January 25, 2016

It didn't feel like home.

That was his first thought, walking through the doors of the 1-6; it didn't feel like home. Manhattan SVU had moved into this building in the final year of his tenure, and when he thought of home, thought about the old days, thought about Liv, this wasn't the place he pictured. When he thought about home, thought about the old days, thought about Liv, he thought about the old precinct. The rickety cots in the cribs, and Olivia's short hair sticking up in a million directions. He thought about her, walking down the stairs with a cup of coffee in her hands. Thought about the bars on the windows, and Chester Lake's old man. The plate glass wall a drugged out psycho tossed him through. The interview room where Liv fainted in his arms.

Everything was different now.

They'd done the place up, replaced the lights, the computers, reorganized the bullpen in SVU. Cragen's office - it was Cragen's office first, and Liv's for such a little while, and hers no longer; he'd never seen her sitting in the big chair and so it would, always, be Cragen's office to him - was dark, and he didn't recognize a single face.

This was a bad idea, he thought, standing in the doorway clutching two coffees in his hands. He didn't even know if he'd find what he was looking for here; without Liv, everything about this place felt wrong, and nothing more wrong than him, standing somewhere he shouldn't have been.

Before he could think better of it and turn around Fin appeared, coming from the head or the breakroom Elliot couldn't tell, started walking back to his desk and froze the second his eyes landed on Elliot.

"Shit, man," Fin said. Elliot heard him from clear across the room, and the rookies - Elliot could tell they were rookies just by looking, could smell the green on them - heard him, too, and watched in fascination as the two men approached one another warily.

"Long time no see," Elliot said, passing one of the coffees to Fin. A peace offering, an olive branch. The two of them hadn't always seen eye to eye - they'd fought more often than not, rubbed each other the wrong way, pissed each other off, but they were brothers, after a fashion, and the thing about brothers was that they were there for each other, even when they didn't want to be.

"Feel like I'm looking at a ghost," Fin said. Elliot knew what he meant; he felt the same way every time he looked in the mirror.

"Look, can we talk?"

Fin crossed his arms over his chest, a shadow passing over his eyes.

"You heard about Liv," he said. It wasn't a question. There was only one reason for Elliot to come to this place, only one thing that could ever have brought him back through those doors, and they both knew it.

"I did," he said heavily. As far as the people in this place were concerned Liv was dead, and Elliot wasn't about to blow her cover. Fin might have known better, Fin who had stayed by her side when everybody else left, but if he did he would not say, and Elliot would not risk Olivia's safety on a bet about what Fin might have known.

"I need to know what happened," Elliot told him. That was why he'd come; to learn the details that weren't in the Marshals' notes, to formulate a plan.

Olivia had made her choice clear; she had not chosen him. Didn't want him around, didn't want the risk and the heartbreak that followed in his wake, and he understood that and did not blame her for it, but he couldn't do nothing. Couldn't just sit in New York, rebuilding his life, free to contact the ones he loved, surrounded by old familiar faces, while Olivia and her boy wasted away somewhere alone on the other side of the country. He could not go to her, did not dare risk tracking her down, but he could do this much. He could look into the men who'd stolen her life from her, and do everything in his power to bring them down. The NYPD had taken him back and he had a gun on his hip and a badge hanging on a chain around his neck, and he was determined to use them to save her. He owed it to her.

"Come on," Fin said, leading him back to the breakroom. "Let's talk."

So they did, talk. Mostly Fin talked, and Elliot took notes, asking questions here and there. Names, dates, details that were never entered into any logbook. The girls Liv had tried to save, the men who tried to kill her.

"The kid who shot her, he's long gone," Fin told Elliot.

"Back to Mexico?"

"Nah, they took him out. He was in Rikers, looking at life for killing a cop. He knew cop killers don't have it easy in there, and he wanted to make a deal. He was willing to testify, do WitSec, whatever it took. The cartel got to him first, had him killed in prison."

Poor kid, Elliot thought. He'd never actually killed Liv at all, had just taken a shot at her because he was young and scared and following someone else's orders, and he'd paid for it with his life. He never would've been in Rikers in the first place if the Marshal's hadn't faked Liv's death, and that thought weighed heavily on Elliot's conscience.

"What about the bosses?"

"I got a friend in Narcotics, he keeps me up to speed," Fin said. "Last I heard, there was some kinda shakeup with the leadership. Old boss got killed, no one likes the new boss. Feds are in there, trying to get enough evidence against one of the players to flip him. They get one of 'em to turn, the whole thing'll go down."

That was interesting. If the cartel boss, the one who'd put the hit out on Liv, was dead already and the rest of the gang was scrambling, vying for power, would they notice, would they even care, if it turned out she wasn't dead?

"How much did Liv know?" Elliot asked.

"About the cartel? Not much. She didn't have any special intel, they didn't go after her just to keep her quiet. I could've given the same testimony. That hit was personal. The old boss, he didn't like a woman getting in his way."

"And he's dead now?"

Fin's eyes narrowed; he watched Elliot warily, thoughtfully, and across the flimsy table Elliot could almost hear the wheels turning in his old colleague's mind.

"You wanna tell me what's really going on?" Fin said grimly. "Look, I know what she meant to you, and I know you probably wanna kill every last motherfucker who had a hand in hurting her -" you're goddamn right about that, Elliot thought - "but there's no one left to fight, man. The kid who pulled the trigger is gone. The guy who told him to do it is gone. So what are you really trying to find out here?"

