The man's face was stone before him, frozen in shock, and within the roar of pain and rage surrounding him, Elliot felt hands pulling at his shoulders, his back, his arms, and voices around in a blur of frantic confusion. He tried to brush them off, wanting to home in on the man and the truth within his head, but as hard as he fought, he found bodies and strength in between him and his goal.
Tasting the fear, his instinct for the kill took over, and the room seemed tiny, with only him and his prey inside, despite the distant noise, yells and shouts, and his name echoing in the air, heavy with adrenaline and murderous rage.
With renewed franticness he clawed his way through those that stopped him, his body and muscles burning as he gave everything, but it was for nothing. In the moment his prey was blocked from his view, he became vaguely aware of there being uniforms, a solid wall of flesh and blood and the living. As hands pushed and pulled him away, his body seemed to collapse beneath him, and then they weren't holding him back but instead holding him up.
He was stumbling, hardly seeing or feeling the shadowy, indistinct ghosts surrounding him, and the next thing he heard was Don's voice coming through the mist. When the hands holding him let go he was surprised that he was able to keep his feet and, looking up, he found himself in the interview room, Don shutting the door behind them.
As it clicked to a close, Elliot turned slowly away, leaning on a chair and clenching his fists around it in preparation to break, to fight, to destroy, not with anyone but with himself. He knew, he knew, he knew that he had just jeopardized the most important case of his life, of all their lives, and he wanted to annihilate himself.
"Smash things if you want," Don's voice was terrifyingly calm, "but it won't make a difference." He wanted there to be anger, rage, recrimination launched at him but instead there was just the calm and the quiet and something close to pity. For a second his rage bubbled, and he could see the room destroyed in his mind's eye, hands ripped and bleeding, and the same understanding expression still on Don's face.
Instead, his legs gave way suddenly, muscles failing him, and he sunk to his knees, hitting the cold floor viciously. Sobs forced themselves out in agonising gasps, as the pain choked him, wrapping itself round his chest and his throat. He was kneeling as if praying, his arms clutched to his body to offer pitiful comfort, and a keening, crushing noise surrounded him.
It was running through his veins, oozing out of every cell and pore of his skin, his longing for her and his despair. It was the sound of a million years, a million losses, a primal pain that carried no words, nor needed them for it to be felt. He didn't know how he was breathing, he didn't want to be, he only knew that she was gone, and that man knew why and how, and none of it made any sense any more.
It was the moment they had been waiting for, the moment of truth, but despite everything happening as it should have done, they were no closer to her. And it didn't matter that they had caught him, that he had admitted to the rapes, that he was trapped in their walls, because she wasn't there. He wasn't saying, wasn't telling, and even his silence was worthless, because it wouldn't make any difference at all. She was still gone.
He rocked for more minutes than he thought possible, his mind no longer in the room but caught in the whirlpool of five years of pain, before he found his rocking slowing, and his cry fading from around him. Then there was just silence, and when he blinked and saw the world again, the sky was dark outside and the air black within.
Alex was stood at the doorway, her face turned away in gentle respect, but when she sensed him move she came over and offered a hand, lifting him from the floor and placing a mug of hot coffee in front of him as he sat down.
"What's going on?" Elliot asked, his voice coarse and foreign, and Alex sat down opposite him before answering.
"Nothing. He won't speak," she sighed, and sipped her own coffee without looking at him. It occurred to him that she was afraid, that he had finally crossed into insanity, and he wondered when the psychiatrists would come to take him to Bellevue. It felt like a blessed relief, if it was going to happen.
Alex continued on, "they're trying to get more information on him, where he's been living, what he's been doing, but they can't find anything. His car was stolen, his license was fake, he had a prepaid cell on him but there were no numbers stored. He seems to have made himself disappear."
Elliot took the information in but didn't react to it, instead watching himself pummel the man into the ground, seeing blood come from nose and mouth, his hand round his throat and choking him until he begged for mercy and said the words he needed to hear. But every time the daydream got to that point, it ended. He didn't know what words he wanted, what they would be, whether they would kill him inside, and faced with them being that close and yet so far away, his imagination refused to speculate.
They sat in silence for minutes at a time, Elliot terrifyingly numb to the world, his hands wrapped round the cooling coffee without moving. There was nothing in his mind. Nothing but dark spaces and the gut wrenching, choking grief that was lurking just out of sight. He wasn't aware when Alex stood and went to get more coffee, only realising when she replaced the cold in front of him with warm, and he felt the china faintly burn his skin as his hands rested round it again.
He didn't know how long it was before Don came back, only that two more untouched coffees have passed through his hands. Alex left, and Don sat down in his place, and Elliot found he couldn't bear to look up at him, fearful of the look in his eyes.
"They're not getting anywhere," he said quietly, the words hardly heard above the beat of Elliot's heart and his breath, "he won't say a word now. Seems like all the detectives in the building have tried." Elliot digested the information, the suspect's silence, before breaking his own.
"It's my fault," he said, sounding almost in wonder at his own stupidity, as if it had only just occurred to him.
"What is?" Don asked gently, trying not to break him.
"The guy...." and he gestured vaguely towards the interrogation room, "him not speaking." There was such a long silence following that declaration that Elliot felt sure there would be an acquiesce when the words finally came.
"It wasn't you Elliot," there was a wistfulness in Don's voice, almost as if he wished it could be that simple, "he's scared. Whatever happened, it happened to a cop, and he knows that with the rapes as well, that puts him in jail for a very long time. He doesn't want to brag, or confess, or show off. He's been hiding for five years. He's just scared."
