Very little about his current predicament made sense to Elliot - stuck in a cabin in the woods; hiding from a renegade angel; kissing Olivia and then regretting it, two things that had always seemed equally unlikely to him - but one thing that did make sense to him was lunch. Olivia had spent most of the morning holed up in the back bedroom on the phone with her nephilim contacts and so Elliot had spent most of the morning alone in the front room with McKenna, trying to keep the poor thing from going stir crazy and failing rather spectacularly. They'd left his apartment in a hurry, brought a few things to keep her occupied but certainly not enough, and she kept asking to play with his phone and he was almost stressed out enough to let her, but now it was getting close to noon and he figured that, angels or no, that meant lunch time.
So he scooped McKenna up and carried her into the kitchen, sat her down at the table and listened to her singing a little nonsense song to herself while he heated up enough spaghettios to feed all three of them. Maybe Liv wasn't hungry, maybe she intended to stay in the back bedroom all afternoon, but whatever she wanted Elliot figured she'd need to eat eventually, and he couldn't seem to make her happy but he could make sure she was fed.
The beeping of the microwave must have caught her attention; she came drifting into the kitchen while he was burning his fingers on the third bowl, while McKenna was insisting too hot, too hot.
"Just wait a minute, sweetheart," Elliot told the girl, though his eyes were locked on Liv. "Let it cool down."
Maybe that's what Liv had been doing, avoiding him all morning. Maybe she'd been trying to let things cool down between them before she faced him again. She was just standing in the doorway, tapping her phone against her chin and watching him thoughtfully, sadly, and he found himself wishing, not for the first time, that he could read her mind.
"I made you some, too," he said, pointing to the bowl at the head of the table, just waiting for her.
"Thanks," she said faintly, and then she drifted across the kitchen, ran her hand gently over McKenna's head once in greeting and settled herself in the empty chair, An awful sort of tension seemed to follow in her wake; he could feel it, every muscle and tendon in his body tightening, something like fear constricting his lungs.
He couldn't live like this. Yeah, maybe he'd been foolish to push her; maybe it had been fucking stupid of him to try to kiss her when they were running for their lives, when he'd just announced his intention to leave the department for good, when Liv's whole world was turned upside down, and he'd take responsibility for that and he'd make his apologies, but Christ, he couldn't do this. He couldn't live without her.
"Gotta potty," McKenna announced cheerfully to no one in particular, already scrambling down off her chair.
"I'll go with you," Olivia said, and damn it, Elliot thought; she really was trying to avoid him.
"Do it myself," McKenna insisted.
"Are you sure?" Olivia didn't sound too sure, but McKenna was four years old, and potty trained, and had been doing a pretty good job on her own so far. It looked to him like Liv was just searching for any excuse not to be alone with him.
"Do it myself," McKenna said again, and then she danced away, and Elliot was left standing by the counter, looking at Olivia, who seemed forlorn, somehow, helpless, somehow, in a way she ordinarily never was.
He waited until he heard the bathroom door close before he spoke.
"Liv," he started to say, but she looked away from him and shoveled a spoonful of spaghettios into her mouth like a child trying to avoid having to answer an unpleasant question, and Jesus, that made him mad. If nothing else he was her partner, and they were supposed to do these things, the hard things, together.
"How long you gonna be mad at me this time?" he demanded, stomping across the kitchen and plopping down in the chair across from her. He was so out of sorts he'd left his lunch sitting on the counter, but he wasn't gonna go back for it now; he wanted to talk to her more than he wanted to eat. He was thinking about Gitano, about coming into work the next Monday and finding out that Liv was gone, that she'd just up and left him with no word, that she'd run away rather than speak to him. She'd run, and made herself a little home at Computer Crimes, and he'd often wondered if she'd have come back on her own if their paths hadn't crossed. If he hadn't blown up at Blaine, if he hadn't needed her help with that case, would she just have carried on with her new life? Had she been happier there, without him? And why the fuck had she done it, just left him after he told her that she was all he had, after he'd told her he couldn't stand to lose her? Maybe that was why she'd left, after all; maybe she'd known, even then, that they were always headed for this. For ruin.
"You think I'm mad at you?" she asked around a mouthful of pasta, swallowed hard and knitted her brow together in confusion.
"What am I supposed to think?" he fired back. "You've been avoiding me all day."
It was only noon, and it had been less than eight hours since the disastrous kiss, but that short span of time felt like forever to him; even an hour was too long to endure a pouting and distant Olivia, and no one had ever accused him of being patient.
"Jesus, Elliot, not everything's about you," she snapped, twirling her spoon through her cheap canned pasta moodily.
That did make him wonder; had she met Jesus? How many theological questions could she answer, on account of having been there? A conversation for another time perhaps; he was preoccupied with more immediate concerns.
"I made a mistake, all right?" he said. "I fucked up, but how long are you gonna punish me for-"
"You think it was a mistake?" she asked in a small voice. Six little words that set his head spinning.
