You wanna talk about it? Let's talk about it.
"Maybe now's not the time," Olivia said carefully, apprehensively. When she texted Barba, when she asked him to come to Elliot's, she'd been looking for a friend, hoping for a chance to learn more about the seven years she'd spent without Elliot from someone who'd been there. She hadn't expected this, Barba's anger, his intense focus on Elliot. She didn't want this, didn't want to sit and rehash Elliot's mistakes with a man she could not remember, a man who did not care for Elliot as she did. Events were spiraling out of her control and she hated it, the tension in the room, the uncertainty swirling through her belly, the feeling of a gun about to go off.
"I think now is exactly the time," Barba answered coolly. "You don't remember anything. I don't know what he's told you, but you deserve to know who you're spending your time with, don't you?"
"It's all right, Liv." Elliot's voice was low, controlled, in a way that told her he was angry but trying not to be. "I think your friend Rafael is worried about you. I think he needs to know you're safe with me."
"Safe with you?" Barba scoffed incredulously. "You abandoned her -" he spoke that word abandoned with such heat, such disdain, as if he knew what Elliot had done and hated him for it - "and if you think I'm just gonna let you play happy families with her when she's vulnerable -"
"She's sitting right here," Elliot told him sharply. "Don't talk about her like she doesn't understand you. She's not a child."
How many times had she said that to Elliot herself? Maybe she'd finally gotten through to him. Then again, maybe he just wanted to be the only one who got to be protective of her.
"But you're right." Elliot turned to Olivia then, his eyes open and full of heartbreak. "You deserve the whole story, Liv."
"Tell me, then," Olivia urged him. It was not a story she wanted to hear but she knew that she must, knew that the only way she'd be able to move forward with either Barba or Elliot was to know, and decide for herself what to do next. This story, this story Elliot meant to tell her, it was her story, too, and she could not hide from it.
"Like I told you this morning, it was a rape case," he began. "The perps were trying to threaten the victim into dropping the charges. The victim had a sixteen year old daughter. Jenna. One night, these guys came up, killed the woman on the street. Right in front of her daughter. You and me, we'd been working with them for a long time, we were close. We cared about Jenna. We wanted to help her. But we couldn't save her mom."
That must've been the girl's name, Olivia thought. Jenna. The girl Elliot wanted to help, the girl he killed. Jenna, whose mother was raped. Jenna, who Elliot and Olivia had failed. As she listened Olivia twisted her hands together in her lap and tried not to cry, thinking of this poor girl whose life had been so short and full of grief.
"We caught the guys," Elliot continued while Barba sat stoney-faced and silent, apparently unmoved by the palpable emotion in Elliot's voice. "We had them in a holding cell in our squad room. But Jenna didn't trust us anymore. She saw how slow the process is, she knew we'd failed her mom. So she bought a gun, and brought it into the station. No one thought to check her for weapons, she was just a kid and she'd been in the precinct before."
Just a kid, with a gun. A kid who knew her mother had been raped, as Olivia's mother had been raped. What would Olivia have done, if she ever found herself face to face with the man who'd hurt her mother? What would she have wanted to do?
"She walked right up to the holding cell and she started shooting. You gotta understand, Liv, the cell wasn't a concrete room, or anything like that. It was basically an open cage. There were people everywhere, civilians, cops. I was closest to her. Everybody ducked when she started shooting. Something happened, I don't remember what, but she turned away from the cage, and she fired the gun again. And that time she pointed her gun at you."
Olivia swallowed, hard, her heart aching at the horror Elliot described. Aching for that girl, grief-stricken and afraid, but aching for Elliot, too, for the sorrow she saw in his eyes now, for the burden she knew he carried.
"There was a woman with you. A nun, named Sister Peg. She was one of our oldest friends. We'd worked with her more than ten years. Saint of a woman. Gentle and patient. She ministered to prostitutes and drug users, the homeless. She took care of the people nobody else wanted. She was good. One of the best people I've ever known. And Jenna shot her. Killed her right there. Peg died in your arms."
It was painful even to imagine it; the girl with the gun, trembling and afraid, Olivia holding her dying friend, Elliot watching it all unfold, helpless and horrified. What must it have looked like? Sounded like? Did she have nightmares after that, too?
"I'll never forget her face," Elliot said sadly. "Jenna. She was just a kid, and she was so scared. She looked like she couldn't believe what was happening, like it was someone else hurting all those people. But she wouldn't put the gun down. She lifted it up. She pointed it at you."
"And that's why you took the shot," Barba said quietly from his chair on the other side of the rug.
