August 17, 2021

He found her after she left the interview with Myers, just like she'd known he would. He had an uncanny knack for that, for knowing where she was, where she was going, what she was thinking. In the old days it had felt like a gift, had felt so often as if they shared one brain, and she had spent so much of her life feeling alone and misunderstood that to find the one person who recognized her, who knew her, in a way that no one else had ever done, that had felt like a blessing. It might still be a blessing now, but she could not call it one, not when her heart was screaming and her head was spinning and she just wanted a moment, just one blessed fucking second to be alone, to breathe, to gather herself. All she needed was to be alone, but he would not leave her be; he had found her.

Found her, and confounded her, that's what he did, left her confused and reeling, his presence both a balm and a cause for alarm. Just looking at his face made her feel so lost, so uncertain, but he reassured her, too, and it shouldn't have been possible, really, for one person to make her feel so off-kilter and so safe at the same time, but he did, just the same.

"Liv," he said her name, warm and soft and aching with the hurt she knew he felt. Beneath his brash exterior, beneath his smart mouth and his broad shoulders and his bravado, Elliot Stabler was possessed of a gentle heart, and that heart was grieving for her, as desperate to find Mia as Olivia was herself. What's mine is yours, that used to be the way of things between them, victories and defeats and sandwiches shared equally between them, and she'd do anything for any one of his children and he'd do anything for hers and some things never changed.

"I just need a minute," she said, shocked to hear how hoarse, how rough her own voice sounded. "Just...give me a minute, please."

If he'd been Nick or Amanda or Fin or one of the new kids, he would have left her then. Would have heard her telling him what she needed, would have heeded her request, would have trusted her to know what was best for herself, would have respected her wishes, even if they disagreed.

But he wasn't Nick, or Amanda, or Fin, or one of the new kids. He was Elliot, and he knew better.

"I know that can't have been easy, being on that side of an interview," he said, walking towards her, not away, closing the distance between them slowly, steadily, his blue eyes bright and intense and focused on her face, shining with concern. He never let her get away with that I'm fine bullshit; he always knew when she wasn't, and he wouldn't let her hide from him, even when she wanted to.

"You have no idea -" she started to say, shaking with fury now; he'd given her the one thing she needed most, a place to direct her anger, someone to vent all of her frustrations on, someone who could bear the brunt of her misplaced rage, her feelings of helplessness, her lashing out, and not only come through unscathed, but think no less of her as a result of it. That was one thing he'd done for her, one thing no one else had ever given her; she could be angry, with him, and he was not afraid, and he was not cowed, and he would not judge her for it. They were too much the same, and he understood.

"You think I didn't have to sit there talking to a detective about my current operations and who might have wanted to kill my wife on account of me? I know how it feels, Liv. You feel like you're being blamed for this. Like it's your fault. Like if you weren't on the job Mia would be safe."

Part of her wanted, very much, to hit him, but it was only because he was right. He was absolutely right, because guilt was swirling through her stomach like a tornado made of knives, because she was blaming herself, because she was wondering even if now if the job was worth the price she had to pay, worth the havoc it had wrought on her family. And he had asked himself those same questions, wrestled with the same guilt, but Kathy had died and a sob lodged itself in the back of her throat at the very thought. No, the job was not worth her daughter's life. Nothing would be.

"You're not responsible," he told her earnestly, ducking his head so that she was forced to look him in the eye. "The person who took her, he's the only one to blame."

"What makes you think it's Wheatley?" she asked him in a ragged voice. That was the question she kept coming back to; her gut told her that he was right and Myers seemed to agree, and the Missing Persons team was working with Bell and the OCCB crew on tracking the bastard down, and everybody was moving full steam ahead as if Wheatley was the obvious culprit, and she'd said some bullshit to Myers about Wheatley's possible motivations but she didn't know, really. Didn't know why she felt so certain that Wheatley was behind it all, and didn't know really why he'd want to be.

"Liv-"

"You must be pretty sure, because Bell is backing you up. If it was just you everybody on this investigation would say you just have a grudge against the son of a bitch -" Olivia probably would have said that herself, except - "but it's not just you. Bell thinks he's good for it, too. What the fuck is going on, Elliot?"

For the first time since he walked into her line of sight Elliot looked away, ducked his gaze, ran his hand over the back of his head the way he did when he got anxious now, a nervous tick he'd picked up in the days after the car bomb that he couldn't seem to control. He'd never done that, before. Olivia would've remembered.

"He's angry with me," Elliot confessed. "It's personal. More personal, I guess. I…I fucked up, Liv. I got close to Wheatley's ex. Maybe a little too close. That's all over now -"

That hardly comforted her. It took her like a punch to the gut, the idea of Elliot getting too close to the ex wife of the man who'd murdered Kathy. What the fuck had Elliot been doing with that woman? Why had he gone to her, why had he even wanted to, when he had his family to worry about, when Olivia was right there, holding out her hand to him? It stoked the flames of her anger, that confession, and she wanted to shout at him, wanted to tell him how fucking stupid he was, wanted to accuse him of betraying Kathy - because she could hardly accuse him of betraying her, when she had no claim over him, no matter how differently she might feel in her heart - but he just barreled on ahead, heedless of the hornet's nest he'd just kicked.

