Waiting For Superman Chapter 2: The Promise

~ It was all a bad dream. A very very bad dream from which he'd soon wake up, at home in his bed, unknowing that any of this had happened. Or hell, he'd wake up two years ago unknowing that he was ever going to leave SVU, leave her, completely unprotected. Presently, he was sitting in the passenger seat of Cassidy's patrol car holding a lukewarm cup of coffee in a vice grip.

4 days. 4 days, he'd held her hostage, tortured her. Burned her with cigarettes. Branded her with hot iron. Beat her. Cut her. Made her bleed. And that was just what they knew from the crime scene. No…not the crime scene, Liv's apartment…no, the crime scene. He didn't know which choice of words would make him feel better. He didn't want to think of her as a victim, but it did make it easier. He didn't get nauseated when thinking about that type of work, at least, not usually—he'd conditioned himself for that much after years of prolonged exposure to those crimes every single day.

But it was different with Olivia. Different because he knew how she would have felt, knew how she would have reacted, as closely as if it were himself experiencing the same sensations. And with Olivia, came the knowledge that this crime alone, could have been solely prevented had he been there, because he would have driven her home after a case like that, waited for her to flash her lights, maybe even walked her inside and talked with her awhile. If he hadn't heard from her for a single day, let alone two, he'd have been up there.

-"Does Lewis let his victims live?"

-"No, not always…"

He cracked the window, now in serious danger of either getting sick or punching out Cassidy's dashboard. He played through everything he'd learned so far in his head.

…The SVU caught a seemingly easy case. A simple indecent exposure. A man flashed his dick to a couple of foreign tourist girls in Central Park and a nature photographer witnessed the incident. But something seemed off—when one of the new detectives, Amanda Rollins, brought him in, they couldn't run his fingerprints because he'd burned them off his fingers—a 'kitchen incident,' he'd said…They couldn't find an identity, a history, anything…

-"Take me to the apartment," Elliot ordered.

-"It's a crime scene, Stabler. You're a civilian."

-"Take me to the apartment, Cassidy," he repeated.

-"I don't know what you think you're going to find…CSU's been over that place with a fine tooth comb. Anything further is just wasting time."

-" Take me, or I'm walking."

…He raped and brutalized the elderly witness, the nature photographer. For two days, he beat her, breaking her ribs. He burned her with the handles of clothes hangers. Did things to her that she never could have fathomed a human being would do to another. Left her for dead. Which, after only a few days, she was, of a heart attack from the shock, fear and shame…No witness. Tourists back home overseas. Charges dropped…

He didn't know what he was expecting to find in her apartment, or even, if it was a good idea for either he or Cassidy to be there—they needed to be out finding her—but Elliot needed to know, to see for himself what Lewis was capable of. At least, that was what he told Cassidy. In reality, he needed to see what she'd been through, put himself there, understand. Had she put up a fight? Had she even been able to? Had she been scared? Did she expect someone to be there, saving her? Did she want it to be him?

He couldn't get all or any of this from a room, he knew, but right now, it was all he had.

…Familiar streets. Familiar buildings…Almost there now.

…After they finally found him in the system, the detectives had almost wished they hadn't. William Lewis had a record, alright. A string of graphic rapes and murders across different states under different names—each time, having me some brilliant stroke of luck leading him down a path of mistrials and dropped charges. The charges had just been dropped this last time, too. Olivia would have been upset. Olivia would have felt betrayed by a justice system that let another of Lewis's victims go unavenged—like her life didn't matter and Lewis's did. The other detectives would have asked her to go for a round of drinks with them, but Olivia would have respectfully declined and said she was tired and needed to go home and get some rest. They would have let her go…

Cassidy pulled the car to a stop outside Olivia's building and just idled there.

-"I'm not going in. I've seen enough of it to make me sick. Here's the key—"

-"I have a key, thanks," Elliot grunted at Cassidy's cowardly squeamishness in the face of true policework, the same squeamishness that had caused him to leave SVU ten years ago. He still couldn't grow a pair, not even for her.

