Something was different this morning, Malcolm thought. She was different, in a way he couldn't explain. The sweater she'd chosen was low cut, showed off the soft swell of her golden breasts to their full advantage - and the scars, too, the scars Olivia always used to try to hide but now did not seem to think twice about. Did it mean something, he wondered, that she'd once felt shame over those scars and did no longer? Was it only that she'd forgotten what happened, how she'd been hurt, or was it that she'd forgotten she was meant to feel shame at all?

There was no shame to be found in the graceful movements of her body, the effortless beauty of her, the way her dark eyes returned, again and again, to the hulking brute of a man sitting at her kitchen table with her son on his knee. Olivia had been insistent that she make their breakfast this morning, and while Malcolm worried about grease fires and a colossal waste of food, Stabler just grunted it's her house, man, and deferred, yet again, to a woman who had forgotten the sound of her own husband's voice.

The man was up to something, Malcolm was sure of it. While Olivia worked Stabler's eyes remained trained on her, a vein pulsing in the side of his thick neck giving silent evidence of the tension he carried within himself, though Malcolm did not know its source. Maybe Stabler didn't like that Malcolm was still here; maybe Stabler wanted this new, perpetually half-naked and good-tempered Olivia all to himself.

Fuck that, Malcolm thought. Whatever had happened between the pair of them in the past - and he still wasn't entirely sure that what Stabler told him was the truth; it was certainly not the whole truth - Olivia had fled from this man and the life she'd shared with him and Malcolm would not, could not allow Stabler to drag her back down into that darkness.

The man had to go home to New York sometime, didn't he? Fin and Stabler, they couldn't stay indefinitely, not when they had jobs and families - he assumed they had families, Fin had mentioned a wife, anyway - to go back to. Really, how long did they expect to put their lives on hold, to hide out in this little town explaining Olivia's life to her instead of letting her get on with the business of living it?

The sooner they left, he thought, the better.

"He likes you," Olivia said to Stabler then, drawing Malcolm's attention, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth while he watched Olivia batting her eyelashes at Stabler.

Oh please, Malcolm thought. Noah was a sweet kid, quiet and clingy, and he'd like anyone who spoke to him softly and held him close. It didn't take much to win him over, not really, and all Stabler was doing was holding the boy on his lap, but still Olivia was looking at the man with something perilously close to adoration in her eyes. In fact, if Malcolm didn't know better he could've sworn…

The low cut sweater, the confidence in her steps, the sway to her hips...surely they hadn't fucked, had they? After all Stabler's bluster and protectiveness, surely he wouldn't have crossed that line.

Would he?

"He's a good kid," Stabler said, and Malcolm gave in to the urge, and rolled his eyes. It was embarrassing, really, the way Stabler was going all moony over her. A grown damn man sitting there pining for a woman he'd abandoned years before, and the only reason he had any hope at all of ever winning her back was that she had forgotten the terrible blow he'd dealt her.

Asshole.

Before Malcolm could come up with some relatively dignified way to put an end to their little back and forth Olivia's cell phone began to ring, and she answered it at once, turned all her attention to the phone and left the bacon to burn and Stabler didn't even try to warn her to be careful. Malcolm intercepted the bacon himself.

"Fin!" he heard her say, heard the genuine delight in her voice. Truthfully Malcolm liked Fin - respected him, at least, though Fin did not seem to return that respect - and he was looking forward to the return of the man's steadying presence in the house.

"You sound funny," Olivia told him. His voice was fuzzy and far away, and she could hear a strange crackling kind of sound on the call she didn't recognize.

"I'm in the car," Fin explained.

"Are you on your way here?"

"No," he said, and her stomach lurched uncomfortably. She'd been counting on this, on him, to help teach her more about herself; she'd been planning to press him on the matter of her scars today, not to let him change the subject this time. Where was he going, if not to speak to her?

"I got a call. It's work. I can't - it's all hands on deck, Liv. I've been gone too long already. I gotta go back."

"Oh," she said softly.

Of course he had to go back. To his wife and his home and his job, to his real life. A life with no place in it for her at all.

"Honestly, we're lucky I made it this long without a call out," he grumbled. "But I'm sorry. I know you still got questions."

So many questions, and at present the most pressing of them was simply this: what was she supposed to do? Without Fin there to help her, what was she meant to do next? Where was she supposed to go, and how was she supposed to untangle this mess?

"The thing is, you don't need me, Liv, not really."

"I do," she insisted at once, horrified to discover that she was suddenly on the verge of tears. "Fin, I need -"

"Either your memories come back, which case it doesn't really matter if I tell you everything or not, or they don't, and if they don't, we got all the time in the world to help you answer those questions. Look, it's Friday. You just came home from the hospital on Monday. You can't slay the dragon in four days, Liv. Shit takes time. Be easy with yourself."

Slow down, take it easy. The same calm guidance, over and over again. It was grating, infuriating, unbearable, but she could see that it was right, too. Fin was right; if her memories didn't come back, she'd have a lifetime left to explore everything she'd forgotten.

