The fridge came stocked, at least. Applesauce and juice for Noah, assorted vegetables for her, ketchup and mustard, that kind of thing. Enough to get them through their first day in the house, and then maybe tomorrow she could venture out into the world, go to the grocery store herself. The car, the carseat, the bank account with a few thousand dollars in it; the Marshals had provided for her every need. Well, her every physical need, or at least her every physical need for now. Their aid would not be indefinite; she'd be expected to pull her own weight, and soon. Even on the run, in hiding, she was still going to have to work, still going to have to do all the normal, boring, endless mundane tasks that kept a life on track. Death and taxes, the two inevitabilities, wasn't that how the saying went?

For now, though, she had what she needed. For now they were safe, and their bellies would be full. There was a stockpile of boxed macaroni and cheese in the pantry, so she buckled Noah into the booster seat at the kitchen table, and started boiling water. Today was Saturday, and she was not a cop - she was not anything - and she did not have any work to do, did not have any friends to visit, did not really even need to do any chores, since they'd only just arrived in the house and the whole place was spotless; there was an eerie sort of stillness to the house, to the afternoon, to her life, that she liked not at all. Olivia had been busy for the last three decades or so, and faced with an endless expanse of quiet she found herself feeling more than a little lost.

She could feed Noah; he needed lunch, and it would give her something to do, but then what? Play with Noah, see if he would go down for a nap, maybe try to take one herself. Feed him again, maybe eat a little herself. Give him a bath, put him to bed. Do the same again tomorrow.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day…

The situation must be dire indeed if she was quoting Macbeth to herself over a pot of boiling water. Maybe she'd see if there was a park nearby; maybe some fresh air would do her and Noah both some good. The park meant going outside, though, and outside meant risk, and she wasn't sure that was a risk she was ready to take. The Marshals said their car hadn't been followed, that there was no way the cartel could have found her, but what if they were wrong? No system was truly impenetrable; there was always a vulnerability to be exploited. Law enforcement did their best, but no one was perfect. Olivia wanted them to be perfect; her son's safety depended on it. She couldn't stay in the house forever, but how was she supposed to know when it was safe to leave? Would it ever really be safe?

Behind her she heard the front door open, heard a woman's cheery voice call out US Marshals! It must have been the local team; the guys who had driven Olivia and Noah here were due back on the east coast, had told her that her new handlers were on the way.

Handlers. Jesus. She had handlers now.

"In the kitchen!" she called back.

It was a nice house, Elliot thought. A little big for one woman and one kid on their own, but nice, still. Fenced in backyard where the kid could run; maybe they could get a dog, even. Neighbors close but not too close, screened from view by the fence and the bushes. Maybe the neighbors would be nice. He could see people further down the block watering flower beds, mowing the lawn. The place felt…homey. Cozy. A real neighborhood, a nice place to raise a family. Hopefully their witness felt the same way.

At the front door they stopped and chatted with the other Marshals; the guys seemed relieved to have reinforcements, and didn't stick around to say goodbye to their witness, just got in the car and drove off. Must be nice, Elliot thought. Must be real nice, dropping their problems on someone else and running away, not a care in the world. Problems had a way of gravitating toward Elliot; he never seemed to be able to get ahead of them.

"US Marshals!" Jackie called as they walked in the door. The inside of the place was nice, too, he thought. A little bland, a little boring, but nice. Kathy would've loved it.

"In the kitchen!" A woman's voice called back, and Elliot's stomach lurched like he'd just been hit with a bat.

It's not, he thought wildly. It can't be.

It only sounded like Liv; Liv was thousands of miles away, safe and hating him. She wasn't in the kitchen of a cookie cutter house in a soulless subdivision in Nebraska; she was stalking the streets of New York with a gun in her hand, the way she was meant to.

It's just that you miss her, he told himself. It had been a little over four years since he left, and he still saw her sometimes, or thought he did. A head of dark hair, the click of bootheels on tile, a laugh deep and warm, and he'd jump out of his skin, ready to run to her, desperate to see her face, and then the fog would clear, and he'd come back to his senses, and it wasn't her. It never was. Liv was gone. Or not gone, exactly; Liv was right where he'd left her. He was gone.

"Go say hello," Jackie nudged him. "I want to sweep the house."

"Didn't the other guys do that already?"

"Rule number one, new guy," Jackie said. She'd already given him the "rule number one" line at least four times before, and each time it had been a different rule. Seemed they were all tied for first. "Never trust somebody else's work."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and then he squared his shoulders, and marched off toward the kitchen, and the sound of the voice that had seemed so much like Liv's. Seemed like hers, but wasn't, because Liv wasn't here, and he was never gonna hear her voice again.