"That's right," Elliot agreed heavily. "Jenna was out of control. She'd already killed, I don't know, two, four people. Someone had to stop her before she hurt anyone else. I saw her point that gun at you and I just…"
"You did what you had to do," Olivia said, reaching out to lay her palm gently, comfortingly on his thigh. It was like he'd said that morning; it all came down to choices. Hurt one person to save dozens more. It was an impossible situation, she could see that even now. No matter what choice Elliot made, he was gonna lose.
"I couldn't lose you," he said. "They train us to shoot center mass, and empty the clip. Jenna went down, and I held her in my arms while she died."
And for the last seven years he'd walked around with the knowledge of what he'd done heavy on his shoulders.
"And that's why I didn't pick up when you called me," he continued, though it looked like it pained him to keep talking. "I chose you over the job. I didn't shoot Jenna when she started firing, I shot her when she put you in danger. I couldn't…I couldn't keep doing the job, knowing that I'd put you first every time. We're not supposed to do that. And I knew how much SVU meant to you, and I couldn't jeopardize that for you. I figured they could push me out, do whatever they wanted to me, as long as you got to stay in SVU. So I walked away. I wanted you to have a chance, Liv. And it sounds like you did. It sounds like you did ok for yourself."
"You have no idea what she's been through," Barba said testily. "I understand you feel you have to justify what you did for yourself -"
"I'm gonna step out," Elliot said to Olivia, sucking his cheek between his teeth like he was fighting the urge to turn on Barba. "I'll get some air, let you two talk."
"Elliot…"
What was she supposed to say? I'm sorry, I understand, I love you? What words could she possibly offer to ease this grief, this grief she could only halfway understand? He spoke of their training, the choices they had to make, all the parts of the job that had been drilled into him, but Olivia didn't remember any of that, couldn't share any of that with him now. In this moment, she couldn't understand why she'd chosen to be a cop at all.
"It's all right," Elliot told her. "Talk to your friend."
And then he rose slowly to his feet and walked away, out of the glass doors and onto the patio, out of sight.
"That was cruel," Olivia told Rafael quietly.
"I think it was necessary," he responded. "Your husband - you know that you were married?"
"Yes," she said, not bothering to keep the edge of anger from her voice because she was, angry, was so angry, with Barba for forcing Elliot to relive such horror, with Elliot for trying to keep this burden from her, with herself, for not remembering.
"Your husband hated that man, Olivia. Tucker thought Stabler was dangerous. He tried to take his badge, after the shooting. Tucker - your husband - was the one who investigated the shooting and decided Stabler shouldn't come back to work. That story he told, about killing the girl because she was pointing the gun at you, that's not what he told Tucker."
"What are - what are you saying?" Olivia demanded, her hands trembling in her lap, her mind spinning. Was Barba trying to say that Elliot had lied, just now? Elliot seemed so sincere, so earnest, and she wanted, desperately, to believe him.
"I read the file, Liv. Stabler told Tucker he shot the girl when she moved to fire into the cage again. Not when she was pointing the gun at you."
"She was still pointing the gun at someone, though," Olivia protested feebly. It was almost a reflex, defending Elliot; she felt as if she were defending herself. For loving him, for trusting him, for choosing the same job as him, for killing people, just like he'd done.
"Why didn't he say that, then?" Barba was unrelenting, a dog with a bone. He was leaning forward in the armchair, his eyes fixed on hers beseechingly. "Look, Liv, I know you care about him. And I'm sure he cares about you, too. But the story he told today is not the same story he told to IAB. And maybe it's just been a long time, maybe his memory isn't as clear now as it was right after it happened. But all that shit he said, about how he couldn't lose you, how he kept putting the job first…whatever he says, he was married the whole time. He was married to someone else. And the Olivia I know never would've gotten tangled up in something like that with a married man."
The Olivia he knew. Which one was she, Olivia wondered; which Olivia had Barba known, and was it the same Olivia Elliot remembered? Did Elliot even remember her clearly, after seven long years apart? Or did he only remember the lies he'd told himself, the story he'd concocted to justify his mistakes?
Maybe remembering was no better than forgetting; maybe nobody knew the whole truth.
"He says we never crossed the line, and I believe him," she told Barba quietly. "You don't have to make it sound like we did something wrong. I don't think we did."
"Maybe not," he allowed. "Maybe it wasn't what it sounds like. But I've seen his jacket, and that man was a bully, Olivia. And he hurt you when he left. He can sit here all these years later and tell you he left to protect you, but no one who knows you thinks that's what he did. He didn't help you, he broke your heart, and you were furious with him, Olivia. You wouldn't even say his name out loud. I'm sorry if you think I was wrong to push him but I do think you needed to hear that. You need to know what he's capable of."