Wouldn't she?

"But you're the one who knows," she pointed out, disappointed and angry both. "I can't…I can't do any of this without you. And you're my friend. When can I see you again?"

"Soon," Fin said, far too vaguely for her liking. "Look, we're just getting started, right? I can't walk away from everything and sit with you for weeks and weeks until we answer all your questions, but I can come back. And I can bring more people with me. Rollins and Carisi wanna see you. Barba will, too, once I talk to him. You can call me anytime. You're not gonna be alone, Liv."

But I will be, she thought. It would be just like before, those sad text messages on her phone. Vague plans for Christmas that never went anywhere, promises to be better about staying in touch and long months of silence. Fin in New York, living his life with his wife and their friends, and Olivia here, alone and far from everyone and everything she loved.

Except Malcolm.

Even Elliot must surely leave her, she realized; he was a cop, still, just like Fin, and the time was bound to come when he would get the same phone call, and leave her just as Fin was doing now.

"Talk to me, Liv," Fin urged her when she'd been quiet too long.

"I'm just…"

Scared, she thought, but Elliot and Malcolm were both watching her curiously and she didn't dare admit to her fear where they could hear her.

"I know," Fin said. He didn't need to hear her say it; he knew what she was thinking. "It's scary. But you're doing good. You're safe, and it's gonna be ok. And I'm gonna see you again real soon. All you gotta do is trust me, ok?"

Could she do that? Trust this man she'd known for twenty years, for only a few days?

"Ok," she said.

And that was that; Fin reminded her that the box of memories he'd brought was still in her kitchen, and told her that everything inside it belonged to her. Fin promised he'd call her soon, and then Fin said goodbye, and she had no choice but to hang up the phone, and face the two men staring at her from across the kitchen.

"He got called in, didn't he," Elliot said sadly, knowingly. Noah was still sitting on his lap, pudgy little hands tugging gently at Elliot's bushy beard.

"Yeah," Olivia said, scrubbing at her eyes in a desperate attempt to hide the evidence of her tears. "Looks like it's just you and me."

Over by the stovetop Malcolm cleared his throat once, and she sighed. Fin had mediated her past and present well, but in this room what had been and what was were at war with one another, and she had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

"Come on," Malcolm said. "Breakfast is ready. Let's get you something to eat."

Might as well, she thought. It would be harder, without Fin, harder to unpack the cluttered boxes of her memories, but maybe that would be ok. Maybe she could take a break, even. There was nothing she could do to force her memories to return; maybe she could stop chasing them, just for a day, and try to figure out what her life looked like now.

Or, she thought, stealing a glance at Elliot and Noah, what her life could look like, if only she were brave.

"This is nice," Elliot said, and beside him Olivia huffed out a derisive laugh. She'd never been one to disguise her displeasure, and her mood had been on a downswing since that phone call from Fin. She was disappointed, he knew, frustrated that the answers she sought were drifting further out of reach. But the night before she'd sat beside him and all but told him she didn't want to wait for answers that might not ever come. So what was it, he wondered, what did she really want? To know everything about her old life, to dig and dig and dig until she knew her own sarcophagus as intimately as a lover, or to cast aside the shape of what once had been and embrace her second chance?

He didn't know. He was pretty sure she didn't know, either.

"Nah, I mean it," he said sincerely. "I never got to walk my kids to school."

Technically they were only walking Noah to daycare, but still. It was nice, in a Norman Rockwell kinda way. Man and a woman, walking together, holding hands with a little boy who looked like a mix of both of them on a crisp October morning, the leaves on the trees burning in a dozen brilliant shades, pretty as a postcard. She'd never had anything like this before; there were times when his life with Kathy had come close to this sort of dreamy domestic bliss, but Liv had never tasted anything like this. A part of him could understand it, why she decided to pack up and move to this little nowhere town. She was chasing a dream. Husband, baby, neat little craftsman on a quiet street, no blood to stain her hands. Maybe it was what she'd always wanted, deep down.

"Don't you think it's all a little…boring?" she asked. "Me and Malcolm, we're retired. Every day is the same. Get up, take Noah to school, and then just…nothing, all day."

Elliot didn't like the sound of me and Malcolm but he knew better than to let his petulance show.

"I'm sure there's more to it than that."

"Malcolm golfs, when the weather's nice. He says I go to the club sometimes."

"I gotta tell you, I'm having trouble picturing that."

Olivia Benson at a country club? What sort of women spent their time at the club, and what could Olivia possibly have to talk to them about? Husbands and babies could only provide so much conversation fodder, and Liv's husband was dead.

"It'll be cold soon, and he won't even do that. And I don't know…Fin had to go back to work, and I'm sure you'll have to go back soon, too, and then I'll just be…here."

"That's the thing about freedom," Elliot told her. "There's no one telling you what to do all day, so you gotta decide for yourself."

