June 4, 2021

"You hoping I've found the kind, faithful, and devoted man that I deserved?"

Once when Elliot was very small he had sat with his grandfather on the back steps of the old man's house in Jersey and watched a storm roll in from the sea. The day had been bright and sunny, Elliot recalled, the skies blue, the clouds puffy and white, but his grandfather had seen what Elliot's child's eyes did not; his grandfather had seen the darkness brewing off in the distance, and knew what it meant.

This was like that, he thought. The conversation tonight had been gentle and warm, centered on her children, punctuated with knowing smiles. They had been comfortable in this place, and Elliot had felt safe basking in the sunny warmth of Olivia's presence, the summer afternoon familiarity of sharing a meal with her. He had not seen the storm clouds gathering until it was too late, and rain like a wall of doom was rushing in off the water, rushing towards him, towards them both.

He hadn't counted on it, on talking about the letter. Talking about it now, tonight, in Olivia's home, with her son playing nearby, her body still healing from Wheatley's attempt to - what? Hurt her? Kill her? - an attempt he would not have made had it not been obvious to anyone with eyes that Olivia mattered to Elliot. Olivia had been targeted, as Kathy had been targeted, because Elliot loved her. The one true love of his life, Wheatley had said, the fucking prick. Elliot had wanted to deny it, in the moment, but he had not been able to say you're full of shit, or I never loved anyone but Kathy; he had not been able to deny his love of Olivia, and maybe it was that, more than anything else, that proved the truth of that love. If he hadn't loved her, he could've said he didn't; if hadn't loved her, he wouldn't have known exactly who Wheatley was talking about. If he hadn't loved her, his wife never would've written that fucking letter.

That letter he'd put in Olivia's hands that day in the snow, that day when he'd watched Noah and Mia sledding happily, when he'd heard her child call her mommy, and felt his heart clench at the sound. It was a decision he'd made in an instant, the decision to give Olivia the letter, to let her go, to give her the closure she'd been needing for a decade, to let her be free to live her life without the ghost of him hanging over her shoulder; it was a decision he'd been regretting for months. If he could have taken it back Jesus he would have, because he knew that letter hurt her, and he didn't want her to let him go, not really. That day in the snow he'd been mourning Kathy and thinking he'd spend the rest of his life miserable to atone for his sins, the sins that had killed his wife, but the insanity of his initial grief had faded away, and the rational part of his mind knew he'd made a mistake.

And Olivia was hurt, as he'd known she would be, and Olivia was angry, as he felt she had every right to be, and he was scared, now, of what might come next, but a chance had been delivered to him, a chance to put things right.

"Liv," he said slowly, trying to find the words to explain where the letter had come from and how it had wound up in her hands. "I -"

"You know what?" she said suddenly, sharply. "I don't want to do this, actually. We've been having a nice night and I don't want to sit here and listen to you tell me that what we were to each other was never real."

But she was injured, and moving slow; if she'd been well he was certain she'd have been out of her chair already, but as it was she was hindered by her fucked up ankle, and so was still in her chair when he spoke the words to tear them both asunder.

"Kathy wrote the letter," he said quickly.

Olivia paled, her eyes gone wide, her lower lip pouted and trembling the way it did when she was confused and trying to process some incomprehensible piece of news, and into the silence of her dismay he spoke the truth.

"I spent days trying to write the letter and I couldn't find the words and Kathy offered to help. She…she dictated, I guess, and I wrote it all down."

"Elliot, what the fuck -"

"I couldn't stop her, Liv. She was saying all these things and she thought they were true, and she was my wife, and I couldn't look at her and tell her…I couldn't tell her that she was living a lie."

Every word had stabbed him like a knife, but Kathy was standing over his shoulder, watching, and if he'd refused to write the words she said she would have known. She would have known, in that moment, that the last two decades of their marriage had been built on a lie, would have known that Liv mattered more to Elliot than his own wife, would've known…she would have known. And they were only supposed to be in New York for a few days, and they were going to have fly back to Italy together, fly back to the son they were raising together, to the life that they had made together, and Elliot couldn't tell her. What good would it have done, he'd asked himself, telling Kathy the truth, telling Liv he loved her, when he'd been gone for ten years and Liv probably hated him for it and probably wanted nothing to do with him and he was still married? Letting her go, letting her go on hating him, letting her believe that door was firmly closed so she never had to think of him again, that felt kinder than declaring his devotion ten years too late.

And now Kathy was gone, and he was left looking at a woman he loved, who hated him.

"I'm too sober for this conversation," Liv grumbled, and a startled laugh exploded from the back of Elliot's throat. It made Noah look over at him, the sound loud enough to draw the boy's attention, but Elliot smiled at him, and Noah smiled back and then returned his attention to his toys.

