August 17, 2021
I don't remember which one it is, Olivia thought despondently, staring out at the labyrinth of abandoned warehouses and loading docks stretching out in front of her. It had been seven years; it had only been seven years, since that day in the silo with Lewis, and she'd been so certain she'd know the building on sight, so absolutely positive that she could never, ever forget it, but looking now, she couldn't quite tell.
"What?" Elliot asked, and she turned towards him sharply, disturbed to find that she'd spoken aloud.
That's what this whole thing was, she thought. Fucking disturbing. Her child taken from her, her child in danger because of Olivia, because of the work Olivia did, because of the man who loved Olivia. Taken here, to the place where both their lives had almost ended once before, Mia's and Olivia's. Why did it have to be here?
Elliot was looking at her expectantly, and she knew him, knew he was like a fucking dog with a bone, knew he'd never let her comment go unaddressed, and it wasn't like there was anywhere for her to go to escape him. They were hiding out, parked on a ridge above the line of warehouses, waiting for word from Jet's drone guy, waiting for the signal, waiting for the moment to come when they must decide their course of action, and seal their fate. They were waiting, and they were probably about to die, and really, Olivia thought, if she couldn't be honest with him now, when would she be? Ayanna was still in the car; it was just the two of them, alone on the gravel. It felt to her as if they were the only two people left in the world.
"He brought me here," Olivia said. "To one of these buildings. The second time he took me, he brought me here. And I thought I remembered everything. I thought I remembered every detail. But I can't remember which building we were in."
Funny, she thought, the things that stuck with her. She couldn't recall much about the exterior of the building, just the blank, cement color of the walls and the way Lewis threaded her through winding corridors and crumbling doorways, the way he was so, so sure of his steps, and her stumbling along blind beside him. She remembered the rough edges of the table beneath her palms; the table left splinters in her hands. She remembered the way that fucker smelled, and the taste of his blood on her lips.
"Who, Liv? Who took you?"
It was hard to fathom, the fact that he didn't know. Olivia had skirted around the edges of this wound before, had told Elliot some things happened that brought her and Brian closer together, told Elliot some things happened while she was pregnant with Mia that made her fear for her baby's life, told Elliot something happened in a warehouse by the canal, but she hadn't really told him anything at all. The prospect of telling him now was untenable; it was bad enough, standing here again, smelling this place, feeling the phantom touch of Lewis's hands on her wrists, her shoulders, her tits. She did not want to give Elliot a blow-by-blow account of that day's events, and she damn sure didn't want to speak Lewis's name aloud. But she was pretty sure they were both about to die, and she didn't want him to die pissed off at her for being withholding.
"His name was William Lewis," she said. "He was…he was a monster, El. He was like nothing I've ever seen." And Elliot, he hadn't seen everything she'd seen, but he'd seen enough to know what that meant. "He'd kidnapped a little girl. It's funny. Her name was Amelia, too."
They hadn't done that on purpose, Liv and Brian. She hadn't really put it together until her Amelia was a few months old. Bri wanted to call their baby Mia, and Liv had just enough of a snobbish streak in her to refuse to give her child a nickname instead of a proper one, and so she'd insisted on Amelia, and they hadn't either of them been thinking about little Amelia from the warehouse. Their baby had always been Mia, and Liv had been trying, so fucking hard, to put Lewis behind her, to focus on the future, and by the time she'd realized what she'd done it was too late; Mia was Mia, and there would be no changing it.
"Liv-"
She'd already told Elliot that part, that there had been a child, that Lewis had used the girl as bait, that she had fallen for it. She hadn't told him the rest yet. She was gonna, though.
"I was pregnant," she said. "I never should have fucking done it. I loved my baby so much, and I wanted to keep her safe, but that little girl was someone's baby, too. And he was…he was my responsibility."
"He was your dragon to slay," Elliot said grimly, as if he understood. If anyone would understand, she thought, it would be him.
"Yeah. I didn't, though. The dragon shot himself right in front of my fucking face. Left me just standing there with my legs tied to that fucking table."
"Jesus Christ," Elliot choked. She could only imagine what he was thinking, what he was feeling; she was refusing to look at him, choosing instead to stare out at the warehouses, because somehow that felt safer than looking him in the eye, so she couldn't see his expression, but she could imagine. She knew him; she knew what darkness his mind would conjure.
"We should've died that day, El," she said. "Me and Mia. There's no…there's no reason for it. For what he did. We should be dead. Maybe it's right that it's all gonna end here. Maybe we've just been living on borrowed time."
It happened so fucking fast; Elliot spun on his heel, so quickly he damn near slipped on the gravel, caught her with both of his hands clenched tight around her upper arms, dragging her into the bulk of his body, his grip so fierce he'd no doubt leave bruises on her skin, his eyes bright and shining in the sunlight, so captivating she could not look away, even if she wanted to.
"Bullshit," he said, in a voice so thick with rage and worry it bordered on the ferocious. "You deserve a life, Olivia. You deserve your life. You don't owe anybody a goddamn thing and I'm not gonna stand here and listen to you talk about yourself like that. You…you deserve the whole goddamn world, Liv, and Mia does, too, and we are all walking out of here together."
