Everything I did, I did it for you, Liv.

"Bullshit," she snarled without hesitation, reflexive and mean. How dare he, her heart howled in rage; how dare he say it had all been for her? Disappearing without a word, ignoring her calls, leaving her lost and alone, adrift and reeling, abandoning her the way he'd promised he wouldn't, the way he knew would break her in half; how dare he say he'd done it for her benefit? Shattered her heart, and called it a gift; if he'd been standing just a little closer she'd have hit him, and felt damn good doing it.

For years now she had been dreaming of this moment, imagining how it would feel to hear him make his apologies and justifications, imagining a world where he would be contrite and she would be magnanimous and they would both be okay, but her dreams never came true, and this was worse than any nightmare she'd ever watched unfold behind her closed eyelids. Here she stood, trapped and lonesome, cut off from everything and everyone she'd ever loved, and Elliot was here, and that should've felt like grace but he had a mouth full of poison and she had a belly full of grief and she wished, desperately, that she'd outed him that first day, told Jackie the truth and let the Marshals usher her off somewhere else, put another thousand miles between her and him because even the wide open plains of Nebraska were not big enough to contain them both.

"You don't get it - "

"You're damn right I don't get it," she cut him off sharply. "I don't get how you could've done that to me. Just up and left without a word. Like you -"

Like you never cared about me. She caught herself before the words came tumbling out of her mouth but he flinched like she'd said them just the same. But that was what he'd done; he'd walked away from her like it was easy. Like she'd never mattered to him at all, and maybe she hadn't. Maybe everything they were to each other, everything she thought their partnership was, maybe it was all in her head. Maybe she was nothing to him at all.

As she spoke Elliot moved, lightning quick and furious, launched himself up the steps to stand beside her, his hand shooting out to curl around her bicep, drawing her closer to him. The pressure of his fingers was so deep it almost hurt, and this close she could see the shine of his blue eyes in the light from the doorway, could smell the greasy fast food he'd had for dinner and the lingering hint of mint from his gum; he smelled like stakeouts, like old times and joy, and he looked like a dream, powerful and strong and holding her. Even if it hurt, at least he was holding her.

"I didn't have a choice!" he growled, and she could see the anger in him, the tremor in his hands, the flush creeping up over his chest, his neck, could hear his fury in the tight, too-loud way he spoke. "Tucker told me that if I tried to fight for my badge he would make sure you lost yours."

There was something electrifying about it, about standing this close to him, about his hands on her and their voices in the darkness, something that made her heart race, made her knees sway. The old familiar gravity, drawing her into him, his possessiveness and her yearning to belong, the two of them so evenly matched in passion and fury and grief, was intoxicating now as it had always been, but she fought it just the same, because she couldn't believe what she'd just heard.

"He wouldn't do that," she insisted, and snatched her arm out of Elliot's grip, needing to put some space between them; his proximity made it hard to think.

It was easier to deny it than consider the possibility Elliot might have been telling the truth. Easier to defend Ed, to blame Elliot for the way her whole life had been torn to pieces. The last year or so Ed Tucker had become a friend; helped her when she needed it, pushed her to go for Lieutenant, protected her, found his way into her bed, a time or two. Before the shit with the cartel blew up they'd been dancing on the edge of something, Olivia and Tucker, the edge of something she thought might be good. Ed was a son of a bitch but she'd come to see that he was the kind of son of a bitch she liked, stubborn but only because he was principled, sharp tongued but only to cover the softness of a heart that had been battered by the world, gentle when it mattered, steady when it mattered, fierce when she needed him to be. Whatever Elliot said, she knew Ed cared about her, knew he respected her, knew now that his respect for her had begun to grow long before she warmed up to him, and she couldn't believe - didn't want to believe - that the last man who'd been inside her, the last man who'd cared for her, was the reason she'd lost Elliot in the first place.

"Are you kidding me?" Elliot snapped, easing down onto a lower step and running his hand over his mostly bald head. "The guy had it in for us, you know that, Liv. You're really gonna defend him?"

"He had it in for you." Ed hadn't really ever tried to take her badge - except that one time, when she stood accused of murder, and she couldn't blame him for that, not really, when he had her DNA at the crime scene, had every reason to believe she was a killer. Yeah, Ed and El had butted heads more times than she could count, but it was almost always Elliot he was after. Hell, just a few weeks before Jenna Fox brought a gun into the station Ed had been investigating a sexual harassment complaint against Elliot. It wasn't hard to see why Ed would want Elliot gone, would think he'd crossed the line one too many times. But Ed would have no reason to go after her.

Except that she would've made a damn good bargaining chip. Threatening her would've given Ed the leverage he needed to ensure that a cop he hated, a cop he thought was a liability, walked away from the job. It was a cold, callous thing to do, but it was also smart. And Ed, he wasn't cruel, she knew that now, but he was determined to do the job, whatever it took.

"And he knew the one thing that mattered more to me than my badge was yours."

