It was surreal, sitting there looking at this woman who wore Olivia's face, who spoke with Olivia's voice, who was Olivia, but not. There was something innocent, guileless about the way she sat, her back propped up against the arm of the couch, her knees drawn up to her chest. Long legs bare, the satin of her pajamas clingy and revealing, and her sitting there without shame. Without pride, either; it seemed to him she did not know the picture she'd made of herself, the effect it was having on him, sitting next to her in her little pink pjs with her pink-painted toes dangerously close to his thigh.

And why should she know, why should she even spare a thought for how beautiful she was, for how that beauty tore at him? As far as she was concerned, he was just her old friend, like Fin, someone who cared for her but not someone who had ever run his hands over her soft skin.

He hadn't. He'd never done that. Never touched her. Not like that, not like someone who loved her - not like Tucker, apparently, and he bit down hard on his cheek at the very thought of Tucker with his hands on Liv's naked body; Christ, did it have to be Tucker? - but just because he'd never done it didn't mean he'd never wanted to. From the moment they first met, he'd wanted to touch her. He wanted to touch her right now.

But she was scared and reeling, lost and in need of guidance, and he would not betray her like that. Not now.

Not more than he had already.

I came here for you because this is what we do, Liv. We show up for each other.

The second the words passed his lips he regretted them. There had been a time when he could've promised her that, looked her in the eyes and said we show up for each other and meant it, but now that promise tasted like lies. It was what they once had done for each other. Before, before Jenna, before his devastating exit from her life, they had shown up for each other without hesitation. She'd gone to Jersey for him, spoken to his mother without him knowing and brought her back to the city and saved Kathleen's life in the process, just like he'd gone to Jersey for her, followed her to her brother's house because he knew something was wrong and sat beside her in the back of an unmarked cruiser, shoulder-to-shoulder and heading for the ball-busting of their lives and he was right there with her because she was his partner, and his place was by her side.

All that was in the past now, though. He didn't show up for her, not anymore. Didn't show up when she got hurt, didn't show up when she gave birth to her son, didn't show up when she got married. It was only a twist of fate that brought him to her now; if she hadn't found his photograph, if she hadn't remembered his face, he'd still be in the city with no idea what had become of her, dreaming of one day walking into a precinct where she no longer worked with a cup of coffee for a woman who would not be there when he arrived.

And she knows it, he thought; Olivia was studying him, her dark eyes thoughtful over the curve of her knees. Maybe she didn't remember the story of her own life but she was still the same woman at her core, and that woman was curious and quick-witted and good at puzzles. He'd presented her with a hell of a puzzle - a man she remembered, a man who everyone said had mattered to her once, a man who could not tell her where the scars on her body came from, a man who by his own admission had not spoken to her in years, a man who still swore that he would always come when she called.

She's figured it out already, he thought. She knows that I'm a liar.

"It's funny," Olivia said suddenly, shaking her hair back from her shoulders. "Yours was the only face I could remember. I could even remember your voice. I thought…I thought we might have been in love." She smoothed her hands over her knees. "I guess I was wrong."

She wasn't, though. She wasn't wrong.

It might've looked that way; she'd married someone else and Elliot had told her about his marriage and his kids and she'd decided for herself that whatever might have bound them to one another it couldn't possibly have been romantic. She didn't know who she was, but she did, in a way, was probably even now thinking that she'd never get mixed up with a man who had five fucking kids with someone else. And she was right about that, but wrong, too; Olivia never would've fucked him, never would've let herself come between him and his wife, never could've lived with herself if she had. But they loved each other, still.

It was love, what he felt for her. Time and distance brought some clarity, and he knew that, now. Hell, Kathy knew it; the day their divorce was finalized she'd told him to call Olivia. You love her, El. You always have. And you're the kind of person who needs other people. Let her be your people.

And wasn't that just so fucking funny; wasn't that just fucking hilarious, that after thirteen years of partnership and seven years away from Liv, twenty goddamn years he'd spent refusing to admit to himself that what he felt for Olivia was love, wasn't it so fucking funny that Kathy was the one to finally say the words he'd rather die than say himself. It had haunted him ever since, the casual way she'd said it, like there was no question in her mind, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe it was. He loved Olivia, and he had been resolutely refusing to face it for two decades, but with four little words - you love her, El - Kathy had forced him to admit the truth to himself.

He loved her. He always had.

"I don't think you are," he said. "Wrong, I mean. I don't think you're wrong. There's…there's lots of different kinds of love. And I think we did love each other, Liv. We did."

"I can imagine it," she murmured. "You…you were like a brother to me, weren't you?"

He thought of her walking out of the bathroom in her bra, pressing herself against his body, calling him daddy, and swallowed hard.

"No," he said. "Not like a brother. Fin, that's your brother. He'll tease you when you need it and protect you when you need it. He'll drive you a little crazy but he'll always be there for you."

