She didn't come.

It wasn't like she'd said she would, or anything, wasn't like she'd broken a promise, but most nights she came swaying in through doors at 6:30 or 7:00, looking for him with a smile on her face. Most nights they met here, and then went home together. Most nights, but not tonight; he clocked out a little after 8:00 and there was no sign of her, and when he texted her dinner? she didn't respond.

It wasn't like he needed her to come. He had a MetroCard and a key to her apartment in his pocket; he could find his own way home, make his own plans for dinner. The Waterfront didn't have much in the way of a kitchen but they did chicken tenders and pub chips, and that was good enough for him. He sat at the bar and ate the greasy food in silence, staring at that stupid pay-as-you-go phone, willing her to answer him. It was her day off today, and she'd told him she didn't have much in the way of plans, so why hadn't she come? What could have been better than this, he wondered, better than a fried dinner in a half-empty bar with her old friends Munch and Cassidy, with him?

And why wasn't she answering his text?

Maybe she's pissed, he thought, chewing his food morosely. There had been a weird moment between them in the morning, a moment when she'd been so close he could catch the scent of oranges from her lotion, a moment when he'd put his hands on her hips and looked into her pretty face and wondered. The things he'd wondered, the things he'd wanted, weren't the kind of thing she deserved and he'd pulled away, a little ashamed of the urge he'd felt to kiss her. Olivia was fierce and beautiful and warm as the sun and he was nothing to her, just a stranger, just someone to keep her company in the midst of a lonely life, and she deserved better. Better than him, kissing her, better than a man who looked at her and saw someone else.

It was all tangled up inside him, Liv and Olivia. Which was which, and which did he want, and did it matter, really? Probably did to her, he thought. Liv would probably be pissed if she found out he'd reached for this version of her, and never for the one right in front of him. And Olivia, she'd probably be pissed, too, would probably say shit about how she wasn't the one he was looking for.

She was, though. She was the one he wanted. He wanted this Olivia, and the wanting felt different. With Liv he wanted Liv, his partner, the one who seemed sometimes to share the same fucking brain with him, the one who remembered all the old stories, the one who spoke to him gently when he needed it and shoved him when he needed it. He wanted Liv like he wanted home.

Olivia, though; he wanted her, too. He wanted Olivia, brash and wary, the one who wasn't afraid of him, the one who had nothing to forgive him for, the one whose heart was lonesome and sad just like his. He wanted Olivia like a surfer wanted a wave, the big one, stronger than any other, the one that might drown him or lead him to glory but either way would leave him changed. Sometimes he ached with it, the wanting.

It was easier to look at Olivia and want. When he looked at Liv, Christ, he'd wanted her, but the wanting had come with risk. Penance to pay and something to prove and the knowledge that if he fucked it up he'd lose the best thing that ever happened to him, lose a piece of himself. It scared him sometimes, looking at Liv. Olivia, though; he could look at her. Look at her head on, and see the beauty of her, and think about how her thighs might feel under his hands, and feel no shame.

Well, some shame. He felt some shame, but only because reaching for her felt a little bit like stealing. This version of Olivia wasn't meant for this version of him.

For a while he brooded and poked at his dinner, and when he'd had his fill he ventured out into the night. Walked a few blocks to the subway station, rode the train as close to her place as he could get, traversed the familiar path to her building, up the stairs, through her front door. The apartment was dark when he stepped inside, all the lights off and no sound of movement coming from anywhere.

Did she go out? He wondered, frowning, thinking about Olivia with a glass of wine in her hand. The last week or two she'd been drinking less and that felt like progress but what if she'd gone out in search of a bottle tonight? What if, he asked himself then, what if she'd gone looking for more than a drink? In the morning she'd looked at him like she wanted him to kiss her and when he didn't she'd pressed his buttons like she was trying to make him mad on purpose, like she was trying to punish him for something, and what if that was where she'd gone, to find someone else to hold, to make him regret putting his hands on her?

Before he let himself get too worked up over the salacious possibilities - before he let the anger at the thought of someone else's hands ghosting over her skin completely overwhelm him - he decided to make sure that the apartment really was as empty as it looked. Hell, he thought, maybe she was just in the bath.

Her bedroom door was open, and so he went there at once, slid silently into the room and then stopped at her bedside, staring.

He'd been wrong; she hadn't gone anywhere. Olivia wasn't out drinking or trying to pull a stranger in a bar; she was fast asleep on top of the covers, a book lying open beside her like it had tumbled out of her hands when sleep finally claimed her. The lamp was off, and he figured that meant when she'd started to read it was still light out. That meant she'd been asleep for hours, and she was probably gonna regret it come 2:00 a.m. when she was wide awake and restless. That meant he should probably wake her up.

