He couldn't see anything, not really, his vision hazy, full of shadows, and the darkest of them all right in front of him, dark, like the color of her hair, like the color of her eyes, like the hollow place inside him where she was meant to be. Dark, and his hands pressed hard to her belly, the blood invisible to his eyes but slippery beneath his palms, her body heaving with the convulsions of her frantic breaths and shaking him like a rodeo bull trying to buck off a rider, and the pavement unforgiving beneath his too-old knees. The world dark, and loud, sirens wailing, women crying, hushed voices all around him, and above it all the rattling sound of her lungs filling with fluid, giving up, giving in.

"Hang on, Liv," he pleaded with her earnestly, desperately, as if dying was a choice and she could choose against it, as if there was anything she could do to stop what they both knew was coming.

"Can't," she choked, "breathe."

"I know," he said uselessly, tears burning down his cheeks, his hands pressed so hard to her belly he feared he might push straight through her to the sidewalk beneath. "Help's coming, just hang on."

"Sorry," she gasped. "Sorry."

And then a stunning, shattering, heart-rending silence fell, a silence so complete it felt as if the world itself had come to a stop, just to mark the moment, to mark the ending of a titan, the fall of a goddess.

Beneath his palms she gave one last great heave, and then went still, and in the silence his heart began to shriek.

"Liv," he begged, cursing his useless eyes, his helpless hands. "Liv, Olivia, Olivia, please, say something, Liv, please, don't go, don't leave me, Olivia!"

Olivia Benson died the way she always feared she would, in the arms of Elliot Stabler, and the last word she ever said was "sorry."

He jerked awake, aching from head to toe, feeling as if he had just been struck by a train, which, he supposed, in many ways he had. There was a necklace in his pocket, a golden compass on a delicate chain, and the woman he meant to give it to was dead, and gone, his heart shrieked, gone, she's gone, and he could not open his eyes, not at first, did not want to, did not want to look and see a world without Olivia in it. She was gone, and never coming back, and her absence had ripped him open as surely as if the bullets had pierced his belly, and not hers. Gone, that was the only thought in his head, she was gone, gone like Kathy was gone, gone like every good thing that had ever happened to him, gone for him, because of him, because just like Kathy he hadn't been able to protect her, because just like Kathy she had only been in danger in the first place because of him, because of his pride, because of his recklessness, and if he'd had a knife close to hand he might have opened a vein right then.

That was what made him open his eyes, in the end, the thought of finding some way to join them, Olivia and Kathy, the two women he had loved, the two women who were dead on account of him. He opened his eyes, and what he saw came as such a shock that for a moment confusion won out over grief.

It was all a bit foggy, the events that followed Olivia's death. He could faintly recall the hands that pulled him away from her, the red flash of the lights, the screaming of the sirens. Someone put a blanket over his shoulders. He was pretty sure the medics said something about taking him to the hospital, and he'd thought, at first, that was where he was, that he was still propped up in a hospital somewhere in Ohio while Olivia's body remained frozen downstairs, waiting for transport to carry her back to New York, to the city of her birth, to her home, but as he looked around he saw at once that he was not in a hospital.

He was in an interrogation room, instead. A familiar one, with its cinderblock walls, its heavy table with the hook in the center for handcuffs, its wonky chair with uneven legs. The walls were blue, and it was all so profoundly familiar; though there was nothing in particular to set this interrogation room apart from the hundreds of rooms just like it all over the country, he looked around and knew, beyond any doubt, that he was in SVU. That he was in the 1-6, that he was home, and though he did not question the truth of his mind's assertion he did not understand it. How had he come to be here? And why? And why was he alone, when Fin at least ought to have been there to greet him after this shattering bereavement? Just how much time had he lost?

It had been like this after Kathy, a little. He'd lost some time then, too, too overwhelmed by the sorrows of his heart to process much of anything. Whole nights passed in the wink of an eye, and short walks to the coffee shop seemed to take eons, and none of it made any goddamn sense, without her, and he supposed it was only fair that losing Olivia would have the same effect. He looked down at his clothes and found himself wearing the same grey waffle knit henley and dark jeans he'd been wearing at the diner, and when he reached into his pocket he found the comforting weight of the compass necklace right where he'd left it. He'd meant to give her the compass, not just to help her find her way, find her way back to him, find her way to loving him, find her way to happiness, but because that was what she was to him, what she had always been to him, the compass guiding him home, reminding him always where he came from, where he was going. She always brought him back when he was lost, and she was gone, and what the fuck was he supposed to do now?