It was the 'just' in Don's sentence that caused a tear to spill down Elliot's cheek again, one lone taste rather than the hot bitter flood that came with the sobs of pain before. They would never know, he wouldn't talk, 'just' because of fear.
He wondered if Olivia was scared, those moments in her apartment. If there had been time to realise what awfulness was coming, or if adrenaline had kept her going, kept fear at bay, blocked until...
"I'm scared too." He admitted, still not able to look the older man in the eye, and the agreement shattered yet another part of him.
"Me too."
They sat in the dark, lost and alone, with the light of the squad room casting bright lines across the floor that changed on the rare occasion someone walked by the door.
"I thought you'd call Huang. Have me put in Bellevue," Elliot admitted, moving his hands round the coffee for the first time in hours.
"Do you need to be there?" Don asked, and Elliot wondered what would happen if he said yes. How comfortable and easy it would be to lose himself in the madness, to be watched and contained and looked after, to not have to think or live any more. To be wrapped in cotton wool, with nothing getting through.
"No." He said. He knew he'd gone past that point now, the point where it could be fixed by simply locking himself up. It was ingrained, in his heart and his cells and every inch of his body. The truth, the bittersweet truth was that she had carried so much of him inside her, once she had gone, it had ripped too much of who he was away. He could only be nothing now.
So the night passed, broken only by the raised voice that Elliot could recognise as Paul Thomas, when he yelled frustration in the squad room and something smashed, glass raining down onto the ground. Neither of them moved, but Elliot's thoughts kicked into gear for a moment, allowing himself to feel distant surprise that the man who hadn't known Olivia, who hadn't been trapped in the web, could feel such rage. The voices soon faded though, and nothingness settled again.
It wasn't until sun began its gentle seep through the windows, and both men had counted each heartbeat a thousand times that Captain Price walked through the door, and they looked up in longforgotten hope, though what the hope was for, neither knew. She sat down with them, and for the moment it took her to steel herself to speak, Elliot thought how strange it was that she seemed like a detective, breaking news to loved ones. Then he realised that was exactly what she was.
"He's asked for a lawyer. We've got no choice but to hold him on the rape charges and go to arraignment. He's not going to speak."
At her words, and the stark knowledge that despite catching their man, it had all come to nothing, Elliot was shocked to discover he wasn't at all surprised at the turn of events. It felt like a hopeless dream, simply one of his never-ending nightmares, that he should be dragged from the sweet suspension of life and back into hell. That he should be forced to face the truth all over again, but for it to come to nothing, and their agony to continue.
Without looking at Don, he offered a hand to the Captain and thanked her before walking out of the room, though as he did so he couldn't help but wonder what he was thanking her for.
He saw that the room had emptied, and now there were just a few people around. Fin sat at his desk, head in his hands, but he stood up as he saw Elliot coming towards him. His head was bowed and his shoulders shrugged in defeat. Elliot got the feeling he was ashamed, and it broke him just a little bit more.
"I failed. I'm so sorry man."
The sight of Fin's destruction, his loss and the childish apology in his eyes nearly brought the tears again. Without thinking, he pulled him close, feeling the other man's shaking body as their chests collided. They stood for seconds that felt like hours, and Elliot could hear words around them but it wasn't for another few breaths that he realised it was him, murmuring as if soothing a child.
"It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault"
Round they went in circles and it was long long moments before they returned to the world and braced themselves against the pain. Elliot pulled away slightly and looked him in the eye before releasing completely, searching for an acceptance of his truth. John came closer, with Don beside, and they stood together, hands on each others shoulders, equals in their sorrow and grief. For a second he saw Olivia smile at them, at their companionship and their love, and as he gazed at her, he heard, as if coming from far away, Don say,
"The last thing she'd want is for us to break now."
At the heartbreaking truth, he felt tears well for a second in his eyes before blinking, and around him he felt them all take a breath. His body joined in without question, and he settled back with the ground solid beneath his feet. As they let go of each other, Alex came up and hugged each in turn.
"We'll keep trying," she said, gesturing to the current SVU ADA standing behind her with undisguised sadness spread across her.
He looked at her before letting his gaze drift across the squad room, taking in details as if everything he remembered would be essential. Fin's partner, Paul, was typing up reports with exhaustion apparent, the coffee pot was newly filled, and Liv's picture was gone from the board again. The female detective, whose name Elliot couldn't even remember any more flashed him a sorrowful look as she walked past and sat down at Liv's desk, and he knew with a gentle, soft realisation that he would never belong in that room again.
Turning to Don, he said,
"Take me home." And both men walked out.
He was as unaware of the journey back out of Manhattan as he had been on the way in, but it came as no surprise when he felt the car slow and stop, and he saw his house sitting innocently next to them in the morning light. Don turned the engine off, and they sat in silence, each lost in his own world. Finally, Elliot went to get out of the car with slow, old movements, and as he did so, Don said,
"Take care of yourself El."
Looking back at his old captain, seeing age, tiredness and sorrow etched across his face, he nodded once.
"You too Cap." And with that he got out, shutting the door behind him and standing on the sidewalk for a moment, looking at his home.
Suddenly the front door was flung open with a bang and his son came charging out, arms spread wide and flying down the steps before launching himself into his arms, shouting
"Dad!" as he did so.
Elliot caught him, and buried his head in his hair, feeling his warmth and his heartbeat pressed against his chest, before Eli struggled free of the hug and dropped back to the ground. Looking up, he saw Kathy standing at the open door, and their eyes locked for a split moment before she walked back into the house.
He felt Eli's hand take his and drag him towards the door, excitedly talking and overflowing with energy and life. Elliot let himself be taken up the steps, heavy and tired and, without looking back at Don in the car still on the street, he closed the door behind him.