The problem with making a promise was that once it had been spoken, it was up to him to keep it. To keep his promises, to stay true to his word, not to falter at the first hurdle. To say he was going to do something, and fucking do it.

He'd promised Olivia that he was going to give her space. That he would back away, and let her process the information in that file on her own. That he would wait for her, and not crowd her, not push her, not demand information he knew she could not bear to share with him. Oh, he hadn't said I promise, not explicitly, but he'd told her what he was going to do, and she needed to know that he could be trusted to keep his word.

Only now he wasn't sure he could. Wasn't sure he was physically capable of sitting still and waiting, not when Olivia had gone storming by him, ignored him calling out to her, and slammed her bedroom door behind her. It was obvious that she was upset - Jesus, upset was an understatement; he'd seen the Polaroids, the scars on her chest, her thighs, and he knew she had endured horror, and knew that learning about it must've been completely devastating - and it was likewise clear she intended to deal with this hurt on her own, and he'd promised he was gonna let her but now that it came to it he found he could not bear the thought of leaving her to deal with this grief alone. Too often in the past she'd done that, retreated, hid herself away to lick her wounds in private, and it had been bad for her, every time. The only thing that ever helped, the only thing that was gonna help her now, was having someone to share her burdens with. He didn't want a repeat of Sealview, of Olivia locking herself and her sorrow away, too far away to reach. What he wanted now was a moment like the one they'd shared on the stoop at his old apartment, the pair of them honest and gentle with one another, holding each other up, finding grace in the comfort of another heart.

He drummed his fingers on his knees as he warred with himself, listening hard for some sound of her in the bedroom, though he identified none. The question churned through his restless heart; go to her, and break a promise? Or stay, and leave her to wander through the wilderness of her grief alone? How could he help her, when he didn't understand what had happened to her, when he didn't know, truly, what she needed from him in this moment?

In the end there was no choice at all; she was in pain and he could not bring himself to leave her that way, promise or no.

He rose abruptly from the couch and marched straight to her bedroom, knocked once, sharply, and waited. No answer came from within; no voice, at least. As he stood there he heard the sudden rush of water through the pipes, as if she'd decided to start the shower or run a bath. But she'd just had a shower the night before, and he didn't think the sound of the shower right now had anything to do with hygiene. No, he was pretty sure she was running away.

Carefully he eased the bedroom door open, glanced inside and saw for himself that he was right, that Liv was no longer in the bedroom, that she must've been in the en suite instead.

It was a terrible thing, what he meant to do. To intrude on a woman alone, in a vulnerable, terrifying moment. The only thing worse would've been not to go at all.

He walked to the bathroom door, resolute and resigned to the very real possibility that she might hate him for his invasion of her privacy. The door was closed so he knocked there, too, not wanting to go storming in, but when Olivia did not answer he tried the handle, and found the door unlocked.

"Liv?" he called out as he eased the door open.

"Go away!" she yelled from inside the shower. The curtain was drawn, hiding her from view; that was probably for the best. He knew she never would've forgiven him if he'd walked in and seen her naked.

"I need to know you're ok!" he called back.

"Just leave me alone!"

"Can't do that, Liv," he told her grimly, and with that he marched right into the bathroom and sat himself down on the closed lid of the toilet.

"I don't know, it seems to be your specialty!" she was still yelling, having no way to know how close he was to her now.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" he demanded, already on the defensive even as he wished he wasn't. After all, she was right, wasn't she? He was the one who'd left her all alone, to face this horror without her partner beside her. Truth was she had every reason to hate him for that; truth was he hated himself for it. But true or no, he didn't like hearing it.

"You left me," she told him, her voice a little softer now like she'd noticed he was closer. "And no one gave a shit about me after you went. I was missing for days before anyone even noticed."

Jesus Christ, he thought. It was his worst nightmare, really. Used to keep him up nights. Elliot had been born into an Irish Catholic family, mother father sisters brothers, and when he married Kathy she'd been pregnant already. He moved from his father's house - which had always been bursting with people - straight into base housing, lived with his wife and baby daughter, with the other boys in a barracks overseas. The babies kept coming and Elliot had never been alone in his entire goddamn life; even after Kathy kicked him out the first time, when he moved into his own apartment, he still wasn't alone, their lives too enmeshed to allow him to distance himself from her completely. But Olivia, Olivia was, and always had been, alone. No one to spend Christmas with, no one to call her on her birthday. Just the squad, that was all she had, and he'd worried about that for more than a decade. Worried about her, all on her own. Wondered who'd take care of her, if he wasn't there to do it himself.

Apparently the answer to that question was no one.

"Liv -"

"I really, really don't want you here right now."

As she spoke it seemed to him that something was off; it sounded as if her voice was coming from below him, and that didn't make any sense, not if she was standing in the shower. But maybe she wasn't standing; maybe she was sitting, right there on the floor of the shower, legs too weak to hold her, hot water spraying down over her head.

Very quietly Elliot eased himself down to sit on the floor by the edge of the tub. To sit next to her.

"I can't imagine what you're feeling," he said slowly. "But I do know that your squad cares about you. Whatever happened, it wasn't because no one gave a shit about you."

"Then why didn't they come?" she asked in a broken little voice. "Why didn't anyone come for me?"

Because they knew you wouldn't let them, he thought. She had a bad habit of pushing people away, even the people she loved the most. But he damn sure wasn't about to place the blame for her abuse at her door; there was no one to blame for that but the man who did it.

