She was sitting at her desk.
There was another woman sitting at Olivia's desk.
He didn't know why it threw him so much, the sight of someone else there, her figure in the chair, like she had always been there. Other people had occupied the silent space since he had removed Liv, other women, but somehow, on that day of all days, it felt like another breath forced from him, another piece of the fragile composure he had carefully constructed over the past five years shattered.
Perhaps it was because she looked like she had been there forever, and would be there forever. He knew how false, how delicate, how fleeting that illusion was. The wind would come and, with a single gust, an exhale on the day it was least expected, everything was gone. She looked as solid as Olivia once had.
He went over to the coffee machine and poured himself the thick, bitter liquid, trying not to look concerned or put out. Brutally aware of her watching him, he refused to acknowledge her presence until she came over and helped herself to coffee as well. Waiting for her to move away from him was a lesson in stone, dark and solid, inflexible. What he wanted to do was shake her. Scream at her for being in that place. Destroy her, in the hope that Olivia would come back and take her rightful place. Silence was the only option. The only thing left within.
But she didn't move, and stayed standing beside him, leaning back against the table.
"You must be Detective Stabler." It was a clear statement of fact with no question at all within it, but he nodded anyway, by polite reflex.
"Yeah." He could just about get the word out but didn't elaborate or hold out his hand.
"I'm Kate. Kate Tarpley."
There was still nothing to say, all the normal lines of social conversation seeming trivial and pointless at that moment in time. She didn't seem to mind, at least, nothing in her voice or attitude changed. "Guess they'll be here in an hour or so." She glanced down at her watch.
"One hour too many." He said quietly, taking a sip and letting the coffee burn his mouth. It made him feel alive, real, not twisting in a surreal nightmare. Waiting had become an art form, a stillness created by holding each breath and containing each thought before it rampaged into chaos. Even so, as the prospect of resolution threatened, the universe spread out his suffering, relishing it. The scald of his mouth increased, and he held it for as long as he could before swallowing, searing his throat.
In that moment, he realised that he didn't have a clue what would come after. If there would be an after. How there could be.
"Five years too many." She commented, walking over to her desk and sitting down, turning the chair slightly in his direction but not looking at him, instead fingering the edge of papers on her desk. He sat down too, in the closest chair.
"Yeah, you're right there," He sighed, before looking up at her. Before he could stop himself he found he was inspecting and comparing her in his mind. She was shorter than Olivia, her hair paler and pulled back in a messy bun, and her build was slighter and wirier, although he could tell from the way her shirt clung slightly to her upper arms that she was strong. "She'd be fast in a fight." He thought, before trying to switch off the 'cop' voice in his head. It would be too easy an escape.
"How long have you been here?" He suddenly felt the need to break the silence, kill a few minutes with inane talk instead of dark and painful thoughts. She looked up at him and leant back in her chair.
"Two and a half years. Feels like a lifetime." She replied with a wry smile. He managed to give one back, though it was a fierce effort.
"Wait until you've done a decade or more." At that she gave a small shake of her head and glanced down at the small pile of files sitting beside her on the desk, at herself fingering them.
"No chance of that," she said, "I think I'll be lucky to make it another year. I don't know how Fin does it, or how you guys did for so long." Elliot took another sip of his coffee.
"I guess we'd have given it up at some point." A strange regret covered the words.
"You think?" She turned her head slightly to the side and looked quizzically at him as she posed the question. When he didn't answer, she continued, "I've looked through some of your cases, and your stats were.... impressive to say the least. Why leave that?"
"I could ask you the same thing," he replied, his voice containing a hint of irritation he hadn't meant it too. "You've put in two and a half years, why not carry on? Why are you counting down how long before you cannot bear it any more?"
She didn't seem perturbed at his bitter tone.
"Fair point. But after so long, surely you two got more accustomed to it? There can't have been so much that would shock or surprise you?"
He knew she wouldn't understand the irony if he tried to explain. The truth was, it had only been since he had stripped himself of the 'special victims' skin, since he had ceased to be one of those involved in the worst of the worst that things had stopped shocking him. Not that the world had become clearer cut or more innocent, he still knew the disgusting degradations people committed, the levels to which they had sunk. But somehow, doing the job, trying to overcome or bring justice to those acts had kept him still able to feel that shock, still alive. The fight had fueled his disbelief that people would do that. Once he had gone, and the fight had stopped, nothing surprised him any more. Except his own reactions to the world.
