© Lyricara

Published: 15 March, 2010

Reprinted: May, 2022

Original characters and likeness belong to Dick Wolf and NBC.

Original story and ideas belong to Lyricara.
Originally published on svufanfiction.com in March 2010.
Currently being republished on archiveofourown.org since September 2021
Illustrations by Natasha Jackson
Cover created and designed by Natasha Jackson

Printed via www.lulu.com

Reformatted by Natasha Jackson

It is suspended by fate, as plentiful as it had been on the day of its fall.
 Other work by Lyricara

FanFiction.Net

Wounds
Uccello
Syne

ArchiveOfOurOwn.Org

After Rain
Lucky Charm
What Have I Done?
Ara
The Garden (Scenes From A Life)
 Authors Note

At the time I am writing this, it’s been over a decade since I wrote Atlantis. I am once again
sitting by the ocean, this time in Nice, because there is a magic in the water, an undiscovered
world that mirrors the undiscovered within us that I find to be incomparably healing. I’ll
always be fascinated by the power of its majesty. If you’ve never sat quietly by the ocean,
alone, toes in the sand, and listened to her roar, then stop reading this and find your way. Go.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think this story would last as it has, would be shared, would
be read and reread, would prompt the incredible notes and letters I’ve received, would inspire
anyone to visit Long Beach Island, or would be printed in any form. Yet here we are, here I
am, and I’m in awe of how this whole experience has changed me.

I started writing for fun, to tell stories, and then realised the stories had a chance to heal me
and affect anyone who read simple words on a page. I am an inherently hopeful person, but
have also lived through dark periods and obstacles, and it’s that belief in a better tomorrow
that propels me to put words to the page everytime. I don’t think Atlantis is a place, or even
found in another, but is rather found in our own moments and experiences. It’s that
unexpected laughter, that stunning vista, that challenge we overcome, that song that was
written just for us - it’s a pinnacle of joy, appreciated and revered, even if it is fleeting, maybe
because it is fleeting. Our lives aren’t perfect, but moments can be - and that is where infinite
possibility blooms and lives. If there is one thing I hope this story does, it’s to remind you that
no matter how hard things are today, you can find a way to emerge again. There is a palace of
hope in our hearts that deserves a chance to blossom. You are your own legendary tale of
resilience, and an Atlantis lives in each one of us - there is a rise after the fall, if you just keep
your eyes open and believe.

Thank you for reading this story, thank you for trusting me with the warriors you love, thank
you to Jess who carried me every step of the way, and thank you for believing in happy, gentle
endings with me.

With love and endless appreciation,

Lyricara
(Summer 2022)
Atlantis
Beneath the water, it waits
 Who was I before?
I don’t remember.
Nor do I want to
remember a time without you.

Where was I before?

I don’t remember.
I just knew
when I found you
I had come home.

- Alicia N Green
 Chapter One

S
he's not sure what she expects, or if she expects anything at all. It's been so long since
she's allowed herself to feel anything but the crawling seethe of injustice that she has no
idea what this is within her, if it's anything. Then again, it has to be something because
she is having trouble breathing. She's also having trouble holding her breath.
But she's trying. To hold her breath, that is. She's trying to keep herself together. She can't
falter when she sees him. He can't think that she is a wreck of a person or that she can't stand
on her own two feet. He can't feel guilty for what he did. He had to leave her. He had to. She
gets that.

She has tried not to take it personally, but she battles that fight every day. Every day she
pushes forward. Every day she misses the hell out of him. Every day she feels like she wasn't
enough, because clearly if she had been, he wouldn't have walked away in order to find
something better. He wouldn't have had to. She hopes that he's found whatever it was that
he'd been looking for, because Jesus, it's been eight months of working without him and
enough is enough. Her patience, the smile she has plastered on, it's wearing thin. She talks to
herself a lot these days. She says things like he's happy and you want him to be happy. She
tells herself that she was the best partner she could have been. She reminds herself that if she
wants to be the person he thinks she is that she will give him the time he needs. That she will
encourage him to keep doing what he's doing. Even if he is doing it away from her. Not with
her. Without her.

Even if she doesn’t know what the hell he is doing. Her hands grip the steering wheel. The
sun is jarring, almost blinding -a little too brilliant- as she flies down the thruway. It's a
Wednesday afternoon at two o'clock, and she's off for the next week.

1
A whole week. An eternity if he sends her home in a few hours. She has a few things in a bag,
but she doesn't know if she will be staying or going. She has no idea what to expect. Which
works out just fine, because living without expectation is a particular specialty of hers.
She tells herself there is nothing ahead, but truthfully, she doesn't care too much about what
she's left behind either, and that means she's driving through the middle of some sort of
purgatory.

She keeps driving. Eyes straight ahead. Breath tentatively held. The top is down on the
Mustang, and she lets the sun pound against her bare arms. The simple, blue jersey dress she
wears comes to just above her knees, and she has hiked it up as she sits to get some sun on her
thighs. Her skin has been cold for so long, but right now the late June heat is seeping into her.
Finally. She chalks up the lack of shivering to the weather and not to the fact that she is
heading there. To him.

The wind whips her hair. It's longer than it had been when he'd last seen it. It falls just past
her shoulders, and even tugged into a messy ponytail right now, strands lash at her face. Her
sunglasses are aviators, and her Sig is in the glove compartment, as if she will need it out here.
Of course she won't, but she brings it anyways. Maybe it's just the most tangible thing about
her, the easiest thing to hold onto. She doesn't have much to hold onto these days. What she
needs is the air. She is desperate for the thick, hot air that sinks into her. Her eyelids are
heavy, lulled by the straightaway drive and the surprising lack of traffic.

The heat is relentless.

It is everywhere but inside of her. Her gut is still cold. Frigid. Even after the snow melted and
the spring came, she hadn't warmed. She stays stuck in the ice of winter. His winter. Her foot
rests a little heavier on the pedal as she drives. Behind her sunglasses, her eyes burn and she
turns up the volume on the radio. For a little while it drowns out the rushing noise in her
head. Maybe it's the fear. Maybe it's the memories.Maybe it's just because it's been too
damned long and he had been devastatingly wrong. She hadn't been just fine without him
after all.
***

Eight months.

He stares out a hundred feet ahead at the Atlantic, the concrete pavement of the patio burning
into the soles of his feet. At the edge of the water the seaweed is piling up, and the seagulls are
2
swooping in on it, picking out whatever they can find for food. They squawk as they dive
downwards, and he squints against the glare coming off the water as he watches a particularly
aggressive bird indicate its territory. He knows about this sort of thing. About claiming space.
About thinking that there had to be inherent rights to something. To someone.

He thinks about having to let go in order to figure out what was actually his. He thinks about
how it could take years for a life to change, or it could happen in just an instant. His mom is
gone now. She'd had a heart attack in the middle of the night early last November and she had
never woken again. He'd gotten the call in the morning after a neighbour had found her and
just like that, the choices he had to make had started to line up, until there was no more
waiting, no more procrastinating, no more pretending. He'd never said goodbye to his
mother. He had never forgiven her, absolved her, understood her. But he knows now that he
couldn't have given his mother those things because he had never learned to give them to
himself.

It's been a long-ass eight months. He misses the hell out of his partner. Olivia. He catches
himself saying her name out loud every now and then, and these days there is no one to hear
him. He sometimes stands under the spray of the shower and closes his eyes. In those
moments he grits his teeth so hard he can feel the pressure of it in his temples. He prays to
God that he did the right thing by walking away. He waits for a sign but he's still not gotten an
answer.

He'd left her just as the winter was rolling in, when the slush had already been thick on the
streets of Manhattan. The failures had piled up in his chest, and the more he had looked at
her, the more he had realised how little he had to give her, to any of them. If it had been up to
him, he would have lived in the complacency forever, because it was easier than uprooting
everything and everyone. But when he looked at her, at the way she still looked at him with a
little bit of hope, of faith, of belief, he knew he couldn't just do what was easy anymore.
She needed something from him. He had to stay - to really stay - or to go.

He'd gone.

Leave of absence. Three words that said nothing at all, but that had one, singular result. He
had walked away from Manhattan. From his family. From his job. From Olivia. His mother had
died and it had made him leave everything behind. His marriage had been the first casualty.
His job, the second. The truth was that he'd even pulled back from his kids for more than a

3
few weeks, because he couldn't be anything but sure of himself in front of them. He'd asked
Olivia to forgive him for leaving her. He thinks she did.

He has never tried to forgive himself.

***

She remembers the house. Of course she does. It had been his mother's, and she remembers
everything when it comes to the details of his life. His face is more familiar to her than her
own. Even now. She kills the engine and sits back in her seat. She parked half a block down
the beach, and she will trek across the sand to get to the bungalow-style home. Her head falls
back onto the leather seat and she lifts her chin to the sun. She takes a deep breath and then
decides what to do with it. Exhale, she thinks. Let this one go. There will be another.

She needs to get herself together, because she refuses to let him see her as less than she had
been when he had left. He'll take on the responsibility of her in an instant, and she doesn't
want that. She wants him to decide to come back on his own. When he's ready.

She doesn't want him to see that she is just biding time until he comes home. She presses her
lips together and inhales again. She holds onto this one. She wants to be able tell him that
things are good. She wants to say that after he left she managed to move on. She wants to tell
him that she's found a rhythm that works with Fin, and that Munch doesn't seem to mind that
she stole his partner. She wants to tell him that it is okay that he left, and that she understands.
She completely understands. That part is the truth. It's easier to understand the leaving, and
harder to reconcile why he had stayed with her for so many years. It's even harder still to
comprehend just how much she counts on him coming back to her. Soon.

She ignores the small voice inside of her that has been cautioning her about coming out here.
She knows it's dangerous. She knows that seeing him again will open the wounds, will make
the need sharper. She knows that she is looking for signs that he is almost done with this
phase, and that he is almost ready to be her partner again. She is banking on all of this, even if
she tries to remind herself otherwise.

Ahead of her, the waves roll in, and she listens for the sounds that announce each one of them.
She hears the build and then the crash, and she pulls the rubber band out of her hair, running
her fingers through the messy, tangled strands. She pulls off her sunglasses and twists the
rearview mirror to face her.

4
She opens her eyes. Her face is pale, despite the last hour of sun. Her eyes seem too wide, her
irises too monochromatic. She has no expression on her face, and if anyone were to
characterise her at all, they'd say she looked exhausted. She isn't crying. She hasn't in a long,
long time.

He's her friend, she thinks. And he's happy here. When he had called her to ask her to come
out, he had sounded so even. So unbelievably even. He hadn't fumbled over his words;
instead his voice had taken on a soothing, confident cadence that had left her gripping the
phone, as if she could hold onto the sound. You feel up to a drive?

She closes her eyes now. She can do this. She can. She hadn't lost her composure as he had
packed up his desk. So she can do this. They can do some catching up, if that's what they call
it. At least she can catch up, so she is no longer left far behind.
Time has passed, she reassures herself. You're stronger now. She won't break down or break
apart. It's just him.She doesn't have expectations. She doesn't. She hopes maybe he'll make
her laugh, because he is good at that, and if he does, then it was worth the drive. She ignores
the small bag she has packed that sits in the trunk. In case of emergency, she rationalises. It's
there in case of emergency. Maybe he will need her to stay a few days, help him pack up.
Maybe he will decide to drive back at the same time as her.

The lies are hollow, even to her, and yet she is so willing to believe them. She swings open the
car door and gets out of the car. It'll take her a few minutes to put the top back up, and that'll
give her the distraction she needs. She doesn't think about who she will be when she makes
the drive back home.

5
6
 Chapter Two

H
e hasn't changed much about the house since his mother died. Soon after her death,
he had packed up most of the knickknacks and her clothes and donated most of
them, keeping a few valuable things for his daughters. When he had finally decided
not to try and save a dying marriage, he had put his things in storage. It had taken him a month
of biding time in this house before he had made arrangements to have his things brought here.
As a whole, it didn't amount to much - some of his furniture and the couch from the
apartment he had once lived in, a few pictures, his clothes. He had thrown out the bed his
mother had died in and had bought a new one, and he'd added a new television in the living
room. All in all, the place was huge compared to the small apartments he could have afforded
in the city.

It isn't a rental. The place is paid for. In essence, his mother had left him a home of his own.
There are two extra bedrooms in the house, and his kids have been out to stay a few times.
Sometimes they came as a group, other times on their own. Lizzie came for a weekend after
she had broken up with a boyfriend; Dickie had come
out with a couple of friends. He is waiting until the start
of next month for the twins to arrive again, because
they've asked him if they can spend some time living
with him. He doesn't mistake their fondness for the
beach with their fluctuating, fragile fondness for him.
But they will fill the house with welcome noise
nonetheless. He even gets his youngest for a week, and
he is anxious to take Eli to the beach in the mornings
and watching his son build sandcastles.

7
He's gonna make damned sure those glorious monuments are constructed far enough back
on the shoreline that they won't be ripped apart when the tide comes in.
He knows now he can change things. He's got a better handle on trajectory. On the surface,
he has left Manhattan behind. But the surface doesn't mean everything, he knows this. He's
tan now, and he has the time to take long runs on the beach. He's got his mother's life
insurance money set aside and months of vacation accumulated, and he figures that after
twenty-five years of not having a moment alone, he is entitled to this. But physically walking
away had no bearing on his mental attachment to what he had left behind. To whom he had left
behind.

He wakes to worrying about her every, single day. But other than that, his life has changed.
For the first few months, he had grabbed his keys to head back to the city at least once a day,
thinking he had made a huge mistake. He had picked up the phone only to hang up, thinking
Olivia had enough to deal with without worrying about his shape-shifting mental state. And
then the grey of February had set in, and he had decided he needed something to do.
Something that would occupy his time. His father's old motorbike had been the perfect thing.

The bike was a '73 Harley Davidson FLH, and he remembers when his father had first bought
it. He had been ten years old, and his father had been kicked off the force the year before for
refusing to point fingers at other cops during the witch hunt perpetuated by the Knapp
Commission. For a little more than a year, Joe Stabler had roamed aimlessly, his anger
simmering like a live wire throughout the house. His mother's voice had risen over the
months, until her false cheer made her sound terrified, and as a boy, he had taken to his room
on most afternoons, praying that he wouldn't hear the heavy-handed knock of his father's fist
on his door. The bike had been a temporary godsend.

The old man had come home on it one day, and the smell of the exhaust had filtered into the
kitchen. He had wanted to go out and touch the bike, but he had heard his mother's voice
first, her shrill, angry tone berating his father for spending money on the used bike when he'd
turned down every frivolous thing she'd ever asked for. The argument had escalated until his
mother had grabbed the keys to the car and left, and Elliot had stayed cowered in his
bedroom, the gleaming metal of the bike not enough to lure him outdoors.His mother had
stayed away for three days.

But the bike had ultimately proved useful to all of them. His father spent inordinate amounts
of time on it, and every minute that bike occupied the elder Stabler was another minute that
8
Elliot didn't have to worry about his father's volatile temper. His mother had eventually come
around, and when her mood swings hit, she'd even try to cajole his father to take her out on it.
When the old man had died, no one had bothered to sell it. And once Elliot had left that
house, he had never wondered what had become of it.
The fact that he had found it stored beneath dusty blankets in the recesses of the detached
garage had been a surprise. It had been rusted in some places, and the metal was dim with
scratches and dents. The cold, winter months had been the perfect time to hunker down in the
closed garage and see what he could do to restore it. He figured he'd maybe sell it when the
weather got better and there was a market for it. He hasn't put up the For Sale sign yet.

Somehow, the hours of working on the bike had calmed him. He's started it a few times, but
never ridden it, and he doesn't know if he'll ever have the urge to sit where his father had
once reigned. But now, for awhile at least, he's not chafing beneath the pressure. He's not
one case away from throwing it all away. He's taking his time and figuring out what the hell it
all finally is. And then there is the now.

He waits for her, holding a fresh beer in his hand, and the condensation of it drips down over
his finger and falls to the concrete. He is wearing jeans and a threadbare white t-shirt, and he
should probably change for her, look decent at least, but he also wants her to see him as he
now is. If he's being honest, the fact that he has put on a shirt at all means he's dressed up for
her. Not that she notices that sort of thing. There are other changes in him. The only scars he
gets on his hands these days are the ones he earns fixing up the bike, and he pretty much grills
whatever he wants to eat. He's added muscle and lost half of the nightmares. He's thinking
about building an addition to the house and he wants to do it with his own two hands. He'll
probably fuck it up. He's always been far better with a glock than with a power saw.

