He found her in Eli's room, kneeling on the floor, packing her things with a determined look on her face.
"Liv?" he called to her from the doorway, his heart in his throat. Anger nipped at his heels, though he tried to ignore it; it just wasn't fucking fair. Finally, finally they'd had a taste of what they could be together; they'd finally been making it work, and now she was leaving? What the fuck was she leaving for? What had he done to send her running? The night before she'd wanted him to kiss her, told him so, wanted to fuck him, seemed more than happy to fall asleep in his arms, and his head was spinning from the sudden shifting of the ground beneath his feet.
But really, he thought, really he should've been expecting this. Liv always had one foot out the door.
"What's going on?" he asked, trying not to let his disappointment, his frustration, his goddamn terror at the thought of her leaving bleed through in his voice.
"Going home, Elliot," Noah told him solemnly from his perch on the bed.
On the floor Liv's hands never paused for a second, folding up shirts and trousers and tucking them into the bag, gathering Noah's toys, carrying on like she couldn't see Elliot falling to pieces in front of her.
"I thought you were still asleep," she told him quietly. "I was gonna talk to you when you woke up."
"Were you?" he asked before he could stop himself, the words tumbling out of his mouth angry and hard. Her eyes flashed at him, a warning in their depths, but it was too late now to take back his accusation, and he would not apologize.
"Of course I was," she fired back. "I wouldn't just leave without telling you why I was going."
The rest of that thought - like you did - remained unspoken, but she didn't have to give voice to her recriminations; he heard them loud and clear. Maybe she'd remembered more even than he realized; maybe she'd remembered enough to hate him, again.
Christ, he loved her. He couldn't bear it if she hated him.
"I've decided to go home," she told him, as if he hadn't figured that out already. She and Noah had only been staying with Elliot a bare two days and they hadn't brought much with them; there was nothing left to pack, nothing to give her an excuse to avoid him any longer, and she rocked back on her heels, looked up at him with eyes full of grief.
"You wanna tell me why?"
It had all been going so well. She was making connections with her friends, remembering more and more, finding her way. They were finding their way, together, being more honest, more open with one another than they ever had been before, not hiding any longer from the truth of their desires, no longer afraid of the way they loved each other.
At least, he thought they were no longer afraid. Her face, her eyes right now; she looked scared to death. He was, too.
"Lot of reasons," she said, and he damn near swallowed his tongue in his attempt to keep a hold of his temper. That wasn't a fucking answer, he needed her to tell him -
"I'm not sure being here, listening to people tell me who I am, is really going to help me," she said. "I mean, everybody's - everybody's telling me things, Elliot. Would you accept that? Would you just do what you were told, be what other people told you to be? Or would you want to find out for yourself?"
"I'm not telling you anything -"
"You are," she interrupted him, her voice sad but steady. "You've been so kind to me and you've been so patient and you're trying to let me figure things out for myself, and I appreciate that, Elliot, I do. I see that you're trying. But you are telling me, too. You're telling me who I used to be and you're telling me what you want for the future and you're telling me that you love me -"
"I do love you - "
"And I think I love you, too. But you've known me for twenty years, and I've only known you for a few days and it - it scares me."
She was right, he had been trying, as hard as he could, to give her control of her own life, and she said it herself she could see how hard he was trying, but apparently it wasn't enough. His best efforts, his devotion, his love, it wasn't enough. Maybe it never would be.
It wasn't working for him, standing in the doorway while she knelt on the floor, towering over her like this, feeling like a monster even as his heart screamed in protest, insisting that he wasn't. With a grimace he sank to the floor, too, sat flat on his ass with his legs stretched out in front of him, three feet and twenty years away from her.
"When I'm with you I think I could stay here forever," she told him, plucking anxiously at the hem of her blouse. "You even had me - you had me thinking about babies, Elliot. When we're together I can picture that life for us." He could, too. Could picture it, the pair of them living together, loving each other. Could picture her with a baby in her arms, could hear himself call her wife, could picture it all and his heart screamed in his chest, desperate not to lose hold of that dream.
"I can feel it - it's like I can feel that future pulling me in. Pulling me down. And maybe that's a good thing, but it's happening too damn fast. Don't you think it's happening too fast?"
Not fast enough, his vicious, broken heart whispered to him. Twenty fucking years, that's how long he'd waited to take her to bed, and he couldn't imagine there was a soul alive who'd say twenty years was too fast. Except that it was. It was too fast. She was right; it was only a few days since he'd exploded back into her life, and she didn't remember anything, and here they were, rushing headlong into change and commitments and forever. It felt so right, but he could understand it in a way, her fear, her doubts. What they were, what they had always been, had been from the moment they met a strange and all-consuming thing. A goddamn hurricane, that's what they were, unpredictable and fierce, tearing through everything in their path, leaving a trail of wreckage behind them. Jenna wasn't the only person who'd died because Elliot loved his Olivia; there were bodies buried six feet under because the force of this love was too much for anyone to survive it. They blocked out everything, everyone else; they always had. And now Olivia, too, feared she was about to become a casualty of that love, and he was worried she might be right.
"I'm not sure running away is the right way to slow things down."
Don't go, that's what he wanted to say. I'll give you anything, I'll do anything, just please don't go.
"Do you really think we could slow down if I stayed?" she asked him sadly.
