The room was filling up, with air of the past and of the new. Elliot watched, leaning back in a chair and still hovering above them all in his mind. It struck him, as familiar faces surrounded him, clung together in a wall of memory, that it was as if someone had taken a scene from years ago and moved things around to play spot the difference. It was even possible to do so with the sounds, John's voice one minute, a strange one the next. Jarring and comforting in equal measure, he could close his eyes and make five years drift away, dragged out by the tide. But then they came back to hit him with reassuring pain, washed over him with frozen life, reminded him of reality.
John had commandeered his old desk and Don and Alex sat near him. Both had real smiles on their faces when they saw John. True signs of happiness were few and far between now, fading after the initial joy, but pleasure at his presence lingered. He was the one that had come through best, that had changed the most. That had found a new life, not stayed suspended in a half one.
News had leaked throughout the streets and precincts, and not only were there officials from 1 P.P there but Monique Jefferies had come in about twenty minutes after John, Brian Cassidy not long after that, bringing with them sodden melancholy and stilted smiles, as well as the comfort of a old sweater dug from the closet, that smelled of the past.
They all sat or stood around, drinking coffee, while younger, newer detectives got on with work at desks. It was like playing hooky from school, sitting with old friends, memories circling like prey.
Capt. Price came out of her office and surveyed the group without comment or introduction to those she hadn't met, simply saying that Fin had called again and they were just outside the city.
Elliot felt the tension swell, rising to cover them, but not only that. Reminiscence began, pulling memories close to their skin as protection. Being there, almost together, caused stories to swarm from them, and they talked with voices that began quiet but rose to sound almost normal.
Looking across at Cassidy, he idly wondered if he had ever told anyone else that he slept with her. If anyone else knew that he had an entirely different reason for being here and for feeling her loss. If in a drunken night he poured it out in bitterness and grief. Somehow, he couldn't see Brian doing that. He'd cared too much about Liv to do so. He suspected that he did as Elliot did, carried their own secrets of her within their hearts. To let them out would be to lose another part of her to the passing of time.
Elliot was aware he had the most stories to tell, especially of Olivia, but he couldn't bring himself to share many, simply interjecting with small details. The full stories, the full images of her were his, to have and to hold.
Part of him was angry with them, to hear the past tense when they refer to her. Already they were memorialising her, writing her eulogy and the words inscribed in stone for all to see, that couldn't change. He wanted to scream that they should at least wait until she was confirmed dead, until they had a confession or a body, but he didn't.
The other half of him was so glad to be able to hear her name, to wallow in her and her life and see her grow before his eyes, made vivid with the words and love of others. It was easy to quietly pretend that she was just out getting coffee and would walk back in on their inane chatter. To drown in memories.
It struck him as bitingly ironic that the reason they were all there was to find answers, was the fact her 'taker' would soon be there, and yet it was the strongest he'd felt her in a long time. The closest to her he'd got.
He thought about her visits in his dreams. The way he loved and hated them in equal measure, clung to them and would wake with tears in his eyes. The way his heart still leapt when he thought he saw her in the distance and even when it was proven that it wasn't, he would let himself drift for a second into 'what if'. He couldn't help but wonder what would happen once escape was ripped from him.
Looking at the other, strange detectives around them, listening in, watching their talk, he considered what they saw. How did they appear, from the outside of the glass that contained them, that kept them trapped together? He didn't want to be free though. Free meant something else. Free meant not have an excuse any more.
He wondered whether the people watching wanted a part of the camaraderie. Or the success rate they had by being such good partners. Whether Olivia's disappearance so tainted their record that they feared something would rub off on them. It was just one of the many sadnesses, that Olivia and Elliot would now not be remembered for the good they did, but for a missing person and a broken man. People dissolving into nothing.
She had never faded in his mind, and he knew that if someone needed him too, he could describe her down to the last wrinkle of her face when she smiled, the movement of her hand as she brushed her hair from her face. The sound of her sigh.
No one needed that of him though.
His thoughts turned to what they were going to do afterwards. When he had done the grieving and the laying to rest and the closure. What came after the waiting? Forgiveness? Resolution? Going back to being a husband and a father?
Thinking of Kathy over the years, watching him, was hard. They'd balanced on a tightrope, and in the detached part of his mind he knew it had been as hard for her as for him. To watch someone disintegrate. Sometimes they slept in the same bed, sometimes he was in the spare room. Sometimes he was on the couch, a blanket always thrown over him by morning, the children tiptoeing around him. Sometimes he talked about her as easily as if she were in the next room, other times she was blocked from their lips and their lives.
Looking around, it was staggering to see all the people that had never come back, only to sit in the room now, weaving strength between them. How impossible it had seemed for any of them to set foot in the building again. Even him. Perhaps especially him.
He's pressing on her as hard as he can when he feels her take a last breath. He doesn't want to hurt her, hates that he's inflicted more pain by pushing on the open wound but he's trying desperately to keep her alive. But even as he does so, he knows that it is pointless. There is too much blood, too much life leaving her and he feels that, as he brings agony to her last breath. She's dead at least four minutes before the bus arrives.
As he watches the paramedics shake their heads, the crime tape go up, the sheet go over her body, he is entirely numb, not moving. People walk around him, brush against him, but come nowhere near, not making it through his midnight grief.
