Elliot's black eye is the first thing Olivia processes as she awakens. "What happened?" she demands.

"Nothing," he replies swiftly. "It's not important. How're you feeling?"

She ignores the question. "You beat Porter up, didn't you?"

"The douche bag was hanging out here. He has no business being around you after what he did to you that day at the airport."

In her head, she's relieved: he doesn't know.

"He's not a bad guy, El."

"He betrayed you. Nearly got you killed."

She's silent.

He clears his throat. "Liv, I uh, I gotta ask you… you slept with him? Tell me he's lying, Liv."

She exhales a breath she didn't realize she was holding. "You know."

His last shred of hope vanishes. His heart thumps in his ears. Anger at Porter bubbles up in his throat all over again. "He thinks the baby is his. Tell me he's lying," he repeats.

She hears the desperation in his voice, and it breaks her heart. But it also brings her a peace she had not realized she was lacking: he wants this baby, she thinks. He really wants it. "He's not lying, El. I'm so sorry," she says, her voice small.

"But how…"

He's incredulous, speechless, in shock. At the back of his mind he knows he should be furious with her, but he's not. He's not, because the last two weeks have changed him. He thinks back to what they went through together: endless days with only her to maintain his sanity, terrible hours during which he thought she was being assaulted, followed by days of starvation and illness, all culminating in her near-death in the cold, dark woods. After so much trauma he feels closer to Olivia than he's ever felt to anyone, and, rational or not, he simply can't bring himself to blame her for anything. He doesn't know if he'll ever be rational again when it comes to her.

"El, I want you to know, it was the night before you and I… it just happened. And then the next day, somehow, you and I chose that particular day…. I'm so sorry, El, I didn't plan any of this."

He's afraid to ask. "And the baby…?"

"I just don't know," she admits. She's oddly relieved to finally have told him. "There's just no way to know until we do a test." She hesitates. "That is…"

"What?"

"That is if you want to do the test…"

He nods silently, digesting the reality. "So the whole time we were locked up…"

"I wanted to tell you so badly. I almost did, so many times. You have to believe me."

"I wish you would have," he says quietly.

"No, Elliot, you don't," she asserts. "We were under enough stress as it was. You would've been upset, you would've worried more. It was for the best that I didn't tell you."

"If I had known, I wouldn't have made you –"

"What?" she interrupts, because she knows exactly how he's thinking about this. "You wouldn't have made me escape from a dangerous situation? We were going to starve to death."

"You almost died," he chokes, reliving that moment in the woods when, frozen and exhausted, she finally succumbed to her illness and collapsed in his arms.

"I almost died in that room," she retorts.

"At least that room provided some shelter and we had clean drinking water." He suppresses a shudder, still thinking of that moment. For several long, brutal seconds, before he had a chance to lay her on the ground and check her, he was certain he had lost her.

"Oh, so now you were supposed to divine that the team was only a few hours away from finding us?" She laughs. "It was the smart thing to do, for us to try that escape."

He clears his throat nervously. "Liv, I just have to ask… what made you… I mean, him, of all people. He hurt you..."

She lays a palm over his wrist. "Elliot, I know. But you have to understand, we had history. He came over to my place and apologized and it just happened."

"I know, but I can't believe you would forgive him."

She grows defensive. "What, you've never forgiven someone who's hurt you before?"

"I never slept with someone who hurt me before."

She flinches, but recovers quickly and clucks her tongue indignantly. "Then where, may I ask, did your youngest son come from?"

His face turns beet-red. He clearly has no response.

She sighs. "Look, El, you're right. It was a mistake, a moment of weakness. Promise me you won't rub my nose in it. I love you. I want to be with you."

His heart melts at her words; he sees how much she has agonized over this. "I'm sorry," he tells her. "I'm sorry. I won't bring it up again."

"Thank you."

"So, uh, what's… what's the next step?"

"I honestly don't know. Before the kidnapping I was going to do paternity testing and then tell you when I knew one way or the other."

"And if it's his? Where does that leave us?"

"To be honest, El, what I'd really like to know is if it's yours where does that leave us."

He crinkles his forehead in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, do you want to… raise another child?" she asks tentatively.

