The Golden Dragon, like the Woo Hop that Elliot knew, was not a white tablecloth, dine-in, Peking duck kind of establishment. It was set up for takeout and delivery, with a counter in front and a few red vinyl booths tucked off to the side. The tabletops were sticky and no one else was eating in, but that didn't seem to bother Olivia much. She called the girl behind the counter by name, and ordered a bottle of Corona to go with her General Tso's, and he would've said it all felt so familiar, if her eyes had not seemed so guarded. Since Christmas they'd been getting closer, him and Liv, and she smiled at him more openly now, but it wasn't Liv sitting across the table from him.

It was Olivia, and though they bore the same face, though their hair, their eyes, the line of their shoulders, the dip of their waists were the same, she was not Liv.

She'd ordered a beer for him, too, and he sipped it slowly, used drinking it as an excuse not to talk, and just looked at her instead, feeling almost as if he were seeing her for the very first time.

That night, the night the car blew up with Kathy inside it, the night he got his first look at Liv after ten long years in the glare of the lights spinning across the puddles on the pavement, that had felt like this, a little. The familiar made new, his eyes searching for each inconsistency. There were fewer now than there had been that night; this face was the same one he'd last seen in the diner in Ohio, but those eyes…those eyes did not love him.

Still, though, she was pretty. So goddamn pretty, and he could look at this Olivia, and see her in a way he wasn't able to do with his Liv. Or hadn't been able to, not yet. They'd been getting there, before…before she died.

"You got something to say?" Olivia asked him primly, and he gave his head a little shake, tried to focus, tried not to think about the way it felt, Liv's body heaving beneath his hands as she died.

"Does this mean you believe me?" he asked, swinging his beer bottle in a gesture that encompassed the table, the restaurant, the two of them sitting together when there was no reason, as far as he could see, for her to take this risk, take a lunatic out for beers and Chinese. His Liv never would've done that, he was pretty sure, but his Liv had a child at home to worry about, and this Olivia didn't seem to have much of anything at all.

"Why, because you were right about my Chinese order?" she scoffed.

"I was right about some other things, too, I think."

"Yeah, maybe you were." She said it quietly, looked away, and he didn't quite know what to make of that.

"You said…how did you know, about what happened when I was a kid? Everything else, maybe you hacked my phone or something, but how would you know about that?"

So she still didn't believe him, then. Or maybe she did; if she really thought he was some nutjob who'd hacked her phone, been stalking her, she wouldn't have consented to be alone with him, would she?

"Liv told me," he said with a shrug. "We were working some case, a seventeen year old who'd been sleeping with an older man. She told me she'd been in love with an older man when she was a kid."

And he'd never, ever forgotten it, because Liv had talked about that time in her life like she actually believed they'd been equals, her and whatever prick took advantage of her when she was too young to know better, and he'd been telling himself for more than twenty years now that if he ever met the son of a bitch who did that to her he'd tear the asshole limb from limb.

"Did you tell her she was an idiot?" Olivia asked him, something dark and self-deprecating twisting at the corners of her mouth.

A waitress came walking out with their dinner, and they both fell silent, waiting for her to leave, fiddling with soy sauce and chopsticks. Liv always used chopsticks, and Olivia was no different.

"I didn't tell her that," Elliot said. "Whatever happened, I don't think she's the one to blame, and I didn't wanna…I guess I didn't wanna make her feel like shit about it. It was done. I'd kill him, though, if I ever got the chance."

"If your world is anything like mine…you did her a favor. She probably felt guilty enough without you making it worse."

And that surprised him, her willingness to be so candid with him. To admit not only that he had been right about this sordid piece of her past, but to admit to the shame of it, too. Shame wasn't something he wanted her to feel, though, not with him.

"So you do believe me, then," he said, grinning at her, changing the subject and trying to make her smile. It almost worked.

"I think you're a whackjob," she said easily. "But I'm having a hard time coming up with a better explanation."

"Fingerprints match," Elliot said around a mouthful of sesame chicken. Though he'd never admit it out loud, he thought Golden Dragon did a better job of it than Woo Hop.

"And they'd be hard as hell to fake," she said. "And I don't know why you'd go to all the trouble. If you wanted to take over Stabler's life you'd be asking more about his kids, his wife. If you wanted to get to me there are a million better ways to do it. This is just…fucking weird."

"You're telling me," he said.

"Why don't you? Want to know about your family, I mean?"

He spun his chopsticks through his fried rice a few times, gave up, reached for a fork instead, and tried to find the words to answer her question.

" 'cause they're not my family, I guess," he said finally. "My wife is dead, and my kids are back in the world I left behind. This version of 'em…I don't know their story, and they've just been told their father's dead. It'd only hurt them if I turned up now, and I don't want to do that to 'em."

"Isn't there a part of you that wants to see your wife, though? You said she died, don't you miss her?"

"Would you want to see your husband again?"