That was a promise he couldn't keep, and they both knew it. There were no guarantees, here; Mia might not even be in the building, or she might be dead already, or Wheatley might blow the whole thing sky high the second Elliot and Olivia opened the back door. He thought she deserved her life, but she was halfway convinced that life was already over. At least she didn't have to worry about Noah; Brian could be so childish but he stood up when it counted, and he loved the kids, and he'd do anything for Noah. She could not save her daughter, but at least her son would be spared.
And besides, she thought, a part of her had always kind of believed it would end this way. Liv and El, in a hail of bullets somewhere, lying bloody and broken on their backs on a dingy floor, their hands outstretched towards one another. Maybe that's why she hadn't died that day in the warehouse. Maybe the universe was just waiting for her and Elliot to be together again, so they could meet the end that had always been coming for them.
She didn't say any of that to him, though. Deep down, he knew it, too. It will always be you and I, she thought. Ain't that the goddamn truth.
"You really do love me, don't you?" she said instead, looking up into his face, trying to memorize the way he looked right now, righteous and strong and burning alive with love for her. For her. She'd always felt like no one had ever really loved her as deep or as strong as she longed for, but that wasn't true; Elliot had always loved her, loved her the way she'd always hoped somebody would. It was just that no one else had ever loved her the way he did. And here, at the end of everything, she wasn't afraid of that love anymore.
"I do," he said.
Like a marriage vow, she thought.
"I do," she answered, and lifted herself up onto her toes, brushed her lips against his once, gently, and then stepped away.
He was watching her, something like awe, something like fear in his eyes, but before he could say anything else the car door opened behind them, and they both spun around, watching Ayanna slide out from behind the wheel, eager to hear what she had to say.
"What've we got?" Elliot demanded roughly, coming to stand next to Olivia, his shoulder brushing against hers comfortingly.
"Jet's guy says there are heat signatures scattered around the east side of the building. Looks like two people on the first floor, maybe five or six upstairs."
"He wouldn't leave seven guys in that building if there was nothing there," Olivia said, her heart racing now. One guy, they might have assumed that was a trap, just bait to lure them here. Two, even. But seven? Two on lookout downstairs, four or five upstairs - if one of those six heat signatures was Mia, that meant five guys - keeping watch? There was something in that building.
"Explosives?" Elliot asked tersely.
"No indications from the drones," Ayanna said. "But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just 'cause we didn't pick it up doesn't mean it's not there."
"Is Wheatley the type to kill six or seven of his own guys just to get one over on you?" Olivia asked Elliot desperately. Surely even Wheatley wouldn't be that stupid, she thought. He'd have a hell of a time getting anyone else to ever work with him again after a stunt like that. The guy had spent most of the last few months under investigation, and now that the charges had come down his security must have been stretched pretty thin. He'd made bail, cut a deal with the Feds for most of the charges, but even so, he was already unattractive as an employer, and he'd burned a hell of a lot of bridges.
"I don't know," Elliot said, but his eyes said yes.
"I put in a call to ESU," Ayanna said. "They're scrambling a team. We wait here for backup, we encircle the building, we send the bomb squad in -"
"You do that and my daughter is dead," Olivia snapped, hysteria winding its way up the back of her throat. "They'll kill her and try to run." If they haven't killed her already. "There may be some way out of this place we don't know about. We can't just mount a charge at these guys."
"But a small team, coming in under the radar, we might get the drop on them," Elliot continued for her. "The two guys on the first floor, if we can take them out without firing a shot the guys upstairs won't even know we're there. Jet said she can get us in without being spotted."
"You're both insane," Ayanna declared.
She's not wrong, Olivia thought wildly.
"We can't ask you to go, Sarge," Elliot said. "I'll call Jet. I've got my earpiece, she can walk us through it. You can organize the ESU response from here. But we're going."
We can't ask you to go, he said. We. Like there was no question, like he knew already that Olivia's hands were itching for her gun, that her feet were pointed towards the warehouse, that she'd decided in her heart that she was going in, no matter what Ayanna said. Like he knew all that, and he was going with her, because where one of them went, the other followed. That was as it should be.
It will always be you and I.
"You really are insane," Ayanna said, "if you think I'm letting you go in there without me."
"Ayanna," Olivia breathed her name. It was a tremendous sacrifice, too much for Olivia to ask of her. It was too much to ask of Elliot, too, but Olivia knew his mind was made up already, and selfishly she wanted him with her. She wanted to die holding his hand. Ayanna, though, Ayanna wasn't part of this, didn't owe either of them a fucking thing, was risking her whole career and her entire life to help two people who were out of their minds with grief.
"I'm going," Ayanna said grimly. "Guns out, earpieces in. I'll call Jet."
This is it, Olivia thought. One way or another, this nightmare was about to end. In that moment she prayed, prayed for Elliot's safety, for Ayanna's, prayed with all her might that they would find Mia alive, that they would bring her home safe. She prayed so fervently her lips moved in silent recitation, and beside her Elliot's lips were moving, too. They were saying their prayers, and delivering themselves into the uncertain mercy of God's hands. There would be no turning back.
