The wall of uniforms and detectives parted, allowing him a closer glimpse of the man, head bowed and shoulders cowed. Despite being taller than Fin he looked small, and weak. Not the monster that Elliot had formed in his head, a scalding devil that had resulted in the loss of Olivia and the destruction of so many other people. He was just an ordinary man, and nausea rose in Elliot's throat, threatening to choke him. How easy it had been to lose her.

Fin had stopped at the doorway, waiting for Hartman to lift his head and see what he was up against, and when he did so, Elliot stared at him, willing him to look him in the eye. The man didn't though, his gaze sliding slow as ice melting over all those in front of him before dropping his head again. There was no reaction in his face.

When he moved out of sight towards the interrogation room, most of the people in the room seemed to exhale a sigh, a joint release of the threat they had been containing for him, but Elliot didn't. Instead, he felt drawn towards him, out of control, connected by an invisible thread that was dragging him onwards. Don and Capt. Price followed. There was never any suggestion that he wasn't going.

Looking through the glass, they saw Fin pushing him into the chair and taking the handcuffs off, before settling down in the seat opposite. Elliot was stood between the two captains, ex and current, supported. Or contained. Another man he had never seen joined them, walking into the interrogation room and leaning against the wall. Elliot was struck by how cold he felt, surrounded by people. Alone.

"Fin's partner, Paul Thomas," Capt. Price said, nodding at the man through the glass.

The scene in front of him, the two detectives and the suspect, was one that Elliot knew he and Liv had played out many many times before, and one he had seen in his nightmares. It ached with familiarity but never had he felt so out of control, standing on the outside looking in as his future was decided in the room before him. Answers or silence. Sink or swim. Live or die.

"So, you know why you're here?" Fin leant back in his chair, analysing the man. Hartman shook his head, looking down at his hands on the table.

"Well, why don't we start with your name. David is it, or Daniel?" There was a taste of sarcasm in his voice.

"Daniel." He spoke so quietly that those standing and watching strained to hear.

"What's with the fake I.D Daniel?" Fin tossed onto the table the driving license that had been found on him. It skidded to a halt but Hartman didn't look at it, instead just shrugging.

"Trying to escape from something? Hide something?" He shrugged again, but Elliot could see a tightening of his shoulders, even from outside, which was accentuated when Fin's partner, Paul, jutted in from his position leaning against the wall.

"What would this guy have to hide, looks pretty harmless to me. Pathetic really." Fin snorted quietly at the statement, watching for a reaction.

"You married Daniel?" He shook his head and looked up, first at Fin and then Paul before speaking.

"No." His voice was low, but louder than when he had stated his name.

"But you were married, weren't you. When was that?" Fin's tone was mildly condescending, coated with a light-heartedness as if his questions meant nothing, a simple teasing. Elliot wondered if the man could feel the weight behind the words, the pressure of five years pressing down on them. He thought not.

"A while ago." Still leaning back, he was looking somewhat warily at Fin. Elliot could feel every question tensing his own muscles minutely. He knew this was the game they played, but it felt excruciating, the tiptoeing, the circling before the kill.

"Let's see, I've heard that your wife left you almost six years ago. That sound about right?" Fin tapped the file sitting in front of him.

"Yeah, I guess." Hartman shifted in his chair, the metal against the floor screaming slightly.

"Why'd she leave, Daniel?" He shrugged yet again and Fin continued, "no ideas?" The question hung between them for a second while Hartman squirmed before finally answering.

"Guess she didn't love me."

"We heard she left to be with another man," Paul interjected, a sneer in his tone. Their suspect didn't reply, but the muscle tensed through his locked jaw at the disdain.

"That what happened?" Fin asked, and part of Elliot wanted to smirk, seeing the man feel uncomfortable. The other half was impatient already, struggling, desperate to be allowed in to beat the answers out of him. Paul spoke again,

"Aww, who'd have thought it. How could anyone desert this poor guy, run off with a better man. Doesn't seem possible." There was little reaction.

"What happened after she left?" Fin asked. Hartman simply continued the shrugging, and Fin flicked open his notebook and looked down. "Says you left your job just after." He nodded but didn't speak. "Why?"

"Guess I didn't want to do it any more." He looked down, almost mimicking the tiredness of a man weary with his life and the choices he made.