Christ, that felt strange to say, strange to even imagine, Olivia with a husband. Her face fell, and she turned away, caught the waitress's attention and asked for another beer, and that was strange, too, strange how quick she'd drunk the first one, strange that she'd be willing to have a second so close behind while she was sitting with a man she did not know. Liv was strictly a one drink at dinner kinda girl, more if they were out at the bar, but even at Fin's wedding she'd only had two glasses of wine all night long.

"Yeah," she said softly. "Yeah, I'd want to see him again. I told him…I told him I wished we'd had more time. I'd take it, if I could."

Did it make him a bad husband, he wondered, if he didn't want to see Kathy now? Truth was, the very idea of it scared him; he was scared, scared of what she'd say, scared of what she'd blame him for, scared of what it would do to him, losing her a second time. Because he'd have to, wouldn't he? Besides, this Kathy, she wasn't his Kathy. This Kathy had left him a long, long time ago, and they'd never had Eli, or all those nights in Rome when they felt like newlyweds again, when they were happy. This Kathy probably hated him more than his own did. Then again, maybe not; this Kathy had never met Olivia, never seen him with Olivia, never heard Olivia's name fall from his lips and looked at him with loathing.

"You want my last egg roll?" he asked her. He'd ordered two, because Liv only ever ordered one, and he always ordered two, because most of the time she'd ask him for it, and he liked to be prepared.

"Yeah," she said, and took it from his hand easily, did not balk at eating food his fingers had touched.

"Where do we go from here, Olivia?"

That was what he needed to know, more than anything else. He had other questions - why hadn't she adopted Noah, and just who the fuck was Ed and why was he so special, and what else was different about this Olivia, and why - but before he got any of those answers he needed to know what she planned to do with him. Where was he gonna sleep tonight? Was she gonna cut him loose? Was he never gonna see her again, after this meal was done? But she'd had Fin run his DNA; surely she'd want to keep tabs on him at least until those results came back, and that could take days, and he knew it.

"Well," she said slowly, "I'm gonna keep eating, and I think I'll have another beer. And after that I'm pretty fucking tired, so I think I'll go to bed. You need a place to sleep tonight."

It wasn't a question.

"And I've got a couch."

"You offering it to me, Captain?"

She eyed him speculatively over the mouth of her bottle, and he returned that gaze steadily, hoping she couldn't see how badly he wanted her to say yes. He was alone, here in this place that felt so much like home but wasn't, and he didn't know her, not really, but she was the closest thing he had to a friend here, and he didn't want to be parted from her. He didn't want to sleep in a shelter; he wanted to sleep on her couch, and he wanted her to want him to, wanted her to believe him, wanted her to care about him, wanted her to trust him. It was all he'd ever wanted, really, for Olivia to trust him.

"Maybe," she said. "What have I got to lose, really?"

Your life, he thought, but did not say. He wasn't stupid; if he pointed out the risk she was taking she might rethink it. But it troubled him, her cavalier disregard for her own safety. By her own admission she thought he was crazy; what if he meant to kill her while she slept? She could barricade the bedroom door, sure, but that wouldn't stop him setting a fire right outside it, if he really was out to get her.

"I know you got no reason to believe me," he said. "But you can trust me. I'm your partner."

For better or worse.

"Been a long time since I had one of those."

"Maybe I'm what you need, then."

She'd finished the second beer already, and raised it up so the waitress could see, silently asked for another.

"Tell you what," she said. "You can stay with me tonight on one condition."

"Fire away."

"My Sergeant searched you when he found you in the interview room, while you were unconscious. He said the only thing you have in your pockets is a necklace."

That was true; the compass was still there, warm and safe next to his thigh.

"What is that about?"

He shifted uneasily on his seat; the truth wasn't something he felt comfortable sharing with anyone who wasn't Liv. The dance they were doing, the near miss in her kitchen when she'd almost kissed him - or he'd almost kissed her, hell, he still didn't really know who'd moved first - it was private, and he knew Liv would see it as a betrayal, him sharing those secrets with someone else.

But Liv was dead, and this was Olivia he was talking to.

"It's for Liv," he said. "Was, I guess. I bought it for her. To give to her."

"Can I see it?"

Numbly he fished it out of his pocket, passed it into her waiting hand, while the waitress set the third bottle of beer on the table and whisked away the other two in silence. Olivia turned the pendent over and over between her graceful fingers, studying it closely.

"A compass," she said. "Any reason for that?"

"She is -" was - "a little lost, right now. Confused. I wanted her to have…I wanted her to have something to help her find her way home."

"To you."

"Yeah."

I want to, she'd told him in the kitchen. I'm not ready, she'd said that, too, shaking her head. She'd been torn, devastated, drowning, and it had wrecked him, knowing he was the cause of all that turmoil. That he was the reason she couldn't trust her own desires, couldn't give in to the longing of her own heart, the reason she was afraid. He didn't want her to be scared, any more. He wanted her to be ready. And it was too goddamn late.

"It's pretty," Olivia said, and handed it back to him.

So was she, he thought as he tucked the necklace into his pocket. And so are you.