The suits and dress shirts have long since been discarded. He thinks every day about how his
mother had seen him, how she had taunted him about how buttoned up he had been. He'd
assumed she'd meant his clothes and he hadn't understood her complaints - the job had
required that attire of him. But he has now spent eight months in the world his mother had
created, and he sees more of her this way. He gets more of the things she had meant. He
wonders how Olivia will see him. He knows what it is like to be a cop, and how there is a clear
line of demarcation between the badges and the civilians. He doesn't want her to see him as
no longer on her side. He is afraid that he's been gone so long that she no longer needs him.
***

9
Olivia sees him before he sees her. She's walking across the sand, close to the houses, when
she spots him. He's standing on the small patio, his stance wide and his jaw set. He is staring
out at the water, as if he is lost in thought, and for a moment, she just stops. She wants time
before Elliot sees her, but she only has seconds. He will sense her, just like she still senses
him, and then her ability to just absorb the changes in him will be lost. He looks broader, if it
is at all possible, and his skin is darker, as if he's spent a great deal of time in the sun. He
hasn't shaved in a day or two, and she absorbs the familiarity of that particular detail about
him. During the worst of the cases, he wouldn't have time to go home and shower and he'd
end up looking tougher, more hardened with the days-old stubble on his face. She has seen
him this way hundreds of times before.

It is the rest that is different. He looks calmer, yet he's solid as a fortress and she doesn't
know if that will keep her out or lock her in. He is barefoot, and his jeans cup the strong
curves of his body. His t-shirt is thin and white, and it hugs the wide, muscled plane of his
back. He lifts the beer to his mouth and she knows that her moment of privacy is over. She
stands there, fifteen feet from him, waiting for him, for his eyes to -

There.

It's lazy almost, the way Elliot flicks his gaze to her. His mouth stays on the bottle as he takes a
deep sip, but those glinting blue eyes are on her. The small smirk starts to form on his lips
even before he has managed to pull the bottle away. He finishes, and uses the back of his hand
to rub absently at his wet mouth. She can't move. She's never seen him like this before. It's as
if the veneer he'd maintained for as long as she'd known him had been stripped, and here he
is, at his core. He drags his eyes over her, making no effort to disguise his blatant appraisal of
her. Olivia's breath catches in her throat. She should go closer, but she forgets just quite how
to do that.

His grin is half-assed, as if he is completely under control. His voice is low, almost a drawl.
”If you're waiting for an invitation, I believe I already gave you one."
And just like that, the winter that had lived inside of her is gone, and she's thawing from the
inside out.
***

He knows immediately.

10
He had wondered if he would feel like the one left behind when she showed up. If she would
still be her and he would be someone else entirely and if that would make him feel like the
world had left him out. The truth is that he was the one to walk away, but that doesn't mean he
didn't worry like hell that her world would go on without him, despite him, as if he had never
been there. But all of that disappears when he sees her. Olivia is the one who has stayed the
same.
Granted, he has never seen her like this. Hell, he's seen her in a dress before, but it's always
been for a case or a date and the dress had always looked untouchable. Olivia has always
looked untouchable, as if she would flinch or disintegrate if he got too close. He's wanted to
touch her for a long damned time now, but he's less afraid of her recoil than he is of the
resulting accusation he knows he'd see in her eyes.

He likes this dress on her. It is essentially a long t-shirt that skims her body and her hair is so
long that the wind plays at it. Maybe it's all the months away that makes him see her for the
first time again, but he's knocked on his ass by just how unquestionably beautiful she is. Her
eyes have always been painfully vulnerable, and her stance transparently defensive, but she
seems softer in some ways right now. As if she is almost uncertain of him, wary. Of course she
is. You left, he thinks. You're no better than anyone else. God damn it to hell if she doesn't
realise that he is taking it all in. He's missed the fuck out of her.

"You made it this far," he says, still not moving towards her. She looks like she's debating
whether or not to leave. "Might as well have a beer with me."
At that, her eyes soften and the hesitant, frozen look she has been giving him fades away. She
walks towards him, and he sees it, the brazen way she closes the space. Just like that, she is
here. With him. Eight months. Two seasons. Thousands of fucking days.

Olivia smiles just a little bit as she finally stops right in front of him. She arches an eyebrow
and then nods towards the nearly fresh beer dangling from his fingers.
"I'll take that one," she says.
He can't help it. He laughs deep in his throat and hands her the beer. She doesn't take her
eyes off of him as she takes a long sip of it. He watches her mouth on the bottle, and he's sure
she knows that he's watching. She's daring, always has been. He may never let her leave.
"So," Olivia finally asks, holding the bottle between her hands and sizing him up. "How's life
as a beach bum?"

Elliot's lips twitch. He's never felt like this around her. Totally free and absolutely positive
that no one is watching or judging them. He feels wholly in control, even when it comes to this
11
mutable thing that always sits between them. He's not fighting anything or telling himself
he's got too much to lose. He's got nothing to lose this time, and maybe it's the first time in
his life he can really say that with any certainty.

"I got almost everything I want out here," he says, watching her reaction.
Her eyes widen again, for just a moment, but she doesn't look away. And instead of the
haunted look he's so used to her wearing, Olivia gives him a rare smile.
"If my mother hadn't been such a drunk, she would have warned me about boys like you,
Stabler.” He thinks this is euphoria.
"Good thing she liked to drink," he responds dryly.
He hears her tiny bark of surprised laughter behind him as he turns towards the house, and in
just that, he's positive she will follow him in.

12
 Chapter Three

S
he hates that she knows what this feeling is.It was easier not knowing. It was easier
when the lines were blurred and the denials were at the ready. It was easier when she
could hide behind excuses like it's just the job and I spend more time with him than
anyone else. But she can feel the unease as it twists in her stomach and her throat seems to
lock involuntarily. Twelve years of walking next to him yet she's completely self-conscious as
she stands in the narrow, unfamiliar kitchen with him. She is hyper-aware of each and every
one of Elliot's movements.

He leans into the fridge and digs out another beer before setting it on the counter and
opening a drawer to get out the bottle opener. Olivia watches him, and he is achingly familiar
and yet startlingly new all at once. He seems calm. His actions are fluid, and that rigidity she
had come to know in him is gone. It scares the hell out of her. There is a voice inside of her
that tells her this is who he is without her. The voice tells her that she is part of the grime he's
been trying like hell to wash away. Elliot must sense she is watching him, because as he pops
the top off of his beer he looks over his shoulder at her.

"How's work?"
It's meant to be a casual question, but she can feel the bottom drop out when he asks it. There
is too much to be said. Too many details he doesn't need to know. She could tell him that she
hates him on some days for leaving her, and she could try and make him understand that she
feels like she's half the cop she had been when he had been by her side. Sometimes she misses
things - clues - that she thinks she might not have missed if he had been there and despite the
fact that Fin is an amazing cop, she often feels a crawling sensation on her skin, as if there is
no one at her back.

13
Olivia presses her lips together even as she smiles, and she knows that her eyes have taken on
a sheen. She lets out a breath then and shakes her head.
"Can we talk about something else?"
Elliot stills then, and the amusement fades from his eyes. For a moment he lets all of the
apologies become starkly apparent in his expression.
”You can be angry with - "
"No." She doesn't want his platitudes. He doesn't owe her anything for needing some time
on his own. Hell, she had thought about leaving a thousand times. She had even actually left a
few times and every time she had always returned for her - for what she needed - never for him.
Then again, what she had needed had always been him.

Olivia shrugs and turns, walking into the small living room. She sees the touches of him in a
few of the furniture pieces, but there is also evidence of his history. There are a few frames on
one of the tables that hold old, faded photos and she knows she will want to look at those more
closely later. The dining room table is still the one she remembers from the time she had
picked up his mother here, and there are décor pieces that would only be appropriate in a
beach house. An old oar, some fishing net, seashells in a jar on the shelf.

"If you're pissed I took leave, I have a right to know."

Olivia stops in the middle of the room, death-clutching the beer. She thinks about picking up
the small satchel she had come in with and leaving, because she certainly hadn't driven out
here to rehash the past. He is still infuriating because he either gets everything about her or
nothing at all. She says nothing. "I missed you, Liv."

Of course. Leave it to him to say absolutely everything.

Her eyes dart across the room in front of her. She should be better at this. At talking to him
about her feelings and emotions. But the truth is that she isn't sure what to do when she is in a
room with him and the job doesn't sit squarely between them. There are no files, no cases, no
theories to debate. There are no badges or guns or wedding rings. It occurs to her that this
thing has no boundaries for the moment and that thought nearly makes her head for the door.
She's not sure if she is more afraid of nothing happening at all, or of everything finally
bubbling to the surface. She's not sure what the hell - who the hell - they are.

"Took you eight months to invite me out here. That your idea of staying in touch?"
Jesus. She couldn't sound more defensive and accusatory if she had tried. Olivia turns,
expecting to see a shuttered expression on his face.
14
Instead, Elliot is giving her that maddening, self-satisfied half-grin.
"I'll do better next time?"
Next time. As if he's planning on staying out here.

She is suddenly agitated. He's calm as shit and he's probably doing nothing all day except for
sitting on the goddamned beach and yeah, yeah she's pissed. She's pissed that he walked
away, that he left her. Elliot, of all people, knew better than to do that. He knew what it would
take from her, how many times she's been left behind. And he left her. Left. He doesn't
realise that every time she introduces herself and Fin to a vic or a suspect that it grates on her
ears. He doesn't realise that Manhattan is a clusterfuck of depravity and he just sailed right on
out of it. He acts like he owes her nothing, and maybe he doesn't, but it sure as hell had felt
like he did. Asshole. Asshole. Screw this.

Olivia sets her beer down hard on the dining room table. She doesn't need this. Elliot calls
every now and then, that should be enough. It is enough. They aren't the same people
anymore. Clearly all that bullshit about other-halves and being inseparable and co-
dependency is just that - bullshit. Out of sight, out of mind seems to work for him. She needs
to buy into the concept. Olivia doesn't look at him as she moves to brush past him. She'll grab
her purse and - Elliot's hand is hard around her upper arm as he stops her.

"Why'd you take the week off?"

Olivia stills. He had to have called Cragen.
"Needed some time away. You of all people should get that." She pulls out of his grasp and
narrows her gaze as she looks up at him. "And stop spying on me."
"So," Elliot says, his voice dropping until it grates. "This is away. Stay here."
She hadn't expected this. Yeah, she'd put a bag in the car, but the actuality of staying here
with him is jarring. There are a thousand scenarios she had imagined where she would need
that overnight bag, but none of them involved him asking her to stay here within ten minutes
of her arriving.

"I can't." The words come easily. Instinctively. Self-preservation isn't shed in an instant.
He looks amused again. His eyebrows arch and he looks too damned smug. Elliot always had a
way of seeming like he was the only one in on the secret.
"Why not?"
Olivia's chin comes up. "Why should I?"

15
His laughter rumbles. "'Cause I've got a beach house and I'm good company and you've got
nowhere to be." His grin is so wide it is nearly infectious. "Fine. Two out of the three are
true. B'sides, I got ten bucks on the fact that you've got a bag in the car."
She hates him. She really does. Only he disarms her every time.

"Asshole," she mumbles half-heartedly. At least he ought to know what she thinks.
He doesn't push her about staying. Instead he reaches around her and grabs her beer,
shoving it back into her hands. "No argument ‘bout that. Now grab your beer and come with
me."
"Where are we going?"
He's already halfway out the door. "You'll see.”
***

She's two steps behind him as he walks out towards the shoreline and he thinks about slowing
down for her, but he realises he's never done that before. Not since the first day he met her
has he ever slowed down, stepped back, pulled rank. He's told her no a few times, but she's
done the same for him. So Elliot walks across the hot sand and he lets her trail by a foot or
two. She'll figure it out. Olivia always does.

The seagulls scatter as he gets closer to the water. Within seconds they regroup and he knows
they will descend again. Something about habit. About need. The water is loud here as the
small waves roll in. The day is fairly calm, and the sun is unhindered by any clouds. She didn't
bring her sunglasses out here and neither did he, and when he turns, she is squinting at him
against the light.

"So what are we doing out here?" she asks, cocking her head.
"Jesus, Benson. You need a plan for everything?"
He loves the way the wind tangles her hair. The way he can almost see the colour of her skin
warming beneath the sunlight as he watches. He notices the way she is flirting with the idea of
teasing him.
"Pretty much," Olivia admits. "So?"

He can't believe she is really here. He can't yet fully reconcile that they aren't shadowed by
the pall of death or victims or rules. Not anymore. He left her, yeah, but he had never intended
not to come back for her. He hopes she knows that. That there was never a question that she
was his best friend, the one person he fully trusted, the one person he couldn't see himself
without under any circumstance. He has done just fine without the woman he once called his

16
wife, and he knows that his kids will all grow up and lead their own lives one day. But.
Olivia is the only one. He won't give her up. He can't let her go. He knows. He's tried. The
months have been long. Gruelling. In her absence - in his - he has made her into everything.

"So what?" Elliot fires back.

Her smile is slow to unfold on her face. But when it does, and her eyes meet his, he can see the
stiffness in her shoulders ease.
"So what's your plan?" Olivia presses.
She is belligerent and type A and a pain-in-the-ass. He doesn't expect any of that to ever
change. He won't let it.
"This is it."
One eyebrow cocks. "We're gonna stand on the beach all afternoon and look at each other?"
Elliot shrugs. "We could sit. Hell, we could drink our beers."

Olivia's eyes narrow as she comes to stand directly in front of him. She seems to be searching
his face for something.
"Did you lose your mind? Is that why you took leave? You didn't want anyone to know you'd
turned into a lunatic?"
Fuck. If she knew why'd he'd left, she'd probably be back in the city before nightfall. Her
mouth looks goddamned incredible.
"Maybe I was tired of working with a lunatic."
She takes the step to come stand next to him, both of them watching the endless rolling in of
the waves.
"You shouldn't talk about Munch when he's not here to defend himself," she retorts.

He can feel her eyes on him. He doesn't face her. He knows it is sometimes easier for her to
talk to him when he doesn't look her in the eyes. Only she doesn't say anything. He realised
this about her very early on - that she chooses all of her words very carefully, and when given
the opportunity to just listen she does that over offering her own commentary. It is one of the
things that makes her such a fucking phenomenal cop. Of course when it comes to her own
life, she can't communicate worth shit. Not that he is one to judge.

"You know what the docs told me about my mother?" He still can't look at her. He examines
the endless horizon instead. He figures he is the one who owes her the chatter, the
conversation. He is the one who walked away after all and if she's gonna stay, he's got to give
her something to make it worth her while. Olivia is silent.

17
"They told her three years ago she could die of a heart attack." Elliot shakes his head because
this will never, ever make sense to him. "She had coronary artery disease, and they gave her
medication. She filled every prescription, and when I was packing up her stuff, I found a box
under her bed with over two dozen bottles full of pills."
"She never took any of them." Olivia doesn't sound surprised. Instead she sounds like she
expected it. Elliot turns to face her, and Olivia must sense that because she looks over her left
shoulder at him. She doesn't look away.

"The hell is that?" He bites off a curse. "I mean, I get she was sick in the head, but these
meds weren't about whether she was gonna be happy or sad. They were about whether she
was gonna live or die. Didn't that make a difference to her?"
Olivia's eyes are so black that he can almost see himself in them. Even out in the brilliant
sunshine, her voice takes on the dark, dusty quality that lulls him.
"You couldn't have made her take those pills any more than I could have made my mother
stop drinking, El. We couldn't physically force them to do anything so we tried to
compensate. If we could just get them to love us enough, be inspired enough, whatever it was
- it would make them change." She lifts her beer to her mouth and shrugs. "Truth is, neither
one of them was looking to be saved."

There are moments - each of which he remembers with distinct clarity - that he wants to crawl
into her. This is one of them. He feels his throat lock because here he is, standing at the edge
of the ocean with her. Ahead there is absolutely nothing or the Promised Land, dependent
upon one's point of view.
"How do you know if someone wants to be saved?" he finally asks. He has to know.
Olivia looks up at him, and the corner of her mouth lifts in a quirk. Just like that, he feels
bigger, stronger. The sand beneath his feet is suddenly solid ground.

"You'll know," she says. And then, a moment later she sort of smiles as she stares out ahead.
"You'll know."

He believes her.

18
 Chapter Four

O
livia stares at the countertop in the kitchen, her hand gripping a rather large knife.
She doesn’t know where to start. The counter is covered in vegetables and thick
steaks and fresh bunches of herbs. They had sent over an hour walking the beach, not
saying too much or too little, and when they had come back, Elliot had asked her if she was
hungry. Fuck yes, she is hungry. She is always hungry. It probably isn’t the most feminine
trait, but she is who she is, and that means she loves food.

He knows this of course.

So he has promptly pulled out the contents of the fridge, dumped them on the counter and
very nonchalantly told her to figure our what looked good while he took a shower. Good to
know that he is as infuriating as ever. Then again, she does have a knife in her hand. Maybe
she can just stab him with it.

He knows she is just a so-so cook. There are a few things she can manage - basic lasagna, for
instance - but on the whole groceries and things that simmer for hours and chopping blocks
covered in herbs are not her forte. Half of her wants to know what the hell he is doing with a
fridge full of this stuff, the other half wants to know if he actually knows what to do with it all.
Being out here is weird as hell.

