I hope you find your way home.

The echo of his tear-laden voice sounded through her mind like a bell, and as it did her eyes snapped open. No, she wanted to shout; no, not yet. It couldn't be over; she couldn't die like that, on the grimy floor of Brian's bar with Elliot's tears dripping hot on her cheeks. She couldn't die, not now, not when she was so close to something that felt like happiness. No; the force of her stubborn will to live was so profound it made her shoot bolt upright, and as she did, as the fog lifted from her eyes and her surroundings came into focus, she found herself in the last place she expected to be.

She was in her office.

In her office, sitting behind her desk, wearing a sharp black suit, computer running and email displayed on the monitor in front of her, sunshine streaming in through the windows behind her.

What the fuck?

How could she be in her office, when last she remembered she was struggling to breathe, bleeding out while Elliot knelt over her? Her hand flew to her chest but there was no wound; the touch didn't hurt, and her shirt wasn't torn and bloody. Nothing was amiss; it was as if nothing had happened at all, as if the shooting in the bar was no more than a bad dream.

Nothing was amiss, nothing was wrong, but there was something out of place. She could feel it, hanging around her neck; for years she'd worn her plain gold wedding band on a chain around her neck, but she'd taken it off a few weeks ago, when it was starting to look like Elliot was going to stay, when she was starting to believe that maybe there was a future for her yet, a future worth living. She'd taken her necklace off, so why was she wearing one now? She fumbled along the chain until she reached the pendant, and then clumsily tried to get a look at it, tucking her chin and peering down in confusion.

It was the compass. The compass, the one Elliot carried in his pocket everywhere he went. The necklace meant for his lost love. How the fuck had it ended up on her neck? Elliot would never part with it, wouldn't hear of it.

He gave it to you, the thought drifted through her mind. Somehow she felt certain that was true, that Elliot had given her the compass, meant it to guide her on her way, but she couldn't remember.

Something very, very strange was going on, but she didn't understand what, not yet. What she needed, she thought, was to talk to Elliot. To ask him about the necklace, about the shoot out in the bar, to pick his brain and work her way through it. Elliot had endured a certain kind of madness all his own; he wouldn't judge her, she thought, for not remembering, for asking questions she ought to know the answers to.

She reached into her pocket and fished out her phone, intent on calling him, but she stopped almost immediately, staring at the date on her lock screen.

May 11, 2023.

The phone said today was May 11, and that couldn't possibly be right. May 11 was two full days before Elliot turned up in interrogation; May 11 was the day her universe's Elliot died in Ohio. May 11 was months ago.

Wasn't it?

Maybe there's something wrong with the phone, she thought. Technological problems seemed more likely than time travel, so she picked up her desk phone and buzzed Fin.

"What day is it?" she demanded the second he picked up. Through the half-open blinds on her office window she saw Fin turn to stare at her.

"It's Thursday," he said slowly.

"No, I mean what day of the month is it?"

"The 11th."

"Of May?"

"Listen, Cap, are you all right?" He sounded genuinely worried about her.

"Just…is it May? It's May 11th today?"

"Yeah."

She hung up the phone and sank back into her chair, and covered her face with her hands.

Maybe she'd dozed off at her desk. Maybe she'd had more wine than she should have last night, and maybe she was just tired, and maybe she'd dreamed the whole thing up. Dreamed of a man who turned her world upside down, dreamed of someone to love her, just because she wanted it so goddamn bad. Maybe she'd finally cracked.

That wouldn't explain the necklace, though. If it were all just a dream why wasn't she wearing her ring, and where had the compass come from? It was a bit bulky for her taste, the symbolism of it a bit too on the nose; she'd never choose it for herself. No, the necklace was real, and Elliot was the only one who could have given it to her.

He finally did it, she thought. All he'd wanted, in the beginning, was to go home. To get back to his kids, to see his Liv again. Untangling the truth behind his shock arrival in her world had been his only reason for living, in the early days, and if it really was May, now, if she really was back where this whole fiasco had started, maybe he was, too. Maybe he had a chance to save his Liv. Maybe he had a chance to be happy.