"I don't know what happened -"

"You're goddamn right you don't know," she hissed, and as much as it hurt to hear her swear at him now he couldn't help but wonder if maybe it was a good sign. If maybe it meant that she was remembering.

"Because you weren't there," she bore in relentlessly. "You walked away from me and you never looked back. And now you sit there, and you tell me you love me -"

I do, he thought. I do love you.

"And I don't know what makes you think I should believe you."

"I thought I was doing the right thing back then."

He really, really did. At the time, ducking her calls, promising Kathy he'd be the husband she deserved, he thought he was doing the right thing. Making the right choice for everyone, Olivia included.

"I think something different now."

These days he was beginning to suspect that he never should've gone back to Kathy in the first place, pregnancy or no. At the time he'd thought there was no other choice, but hindsight told him something different. And that was the most unfair thing of all, he thought, that he could only clearly see the right choice after the thing was done.

"And I'm supposed to what? Just forgive you?"

"No, I was pretty sure you were gonna hit me the first time you saw me again," he admitted ruefully. "But I'm pretty sure I'd have deserved it. I was gonna let you hit me, if that's what it took to make you talk to me again."

"I should hit you right now," she muttered.

"Would that make you feel better?"

He'd let her, if that was what she needed. He owed her that much.

"No."

From inside the shower she heaved a great sigh, and then one of her hands appeared, reaching for the edge of the shower curtain. She tugged it back, just far enough so she could see his face, not so far that the shower could soak him.

The shower was one of those dual shower and bathtub insert things, white and pristinely clean, full of countless scrubs and soaps and haircare products he couldn't begin to identify. Olivia was sitting on the floor just as he suspected, water cascading down her back. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, preserving her modesty. Mostly what he could see was her long bare legs, the elegant line of her shoulder, the sparkle of the gold chain of his medallion still hanging around her neck. Mostly what he could see was her eyes, big and dark and sad.

"I hate this," she said softly.

"I know."

"I want to know who I was, but everything I learn is just so…it's just so sad, Elliot."

"I know."

Her mother, her father, her brother, her husband were all dead. Her father was a monster, her mother was a drunk. Her son was a foundling, an orphan with his own complicated past. She'd been beaten, burned, god only knew what else. She'd killed people; she'd buried friends. It was horror upon horror, and if she didn't want to remember he couldn't blame her for that.

But that was only half her story, and he wanted, very much, to tell her the rest.

"You're more than the bad things that happened to you."

"Am I?" she asked bitterly. "All the clothes in my closet are black and I call the pizza delivery place more than I call my friends. It's…my life is so miserable."

"It's not," he said. "It's not. You're not. Olivia, you…listen to me."

Talking like this, openly, honestly, about emotions, about the things they were afraid of, the things they dreamed about, had never come easily to either of them, but in this moment he was willing to try. To overcome his own heavy tongue, his own uncertain heart, to give her back the piece of herself she most needed to find.

"You are brave and you are strong and you are good. Do you hear me?"

She wouldn't look him in the eye; all he could do was pray that she would hear him, and carry on.

"You helped so many people. I mean, hell, Olivia. Hundreds of people. Thousands probably. You were the best thing that ever happened to them, after the worst thing that ever happened to them. You have so much weight to carry but you never let it make you hard."

Or at least, not so hard that she no longer had hope. It was hope, he knew, that kept her in the job, even when that job felt impossible. It was faith that gave her purpose, her unshakeable faith that the victims who crossed her path still had so many reasons to live. That she did, too.

"But you know what else? You're funny."

"I'm funny," she repeated blankly.

"Yeah, you are. You and me, we used to laugh a lot."

Gallows humor, mostly, black little jokes to get them through the day, but still. She used to make him laugh. He used to make her laugh, too. He'd like to hear it again sometime, her laughter.

"You like to dance." At least, she used to let her dates take her dancing, back in the old days.

"You like old movies. A lot. Love 'em, really. You and Munch used to spend whole afternoons talking about old black and white movies I never heard of."

"I can't remember-"

"Maybe that can be a good thing. You can watch all your old favorites for the first time again. See if you still love 'em as much as you used to. I don't…what I'm trying to say is…you got a whole life, Olivia. A whole big, complicated, messy, beautiful life. It's not perfect and there's parts of it that are scary, but I don't want you to get so bogged down in the scary parts that you don't see the good parts. Because there's good, here. There's a lot of good in you. And there's more good out there waiting for you to find it."

It was a lesson he was beginning to learn himself. That he was more than the sum total of his mistakes. That there was good, even in the midst of bad. His marriage with Kathy had imploded, but that didn't mean no good had come from it; they had five beautiful children, and a lifetime of memories, and he would not be the man he was now if it had not been for her. Their marriage was over but they could still laugh about it sometimes, about the old days, and Kathy smiled more now than she had in years.

The job had ended in abject failure for him, but he had never forgotten the good of it, and he was trying to get that back. Had a badge and a gun and a plan, and he was, slowly, building the kind of life he wanted for himself.

And that was all he wanted for Olivia. He wanted her to see the good all around her, and he wanted her to live, to live exactly the kind of life she wanted. Even if that meant her staying in this nowhere town, devoting herself to her son and her home. If that was what she wanted, he wanted her to have it.

"I don't know how to do that," she confessed. "I don't know how to find it."

"All you gotta do is look," he told her.

And then he held out his hand. Reached out to her, not to touch her, only offering. Offering her a hand to hold, a lifeline to cling to. An anchor to keep her steady, a reminder that she was not alone.

As he watched and waited, holding his breath, Olivia reached out, took his hand, and held on tight.