"So, then what did you do?" Fin leant in and waited for an answer. None came, Hartman not even acknowledging the question and outside, Elliot turned away for a second before looking back. Finding answers, digging for them, demanding them, was part of the job, and yet in that moment he hated it with such intense passion he could barely breathe.

He felt both people beside him look his way for a second, and Don's concern washed over in a wave, but he was already focused back on the scripts being read in front of him. It was unreal, false, and yet someone had taken bricks from the wall he had constructed around him, and now the world was coming in. Reality. It hurt.

"You had any girlfriends since your wife? One night stands? Play around a little?" That got a reaction and he glanced quickly at both men in turn before flushing slightly and picking at the skin of his fingernails. "Anything you want to tell us?" Fin probed, but he shook his head.

"Come on, surely you've got something you want to brag about? A gorgeous girl who couldn't resist you?" Paul sounded more genuine in that statement, and Hartman looked up slightly as if unsure as to his motives, before returning to his hands.

"Or did no woman want to touch you," Fin asked, it coming out as more a statement of fact than a query, saturated in disdain and disgust. Elliot resisted the urge to punch through the glass, just to release some tension.

Fin opened the folder lying on the table and pulled the top picture out, pushing it towards him.

"Do you recognise her?" Hartman looked down at the picture for a second before turning his head away, as if he didn't want to see. "Well?" Fin leant forward and shoved the picture closer, but Hartman refused to look again as he shook his head.

"Well, that's funny, because your semen was found inside her," Paul's statement seared through the air, and they let it hang painfully over him while his jaw tightened and his whole body stiffened. "No comment?"

"What about this one?" Fin slid another photo towards him, and, slowly, as if he couldn't prevent himself, he glanced for a second before swallowing and looking away again. "Don't recognise her?"

"Let me guess, no comment," Paul sneered, and turned towards Fin "Isn't that funny, cos, surprise surprise, his semen was inside her as well."

Those outside watched intently as the man continued to look awkward, not admitting anything but not claiming innocence either. They could see each swallow slide down his throat, sweat silently beginning to dot his face, and Elliot felt the same happening to him as tension rose around them.

They went through the same act with the third girl, the showing of the picture, the looking away, the heightening of anxiety visible on his body and easy to feel by those watching. Elliot wondered for a second if he was still breathing, before getting drawn back in.

"So, you're claiming that you don't remember any of these girls." Fin asked. No response.

"You know, you'd think you'd remember if you'd raped all three of them," Paul started moving round the room, walking behind him and leaning in to get closer, murmuring over his shoulder, "see, they all tell exactly the same story. That a man broke into their apartments, threatened them with a knife, raped them, and left." He stood back up, seemingly enjoying the body language of the guy in front of him, the resumption of nervous hand movements, picking at his nails and skin. Fin continued where Paul left off.

"And then, surprise surprise, when we did forensic tests, all the 'samples' that were left were identical. And, when your DNA got ran, we got a match." There was a note of triumph in his voice that everyone but the suspect could tell was false. Hartman obviously didn't though, swallowing again, a wet sound.

"So, is there anything you'd like to say?" Paul demanded, but despite the clear anxiety being show, Hartman sat in silence for long, hateful minutes, until he jumped as Fin stood up. He slammed his hand down on the table and, with a glare of revulsion that could be felt by those outside, walked out of the room, the wall shuddering as the door crashed shut behind him.

"What do you want us to do?" he asked, looking at all three of them in turn and then staring through the mirror as his partner prowled around the room without speaking, "keep grilling? Leave him to sweat a bit more?"

Capt. Price stopped watching the movement beside them and leant slightly against the mirror, taking in the men before her, composure clear in every movement.

"We could do with him admitting to the rapes before we try and find out about...." her voice stalled for a second and it struck Elliot as surprising that she, who hadn't known or been affected by Liv, failed to bluntly state her name, "then he can't back out of the DNA results, and his blood being found in her apartment."

"Do we need a confession?" Cragen asked, and Elliot wanted to hit him for a second. How could he contemplate not getting the answers. But, at the same time, he understood. This was the most sublime form of torture known to man, the drip drip drip of answers with no information, and secrets hidden in shadows, out of reach.

