"Uh," she said.
That wasn't how this conversation was meant to start. She had a whole speech lined up in her head, had rehearsed all the questions she wanted to ask and all the answers she was willing to give. It was supposed to be her with the upper hand, her with the plan, her holding all the cards, but at the crucial moment she fumbled it.
She just hadn't been expecting him to look like that.
The night had been, until now, rather unremarkable. She ordered them delivery and they ate it together at the bar in her kitchen and they talked a little bit, tension hanging thick in the air between them, almost-strangers that they were, and he'd asked if he could have a shower, now that he had clean clothes to change into, and she'd said yes, but the only way to access the apartment's single bathroom was through her bedroom, and she hadn't wanted to leave him alone in there in case he decided to go snooping, so she'd sat herself down on the end of her bed to wait for him. All perfectly normal, she'd thought, perfectly reasonable. While she waited she'd formulated her plan of attack, and she'd been feeling quite confident about it, ready to call him out for his invasion of privacy and shut down any designs he might have had on asking her distasteful questions. Everything had been under control.
But.
But he'd come walking out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam, sighing in a relaxed, contented kind of way. But he'd come walking out of the bathroom with a smooth, easy confidence to his gait, his body seeming somehow huge and imposing in her little bedroom. But he'd come walking out of the bathroom shirtless, and she could see him now. He was wearing a pair of Brian's sweatpants slung low on his hips, low enough to show off the deep V cut of the muscles just above his groin, pointing like an arrow straight down to his cock, and his shoulders were so broad, and he was so heavy, and she could see the tattoos on his arms, the scar from a bullet on his shoulder, and his feet were bare and there was a smattering of hair across his chest that made her think the kind of thoughts she had no right thinking about the weird, inexplicable stranger who had so suddenly burst into her life.
But.
She thought them, just the same, and it took her a moment to remember how to speak. Her eyes snapped back up to his face desperately, and she found him watching her, his expression confused, not smug or self-satisfied. That, at least, was a relief.
"You good?" he asked. He was holding a white t-shirt in his hands, toying with it, maybe tyring to decide whether he should put it on or not. What would be more awkward; if he stayed bare he'd risk her continuing to ogle him, but if he put it on now it would be a tacit admission that he'd seen her ogling, and then where would they be?
Christ, did he have to be so sexy? It just wasn't fair.
"Yeah," she said. "I wanted to ask you something."
"Shoot," he answered. For the moment he was caught in the middle of the room, halfway between her and the bathroom door, but he stepped to the side, leaned back against her dresser and crossed his arms over his powerful chest. Trying to cover up, maybe. Maybe he didn't want her looking at him. Maybe she couldn't blame him for that.
"You said you looked up your kids, you found out about Ed. What else did you learn today?"
There were so many things he could have read, just from the Google results if he searched her name; so many things she didn't want him to know. It was eating her up inside, wondering what was in his head now, if it would change the way he saw her. And that bothered her, too; she was a grown woman, a widow, a goddamn NYPD Captain, and she shouldn't have given a shit what he thought about her. She did, though. She did care.
"Kathy's new husband is an accountant," he grumbled. "I meant to do some research on this string theory shit but I got distracted. Was thinking I might go back and try again tomorrow, if that works."
It worked; the library was a good way to keep him out of her hair, and now that he had a phone she could reach him if she needed to, if plans changed. Maybe she'd get him a MetroCard.
"That's fine," she said dismissively. "But that's not what I meant, and I think you know that."
She leveled an even, unblinking stare at him, but he refused to meet her gaze, instead stared down at his toes, his shoulders slumping as if in defeat. That was all the answer she needed; he didn't have to speak. If he didn't know, he wouldn't avoid her eyes. He knew.
"What did you see, Stabler?"
"How long you been sitting there waiting to ask me that?"
"Answering a question with a question. Are you a cop or a lawyer?"
It irritated her, his evasion. Maybe it was fun for him, trading little quips with her, but the subject at hand was deadly serious, and she didn't want to play games.
"All right," he said heavily. "Yeah, I read about…about Lewis."
It still hurt. It shouldn't have; she'd suspected from the minute he first started talking about his investigations at the library that he'd read about Lewis. That question about her apartment, it felt connected, somehow. Intentional. Like he was digging for answers but didn't want to just come right out with it. Fuck that, she thought. It happened, the horror Lewis inflicted on her, and there was no sense in denying it, now that he knew. But it hurt, still. Hurt to know that he'd learned about this grief, and didn't want - didn't what? Didn't want to know badly enough? Didn't care enough? - to ask her about it. It hurt, remembering. It hurt, looking at him, wondering if he thought she was defective somehow, now. Wondering if he thought his Liv was stronger than she was, better than she was.
"You can't believe everything you read," she said slowly.
"Did he not…" the question came out almost desperate, and she blanched from it, grieving for him, ashamed for herself, hating the answer and having to say it anyway.
"He did," she said. "But the papers…there's things that happened that never went to print. There's things I'm never gonna talk about. So don't fucking ask me."