And maybe she did, too. The last thing she'd done before the shooting was track down Noah Porter. It took her ages to locate him in her old files, but she found him. A baby, discovered in the midst of a CSA case not long after Lewis. Olivia barely remembered the case, had been too strung out and raw and defensive in those days to be much good to anyone, but she had found Ellie Porter's baby, and one phone call to an old friend at Child Protective Services was all it took to locate him. Noah Porter was eleven years old and living in a group home. He was alive, and he needed someone to love him, and she knew that.

Fate, the universe, God, whatever, had handed her a second chance. Sent her back to the moment when everything changed, without Elliot but armed with the lessons he'd taught her. Her fingers weren't itching for a drink to hold and the loneliness wasn't choking the life from her anymore, and she knew where to find a little boy who needed a family as badly as she did, and maybe, she thought, maybe that was the only thing that mattered. The how, the why, she wasn't ever going to get the answers to those questions. She had an opportunity here, a chance to make different choices and change the course of her life, and by God she was gonna.

She reached for the desk phone again, intent on calling Trevor Langan - the guy was a prick and a skeezy defense attorney but he'd handled his fair share of family law cases and would know how to work the system better than anyone - but before she got the chance someone knocked on her door.

"Yeah?" she called, and then the door was opening, and the breath froze in her lungs when she saw who had come looking for her.

"Captain Benson?" Elliot asked, lingering in the doorway, waiting for an invitation.

It was him. It was Elliot. Or, it was an Elliot. Not the one she'd known; his eyes were guarded and hard, and he was wearing a badge on a chain around his neck beneath a black leather jacket. The Elliot she'd known had turned up here in a henley, without a badge, with eyes open and pleading, and she knew at once that this was not the same man.

But it could be, she thought. This wasn't the Elliot she'd met, and so it must have been, she thought, the other one. The one who lived in her world, the one whose life was so different from the story Elliot told her. A different man, in so many ways, but the same, too. Everything Elliot was, kind and gentle and brave and stubborn and cocky and funny and duty-bound, all of it, this man could be all those things, too. A little rougher around the edges, maybe, but then wasn't she? Wasn't she harder, sadder, meaner than the Liv her Elliot remembered?

"Detective Stabler," she said before she could stop herself.

"Yeah. How'd you know?" he asked, eyes narrowed as if in suspicion.

She waved the question away with a negligent flip of her hand.

"I've heard about you," she said. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm with OCCB," he said. He started to step into the office, shooting her a pointed look, to which she nodded in reply, indicating he should sit. He sprawled in the chair across from her desk, legs spread wide, at ease with himself despite the fact that he was the interloper here on her turf.

"We caught a case, and my Sergeant thinks it may have some overlap with one of your open rapes."

"Sorry, aren't you supposed to be in Ohio?" Today was supposed to be the day he died, but instead he was here, and she couldn't really figure out why.

"Did you already talk to Bell?" he asked, and then continued before she could come up with a reasonable lie. "Yeah, my team's in Ohio now. Bell really wants to nail this guy for everything, though. She wants him to go down for our murders and your rape. Someone needs to liaise between our squads, so…"

"So she sent you."

Olivia actually laughed out loud; she couldn't help it. She'd never really believed in God, and she'd never really believed in fate, either. Or she had, in a way, had believed that the circumstances of her birth, the pain she'd caused just by entering the world, the darkness that she carried inside her chest, meant that she was destined to be alone, that no one would ever love her, and stay. The truth of her life always seemed to bear that out, seemed to vindicate her mother at every turn, until now. The course of fate had changed; Elliot Stabler wasn't going to die in Ohio today, and Olivia Benson wasn't going to be alone, not anymore.

Oh, she wasn't naive. This man was a stranger to her, was not the same man who'd shared her bed for months. There was much to learn about him, and she might discover that she didn't like him at all. It might be that he was too different from the Elliot who'd rocked her world; she might not ever stop missing that other version of him. But then again, this man might be better. The two of them together, it might be better. She wanted to find out.

For the first time in a very long time she felt something like hope begin to bloom in her chest. She would work this case with Elliot. She would get to know him. She would do whatever she could to try to bring Noah home, to give him the safety and warmth that his life had been lacking up to now. She would make her choices, and she would choose to live.

"Looks like we're gonna be working this case together," he said, and then he stood up, and she did, too. "What do you say? Partners?"

He reached across the desk and held his hand out for a shake.

She took it.

"Partners," she said, and then she shook his hand, and sealed their fate.