"Not for the rapes." All of them turned in sync to see Alex standing in the doorway. She nodded to Capt. Price. "Your ADA called, said she's tied up in court, asked me to advise you if I could. Even though I'm no longer..." The sentence faded away, as so many often did, and Elliot saw her visibly steel herself before continuing.

"The DNA evidence is strong and indisputable for them, and the statute of limitations doesn't come into it as, after Olivia went missing, Donnelly issued an arrest warrant based on his DNA profile, which wiped out the statute time," and as she spoke, Elliot couldn't help but recall with something close to pride how everyone had pulled together in those days.

She continued, "add to that the CCTV footage of him following one of the victims and a jury would be insane not to convict. But for Liv...." And there it was, that dissipation of words again, facts to unbearable to be released into the air. Elliot thought he might choke when he tried to speak, but managed to get the statement out nonetheless.

"What do you mean. His blood was there, in her apartment!"

"Yes, but not very much. And we don't know what to charge him with,"and there was pain circulating throughout them all as she touched home truths that had been avoided for years, open wounds that had been ignored. "We could charge him with murder but we have no body, no semen or evidence to charge him with rape, not enough blood to say she wouldn't have survived, and no evidence to say that he did kill her."

She managed to speak without letting her emotion drown her, but Elliot could feel it emanating from her, and he knew those who knew her could feel it too. "We've got nothing. We need a confession to find out what happened."

She turned and assessed the suspect through the glass as he sat biting his nails, silently watched by Paul and another uniformed officer, scowls and violence issuing from them.

"If things get bad, you might be able to offer him a deal. A reduced sentence for the rapes if he tells you what happened to Olivia. But we have to get him to compromise himself more before we can do that. He hasn't got anything to gain by accepting a deal at the moment, because there is only circumstantial evidence. You have to get him to talk." She sounded hollow as she spoke, her words empty, and she didn't look at them again before turning away and leaving.

"Let's leave him to sweat." Don said, and walked out. Capt. Price stood beside Elliot for a few more seconds and then took a couple of steps towards the door. When he didn't follow, she turned back to him.

"We'll get him." She said quietly. He looked at her, but didn't agree or disagree. "You coming?" He wanted to watch him, to study him, to burrow into his mind and force the information out through willpower alone but it was beyond him to control himself for much longer. He left, as he knew he should.

Going back into the squad room, into the hustle and bustle of the ordinary world, he was struck with the intense desire to run. Olivia's picture was back on the screen, her and her life being studied again, and the pain of such a violation still hit him. He had thought about this day so many times, and yet the reality was ten times worse than his nightmares. The scab ripped off the wound that has festered, and acid poured in. He sat down, lowered his head in his hands, and thought of escape, to the place he could run to and leave this all behind.

It's nine weeks after she has gone, and he stands outside her apartment building in the sunshine, waiting to speak to the landlord. It feels wrong, when he looks around him, to see people walking with smiles on their faces and laughter in the air. He wants to hide in the shadows and block out the world, lurk in the darkness that rests across him so easily.

When the landlord lets him in, he does so with hardly a word, quietly giving the key and leaving him to it. The door shuts with a gentle click, and he closes his eyes. There is a sense of her still, the scent of her place, like she'll step out of a room and greet him at any minute. He waits, but no sound comes, and when the beat of his heart becomes unbearable to hear, he moves.

The forensic team have cleared up after themselves and it looks undisturbed and unexceptional. But, as he walks through, trailing his fingers over the surfaces and sitting on the bed, there is an echo that hangs, a faint aura of dust that covers not only furniture, but his memories and her within them. He sits until the must fades and she comes to the fore, until he can forget for a split second that she won't come bursting through the door and look confused at his presence. When he gains that moment, it is bliss. He breaks all over again when it shatters, and the spell is gone.

Then he does what he came to do, taking food out of the cupboards, unplugging the electronics, tidying. He takes her spare gun from where it is locked up and slips it into his belt. The license swapped to him yesterday. He will not sell it. He cleans impeccably, makes sure all the blood is gone. When he looks around, he wants it to be as she left it, only better. A place where she will sigh with relief when she walks through the door. Her home.

He wants to stay for hours, forever, but he doesn't, instead picking up the paperwork given to him by the landlord and the box of a few things he has selected. As he leaves, he carefully locking the door behind him. Safe.