She can’t shake the uneasy feeling that he is settling further into his life out here instead of
getting ready to come back to Manhattan. She wants to ask him outright if he’s coming back
soon, but she knows that if he sense her need, he will come back before he is ready and in the
end, that will only make him resent her. She lets the knife clang out of her hand and onto the

19
counter. She runs her hand through her hair instead, letting her palm come to rest on the
back of her neck. She massages the sore muscles there and looks up out of the small window
in the kitchen that overlooks the beach beyond. The New Jersey shoreline. New Jersey.
Christ, he’s been living in a different state for the better part of the last year.

Olivia closes her eyes. She’s already too comfortable here. Her shoes have long since been
kicked off and the windows in the sunroom to her right have been opened to let in the sea air.
Elliot must have moved the dining table into the still sunlit room - a place that had once been
filled with his mother’s paintings - because it now occupies the small space. She’d only been
here for a short while that afternoon she had come to pick up Bernadette Stabler, but it was
long enough for her to notice the changes Elliot has made.

Surprisingly, the place feels like him. Gone are the few coral upholstered chairs and the
delicate knickknacks. Instead she can see evidence of his life everywhere. His sneakers are
tossed by the door, a couple of sports magazines sit on the table. The bright purple gauze
curtains his mother had hung have been replaced by beige blinds and the light yellow walls are
now painted a light, soothing blue.

He is living here. This isn’t a place in which he has been hiding from the world. This is a place
he has made his home. It isn’t the messy, dark respite she had expected to see. Just like that,
her throat feels thick. She can’t relax here. She can’t. He might stay out here forever, but she
has to go back to New York. With or without him. She’s got no place here. No reason. The
gnarling sense of displacement crawls on her.

“You tryin’ to use your brain waves to cut the

veggies?”
Olivia spins to her right, startled out of her reverie by
the husky sound of Elliot’s voice. As soon as she
turns, she wishes she hadn’t. Elliot stands in the lone
entrance to the kitchen, his hip propped against the
wall and his arms folded over his bare chest. He is
wearing a pair summer shorts and an amused look on
his face. He looks entirely too comfortable in his
state of undress.

“If you can sear a steak with your mind, I’m going to be a little afraid of you,” he quips.
Her mouth is dry and she prays to god that she isn’t ogling him. It’s a little impossible not to
look at him. He’s cut, everywhere, and he’s got that sultry, summer-heated warmth to the
20
colour of his skin. Everything about him out here is relaxed, so much so that for a moment,
she almost misses his raging anger and the scowl she know all too well.

“I’m the guest,” Olivia says, drawing her lower lip into her mouth before she realises what she
is doing. Fuck. “Shouldn’t you be cooking for me?”
“Maybe. But you’re the woman -“ Elliot starts teasingly, walking into the kitchen.
Olivia picks up the knife and cocks an eyebrow at him.
“Sure you want to finish that sentence?”
Elliot’s eyes crinkle at the corner as he grins. He passes behind her in the kitchen, but not
before he leans in towards her ear. “I’ll take my chances.”

Her skin prickles with awareness. Everywhere. You’re the woman. Maybe that is what is so
unsettling about being out here. She feels that way today. Feminine. Not like his partner. Not
like his physical equal.

“I take it you can make a salad?” He teases. “Nothing to burn, char or over-salt about that.”
She stands still, awkwardly watching Elliot as he starts to unwrap the steaks onto a plate. He
reaches into a cupboard and pulls out some balsamic vinegar and sets it on the counter, and
then opens a drawer to pull out some grilling tools. Olivia doesn’t move.

She feels like a fish out of water. He is remarkably in control here, and he seems to be taking
up all the space wherever he is. She thought she’d felt left behind in Manhattan, but here, the
evidence of his moving on is all around her and the reminders are unavoidable. And then, just
when she thinks he doesn’t even realise she is here, Elliot stops rummaging. When he fully
looks at her, all of the playfulness in him is gone.

“Liv?”
She can’t breathe all of a sudden. She feels an agonising need to tell him about the last eight
months. She wants to tell him about seven-year-old Lindsay Folsom, who disappeared from
the neighbourhood pool and who still hasn’t been found. She wants to tell him about sixteen-
year-old Farhid Azzari, whose father burned off half her face because she had shamed him by
falling in love with a catholic boy. She wants to tell him about Bobby Lillingham, Charles
Adami, and Rashida Lopez. Names who mean nothing to him. Nothing. He doesn’t know
anymore.

Elliot had walked away, like none of it had ever happened. He doesn't wear the guilt of the
times they had failed on his skin; he doesn't look like he loses sleep.

21
That's her world now. Not his. And she can't bring him back into it before he is ready. If he is
ever ready. She can feel it. He's not acting like her partner anymore. And if he's not that, then
he doesn't have any ties to her. Olivia watches him as he comes closer to her. She has to say
something because she's acting like an idiot.

Liv, we have to talk. Eight months ago. Eight-fucking-months. It's just for a little while. I'll
call you. I promise. It was all bullshit. He had called her three times. Exactly three. And by the
third time, she'd had nothing to say. Just need to clear my head.

"Olivia-"
Elliot's voice is harsh now, almost commanding. He's got the slightest bit of urgency in his
tone and she feels an odd satisfaction that he's feeling some sense of discomfort at least. This
isn't comfortable. Making dinner in Jersey at his mother's beach house isn't them. It's not.
Fuck. That's because there is no them.
How the hell hadn't she moved on? Even around the squad they've been referring to Elliot as
her old partner. Her former partner. She's heard people talk about them. How they'd once
been great. As if it was all in the past. The past. She hasn't moved on. Not like he has. She's
been waiting for him. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Elliot's hand lands on her arm, but unlike when he stopped her earlier today, his touch is
unwaveringly gentle.
"Hey," he nearly croons. "What just happened?"

Olivia doesn't know this man. This man with the freedom to touch her, this man with the time
to read magazines and run on the beach. He is now someone who falls into bed at night with
the assurance that he will sleep the whole night through.
And the thing is that if she doesn't know him, then he probably doesn't understand her
anymore, either. It leaves her with no one.

She looks up at him, but she doesn't trust herself to speak. Olivia watches Elliot carefully
though, praying he doesn't make any sudden moves. The fire in her chest is smouldering, and
she's afraid that if she opens her mouth too soon, she will fuel that fire with the oxygen that
will rush into her starved lungs. He’d once been hers, she thinks. Not in any way that the
world recognised. He'd been married to someone else, and their friendship was always
carefully characterised as second fiddle to their partnership, but he'd been hers. Once.
And when he had sailed out on his fairytale break, she had believed with everything in her that
he would be coming back.
22
Surely he couldn't leave her that easily if he had been planning to never come home? But it
had been that easy for him, and now he was flourishing while she was floundering. It was one
thing to put her life on hold for him while he'd been by her side every day, but it was another
thing entirely to put her life on hold for a man who had left.
"Christ," Elliot swears under his breath.
Olivia is mute. She is someone she doesn't recognise at all. She presses her lips together
because the realisation that she is weak, so fucking weak, is jarring. She is a grown woman
who is acting like an abandoned child, and there is no modicum of pride that can be salvaged
from this.

Behind the badge, the gun, the glare, this is who she is. She is frozen. It's as if life has dumped
her off here and she has no idea where the hell she is.
"What the fuck is going on?" Elliot whispers harshly. It's finally a tone she recognises. "Is it
work? Is it bad? You wanna talk about it?"
He blocks the window in the room because the sheer size of him. It makes the room feel
darker. Shadowed.
"I should go," Olivia finally manages.
He locks eyes with her. He doesn't even blink. "Stay here."
She shakes her head before she even realises what she is doing. "I thought-" It's the break in
her voice that gives her a burst of composure. She can't do this. She can't sound like this. She
clears her throat. "Never mind. It's two hours back, El. I should get on the road. It was good
to-" He finally gives her an expression she recognises. He narrows his eyes and his jaw flexes.

"Save the shit, Olivia." He riles her immediately. "You think I'm the one who's dishing out
shit?"
"Yeah. You drove two hours for what? For a beer?"
To see you. To see you, goddammit. I've been waiting and...and nothing. It's nothing.
"Guess so." Her purse is in the living room and she tries to move past him.
Elliot surprisingly backs away and lets her pass. He watches her in silence as she finds her
shoes and walks towards where she had set down her purse.

"I found this journal of my Mom's," he says quietly. "Don't have the guts to read it."
This is always how he breaks her. He starts talking and he has to know that she has never, ever
been able to walk away from him when he does this. When he talks about himself, or when he
shares things with her. It's his holy grail of influence over her because the instances are so
rare.

23
Olivia stills, and when she looks at him, she knows he can see that something inside of her is
breaking. She's missed him so damned much that it is a physical, pounding ache inside of her.
She's terrified of him now; terrified about what he could make her want.
Elliot glances at her, and for the first time today she can see that he's trying like hell for
something, only she doesn't know what it is. When he's sure she isn't moving, he walks over
to the table and picks up a small, leather bound book. It is a faded, pale and cracked orange
colour that is tied shut with a brown leather string. Elliot's thumb slips over the surface.
Once. Twice. He looks down at it and then up at her, and without hesitation he settles the
journal into her hand. It's a heavy, heavy weight even though it can't be more than a few
ounces. Olivia can't think.

She says the first stupid thing that comes to mind. "What do you
want me to do with it?" Her breath is shallow.
Elliot's grin is barely perceptible. "Tell me if there's
anything I need to know?"
Olivia flinches - hard - and she can feel the rush of
adrenaline spike through her as her heart rate
accelerates. He can't possibly mean -
"Will you read it?" His voice is barely a rasp.

When Elliot's dark lashes lift so that he can look at her, she sees that whatever lightness he'd
worn earlier today has been eroded. The smallest voice inside of her tells her that he's faded a
little bit since she'd announced she was leaving a few moments ago.
But he's asking something of her. Something he's thought about. Planned. Had time to
consider. She can't do this. She can't. She has never been able to go through her own
mother's things - her own mother's psyche - so she doesn't know how Elliot could expect she
will be able to sift through this. She's scared of what she is holding onto. She's terrified of it.
His mother's journal. Jesus. Jesus. They've gone from stay out of my personal life to this.
This. She wants to tell him it's none of her business. It can't be. Couldn't be. Shouldn't.
Elliot forces a tight smile.

"It's been sitting there for months. I just...you're the only one...." That forced smile fades
and he stands there for a moment before shaking his head as if trying to clear it. He worries
his lower lip, chewing on it again and again, his eyes focused on the worn leather in her hands.
He finally stops speaking. Instead he just lifts his gaze and looks at her. Something in him is
pleading; he's just given up on using his words. Olivia can't look away. She sees him then.

24
The familiarity - the stabbing, consuming familiarity - of Elliot is suddenly there in front of
her. It feels like she is slamming into a brick wall of him, only she is standing still. So is he.

Something finally pieces together for her. The ridiculous quantity of groceries he had on
hand, the recent coat of paint on the walls. The shelf in the fridge was full of her favourite beer
and there was fresh soap on the sink in the bathroom. She had even noticed a folded set of
towels on the bed in the guest room when she had used the bathroom earlier. She is almost
dizzy with the realisation.

"Did you-" Olivia's voice cracks. She stops and takes a deep breath, trying to get past the
butterflies that are forming deep in her stomach. Her fingers tighten around the bound book
in her hands. "Did you do-“ It hangs in the air. He'd done this for her to see. To experience.
"Didn't want you here until I had it together, Liv. Figured you'd had ‘nough years of
watching me lose my shit."

She can see the lack of movement in his chest because every crevice of him is on display for
her right now. Elliot is holding his breath and the only things moving on him are the muscles
in his jaw and his fingers as he clenches them once, then twice.
"We got nothin' to lose if you stay," he encourages softly.
Olivia grips the book. She can't take her eyes off of Elliot. He is all ridges and planes and
powerful curves lit in the ribbon of colours that signify the glorious dusk. Hers. Hers.

She's got nothing left of defence when he lays himself bare like this.
Olivia nods. "I could maybe stay just tonight and then-"
The light in him comes back and she almost gasps with how obvious it is. Elliot exhales and
the smile is back in him and Jesus Christ, she's done that. He changes like that because of her.
Just like that, she falls over the edge for him.

25
26
 Chapter Five

H
e's heard that the ocean never sleeps, and he thinks that is entirely wrong. He has
been out here long enough to understand the changes in the tide, the pull of the
moon. He's seen the ocean thrash in the throes of a frigid, winter storm and he's
arisen in the morning to the startling sight of a sea of smooth glass. In the afternoons, when
the birds make the surface their playground, the white-tipped waves seem to play along, yet by
evening the waves roll in with a slow, easy rumble as if preparing for nightfall.

Sometimes he sits and stares at the endless miles of it all and wonders what it would like to be
out there, at the mercy of the power and seemingly whimsical pull of the ocean. He wonders
what it would be like to live aboard a freighter for months on end, his hands chapped by the
calluses of a life earned at sea. He thinks about what it would take from a man to live beneath
the surface, without daylight, for six months at a time. He'd met guys like that - the sub guys -
back in his days with the Marines. He thinks about how there is a whole world beneath the
water that he has never experienced. There are ridges and peaks, mountains and colonies.
There are unexplored, watery black depths that he wonders if any man will ever see. You're
just like your father. All buttoned up, no imagination. No spirit. If anything is just a little out
of the ordinary it scares you to death. Anything that doesn't fit into your neat little boxes, you
just can't take it.

He hears his mother's voice a lot these days. Her death had been starkly different than his
father's. When his Dad had died, he had felt no remorse. The old man had been especially
brutal and caustic in the last two decades of his life, and there was nothing Elliot wished he
had said or done differently. But his mother - losing his mother was another story entirely.

27
The first few weeks out here had been the hardest. He'd seen jarring physical reminders of all
the ways in which he had failed her. The screen door to the patio had creaked almost
obscenely; the faucet in the sink was rusted. Then had come the emotional barrage - he'd
boxed up photo albums that had chronicled his childhood, and he had gone through storage
chests in the garage that were filled with the rudimentary artwork and essays he'd brought
home as a kid. He'd started to see a pattern in the things she had saved. Every single thing his
mother had held onto about his childhood had been something that had depicted a happy
moment, a childhood dream, an uninhibited smile.

His first instinct was to curse his mother's inability to live in the real world; his second was to
realise that as a parent, it had been her job to wish he had been afforded the freedom to follow
every dream that had ever even crossed his mind. Somewhere around month three of being
out here he had forgiven his mother for everything she had ever done, and started to blame
her for the one thing she hadn't. She hadn't saved herself. She'd let herself die, and to this
day that is the one thing he can't reconcile. The truth is that he wonders if she didn't see
much to live for. That is his fault. He should have known she would die like this, before she
had to. He should have known he wouldn't be the one to find her, that he wouldn't be there at
her side in the end. Avoiding her for the last seven years hadn't been the best way to look out
for her and so that was it. All he'd get. He could fix the faucet and oil the door and none of it
would mean a damned thing.

His mother would never know what he felt, how he cared, if he had at all. And he had.
He had cared. He'd loved her and needed her and he'd been her son for every day of his forty-
four years even if he had missed Christmas with her, avoided her calls, sent everyone else to
see her instead. He'd been so afraid of his mother leaving him for most of his childhood, and
yet in the end, his mother hadn't walked away from him. He had walked away from her.

And that's the brutal truth of it. He leaves behind the things that make him scared.
Next to him, he feels a shift in the air that has nothing to do with the light wind. He knows who
it is, the only person who he would let be with him. Olivia. He looks down, over his right
shoulder, and her olive-skinned feet are the only thing he sees. She has light pink toenails,
and there is something so unexpected about that that he feels himself exhale, if just for a
moment. The sand is strewn across the top of her slender feet and he knows that if he looks
up, her legs will be bare to her knees.

Olivia hands him a cold, already-opened bottle of beer before sitting down next to him, he
takes it gratefully and stares straight ahead. She doesn't say anything, and that is one of the
28
things he likes best about her. She doesn't fill the silences with inane platitudes. She doesn't
tell him that his mother knew he loved her, she doesn't tell him that he did the best he could.
She doesn't make up the blanks in her life or in his; she has always only dealt with the things
that she knows for sure.

"Dinner was fantastic," she says quietly.

He lifts his head and his fingers instinctively start peeling the label from his beer bottle. The
wind shifts, and out of the corner of his eye he can see her hold back the long strands of hair
that blow gently across her cheek. He can't believe Olivia is out here, with him. It had taken
him months to feel ready to see her again, days and days that had to pass before he could see
past all the ways in which he could so easily fail her. She had been quiet at dinner, and they
had lapsed into a silence so easy that it had bordered on unsettling. He'd grilled the steaks,
she'd made a salad and every time he had looked up at her and caught her eyes, she had smiled
just a little bit.

When Olivia smiles at him, she seems a little bit embarrassed by the expression. He senses a
hesitancy in her that has become more pronounced after his months away. She looks at him
some times as if he is a time bomb and she can't decide how far away she needs to stay back so
that she doesn't get burned. The sun has set, and the sky is streaked in the greys and blues
that preface nightfall. It's still warm outside, but the breeze feels good on his heated skin.

