A/N: Ok so the italics are now memories a LOT taken from the show, I'd like to make it clear that I don't own SVU or any of its characters or scripts I am just borrowing it to make my story!

"Take me back to the start of your relationship?"

To do that I have to take you back to the start of our partnership...

We were working a very complex case about a man in a cab that had his penis cut off. It was complex because we first believed the victim to be a man by the name of Victor Spicer, that was until we found out that Victor Spicer was in Rikers.

Anyway it turns out that the man who was killed was wanted for war crimes, he raped like seventy women or something. Don was concerned about me not being able to handle it considering my father was a rapist, Elliot kept insisting that he believed me that I could handle it. The truth was I couldn't handle it, at all. He had to go to do something and I found myself going to interview as suspect alone. I knew it when I was there that she was one of two killers, I knew it and yet I denied it.

"So you don't think she murdered him?" Elliot asked after a few minutes of watching Olivia twirl a pencil around her fingers.

They were sat at their conjoined desks facing each other, he was trying to read her, interrogate her.

"No." She said putting the pencil down. "I don't think she murdered him."

Elliot knew she was lying of course by the way she avoided eye contact and ran her fingers through her hair.

"She said she was in her office till around one …" She continued. "That's after he was killed." She shrugged awkwardly.

"And no one else was there." Elliot said the look on his face showing that he was really not buying what Olivia was selling.

"No one else was there." She repeated.

"And no one else was there that is an anti-alibi." Elliot explained.

"Elliot." Olivia pushed. "I saw her hands, there are no broken finger nails."

The way he looked at her showed he cared for her but also showed that he didn't believe any of the shit she was spewing.

"Look we know there are two killers, so … how are we going to find the other one?" She asked not realising that Elliot's interrogation tactics had worked on her, it was so obvious she was still a bit of a rookie.

"You mean the other one who also didn't do it?" He asked laughing a little at her slip up. "We've got three other Tanzik victims to check out so… let's do that." He said getting to his feet.

I remember he really knew I was lying, I had to though, I understood that we couldn't pick the vic you know but if that had been my father I can't say I wouldn't have done the same, just my dad was already dead when I found him.

I saw my mother the night before that happened, we sat at a restaurant and she was sober … we were drinking wine and she told me that she understood what the women had done but she didn't condone it, she said that if he hadn't raped her she wouldn't have had me… probably the nicest thing she ever said to me and she also asked me what good would it have done for me to grow up with her in prison. That was probably one of the first times I realised she cared about me, she really did want me.

Anyway I'm running away again, back to the case, it was horrible because we quickly found the second killer who eventually killed herself. After a confession and a deal of man two Elliot and I were called into Don's office because he wasn't pleased with the result.

"You've just used your get out of jail free card on this one Olivia." He said to me angrily. "There's only one in the pack."

If only he knew how many times he'd go through the pack over the years.

Our killer, while she was dying after stabbing herself pulled Elliot's ear to her and whispered something. Just after we'd left Don's office we sat at our desks just staring at each other both of us thinking about what had happened over the past few days. I asked him what it was that the woman had said to him.

"I just want to be with my family." He replied and my heart cracked at that moment.

These women deserved justice and instead they took revenge, back then I was with them, revenge was what I would have done too in their positions but of course after all those years at SVU your outlook changes.

I'll never forget how he took care of me during that case, it was my first big case with SVU and it hit hard. Elliot's belief in me during that time … I think that's when I noticed that there was something between us, then of course I didn't know what it was.

The next hard case was a single woman who'd been abused by her father as a child and had run away changed her name to hide. She committed suicide by diving through a window and we were investigating it thinking it was a homicide.

Just after we got the case I remember saying I couldn't live like her, if someone would have killed her and left her in her in the apartment she could have been there for months before anyone would have noticed.

Elliot knew before I did. He knew that I was in the same situation I mean I know that my Mom was still alive then but she was too drunk to notice most of the time but as soon as I made the comment about her having no one Elliot knew but I didn't.

Don told me during that case to get inside the victims head. He told me that just after telling me all about how his wife Marge died. I think that's when Cragen and I began to get close too, when I was sat in his office just talking and he told me about his wife's death and his house with the swimming pool ... strange ... anyway ...

I listened to the vics sister sob her heart out after confronting her molesting father. I'll never get those sobs out of my head you know … and I was talking to Elliot afterwards and I told him that I knew he realised that I had no one in the same sense Gretchen Quinn had no one and you know what he said to me? He said

"But your Dad didn't molest you Olivia." He said it after I said that the vic and I were similar.

"No he didn't Elliot." I replied. "But he did rape my mother."

I went home after that and let the cold hard reality of what I'd worked out hit me, Elliot and I didn't even call each other by our nicknames then, we were just Olivia and Elliot or Benson and Stabler there wasn't that in between that came after time.