Instead he told her what she needed to hear.
"Every day I still get shocked. It's the day you don't that you have to stop." He thought, from her assessing look, that maybe she had seen through the lie, but then set it down to paranoia. Olivia would have seen through him in a second.
"So why did you leave?"
He shook his head. The story of his defeat, of his last desperate stand, had never got out, and to taint this day with more of his own failings seemed unfair.
Kate nodded as if he had answered.
"The rumour mill said that it was because you couldn't bear working with another partner. That you were impossible. That her loss made you break."
Elliot barked a sharp laugh, stinging with acrid, caustic pain.
"That could have been part of it." He didn't want to admit the truth, that she was too close, that he couldn't bear it was as simple as he couldn't do without her, but he still got the strange feeling that she knew anyway.
At that, there was silence for a minute as both stared into space, their thoughts nowhere near the room but nowhere the same place either. His were spinning through the past, fast gaining momentum as they had done all day, and he blocked them out as he waited for them to settle, waiting for them to find what they were looking for.
"I can't imagine what you must have gone through." She said.
"No. You can't" he thought. Don't even try. I hope you never have to go through it. It would kill you. It has me.
The being impossible with another partner was true though. Not that he had ever been anything like as uncontrollable or spontaneous as with Liv, or even as selfish. There was no rushing headlong into situations, no outbursts of rage, no beating of perps. There was nothing, and it was that space, that dance with ghosts and silence that stopped him.
The first time he realises its going to be like this is in the second week. They've got a rape, woman attacked in the hallway of her apartment building, and the thought rushes through Elliot's head that maybe this was the guy striking again. When he realises they have fluids, he's happier still. A joy that tastes sour and disgusting.
But then the DNA comes back. It's not a match to the blood in Olivia's place and his interest in the case wanes. Harris keeps him going, asks the right questions, tries to make him think, and thankfully the rapist is an idiot who showed his face on the security cameras in the entrance hall to the building. They bring him in, present the evidence and he confesses.
Easy as that. Case closed. The next day, he cannot remember a single detail, only the acid on his tongue at his reaction to the semen. To the woman's worst nightmare.
Sarah Harris had lasted a month with him, but one day he comes in and the desk is bare again. When he walks to Cragen's door and nods to it, Cragen gestures for him to sit and shut the door.
"She said she couldn't do it." Cragen sighs, not looking at him for a minute before their eyes meet. "She didn't give any more reason than that. You know why?"
He shakes his head, though he knows it must be something to do with him. His thoughts do not care enough to think it through, to analyse it all. What would be the point? She's gone.
"We've got another woman coming in. She's older, been in Vice for years. Again, if you want to swap with one of the others...." The sentence trails off as Elliot shakes his head. He doesn't. She lasts till the end, till he leaves himself, till that day.
He wondered for a second what had happened to her, before he realised that he didn't want to know. He didn't want his brain to inhabit the graveyard of cops. There were too many people there without him disturbing them.
"What is there on this guy? That Fin's bringing?"
He broke the silence, needing information as the time came closer, needing to be prepared. For what, he didn't know, but it was part of the journey, he could feel it.
"He's 32. Ex structural engineer. The name on his I.D was David Lewis but his actual name is Daniel Hartman. No record, but we've managed to track down the company he used to work for." She looked straight at him for the first time, once they had become cop to cop, detective to detective. "They said he was quiet, generally a good worker but didn't cope with stress or failure very well. He left the job when his wife ran off with another man."
He digested the information. His guilt was becoming clear, five years ghostly mist disappating before his eyes. The DNA didn't lie, blood tests and semen didn't lie, but it wasn't guilt they were trying to prove. He needed more.
It still felt too easy though. The psychological profile he was forming without the need for Huang or any other shrink, it so clearly told the story of this guy. Control and loss of it. Failure and rage. He choked down how much he knew those worlds.
There had to be something else, something more, some huge cover-up that had stolen Olivia. Something meaningful. It couldn't, dare not be as simple as your garden variety control freak turned rapist. Turned killer.