It wasn't like he was an expert, or anything. He'd never been free a day in his life, not really. Not the way she was now.

"So what do you want to do with it?"

Olivia sighed; he watched her from the corner of his eye, watched her look down at her boy and smile softly, sadly.

"I don't know," she admitted. "But I'll have to think of something, won't I?"

"How about just for today?" he suggested. "Just for today, what do you want to do?"

It wasn't as if they had a lot of options. The coffee shop they'd visited the day before was in the heart of downtown, or what passed for it, anyway. A few kitschy shops, a barber, a bar. The town boasted a movie theater and a golf course and that was about it.

"I don't want to go back to the house," she decided. "I don't want to just sit around talking any more."

Idleness had never come easy to her; he added that to his mental list of qualities so intrinsic to Olivia that even the loss of her memories was not sufficient to erase them.

"There's a park, not too far from here," Elliot told her. "We passed it yesterday, when we went to get coffee. We could drop Noah off, get some coffees to go, go walk around the park. Get some fresh air. Might be nice."

"Yeah," Olivia agreed, though it seemed to him her heart wasn't really in it. "Might be nice."

It took about an hour to get Noah settled, get their coffee, and make their way to the park, and as the chill set in to the tips of Elliot's ears he found himself reconsidering the wisdom of his plan. Not Liv; she was in her element here, cold and kinetic, cheeks flushed a pretty shade of pink while her eyes roved endlessly around the park. There were a few intrepid mothers and toddlers hanging around the jungle gym, but it was early yet, and mostly they had the park to themselves. A black asphalt track wound its way through tickets of trees and open grass, and it was there Elliot and Olivia began their meandering walk. Every now and then a jogger came racing by them, sometimes with a dog sometimes not, but they were few and far between.

"I keep wondering," she said as they walked, "I must've done something here. I know I don't have a job but I can't believe I just sat around and watched TV all day long."

Elliot grunted.

"You always hated that daytime TV crap."

"But I don't know how to figure it out," she said. "Where I went, what I did."

That was a question Elliot couldn't answer, but one he feared Malcolm could. It was Malcolm who shared this bucolic life with her, not Elliot, and it was Malcolm who'd know how she'd filled her days.

If she'd ever actually told him, ever actually shared herself with him.

"We should look for your computer," he suggested. The thing would have her search history on it. Documents, a calendar, spreadsheets. Hell, most of that was probably on her phone, too. Technology rules our lives, he thought grimly; he could work a phone and his office computer and that was about it, normally didn't give two shits about the tech, but in this instance even he could admit its usefulness.

"You think I have one?"

They drifted to a stop near a blissfully splashing fountain. The thing gave them something to look at, Olivia's eyes following the flow of water in a curious sort of way, and Elliot let her look her fill. Ever the cop he took a moment to get his bearings, keeping an eye on a man sitting on a bench about five yards away. It was a strange time of day for a man to be on his own in a park, and Elliot's instincts warned him, quietly, of the potential for danger here.

"Sure you do," he said. "We'll look when we get home. Who knows, maybe you're writing a book."

She certainly had enough to say to fill a book. Three or four of them, probably. And she'd always been better with words than him.

Over on the bench the man pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Tapped the pack on the heel of his palm three times. Pulled one out. Caught it between his lips. Produced a lighter from the folds of his coat, lit it.

"You don't really think I'm writing a book," Olivia said, laughing.

"With you? There's no telling," Elliot told her. "You do seem more like the volunteering type."

Would there be a rape crisis center in a town this small? Maybe in the next city over. That was something he could imagine her doing.

The wind shifted and carried with it the acrid reek of the man's cigarette, and Elliot wrinkled his nose. It was a nice morning, but the smell threatened to ruin it; time to move on, he thought.

But before he could suggest they keep walking a strange expression overtook Olivia's face; her eyes went wide with something that looked alarmingly like fear, and she began to jerk her head around as if she were looking for something.

"Liv?" He asked, catching her by the arm.

"What is that?" She demanded sharply. "That smell. What is that?"

"It's that guy," Elliot said, gesturing as discreetly as he could to the man on the bench. "He's smoking. I know, it stinks, we should-"

"I can't…" she started to pace, making no move to leave the fountain but shifting her weight restlessly, rubbing at her chest in agitation.

"Olivia -" he called her name, but she jerked her arm out of his grip, shaking her head.

"Something's wrong," she said. "I can't - I can't - I can't breathe -"

Jesus Christ. It looked for all the world as if she were having a panic attack. But why? Because of the smoke? Hell, they'd walked through clouds of smoke so many times he couldn't even begin to count them, knew for a fact that Liv herself had smoked a bit, here and there - socially, of course, never habitually - and he'd never seen her this bothered by it.

What the hell is going on here? He wondered. And then he realized it didn't matter; it didn't matter why Olivia was upset, only that she was. All that mattered now was that she needed his help.

"Come here," he said, taking her hand. "Come with me."