If he'd said those words to her five years ago she would've loved him for it. Would've shouted at him, told him he had no right to sacrifice himself for her, but beneath her furious defense of him her heart would've felt protected, secured, at peace in the knowledge that he had her back, always. She would've felt like she mattered to him. And that would've meant everything.

But.

"It doesn't matter what Ed told you," she reminded him mercilessly.

"Ed?" Elliot choked out, looking almost horrified at the sound of the man's given name.

"You're the one who didn't pick up the phone, El, and somehow I doubt Tucker's the one who made you ignore me."

"You'd have tried to stop me," he said, and she hated him just a little for that, but only because she knew he was right. "If I'd told you…if I'd heard your voice, I wouldn't have been able to leave. And then I'd have lost my pension and I'd have no way to feed my family and you'd have been out on your ass, too."

If she'd been a little less angry, a little less scared, a little less raw, a little less flayed wide open by the torching of her entire life, she might have understood him. Might have imagined herself in his position, and might have realized that in his shoes, she'd have done the same damn thing. If the only way to keep him in his job was to leave, she'd have left, too. Clean break and all; it was the only kind of break they were ever gonna have. He was a habit she'd have to go cold turkey on; she would've run, just like he'd run, from the hard conversations they couldn't have, from all the words they could never say to one another, all the things she felt for him that she wasn't allowed to feel and all the hopes she harbored for a future that was never gonna happen. It was what she'd done with every man she'd ever dated, walked away and never looked back, because looking back hurt, and she would not be turned into a pillar of salt. She might have remembered the box of his things she'd shipped off to Queens, might have remembered how she sent it to him FedEx and didn't turn up at his door herself thought she very well could have. Might have remembered the medallion he'd pulled out of that box and sent right back to her. Semper fi.

But she was angry, and scared, and raw, and there was no safe quarter for him within the wreckage of her heart.

"You don't know that," she said. "You don't know what would have happened, because you didn't even try. You walked out on me because it was easy."

"I walked away because you deserved better than anything I could give you."

In the shattering stillness that followed his grim proclamation it occurred to her just how goddamn quiet this place was. No bustling noise of traffic or wailing of sirens, no calling voices, no birds this time of night. No skyscrapers on the horizon, nothing but an endless expanse of inky black sky, and more stars than she'd ever seen before in her entire life. She had slipped through darkness into another world, a world so unlike the one she had known, and she didn't know who she was out here, under all that black, didn't know where she was going or what she was meant to be doing.

"You really think I was better off?" Better off without you, that's what she meant. He heard the words she did not say, and looked up at her sadly, knowingly.

"I do," he said. "I looked at your file. It's been four years since I left, and you've been promoted twice and you've got a son. I'd say you were doing a hell of a lot better without me there holding you back."

"You stupid son of a bitch."

Yeah, she'd risen up the ranks, but only because she had to, only because Cragen was on the way out and the only way she could protect her position in SVU, in the only home she'd ever really known, was to take command herself and not run the risk of someone new coming in and shattering everything she'd worked so hard to build. And yeah, she'd found Noah, but who could say whether Elliot's absence had played a role in that? Maybe she'd have found her son just the same with Elliot by her side. Maybe it would've been easier, bringing Noah home, learning how to care for him, if she'd had her best friend to lean on, if Elliot had been there to answer all her questions and support her when she was flailing. There were so many times she'd wished like hell that Elliot could've been there to see it, to meet her son, to watch her become a mother, so many times she'd closed her eyes and imagined Elliot holding Noah and hated herself for it. The last four years there had been good, so much good, she wished she could've shared with him.

And there had been bad, too, the kind of bad that left her scared and wary, the kind of bad she couldn't help but think would've been a little bit better, if only he'd been there.

"What's his name?" Elliot asked suddenly, brushing off her insult like it was nothing.

"What?"

"Your boy," he clarified. "Your son." Goddamn him, but he smiled when he said the words, smiled like he liked the way they sounded, like he was proud of her, and she wanted him to be, desperately. "What's his name?"

"Noah," she answered. Gabe, now, but Elliot wasn't asking what name the Marshals had given him. Elliot wanted to know her son's name, the name his mother had chosen.

His mother who was not Olivia, and she was going to have to tell him that, she realized, was going to have to tell him that Noah was adopted, was going to have tell him a million things about the last four years and how badly he'd fucked up, but right now she was too tired to fight.

" 's a good name," he said. "He -"

He didn't finish the thought; as he spoke they both heard the crunch of tires on the driveway and turned together to stare at the gate in the fence.

"Who -"

"It's Jackie," he explained. "She's coming to help me clear the house. Says it's -"

"Protocol."

"Yeah."

So much for getting it all out in the open. With Jackie watching their every move they couldn't speak freely; all the questions Olivia still harbored in her heart, all the explanations Elliot still wanted to give, all the accusations and the justifications and the anger and hurt, it would have to keep a little while longer. He had a job to do now, and if she ever wanted to finish what they had begun tonight she was going to have to let him.

"Let's go," she said.

And so they went, together, marched across the grass and out through the gate, and met Jackie on the drive.