October 30, 2015
Lost in the throes of pleasure she casts her head back on her shoulders, soft lips parted on a rich, throaty moan, dark hair fanning out across the pillowcase, a river of silk. He can see her, the arch of her neck begging for the press of his teeth, her long legs trembling, hands fisting in the sheets as she cries out - his name, someone else's, he can't hear, and doesn't care, anyway. A hand reaches for her - his, he thinks, or maybe not, can't feel the warmth of her beneath his palm, he doesn't know, doesn't know - grasps a handful of her breast, fingers sinking into soft flesh, and "yes," she cries, and "yes," again, and then her eyes flash at him, dark as night, full of recrimination and then -
And then he woke with a start, drenched in sweat, so hard he could already feel the damp patch forming on his underwear at the place where his cock was leaking for her. On instinct he turned and looked for Kathy; looked, and found her, lying beside him, sleeping peacefully, blissfully unaware of the vision his traitorous mind had conjured.
How long, he wondered, how long could a man go on like this, torn between duty and desire? How long would this last, this punishment his mind inflicted on him, even in sleep? Where would he find peace?
The best way to avoid a temptation, the priest had told him once, is to remove it from your life entirely. Was that the only way? Would he have to leave Olivia in order to free himself from this longing for her?
Maybe I don't wanna be free.
It didn't matter, he thought glumly; leaving her the first time had not banished the memory of her. Time made it a little easier; after a time the thoughts of her only made him wistful, and not desperate. The immediacy of her faded, and if every now and then he found himself looking up at the stars and wondering where she was, he comforted himself with the thought that she was better off without him. There was no such comfort to be found now, though, because he knew precisely where she was and what she was doing, knew how far she'd fallen and what had been taken from her, knew she was angry with him, knew he was hurting her, and didn't know what the fuck he was supposed to do about it.
What he wasn't gonna do, though, was lie next to his wife with a raging hard-on brought about by dreams of Liv and her pretty mouth. It wasn't fair to Kathy but Christ, it wasn't fair to him, either.
They'd gone to bed early; it wasn't even midnight, yet. He rolled out of bed and padded silently to the bathroom, weighing his options. He could go downstairs, turn on the TV, rattle around the house and fall asleep on the sofa, but he didn't want to face Kathy when she woke and found him gone. It would bother her, he knew, if she discovered that he'd chosen to sleep somewhere else. She'd ask him what was wrong, and he wouldn't be able to answer her, not truthfully, and she always seemed to know when he was lying to her face. The better course of action would be not to lie, or at least to find some safe truth to tell her.
If he had to work, she'd understand. If he went to the office and plowed through some paperwork in the middle of the night he could tell her, come morning, that something came up at work, that he'd passed the hours at his desk. The fact that none of the work was pressing, that no one had called him or expected him to do it, he could leave that bit out. It would be the truth, and the work might free him from thoughts of Liv.
So he went, drove across town and planted himself behind his desk. He meant to lose himself in it, but there was no respite from Olivia in that place; Liv was work, now. One of his cases. An email had come through, sometime between when he left the office at 5:00 and when he returned at nearly midnight, one of the Feds alerting him that there'd been some chatter among the drug cartel about Olivia. An audio file was attached to the email but Elliot's Spanish was rusty, so he just read the transcript the Fed provided. The big boss had been bragging about evading capture, and one of his goons said they're scared of you, after you killed that bitch cop, and everybody laughed. The Fed reckoned they were talking about Liv, that it was a good sign they thought she was dead. Probably he was right.
But that got Elliot thinking; he didn't know much about what had happened with the cartel, why Liv was in their sights. He was supposed to know, wasn't he? Wasn't that his job? He was supposed to know all his witnesses' stories. If he read her file now it wouldn't be an invasion of her privacy; it was for work.
It was a thin excuse, and he knew it, but he pulled her file, and read it anyway. He'd skimmed it before, but he took in the details, now. The girls, and SVU's investigation, and Christ, these guys shot her, they'd shot Liv, while she was in the car with her baby. Could've killed both of them.
Would I have known? He wondered, staring blankly at the computer screen. What if Liv had died, would he ever have found out? Officially she'd been dead for more than a month now, and none of his old friends had contacted him. They might have tried, but he had a new number and the Marshalls protected their officers almost as fiercely as they did their witnesses; maybe Fin or Munch or Cragen wanted to tell him, but couldn't track him down. The result was the same; she was dead - technically - and no one had told him. If he hadn't stumbled into her path out here in Nebraska, how long would it have been before he learned she was gone? Would he have ever known at all?
Part of him wanted to think that yes, he would know if she died. Would know if something bad happened to her, would feel the absence of her, ripping a hole through the fabric of the world. But that was just wishful thinking, wasn't it? She could have died, and he'd have gone right on telling himself that he'd saved her life by leaving. What a fool he'd been.