"Company was even better," he murmurs.

Olivia ducks her head as she burrows her toes into the sand in front of her. "I'm glad, you
know."
He shoots her a side glance. "'Bout what?"
"That you made me stay."
Elliot laughs then, and the feeling makes its way into his chest. "I don't think anyone's ever
made you do anything you didn't want to do."

When Olivia looks at him, she is trying not to smile, but the light in her eyes gives her away.
The effect makes her look almost mischievous. She doesn't say anything, but the beauty of it
is that with him, she doesn't have to. He hopes she knows that. He looks back out at the water
then, because looking at Olivia for too long is never a good idea. His instincts with her are less
controllable than he'd like. He has a constant need to touch her, to provoke her, to want to
feel her breathe on his skin and he's damned sure that if he tries any of it, she's gonna hightail
it back to Manhattan.

29
She takes a sip of the beer and then rests her forearms on her knees. "I can think of worse
places to be.” He is so profoundly grateful to her in that moment that he can't breathe. He
looks at her while she looks straight ahead and her skin appears bronze and perfect out here.
"My mother knew about you," he says quietly.
The side of Olivia's mouth lifts. "I know. I came out here to get her before Kathleen's trial,
remember? She told me you'd mentioned me."
Elliot shakes his head. "Not what I meant." He can't take his focus off of her. "She was mad
at me. Said I lived in little boxes, and that I had no spirit." Her head cocks so she can look at
him. Olivia says nothing.

He gives her a wry smile and then uses the crashing waves as distraction. He needs to keep
talking. It's the only thing that keeps Olivia next to him. "Most parents woulda been happy
their son wanted to do the right thing and marry the girl they got pregnant. Not my mother.
She was convinced I was throwing it all away. Even back then, she had big ideas for me."
"You did the right thing, El."

He loves Olivia's voice. When something affects her, the timber drops until her words are
low, breathy, so damned earnest. He can't tell her that for as many times as he has imagined
her tangled with him in his bed for hours, he has also imagined her sprawled on him, talking -
just hours of her voice saying anything and everything she felt she had to say.
Elliot nods. "Yeah. Maybe the first time around." He laughs softly. "Second time around I
shoulda known better." The silence hangs heavy. The waves do their best to the cut the heavy
summer air, yet still fall short. He can't let the silence sit. Not now. He doesn't want Olivia to
get up. Not yet. He's got to keep talking to her. He's got shit else but his words.

"When Kath and I split the first time, Mom called me a lot and I'd send all her calls to
voicemail. She'd leave me rambling messages about how my sun was rising and how fate gave
me a second chance. I'd get so pissed she didn't get it." He lifts his beer to his lips then
thinks better of it. "But she'd end every one of those voicemails with askin' ‘bout you."
That brings a surprised bark of laughter from Olivia. "What?"

Elliot can't help it. The smile on her face and the shadows are too intoxicating. He lets his
mind veer, and he imagines moving closer to her, feeling her hand slip up the back of his neck
as he hovers on her, just enough so that she'd lower herself back onto the sand. He wants to
touch the long, smooth length of Olivia's leg and gently pull it up, around his hip.
He tries not to think beyond that.

30
"She musta realised you were important. Didn't always mention the kids, but every time
she'd end it with ‘be good to Olivia' or ‘tell her to watch my boy's back'." Now the smile tugs
at his mouth, too. Olivia is so fucking close to him. If he went for it, her lips would taste like
beer and her hair would be just a little bit tangled from the wind as he pushed his fingers into
it.
"El," Olivia says, and it's throaty and lazy. Her eyelids seem heavy. "Guess she had
somethin' right."

Olivia closes her eyes and instead of moving closer to him, she props her arms on her knees
and lifts her beer bottle. She presses her forehead to her wrist and sits, quietly.
Elliot watches her, and he knows he can't tell her too much, too soon. It's the same with those
who are buried in the rubble of a disaster for weeks, no food or water. If they are rescued the
instant barrage of too much at once can kill them just as soon as the isolation and starvation
could.

"You been buried?" he asks.

She must sense that for now the danger has passed because she turns her head to eye him.
"You mean as in work? It's been bad, yeah, but no more so than-"
"No," he laughs. "I mean as in under the sand. Has anyone ever buried you?"
Olivia's face registers just a moment of shock before she realises where this is headed.
"What? No. And I swear to God-"

She is as fast as he is, if not faster. By the time he's up, she's up and she's backing away from
him, one hand clutching her beer and the other palm held out towards him, as if warding him
off. Even in the dark, Elliot can find her eyes. She is smiling, and it's one of those rare smiles
that takes over her whole face. He knows they don't do this - they don't ever horse around -
but fuck if he's all that concerned about what they used to be or used to do.
"Stabler," Olivia warns, trying unsuccessfully to look serious.
"Yeah, Benson?" He's encroaching on her and he has absolutely no idea what he is gonna do
if he catches her. But it's nighttime and the air is warm, the sand is soft, and hell if this isn't
the most absurd, rare moment in time. The breeze slides between his fingers and his ring
finger feels bare. He's never been able to breathe like this.

"C'mere," Elliot says, trying to sound as trustworthy and encouraging as possible. He takes
another two steps forward until she is nearly in his grasp. She must realise that he's got
nothing good on his mind. When he catches her he is gonna touch her and hold her and
fucking slip his palms against her skin. Olivia's laughter is spectacular as she shakes her head.
31
"Like hell I will." She drops her beer in the sand and runs like the wind towards to the water.
***

It's dark out here now, and she feels the sand compact beneath every quick step she takes.
Her lungs have opened up and she loves the way the air still warms her skin this late into the
evening. Olivia just wants to keep running, to just feel like this forever. The beers have dulled
her senses just a little bit, and she blames them too on her inability to outrun him. She can feel
him gaining on her even as she makes for the straightaway of wet sand that borders the edge of
the tide. To her right, the waves roll and tumble, the comforting sound penetrating into her
stomach, her chest, her throat.

She feels a little bit tipsy, as if she isn't quite connected to the boundaries and borders she
maintains. Freedom. The air is swirling deep inside of her. She's so awake. So startlingly
awake. She forgets she is actually running and she just moves, pushing herself. She could
close her eyes and just keep going and never hit a wall out here. She senses him behind her
before she even hears his roughened breath on the back of her head. His arm is thick and
strong around her waist as he tangles his legs with hers and hauls her back towards him.

He's got her. He's got her. She doesn't think about don't touch and my partner and there are
rules. She thinks about nothing except for the hot, hard feel of him. She listens to the voices
inside of her. You're safe.

“Gotcha.” She lets him take.

His feet and hers intermix and it sends them both tumbling to her left, and he breaks her fall
by hitting the soft ground first, his arrogant, satisfied chuckle already settling over her.
Olivia is half on him, half off, her back to him when she catches her breath. She wants to
laugh, to just fucking laugh at how ridiculous all of this is. Ridiculous. Breathe, Olivia. Just
breathe.

"Asshole," she retorts, trying not to notice the solid rock he is next to her.
Elliot smells like soap and beer and his hands are on her, in places they shouldn't be. She
can't catch her breath as he rolls over towards her, nearly spooning her as his hot breath
warms her jaw. Her eyes shut. You've waited a long time. The water is ten feet away. There is
salt in the air and sand in her hair and above her, the sky is clear and endless and she could
meld right into it.

He leans up over her. "Eight months away and I can still take you," he teases.
32
Olivia falls back onto the sand, her chest slamming. Elliot is too close to her. Half on her, half
off. She should stop him, to push him back but the need for him is nearly debilitating. She
opens her eyes and he's right there, inches from her face. The hard mass of his thigh presses
against hers and his thumb and fingers are wrapped around the curve of her waist.

He's so close. So close.

It's been a hundred years since he's been her partner and it's so damned impossible to
remember all the reasons why she can't have him. Manhattan doesn't exist, and neither does
humanity. It's a cliché to feel like they are the last two on earth but that's what this is, it's
simple and obvious and basic like that. Let this be. Elliot's skin is hot and he's breathing just
as hard as she is. He'd put on a t-shirt right before dinner but the material of it is so thin that
she can feel every ridge of his stomach against her torso, and he is tan and perfect and rough
in all the right places.

He doesn't pull back. He doesn't create space or give her apologies for staying like this.
The want slides across her skin, through her belly and her thighs, her breasts, the sensitive
spot on the side of her neck - it all aches. For him. For him. For this.

"Jesus," Elliot mutters, his hand sliding lower, down towards where her dress is clinging
precariously to the tops of her thighs. She can't look at him because the relief of him on her is
so sharp - so painfully acute - that her eyes prick. She can't do this occurs to her, but it's lost,
forgotten because there is no one here to see her lose it, give in, just succumb to the sheer
want. She stares at the night-darkened sky. At a million stars. She thinks about floating up
there, and about just staying with him. Just staying.

Her chest is crumbling up beneath the cinders. He's a burn. A goddamned burn on her.
Elliot's palm skims the top of her bare leg and he makes a guttural sound. She can feel him
pulsing, controlled and almost rocking on her. Her back is flat on the sand now and she's still
out of breath, but he's coming down on her, lowering his powerful body until she's pinned
between him and the sun-warmed earth. She makes a sound. He is so unbearably present in
this moment that it reminds her of just how vicious his absence had been.

Eleven years sail by in her mind. Eleven years. Days, cases, nights, dying. She thinks of crying
and of his family and of being on the outside for so, so long. She thinks about the city, and
how without him it crawls all over her. Without him, it has its way with her. There is an ache
inside of her. A desperation to belong to something, to someone, to anything. She's strong,
33
yeah, but she's got a place inside of her that hasn't grown up, that hasn't caught up to what
she's seen, heard, learned.
Elliot presses his forehead against hers. His fingers slip into her hair. She can feel his
knuckles against her scalp, can feel the way her body craves him. His eyes slip shut and she
can feel his lashes then as they skim her cheek. She stays focused on the sky. Endless. Above
her. Eyes wide open. Her throat closes. She blinks. She knows every inch of him and yet
nothing at all.

"You left me," she says softly, her voice catching. There are no clouds in the night sky. It is
unblemished. Orion blurs. Elliot's breath is hot against her cheek and his hand opens against
the side of her face. She knows he won't kiss her. Not this easily. Not this soon. It's okay.

"I'm so sorry, Olivia," he rasps. She closes her eyes, keeps him against her, and the night
stills.

34
 Chapter Six

H
e had needed some time, and the walk to her car had provided the perfect excuse.
After he had rolled away from Olivia, Elliot had done his best to just breathe. His
instinct had been to hold onto her, but that urge solely existed to save him. The need
to save her had always been more powerful and because of that he was well aware he needed to
give her space. He'd helped Olivia up and then walked her back to the house in silence before
offering to retrieve her bag for her from her car. Wordlessly she'd handed over her keys. She
wouldn't run, at least not for a few more hours.

It was a small bag, and it couldn't hold much, but he was relieved to see it nonetheless. There
was something reassuring in knowing that even after all the months he'd been gone and the
abrupt way in which he had left Manhattan, it had still occurred to Olivia that she might want
to stay with him for a few days. When he'd returned to the house, Olivia had been sitting on
the sofa, her eyes shut and his mother's journal - still closed - on her lap. Her feet had been
stretched out in front of her, ankles crossed, and she had looked so tired and comfortable
sitting there on the couch that he had just stopped for a moment and absorbed the startling
sense of completion that seemed to pervade the house simply because Olivia was in it. The
world they had lived in couldn't have seemed further left behind. The corner of his mouth
now lifts in a grin as he watches her, and she looks up drowsily. He tosses her keys on the side
table, her bag still slung over his shoulder.

"You look exhausted." His voice is scratchy, almost hoarse. You look beautiful. A million
things he should say. Wants to. Will. Olivia's hair falls into her face a little bit as she shifts.
"It's all the sea air." The silence seems to settle between them and he couldn't care less. He
would be content to just watch her exist in his space. But Olivia stands up, and as she walks
towards him to get her bag it occurs to him that she could easily drive away tomorrow

35
morning. If he had attempted too much too soon with her, he wouldn't be surprised if she
tries to leave before he is even awake.

"You bring sneakers in this thing?"

Olivia nods. She comes to stand right in front of him and in her bare feet she is shorter than he
remembers. She has to tilt her head up a little bit to look him in the eyes and he likes the effect
because it means she has to gaze up through her lashes. She's a sultry sort of sexy and her
movements are languid and it's the opposite of everything he had ever seen of her when he
had been her partner. As a cop she's all fire and movement. As a woman, she's a slow dance.

"'Course," Olivia acknowledges, reaching for her bag. Elliot needs to make plans with her.
She wouldn't easily let him down if they had definitive plans, and this is the only way he can
feel marginally better about his chances of getting her to stay another day.
"Go for a run with me tomorrow?" Olivia's grin borders on a smirk. Her hair is tousled and
her skin is even darker now than it had been when she arrived this afternoon. She knows
where the guest bedroom is and she makes no bones about heading there. "If you can keep
up," she agrees, one eyebrow raising speculatively as she throws him a look over her shoulder
while walking away. Elliot stands there long after she closes the door to his room. He looks at
all the open windows he will need to lock up before he takes a shower and goes to bed.
He thinks about finding a way to lock Olivia in.
***

The world is still. At least it feels that way. Outside, she knows things are moving. The water
rolls, and it is an odd sensation to hear the constant movement but to remain steady on dry
land. She has left the high bedroom window cracked just a little bit, and she can't remember
the last time she's been able to fall asleep to fresh air. Elliot would probably tell her to lock the
windows - their job lives in them, it's always their job - but she's a cop and she's quick and
besides she feels a little bit invincible out here. He is in the next room.

Elliot.

Olivia is exhausted and her body aches from it. She can feel herself letting go of the week, the
month, the city itself. The white sheets are crisp against her skin and the light yellow duvet is
the perfect weight on her, but still she can't sleep. Instead she stares at the ceiling, unable to
calm the thoughts that skitter through her mind. She is too aware of Elliot. Of being in this
house. His house.

36
In Manhattan - as his partner - she's found herself attracted to him but she has always
attributed that inconvenience to Elliot's overwhelming presence, to her natural human
instinct. He is strong, dynamic, commanding. He has a way of sucking the air out of a room
and then burning up everything in his presence as if he is a flashover fire. She'd stick by him
in the cold just to stay warm. She's stuck by him for years. The sheer scope of their tangled,
mangled history is overwhelming.

Olivia takes a deep breath and blows it out, fascinated by the rough surface of the ceiling.
Being Elliot's partner has never been easy. Not being his partner has proven impossible. She
is so inextricably linked to him that she couldn't unravel them if she tried. It scares the hell
out of her. She's dependent upon him. Dependent. The thought is so frightening, so utterly
debilitating, that she almost gets out of bed just to move. Hush, Olivia. You need to sleep.
Just rest.

She knows this. She needs to close her eyes. She hasn't slept properly in months and even she
knows that she is two steps from fucking it all up back in Manhattan. Leave had been her
choice, but she had been days away from Cragen forcing it under his orders. She presses her
eyes closed now and wills away the panic she still feels because Elliot is not at his desk across
from her every morning. She starts every morning with a numbing kick to her chest, and she
does everything she can to stay away from the squad room as much as possible. Out on the
streets she can pretend he is still back at the house, waiting for her, doing paperwork, ready
to.

The lies she tells herself are even clearer out here. Olivia can still feel his hand on her skin.
She remembers Elliot being on her a few hours ago. She remembers the way he had grunted
and held her so tightly. His arousal had been evident in his tightened expression and in the
fierce way he had looked at her. She imagines him in here with her right now, the dark places
in Elliot's eyes growing as his mouth closes in towards her. Olivia's arm lifts until it rests over
her head and she imagines his hands and his mouth and the sound of his voice as he slips his
rough palm up the hem of her t-shirt. Let him hold you.

She's thought about Elliot like this before, but usually when she's thought about this - him -
she is trying to stop being angry, trying to block out something painful that is invading her
mind, her heart. She has thought about him on her - hard, fast, deep - and she always imagines
it as something they would regret. As a mistake that could be made in their darkest moment.
She has imagined him touching her out of their frustration, their anger, their indignation at
the sheer, blinding injustice of it all.
37
But she has never, ever imagined Elliot touching her out of love. Even the dangerous, nearly
inconceivable idea of it makes her draw deeply on every breath. He is her partner. Her friend.
Olivia keeps her eyes closed and her hand slips to the bare skin on her belly where her shirt
has lifted beneath the covers. Her hand is his, and she thinks about Elliot's mouth there, on
her abdomen. Friends. Friends.

She wonders what the moment would be like, just how overwhelmed she would be if Elliot
were to actually make love to her. It is one thing to sleep with a friend; it is another thing
entirely to finally have the man who has been absolutely everything to her find his release
while buried inside of her. That she could pleasure him like that - that she could be the one to
arouse him - Elliot - is too much to consider. She inhales so sharply that she can feel the air
swirl in her gut. Her pulse picks up speed and her breathing becomes shallow. Easy.

