A/N: I know I said this last time, but thank y'all once again for your patience while I moved house! I am hopeful that updates will be more regular beginning next week. In the meantime, let's check in on Elliot…

September 15, 2014

"There you are," a soft, relieved-sounding voice murmured from somewhere off to his left. "You son of a bitch."

Elliot's eyes fluttered open and promptly closed again, screwed up tight against the harsh, antiseptic white lighting of a hospital room. It would be a lie to say that he was in pain, that his whole body ached; they'd pumped him full of something, some wondrous thing that took the sting away from being gutshot, and left behind it only the knowledge that he should have been in pain, that he would be later, but was not now. It was a forewarning of pain that he felt, an omen of future suffering, along with a pleasant warmness on his chest, like the soft weight of the cat his mother had kept for a few months when he was a child.

"Time is it?" he croaked through parched lips. His throat felt cracked, would've been raw but for the pain meds.

" 'bout 8 a.m."

He risked opening one eye, squinting to find Ayanna Bell sitting in a chair at his bedside with something dangerously close to a smile dancing across her face.

"I was out the whole night?"

"It took 'em a long time to patch you up, Stabler. You took a bullet in the belly at close range, it really messed you up. You're lucky we found you as quickly as we did. That was smart, staying on the phone with Jet."

He frowned as the memories returned to him. In waves, people said, things might come back to one in waves, and it felt like waves, to him, not buffeting him wildly but lapping gently at the shoreline of his mind, coming tantalizingly close but receding before he could capture them fully. The phone; he remembered sitting in the car, on the phone with Jet, remembered telling her not to disconnect, remembered putting the phone in his pocket, the call still live, Jet still listening. He remembered hard packed dirt under his head - some of it got in his ears, when he fell - and Olivia's hands, warm and gentle. Olivia's hands, running over his head, his shoulders - no wait, he thought, that's not right; she'd not touched his bare shoulders last night, that was days ago. Weeks, maybe? What day was it, anyway? - Olivia putting the phone in his hands, Olivia's eyes, black as night, Olivia's back, retreating. Olivia, walking away from him, forever.

"The call wasn't recorded," Ayanna said kindly, knowingly. Of course she knew; Ayanna knew everything. She'd known before he ever went to Oak House last night that he was too close to Olivia, that he was too concerned about the madam's safety, that he was too eager to protect her. If Jet had done her job she would have stayed on the line, would've listened closely, would've heard it all. Would've heard the two shots, would've heard Olivia's scream, would've heard Elliot telling her to run, in direct violation of his duty as an officer of the law.

"We're starting to paint a picture of what happened down there," Ayanna continued. "The docs pulled the bullet out of you, looks like it's a .380 auto, matches the gun we found near Whealtey's body. And the bullet they pulled out of him, looks like that's a .22, but we didn't recover that weapon. You carry a .9 mil so we know you didn't shoot him. Looks like there was a third person down there in the tunnel with you."

If Jet had done her job, she would have reported the details of everything she'd overheard to her boss, and Jet always did her job, and that meant Ayanna knew damn good and well that there had been a third person down in that tunnel. Ayanna knew Olivia had been there; the .22 was smaller than Elliot's police issued weapon, and smaller than the .380 Whealtey had used on him, small enough to be concealed in the pocket of a robe, small enough to fit easily in the hand of a woman who had never fired a gun before.

"Sarge -"

"No telling who it was," she said before he could explain himself, shooting him a look that said plainly keep your damn mouth shut. "I'm sure you don't remember much, given how much blood you lost at the scene."

It occurred to him then that he knew exactly what she was doing, and if his stomach hadn't been bisected by a fresh, ugly incision he would've sat up straight then, and hugged her out of sheer fucking gratitude.

"Maybe it was one of the madam's goons," Ayanna mused theatrically. "You told us she's got a couple of big dudes working security for her and we know at least one of 'em was packing. There were no cameras in the tunnels, though, and Jet's going through the footage but it looks like there weren't any cameras pointed at the entrance, so we can't say for sure who went down there. No one's too upset about that, though. No one is gonna miss Richard Wheatley."

There might not have been any cameras at the tunnel entrance but there were plenty of them between Olivia's bedroom and the basement. They had to have footage of Wheatley marching with her through the house, and Elliot tearing after them; Ayanna knew. And though she'd never met Olivia, though she'd never trusted the woman, though she had no reason to protect a criminal who made her living trading sex for cash, she had, for Elliot's sake, decided already not to pursue Olivia. Ayanna had decided not to point out the obvious, not to start a manhunt for the pimp who'd surely killed Richard Wheatley, who had intel that could assist in putting Kosta away. Ayanna had decided, and she'd done that for Elliot, and he knew it.