It's the weekend, and he has arranged to meet Don, Fin and Munch at a local café. They sit, drink coffee in silence, and he slides them each a key across the table. He had been going to pay the rent by himself, but the others had insisted they split it between them when Fin overheard him on the phone to the landlord. They each attach the key to their key-rings, where it hangs as innocently as the others.

For a second he wonders how long the apartment will sit empty, whether one by one they will fall by the wayside until he is the only one left who visits and pays. But in that moment, he knows they won't. They will hold on for as long as it takes. Until there is an answer. Or she comes back.

When he gets home, he takes the worn, fuzzy bear he has removed from her bedroom out and places it on his bedside table. He knows he's crazy, but he couldn't let it sit there in the emptiness any more. It's a sign of how accepted his insanity has become when neither Kathy, nor the kids, even blink when they discover it. On occasion, when he wakes up on the sofa or in the spare room, he finds the bear next to him. He never asks who brings it to him, and no one ever says.

Over the years, every couple of months, without question, he comes and cleans, opens windows for an afternoon and freshens the place, brings life back. There are always signs that the others do so as well, and sometimes the children ask to come with him. Occasionally he lets them, and they spend warm silent hours preparing the apartment. On the way home, they talk of her, of their memories, but never in that place. The apartment is for her living, not for remembrance as if at a grave.

When he sits there, in the quiet and the solitude, he always comes away with hope. Hope that she will fill the rooms again, that she will stand at the counter and look at him, her hands wrapped round coffee. He walks around and sees her everywhere, a flash of light hitting her hair, her laughter welling up around him, and every time he leaves he thinks that the next time he comes in, he'll be bringing her home.

There is no reason for this, no explanation other than she feels so real to him there, it allows him the perfect escape from reality. It is the one place for him to truly believe she is still alive. Its a place where he can feel that freely, without anyone else looking at him and thinking he's insane, or deluded.

Seeing her face on the screen again, the urge to run there was almost unbearable.

Instead, he stayed still, and John stood beside him as they watched Fin pace the room, his new partner talking to him from his seat at John's old desk. He knew they were speaking loud enough for him to hear but their voices was pushing through treacle and never reached him.

"Why couldn't this have been one of your conspiracies?" He asked John, who looked at him with a knowing smile that made him, just for a second, want to yell.

He himself, without John's help or 'out there' rantings, had gone through all the extreme alternatives, nagging and tormenting Huang and Cragen for information, asking Alex to find out whether it was witness protection. The obsession consumed him for a good few weeks before he suddenly let it drop when he realised there were no new leads and Cragen shouted bitterly at him in his office. He could still recite the words perfectly.

"Do you really think that there would have been so much publicity, so much money spent on searching for her, so many man hours and forensics and cost, if she was in witness protection, or had been whisked away by the FBI. Stop being a coward Elliot, and face it."

He had sat for an hour and at least three shots of vodka after Cragen's words, who had then had to drive him home.

"What I wouldn't have done for it to be one," John said. "The thought that....that this guy could...." he nodded towards the invisible interrogation room, "I don't know how you can watch." Elliot shrugged.

"It's not a choice."

They both looked up as Fin stormed over to them, anger written across his face and pulsing from every cell of his body.

"Fuck man."

Elliot glanced behind him and saw his new partner, Paul, standing with resignation on his face. He gave Elliot a small nod before looking away.

"How the hell do we do this?" Appealing to them both for an answer, neither could think of either platitudes or soothing words to give. "I just want to kill him. But I can't. And he's sitting there and he won't fucking talk and I have to play this game with him to make him give it up. And I just want to kill him." He was almost yelling by the end, his hands leaping into the air with hate.

Elliot knew that feeling, and John seemed to as well, getting up and putting his arm around Fin's shoulders.

"We've done it for so long. All we've got to do is get through this. And if I can't be in there, you're the guy to do it." Fin glared at him for a second before relenting and sighing, John's quiet words ad gentle attempt at humour somehow seeming to soothe.

While they began to talk new tactics, focusing on the simple task in front of them rather than what it might bring, Elliot found himself glancing behind the two men, just for a second wishing her to walk through the doorway and end it a better way. So that none of them would have to do this any more.

