"I'm so tired, Elliot," she murmured, her damp fingers still intertwined with his. Of course she was tired; less than two weeks out from a massive head trauma that had wiped out all her memories and she was straining under the weight of a lifetime's worth of losses dropped on her all at once. If anybody ever needed a goddamn nap, it was her. They still had a few hours left before they'd need to pick Noah up from daycare; there was plenty of time for her to rest.

"Come on," he said, rising creakily to his feet, his knee punctuating the effort with an audible crack, her hand slipping slowly away from his. "Let's get you out of there."

A sheepish expression crossed her face as she wrapped her arms around her knees, and too late he remembered that he wasn't supposed to see her naked. That this wasn't something they did, sit together, shower together, without clothes, without artifice, without shame. That she was not his lover, not his wife, that he was not allowed the grace of such intimacy with her, no matter how natural it seemed in the moment.

"Will you - uh - will you wait for me out there?" she asked him, jerking her chin towards the door that led back to her bedroom.

"Of course."

Before he left he pulled her fluffy white towel down off its hook by the door, left it on the closed lid of the toilet, within easy reach for her. She'd asked him to go and so he did not linger, only brought the towel to her and then made his exit, closed the door behind him and stood for a time staring around her bedroom with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

It was a nice room. Nice in a bland, hotel room kind of way. Impersonal really, and he found himself wondering if she liked her space like this, or if the decor in this room had been a concession to Tucker's tastes, a compromise between the happily married couple.

Christ. Tucker had slept in this room. In that bed. With her. The night before she'd crawled into Elliot's lap, ground herself against the hardness of him, kissed him with more passion than he had ever known, and Elliot had to tell her no. Tucker didn't have to say no; Tucker got to say yes, and touch her as much as he wanted. Tucker got to love her and that was never, ever going to make sense to Elliot.

For a few minutes he brooded in silence, until finally Olivia appeared. Her hair was damp and dripping slowly down her back, her body wrapped in that fluffy white towel, a blush staining her cheeks.

"I need clothes," she said. "Clean clothes, I mean."

She'd only worn this morning's outfit for a few hours, but after everything she'd been through today he wasn't about to comment on her costume change. She could change her clothes as many times as she wanted, as far as he was concerned. But that meant once more he was somewhere he shouldn't be; if she didn't want him to watch her step naked from the bath she damn sure wasn't gonna wanna let him watch her get dressed.

"I'll just - I'll go back to the living room," he said, but before he could make an escape she reached for him, one hand gentle on his forearm while the other clutched her towel tight above her breasts.

"Just - will you wait in the bathroom?" she asked him. "I want to talk to you but I don't…I don't want to go back out there yet."

And why not? he wondered. It was her house and once more Malcolm had agreed to make himself scarce until dinner; there was nothing and no one waiting beyond her bedroom door. Maybe it just felt too big, the house, the world beyond it. Maybe she just wanted to be somewhere quiet, somewhere small, somewhere safe. It didn't really matter; he'd go wherever she wanted him to, just now.

He waited in the bathroom just like she asked him to, and when she was ready she came for him, opened the door and took a step back, inviting him out into her bedroom.

The second he saw her his heart sank.

For the last few days, Olivia's wardrobe choices had been somewhat out of character. Low cut tops, bare shoulders, skimpy pajamas. Pinks and whites, light colored things, pieces he was certain she hadn't worn in quite a while, clothes that felt almost out of place, on a woman as serious and sad as Olivia. Those clothes had been incongruous but nice, in their own way, lent a lightness to her steps he enjoyed seeing. Not so now; she'd chosen a pair of blue jeans, boot cut and not skin tight like those leggings, and over them a heavy, shapeless black sweater that covered every inch of her. Covered the soft wrinkles between her heavy breasts, covered the freckles that danced across her chest, covered her scars. Covered her, and hid the truth of her from view. Even the medallion; if she was still wearing it she'd tucked it beneath the sweater, out of sight. The clothes answered a question he hadn't known to ask; the more she learned about her own life, the deeper she seemed to retreat into shadow.

"How you feeling?" he asked her hoarsely. Fine, that's what he expected her to say. That's what the old Olivia would say. She was always fine, even when she wasn't.

"I'm just so tired," she told him softly, sadly. "I want…I want to lay down, I think."

"You should try to get some sleep," Elliot told her. "We don't have to get Noah until 3:00. You lie down, I'll wake you up when it's time to go get him."

Olivia shifted uneasily on her feet, fingers toying with the hem of her sweater while she watched him with dark eyes, huge and lonesome.

"Will you…will you stay with me? I don't want to be alone right now."

He swallowed once, hard. That was something else they'd never done, something they were never supposed to do. Lay down together, in bed together. Even in the old days, when they'd caught a hard case and been forced to sleep in the cribs at the station house, they'd taken it in shifts, never actually gone in and laid down together. They weren't supposed to sleep on stakeout, either, even if they'd spell each other a while, one of them promising to keep close watch while the other closed their eyes for a bit. There was something vulnerable about a body at rest, about resting together, a closeness, a trust, an intimacy they had never shared with one another. Weren't supposed to share.

But she was hurting, and confused, and the last thing he wanted to do was leave her.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah. I'll stay."

He was not sleeping.

It had never come easily to him, napping. Sure there had been times in the Marines, on the job, when he'd been so exhausted he could close his eyes and sleep anywhere, but he couldn't bring himself to enjoy a nap in the middle of the afternoon on a normal day. Especially not when he knew the clock was ticking, knew there was somewhere else they were meant to be soon. The bed was unfamiliar to him and there was sunshine streaming in through the windows and he was still wearing his jeans, and sleep did not come.