"Ok."
Was it respect that made him acknowledge her request, made him agree to it, or was it fear? Was he relieved to be given an out, or did he regret losing the chance to learn more about her past?
"Did she…" Olivia started to ask, and immediately wished she hadn't. Did it make a difference, really, if her doppelgänger had suffered the same fate? Which answer would hurt worse, yes or no? Some things seemed to be the same, between their two worlds, some events so profound, so foundational, that they had become immutable. Stabler had married Kathy in both worlds; Olivia and Liv had both loved Ed. Both Stablers were cops, both Olivias were in SVU. The way he'd described Liv's mother sounded familiar. Was it just a law of nature, she wondered; were William Lewis and Joseph Hollister and the crimes they committed woven into the very fabric of time and space? Was there no universe where Serena was spared, where Olivia was safe?
"I don't know," Stabler confessed.
"What the fuck does that mean, you don't know?" The question came out harsher than she'd meant for it to, but his answer shocked her.
"It happened in 2013. I'd been gone for two years by then. It was years before I saw Liv again. She never mentioned it." His voice was hollow, his eyes dark and vacant, like it hurt him, admitting to that, like he'd hidden his heart somewhere deep down inside to spare himself the grief of it.
"And you never asked? You never looked her up?"
How could he do that, she wondered. He loved Liv, and he'd never found out what happened to her while they were apart? It was barely twenty-four hours since he'd first met Olivia and he'd already gone digging through her personal life. Did he know what a violation it was, and so honored his love, and felt no guilt at betraying Olivia?
"I was afraid," he said, his voice raspy with barely restrained emotion, his eyes glassy and still refusing to meet her gaze. "I told myself when I left that she'd be better off without me. That maybe she'd finally be happy. I didn't want to find out I was wrong. I didn't want to know that I'd let her down."
It was selfish, she thought. He'd been selfish, and she wanted to hate him for it, but she couldn't, not really, because it was sweet, too. Heartbreaking, really. Stabler tried to do right by his woman and he'd left her behind and she'd been hurt so grievously but as long as he didn't know he could cling to the dream of her happiness. He wanted to believe it, wanted to believe his woman had been happy. And now he knew that Olivia wasn't, but how the fuck was he ever going to find out what happened to Liv? She was dead and gone and he was trapped here, in the wrong place, the wrong time, too late to save her.
It's too late for all of us, she thought.
"I saw they convened a grand jury when he died," Stabler said carefully. "Did you…did you kill him?"
"Yes."
"Good." It sounded like he meant it. It sounded like he was glad the bastard was dead. It sounded like he was proud of her. She wanted to be someone he could be proud of, and she didn't know what the fuck that made her. Pathetic, a little; crazy, maybe.
But he didn't ask her how, and she didn't answer. Didn't tell him about the game of Russian roulette, about pointing the gun to her head with two rounds left, about the split second decision she made to turn the gun on Lewis instead of herself. There was a 50/50 shot that nothing would happen when she pulled the trigger, but she'd have been dead either way if she hadn't. It wasn't really that much of a risk. And it worked out, in the end. Lewis was dead on the table and she'd set the gun near his hand and there was no one to contradict her story when she said he did it himself and no one who wanted to, anyway.
"Is that enough?" she asked him, feeling suddenly very tired. She wanted it to be enough. He knew the truth, now, knew that Lewis was real, that Lewis had hurt her, that she'd killed Lewis and put an end to the carnage he wrought. That had to be enough; he didn't need more than that, or maybe he did but she didn't want to give it to him.
"Yeah," he said. "It's enough for me to know he's dead. It's enough for me to know you're still here."
This time he looked right at her, blue eyes burning into hers, and she found herself captured by those eyes, caught by the intensity of his stare. His expression was deadly serious, but there was kindness in him, too.
"Ok," she said.
"I'm glad you're still here, Olivia," he added, and shit, she wished he wouldn't do that. Wished he wouldn't say her name in that voice, warm and low and gravelly, while he was standing half-naked in her bedroom, sexy and mysterious and praising her for the ruthless streak of violence in her heart she'd always tried to hide from everyone else. Praising her for it, not running from it, not afraid of it. Proud of her for it, when no one else ever had been. It was dangerous, his pride, his kindness. It made her want all kinds of things she knew she'd never have.
"Time to go to sleep, I think," she told him. She had to get him out of her room, and fast. The tone of the conversation had shifted, and she didn't want to know what might happen if he lingered there too long.
"Ok," he said. They'd said that a lot tonight. Slowly he pulled the t-shirt on, and then pushed himself up off her dresser.
"Good-night, Olivia," he said as he walked by her.
"Good-night," she answered.
When he closed the door behind him she locked it, not because she was afraid of him hurting her in the night but because she wanted him to hear it, wanted to reestablish some kind of boundary between them. Whatever feelings he might stir up in her heart he did not belong there with her, and they both needed to remember that.
It was a long, long time before she fell asleep.