Her chest is tight and brittle and she is so starkly aware of how alone she has been these last
months. She doesn't cry, and she vaguely realises that she has stopped crying over anything or
anyone. Even the victims don't get her tears anymore. I felt like an empty shell. Like someone
had reached inside of me and scooped out my soul. His mother had once said that to her.

Numbness has a silence, Olivia thinks. It's been too quiet inside of her. Until now. Maybe that
is what this is. Maybe this is the sound coming back. She can hear herself think, can hear the
voice inside of her. She can hear the ocean and the sound of Elliot taking a shower and in the
morning she knows she will hear the calls of the sandpipers and terns as they sail by outside of
her window. Listen.

There is a cadence to the ocean that rocks her. Every few moments the shoreline is being
washed clean. What the tide takes, it gives. Even the darkness is bright out here by the water,
outside the moon reflects on the ripples again and again and again. His mother's journal sits
on her end table and Olivia rolls her head to look at it. The lamp is still on and she knows she
won't sleep just yet. The fact that Elliot asked her to read it is also too much to dissect. She
doesn't know yet if she is supposed to tell him only the positive or if she should abbreviate the
negative, but she knows that either way she will read the words. She couldn't refuse him
something like this. She wouldn't.

Her hand reaches out and settles on the soft, buttery leather. She pulls the book towards her
and with her fingers unwraps the leather ties. She can hear his mother's voice as clear as a bell
as it had sounded on a chilly afternoon while they had sat at a local crab shack.

38
Olivia Benson? I never thought we'd meet. It is strange that she will probably know the
woman better than her husband or son after she is done reading this, when once she hadn't
known of the woman's existence at all. Olivia sits up a little in the bed, and her fingertips find
the grooves in the leather. From what little she knows of Bernadette Stabler, she knows
enough to realise that the woman would have wanted her son to know about his mother. If the
journal would give her son even one iota of understanding about how she had lived and why
she had died, then reading these private words would be encouraged.

The journal feels fragile, as if the sea air has taken its toll on the softened paper. Olivia lets the
pages slip through her fingers, fanning them. The handwriting is a looping scrawl, with some
pages written in blue ink, others in black. Just by the brief glance she knows that Bernadette
Stabler did not journal every night. The words span years and the entries are sporadic. Before
Olivia reads a single line, she recalls his mother's apologetic words from that afternoon, eons
ago.

I made certain choices and I lost my son.

In the room next door, the shower shuts off and the pipes creak loudly. Olivia hears the
curtain being pulled back and the rattling of the towel rack as Elliot pulls a towel off of it.
There is a wall between them as they go to sleep tonight. He left Manhattan so, so long ago.
She had stayed. She's made choices too. Only she doesn't have the strength of his mother,
because she doesn't think she will survive if she loses him after all.
***

His bedroom is simple. He likes it that way. When he had been married, Kathy had preferred
thick curtains and throw pillows, just a little bit of clutter to make the home feel lived in.
There is no clutter in this room, but he doesn't feel the lack of anything despite the absence of
the stacks of books and laundry baskets and ironing boards. This room is him. The king-sized
bed has a sturdy oak frame and the sheets and comforter are plain white. He's got an alarm
clock on the end table and a couple of silver picture frames that hold photos of his kids. One
wall is covered in closed beige blinds because the windows overlook the side of the
neighbour's house and on the far side he has a small bathroom with a decent-sized shower
stall in it. There is a full bathroom with a tub off of the main hall.

He gets that this place needs no décor. The ocean is the attraction, and it sets the tone for the
whole house. After his mother had died he had cleaned out the housed - simplified - but left
intact more than he cared to admit. Most of the furniture remains and there is a comfort in
39
that. Despite his mother's chaos, a sense of calm resides here. If you could just take a deep
breath. Smell the ocean air. Feel the sun on your face. The wind. The sand beneath your feet.
His mother's words. It still shakes him that she is gone. He hadn't understood why his mother
had left New York after his father had died. He'd assumed she had needed to leave him, but
the truth as he understands it now is that the need to find herself had been the strongest
instinct of all. Elliot gets it these days. Eight months away could change a man. The ocean
took the rage, the sand absorbed the bloodshed. And the air. The air taught him to breathe
again.

The thing that scares him now is that he has done to Olivia what his mother had once done to
him. He had walked away from Olivia - trying to save himself - and he knows now how deeply
he hurt her. All of these months he has tried to pretend that she was stronger, more resilient,
tougher. He wanted to pretend that she couldn't hurt. That she wouldn't. But he heard the
crack in her voice tonight. He heard the accusation. He deserves all of that pain and more.
She deserves none of it.

His skin is still warm from the shower, and he pulls off his towel from around his waist and
walks naked towards the bathroom, throwing the wet fabric over the top of the shower rod.
The mirror over the sink is still partially steamed up and he scrubs down his face with his
hands, looking at himself in the blurred reflection. He's spent years being the man everyone
expected him to be. He's been a husband and a father, a son and a decent cop. He's tried to
be her partner too and that is the one role that hasn't come with any rules from day one. Or
maybe it is Olivia. Maybe it is Olivia who hasn't come with any rules. He feels stronger
tonight, having her under his roof.Years of being her partner did not made him feel like he
could protect her, keep her safe, but this does. This does.

Elliot turns around and heads back to his bed, peeling back the sheets and comforter. He
sleeps soundly these days, but tonight he tells himself to forego the deep sleep and instead to
listen for her. If she is scared, she will pace, if she is anxious, she will head to the kitchen for
water. If she is terrified, she will leave and there is no way in hell he won't do his damndest to
stop her. He shuts off the light and slips into the bed before rolling over onto his stomach,
sprawling across all of his space. He shoves his hands under two of the down pillows. By the
faint rustling he can hear coming from her room he imagines that Olivia is awake, maybe
reading. He bets she hasn't locked her windows and that she thinks she is tough enough to
stop any unlikely intruder.

Tonight he will sleep while half-awake.

40
No matter what, from now on he will always be the first to get to her if she needs him at all.
She's been there for him for too many years without getting anything in return.

My turn, Olivia.

41
42
 Chapter Seven

A
pril, 1969

I find it funny that Joe is embarrassed when I talk endlessly to myself, yet he has
been encouraging me to write in this journal. I think he's just so relieved that I'm willing to be
occupied with something that he doesn't see the irony. Isn't this talking to myself? Never mind,
I've long since given up trying to understand the man. At least he is a good husband. He works
constantly and Elliot and I can stay home together. Joe doesn't have fancy ideas about
wanting me to work. I know that women are fighting for equality, but I don't want it. I want to
stay home with my baby and watch him sing as he slams his hands and my wooden spoons
into the pots and pans.
He loves to make noise, my baby boy does. I've seen him change so much this year. At three he
is already showing signs of his remarkable talent. He loves his building blocks and I am
always amazed at how high he can get them to stack before they come crashing down. He cries
when they fall, each and every time, and I sit there and rock him and we let the destruction
break our hearts. Every time we make plans to build them higher next time. Higher and
higher. One day, we imagine, we will get these towers to rise into the sky. Get them to the sky,
Mama, Elliot says.
I promise him that we will.
Today I heard on the news about this English sailor who made a world record by sailing
around the world alone. I've followed his journey and I'm amazed that a man can live on a 32-
foot boat for so many months and live in isolation like that. Then again, he had the ocean as
his companion and I've always felt at home by the water. Maybe it's the same for him. I
imagine that he would recline on the deck of his boat and watch the skies and daydream for

43
hours. Joe says I'm wrong, that the man was in a race and had goals and that I am full of
frivolous nonsense. I pretend this is how it went nonetheless.
Maybe Joe is right and this journal thing can be an outlet. I think of one day writing a book, so
this is good practice. I'd ask you to tell me how I am doing in terms of sharing my feelings, but
you can't talk back, now can you? You need a name I think. Something fantastic and exotic.
Oh! I know! Suhaili. It is the name of that man's boat that he so bravely captained. I will
imagine you as my great white sails. Suhaili it is. I hope you like it.
He is turning out the lights now, so for now I'll say goodnight. Goodnight sweet Suhaili.

Love, Bernie

She is awake before she even opens her eyes. There is nowhere that she has to be today, no
place that she has to go. She should probably head back to Manhattan this afternoon - maybe
this evening - but there is no rush in her blood, no one to tend to but herself. She burrows
into the pillows and realises that she has kicked off the comforter. The air is warm already
though she knows it is still early. She can feel the humidity on her skin and even the daylight
feels different out here. In Manhattan the sun bounces off the cement and the glass windows
of the high-rises before it gets to her. Here, the sun slips down uninterrupted. She can feel it
seep through the closed blinds. Onto her.

Olivia groans and shifts in the bed. Vacation. She is starting to feel like that is what this is, but
it's a strange word to use because Elliot is here. She can't go on vacation with him. It's not
allowed. It doesn't fit. You're a funny girl, Olivia. The voice in her is so loud that she smiles
in response. She does tend to over think things. She's accustomed to assessing the situation,
evaluating the options, minimising the damage. Her job requires those skills of her and she
has never bothered to develop an independent set of life skills.

Beyond her door, Olivia can hear movement. She swears it is the sound of pots and pans being
used gracelessly in the kitchen. She grins, eyes focused upwards. Apparently Elliot's
fascination with making noise hasn't abated in the last forty years. She knows that there was a
horrible darkness in his childhood, but for now she wants to indulge in the images of him as a
child, as yet unaffected by what was to come. She likes the idea of him building towers,
dreaming big. For some reason it makes her want to touch his face with her fingertips and
learn all of the crevices on his skin. Christ.
She wants to be serious. She does. She wants to be careful and cautious and not make an
absolute ass of herself. The goal is to make him come back to the city soon, to get him to stop

44
hiding out here in the nothingness of his days. But the truth is that she wants a few days of his
brand of nothingness before she has to go back, too. Olivia wants to let her mind rest, and she
wants to soak up the sunshine and the water and the way he seems to smile all the damned
time out here. Elliot's grins come easily now - he always seems like he is up to something -
and God, yeah she could fall head over feet for him in another lifetime.

She feels like a little kid. There is something inside of her that is wrapping around her, and
she doesn't want to protest. She thinks about Elliot and how this - all of this - it doesn't make
sense and yet there is a part of her that doesn't care. It's also the most logical thing in the
world. He's her best friend, and as childish as that seems, the basic definition fits. He makes
her laugh and he is impossible and he's so gloriously sexy. She begins to remind herself that
this will change things - spending this kind of time together - and that when they go back to
Manhattan and are partners again that they will have to find a way to place this friendship
second again. But then the moment passes and she doesn't want to think about the city or
work or rules. God.

"I hear you tossing in there. Get your ass up," he calls from the living room. "Days a'wasting
and breakfast is ready." She rolls her head to the right and stares at the alarm clock. It's not
even a quarter to seven. He is a pain in the ass. She smiles and feels the intoxication in all of
her extremities. Elliot is also the respite in her chest.
***

When Olivia emerges, Elliot almost forgets to keep doing what he is doing.
He had intellectually known she was sleeping in the guest room, of course, but the physical
reality of her being here still startles him. It feels like he has waited so long for this - to have
Olivia all to himself - that he is having trouble getting used to it. And then there is the picture
she makes. She is wearing a fitted t-shirt and short cotton shorts and her hair is mussed. Olivia
is all ridiculously perfect, lush curves and golden skin. He's spent the last twenty-odd years
used to the nearly frail frame of his ex-wife. He's used to worrying about hurting Kathy, about
feeling her small bones beneath his hands.

But Olivia is made for sex. Every inch of her.

Her breasts would fill his hands and overspill just a little, and on top of her he'd worry about
getting deeper - pushing harder - and he'd let go of control. She could handle him as he was.
As he wanted to be. Elliot can't help it, his eyes slowly trail over the length of Olivia's long
legs and down to those polished toes and he actually hears her take a deep, surprised breath.

45
It is that sound that makes him connect with her eyes again. Olivia is smirking. Fuck. Of
course she is.
"Are you done?" One of her eyebrows arches in a slightly awkward amusement. Christ. No.
He's not. And if she's gonna let him look, then he'd rather continue his perusal while they're
both horizontal. He'd also be able to far better explore her with his mouth.
Then there is the biggest revelation of all. She's letting him look. That idea needs even more
time to set in. After all the years of watching Olivia date dozens of men, and watching her
dress up for other fuckers, he's damned sure he wants to put an end to her options. The truth
though is that he never expected that she might actually let him. He's thought about how he'd
make a move on her - hell, he's had months to think about that - but now that he has the
opportunity he's sure that none of the ways he imagined it going down would actually work.

"Stay." Fuck again. That's not what he had planned to say. He had definitely not planned to
say anything that way either. His voice had been hard. Harsh. Commanding. She isn't going
to respond well. But even though the smile falls off her face, her eyes widen. She's leaning
against the wall at the edge of the hallway across the room, and she's frozen.
He's got to say something.
"Just tell me you're gonna stay. Today. Tomorrow. A coupla days at least. Hell, maybe for
your week off. I don't wanna worry every-"

He's rambling. Fuck. Fuck. He just doesn't want her to leave. He needs time with her. He's
been alone out here for the most part and everything in his whole goddamned life makes more
sense when she is nearby. He just wants her to give him a timeframe - three days, four, a week
- so he can relax and just enjoy it without living on eggshells. Olivia doesn't come closer. But
she suddenly seems hesitant.

"El." She tries to talk to him with her eyes, but then even that falls away. "You and I? Out
here? It-"
"Could be a good thing," he finishes. He expects her anger. He expects that she will accuse
him of fucking everything up, even though he has no bloody clue what everything even
consists of anymore. Instead, Olivia gives him a look that says she wants to understand.
"How?"
Well, if that isn't the million dollar question he doesn't know what is. He should have
answers. He has spent eight months away, he should have had some blasted answers that
would make sense to her. But if he tries to paint the big picture she will leave. He has to make
sense to her, appeal to her logical side.

46
"Did you sleep good?"
Her smile is slowly - so slowly - unfurling. "Well."She says nothing then, but her half-grin is
almost sheepish. Flirtatious.
‘Well what?" he prods.
That does it. Her smile hits full stride and it makes her eyes squint. "Did you sleep well." She
shrugs. "It's proper English." He stares at Olivia for a second, and he realises how much she
is amusing herself with her grammatical lesson. She is very, very proud of herself. The
mischief is back in her expression.

"You done?" He says it dryly, but it's clear he finds her spectacular. Jesus, she can make fun
of him all she wants if it'll light her up like this.
Olivia arches one eyebrow and tries to keep a straight face. "Technically it's ‘are you done'
but yes, I slept well and yes, I'm done." She thinks she's so smart. He's got the ace card.
"Good. Then that's reason enough for you to stay here. You need a few nights of sleeping
well."

Her eyes lose a little bit of their spark as they deepen, becoming even darker. She seems wary
almost. Scared. But she doesn't look away.
And she doesn't say no.
***

June, 1969

I don't remember the summers being this hot when I was a child. My earliest memories are of
playing in the streets and opening the water mains to flood the alleys. My daddy was lucky,
he didn't lose everything in the Depression, but besides a roof over our head and food on the
table we didn't have much. Those days spent barefoot in the spraying water were miracles,
and it seems to me that the older I've become the less joy the heat seems to bring.
The last few weeks have been especially brutal and the humidity is eating at my skin. Elliot is
in a constant state of motion now and he's changing right before my eyes. Instead of the baby
who had looked up to me with curiosity and unabashed adoration, he now seems to eye me
more, as if he is waiting for the shoe to drop. I've told Joe that we can't fight in front of our boy
like this, but Joe pays me no mind. He tells me that if I would just act more like his wife and
less like a lunatic then we wouldn't fight and the problem would be solved. I don't know what
he means by lunatic. I have ideas, places I want to go, things I want to see. Sometimes I feel
like I am dying when I am standing still and my skin is prickling to just move. To just fly. I tell

47
him these things less and less. He is beginning to look at me as if I am something that is very far
away and I don't like it.
I wanted to rent a sailboat for the summer. I brought home brochures and ads from the
magazines that would help us do it but Joe threw them away. I know we don't have a lot of
money, but we're not poor either. If we saved - really saved - we could at least get a boat for a
week. Elliot could run around in his bare feet on the deck of the ship and the sun would
glimmer and sparkle on the water. I just know this is meant to be, and I'm starting to think I
may have to just take Elliot and go and do these things on our own. Maybe I should learn to
sail.
I look at people sometimes and I wonder if they feel like I do. If they feel like the blackness is
just hovering at the edges and only if they run, really run, can they escape it. They seem so
ordinary as they walk their dogs and make dinner and go to the store that I wonder what is in
their minds? I have so many thoughts that happen all at once that sometimes I forget where I
am. I'm working hard to concentrate on one thing at a time, but I get distracted. Sometimes the
sun is just this golden, simmering colour and sometimes Elliot's crying makes me want to weep
for days. Joe says I just need to focus, but that makes me feel like I am suffocating.
Elliot is asking me what I am writing and he wants to know if I am writing him a story. Maybe
I will.