He's instantly upset by what she's insinuating. "Liv, I would never just abandon my child. Or you, for that matter. I can't believe you would even wonder about it."

"I just… you know, you've got five already. It's another burden, another college edu –"

"Do you even know me at all?" he tosses out, his voice icier than he intended.

She blinks, barely managing to conceal her hurt. "It's a fair question," she says evenly.

He forces himself to calm. "Liv, no, it's not even a question," he says softly. "If I had ten other kids out there I would want to raise all of them."

"Okay…" She feels tears butting at her eyelids, but she forces them back. This is the Elliot she knows and loves. She just needed to hear him say it out loud.

"So back to my question," he says. "If it's his, where does that leave us?"

Suddenly the very real possibility that the baby is Porter's hits her like a ton of bricks and she finds herself teetering on the verge of tears all over again. It can't be Porter's, she thinks. It just can't.

"I… I don't know," she fumbles. "I don't want to be with him, Elliot. I want to be with you. But I… I'll understand if you don't want –"

"Olivia," he interrupts, because he thinks his heart will break if she completes her thought, "I just want to be with you."

"I can't ask you to help me raise Porter's child."

"It's your child," he says with emphasis.

She's shocked by what he's implying. "You wouldn't have wanted Eli if he hadn't been yours," she counters.

He frowns. "How would you know that?"

She flinches, the way he emphasized you hitting her in her gut, reminding her of how little he used to confide in her. But she recovers. He is different nowadays; he has changed. She knows this. She's depending on this. "I'd been your partner for nearly ten years. I could see it in your eyes."

"It was different," he says.

"How?" she challenges.

"I love you, Liv."

She isn't fazed. "Well, you loved Kathy too and –"

"No," he stops her. "No I didn't."

"I heard you in the car that day, right before our accident. I heard you say –"

"Olivia," he grinds out, pushing the air out of his lips with force. "Stop."

She abruptly closes her mouth and looks up at him expectantly.

"I love you," he repeats. "And I want to be with you." He reaches out and touches her cheek with his fingertips. "And whomever you come with too."

x-x-x-x-x-x

Thirteen Weeks

Three days after Olivia and Elliot are found, Cragen, Munch and Fin are back at the precinct in New York, trying to piece together what happened.

Porter, to everyone's chagrin, has continued to hang around, wanting to help get to the bottom of who masterminded the kidnapping of the woman possibly carrying his child.

It is implicitly understood by Cragen and his team that Porter won't press charges against Elliot for beating him to a pulp provided Cragen doesn't call his superiors and let them know Porter's work with the NYPD is technically done.

Still, Fin and Munch find it hard to keep straight faces around him, so amusing to them is Elliot's handiwork on the formerly smug agent's face.

"Our dead guys are Wilson Carson and Jeffrey Da Silva," Fin announces from his computer. "They both have records, mostly petty drug collars and larceny."

"No kidnapping?" Cragen asks.

"No."

"And do we have any leads on who killed them?" Porter asks.

"None," Munch pipes up. "Only prints on Olivia's gun were Da Silva's, but it's unlikely that he killed Carson and then himself."

"Why?" Cragen asks.

"Because Olivia's prints were not on the gun. Which means somebody wiped it clean after she last handled it. Ballistics are still going over the crime scene but odds are there was a third perp involved who did the shooting and then wiped the gun clean and placed it in Da Silva's hand after he was dead."

Porter nods perfunctorily and excuses himself to his corner of the squad where he's set up shop; it is clear he is not impressed with their detective work.

Once Porter is out of earshot, Fin leans in and says quietly to Cragen and Munch, "Do we really care who killed them? I mean, Elliot and Liv both identified Carson and Da Silva. As far as they're concerned, there wasn't a third guy involved."

"Maybe we leave this one to the FBI and call it a day," Munch adds thoughtfully. He points a thumb back at Porter, who is sitting across the room, his nose buried in a file. "I mean, the important thing is that we got our people back and Sherlock over there is dying to have something to do, and we don't specialize in kidnappings."

"No," Cragen says sternly. "No, if there is a third guy, we want to know about it. Just because Olivia and Elliot didn't see him, doesn't mean he wasn't responsible for what they went through. We keep investigating until we understand exactly what happened and why."