"Liv, wait!" Elliot followed after her.
"Not now Elliot." She kept walking away, not sure where she was actually going. Tears forced their way from the corner of her eyes.
He caught her hand. "Please talk to me."
"I cant!" She yelled. "You have no idea." She started seething. "You have no idea what hell I went through or how it affects every single aspect of my life! And now," she pushed her hand through her hair, "he wants the world to think I asked for it!" She paced back and forth.
He grasped her elbow to slow her pacing. "No one will believe that for a second. Look at you. Look at him. The jury's not stupid."
She shook her head and continued her spiral. "Juries are stupid. And he's believable you know? Everyone likes to believe the NYPD persecutes offenders."
She continued, "You don't know Elliot. Things have changed."
"I don't know because you won't talk to me!" His volume increased as the tension in the conversation kept rising. "I can't know anything unless you tell me!"
"If you were here you would know everything, hell, if you were here we probably wouldn't be here!" She matched his volume, and motioned around the courthouse.
They were starting to make a scene. Random passersby tried to avert their eyes, but their argument was impossible to miss. He grabbed her arm and pulled her around the corner away from the curious stares. He glanced around and found an empty office. He pulled her inside.
"I'm sorry!" He felt frustration rising. "Do you think I wanted to leave? I promise it wasn't what I wanted."
"But you did leave Elliot! One day you were here and the next day it was like you never existed!" She wiped away angry tears, "I had to pack up your goddamn desk! Do you have any idea how hard that was for me?"
His own anger and guilt flared, "Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I wanted to leave my whole life?" He gulped back his rising emotion. "Do you think I wanted to leave you?" His eyes dropped.
She answered a little softer, "I don't know. You were the only family I had El. Then you were gone. I had nothing. No one." She tried to pinch back her tears. "And then this happened." She motioned back towards the courtroom. "I thought I was going to die, and the only person I wanted to see again was you! Even after you left me, after you hurt me, I still pathetically wanted you. And the worst part was," she gulped back more tears, "I obviously wasn't as important to you as you were to me" She wrapped her arms around herself and let the tears fall.
Elliot felt like someone had stabbed him in the chest. In one swift movement he gathered her shaking frame into his arms. "I'm so so sorry." He whispered into her hair. "I wish I could take it all back. I wish…" his voice tapered off. Her body continued to shake while she cried, and he kept his arms tightly around her. "It's not true."
Her brown eyes lifted to his, "What's not true?"
He swallowed back the lump in his throat. "You said you weren't important to me. You have to know that is absolutely not true. You were too important to me. More than you should have was part of the problem. I had to choose. Stay, and wreck my family, or leave. I didn't have any good choices. But I realize running away from it was wrong. I was wrong."
Her eyes, filled with tears, still fixated on his. Begging, pleading, for some sort of comfort. Heaven knows it was wrong, but he couldn't help giving her what she needed. She was Liv, after all, and he could never deny her anything she asked for.
He kissed her. Tentatively at first, but it rapidly became more insistent. She clung to his shirt, fisting the fabric. She leaned further into him, kissing him hard. All the pain, emotion, and fear communicated through her lips on his. The agony of this day gave way to the passion and desire they had lived with for over a decade.
He knew he should stop, but all sense left him when she pressed into him harder, pressing her tongue into his mouth. He was powerless to deny her. He groaned in response, lifting her, walking back until her back pressed up against the wall. He kissed her deeper and harder, and she pulled him closer, eventually wrapping one leg around him. He slid his hands down her back, grabbing her ass and lifting her to the office desk a couple steps away. His hands wandered until slipped beneath the hem of her shirt, pressing into the skin of her stomach.
Something told him he should stop, that this wasn't the time or the way this should happen, but the fire burning within him couldn't be tamed. Liv started working on the buttons of his shirt until suddenly she stopped. She pressed her palms against his chest, lightly pushing him away.
He took a step back stunned. Their heavy breathing echoing through the now silent office.
Elliot instantly flooded with guilt and shame. "Liv, I …"
She cut him off with a soft whisper. "We can't." She covered her mouth trying to fight back a sob.
He took a step towards her and reached for her hand. "I know." He admitted. The truth stung, while he was here for her, nothing had really changed. He was still married. He would still go back to his wife, and this encounter would only serve as a painful reminder of what could have been.
He pulled her back into his embrace and she cried some more. He hated himself for this, all this pain. First by leaving her, and the resulting torture she endured. And now by kissing her, holding her in the way he just had, fully knowing he was going to leave again.
He pulled back slightly to cup her face in his hand. She was so damn beautiful. His world. His soul mate. In another place, in a parallel universe, they would be able to be whatever they wanted. However now, the cruelty of fate never felt more painful.
