"What the hell, man?" Fin grumbled, his displeasure apparent through the phone. "I thought I told you to stay away."

"And what the hell was I supposed to do, huh?" Elliot demanded irritably. "She called me at 2:00 a.m. Was I supposed to ignore her?"

"You were supposed to wait," Fin answered. "Look, I'm doing my best here, but you and I both know if she's gonna find out who she is that means she's got to learn a lot of heavy shit. I spent most of yesterday talking to her about her parents. You think that was easy?"

No, Elliot knew that it wasn't, knew that explaining to Olivia where she'd come from, what her father had done to her mother and how that wrong had cast a shadow over every single day of Olivia's life, was not easy. But easy didn't matter to him right now; Olivia was the only thing that mattered, and she needed him, and Fin was trying to keep him away, and he couldn't understand why.

"I could've helped with that," he pointed out. "I know as much as you do about her parents -"

"But not as much about how she feels about them," Fin cut across him smoothly. "There's things I've seen that you weren't there for."

Elliot sucked his teeth, tried to stop himself from losing his cool entirely. Whether or not Elliot wanted to admit it, he knew that Fin was right. There was so much he'd missed, so many questions he could not answer for Olivia now, so many things Fin knew that he didn't. Christ, he hated this, guilt shredding him to pieces as he found himself confronted with the mounting cost of his abandonment of her.

"There's a lot of shit I need to tell her, and I'm trying to do it slow. She hit her head, man, she's fragile."

The truth was she always had been. Fragile. Delicate, in ways that most people never saw. Most people looked at her and saw a bull buster, a fierce, independent woman not easily cowed, not easily broken, and she was those things, of course she was, but she was fragile, too. Fragile emotionally, fragile the way a little girl who'd never been loved right always would be. Gave too much of herself, all of herself, to everyone else, got her heart broke every other day. The mask she showed the world was brave and bold, but underneath she was scared as a child. And that mask was gone now; she was alone, and frightened, and all but begging for help, and Elliot would be damned if he let Fin stand in his way.

"I wanted you to stay clear until she understands herself a little better. Be honest. You know your relationship with her was…complicated."

What Elliot wanted to say was what the fuck would you know about it, but Fin knew more than anybody else; Fin's eyes and ears were always open, even if he kept his mouth shut most of the time. He'd heard and seen more than his fair share, and he knew more than Elliot wished he did.

"You turn up now, she's gonna get distracted, she's gonna get confused, and there's some shit I need to tell her -"

"Like how she got all those scars?"

On the other end of the phone Fin suddenly went real, real quiet. A heartbeat passed, two, three, like he was trying to decide what to say, like maybe he didn't want to say anything at all.

"She tell you about that?" he asked finally.

"She called me crying at 2:00 a.m. asking me what happened to her and I don't have a goddamn clue -"

And that was gonna haunt him for the rest of his life, the thought of how monumentally fucking useless he felt right now.

"I didn't know she still had scars," Fin said softly. "I didn't look at the evidence photos. I guess I didn't want to know."

"What the hell happened out there?" Elliot asked. Part of him didn't want to know; part of him was terrified of the truth, scared shitless about what it would do to him, learning the details of Olivia's wounding, the depth of his own betrayal. What he wanted didn't really factor into the bargain, though; he needed to know.

"I can tell you some of it," Fin said. "But there's things that happened no one but her is ever gonna know."

"This guy, the one who hurt her, is he -"

"Dead, few years now."

Good, Elliot thought.

"Did he…"

Did he rape her? That was the question Elliot needed to ask, the question he couldn't bring himself to voice. Liv's job was sex crimes, and that men the guys she went after were rapists, and if one of them had got his hands on her…Christ.He couldn't bear to even think about it. Rape was a horrific violation for anyone, but for Olivia, whose whole life had been tainted by her mother's rape, whose whole life had been devoted to finding justice for other victims, to find herself counted among their number, was its own unique kind of hell.

Maybe that's why she quit, he thought. Something made her change her mind, made her decide to leave the job she'd devoted herself to; what if it was this, this darkness, this horror?

"She swears he didn't," Fin said. It was a strange answer; it was not a no.

"You don't know?"

"Things were chaotic when we got her back. She was drugged, drunk, bloody, the guy's face was in pieces, we didn't know what to think. She let them take pictures and bloodwork but…she refused the internal exam."

Why the fuck would she do that? he wondered. Because it was a massive violation, maybe, but Olivia knew better than anyone how important a rape kit was. Why would she refuse?