"What are you - " she sat up a little straighter, something like fear in her eyes. "Elliot, what are you saying? Did we…I mean, we didn't, did we? You…you were married, you've got all those kids -"

"We never slept together," he said. Maybe we should've. The night Jenna died, after IAB was finished with him, he'd sat in his car for a long, long time, trying to decide where to go. Home to Kathy with blood on his hands, the weight of her expectations heavy on his shoulders, or across town to Olivia's. The night Jenna died he'd thought long and hard about banging down the door to Olivia's apartment, taking her in his arms, telling her he'd only fired because Jenna pointed the gun at Liv, and he'd rather die himself than lose her. What would've happened, if he'd just had the courage to go to her? To see her face, to speak to her, to tell her that he was thinking about leaving but he didn't want to go without finding out for himself what she tasted like? Maybe if he had she wouldn't be here now. Maybe she never would've married Tucker, and maybe her son would've been Elliot's, instead, and maybe she'd remember everything.

Then again, maybe she'd have thrown him out, and cursed him for all the rest of her days.

"It's not…" he fumbled, struggling to find the words. "What we were to each other, what we felt about each other, it's not the kind of thing I can explain." Maybe a more articulate man could've, but Elliot had never been a poet. "It's…you can only really understand it if you lived it."

"And I don't remember," she said sadly.

"Yeah."

She sighed and stretched her legs out. The tips of her toes brushed against his leg, and she did not apologize, did not jerk back from him, untroubled by the casual intimacy of such a touch, while he was seized with a wild urge to reach out and clasp her by the ankle, hold her to him, preserve whatever tenuous connection to her he could find.

"Fin kept saying you were complicated," she told him.

"I bet he did."

Fin had come along somewhere in year two - or was it three? - of their partnership, and he'd been there 'til the bitter end, been there for what came after, and there was probably no one alive - beside Elliot himself - who knew just how complicated their relationship had been as well as Fin did.

"I've been sleeping with Malcolm," she confessed suddenly, and Elliot looked up at her sharply, alarmed. Did she mean the man was simply sharing her bed, keeping her warm and safe at night, or was he the kind of son of a bitch who'd take advantage of a woman at her most vulnerable, and proceed to get his dick wet when she couldn't remember whether she wanted him to hold her or not?

"Before the accident, I mean," she rushed to clarify; maybe she'd seen the flash of rage in his eyes. "He's been a perfect gentleman since I came home."

"He better be," Elliot grumbled.

"But he said that just because you sleep with someone doesn't mean you love them. I guess it works the other way, too. You can love someone and not sleep with them."

You can, Elliot thought. We did.

"I'm sorry if this is too much for you," he said. "I can't…I can't imagine what you're going through."

"I feel like we're talking about someone else," she said softly. "It's like…I'm learning all about this woman, this Liv, but I don't know her. She doesn't feel like me. She's a stranger to me. And every time I find out something new about her I just think…she sounds so sad, Elliot. When you and Fin and Malcolm talk to me about her, I can't help but think she must've been the saddest woman in the world."

"She's not," he said. "You're not. It's a lot to take in, and I know a lot of it is heavy, but it wasn't all bad. You were happy -" sometimes, he thought - "you loved your job. You were funny. You had people who cared about you. You'd go out on the town, meet new people, have fun. There were so many nights we'd get called out to a crime scene and you'd turn up in a fancy dress and heels, 'cause you'd been out somewhere having fun."

"When you talk about me like that it sounds like you're talking about someone who's dead."

Maybe it did. Maybe he was. Maybe the Olivia he remembered died the day he left her. Maybe he was just remembering a ghost.

"It's been a long time since I left. I don't know what happened while I was gone. I can't fill in those blanks for you. I can't tell you who you are now. But I can tell you who you used to be."

"It's like there's four of me in here," she said, rubbing her hands across her thighs as if to indicate that by in here she meant her own body. "There's your Liv, and then there's whoever I was after you left, and then there's the Olivia Malcolm knows, and then there's me. And I'm not any of those other people."

Who are you now? He wondered. What's left in there?

"Well, whoever you are," he said. "I think you're somebody I'd like to know. I think I'd like to be your friend, if you'll let me."

"I'd like that, too," she said. "Now, are you hungry? I'm hungry."

"I could eat," he allowed. Truth be told he was starving, but he was in no rush to leave her side.

"There's food in the fridge," she said. "You wanna teach me how to cook?"

A smile tugged at the corner of his lips; whoever this woman was, she had an earnest, easy way about her and a good head on her shoulders, and he would happily do whatever she asked him to.

"Yeah, I think I do," he said.

He found himself caught in a strange in-between, mourning his Liv and curious about Olivia. It felt good, following her into her kitchen, peering into the fridge with her, talking to her quietly about eggs and bacon and pots and pans. It felt like a relief, to be standing next to an Olivia who did not hate him. And it felt like guilt, like grief, like horror, knowing that if she could only remember she wouldn't want him anywhere near her. What would she say, the Liv he'd known, if she could hear him now, claiming that he loved her, even though he left her? Was she ever going to come back to him, back to herself, and when she did…Christ, what was gonna happen then?

One step at a time, he told himself. For now, they were making breakfast. They'd take the rest of it as it came.