Til later, Suhaili.

Bernie

Olivia looks up from the pages and beyond the wire fence that borders the patio, she can see
the ocean stretch for miles. Her stomach, her chest, her throat, they are all constricted.
As she lies on the lounge chair in a pair of shorts and a tank top, Elliot is less than ten feet
away scrubbing and scraping down the grill. He's wholly focused on the task, and the
concrete near his feet is littered with bottles of disinfectant and soap. The hose is half- on,
half-off, and it is trickling water around his bare feet as it lays discarded. His back is to her,
and she is grateful he chose to wear a t-shirt today. His body is a searing distraction, and even
though the flimsy light blue t-shirt does nothing to conceal the power underneath, it helps her
to refrain from staring.

It's hard to imagine that she is now holding a book that once drew his curiosity as a child. It's
incredibly easy to lose herself to the images of him as a little boy. It's impossible to fathom
that the child she is reading about has now grown up into the hard, outwardly
indestructible man next to her.

48
"You asked her about her journal," Olivia says softly. "You were three and - " she stops.
She's got to figure out a way to talk to him about what she is reading. There is no point if he
doesn't know. Elliot's back is bent a little bit as he scrapes at the wrought iron, but at her
words, the muscles in his back stop flexing. He stills. He doesn't move.
The sun is a distracting glare, so Olivia shields her eyes as she watches his frozen form. "You
asked her if she was writing you a story." Elliot straightens. After a moment he looks back at
her over his right shoulder.
"That would have been too normal an activity for my mother."
Olivia doesn't hear anger in his voice, but the clear tones of resignation come through. "She
didn't realise she was sick, Elliot. She seems to know she's different, but no one ever told her
why."

He blinks once, twice, almost as if he is fighting the pressure of the sun's light on his eyelids.
Elliot draws his lower lip into his mouth and scrapes his teeth over it before turning back to
the grill. His movements are precise as he starts the scraping again. Olivia sets the journal
down, keeping her place in the book by setting some of the leather ties into the seam of the
binding. The pavement is burning hot on the bottom of her feet when she sits up and swings
her legs around. She thinks better of it and draws her legs up Indian style.

"She would have been different if she'd been afforded the help early on that you've given
Kathleen, El."
He tosses down the scouring pad and straightens, keeping his back to her. "She wouldn't
have taken the medication, Olivia. Even Kathleen had to be forced. They like the way it feels,
being outta their mind like that."
She finds her flip flops and slides them on so that she can cross the patio to him without losing
the skin on the soles of her feet. He must sense her coming because he goes purposefully
back to the scraping. The cleansing.
"You ever ask Kathleen about that? If she was happier before or after the medication?" She
keeps her voice low, gentle. Go easy.

She can see the answer to her question in the way his spine stiffens. If she knows him at all,
she knows that Elliot has never once spoken to his daughter about being bi-polar. He'd been
devastated by the diagnosis and terrified about Kathleen's tendencies, and once he had found
her help he likely didn't want to face it again. Didn't want to acknowledge it.
"I think your mom regretted losing you, Elliot. I think if she knew what it was going to cost
her, she would have made different choices."

49
The grill is no longer in need of Elliot's attention. It's clean and if he'd just hose it down he'd
be done, but he keeps going. Nearly attacking it. His t-shirt is sticking to his body now, and
from where she stands, just off to the side of him, she can see the way he is eating at his lower
lip. She just stands there, waiting. Finally he throws the scrub pad against the hood of the grill
and bites off a low curse. Elliot grabs the scuffed dishtowel next to him and wipes off his
hands, still not looking at her.

"What happened?" he bites off. Olivia flinches just a little bit. The tone is familiar to her.
This is the voice he used back in Manhattan, but he's been so even - so calm - out here that
she needs a moment to adjust to the switch.
"What do you mean?"
Elliot finally looks at her. His eyes are framed by thick, hazel-coloured eyelashes and behind
him, the ocean sways. Moves.
"When you decided to save the day. When you did whatever you did to get my mother to talk
to my daughter so she'd get help. I didn't ask you to do that and you did it-" He stares at her
and she can't move. Her eyes are locked on his and not even the sunshine registers on her
chilling skin. His eyes are apologetic but his words keep coming. It's as if he can't stop
himself. "You came out here more than once, didn't you?"

The accusation is so sharp that she steps back, the nausea instantaneous. Olivia's silence
admits her guilt. She had interfered. She had. And she hadn't told him the truth of it. She had
hid behind the excuse that he had never asked, but the truth of them is that they never do ask.
He didn't ask about Sealview and she didn't ask about his divorce. Maybe the reason they've
gotten along all these years is because they are the only two people in the world who don't ask
questions when it comes to their personal lives. She nods, her eyes locking with his.
"Yeah. I did."

Something in Elliot snaps and he throws the towel down and manoeuvres past her, stalking
back into the house. The screen door slams shut behind him, clanging against the doorframe.
Olivia closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. The odd thing is that she knows better how to
handle him when he is like this. Calm, serene Elliot is an anomaly to her. When he festers in
his anger, she knows exactly what to do. She counts to ten and exhales, giving him a moment
alone before she turns and follows him in. Before she even steps foot in the door she can hear
Elliot angrily rattling around the kitchen, opening the fridge and then shutting it hard.
By the time she makes it to the kitchen and leans against the doorway he has the top off to a
cold beer and is tipping it back.

50
"I'm not going to apologise to you, Elliot," Olivia states quietly, watching every rigid line in
his frame. The vein in his neck is pulsing as he drinks, and he doesn't look at her, instead
choosing to stare out the window at the ocean instead. When Elliot finally pulls the beer
bottle away from his lips and lets the bottle settle hard on the countertop in front of him, he
turns his head to look at her. His eyes narrow in anger.
"What did she tell you, Olivia? She tell you what a shitty son I was? She pull out the picture
albums and tell you what a great a mother she was? That's where you saw those pictures from
when I was a kid right? You two have a cozy little chat behind my back about me?"

She knows what this is. Elliot is trying to rile her up, and he is waiting for her indignation or
righteousness to kick in. She'd done what she had to save his ass - to save his kid, same
difference - and she would make no apologies for it. Somewhere inside of him he knows that.
He gets angry when he thinks he owes her. He doesn't want you to know. Pride. It's his fierce
pride, Olivia.
"Your mother didn't talk about you as much," Olivia practically whispers. "Not until I
brought her to the holding cell. Then she did. She talked about you to Kathleen."
Elliot's head whips towards her and she can feel him struggling to breathe. His back rises and
falls with each belaboured breath and his eyes are nearly slits. His fury is palpable.
"What did she - " He licks his lower lip. He faces her, his back against the edge of the
countertop. "What the hell did she say to Kathleen?"

There are moments in the past where this would have been the tipping point. For years she
confused Elliot's anger and rage at the world as being directed at her. There are remnant
instincts in her that are telling her to run - to let this go - but there is a greater need in her to
honour his request of her to read his mother's diary. There is a reason he's asked that of her.
He needs someone to explain it. He wants to understand or he would have locked the journal
away. She can't run. Olivia looks Elliot in the eyes, silently begging him not to look away. He
has to stay with her on this. He has to listen.

"She told Kathleen about the night she took you driving in the snowstorm." The night your
mom didn't listen to you. The night you broke your arm in the car accident that followed.
The fight drains out of Elliot as he looks at her. His colour pales just a little bit and she sees
the way he starts to shutter up. He rocks back on his heels as the silence settles over them.
He says nothing. He doesn't move.The implications hang in the air. It was abuse, Elliot. You
were a little boy and your mother scared the hell out of you. Mine did too. Maybe this is when
he will ask her to leave. He's never wanted anyone to see too much of him. His mother had

51
once told her that Elliot had blocked out his childhood, and in so many ways he has faced less
of his past than she has.
He gave you the journal to read. He trusts you.

Olivia swallows the fear, the trepidation that is permeating her skin, slipping into her bones.
She takes a step towards Elliot, praying
that he doesn't recoil. She can't take his rejection. She's never been able to withstand his
retreat. The ocean rolls. It's there, the background to all of this. It's a reminder that things
will go on long after this moment. She focuses on the rhythm of it, on the cawing of the birds
and the crashing of the waves. Outside there is the warmth of the sand and the promise of a
lazy day. She focuses on the wind that drifts through the house, though her. Through them.
It's clean out here. Everything is wiped clean. Even the impressions in the sand can't hold
their shape forever. It's time, Olivia.

A step forward. Her heart is racing and she can't stop staring at him. Assured by Elliot's lack
of movement, she reaches out and sets her hand on his forearm. Elliot's muscles are taut
beneath her palm. She can feel the rough hairs on his skin, the warmth of the sun still trapped
on the surface. She resists the pulsing urge to slide her hand upwards, towards his elbow and
further. Her fingers want to dig into him and her chest caves in a little bit. Touching him is
always, always too much. His blood pulses through the thick vein that press against her
lifeline.

"I don't know why things happen, Elliot." This is the voice she uses on victims. The voice
they rarely use with each other, even when their past - their scars - justify the tone. "All I
know is that when your mother told Kathleen about how she had hurt you, your daughter
made the decision to get help. If there is any value at all in what you went through, maybe it's
that it helped to save your little girl."

Elliot blinks, and despite the pain she can see in him - feel in him - he is still big, solid, raw.
His arm turns beneath her hand and then his palm is wrapped around her forearm and he's
pulling. He's so damned gentle but he gives her no options. He replaces his response with
this. Olivia is against him then and she doesn't know who is saving whom. His chest is hard -
hot - against her and her chin hits his collarbone. He's breathing deep. Deep. She can feel his
breath on her hair and she wants to close her eyes, to turn her face into him but they don't do
this, not unless her life depends upon it. They don't do this. They don't do this. Do this.

52
He smells like the salt air and he's so, so masculine. Every nerve ending on her body relaxes.
She's not on fire, she's sinking instead. Elliot doesn't move and she doesn't and she can feel
his heart beating against her chest. The moments stretch and she's too overwhelmed to even
be aroused by the thick, unmovable presence of him. Olivia's eyes want to close, but she
pushes against the urge, keeping them open instead. Behind him, through the window, she
squints against the incessancy of the ocean. Olivia fits against him. This is the thing she always
remembers. Elliot doesn't close his arms around her and aside from the pressing of her body
against his - his against hers - and the grip of his hand around her arm they are not holding
each other.

It occurs to her that she is tired. Bone-achingly exhausted. His t-shirt is soft beneath her chin
and she can feel him turning his head so that his lips are near her ear. Her gaze is so ruthlessly
focused on the sea beyond that her eyes water from the strain. Olivia presses her lips together
and the horizon sways. It's so bright outside. The light is blinding. Curl after curl forms and
crashes, and the white froth bubbles on the surface and then disappears. She watches every
wave form, making sure that another is coming. The tide cannot stop because of this. Elliot's
stomach hits hers as he exhales. She wants to remember this but the relief is so sharp that the
details are lost. She is not going under. Not now. The surface of the ocean rocks. Dances.
"You remind me," he mumbles cryptically into her hair. "You always remind me."

You always remind me.

Olivia closes her eyes and lets the ocean go on without her watch.

53
54
 Chapter Eight

I
t had been late in January when the worst of it had hit him. He'd been off the job for over
two months and the holidays had been behind him. He'd gone into the city for Christmas
Day to see his kids, and it had been the first time he'd been with them since he'd taken his
break. Almost two months without his kids had taken its toll on him, but for the first time as
he had sat there watching the kids open their presents, he had realised that no one was
accusing him of anything anymore. He sensed that Maureen respected his choice to go and
get his head together. Even Kathleen seemed to identify with him, as if he'd finally revealed
himself to be more of a human being. He had left Kathy's house that night feeling less like a
failure and more like one of them.

Until the cold, grey, overcast days of mid-January had rolled in. As vibrant as the summers are
at the shores edge, the winters are equally as desolate. Against the edge of the ocean, the
oppressive clouds had seemed to settle almost against the sand. One storm had rolled in after
the other and the water had been rough, almost angry day after day. There had been a chill in
the house that even the fireplace with its sturdy, copper chimney couldn't eradicate and the
heaviness had settled into Elliot's skin. His mother's easels had still sat in the sunroom, and
he'd packed up the last of her paintings, wrapping each of them carefully before storing them
in the garage. He had thought about the last time he'd been to see his mother, and how he had
dismissed her when she had proudly told him that she sold some of the canvases on the
boardwalk.

He had missed all of the signs. The chances. Not just with his mother, but with his children.
His ex-wife. With Olivia. Chances he wouldn't get back. Couldn't. He had grieved then. He
had grieved for the things he hadn't seen until it was too late, and for the years - the
55
goddamned years - that he couldn't recover. Maybe he'd felt sorry of himself, or maybe it was
the first time he'd actually paid attention to who he was - and to who he wasn't - to this day he
doesn't know. But he had finally cracked, as if his weathered body had could no longer
contain him.
Elliot had cried. Sitting with his back to the wall in the sunroom, surrounded by the shadowy,
empty easels, he had broken. No one could hear him, see him, witness the pathetic show of it.
He couldn't be judged for splintering, couldn't muster enough anger or strength to once
again shove the agony aside. The pain had fed grotesquely upon itself, until the memories had
blended into one faded, murky reel in his head. He had seen himself as a terrified child, had
recalled the image of his mother in the thickness of her disease and holding a gun towards
him. He'd seen his daughter dancing in a white sheet in the darkness of midnight in a
deserted park, had listened to the arguments - the endless arguments - that now comprised
too many memories of his ex-wife. He'd seen Olivia sitting stoically across from him, never
meeting his eyes. He'd felt the bullets, smelled the dead bodies, heard the hollow voices in his
ears until it was a drumbeat, an eerie consistent drumbeat that looped over and over in his
mind.

In the haze of it - the worst of it - one thing had become clear. Beneath the calcified shell of his
skin, he'd let himself die inside. In the darkness of winter, with the furious lashing water
twisting just feet from the house, he had slept for the better part of six days. At night he hadn't
bothered to turn on the lights, and during the days he had drank his way through the cases of
beer he'd stacked in the garage. He hadn't shaved, had barely showered and he still has no
idea if he had bothered to eat during that time. He had gathered up every nightmare he had
ever had and succumbed to them, night after night. In his dreams he had seen his kids die, his
ex-wife brutalised, his youngest son go missing. They were all nightmares not borne in truth,
and he'd wake and then try to dismiss them. They're not real. They're not real. But then came
the nightmares about Olivia.

The first night she came to him in his sleep, he'd watched her clawing at the concrete walls
with her bloodied fingers. She had been trapped, her damp hair sticking to her face as she had
screamed. Screamed. His throat had burned as he'd tried to reach her, to make her hear him,
but she didn't seem to know he was there. He had felt the crawling presence before he had
seen it, and when he had turned he had watched Harris come at her. He had been repelled, his
reaction vicious yet futile. Elliot had been trapped inside the rough stone walls around her,
unable to break through. Harris had been on Olivia, his filthy hands grubby on her skin as she
had doubled over, recoiling and fighting. Fighting. She was always fighting. But she was
alone. It was just her and the monster and the blackness and he could hear her begging.

56
Begging. The sound of her fear was so violent that he had been convinced it was the sound of
God dismembering his young.

In his dreams Elliot couldn't breathe, he was starved for oxygen, and the lack of air had made
him lose focus. But what the dream didn't let him see, he had instead heard, smelled, touched.
When he had reached out, Olivia's slippery, clammy skin had slid out of his weakening grasp.
The vile smell of sweat on Harris' clothes permeated everywhere, and the screaming - her
screaming - it hadn't stopped. Help me. Help me. Help. Her voice had cracked and
disappeared then and his hand had come away, slick - too slick. Elliot! When he had closed his
empty fist his fingers had been sticky with her blood. And then the cold had settled in. The
bone-chilling, frigid cold that turned the damp film on his skin to ice until his skin was
actually peeling and his blood had frozen still.

In every dream about her, he always ended up being the one who died. Elliot had awakened
that night to the howling January sea winds rattling the windows. His skin had been bathed in
perspiration and his throat had been hoarse. He'd roamed the house then, turning on every
light and playing the radio as loud as it would go. He had to erase the sound of it. Of her.
Olivia. Screaming. He had scrubbed his hands down his face, tried to cool his skin by touching
it to the cold glass of a beer bottle, yet nothing had worked. Olivia's pleading was a haunting
that wouldn't abate.

Elliot had sat on the couch and bent over, his arms resting on his knees. He had recalled every
calming technique the Academy had ever taught -breathe from his core, evaluate the fear,
exhale deep - and had tried to erase the memories. Only the memories of the reality of his
dream had been starkly etched into him. Three weeks after she had been attacked, Olivia had
walked by his desk and dropped her case report. He'd seen the tag on it. Harris, Lowell.
When he'd lifted his head to look at her she'd been stoic. Don't ask me about it. It's all there.
And then a long moment later, when she still hadn't moved from the edge of his desk. I'm
talking to someone so let it go. And that had been all. She had walked away and he had been too
terrified of what it would do to them if he pushed it, so he had tried to move on. Only the
dreams were in him. The images. He had talked to no one at all.