Silence hung, waiting for it's predator to strike. But when it came, he was stunned, as shocked as he had been through the tumultuous hours he had already made it through. Hearing the voice, he looked up and saw Munch in the doorway of the room.
A shockwave of past, of deja vu hit him, and they stared at each other for a second and an age before he went over to hug him, holding each other hard and with an aura of emotion swirling around.
"God it's good to see you." Elliot was surprised to hear the truth in his voice, how real the knowledge that he had missed seeing the older man so often. He hadn't thought he could feel such things any more.
Still, it felt so strange, so bitterly odd to see Munch in the squad room again, looking as he did. They hadn't lost touch, El had seen him a few times in the intervening years, but never in a precinct, as a detective. Not since Munch's last day.
He never saw it happen but he heard it, and he saw the perp afterwards. He's sitting at his desk working on paperwork, his partner across from him doing the same. He is vaguely aware that Fin and Munch have a suspect in interrogation: someone they have been hunting for date rape, for using excessive numbers of roofies so the girls can hardly function for days afterwards, much less remember what happens. But it means nothing to him. He has nothing to add.
Suddenly, a crash hits the room, and yelling fills the hallways. Cragen dives out of his office and Elliot finds himself running towards the interrogation room before he can think.
Fin is trying to pull John off a man lying on the floor, but he is not succeeding. John looks possessed, out of control, frantic. Elliot has never seen him use such violence before, fight so ferociously, a terrier with a rat, but he and Cragen both go in, and with three of them they get him out of the room.
As soon as the door slams behind them, he changes again. A chilling calm seems to fall over him and he stops fighting, stops struggling against them. The fire dies.
"I'm done. That's it. I quit." An man says those words, but it's not John. Not the John they know though. This is a man who is closing a door.
"Get Fin to pack my stuff up. Here's my badge." He hands it to Cragen who is stunned, without words.
"My gun is in the top drawer of my desk."
And with that, with nothing more, he walks out. Cragen doesn't move but Elliot goes after him, grabbing his arm just after he walks out of the door.
"What's going on?" He tries to pull him round, to make him look at him, to get an explanation, but Munch shrugs him off and keeps on walking, as if Elliot doesn't exist. Elliot keeps at him until they are half way down the stairs, before his emotions are exhausted and he stops.
John doesn't say a word. Just leaves.
Over the next few weeks they try his apartment, his phone, anywhere they can think to look, but none of them see him. It isn't until two months after he walked out that Fin comes in and says he's met John for a drink, that he's doing better, that he's seeing a counsellor. That that day had been a choice of murder, suicide or resignation.
A year after he left, everyone received a card with an announcement and a photo. He'd moved to Boston, and got married again. Fifth time lucky, the card read, her signature neat beside his scrawl. They looked happy. Elliot wondered what Fin, what Don, what everyone must have made when they received that, but he never asked. He knew himself that he didn't begrudge John a second chance. That Olivia would be so happy for him. That it was only right that some good could come out of it.
Still, he had to remove the card and picture from the trash can three times over the next few days. It now sat in the box at the bottom of the closet. Sometimes he thought he was keeping it to show her.
"You didn't have to come."
John gave him a look. Yes, I did, it read. Of course I did. Even though I said I wouldn't. They could still read each other.
"You in town on your own?" John nodded.
"Rebecca will fly down, if...." But even he didn't seem to be able to find words. Elliot tried to find the ending in his head. If what. If John needed support. Comfort. Companionship. If they find a body. An answer. If...if...if with no end in sight.
John pulled out his wallet and handed Elliot a picture. It was of Rebecca and a toddler. John's son. John had a son. It still staggered him. Aaron Oliver Munch. He was so glad when it wasn't a daughter. He couldn't bear another Olivia. Even 'Oliver' tore into him, but he could recognise it as the tribute it was.
But tributes were for the dead.
It was all coming together then. Don and Alex sat in grief upstairs. John in front of him with a new life in his hands, a life that Olivia hadn't touched at all. Fin on his way back.
And him. Back here. After the day when no one thought he would last twenty-four hours. The day the sky fell in on him.