"She said there was no need. Swore he never got that far. But you didn't see her. She was in bad shape. Her head was in a bad place. And he tried to cop a plea, said he was wiling to confess to rape in open court. She refused to let the ADA take the deal."

"Why the fuck would she do that?" Elliot asked, unable to hold his tongue this time.

"She said he didn't do it, and she wasn't gonna let him humiliate her. You know what she's like. That's a proud woman. If he was gonna take the plea he'd have to stand up in front of the judge and describe exactly what he did to her."

And the grisly details of his violation of her would be part of the public record, forever. It would've been the guy's own little victory, his way of telling the whole world he'd got the better of her. Elliot could understand Liv's refusal, looking at it in that light. Liv hated to lose a fight. And if the guy really hadn't raped her, letting him say he did would've been unconscionable, to her.

But what if he had? She'd refused the internal exam, refused to let him take the plea; what if he had raped her, and she was trying to rewrite history, reclaim the narrative of her own life? Would Olivia do something like that?

She might, he thought. She might.

"The only two people who are ever gonna know what really happened are her and him, and he's dead and she can't remember shit. But you see what I'm saying here, right? This is the kind of shit I need to talk to her about without you there making my job even harder. You've always been shit at hiding your emotions and when she sees how fucked up you are over this it's gonna make things worse for her. She needs space, she can't carry you right now."

They used to call Fin the philosopher, Elliot remembered. There was a wisdom in him; Fin understood people, and he understood how to get what he wanted from them. He stockpiled information and he played the game better than anybody, and he was probably right about this. Probably right that Elliot's emotional response to Olivia's injuries would only make things worse, take the focus off her.

So I'll just have to control myself, he thought. I can do that. For her.

"It's been a long time since we've seen each other," Elliot said. I've changed. I have. "I can hold it together. I'm not gonna make things worse for you or for her."

"Stabler -"

"But if you don't tell me where she is, I'm gonna find her myself. And you know I will. So why don't you save us both some time and give me the address?"

"Stubborn motherfucker," Fin grumbled. "All right, I'll give it to you. But you're not going up there right now, right?"

It was about 2:15 a.m., right now. A reasonable man would've stayed home, tried to get some sleep, waited for daylight before venturing out into an unfamiliar place. A reasonable man would've given Olivia some time to rest instead of keeping her up all night, turning up at her door before dawn with wild eyes and trembling hands.

Elliot wasn't feeling particularly reasonable just now, though.

"Nah," he lied. "It's late. I'll come up in the morning. I just need to know where I'm going."

"Ok."

Fin gave him the address and Elliot dutifully copied it down. Seemed like Liv had moved to a small town up near Woodstock; it'd take him 2 and a half hours to get there, 2 if he ignored the speed limit, which he fully intended to do. He'd get there before 5:00. The trip would take longer than he'd like - he hated the thought of Olivia sitting up in the dark of the night, lonesome and scared, for two fucking hours. She'd been scared long enough.

"Thanks," Elliot said. "I got one more question, though."

"I won't promise to answer it."

Of course you won't, he thought.

"What happened to her husband?"

"Killed himself, about six months ago. He had brain cancer, didn't want to die a slow, ugly death. Tore her up when he went."

"Jesus," Elliot breathed in horror.

"You see the kinda shit I got to tell her? What do you think it's gonna do to her, finding out he chose to leave her like that? Finding out for the second time? Shit, it was bad enough the first go round."

He chose to leave her. Funny that, Elliot thought. Funny that Fin should choose to frame it like that. Liv's husband had killed himself and Fin talked about the guy leaving her. Choosing to leave her. Like Elliot had done, like so many others before him had done. Everybody always fucking left her.

Not this time, he thought. Not this time.

"I'll let you get some sleep," Elliot said. "She said you're coming back in the morning, I guess I'll see you then."

"See you then," Fin said, and with that they hung up, and Elliot grabbed his keys.

He fired off a text to Liv, told her he was coming and when to expect him, plugged her address into his phone's GPS, and started driving. Maybe it would've been better if he called her, if he could hear her voice in the darkness while he drove, but he didn't trust himself with her, not right now. Right now his head was spinning, thinking about her scars and the man who'd given them to her, the rape kit she'd refused and the husband who left her. All these things, all these nightmarish disasters, had happened to her while she was alone, while Elliot was far from her side. Because he was far from her side.

Maybe he gave himself too much credit; maybe it wasn't his fault at all. It sure as shit felt like his fault, though, and he spent the next two hours trying to center himself, trying to silence the voice of recrimination in the back of his mind, screaming at him for having done this to her.

I have to make things right, he thought. Whatever it takes.