-"Really, Stabler. It's like nothing you've ever seen before," Cassidy said, softening his stoic expression.

-"I've seen a lot," Elliot replied.

-"Not like this. It's different. You'll see it—taped off like any other crime scene, but you won't be able to get her out of your head."

He didn't want Cassidy to be right, Elliot thought as he made his way down Olivia's hallway. He didn't want Cassidy to be right for so many more reasons than not wanting Cassidy to be right. He always thought it cliché, in those horror movies Kathleen and Lizzie always liked to watch, when characters described feeling like their blood had frozen, but he had no other words to describe the sensation he felt when he turned the key in Olivia's lock and opened her front door. It was a chill that made its way down his spine and eventually settled right in his gut, like he'd swallowed a ball of ice whole.

The crime scene tape formed an archaeological dig site boundary around her…the…living room furniture. Coffee table upturned. Cigarette butts. Clouds of gray ashes streaking the carpet. Haunting blood stains led into the bedroom, where a frying pan and a bent coat hanger rested at the foot of the empty bed frame. No blanket, no sheets, no mattress. Elliot leaned against the bedroom wall, massaging his temples furiously with his index fingers. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before, but he kept looking up, expecting her to be there, vowing to catch the sick prick that did this. He'd never investigated a crime scene without Olivia. But he still hadn't. She was still here. He felt her everywhere. Her ghost, watching him from every doorway—phantom images of Olivia wherever he looked—bleeding out on the carpet, screaming for him to save her, screaming at him that he promised, sprawled across her bed, tied down and—No. She wasn't a ghost anywhere. She was alive. She had to be. It wasn't even a question, she was alive. Olivia would never give up, she'd promised. But he'd been there, then. He'd vowed to protect her and he'd failed. Would it be so unrealistic to believe she may have failed, too? No.

He could feel himself beginning to falter and willed himself to get up and face it. He was here for her—if she could face it, he had to. No one knew Olivia like he did—if she'd left some sort of clue (which she would have)—he'd be the one to find it. The crime scene investigators would have took to this crime scene like any other, neglecting to realize that Olivia wasn't a victim and nothing, not even Lewis, would ever change that.

He started with the most unnatural thing in the room—the pot. Most likely Liv's defense weapon, but why had he been told that the blood on it was Olivia's? Had he been told that?

-"So, he attacked her in her kitchen, unsuspected. He was already in the apartment when she came home. She raised the first thing she could grab, which was the pot, but he got it from her and hit her with it, she fell—that's the first bloodstain…then he—"

-"Stabler, what are you doing? CSU's told us everything already."

-"They must have missed something, she must have—"

-"Get over yourself. I called you to help me find her, but you need to accept that maybe you don't know Liv as well as maybe you used to. You gave up that connection when you left her."

-"Shut the hell up, Cassidy. This isn't about you or me or the past or anything but Olivia," Elliot growled, but he couldn't help the prickle of guilt—what if Cassidy was right? What if he had no place being here at all, standing beside these people who'd been there to take care of Olivia in the wake of his broken promise? They were pulling away from the curb when Cassidy's phone rang.

Elliot finished the last of his now cold (though it hadn't been too good to begin with) coffee and crumpled the cup in his hands as he stared out the window, still expecting her, any minute now, to come out of her building and get in the back seat, complaining about Elliot getting shotgun.

That was when he realized—he had no idea what she looked like anymore. The images of her in his mind were outdated, Liv of two years ago, and even those were frayed around the edges. He couldn't find her, he'd never find her…because it wasn't Olivia he was looking for, it was a memory he could never get back.

Cassidy hung up his phone and started the car. He was smiling, something Elliot couldn't remember seeing Cassidy, another ghost, ever do.

-"They catch a lead?" Elliot asked. Cassidy nodded.

-"Better. They found her."