"Defending me?" she demanded. "Did you hear the same story I did? Even if you're right, even if he shot her after she'd turned away from me, he's not…he's not a bad man. He's not dangerous. You heard him, he had no choice."
"I guess I think there's always a choice," Barba said, a soft, sad smile tugging up the corner of his mouth. "We fought about that, you and me. More than once. You always took the cop's side."
"I am a cop," she reminded him.
"You were," Barba allowed. "But you've been trying to build a different kind of life. You wanted to get away from all of this. You wanted Noah to grow up safe, you didn't want him growing up in a house full of guns, afraid of his own shadow. I know you're confused right now, but you have to think about what comes next, Olivia. What do you want?"
What do I want? She wondered. The little house back home, Rosie down the street and Malcolm next door, walking Noah to school every morning, passing her days in quiet isolation? Or did she want this, the bustle and noise of the city, an apartment behind a locked door and all these men with their grim faces? Elliot beside her, or an empty bed? What would she choose, if she could choose anything at all?
It was a question she could not answer. Either choice could bring her sorrow; neither seemed to promise to banish her grief.
"Is that really why I left?" she asked. "I mean, did I tell you that?"
She didn't want guesses, assumptions, didn't want another man telling her who he thought she ought to be. She wished like hell she could speak to herself, her old self, hear the words in her own voice, and not rely on secondhand accounts, but there was no going back now.
"You did," Barba said, offering her a sad little smile. "You told me at Tucker's funeral. You'd found out Ed had cancer, and it was like a lightbulb went off for you. You told me you felt like you had to choose between your family and your job, and you wanted to choose your family. That was why you left."
She'd left to spend more time with a family she no longer had; Ed was dead, now, and Noah would start school soon, and when he did she'd have even more time on her hands, time spent alone doing nothing at all.
"And he," Barba jerked his thumb towards the door Elliot had walked out of, "wasn't even a thought in your head. I'm glad you feel safe with him but you gotta ask yourself, Olivia - what does he want from you?"
I could get you pregnant.
Want your baby.
It'd be just you and me, forever.
If Elliot was telling the truth, that was what he wanted. Elliot wanted forever, with her. Wanted them to be a family, Elliot and Olivia and all their children. Elliot wanted a promise. But was that what Olivia wanted? Before she'd called Barba, before his accusations and mistrust, she might've said yes. But was that only because it was easy, being with Elliot, because he answered her questions and looked after her and treated her kindly, because she hadn't felt the need, before now, to worry when she was with him? Was he only an escape, a comfortable choice in a sea of discomfort? Was he really what she wanted?
She thought of his hands gripping her hips, his voice low in her ear, and heard her heart answering yes.
What kind of person does that make me? she wondered.
What kind of person was she, to want him so badly despite not remembering - not knowing - him at all, despite everything she'd heard today? Was she a liar, too? A killer, too? A little broken, a little mean, a little reckless, but trying, as it seemed to her that Elliot was trying, to be a good person in her own way? Was it even possible, to be all those things at the same time?
"I don't know," she said sadly.
Out on the patio Elliot pulled his phone out of his pocket, and googled Rafael Barba, and scrolled the news articles as rage began to bubble in his gut.
Fucking hypocrite, Elliot thought darkly as he began to read those articles one by one. They all told the same story, the story of an ADA who had taken it upon himself to shut off life support for a brain dead infant. Charged with murder, Barba had defended his actions on the stand, and he must've been damn convincing because he scored himself an acquittal. Left the DA's office - the articles said he resigned but Elliot was pretty sure that the man had quit before his bosses had the chance to fire him. That was the long story, about why Barba was in private practice now; Barba had faced choices of his own, and killed a kid, too.
Part of him wanted to march right back into his apartment and shove his phone in Olivia's hand, show her the ugly truth of the self-righteous man taking up space in Elliot's armchair. But he had made a promise to himself, when this all began, sworn a vow as he drove through the night to reach Olivia's side. He'd promised himself - promised her - that he would be better, that he would not be reckless and angry, that he would not be the bully Barba thought he was. What mattered right now was Olivia, and this news would not help her. Getting into a brawl with Barba in the living room wouldn't help her much, either. She wanted to talk to her friend, and Elliot was resolved to give her the space to do that. And when Barba left, when it was just Elliot and Olivia alone again, he'd have one more chance to get it right.
Christ, he wanted to get this right.