"You got something you wanna say to me?"

He was trying to keep his voice down; Olivia was in a delicate place emotionally and her baby was sleeping just down the hall - her son, her son, the child she had always dreamed of, born of her body, her deepest longings made flesh, her son, and Christ every time Elliot thought about that boy his heart turned itself inside out - and Elliot had promised himself he wasn't gonna be this guy. Promised himself he wasn't gonna be angry or aggressive, wasn't gonna be possessive, wasn't gonna upset her or lie to her, wasn't gonna let the mess of his own emotions stain her skin.

But Malcolm was busy scraping the last of the eggs into the trash can, and just looking at the guy made Elliot want to put his fist through the wall.

"Excuse me?" Malcolm straightened up, empty frying pan clutched loosely in his fist, belligerent expression on his face.

"You sent her out of the room," Elliot pointed out through clenched teeth. "Don't tell me you were just looking for an excuse to do the dishes."

"She needed to get ready -"

"Pretty sure she can make her own schedule, pal."

"She can't!" Malcolm hissed, suddenly burning with a righteous sort of indignation. "She can't tell time!"

That rocked Elliot, just a little; of course he knew that Olivia had forgotten everything, he just hadn't realized how much the word everything encompassed.

"And it's important for Noah to keep to his usual routine," Malcolm continued in an angry, patronizing sort of way, as if Elliot had never met a child before and had no idea the amount of effort it took to raise one well. "He knows something is wrong. He's four years old and he knows something is wrong with his mom. Do you have any idea how fucked up that is?"

"Yeah, I think I do," Elliot fired back. "Because that woman is my -"

"Is your what?" Malcolm interrupted him snidely. "Because I've known her for two years and she's never once said your name. So who exactly do you think you are to her?"

"What about you, huh?" Anger propelled him forward until Malcolm was within striking distance, his hands itching for an opportunity. "Who do you think you are to her?" Elliot demanded. "Just 'cause she let you sleep with her doesn't mean you know her."

The men who shared Olivia's bed so rarely shared her heart, and Elliot knew that better than anyone. He'd seen them, those guys watching her every move with puppy dog eyes, chests puffed out because they thought they owned a piece of her until the day came when she slammed the door in their faces. Sex and knowing weren't the same thing.

"She told you about that?" Malcolm rocked back, just a little, clearly shocked by this revelation, his eyes darting towards the doorway like he was thinking about running. Elliot had the upper hand now, he realized; Elliot knew more than Malcolm did, and Malcolm was beginning to see that.

"What, you mad she didn't keep your secret?" Elliot sneered. "Let me ask you something - have you laid hands on her since the accident?"

If he's fucked her in the last two weeks I'll kill him myself.

"I'll have you know, she kissed me -"

How many times had Elliot heard the same story, a predator insisting their prey was the instigator, that a victim was ultimately responsible for someone else's crimes? If Malcolm thought that gambit was gonna earn him some of Elliot's sympathy he was dead fucking wrong.

"And I stopped it," he finished firmly.

Well. That changed things, just a little; if Malcolm had kissed her, touched her, fucked her, Elliot's instinctual mistrust of the man would have been validated, but instead Malcolm was insisting that he'd been a gentleman, that he'd pulled away and not taken advantage. If that were true, if Malcolm had stopped her, that meant that there was a possibility he was just a decent guy, trying to do the decent thing.

"I care about her and I am going to keep her safe," Malcolm continued, "so excuse me for being suspicious of some random guy who turns up here in the middle of the night after the one person she trusts told her to stay away from you. You're right," he brushed by Elliot, went to the sink like he meant to start washing the pan he was still holding, "I did want to talk to you alone. I want to know that the hell you're doing here and why Fin says she shouldn't talk to you."

The last thing Elliot wanted to do was tell Malcolm the whole sorry story, but the guy had a point. When it came to Elliot and Olivia and their history, Malcolm knew less than Olivia did. The pictures she'd found, the conversations she'd had with Elliot, he felt certain she hadn't shared any of that with Malcolm. She might not have remembered anything, but she was still Olivia, and Olivia never shared her secrets readily.

But Malcolm was the one holding the keys to Olivia's life. Malcolm knew things about her that Elliot didn't know. Malcolm knew about Noah's daycare, and his routine, and Malcolm was the one Olivia had chosen to share her bed. Before the accident, before the forgetting, it was Malcolm she wanted, not Elliot. Though Elliot's heart screamed with the need to stake his claim, to put his roots down right here and insist that he belonged in Olivia's life, the truth was he had walked out of that life seven years before, and she didn't want him in it, not anymore. It was Malcolm she wanted, and if Elliot wanted to stay here, to spend time with her, he would have to bring Malcolm onside. What would she do, he wondered, if Malcolm insisted that Elliot needed to leave, if Malcolm began to try to poison Olivia against him? She didn't remember either of them; which one of them would her blank-slate mind choose now?