And now she runs next to him. The endless miles of the Atlantic begin just a few feet to their
right and the late afternoon sun is warm on his bare arms. He is wearing a backwards baseball
hat and his favourite running shorts and there is nothing but open shoreline ahead. They
could keep running. Just keep going. He is sure she could keep up if they never stopped.

57
Elliot tries to focus on the sure, even, muffled pound of her sneakers on the packed sand.
Olivia's strides are long and even, and when they do this she can always keep up with him.
Her legs are long - strong - and he can hear her heavy breaths despite the fact that the water is
tumbling so close to them. He chances a glance at her.
Olivia's hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail and her cheeks are flushed red. She is covered
in a sheen of perspiration and there is a glow to her skin because of it. She is pushing herself,
he can tell, and she is using her breathing and fierce will to keep moving ahead.
He feels the rising, compelling urge to just grab Olivia and pull her with him into the cool
waters next to them. He needs to touch her too much, so much, and sometimes he just wants
to run his fingers over her skin to make sure that after all of it she is still intact. He runs. He
runs because the bitter isolation of January has somehow led to this. He runs because the cold
has been chased by the heat, and because she has survived despite him. He runs because he
thinks she might let him hold her soon and because he isn't - absolutely isn't - done with his
life yet.

He runs because with her he is tracing the edge of the world with his footsteps.He runs
because there is a balance. He can be given the thousands of nightmares, because he can still
run. Just outrun them.

He is faster than the nightmares when she runs beside him.

***

There is something reassuring about the creak of the floorboards as she walks through the
house. No matter where Olivia is in this home, the hardwood floors give just the slightest
millimetre, as if yielding to the years of use, the salt and humidity in the air, the simple
presence of a being upon them. She likes the sound, and she finds herself deliberately
choosing paths through the house that will trigger the soft groans of the faded wood.
There are more than a dozen spots in her bedroom alone.

Olivia walks across her room towards the edge of her bed. Her muscles ache, but it's not a
result of exhaustion. If anything she feels as if her blood is finally reaching all the way into her
extremities. She runs her fingers through the damp strands of her freshly washed hair as she
stands there for just a moment, wrapped in her towel. After the run Elliot had said he was
going to take a quick swim out in the surf, and she had decided to come in to get washed
clean. She is not sure what the hell all of this is. The house, the quiet, the way they have just
settled in. It scares her that being with him is this easy. It is a constant battle to remember who
Elliot is to her in Manhattan. Her partner. Her friend. Friends. The word chafes on her skin.

58
Olivia sits on the edge of the bed now and breathes deep, closing her eyes. There is something
releasing inside of her and it's a nearly painful thing. It is only now that she is starting to
realise what the last few years have taken from her, what the price of just existing day after day
has been. She hasn't really let herself feel anything in so long that every little nuance of
emotion right now is overwhelming. The last eight months have been the worst of it. Olivia
had worn his abandonment on her, in her. All of the logical, truthful reasons for his leave
hadn't convinced her of a damned thing. Without Elliot she had walked into the squad room
every day feeling the throb in the dark circles beneath her eyes, feeling the abrasive way the air
slid over her skin. She had been jumpy and had startled easily, and even the worst of the cases
hadn't drawn the fire of her indignation. She had finally, after all the years, felt exposed and
vulnerable, as if the world could see what a sham she was. She wasn't a great cop anymore -
the legendary invincibility was in the past - and she had been left just as ordinary as the rest of
them.

She had been left.

Olivia head bows forward and she tries to breathe through the sharp pain of it. The instinct to
blame herself for his leaving is so visceral, so overpowering that it takes everything in her to
defeat it with the truth. He'd left for him. He'd left to get his head together. It wasn't about
her. It wasn't that she was too little, not worth staying for, someone he wanted to forget.
The lessons of her childhood are sometimes so deeply ingrained into her that she can't
separate the past from the present, even when logic tells her differently. She hadn't been a
burden to Elliot; she had made sure of that over the years. She hadn't made demands, hadn't
asked anything of him but one time. What about me? The one time she had made that mistake
she had rectified it, apologised for the indiscretion by walking away. Olivia presses her lips
together and stares at her toes as they rest against the faded throw rug. Out here she is losing
the battle of containment with herself. Without Manhattan as her backdrop, she is becoming
too painfully aware of what she needs. Of just how much she needs. She let years and years go
by without admitting she had been fading. Deep inside, she has been retreating. Isolating.
Conceding. And now.

Now he's touched her out here so much, and every time Elliot does it Olivia just wants to
close her eyes and sleep like that. Against him. With his solid heartbeat against her skin. She
wonders if he knows what he is doing. If he knows that she is coming awake beneath his
fingertips, if he can feel her try to control the shaking. Her mind can't integrate all of the
details of their complicated history with this. This. But there is also a growing realisation in

59
her that he could draw her out again. There is no one else who has that ability. There is no one
else who is worth it. Who understands her. Who has that influence over her.
After all those years of walking next to him maybe it is perfectly logical that when all is said
and done, no one else stands a chance when measured up against him. She has loved him for a
long time. He's been her family. But this is different. So different. This is the falling. Despite
the terror, she can't help marvelling at the irony a little bit. After all of Elliot's teasing every
time she had a date, all of the knowing smirks when she had been called in and had to work a
case in the dress she had been in, it has come to this for her. She wonders if she has always
known the search for someone would be futile. She wonders if Elliot ever realised that
everyone else would fall away for her because of him. Outside her closed bedroom door Olivia
hears the crack of the screen door, and then the heavy footsteps of Elliot. The floorboards
groan beneath his purposeful steps, and in moments she hears him in his bathroom, starting
the shower. It's so domestic, this thing they are doing. She had always imagined that a life
with Elliot would be volatile, but the truth is that it is being without him, away from him, that
is the most unsettling.

She eyes his mother's journal sitting on the end table. It's a tether between them. Something
he has asked of her, something that binds them. Olivia's fingers are on the leather before she
realises it, and once again she is opening it. Her fingers trace over the impressions made by
his mother's pen. The woman had suffered because of her illness, but there was also
something so ordinary about Bernadette Stabler. Beneath the mood swings and the
impulsivity, she was a woman who had wanted more from life, who had felt an emotional void.
She was a woman who had spent her life searching.

November, 1969

Dearest Suhaili,
I know it's been so long since I've written.
The truth is I'm not sure what to say anymore. I feel like the blackest of clouds has rolled in
and like Dorothy, I'm swept up in a tornado. Only in my tornado, the wind doesn't move, it
just makes everything around me dark and oppressive.
Sometimes I see Elliot playing and I feel like I'm watching him from high above. He calls to me
and says it again and again - mama, mama, mama - because I'm sure he needs something, but
I can't get to him. A few days ago Joe came home from work and Elliot was still in his
pajamas. I forgot to send him to preschool and I think I forgot to make him breakfast or lunch.
I had been so tired I had stayed in bed, and I heard Joe yelling at me when he got home from

60
work but I couldn't seem to wake up. My husband slept in the guest room that night and the
next morning Elliot was gone to preschool with Joe before I had even gotten out of bed.
I feel like Joe is a stranger to me these days. I am sure there is something going on at the
precinct because he leaves early and comes home late every single day. He frowns so much
and his words are short, and he is losing his patience with both Elliot and I. Sometimes I
suspect that he has found another woman, but I don't think I am strong enough to learn the
truth so I don't ask. It is better not to know, I think. But I worry because he is changing before
me and the man I married is long gone. I wonder if Joe feels that way about me, too. He looks
at me like I'm gone. I don't think he knows me at all.
I know that he doesn't dream about things, not like I do. He doesn't understand why I
sometimes need to spend hours in the dark, and he doesn't believe me when I tell him that my
bones are sometimes so tired I can't force myself awake. There are times when I want to sleep
for days and days but I put on a good show. I make dinner and I clean the house and take
Elliot to the store with me. But Joe doesn't compliment me anymore. He doesn't mention my
pretty new dresses and he doesn't want to hear about the art classes I want to take at the Y. It
is like we are two strangers living in the same house.
The only saving grace to all of this is that Christmas is coming. My heart races when I think of
the lights, the presents, the fairytale of it all. I can't wait to buy a Christmas tree, and I'm going
to cook everything in my recipe book. I'll play Christmas carols all day long and Elliot and I
can practice the words to the songs. I saw a train set at Macy's last week and I'm going to buy
it and set it up as a surprise for my boy. He deserves surprises. I want my boy to have a better
life than this. I want him to live grandly and I just know he will have great adventures. Maybe
one day he will be a train conductor and he will take me far away. I could be one of those
women who wears glorious hats and travels by train to the farthest reaches of the world. I
could take a train across Africa and wear flowing white headscarves, or I could go visit the
Taj Mahal. It makes me happy when I hear Elliot playing with his toy rockets. He calls out
‘Pollo! ‘Pollo! Come in! and then jumps around his room as if he is on the moon. Sometimes I
stand just outside the door and watch him without him knowing. He plays by himself for
hours, lost to his imagination. I just know he will do big things one day.
There is so much I haven't seen and I feel like I am trapped in a tiny little box. I think I am
suffocating. The rules are killing me slowly. There are too many rules. What I should do, what
I can't do, where I should go, where I can't be. I want to laugh. I want to laugh deep in my
belly. I want to feel glorious and euphoric and free. I just need to live. I need to follow my heart
without anyone watching.
I want to exist in a place where my life doesn't keep choking me. Please help me.

Love, Bernie

61
Olivia closes her eyes and lets her head drop back for just a moment. The shower in Elliot's
bathroom is no longer running, and she should probably get dressed. The wind has changed
just a little bit, and through her open window she can feel the afternoon heat giving way to the
lightness of early evening. It's amazing to her that she has no idea if it is three o'clock or four
o'clock. Instead time is measured by the ferociousness of the sun, the shadows on the wall,
the grumbling of her stomach because it's now been hours since she last ate. The floorboards
outside her closed bedroom door tell her Elliot is there before she even hears the light knock
on the door. It is surprising to her that his presence can make her pulse speed up at the same
time that it makes her breathing slow down, even out. He has always been an anomaly.

"Liv?" His voice is a low, familiar rumble that comes from the other side of the door and it
makes her clutch the towel wrapped around her just a little bit. She doesn't get up from the
bed, instead she just sits.
"Yeah?"
There is a pause and then, "Can I come in?"

For one moment she wonders what that would be like if she were to just say yes and let Elliot
walk in. Her towel covers most of her, but it still leaves exposed the tops of her breasts, her
thighs, her legs. Technically a bathing suit would reveal more, but there is something more
intimate about this. She imagines him opening the door, and she wonders if his eyes would
openly roam her skin. It scares her that she wants that reaction in him. It scares her that she
wants for Elliot - her partner - to find her attractive. She wants to make him hungry for her,
and she closes her eyes against the pulsing danger of it.

"I'm not dressed." Her voice sounds too breathy. Almost as if she is daring him to do it. The
door isn't locked. He could ignore her and twist the handle. Let himself in. Then it would just
be her in a towel and Elliot Stabler and a room with a bed in a corner of the world where no
one could see them. But it's Elliot. It's Elliot of the last twelve years. Her partner. The one
she wasn't supposed to touch, the one who spent the better part of the last decade leaving her
to go home to his wife and kids. It would be against the rules for anything to happen. The
rules are killing me slowly.

His mother's voice. Olivia's fingers press so hard into the journal that her fingertips turn
white. She stares at the closed door. She knows he is still standing there, but he hasn't said
anything for the last few seconds. She ought to get up and pull on a shirt and some shorts and

62
open the door to talk to him. She ought to go home, for God's sake. It's only late afternoon.
Staying here is going have consequences. There are too many rules.

"You wanna go to the boardwalk for dinner tonight?"

She can hear the hesitation in his low timbre and Olivia closes her eyes again. Elliot is offering
her something so normal, so ordinary, that she could wrap herself around him just for offering
it. He makes her feel like she fits somewhere. Like she belongs. I want to laugh. She doesn't
want to go home yet. She doesn't want to spend the next few days in her apartment by herself.
She doesn't want to suffocate in the humidity that burrows down between the skyscrapers and
she doesn't want to give up. She can't. There are so few opportunities to just forget the rules
for a little while and to just live.

I just need to live.

She is feeling brave right now. A little reckless. Maybe later she will berate herself, but for the
moment she needs to feel alive. She wants to take a chance and deal with the consequences
later. She wants to feel her heart race and her skin flush and she knows, she knows that this
isn't any sort of sustainable reality. But her blood is warm now. The sun has already had its
way with her and the burnished colour of her skin makes her feel different, protected. Olivia
stands and holds her towel against her. She can't do too much, too fast. This is just one
moment. One. Later it won't mean anything. The floorboards sound. Once. Twice. He must
know now what she is going to do. The last floorboard creaks right by her door and her hand
settles around the brass knob. She twists it and the door opens. Not all the way. Just a little
bit. A few inches. Enough.

He's right there. Elliot is in front of her and Olivia watches him - hears his immediate intake
of air. He looks her in the eyes first, his pupils dilating as his breath picks up. His nostrils flare
just a little bit as he clenches his jaw, ruthlessly focused on her face. Olivia knows what he's
doing. He's not like other men. He doesn't take what he isn't sure is his. He's rigid, the
plane of his chest rising and falling beneath the clean, tan-coloured t-shirt he is wearing. But
Elliot is waiting. He's waiting for permission to look at the rest of her. Even with her hair wet
and without makeup on, she feels stunning when he looks at her. So she does it. Gives him
what he needs. What she does. Olivia looks up at him and smiles just a little bit. Her eyelids
feel heavy from the immediate rush of arousal that flushes across her skin. It's the way he
looks at her.

The way he looks at her. He sees you, Olivia.

63
Elliot knows he's got permission now, but he gives her one last look of apology. And then
Elliot's gaze falls. She can feel it as he takes in the dips of her collarbone, the curve of her
shoulder, the rise of her breasts. His perusal stops where her fist holds the edges of the towel
together and his eyes narrow for a moment. Darken. He drags his teeth over his bottom lip
and blinks, the rest of his body utterly, perfectly still. Olivia can't breathe.
She lets Elliot look at her, and she feels every nerve-ending in her skin. The adrenaline that
had pulsed through her during her run had nothing on this. She grips the door with her free
hand and stands there, waiting. Waiting until he's done. Until he's looked. Until she knows
for certain that it is the same for him. This is their living. At the hem of Olivia's towel Elliot
stops his gaze from going any lower. He's frozen. Staring at her. And then back up, over her
fist, her bare arm. She's covered, yeah, but she feels exposed. They don't do this. They don't
do this. Her thighs are clenching, her toes want to curl and she is sure that it isn't the lazy
wind that is causing the goose bumps to dance the waltz across her skin.

"Liv." It's a drawn-out, rough groan. He's apologising and asking and telling her everything
in the way he says it. Olivia can feel it in her. What she's done. She's given it life in a moment
of impulse. She's sparked the unspoken.
"Dinner on the boardwalk sounds perfect," she says quietly, and she thinks it's probably
flirting when she looks up through her lashes at him. Something changes then. Even though
he nods just once and then doesn't smile before he turns and abruptly walks away, she knows.
She knows what this is. This is what it's like to step back into the world. I need to just live.

Out here on the Jersey shoreline, beneath the open sky and against the backdrop of the
meandering, lethargic waves of an eerily calm day, she is going to let him remind her that she
is a woman who deep down truly wants to live. She is a fighter, and this life isn't done yet. She
still wants things. She's not so jaded - so defeated - that she is devoid of the daydreams.
You remind me, he'd said earlier. Olivia closes the door and lets her forehead rest against the
moulding of the doorframe, her chest rising and falling. So this is it. This is it. This is
breathing. Living. She begins to inhabit herself again, makes her way back into the shell she
has maintained.

And you, me.

64
 Chapter Nine

I
t's not until they are walking towards the centre of the township that he realises he may
have exaggerated about the boardwalk. As boardwalks go, the restaurants and shops that
form the hub of Surf City are nothing more than a two block stretch of small, dark wooden
buildings, some of which line the wide expanse of beach. Long Beach Island itself is miles
long, but his mother's home is set just north of where the causeway ends in Ship's Bottom,
and unless he needs something, he rarely ventures to northern tip of the island and the
overpriced residential homes near Barnegat Light, or down to the southern end, past the
township of Holgate. He's content to live within the few blocks that make up Surf City. Here
he's got half a dozen restaurants, several small markets, a commercial grocery store and
enough tourist shops that he can usually find the basics.

Not that he's ventured out much over the last few months. He's kept to himself. He had never
intended to make friends or to settle down here. The purpose of coming out to the Jersey
shore has always been for him to get his head straight. Next to him, Olivia is quiet. The air is
cooler tonight and while she had put on a sleeveless navy cotton dress that hugged all of her
curves, she had also wrapped herself up in a fitted grey sweatshirt that she had left unzipped
and slipped on a pair of flip-flops. He thinks it's amazing that despite the limited contents of
her bag she manages to always fit in wherever she is. No one would guess that she was a
decorated detective in the NYPD. No one would guess that she has a ninety-eight percent
accuracy rating at fifty yards - even with his glock - and that she's physically saved his ass more
times than he cares to admit. She looks like his date for the evening.