No, she was probably right about that, too. If she stayed here in this house with him, if he got to see her soft and sleepy in the morning and headstrong and determined in the afternoon, if he had more chances to watch her with her son, to listen to her voice, there was no way he could keep his distance from her. And it was Olivia herself who had instigated their physical relationship; would she be able to keep her hands to herself, to stay away from his bed, while they were sleeping beneath the same roof?
"I can't start a new life with you until I understand the old one," she continued. "I need to know who I am, and that's not something anybody can tell me. Hearing isn't the same thing as feeling. Being told isn't the same thing as knowing."
She'd always been fiercely independent, his Liv. Independent to a fault. There was nothing she would not try to do by herself, even when she really, really shouldn't. He thought about that night in Jersey, following her to Simon's house, thought about the Lewis file and the case notes explaining how she'd ducked her protective detail and gone after the prick herself. Thought about the Liv who'd decided in the days after Eli's birth to just go make a family for herself, find a child to adopt, even though there was no man in her life, the Liv who was so determined she wouldn't wait for anyone to help her. The Liv who was raising her son all on her own, now. The Liv who'd never had a problem breaking the rules, who didn't let an order stand in the way of her doing what she thought was right.
She was always gonna leave, he thought. This was always gonna happen.
"Will you say something?" she asked him then, almost pleading; he'd been too quiet, his heart in tumult and his mind unable to form the words.
"Not sure what there is to say," he answered.
She needed to go, but he didn't want her to. She was right about needing to find her own path, but he was so, so scared that path would not lead her back to him. The two nights she'd spent in his bed were like something from a dream, now, beautiful and impossible, but he could not let that dream go. It was everything he'd always wanted, everything he thought she'd always wanted. Six months ago he'd gotten back on the force and taken the undercover gig with OCCB in the desperate hope that he might be granted one last chance to get things right with her, and he'd almost done it. Almost.
They were almost happy. She almost loved him.
"You want me to drive you back?"
Maybe he should've fought for her, but he wasn't gonna. Not now, not this time. That was a lesson Kathy had taught him a long time ago; he knew better, now, than to try to hold on to a woman who didn't want him. It would only breed resentment in her, as it had in Kathy, would only hurt him worse in the long run as he watched all his desperate attempts to fix what had been broken fail one by one. If he cast aside his pride and fell on his knees for her maybe he could convince her to stay a little while longer, but at what cost? So she could leave him again six months from now, but this time determined never to return?
There was no telling what she'd find, when she struck out on her own, no way to know where this path might lead her. He could only hope it would lead her back to him, but if it didn't…well. He'd have to find some way to carry on, wouldn't he? He loved her, loved her twenty years ago and loved her now and always would, but he would not trap her in a life she did not want.
"Rosie's coming to get me," she confessed, the news twisting in his gut like a knife. She'd made all the arrangements, then. Decided to walk out on him and executed her plan flawlessly, and there was nothing left for him to do now but watch her leave.
Well, almost nothing. He did have one more question.
"What are you gonna do about Malcolm?"
The prick lived next door to her, and Liv was determined to face life on her own, and that was all well and good but it meant she'd have no backup, no one to fight for her if Malcolm tried to insinuate himself into her life again.
"I'm done with Malcolm," she said at once. "He lied to me. And the way he acted when he left the house…I don't want that man anywhere near me. If he won't stay away I'll call Rosie. I'll call the police, if I have to. I'm not going back for him, Elliot. I'm not going back for Rosie. I'm going back for me."
"You really think you're gonna find what you're looking for there? Wouldn't it be better if you stayed here?"
Two days in the city and she'd remembered so much already. Maybe that was just time, her brain healing naturally, but Elliot didn't think it was. He was pretty sure it was the city itself, the beating heart of New York thrumming beneath her feet, reminding her who she was and where she belonged. All the progress she'd made since she'd come here; surely she could make even more if she just stayed.
Couldn't she?
"Maybe," she said. "Maybe being here would help me. But I think…I left this place, Elliot. I need to know why. I keep thinking about my house, all my things. My books and my records. The pictures. My…my whole life is there. I feel…when I'm with you, I feel so drawn to you, but I can feel something pulling me back there, too. I need to know what it is. I have to go back."
That house was so foreign to him, so unlike anything he would've ever expected of her, but who was he to tell her that she was wrong? That the Olivia who'd loved this city was more important than the one who'd walked away from it?
"And I can still call you," she added quickly. "I'm not telling you no, Elliot. I'm saying not right now. I still want us to be in contact. I want you to be part of my life."
"You decide what you want, and then you call me," he told her heavily. It was bad enough, her leaving; the thought of her being so far away from him, calling him to tell him all the wonderful things she was experiencing, how happy she was without him, would shatter him utterly. To hear her voice and yet not be able to touch her, to see her, to hear her joy and know that he could have no part of it himself was like something from a nightmare.
"Elliot - "
"You're right, Liv," he told her. "It's your life, and you gotta live it. But I gotta live mine, too."
He'd have to find some way to keep going, and he knew he couldn't do that while she still had a hold of him. It was why he hadn't answered her calls seven years ago, why he'd decided to get his shit together before tracking her down again; this love was a whirlpool, spinning him around, dragging him under, and he had to find some way to fight the tide and save himself.
"Please don't be angry," she said, tears shining in the corners of her eyes, and something in him snapped.
She needed to go; he needed to let her. For both their sakes, he had to let her go.
"Take care of yourself, Liv," he said. "Lemme know when Rosie gets here, and I'll walk you out."
And then he rose slowly to his feet and walked away, each step echoing like a gunshot in his mind, tearing him to pieces.