Should have, probably, but didn't; couldn't. One thing he'd learned about Olivia was that she worked too damn hard, and didn't look after herself, and God knew she didn't get enough sleep. If she was tired enough to fall asleep in the middle of reading her book she must have needed the rest, and he wasn't gonna be the one to pull her up from her dreams.

Besides, she looked too goddamn pretty like this, and he didn't want to spoil it.

She was wearing black leggings like she often did around the apartment, and her toenails were painted pink. It was warm in the apartment and she hadn't said anything about it but Elliot knew exactly how old she was and exactly what that meant and he'd be willing to bet every one of the few dollars in his pocket that she'd had a hot flash, because she'd pulled all her hair up off the back of her neck and into messy bun, and she'd stripped down to just a plain white strappy tank top. The fabric of the shirt hugged her body like a second skin and she'd taken her bra off - it was lying discarded in a heap under the window, like she'd thrown it across the room in a fit - and he could see the outline of her nipples pressing up against the shirt, enticing as diamonds. The neckline of that little tank top scooped low and she was lying half on her side, her breasts in danger of escaping from the confines of her shirt completely, and he could see the smattering of freckles across the tops of her breasts, and the way the tender skin between them wrinkled made him long to run his tongue across her there.

But freckles and nipples and wrinkles were not the only thing he could see; his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and he could see the puckered outline of scars dotting her chest, from her collarbone down, and down. Those scars were scattered at random all across her perfect tits, and he had a sinking feeling that if she were to peel that tank top off he'd find more of them. Those scars were roundish divots, and he recognized them at once, because he'd seen their like more times than he'd care to count. Cigarette burns, on Olivia, and his knees almost buckled right then.

It made him feel like the worst kind of voyeur, and so he stepped away, snatched up a blanket from the little basket on the floor at the end of her bed and covered her with it gently. She did not stir, and so he left her to her dreams, closed the bedroom door behind him silently and then sat himself down on the couch, and buried his face in his hands.

The newspaper articles had presented the story in a sterile, just the facts ma'am kind of way. Detective Benson had been kidnapped, held hostage, raped, injured, that much he knew, and that was bad enough, but this…Jesus. There was knowing and then there was knowing.

There's things that happened that never went to print, that's what she'd told him. There's things I'm never gonna talk about.

There were so many details he did not know, but he knew this, now. Knew that someone - Lewis seemed the most likely candidate - had burned her, left her scarred, left her walking around with a lifelong reminder of him etched in her flesh. And if Olivia had those scars, if that had been done to her…what the fuck had happened to Liv? While he was in Rome with his wife, eating pasta and thinking that life was as good as it was ever gonna get, had Liv been burned, too? Raped, too?

He was never gonna know. Never. Liv was dead and even if she wasn't there was no one else for him to ask, no way for him to get home and find out the truth for himself. He was never, ever gonna know how profoundly he'd betrayed her, how much damage had been caused when he wasn't there to stop it. He was never gonna know just how much he had to be sorry for, just how much she had to forgive him for, was never gonna know if the fact that he hadn't saved her from Lewis was one of the things that kept Liv from reaching from him, and he was never, ever gonna be able to fall to his knees and beg Liv to absolve him for it. There was no going back; there would be no chance to right those old wrongs. That life was gone.

But you're here now, he told himself, scrubbing his hand over his face and looking at Olivia's closed door.

It was too late to save his Liv. It was too late to ask her, too late to apologize, too late to tell her he loved her. Liv was gone, but Olivia was still here. Still here, and still in need of someone to look after her. Someone to make sure she had enough dinner, someone to make sure she didn't drink too much, someone to cover her feet when she got cold, someone to protect her. Someone to help her banish the loneliness. Someone to love her.

Olivia needed someone, and he needed to be that someone. Needed it, needed to see her smile, needed to believe there was a reason he'd been sent here, needed a reason to hope. Maybe he was never gonna get home, maybe he was never gonna see his kids, maybe nothing was ever gonna be the same, but maybe there was something good here, still. Maybe there was still something worth having.

Christ, she was worth having.

There was nothing for it then but to sleep, and so he laid himself down, and closed his eyes, and when he did he saw her face. Her face, Olivia's. It looked so much like Liv's but it seemed to him that there were differences he could see now, differences he hadn't noticed before. The faces were the same but the souls shining at him through those dark eyes, they were different, and he felt certain he could tell them apart from one another. It was Olivia who occupied his mind as he drifted off to sleep.

And it was Olivia who woke him a few short hours later, screaming.