"We were partners on the job for thirteen years," Elliot told him, rubbing his hand over the tense muscles at the back of his neck. He'd be running short on sleep for six months, and he'd been awake since 2:00 am, and the exhaustion was starting to overwhelm him.

"We were friends. Good friends." Best friends, he thought. "But we had a case that went bad-" worse than bad, but Malcolm didn't need the details - "and I had to leave. I knew she'd try to talk me out of it but I didn't have a choice. I thought it'd be easier on her if she could just hate me. I thought it'd be easier on her if she didn't have to hear me say that I was going. So I didn't talk to her again. I gave her a clean break." I did it for her, he thought. It was what he believed, what he had to believe, to justify one of the biggest regrets of his life. "But that meant she was pissed as hell at me. Fin told her not to call me because he knows that the second her memories come back she's gonna want to punch me in the face and he was trying to make things easier for her."

There was more to it than that. There was more he could've said. More about him, and her, late nights on the stoop of his shitty apartment, her blood on his hands, the look in her eyes while Gitano held a gun to his head. Oregon and Simon and Eli, her father and her mother and his mother. Dean Porter and Sister Peg, bail money and an endless string of loss. The ties that bound him to her went deeper than the word friendship implied, but those ties were private, meant for Elliot and Olivia alone. It wasn't any of Malcolm's business.

But from the look on Malcolm's face, it was clear the man didn't believe him.

"All this because you stopped working together?" he asked dubiously.

He doesn't get it, Elliot thought. The problem wasn't that they stopped working together, it was that he left. That he left her. That after everything they'd been through together, everything they meant to one another, every promise they'd made, the most important person in Olivia Benson's life vanished without a trace. That he had abandoned Olivia, who had been left by every-goddamn-body she ever loved, who had only wanted somewhere to belong and would only hear reproach in his silence, a voice whispering in the back of her mind that no matter what she'd tried to tell herself she didn't belong with him, either. That he didn't want her to.

"How would you feel, if your best friend in the whole world just fucking vanished one day?" Elliot asked, wondering what it would take to get through to the guy, wondering if it even mattered whether Malcolm understood or not.

"I don't think I'd punch him when he came back," Malcolm answered coolly.

"Yeah, like you've ever punched anybody," Elliot muttered. Really, he thought, what did Olivia see in this guy? Malcolm's hands were soft; sure, he was broad-shouldered and square-jawed and in possession of all of his hair, but he looked like he'd be more at home sitting in a comfortable chair than standing in the center of a boxing ring. He looked like the kinda guy who'd never been in a fight in his life.

"What did you say?"

"I said that's 'cause you're not like her." That wasn't at all what Elliot had said, but he was pretty sure Malcolm hadn't heard him clear enough the first time to make a stink about it. You're not like us, that's what Elliot wanted to say now, wanted to point out that Malcolm wasn't like them, battle-hardened and wary, proud and headstrong. There were so many ways in which Elliot and Olivia were the same, and Malcolm didn't appear to share a single one of those characteristics.

"How long has it been since the last time you talked to her?" Malcolm asked. "Because I gotta tell you, I don't think you know her at all. Not anymore."

I don't know who you are anymore. I don't think I want to know.

"Some things don't change," Elliot said with a shrug. "Look, I'm here for her. I'm here to answer her questions and help out in any way I can. I'm here until she tells me to go home. So do you want my help with the dishes or not?"

They might as well clean the damn kitchen, he thought. It was the excuse Malcolm had used to buy them a few minutes alone, and Olivia was busy with her boy. She didn't need to come back to a still-messy kitchen, and Elliot didn't want to hear the questions she might ask if she did. The clock was ticking; it was past 7:00 now, and though Elliot wasn't sure when Noah was due at daycare he figured it was probably soon. After that Fin was due to come by, and Elliot desperately wanted to steal a few minutes alone with Olivia before that happened.

"Yeah," Malcolm said. "I could use another set of hands."

The thing about cleaning a kitchen, Elliot thought, was that it wasn't really a two person job. Everybody had their own preferred method of doing things, and there was only so much space to maneuver. If he was going to work in a kitchen with someone else, he only wanted to do it with someone he knew well, someone who would tackle the problem in the same way he would. Someone like Kathy, or Liv, someone he trusted, someone he could move with. Malcolm was not that someone, and they spent the next few minutes getting in each other's way, grumbling and tripping over each other's feet. They were very nearly finished when he heard the soft sound of bare feet on hardwood, and he turned to watch as Olivia came back into view.