Even as the thought it occurred to her it seemed silly. Ridiculous, even. But she could hear footsteps on the laminate flooring of the corridor leading from the front door to the kitchen, and she could've sworn she recogized them. The cadence of those steps, the weight and the rhythm of them, it felt familiar. It felt like…

Elliot.

Her heart whispered the name, but she shook it off, tossed that thought aside with derision, with shame.

It wasn't Elliot. Elliot wasn't coming for her.

If he was gonna come for her he'd have done that already, she thought, would've stepped in and saved her long before her life unravelled. If he meant to come back for her he never would've left in the first place. He wasn't coming back; he was never coming back, and -

What if he did, she wondered. What if he did come back? Next year, the year after, what if he did come back for her; what if he walked into the 1-6 with a smile on his face and a cup of coffee in his hand? What would happen, when the people there told him that she'd died, that he was too late, that he was never going to find what he was looking for?

Would it break his heart, the way hers had been broken?

He deserves it, she thought. The pasta was ready to drain and she picked up the pot, thinking grim thoughts about betrayal, and forgiveness, and missing - Christ, she was dying of it, of missing, of missing everything and everyone and herself, most of all - and as she turned her eyes flickered to the doorway, and when she saw waited for her there the breath vanished from her lungs in one great whoosh, and the pot tumbled from her grip to land with an almighty clatter in the deep farm sink, boiling water and pasta splashing around and her never noticing it, deaf to the sound of it and blind to anything that wasn't him.

Elliot.

Elliot, and real, standing there, his mouth hanging open like he couldn't believe his eyes, as tall and broad and strong as he had ever been, blue eyes burning at her from across the room, and as he looked at her the floor seemed to give way beneath her feet, the world tumbling away until nothing and no one existed but her, and him, and a rage and a fear and a sorrow the likes of which she had not ever known.

It was like time stood still, wasn't that what people said? When the unthinkable happened, when life changed in a heartbeat, traumatic losses and triumphant joys, didn't people say it was like time stood still?

It was like time stood still.

Standing there, staring at her, it was like time stood still. Like everything just stopped, the world, the goddamn the universe, everything, just to give him the chance to stand and look at her. To look at her, and in that timeless instant, that whisper of a second that seemed to last an eternity, to see her.

Her hair was cut short, above her shoulders like it was in the early days of their partnership, not long the way it had been the last time he saw her. The flash of her eyes was bright and terrible, the curve of her hip warm and familiar, the trembling of her hands echoed in the shaking that overtook his own. She wore a plain grey zip-up hoodie, one he could've sworn he'd seen her in before, and blue jeans that hugged her body like a second skin, and there was a toddler sitting at the kitchen table with a sweet face just like hers and dark hair to match, and need surged through him, fierce, electric, the need to go to her, to put his hands on her, to tell her he was sorry, to tell her how he missed her, to beg her forgiveness, to demand an accounting from her. How could she be here and who was that child, and -

"Everything all right?" Jackie called out from the corridor behind them, approaching fast.

"She can't know," Elliot said in a voice that was not meant to carry past Olivia's ears.

If Jackie found out that Elliot and Olivia knew each other, they'd be reassigned. The whole point of moving Liv to Nebraska was to take her far away from everything and everyone she'd ever known. Any connection to her old life was a risk to her new one, and Elliot…Elliot was her old life. She'd only just arrived in Omaha, and if Jackie learned the truth Olivia would have to leave again, and Elliot would lose her again, lose her for good this time, maybe, and he couldn't bear it. For reasons passing understanding his path had crossed Olivia's once more, and he did not want to let her go, did not want to lose her when he'd only just found her. It felt like he'd been given a second chance, and he didn't want to fuck it up. Not again.

Olivia's eyes were hard and dark; across the kitchen from him she crossed her arms over her chest, and for the first time in damn near twenty years Elliot looked at her, and did not know what she was thinking.

"I won't tell her," Olivia said quietly.

In the corridor just outside the kitchen Jackie leaned up against the wall, listening, wondering. It wasn't like they'd said much to each other, Elliot and the witness. She can't know. I won't tell her. Seven words in total, spoken in unsteady voices, and yet it was enough. Enough for Jackie to know that the two of them were keeping secrets, enough for her to guess what those secrets might have been. There had been a noise, when Elliot first walked in the kitchen, a noise like a pan clattering into a sink; had the witness dropped something? Took one look at Elliot's face, and dropped whatever she was holding as if in shock, and then promised not to tell?

They know each other, Jackie thought. Recognized one another immediately, and pledged themselves without further discussion to silence, despite the risks. The witness's life and Elliot's job both depended on honesty, on keeping the witness as far away from anyone she'd known in her old life as possible, and they had both agreed without hesitation to endanger life and livelihood for one another. What reward could be worth such a price? Jackie wondered. Who were they to each other?

She wanted to know. Elliot wanted to play games? Jackie could play, too.