"If you didn't mean it, why did you give it to me after…"

After Kathy died, when it didn't matter what she knew and what she didn't anymore. Liv was too kind to say it out loud.

"You made Captain," Elliot said. "You had kids. You looked good." You looked beautiful. "You looked happy. And I was fucking miserable, and I felt so damn guilty, and I thought…I thought you'd be better off without me, and the letter was…I thought I was saying goodbye."

"But here you are," she said, shaking her head.

Here he was, months later, sitting at her kitchen table, because even after she'd read that fucking letter - read it so many times she could quote parts of it back to him verbatim - she hadn't said goodbye to him. She hadn't walked away from him, like he'd thought she would. She hadn't moved on, hadn't left him to muddle through on his own. He had wounded her deeply, betrayed her, and she had still looked after him. Whatever that was, whatever goodness, whatever loyalty, whatever sense of duty had compelled her to stand beside him after he'd tried to throw her away, it was a beautiful thing, and he was grateful for it. Grateful to her, for being there for him. But he'd wondered about it, sometimes, what he'd do in her shoes, if the roles were reversed. Part of him thought he'd be petulant, would keep his distance and nurse his wounded heart in private, but part of him knew better. She was Olivia, and there was nothing she could do that would keep him from her, just as none of his casual cruelty had kept her away from him. They were bound, the pair of them. Partners. Always.

"Kathy didn't write all of the letter," he told her quietly. His heart was racing; Jesus, this was hard, being this honest with her, rolling over and showing her the soft underbelly of his soul, the place where he was most vulnerable, where one well-delivered blow would kill him. It was hard to sit there, with those dark eyes watching him, her beautiful face so close to hand, knowing that so much hung in the balance, but he'd told her once that he loved her already, and she had to know what he was going to say before he even said it.

She did.

"In a parallel universe - " she began, her voice very soft and very sad.

"It will always be you and I," he finished for her. Silence hung heavily between them for a moment, the air thick with tension, cluttered with all the things they felt and all the words they never said. It was, perhaps, the most honest he had ever been with her, or with himself.

"I wrote that."

"I should have known you did," she said. "Kathy had better grammar than you."

A grin tore across his face, quickly, reflexively, but it was gone as quickly as it came.

"I just…I wanted to give you a chance to move on, but I couldn't let it go without telling you the truth. Just once, I wanted to tell the truth."

It will always be you and me. It always should have been.

She was watching him thoughtfully, quietly, and he watched her right back. Watched the play of the light on her face, watched the way her lips pulled together. Watched her, and looked, looked at the heartbreaking beauty of her, looked and saw all the many ways her face had changed over the last few years, looked and saw that she was, still, the most beautiful goddamn woman he'd ever seen in his life. That she was, still, Olivia, brash and bold and strong and soft, on the inside, soft in the middle, soft despite all the ways life had wounded her, or perhaps because of them.

"I think you should go," she said finally, and his heart sank.

"Olivia -"

"I'm not angry," she said. "Actually, that's not true. I'm very fucking angry. But I…I get it, Elliot. I get it. I know why you did what you did."

She would know, he thought, because she knew him, and she knew them, was probably the only person alive who really understood what they meant to each other, what they had been through together, the ways they had been changed, for knowing one another. She was the only one - besides him - who would know, because what they were was not something that they could talk about, or explain in words. What this woman meant to him, that was a feeling beyond classification, his devotion to her so complete, so far beyond any of the usual words for relationships among people who weren't fucking each other, that it could not be defined. She understood, he understood, and they weren't gonna fucking talk about it any more.

"But I can't…you left."

She pronounced the word left with the same heartbroken devastation that someone else might use to discuss a murder. That was apt; he had committed murder, when he left. He'd killed the girl Jenna, and he'd killed them, killed the people they had been before that day and killed the thing they were together and killed the people they could have been if he had not taken their futures from them.

"And you're still not ok-"

He was a hell of a lot better than he had been, and part of him wanted to fight her on that score, but she knew him - better than he knew himself he thought, sometimes - and he trusted her judgment.

"And my kids are here -"

Noah was still playing with his Legos and Mia had shuffled off to bed and they were her kids, and she had to protect them, had to be strong for them, and he understood that.

"And I can't do this."

There were tears shining in the corners of her eyes, tears that he had put there. She was on the verge of tears, because of him. Because of everything he'd told her, because of all the ways he had confused her, because it hurt, sitting there, the nebulous unspoken thing that was their love for one another bleeding in the corner.

"I'll go," he said. He would go, because she'd asked him to. "But I don't want…I don't want this to be the end, Liv."

She looked at him steadily, her eyes bright and sad.

"I don't think this is ever going to end," she confessed.

He couldn't tell, in that moment, if she thought that was a good thing or not.