Turned, and saw her, and very nearly swallowed his own tongue.

The outfit she wore was nothing he ever would've imagined her in. Soft leggings that fit her like a second skin, showed off the shape of her legs to their best effect, and that fucking sweater, the curve of her shoulder and a vast swath of her chest left bare by its too-wide neck, and even from across the room he could see the scars that dotted her tanned skin. He could see the heavy line of her cleavage, too, the soft little wrinkles where her breasts pressed together, and the black strap of the bra that held them in place. She was just so fucking pretty, every inch of her familiar to him and yet not, touched by the passage of time and made into something new, something every bit as captivating as the beauty he had known when they were younger and braver than they were now. It wasn't just the clothes, wasn't just her body that made the breath freeze in his lungs, though.

She was holding her son on her hip, and the sight of it shattered something in him.

The boy was bigger than Elliot thought he'd be; sure, he knew the kid was four, but somehow he'd been picturing a baby, still, his brain struggling to accept that Olivia had had a son for years, a son he'd known nothing about. The boy's eyes were wide and blue, the same shape as Olivia's though not at all the same color. Tucker had blue eyes, Elliot remembered. He'd just seen them in that picture from their wedding day.

Tucker's son, and Olivia's both. Tucker had fucked Olivia; knowing they'd been married was one thing, but knowing that they were fucking was another. There was something abstract about the idea of their marriage, something Elliot had been able to distance himself from, but that boy was the incontrovertible proof that Tucker had fucked Olivia, come inside her, made her his, that she'd wanted him to, and Elliot's head spun at the thought, confusion and rage and hurt all swirling together.

Tucker's son, on Olivia's hip, his little fingers toying with the chain of her necklace.

Wait a second, Elliot thought, looking at that necklace. It looked familiar, but Noah's playing kept moving it around. It can't be -

"You look nice, Olivia," Malcolm told her warmly. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yes," she said, smiling. "Is Rosie almost here?"

"Rosie texted me a few minutes ago," Malcolm said. "She asked me to walk with you this morning."

That might've been true; Malcolm had been messing with his phone while they were cleaning the kitchen. Elliot still didn't like it, though; he didn't like the thought of Malcolm and Olivia alone together. The funny thing was, Malcolm probably felt the same way about him.

"Ok," Olivia said, her dark eyes darting over to Elliot, a question in their depths.

"I could use a shower," he said. "I can do that while you're gone."

Might as well give himself something to do, he thought, instead of snooping around Olivia's house with the ghost of Ed Tucker growling at him from the shadows.

"Great!" she said, clearly relieved that he wasn't going to try to start a fight about being left on his own.

"Can I ask you something?" Elliot took a step towards her, his eyes fixed on the necklace. Noah had let the chain drop from his hand, and Elliot could see it better now, and he was pretty damn sure he recognized it.

"Where'd you find that necklace?"

"It was in her car," Malcolm answered for her. "It's a St. Jude's medallion."

"I know that," Elliot muttered, shooting him a dark look. "It's mine."

And so is she.

"Oh, I didn't - I didn't know," Olivia said, reaching up to brush the medallion with her fingertips. "Do you - do you want it back?"

"No," he said. "I gave it to you, you should keep it. It's nice to see you wearing it."

That wasn't entirely true, the part about him giving it to her. In a way he had given it to her, but he hadn't done it on purpose.

A few months after Elliot left a box of his things turned up on the doorstep of the Queens house. No shipping label or anything, like whoever had sent it had dropped it off themselves. Which, he figured, she must have. Must have packed up all his belongings from his desk and driven them out to Queens, and left them for him. In those days she wasn't calling anymore, and she didn't ring the bell, didn't ask to come inside, didn't demand to see him. Just left his stuff, no note, no attempt to reach him. He figured she'd given up the fight, and he took her silence as a sign that she was done with him.

But when he opened the box, when he catalogued the items she'd returned to him, he'd found one thing missing. His St. Jude's medallion hadn't made its way back to him, and he'd spent the last seven years wondering what had happened to it. Now he knew, though. Now he knew that, pissed as she was, when Olivia packed up his things she'd kept something for herself. Kept it on purpose, kept it in her car, kept it in the one place her husband would never see it. A piece of Elliot she carried with her, even after all these years.

Maybe it didn't mean anything, but he liked to think that it did.