It was a question Elliot couldn't answer, not yet. As much as he wanted to tell Fin the truth, to bring him in on Elliot's plans, to have someone to confide in, he couldn't blow her cover now. But if what Fin said was true, if the man whose personal vendetta had put a bullet through Liv's arm was dead, his grudge might have died with him. If the cartel didn't care about her any more there was no reason to keep her in hiding, no reason she couldn't come back home.

No reason she couldn't come back to him.

"I'm just looking for the truth," Elliot said carefully. "The Feds are involved, aren't they? I mean this is international."

"Yeah, DEA's all over it."

"You got a contact over there? Somebody I could talk to about this?"

"And if I do?" Fin said. "If I give you a name, what are you gonna do with it?"

I'm gonna bring her back, Elliot thought.

February 2, 2016

The nights were bitter cold, but the days weren't so bad. The air was crisp and dry and the sun was shining, so Olivia bundled Noah up and took him to the park.

It wasn't a bad life. Slow, quiet mornings spent alone or with her son, trips to the park, to storytime at the library. She cooked dinner almost every night, and had started taking Noah to church on Sundays. Still didn't have any friends, nor any plans to make them any time soon, but there were people who smiled when they saw her, and that was enough. She was into her second trimester now, and her belly hadn't really popped; she saw the changes in her own body but a loose shirt covered it easily, and maybe that was for the best. She wasn't ready to tell the church ladies about her pregnancy just yet.

Those were the only things she had to worry about these days; keeping secrets from the church ladies, feeding Noah. Their needs were met, the US government footing the bill for Liv's quasi retirement - for now - and really she should've been grateful - was, grateful - for the safety of her little family, for the respite from the horrors of real life, but it all felt so wrong, somehow. The life she led was not her own; she was not that woman, sweeping floors every day of the week, baking cookies with her toddler - the premade, tear-apart kind, but still - accountable to no one, no enemy to fight, no crusade to consume her.

But the sun still rose every day, and she had her children to think about. She could not give Noah the childhood she'd imagined for him when she first brought him home, but she could still give him a good one. A better one, maybe.

Noah was clambering over the jungle gym at the park and Olivia was standing just behind him, watching her son like a hawk, when she heard someone approach from the side. She glanced over, trying not to be too obvious, trying not to let the old familiar bite of fear overwhelm her when a stranger came too close, but her mouth fell open in shock as she realized that the newcomer was not a stranger, after all.

"Hiya, Natalie," Jackie said with a smile.

"Jackie?" Olivia breathed in confusion. "What are you doing here?"

"Came to see how you and little man are doing," she said. "Gosh, he's growing like a weed, isn't he?"

"Not that it's not nice to see you," Olivia said slowly, and it was, it was nice to see a familiar face, but - "but what-"

"I got a call from a friend at the DEA," Jackie said. "Got some news for you."

"What kind of news?" Olivia demanded, her heart rocketing up into her throat. What if the cartel had found her? What if they knew where she was? Was she going to have to move again? Had the Feds made arrests, was she going to be called on to testify? That wouldn't be the end of it, she knew; if she testified against them she'd never be safe. She'd live and die in Albuquerque.

"Someone did us a favor. The cartel boss, the one who wanted you dead, someone took him out."

And Olivia couldn't testify against a dead man.

"Are you saying -"

"The new boss was stupid enough to fly into the States and the Feds have arrested him, and the rest of 'em are too busy killing each other to give a shit about you. Pardon my French," she added a little sheepishly, glancing around at the children playing happily all around them.

"Jackie -"

"It's done. You're going home, Olivia."

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Olivia gasped, and then she spun away, made a beeline for the nearest bench and sat herself down there, buried her face in her hands and tried valiantly not to hurl. Jackie had the presence of mind to retrieve Noah from the jungle gym, and she held his little hand as they walked over to join Olivia by the bench.

"It's really over?" Olivia asked when she trusted herself to speak. "We…we're free?"

"You are," Jackie said, smiling. "We've been keeping the money from your old accounts in trust, and all your stuff's in storage. We'll pay for flights for you and little man to go wherever you want to go, but then you'll be on your own. I'm sorry, I know this is a lot to take in."

"Yeah," Olivia said faintly. So much for her quiet maternity leave; she was about to be thrust headfirst back into the world, back to fighting for everything she had, no safety net to catch her if she stumbled, but the thought didn't terrify her the way it should've. The sweet taste of freedom was worth any price. She could go home, and call her son Noah, and she wouldn't have to live the rest of her life looking over her shoulder.

"I wanted to tell you myself," Jackie said. "I know we don't know each other that well, or anything, but I…I got a soft spot for ya."

That soft spot had a name, Olivia thought. The one thing that she and Jackie had in common was the one man Olivia had only just begun to accept she'd never see again.

"Say hi to my old partner for me, would ya?" Jackie added knowingly.

"I can't," Olivia told her. Sure, Olivia was free, free to go home, back to the city, to try to get her job back, but there were some doors that once closed remained that way. It was too late, for her and Elliot; they'd broken one another's hearts one too many times. Wherever he was, that was where he belonged, and Olivia had learned her lesson. She would not take another woman's husband, would not tear Elliot from his family. Hell, he and Kathy had probably patched things up by now, and that was as it should be. He belonged with his wife, and Olivia had no part to play in his life, not any more.

"We'll see," Jackie said mysteriously. "Now come on, let's get going. We gotta get you packed."

"What, now?" Olivia asked. The world had spun madly out of her control; everything was changing, and all she wanted was a second to catch her breath.

"Why, you got anything better to do?"

She could stay at the park a little while longer, watch Noah play, maybe have a little cry, but Jackie was right, she decided. She'd been offered a chance at freedom, and there was nothing to stop her from taking it.

"No," she said. "Let's go."

And so they did.