"Sarge," he said slowly, painfully. "Thank you."

"You did good, Stabler," she told him, reaching out to gently pat his shoulder. "We got the Albanians, and the Italians are gonna be squabbling over the succession for the next few months instead of causing trouble for us, and Oak House is officially closed. The townhouse is property of the state, now. We got all three of 'em, just like you wanted."

It felt like a hollow victory. Yes, the lawman had won the day, but at what cost? What had become of the outlaw, that woman beautiful and bold who'd challenged him, soothed him, awoken him from the slumber of grief and made him whole once more? She'd disappeared into the dark, and he didn't know where to. With no shoes on her feet she'd emerged out of the tunnels and into the black heart of the city, with a gun in her pocket and no money. Did she even have her phone on her? Where had she gone? Where was her son, that sweet boy who looked so like her? Where was Brian, her protector? Had she reached them? Where was she going, anyway, when her life lay in smoldering ruins behind her?

He was never gonna know. However much he may have cared for her - or her for him - they were not meant to be. The lawman and the outlaw; this only ends one way. She'd not told him where she was going, if she'd even known herself, and he'd not asked, had not thought, really, that when he drove to Oak House the night before it would be the last time he'd see her face. Oh, on some level, rationally, he'd known it was a possibility, knew she wanted her freedom, knew she'd earned it, but his heart had refused to allow him to accept the truth of it. Some part of him had clung to hope, still. It was a foolish hope; she was gone, now. Gone, forever. Gone, and taken part of his heart with her.

But she was, also, free. She was, finally, free, free of the shackles that had bound her as a teenager, free of the house that had kept her prisoner, freed from the clutches of the men who sought to use her, to take and take and take from her until she had nothing at all left for herself. She was free, free to fly like the great black bird inked upon her back, spreading her wings and soaring. Please, God, he prayed, let her be free.

"Hey," Ayanna said, sounding a little alarmed, leaning over so she could look in his eyes. "I know you got close on this one. Maybe a little too close."

He thought about the silken slide of Olivia's bare skin beneath his hands, and looked away, shamed.

"It happens," she said, and with two simple words absolved him of guilt. Or tried to. "Happens to all of us, sometimes. You go under, you forget who you are."

No, he thought, that's wrong. Olivia hadn't made him forget who Elliot Stabler was; Olivia had reminded him, had brought him back to himself, and he would be, always, grateful to her for that.

"But you're out now," Ayanna continued. "You'll be laid up for a while. Recovery from something like this is no joke. And I know you're not gonna want to hear this but I'm gonna say it anyway. You've hit your twenty, Stabler. With your jacket we both know you're never gonna make it past Detective. You've done your work. You can rest now, if you want. You can be free."

It hurt, to hear her suggest he consider retiring. It hurt to think she might have lost faith in him, or might have thought he was so tired now that he couldn't keep going. It hurt, because for the very first time he thought about leaving the force, and found that a part of him actually wanted to go. Wanted to put all this bullshit and bloodshed behind him. Wanted to be free, like she'd said, like Olivia had dreamed about.

"You've done enough, Elliot. You've done more than enough. You don't owe anybody anything."

She'd always been insightful. Always looked at him, and known, known who he was, what he was about, and she saw right through to the heart of him now. It was duty that kept him in his post, was a need for penance, a desire to repay the debt he felt he owed to his wife, to Kathy who had died because he'd put the job above his family, but he could see things more clearly from this hospital bed than he ever could have in waking life. Kathy hated the job. She wouldn't want him to stay in it, helping other people in her name; she would want him to go home, and be with their children. It was what she'd always wanted, and it was the one thing he'd never given her.

Maybe it was time to give up. Maybe it was time to finally make Kathy happy.

"Just think about it," Ayanna said. "I'm gonna go, your daughters are in the cafeteria getting some breakfast. I'll let them know you're awake, and I'll send them up here to see you."

"Thanks, Sarge," Elliot said again. She did not answer him, just squeezed his shoulder once and looked at him with something like pity in her eyes before she rose from her chair, and walked away.

This is how it ends, he thought when he was alone. This is the end of everything.