"I…"
Wait, he thought. Was it a mistake?
"I kissed you," he said slowly, and to his surprise she actually blushed. "And you didn't want me to-"
"I wanted you to," she confessed.
"I gotta tell you, Liv, I'm kinda getting mixed signals here."
"Sorry," she said. She was sorry, but she also wasn't explaining, wouldn't even look him in the eye, and he ran his hand over the back of his head, trying to keep a grip on his frustration. Christ, he loved her, but she was the most difficult woman he'd ever met in his entire life. Reticent, and quick to run, and allergic to talking about her feelings. He was self-aware enough to admit that he wasn't the easiest person to talk to, either; he understood why she found it so difficult to open up. It was something they shared in common. They'd always been better at talking around things than facing them head on, but he kinda felt like they didn't have a choice. If they weren't honest with each other now, he might lose her for good. One of them was going to have be brave enough to crack their heart open first; he'd done that already, in the bedroom in the small hours of the morning with his hand on her arm and his heart on his sleeve, but she was still retreating, and he had to stop her, somehow.
"Just…would you just talk to me, Liv?"
"I already told you," she said, suddenly impatient. "It doesn't matter what I want, it only matters what we are, and we're never gonna work."
"Bullshit," he said. "That's bullshit, and you know it. We've got a chance here, Liv. We don't have to waste any more time."
That made her look at him strangely, made tears gather in the corners of her eyes, and he couldn't understand why, when he'd only thought to encourage her.
"We've wasted so much time already," she told him sadly, and then scrubbed her hands across her face.
"I'm not mad at you," she continued while he watched her, while he asked himself what it was gonna take to change her mind, while he began to wonder if maybe nothing ever could.
"And I don't want you to beat yourself up over…that," she added. She couldn't even say it out loud, that he'd kissed her. "But things are the way they are and they're not gonna change. So can we just…can we just work together?"
He wanted to say no. He wanted to stand up from the table and collect his lunch and storm off to the bedroom, lock himself inside there and hide out like she'd done. But that would've been childish, he figured, and as much as a part of him wanted to throw a tantrum a bigger part of him didn't want to be separated from her, and so he stayed.
"Fine," he said. "What did you find out this morning?"
Her shoulders relaxed, just a little; work was always safer ground, for them.
"There have been six sightings of the angel who calls himself Michael. Six visitations, and six babies born afterward."
Elliot's stomach lurched unpleasantly; there were six nephilim children out there? Five more little kids just like McKenna? Where were they, he wondered, and how were their parents keeping them safe? Were their parents keeping them safe?
"McKenna is the oldest one," Olivia continued. "We think he decided to go after her first."
"Go after her why?"
That was the question, wasn't it? What did Michael want with her? They were operating under the assumption that Michael was McKenna's father, but if he was, if he'd father those kids, what did he mean to do with all those angel babies?
"We can't say for sure," Olivia said, not that Elliot had really been expecting an answer. "Marcus thinks…Marcus thinks maybe Michael left the mothers to deal with the infant stage, teach the kids to walk and talk and use the bathroom on their own, and now that McKenna is old enough to do those things he'll take her and raise her up the way he wants. Same with the other kids. One angel on his own can only do so much; if he's got a whole…team of them, maybe he thinks he can use them."
"Like an army," Elliot said slowly.
"Yeah."
An army of soldiers who could not be killed - or at least, could not be killed so easily as a human - raised to do the bidding of the kind of man - angel, whatever - who raped and killed a woman just for standing in his way. It was a terrible thing to think about.
"Heaven won't have him, after what he's done, and even in hell he would be bound to do someone else's bidding. He may…he may want Earth to himself."
"You can't possibly be serious."
That was the kind of shit that happened in movies. The realm of fantasy books; comic books, even. A supernatural being, more powerful than any man, with an army of soldiers at his back, taking over the whole world. This theory Olivia was spinning, it wasn't the sort of thing people usually talked about in all sincerity over bowls of spaghettios, but her eyes told him that she believed it; her eyes were full of fear.
"We don't know," she said again. "But if he just wanted to get rid of the kids why'd he wait until now? Why keep coming back after McKenna? It feels like…he wants them for something. For some purpose. He needs them."
"So maybe he won't kill her, if he turns up here." It was a feeble hope, but one Elliot clung to with both hands.
"I don't know. He's had six kids that we know about already. He may just decide to get rid of all three of us, and go find some other women."
"All done!" a little voice called out from the hallway, and Elliot and Olivia both jumped, trying to hide the fear in their expressions as McKenna came back into view, grinning and sweet. She was a precious little thing, and she didn't need to hear this, Elliot thought. She didn't need to know that her father was a monster, that the path laid before her was shrouded in darkness. That just made him think about Olivia, though, about the child she had been, however long ago; he watched McKenna climb up into Olivia's lap, watched Olivia cradle the girl close, and wondered if Olivia's mother, whoever she had been, had ever treated her daughter so gently. He hoped to God she had.