"Wheatley feels…possessive of her. The ex. Angela. She's…he called her the love of his life. And he knows about me and…me and her. I got her to agree to testify against him in the car bombing case, and he feels like I drove a wedge between them."

"None of this - " none of this stupidity, she wanted to say - "explains why he'd take my fucking child."

"Angela found out that Wheatley was responsible for killing her son. Her son from her first marriage, not his by blood. Her loyalty to her child went deeper than her loyalty to him. I think he wants you to blame me for losing a child."

She did slap him, then. It wasn't something she thought about, wasn't a conscious decision she'd made, but the very suggestion that she could lose Mia now made her lose all restraint, and she lashed out him, not because it was his fault - because it wasn't, not really, even if he was fucking stupid, even if he had been out doing whatever it was he had been doing with Angela Wheatley while Olivia was at home, alone and worried about him - but because he was there, because he was the closest thing she could reach.

He did not swear when she struck him, did not strike back; he stumbled back a pace and rubbed his hand gingerly across his cheek and his eyes blazed at her but he did not condemn her for hitting him. And he wasn't gonna; he understood. He knew.

For her part Olivia was breathing like a bellows, her thoughts racing, chaotic and unfathomable; what if he was right? What if Wheatley meant for Mia to die, as his Angela's child had died, all for the sake of some stupid macho fucking game he was playing with Elliot?

"He knows," Elliot said then, heavily. "He knows, and Bell heard him say it."

"Heard him say what, Elliot?" Olivia demanded. "Whatever the fuck it is you know, that Bell knows, that Richard fucking Wheatley knows, I wanna know it, too. What the fuck did he say, Elliot?"

"He said that you're the one true love of my life," Elliot told her grimly. "And he was goddamn right about that."

It was too much. It was too fucking much, to hear those words from his lips, spoken with such certainty, to hear him confess that the thing she'd always quietly longed for, always quietly feared, was true. She spun away from him, feeling dangerously close to throwing up. For more than two decades now she had been careful, so fucking careful, not to think about it. Not to think about Elliot and love in the same sentence, not to examine her feelings too closely, not to give them a name, because she had known that to name the warmth she felt when she was near him for what it was would be to give it the power to destroy her. For more than two decades now she had been telling herself, over and over, that she could not love him, that he was someone else's husband, that he was not hers to love and would not have wanted her anyway, not when he had a wife he adored, a wife who had given him five children and a home and everything Olivia could not. For more than two decades she had refused to even consider the possibility that she might love him, safe and sorrowful in the knowledge that he would never love her himself, and now he'd just gone and said it. In true Elliot fashion he had not done the thing halfway; the one true love my life, he'd said. Not a blurted out confession in an impersonal hotel in a moment of emotional turmoil; he had looked her in the eyes, steady and sober, and said the one true love my life.

Elliot loved her, the way a small, fragile piece of her heart had always desperately hoped he would. Elliot loved her, and that love might just be the thing that killed her child.

In a daze she stumbled away from him, and she'd thought maybe he'd be smart enough to let her go, smart enough to hang back this time, smart enough to give her a chance to process what he'd just said, but evidently he was pretty fucking stupid, this man she loved, this man who loved her, because he chased after her, wrapped one hand tight around her arm and stopped her in her tracks, and the sudden impediment to her momentum had her spinning on her heel to face him in a moment.

"We're gonna catch this bastard, Liv," he said heatedly, his grip on her arm so tight she knew he was leaving bruises in the shape of his fingers on her skin. "We're gonna catch him, and we're gonna find Mia. We're gonna find her."

We're gonna find her, he kept saying, not we're gonna bring her home safe, because he was many things, but he was an SVU detective first and foremost, and he knew that he could not make such a promise, no matter how badly he might want to.

"And I'm not asking for anything, and I know you might hate me for this, and for everything else, and that's your right and I'm not gonna try to change your mind. But whatever happens next, however you feel about me, I'm never gonna stop loving you, Liv. I tried for ten fucking years and it didn't work and I'm tired of pretending. I love you."

And what the fuck was she supposed to say to that? What was she supposed to say to him, when he was looking at her so desperately, when he was passionately promising her everything she'd ever wanted from him, when his promises came at a cost she could not bear to pay?

She was spared the agony of having to answer him, for at that moment Brian came tearing into view, racing around the corner of the van with her name on his lips. Whatever was happening here between her and Elliot it was going to have to wait; Brian had news, and she desperately needed to hear it.