What else didn't he know? What had he missed, in the four years he was away? And just who the fuck had fathered her boy?
The Witsec file didn't contain those answers, but he ran a secure search anyway; Witsec had access to several law enforcement databases, and her name lit up the screen like fireworks. At first all the results were cases she'd investigated, but he figured out how to narrow it down, and found himself staring suddenly at a link to a case where she was listed as the victim.
The State of New York v. William Lewis
As he began to read horror swelled within him, boundless as the sea. The charges were assault, kidnapping, and attempted rape, and the file linked to the court transcripts. He read them all. Read every word the man Lewis said, and every word Olivia offered in turn. Read about her broken bones, about this man starving her, beating her, burning her, read his vile insinuations and her dogged insistence that he'd been an active threat to her life when she beat him half to death herself. There was so much information in front of him, but so much was missing; he felt as if he were only getting half the story, but the half he got was damning enough.
So much for protecting her. So much for setting her free. When he walked away he'd condemned her to suffer, left her exposed to the brutality of a monster. Olivia was one of the strongest, bravest people he had ever known, and she had saved herself from this nightmare, and he was proud of her for it, shit, he was so proud, but he could not help thinking that if he had only been there he might have stopped it. Might have been able to intervene, to find her before it was too late, to stop this horror before it unfolded.
She'd needed him, and where the fuck had he been? Lewis had crossed her path not even two full years after Elliot's departure; back then he'd been doing the private security work, had probably been tailing some bigwig at an embassy party on the other side of the planet when the one person who needed him most was left without a shield to guard her.
How could he have done this to her? Wrecked with guilt over the way he'd killed Jenna, he turned in his badge to save Liv, as much as himself. He'd never told a soul, and never would, but the moment he pulled the trigger was the moment he saw Jenna swing the gun towards Liv. The girl shot Sister Peg, and Liv was right there, and that was when he snapped. He'd wanted to stop the shooting before anyone else got hurt, was protecting everyone in that room, but he had not moved until he saw that Liv was in danger. He'd killed a child, for her. And Jenna was not the first to die because he chose Liv, and he didn't want the weight of his sins on her conscience. Thought she might just hate him, for the way he'd failed Jenna, for the way he kept failing her. Thought she'd want him to be that man, the man who chose his family, the one who knew when it was time to walk away, the one who'd let her go, and not keep her chained to him.
At the time it seemed like the right choice. At the time it seemed like the only choice. But he knew better, now. He knew what his choices had cost her, cost them both. Kathy was still frosty with him, resented him a little, had only held on this long for the sake of their youngest son, and looked out the window some nights with an expression on her face like she was thinking about running. She wasn't happy. He wasn't, either, wasn't happy about lying to her, wasn't happy about keeping his distance from Liv when all he wanted was to speak to her.
And Liv…Jesus. Liv had been beaten, tortured, abused. Found a man and had a baby and watched her man die, according to Jackie. Been fucking shot by the cartel, and through it all she had been alone. Sure, she had her team, whoever they were these days, but she didn't have him. Maybe it was selfish, but he knew her, and he knew what they were together, and he could not believe, not for a second, that anyone else had taken care of her the way he used to do. If someone had been taking care of her, none of this would've happened.
It should've been me, he thought. He should have been the one. The one who had her back, the one who marched through the city by her side, the one she called when shit went sideways. It was supposed to be him, and he'd let her down.
And now what was he doing? Wasn't he letting her down again, sitting here on the other side of town, not speaking to her, leaving her alone when she was more isolated than she had ever been?
She could have died.
Was that the future that lay in store for them? Just distance, and silence, and one day Elliot would retire, and never know what became of her? If they were lucky to live long enough to grow old, would he ever know when she finally died? What would that feel like, twenty, thirty years from now, running across her name - or Lindsey's name - in an obituary, and knowing that they had lived a whole lifetime without each other?
He moved on reflex, vaulted to his feet and snatched his keys up off the desk, racing out the door so fast he was behind the wheel of his car before his mind caught up with his feet.
He had to see her. Had to tell her how sorry he was, had to fall to his knees and beg her forgiveness. Had to touch her, to feel her heartbeat beneath his hands, assuring him that she was still alive, that he still had time to put things to rights. He had to see her, to hear her scream at him, damning him for a betrayer, to watch the fire burning in her eyes. He needed to know if Lewis had raped her, needed to know if the demon was dead or if there was still time for Elliot to kill the bastard himself. He needed to know who she'd loved, if she let Paul touch her, needed to know if she cared for him, longed for him, half as much as he did for her.
Let her curse him, let her throw him out herself; it didn't matter. They were bound to one another, and always would be, and by God he was tired of running.
He started the car, and pointed it toward her house. A storm was coming, and he would not stand in its path. Let it come, he thought. Let it come.