Beside him, though, Olivia was fast asleep, lost, he hoped, in gentle dreams.

In sleep she seemed peaceful; in sleep she seemed happy, despite the heavy black of her sweater. In sleep the lines of worry on her beautiful face faded away. In sleep she clung to him.

Despite having laid down on opposite sides of the bed, despite their initial hesitance to touch one another, despite their attempt to give each other space, the moment she drifted away she began to shuffle closer and closer until at last she rolled over, almost entirely on top of him, her head pillowed on the meat of his bicep, her arm flung out over his chest, her leg hooked over his thigh. The soft dark of her hair tickled at his nose but he didn't dare move a muscle, didn't dare disturb her, refused to cost her even a moment's sleep, when she so dearly needed the rest.

What a day, he thought. Breakfast this morning had been an awkward affair, Olivia juggling the tension between herself and Elliot, between Malcolm and Elliot. Two very different but equally trying kinds of tension. Then Malcolm's pouting when she told him she had no need of him today, then their walk, the park, her panic, Lewis. Though Elliot had not read the Lewis file for himself he knew enough. Enough to know that her heart was broken, now, that it might not ever be mended, not really.

Just as it had been broken the first time, when Lewis tortured her. Her heart had been broken, and he wasn't there to pick up the pieces.

I'm here now, he thought. And I'm not leaving.

Even as he thought it, he knew it was not true. Knew he could not stay here with her indefinitely. This town belonged to Liv, to Tucker, to Malcolm, and Elliot's life was in the city. His job, his children were in the city. It was his turn with Eli next weekend, and he could not neglect his child in favor of Olivia. If he did, she'd hate him for it.

Probably there were a lot of things she hated him for. Things she was beginning to learn, even if she did not remember.

As if his musings on the inevitability of his departure had flipped some unseen switch his phone buzzed once in his pocket. A text message. A message from someone who was not Liv, a herald from the real world crashing into this dreamlike place. For days now he had been a man cast out of time, thinking only of Olivia, but his responsibilities and his regrets were coming for him now.

Carefully, trying very very hard not to disturb Olivia, he retrieved his phone, and checked the message.

It was from Bell.

I need you to come in, the message said. DA wants to talk.

Son of a bitch, he thought. The op had only just ended, and he was supposed to have two weeks off. Two weeks without work, two weeks to spend doing exactly what he pleased, answering to no one. It was supposed to be two weeks, and he'd barely made it four days.

I'm not in the city, he typed back. Can it wait until Monday?

Surely it could wait. It was already Friday afternoon; whatever the DA needed, it was too late for them to do much now. Surely it wouldn't make that much difference whether he talked to them now or Monday morning. And Monday would give him two more days with Liv, two days to play with her son, two days to try to make her smile before he left her alone with Malcolm again.

Tomorrow, came Bell's answer.

Shit, he thought.

That couldn't be a good sign, a DA willing to come in on a Saturday to talk strategy for a case that hadn't even started yet. All the players had been arraigned, but the wheels of justice turn slow and their case wouldn't go before the court for months. How could things have gone so bad so quickly?

I'll be there, he texted Bell, and then he sighed, and slipped his phone back in his pocket.

The irony wasn't lost on him; he'd taken the undercover gig with OCCB to try to get back in the NYPD's good graces, to pay to penance, to get Liv back in his life the only way he knew how. And now he was holding her, was closer to her than he had ever been, and the fucking job was going to take him away from her.

In his arms Olivia sighed and shifted, her thigh sliding slowly, deliciously against his, and beneath her he held his breath, praying she wouldn't wake, not yet. Praying that God might stretch this moment out into eternity, so that he might never be parted from her.

She sighed again, settled down, and then she nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder, affectionate as a housecat.

"Ed," she breathed, her voice sleepy and thick and fond.

Jesus. She thought he was Tucker. She thought he was her husband. He wasn't, and he was never gonna be, was never gonna be more than the man who loved her, the man who walked away from her one too many times, the man who was never where she needed him to be. Just now she didn't know that, though; just now she thought she was resting in the arms of her beloved, and he wasn't ready to break her heart again. Not yet.

"I got you, baby," he murmured, running his hand gently over her hair. "Sleep now."

And she did.

Awareness stole over her slowly as her dreams slipped away, left her foggy and peaceful, and in that drowsy bliss she lay warm and content, and did not open her eyes.

The second she blinked, it would all be over. She knew it, though she did not know how she knew. As soon as she moved, as soon as the world resolved itself around her, this moment would shatter, and she wasn't ready for it to end, not yet. Just now she wanted to stay right where she was. In Elliot's arms, tangled up with him, the heavy muscle of his thigh comforting and enticing between her own, his hand drifting soothingly over her hair.

"I got you, baby," she heard him whisper, in a voice achingly soft and sad.

It was a beautiful thing, she thought, to be held by him. Sheltered in him, cocooned in the warmth of him, the scent of mint and aftershave light and gentle in her nose. It was a beautiful thing, to know that someone cared for her, that Elliot cared for her, that on this day, in this place, when fear and pain and darkness had come for her, a piece of goodness remained. He'd told her to look for it, to look for the good, and she found it there, lying in bed with him.

She kept her eyes closed, determined to savor the nearness of him for as long as she possibly could.