It's him, Olivia thought. She'd found him, the blue eyed man from her dreams, the stranger whose photographs she kept beside her bed, buried in a shoebox in the back of her closet. The only face she remembered, the voice she heard calling to her softly while she dozed in fitful slumber, that man, El, was Stabler. The last person she'd called before the accident that stole her memories, the one Fin and Malcolm both warned her to be wary of, the one who told her I'm sorry, and never told her why. One mystery had been solved but a hundred more had sprung up in its place. Fin said that Stabler was complicated, and Stabler said you wanna hate me, I get that, and none of it made any fucking sense.

The phone in her hand vibrated again; another incoming text from Stabler.

Can I call you?

She wanted, very much, to say yes. Wanted to hear his voice, to know for certain that it was the same voice she recalled in her dreams. There were so many questions, far too many questions for her to even begin attempting to text them to him, and she was much too impatient to wait for piecemeal answers. But Fin said to wait. Fin said to wait, and Malcolm was out in the house somewhere, probably listening out for her, and he'd be so disappointed in her if she ignored her friends' warnings and did as she pleased. Whatever falling out she'd had with Stabler she didn't remember it; Fin remembered, and thought she ought to wait to speak to the man, but Olivia harbored no ill will towards Stabler.

In truth, she was terribly curious about him. The photographs she'd found spanned years; she could chart the changes in both their faces as time took its toll. In the first picture they were young, fresh faced and strong, and in the most recent one they were older, sadder, but no less fierce. This man, whoever he was, whatever he'd done, he'd walked beside her for a long, long time, and he knew her. Knew things about her that she could only guess at. And she'd dreamed of him. Surely that meant something, didn't it?

She wanted to know why she'd forgotten her husband's face, and why she dreamed of Stabler instead.

Fuck it, she thought.

Yes, she texted back to him.

Yes.

He stared at that word yes, three little letters reflected back at him from the shiny screen of his phone. Yes, she wanted him to call her. The Olivia who did not remember him wanted him to call her; would she have said the same thing if she hadn't lost her memories? The Olivia he remembered - the Olivia he left - would she want to speak to him now?

She tried once already, he reminded himself. It was Olivia who'd called him first; he still had the voicemail saved on his phone. She was the one who'd reached out first, before the accident, when she still knew exactly who he was, what he'd done. That voicemail; Christ, it cut him like a knife. I expected better from you, she'd told him. I thought you were better than this.

The Elliot she remembered, he was better than this; the Elliot she remembered wouldn't have disappeared without a word for years, only to quietly rejoin the NYPD without telling her. That's what she was so mad about; he'd taken the job with OCCB, and he hadn't reached out to her, had been back in the city for half a year and never once tried to call her, and she had to find out about the whole thing secondhand from Fin. It was another betrayal in a long line of them, and the things she'd said to him in that voicemail - I don't know who you are anymore. I don't think I want to know - haunted him. He was never gonna get clean of this, was never gonna find a way to wash out the stain of his sins.

But Olivia didn't remember any of that. Somewhere upstate there was an Olivia who was married, an Olivia who was scared, an Olivia who knew the name El but didn't know him, and she had held her hand out to him, asked him for help, and how could he refuse her? Maybe she'd get her memories back, and maybe she'd hate him, then, curse him, tell him she never wanted to speak to him again, and maybe he'd deserve that, but right now, this moment, she wanted him to call her.

So he did.

"Hello?"

She picked up on the first ring, kept her voice real, real low like she was trying to avoid someone else eavesdropping on her. Her husband, maybe; the guy had to be scared out of his mind, taking care of a wife who didn't remember him and maybe never would again; hell, Elliot knew that if he were in that guy's shoes he'd want to protect her, from the wounds of her past, from the cruelty of the present. If Elliot were her husband, if he'd come that close to losing her, if he'd held her hand while she recovered from this grievous injury, he'd never want to let her go again.

Fuck that guy, he thought. Whoever that man was, Elliot was certain the guy didn't deserve her.

"Hey, Liv," he answered her. Until a few weeks ago he'd been pretty sure he was never gonna get the chance to speak those words again. It felt good to say them now.

"Hi," she said, a little breathlessly.

"Are you ok?" he asked. "You sound - are you sure you're all right to talk?"

"Yes, yes," she answered at once. "Sorry, I just don't want Malcolm to hear me."

"That your husband?"

There was beat of silence, awkward and untenable, and then her voice came back to him.

"No," she said. "Do you not - didn't you know my husband? Before, when we lived in New York?"

This is surreal, he thought. It was Liv on the other end of the phone all right; her voice had been written on his bones long ago, and he would know it anywhere, even now, quiet and deeper, richer than it had been when he left. He knew that voice, and he knew it was Liv, but it wasn't. The woman talking to him now, she wasn't Liv, not really. She wasn't half as angry as Liv would've been, talking to him for the first time in years, and Liv had always carried herself with a confidence, a certainty this woman seemed to lack.

"Uh - no," he admitted. "The last time we saw each other, you weren't married."

"Oh."

The last time he saw Liv she wasn't even dating, hadn't been out with a guy for months. She was still reeling from losing Calvin, and as far as he knew she hadn't had a real boyfriend since Kurt. Of course, she hadn't told him about Kurt; it wasn't entirely impossible that she'd hidden another man from him, but somehow he didn't think so. Not one she cared about enough to marry, at least.

"But we - Ed and I - we got married years ago."