A sob clawed its way up the back of his throat but he bit it back with force; he didn't know how he'd gotten from Ohio to Manhattan, didn't know when his mind had shut off but didn't doubt for a moment that it had, a desperate bid to save him from the grim reality of life without Olivia. He was here, now, and there was no telling who was on the other side of the glass, or what they wanted from him, and he tried to pull himself together, tried to think, but the only thought his brain could form was gone.

It wasn't supposed to be like this; they were Benson and Stabler, partners, a pair, and the world was not meant to hold one without the other. It felt as if someone had torn off one of his limbs, as if the heart had been plucked from his chest; he felt a shell of himself, a ghost still breathing, only half of what he should have been. And Jesus, he wouldn't be the only one; what about her little boy, that sweet faced kid who was so much like her, what the fuck was going to happen to him now?

I'll ask Fin, he thought, rising to his feet. Liv wouldn't want him to kill himself, wouldn't want him to climb the stairs to the top of the precinct and jump no matter badly a part of him wanted to do that just now; she wouldn't want him to take the easy way out, to escape his pain. She'd want him to look after her boy. Elliot didn't know what he was doing at SVU, but Fin would be there, he was certain; he'd find his old friend, and they'd make a plan for Noah, come up with something, and maybe Fin could fill him in on the time he'd lost.

As Elliot turned towards the door it swung abruptly open, and he rocked back on his feet, expecting to see Fin and damn near falling to his knees when he saw how wrong he was.

It wasn't Fin; it was her.

Olivia, tall and proud, beautiful, the prettiest goddamn woman he'd ever seen, in one of her usual black blazers over a white blouse with her hair caught behind her head in a clip the same way she'd worn it that day in Ohio when the world came to an end and a strangled sound escaped Elliot's throat even as he lunged towards her. He had to touch her; there was no thought behind it, his forward progress not so much a decision he'd made as it was a reflex. She was here, and he needed to be wherever she was. She was still breathing, and he needed to feel her lungs expand and contract beneath his hands in this room the same way he'd felt them go still beneath his hands on the sidewalk outside the diner.

His steps were lurching, uneven, and her eyes went wide with something that looked like fear, and she stepped away from him, the door closing behind her as she swayed towards the corner, just out of his grasp.

"Liv," he said her name raggedly, his hands still reaching for her, and what the fuck he thought, what the fuck; why wouldn't she let him go to her? Why was she being so hard, when he knew her heart was so tender? Why was she being cruel, when things between them had been going so well, when just a few days before she'd smiled at him over lo mein and rice like no time had passed, like she was happy to be there with him? Didn't she understand what it had done to him, thinking he'd lost her?

"Don't touch me," she snapped. "Sit down."

"Liv," he said again, harder this time. If she wanted to be pissed he'd show her pissed; he'd been so wracked with grief over her he'd been thinking about jumping and now here she was, perfectly fine, and why had she put him through all this? Why wouldn't she just let him hold her?

"I don't know who Liv is," she told him cooly. "My name is Captain Benson. Now sit down. Or do I have to cuff you?"

This isn't real, he thought. This is just a dream. It must have been. That was why he was here, in SVU, back in the kingdom he and Liv had ruled together once, back in the room where they used to work together so seamlessly. That was why she looked like this, just exactly as she had the last time he saw her; his mind was pulling together memories, making a new story. He didn't like this one very much, but he didn't like the truth much, either, and at least this way he got to hear her voice. He did clasp his hands together and dig his nails into his wrist though, just to check, and when he did it hurt. Dreams weren't supposed to hurt, were they?

"You got a hearing problem or something?"

"I'll sit," he said, relenting, and did as she asked. Whatever this was, dream or not, he wanted to keep talking to her, and he kinda thought he might lose the opportunity if he pissed her off too much. "You wanna tell me what's going on?"

"You first," she answered calmly, without any trace of warmth, and as she spoke she began to pace along the other side of the table across from him, prowling, watchiful and wary like she would be with a perp, and the sight of it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

"Why don't we start with your name?" she said.

"What?" he asked, feeling somehow as if he were losing his mind. She knew his fucking name; she knew him inside and out, knew him better than anyone alive - better than anyone dead, for that matter, because Kathy had been his wife and he loved her and she didn't understand him the way Olivia did. Olivia asking him for his name felt like Olivia asking for her own, felt like a piece of absurdity, but she was not smiling, and none of it made any goddamn sense.

"What's your name?" she tried again, irritated.

"Is this some kind of joke?" he snapped. "Liv, it's me."

Stop it, he thought, stop it. What would be worse, Olivia dying or Olivia not knowing him? Weren't the same, really? He was about to find out.

"I've never seen you before in my life," she said with a terrifying seriousness, and beneath Elliot's feet the entire world turned upside down.