Shaking his head, he knew it was dangerous ground he was stepping on, and instead thought about a conversation he'd had about two years ago with Fin, meeting up for a beer and a chat. Where that same question had come up. How the hell did they do it.

It's a shady bar, the kind where business men come to avoid their wives and professional drinkers to avoid their lives. Not much light ventures into the gloom, even in the late afternoon of summer, and it's the perfect place.

"How you doing?" Fin asks, sliding a beer towards Elliot and settling down across from him with one of his own. When he saw Fin walk in, he was struck by the fact it was nearly a year since they had seen each other, and Fin had changed, though not by much. Showing another year of life as a cop perhaps, that put five years on them that no one else carries. He shrugs, and takes a sip. There doesn't seem to be an answer.

"You?" There comes the same shrug from Fin.

"Ya know." Yeah, I do, he thinks, and yet I don't at all. You still function, still do your job, still sit in that room. I don't know how you're doing at all. But he doesn't say any of it.

"How's work. And your new partner?"

They talk through inanities for a while, never mentioning Fin's cases, instead deciding that his new partner, Paul, is okay but not a patch on John. They even decide that life seems boring without aliens abducting JFK, and the latest political scandal not involving everyone from the CIA to Columbian drug barons. Elliot talks through the job he's been doing since he switched from Narcotics, which he had tried for six months or so after leaving SVU.

He's advising at the academy, teaching how to deal with possible sex crimes, how to spot a victim or a perp, warning signs and 'do's' and 'dont's'. Its mindless, easy and requires no dealing with victims. Mostly he's left alone, and it has been only twice that a wannabe has come up to ask about Olivia. The job even means he could be home at normal hours and he is, sometimes.

Mostly he'll drive for hours at a time, finding himself in the middle of nowhere in an attempt to lose himself, or sit in an all-night diner and drink bad coffee, listening to the chat of other lonely people drift over him. He's driven to Boston, Pittsburgh, once making it to St. Louis before turning back. He didn't know why, only that if she came back, he couldn't have left, have deserted her. She'd need him.

"You think anything is ever going to happen?" He doesn't need to spell out what he is asking. Fin eyes his bottle up, spinning it slowly in his hand and wiping the condensation from its surface before answering.

"I don't know man. I guess, I try and hold onto her as hard as I can, the Liv that we knew, and don't think about what might have happened. I don't want to think about it, until the day we know." He takes a sip, and sighs. "I have my slip-ups though."

"Like what?"

"Whenever I'm at a range, I imagine him. Perfect shot, every time." He snorts, and downs the rest of his beer in one before gesturing for more.

After a few more drinks, and fewer hours, El admits to how often he sleeps on the couch, and to talking to her as he drives. Fin admits to crying once, sitting on his son's sofa. He talks about how they now speak to one another, that his tears bridged a gap. A shaky bridge, that might fall down, but one that existed none the less.

"You gotta hold onto the good that you did. That Olivia did. There has to be a point to it all." A point, he thinks, and they get another beer. He doesn't remember anything after that.

Now, as Capt. Price and Don came back over, as Paul joined them and they discussed the fact their suspect was pacing the room and seemed ever edgier, the idea of 'a point' rang viciously through his head. He hadn't found it yet, and he wondered if he ever would.

When they stood and went to embark upon round two, Elliot looked at John for a second, a gesture in his eyes. John shook his head. As he stepped back into that space, and watched Paul and Fin walk into the room, he wished he could decline as well.

"So, have we decided whether our overwhelming forensic evidence deserves a confession?" Fin said, pulling out a chair and slamming it down so hard Elliot was surprised the legs didn't break off, before sitting and staring at him. Paul continued his prowl. Hartman shifted in his seat, fear showing itself as sweat across his forehead.

"You know, it tends to go easier when you just admit it. People don't like it when you don't. Judges don't. Juries don't. Cops don't." Paul murmured over his shoulder, close to his ear. Hartman swallowed and looked as though he was about to talk, before shutting his mouth again.

Minutes passed, with pacing and hatred pouring off the two cops in waves, and Hartman shifting uncomfortably in the silence, trapped, with no escape. Elliot knew how that felt.

"I don't know why we're trying to help this guy," Fin said, standing up and picking up the folder in front of him, "let's just throw him to the wolves." Paul moved round so he was standing in front of him and smiled viciously.