"Yeah, it's been about long time since…since I left. Look, Liv, Fin told me, about what happened. About your accident."

He figured he ought to get that out in the open. She hadn't mentioned it in the texts she'd sent to him, and he wasn't sure if she was planning on telling him now, but if he was going to be any help to her at all they'd have to be honest about what was happening here. About what she'd lost.

"So you know I don't remember you?"

She sounded so, so sad when she said it.

"Yeah. But don't beat yourself up about it. It's not your fault."

"I just feel so stupid," she grumbled. Now that sounded like Liv; blaming herself for calamities beyond her control. Sometimes Liv talked like she was responsible for the whole world and everything in it. "I can't even write my own name, I don't remember my wedding. I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"Just give it time," he said gently. "Your friends care about you, and we're gonna help you. Whatever you need."

"Will you…will you tell me about yourself?"

He really, really didn't want to do that. Didn't want to sit there and give her the Cliff's Notes version of his life, talk endlessly about his memories when what she really needed was to find her own.

"Lemme ask you something first," he said. "You asked me about El. Where'd you hear that name?"

That part was bugging him. Who is El, that's what she'd asked him. Not Elliot. She had his number saved in her phone, the new number he'd given to Fin, but whatever name she'd saved that number under it must not have been El, or else she wouldn't have asked, would she?

"I found a picture," she confessed. "Of me and - and you, I guess. It had our names on the back. Liv & El."

Maybe she doesn't hate me so much after all, he thought. If she really hated him, she wouldn't have held on to his picture. Or maybe she would've; maybe erasing the past was more his style than hers. Liv never could seem to let things go.

"My name is Elliot Stabler, and we've been friends for a long time."

"I'm glad to meet you, Elliot Stabler."

Me, too.

Maybe this was just what they needed. A fresh start, a clean slate. He'd tell her the truth - it would be wrong not to, would be controlling and selfish and its own kind of violence, denying her access to this fundamental piece of their shared history - but maybe hearing it wouldn't hurt as bad as living it. Maybe an Olivia who didn't really remember all the times she'd been hurt by the people she loved, all the times she'd been abandoned and left behind, all the long years of her loneliness, maybe that Liv wouldn't hate him for walking out on her.

Maybe he was a son of a bitch for even thinking such a thing.

"Are you a cop, too?" she asked, her voice bright and curious, now, less afraid than she'd sounded in the beginning. It seemed she was getting more comfortable with him, like she was enjoying their back-and-forth. Maybe she was. It must have been a comfort to her, meeting another friend, discovering another lifeline she could cling to, another set of hands to help carry her back to herself.

"Yeah," he said. "You, me, and Fin, we all did the job together back in New York. You and me, we were partners."

"Partners," she repeated.

This is my partner, Olivia Benson. How many times had he said those words? More times than he could even begin to count. She'd been by his side every step of the way for thirteen goddamn years, as much a part of him as his own right hand. She was his partner, the one he could always rely on, the one he trusted more than any other. The one who caught him when he stumbled, pulled him back when he danced on the brink, supported him, fought with him, saved him. That's what he needed to be for her now, he realized. Olivia was lost, and she needed her partner to bring her home.

"It means we did everything together," he told her. "And that's what I'd like to do now, if that's ok. I'd like to help you through this now."

"I'd like that," she said.

"I wanna come see you, but I know you got Fin there right now, and you don't need a bunch of people hovering over you. So I'll come up soon, ok? But for right now, is there anything you really want to know, anything I can help you with?"

"Yes," she answered quickly. "I know Fin told you I don't remember anything. And I don't. I didn't remember my husband's name, I didn't remember my son."

My son. The words hit Elliot like a ton of bricks. All she'd ever wanted, he knew, was to have a family of her own, and every time she'd reached for that family fate had slapped her hand away. She'd been denied so many times, and as far as he knew she'd given up on that dream. After the adoption agencies turned her down, after she lost Calvin. But she'd done it, somehow, had found a man and married him and had a child with him, moved upstate to live the quiet, peaceful life she'd always dreamed about. She finally had everything she ever wanted, and Elliot hadn't been there for any of it. When she finally found love, and joy, he was nowhere to be found. In that moment, he felt like the biggest asshole alive.

He had to meet the mysterious man Liv had married, had to know what guy was good enough to earn her trust, win her heart. He needed to find out for himself if that man deserved the gift he'd been given.

"But I remember you," she said, and stole his breath for the second time in the span of three seconds. "Your face, I mean. Your face was the only thing I remembered in the hospital. But those texts…you said you think I hate you. What happened to us, El?"

I did, he thought. Elliot happened. One fuck up too many, and he had to make a clean break, had to try to save his family - for all the fucking good it did him, since he and Kathy ended up divorced anyway - had to try to save Liv's job, her reputation, had to get himself out of SVU before it killed him. He'd walked away, and in the process he had torn them asunder, sacrificed everything they were to each other. He'd broken them, and until this moment he wasn't sure he was ever going to be able to undo the damage. Maybe now he might have a chance to put them together, but it would come at the cost of everything Liv was. He wanted it, wanted her, desperately, but was having her back worth the price she'd have to pay?

"It's a long story," he started to say. "We -"

"Olivia?" he heard a man's voice call from the other end of the phone. "Are you ok?"

"Shit," Olivia swore. "I've got to go, Malcolm's looking for me. I'll call you later, ok?"

"Ok," he said, and then she was gone.