is a pile of paperwork, on top of which is one of the damn 'missing' fliers, and he cannot help but think of John sitting outside crying, and the bottle of vodka he keeps in the bottom drawer of his desk for his detectives. The two seem connected, linked, like they lead to the same thing.
He tries to think of Liv, of the last few times he's seen her, to try and work out if she seemed off, acted differently. She's walking off the elevator as he heads towards it on his way to a meeting. She is normal, frustrated, but there is nothing that makes him worry. He asks about the boy they've just found, she shakes her head when she tells him about the evidence of extended abuse and they share a look of resignation before he steps onto the elevator and the doors shut.
As he tries to trawl further back, suddenly there is nothing. Instead of thinking of her sitting quietly at her desk with a small smile or an exhausted aura, he can only see the blood and her photo, CCTV stills and DNA profiles. A picture that he knows has little of Olivia within in, and yet that's all he has. It's not even 24 hours and already he's losing her to procedure and investigation.
Elliot nodded, staring down at the moving specks of people below, going about their lives without a care for the devastation of others, and was reminded again that he wasn't the only one who lost her that day. For a long time, he had struggled to remember that, but on a day like today he needed nothing more than to hold on tight with those who had known her best. That connection, that tangible link to her, was something that kept him from drowning completely. Don's honest admission was another part of the safety net.
"I came up to tell you, Fin called. They're about two hours out." He didn't know what to say in acknowledgement of that, so he said nothing. "Are you going to be okay?" Don repeated his question from earlier, and Elliot sighed.
"I have to be. I can't fail her in this."
Don took a couple of steps away, but then turned.
"You never failed her Elliot." His quiet words were heard but not processed or believed, and Don knew that. He braced himself for what he had to do now.
"But, you should know something about the man they're bringing in." Elliot looked sharply at him for the first time, confusion apparent. "Fin sent me this photo."
He took a pace closer to his ex-captain and rested his fingers on the side of his cell phone screen, tilting it slightly to get a better look. When he finally made out the features of the man, a buzzing filled his head, blurring his thoughts.
"That's him?"
Don nodded, and shut the phone.
"You still going to hold it together?"
He was aware that he was nodding, asking for a few more minutes, but only jerked back to his senses when he heard the door to the roof shut. Stepping back over to the ledge where he had been, he leaned right over, breathing deeply and trying yet again to not vomit.
Instead, he kicked the wall, glad of the pain, and roared,
"Son of a bitch!"
The anguished shout rose up into the sky and, in putting his hands out to rebalance himself from the violence of the action he had made, he knocked the file beside him off the edge.
Reaching for it, his fingers caught the main majority of the file but her photo slipped from its paperclip and floated away, descending towards the street below. He watched the paper twist and turn, able to glance her face only for a second before she is too far gone.
With the image of the guy flashing again and again before his eyes, he almost wanted to take that leap after her.