"What a pleasure it will be to watch them destroy him."

Fin was half way through the door before he spoke.

"Okay....okay." Elliot's breath caught in his throat at the words. Fin and Paul turned to look at him, before both sitting down at the table.

"You got something you want to say?" Paul asked.

"Yeah," Hartman took a deep breath and looked down at his hands again before continuing, "I raped them."

"You raped Laura Hayden, Kirsty More and Joanna Lister."

"Yes. I... I broke into their apartments and waited for them. And then I raped them," there was almost a pleading in his voice as he said, "they deserved it. I was angry."

"Write it down."

The silence, the scratch of his pen against the paper and the sound of his breath were excruciating. The only sound from outside came once he had finished writing, and pushed it back towards the detectives. Capt. Price murmured under her breath,

"We've got him." But there was no triumph in her voice, and the words caused overwhelming nausea within Elliot. As the time crept ever closer, the urge to run grew. He couldn't understand how, after so long, the idea of resolution was so appalling, when it was what they had been waiting for for so many years.

Fin pushed the pad of paper towards Paul, and leaned back, assessing Hartman.

"What happens now?" He asked, looking between the two of them.

"Oh, we're not done yet."

Fin opened the folder in front of him again, and slid Olivia's photo out, looking at it for a second before turning it and pushing it towards him.

"What about her?"

He looked down at the picture, and even though Elliot couldn't see the photo clearly from where he was standing, he knew exactly what Hartman would be seeing, down to the tiniest detail.

"I don't know what you're talking about." He thought he could hear a tremor in Hartman's voice, but wasn't sure, doubting himself in the moment. Fin's voice became harsher, sandpaper across skin, drawing blood.

"You don't recognise her." A shake of the head, and then a reply.

"No."

"You've never seen her before in your life?" The coldness of Fin's tone settled across the room, and all outside might have been holding their breath for minutes at a time.

"No."

"Were you living in Manhattan five years ago?" Paul asked, and Hartman let go of a breath before answering, his expression showing his surprise at the slight change in questioning.

"Yes." There was caution in his tone.

"Did you have a TV?" He looked even more confused, but answered.

"Yes."

"Then how on earth have you never seen her?" Fin leant in with an accusing, questioning air, and his eyes flicked between the two of them before he looked away.

"Well, maybe I have." He seemed uncertain, and Elliot could see him take on the appearance of an animal trapped in the headlights. He wanted to pounce, to attack, to rip him to shreds, but he took another breath and waited.

"You remembering things then?" Paul asked.

"She's that cop that went missing." He looked at them both again, a faint trace of concern apparent in his voice, as if he was trying to get the right answer but wasn't quite sure what was expected of him.

"Yeah. You're right. You know anything about that?" Fin asked.

"No." His denial was fast, almost frantic, and Elliot could see him swallow.

"So it's just coincidence that you were seen outside her apartment a day after she went missing?" Hartman drew his arms across his chest as if to shield himself, protect him from where it was going.

"I guess."

"And it's also coincidence that your blood was found in her apartment? Along with her blood?" Elliot watched as the sucker punch landed on his face, and imagined him reeling away from the two detectives. Instead, he just went white, the blood seeping from his face as he stared, transfixed, at Olivia's photo. He seemed frozen in time. Paul spoke with an menacing air.

"Right now you're looking at 3 rape convictions, and the murder of a cop. That's life with no parole."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Hartman's voice was shaking, a mouse caught in the sights of a cat.

"So you don't know how on earth your blood happened to be in her apartment?" Paul sounded incredulous, like he didn't believe what he was hearing.

"No."

"Or how she went missing. Presumed dead. With your blood there?"

Hartman looked terrified, pushing his chair back from the table as if trying to get away from her photo, and the truth. He was shaking his head frantically, and Paul and Fin exchanged a look. Elliot couldn't breathe, couldn't bear it, and images flashed through his head, a million possibilities shown to him at once, each more devastating than the last. Before he knew what he was doing, the door had opened in his hand and he was walking towards the quivering wreck, ignoring all the sounds of restraint around him.

He stopped, not touching the man, just assessing him, and when he spoke, his voice sounded alien, the words coming from a different world.

"Just tell me what you did to her."