It feels like nothing matters really. Not why she died, not whose to blame, not who needs to be held responsible. Nothing. For the first time in his life, he doesn't want to find the answers, not because he fears them but simply because he doesn't care.
After too many lost minutes, someone is guiding him towards a car, putting him in, slamming the door. It isn't until they get back to the precinct that he realises it's Fin that's driving, giving him a concerned look as he stops. He manages to get out of the car and go in himself though. He doesn't check in with anyone, or tell the night's story. He stays silent.
Her blood coats his hands and he can feel them stiffening as it dries, rigour setting in. In an attempt to stop the choking round his neck, he turns the bench in the locker room over, hitting the metal of the lockers as he has done before, but then he sees it isn't his he has deformed, but hers, scarring it's surface. New name, new belongings, but hers still. It will never be anything else.
All it has done is added more blood. He tries to rub, stroke, caress away the dent caused by his fists, but it won't budge. He needs it off, needs the blood gone. He thinks about how many tears it would take to wash it all away.
After an hour, Cragen comes looking for him. Don can hear the shower going but there are no clothes laid out, and the overturned bench tells a story of its own. He calls Elliot's name, but there is no reply.
The shower is cold, he can feel it as soon as he comes near. Elliot is sitting, back to the tiles, his suit still on, his shoes shining in the water. He is looking at his hands, and when Don looks as well, he can see that they are red raw, palms held upwards in a plea. Elliot is trembling, but Don is certain he doesn't know it.
When he reaches out and turns the water off, the freezing stream dying down before stopping completely, there is no reaction. He says his name once, twice, but he is talking to an empty space.
Ignoring the damp that immediately eases through his pants and his back, he sighs as he sits down next to Elliot. They look at nothing, at Elliot's hands, at droplets easing their way down the tiles towards oblivion.
"I was too late."
It's fifteen minutes of sitting in the silence of stones before Elliot utters these words, and he sounds like a child to Cragen. Like he's looking for affirmation of his guilt, or of the facts. Don nods his confirmation.
"Yes."
He can still feel Elliot tremble next to him, but doesn't look at him. Simply sits and listens to the words come from the loss and the shadows.
"There was nothing I could do."
He knows the feeling. There is nothing he can do now but answer with the truth as he feels it now, wrapped as they are in brokenness and grief.
"There never was."
They're no longer talking about the girl. Were they ever?
"Why?"
The question hangs before them, never ending. Don wants to simply shrug but he knows that Elliot isn't aware enough of his surroundings to feel or see it.
"I don't know."
"What's the point?"
What a question, Don thinks. How can he give an answer to something he has asked every day since his wife died. His own grief heightens as the knowledge of what Elliot is feeling runs through his veins. He knows this place, desolate and empty, and he wishes he didn't.
"I don't know."
Elliot seems to let a hard breath go before he speaks again.
"You're speaking the truth now." It's a hollow fact.
"Yes."
"She's never coming back." It's the first time Elliot has said it, even to himself. Silence hangs in the air as both wait for the answer to that question. Except, it's simply a statement. "Is this what it's going to be like now?"
Don repeats his affirmation.
"Yes." It hangs, sodden and heavy with failure and resignation, drowning them.
They sit until Elliot's trembling has gone past cold and into a pleasant numbness. They count lines on skin and mortar between tiles. They chase water droplets with their eyes. Elliot expects each heart beat to be his last. He has to think through every breath. He knows if he doesn't, his body will simply stop. It's such a fight. How do you fight when you don't know what you want to win? Then, he dreads knowing. It either means he's ready to die or he's ready to live again. He doesn't want either.
He watches the tears streaming down the wall's face. He wonders why it cries, who it has lost. They wait for hours in the cold and the pain for answers. None come.
Suddenly he snorts some laughter. What she would say now if she came in and saw them sitting in a freezing shower, soaked through to the core and wallowing in dirty, stained water. They chuckle, joined in the image of her, the expression on her face. He sees her coming in; the roll of her eyes, her smirk, the concern that will backlight everything. She looks down with her arms folded and her hair tucked behind one ear, untouched by the water. They sit until she vanishes from the room, telling them that they really are mad and this is the first clear sign of insanity.
He remembers a definition of insanity, that it is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. He wakes up over and over again, gets out of bed, and expects that the result will come and she will be found.
It has to be insanity.
As dawn rises, he walks out of the building in a pair of jeans and an NYPD sweater. Without his badge and without his gun. His suit is curled up in a ball in a trash can, ruined. It's the right place for it. Ghosts possess the precinct for him now, including the ghost of the men they used to be. Of
the man he used to be.
He never steps back into that building. Until then.
Minutes moved by, and when he next blinked himself from the past and the stories, he was aware that the room was almost full, a combination of uniformed cops and detectives. Faintly, through an open window, he could hear the noise of the press outside, and there was a murmur building in the room. He couldn't help but be struck by how similar it was to the days just after her disappearance, when the room had been full and the love, desperation and need for her had infused them all. It was back, coating people that had never known her, and those that had known her best.
A noise came towards the room, a breeze of trepidation and adrenaline that lifted them all to their feet and turned them to look at the door as one. Never had he felt so contained in the strength of others, and so alone, as he waited for the man to come.
And then, he was there.