He is doing nothing to dispel that impression. Let the world think he's a lucky son-of-a-bitch.

65
Elliot is fascinated by the way Olivia changes. He'd seen a softer side of her when she'd been
around Porter and Moss, but this is different. With a badge on her hip, Olivia is stunning.
Fearless. But right now, with the longs strands of her hair falling over her shoulders and a
little colour in her cheeks, she is entirely, female. Olivia ducks her head when she smiles and
he forgets what she is capable of doing on the streets in favour of imagining what she is
capable of doing to him. Of course she's done it already. When Olivia had opened her
bedroom door a couple of hours ago he had nearly sworn out loud. It had taken him an ice
cold beer and a few minutes of standing at the ocean's edge to clear his head. And when the
fog had dissipated and his body had settled he had consoled himself with the realisation that
Olivia was flirting with him. She was actually flirting. Just the idea of it, the victory of it, had
settled him.

The sun is just starting to go down now to the west and in the next hour or so the light will
fully fade. As they silently make the turn onto First Street and head towards the pier that links
the beachfront businesses, he catches Olivia watching the sunset. Her chin lifts into it and her
eyelashes tangle together as she squints into the intense reds and oranges that smear the sky.
The warm light picks up the copper highlights in her hair and he doesn't know if he's a saint
or an idiot for having not touched her all of these years. Olivia catches him looking at her.
She's always, always aware.

"What?"
Elliot sees it. Her hesitancy, her discomfort. She tries to put on a show of strength for
everyone, but he sees her more acutely than the rest of them. In a room with a gunman, Olivia
would be everyone's best bet at survival. Alone with him she is tentative about everything. He
grins at her over his shoulder because he knows what he's about to do. She may have won the
round with the towel, but he's going to throw her completely off track.
"I like your hair like this."

Because he has earned her response, Elliot makes sure that he watches as Olivia's eyes widen.
They don't do this. He's never done this. He doesn't tell her she is fucking gorgeous even
when he can't focus because of it. He doesn't say or do anything to acknowledge that she is
physically different than him. As partners there is no room for him to remind himself that she
is a woman, because if he changes his choices on the street to cater to his instincts as a man
he'll get them both killed. She is uncomfortable, he can tell, but Olivia doesn't take her eyes
off of him. She looks so startled by the compliment that Elliot wonders if she's gonna ask him
what the hell he meant, but then her lips lift slowly. He can see the amusement start to dance
in her eyes.

66
"Are you flirting with me?"

Of course she would come right out and ask. She's always known how to turn the tables on
him. Elliot looks straight ahead, and they are almost at the end of the block. They can enter
the shops straight ahead via the small parking lot, or go left and head up the steps of the
attached pier. He is smiling, but he won't look at her. "Yeah." He says it casually, and he
makes no apologies. She is gonna have to get used it. Get used to him. He heads left, across
the street and towards the beach, and Olivia stays in sync. When she doesn't say anything for
a few moments he looks back over his shoulder at her, wondering how she is taking it all.
At the same time that she ducks her head and flushes, she smirks. The contradictions are
entirely Olivia.

"Good to know," she says quietly as they ascend the steps onto the boardwalk.
By her simple acceptance, she calms him. Ahead a few artisans have their crafts laid out on
blankets, offering jewellery and paintings and small collectibles for sale. Some of the shops
have racks that extend out of their storefronts and onto the wooden planks and at the far end,
people are crowded around an ice cream stand. This is small town America, he thinks. It is the
polar opposite of the dark corners and crevices that they crawl through in Manhattan. Here
they are no longer defenders and they don't wake every morning knowing that their lives are
the last priority. Here they are ordinary. Just a woman and a man.

It hits him then just how content he would be if things never changed. If he had nights of just
this, and he wasn't waiting for her to run, he could wait forever for the rest of it. If she told
him it would take one day at a time for the next hundred years, he'd make sure that he lived
long enough to see the day. With her, his responsibilities are no longer stifling. With Olivia
he is no longer waiting for his life to begin. It's here. It's this. It's the world his mother had
been trying to show him. She had spent her days on the pier selling her paintings, and her
nights by the ocean, listening to the changes in the waves as the tide came in. It scares him
sometimes that he is finding solace in the intangible things that his mother had valued.
Ambiguous things that he had always attributed to his mother's sickness. He doesn't feel like
he is sick or out of his mind. He feels like he is finally finding all of the pieces of him.
The sun is falling now and the ocean seems darker. The seagulls are screaming as they search
for their last meal of the day in the shallow tide. Next to him, Olivia is silent. Her breaths are
even. In a few days - maybe a few hours - it is likely he will give in and try to hold her hand.

You're living your father's life all over again. If you could only find a way to be your own
man.
67
He wonders if his mother can see him now. Sometimes he can feel her near. He thinks that
maybe she has her hand in this, because surely in heaven there is no illness. Surely there the
colourful dreams no longer need chasing. Surely there she is complete. He misses her.
Despite how much he had distanced himself there had been a sense of being rooted simply by
knowing she existed. He tells himself that she sees this. All of this. Next to him, Olivia reaches
out and puts a hand on his arm. Her touch is light, and she stops, expecting him to do the
same.

"Hey, El. You okay?"

She has always been able to read him. There are children running at the other end of the
boardwalk. An older child, maybe seven or eight years old, chases his younger sister as the
parents stand in line for ice cream. The shop owner behind Olivia is tugging at the rack of
postcards, pulling it back into his store for the evening. There is one bar in Surf City, and it is
now less than twenty feet from them and the small cocktail tables that straddle the boardwalk
are already filled with people. There is someone inside the seafood restaurant next door who
is singing, and they are absently strumming their guitar as they croon a cover of a Bruce
Springsteen song.

Olivia's eyes are endlessly dark as she watches him and he is overwhelmed by her. A year ago
he had been suffocating, but now.Elliot's throat is thick, and the background noises fade.
Olivia's palm is still gentle on his skin. He chews on his lip and shakes his head.
"I told my mother that her dreams were just fantasies."
Olivia's thumb brushes lightly over his forearm. She steps closer to him, and no one on the
boardwalk pays them any attention. No one realises that the world should have stopped
because he's found some way to communicate. His mother had always been filled with
grandiose plans. But there is a part of him now that wonders if the dreams and her wild ideas
had just been his mother, trying to find some measure of sanity in a world that had been too
constricting. Because that - that he would understand.

"I didn't validate any of her ideas," he admits, not able to look at Olivia.
The thing about Olivia is that she would have done everything differently. She would have
been less judgmental of his mother. Hell, she had stuck by her own mother right until the end.
She is different than him. She always does the right thing. At least that is how Elliot sees her.
He stands rigid. He's never been good with emotion or regrets. He is even less apt when it
comes to explaining them. Olivia steps so close to him that her toes bump into his. Her hands
slide up both of his arms, until she is cupping his elbows.

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"Elliot."
He has so much right now. Too much. In this moment he is unhindered and free. There is a
heavy, heavy guilt in him that he now is experiencing the very thing he had felt derision for
when his mother had sought it. He doesn't deserve more than she had been given.
And for the first time in his whole damned life, he feels like it is possible to have everything.

"El, look at me." Olivia's fingers dig into his skin.

Despite the light winds, he can still feel her breath hit his chin. He is suddenly hyperaware of
her. Of the pressure of her fingertips, and the nearly painful familiarity of Olivia. Her voice.
The maddening hint of gardenia. The way she doesn't let him get away with anything.
He looks at her. She is endless and he could drift right into her.
"I've read her journal entries and you," Olivia rocks back for a moment, but then holds his
arms tighter to stand still. She exhales and he knows she feels too much. She shouldn't ache
because of him. But she does, that is who she is. She locks herself up and then bleeds out
empathy. "You validated her just by existing. By living."

His mother had wanted him to build sandcastles.He looks at Olivia and thinks that there isn't
enough sand on the beach to build the metropolis that he sees.
***

One strum after another. One note followed by another. Then another. The guy is maybe
twenty, twenty-five and he's wearing a t- shirt and torn jeans. He's got nothing more than his
acoustic guitar, a bar stool and a microphone, but the place is so small that he is still the focus
of all of the patrons. He's mostly covering songs sung by the greats - Billy Joel, The Stones,
Fleetwood Mac and Dire Straits. But every now and then he throws out a curve ball and mixes
something up from one of her quiet favourites like Alison Krauss or Amos Lee. Olivia knows
the words to most of the songs. She loves music because it's the only thing that soothes her
late at night. She's got no desire to watch the cop shows or reality nightmares on television.
She'll listen to anything when she has some time alone - the radio, her iPod or anything from
her massive collection of CDs.

She finds herself humming along as she looks at the laminated menu, but then she feels
Elliot's eyes on her and catches herself. She also pointedly ignores his resulting grin. The
man is infuriating sometimes, and he is acting like the cat that ate the canary all of
sudden. He's a little too smug as he leans back in his chair. He stretches his shorts-clad legs
out in front of him and into her space beneath the table while folding his hands over his
stomach.

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Elliot is watching her intently. Trying to get her attention. Smiling as if he's won something.
She has every intention of ignoring him. The far end of the restaurant is open to the
boardwalk, and the sea air permeates even the deepest recesses of the interior. It's a simple
place, with plastic red and white checkered tablecloths and two waitresses who wear pocketed
aprons filled with straws and their pad of paper and pen. The chairs are rickety and wooden,
and the walls are covered in cheaply framed photos of shipwrecks and lighthouses and faded
images of fisherman holding up their prized catches at weigh-in.

Behind Elliot, the sky has faded into the muted blues and greys of evening. She knows that
over the Pacific the sun would be glorious until the moment it slipped behind the ocean and
beneath the horizon, but she thinks she prefers this. It's heavier, less spectacular. On the
Atlantic, the night seems to lazily roll in.

"Stop it, Stabler," Olivia finally instructs, her menu raised between them as she looks at it.
Even though she can't see him, she can feel it. He's
laughing silently. Sure enough when she puts the
menu down he's rubbing one hand over his mouth and
jaw. Trying not to make a sound. Olivia glares at him.
"What's so funny?"

His eyes remind her of the afternoon light as it glints

on the ocean. Elliot is breathing evenly, and he's
sprawled out in his chair. He doesn't answer her. He is
just watching her. If she didn't like the way her skin
came alive when he did it, she'd kick his ass or leave.
"Nothing," he says unconvincingly. He shrugs, then
takes a long drag of his already nearly half-empty
bottle of beer. "Just...You seem to know every cheesy
song in the book." The smile tugs at his lips no matter
how hard he is trying to mask his amusement.

In truth he doesn't seem to be trying that hard at all. The problem with Elliot is that he isn't
afraid of her. She can give him a death glare and snarl and generally ignore him, but he
doesn't flinch anymore. There was a time when he would have, but they have moved past that.
It is moments like these that she forgets that there is more to them than just this. His good
time is contagious.

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"It's from Notting Hill," Olivia says, as if it's perfectly normal for her to know the soundtrack
of romantic comedies off the top of her head. She makes it clear by her tone that he doesn't
need to comment in response.

Of course he's never going to let this go, she knows that. But it doesn't matter. If there is one
thing she is learning it is that she likes surprising him. She likes when he looks at her as if he is
trying to figure something out, she likes that she seems to be the only thing that has his
attention for the moment. It's taking a lot to get used to the idea that he is spending time with
her because he is choosing to, and not out of some professional obligation. It hits her then
just how truly alone they are. No one knows them here. No one is paying any attention to
them. He is here right now because he wants to be - she wants to be - and it's only Jersey but
with the music and the beach and wind they might as well be in some exotic, foreign country.
All of those times that she had wished for the world to leave her alone she had been wrong.
Maybe what she had needed was for the world to leave her with him.

The smile is flitting across Olivia's lips before she can help it. Her stomach is dancing on the
inside and the beer seems to be working overtime because she is a little bit dizzy. She dares a
look up at Elliot because pretending to read the menu isn't working at all. She has no idea
what she's read. Not a clue. And that is a problem because she is starving. The smug smile
hasn't fully faded from Elliot's expression, but his eyes have deepened since the last time she
looked at him. He is focused on her. Too focused. His expression is soft and he is just a little
too comfortable here. That's what this is inside of her. That is the slowing of her pulse, the
warmth in her shoulders, her chest. It's the comfort of being here with him. Elliot is about to
say something that will cut the silence. Olivia can see him debating over it. She thinks it
probably won't be partnerly but she's starting to feel the beer and to hell with it. To hell with
it. Just this once he can say whatever he wants.

"You guys decide on something?"

The waitress appears without warning. She's in her mid-twenties and she's got dirty blonde
hair pulled back into a ponytail and despite the music and the crowded space, she is kind and
pleasant and patient. Which is a good thing because Olivia is so intrigued by the way Elliot is
steadfastly looking at her that she's got no recollection of what type of restaurant this even is.
Elliot doesn't wipe the unexplainable expression off his face. He doesn't even look at the girl.
"We'll take the blackened catfish, the broiled scallops and two orders of the crab cakes."
Olivia almost tells him she doesn't like someone to order for her, but then she remembers
that Elliot knows this and he did it in any case so there must be a reason. This isn't like other

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first dates; she doesn't have to explain herself. Jesus, it's not a date. It's just dinner. Dinner
between friends. And he's ordered for her.

He's different somehow. Something is different in him. Something she can't explain. But she
can feel it taking over. She can feel whatever it is seeping into the last of the cold places.
Elliot's voice is a rumble.
"And we'll take two shots of tequila with the next round of beers."
And then he grins and she knows what this new thing is. He's happy, she thinks. He's gonna
be okay. This is Elliot without world weighing upon him. For the first time she realises that
she has been afraid for him. She has been worrying about where he would go in his head if left
alone for all these months. But he's good. He's so, so good. He is tanned and he still sprawls
out in his space as if he commands everything. He's okay. She laughs softly out of nowhere
then because he is crazy. This is crazy. Or maybe it's crazier still that they are still new to each
other, even after all of the years. She laughs because who would have thought New Jersey was
beautiful. But it is. This place, this restaurant, tonight, it's a masterpiece.

Or maybe, she laughs simply because he seems startled by the sound of it. And that makes him
watch her.

The truth of it is that she's got no demons at all when

his eyes are on her skin. He watches her and watches
her and watches her and she doesn't think she ever
wants to move or speak or breathe if it will cause the
moment to break. Suddenly drinking tequila sounds
perfect, the music is award-winning and this is the
fanciest place she has ever been. He watches her.

And tonight, without reservation, she watches him.

***

She's never been able to hold her liquor. So when Olivia gamely prepares to throw back the
third shot of tequila, he briefly wonders how the hell he's gonna get her home. He doesn't
have a car here, and this town boasts maybe one cab whose driver is probably home sleeping
by now. It's almost ten and the sun has long since set. As soon as he'd thrown down some
cash at their table, thinking they were going to head back to the house, Olivia had sidestepped
him and sidled up to the bar, ordering another round of the Patron.

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The music plays on. It's louder in here now and it's obvious everyone who remains has been
drinking for hours. He feels the slightest current of danger in the air. He's been drinking,
she's been drinking and he can see the way she is easing into recklessness of it all. She sits
next to him on the worn leather barstool, and her hair falls over her eyes when she looks at
him. Olivia's eyelids are lowering and her lips are lifting and she is the most beautiful woman
he has ever seen.

"Ready?" The challenge is in her irises. It's the flash of mischief - of daring - that he is so
familiar with. Olivia raises the shot glass full of amber liquid and ignores the lime wedge that
had been placed on her napkin by the bartender.
He wants the lime with his but he knows she will call him on it. She'll call him a pansy and
make pointed remarks about the way real men drink tequila and he'll be forced to think of a
hundred ways to wipe that smirk off of her face using his mouth. He leaves the lime wedge
ignored on his napkin. Safety, he thinks. No reason to make this require more of his control
than he's already using up. Elliot lifts the narrow shot glass and clinks it against hers.

"To your vacation." Olivia's smile grows bigger and she taps his glass again with hers.
"To yours. Been a helluva lot longer than mine." She tosses back the shot and shakes her
head as soon as the liquor hits her tongue. He can see her throat working to accommodate the
burn of it and he wonders if everyone else is watching her like he is. If everyone else is this
fascinated.
"Do your shot," she laughs when she's done.

He forgets. He forgets what it is like to be without her. He forgets what it was like to lay in bed
with a woman he should have loved better - longer - and to be lonely as hell. He forgets setting
up the space heater in the garage and working on his father's bike, icy days upon icy days that
he had spent all by himself. He forgets that Olivia locks him out too much, and he forgets that
he has ever failed her. Most of all, he forgets how much he hated just being her partner. What
that had done to him. He forgets the way he had just been roaming. When Olivia laughs, she
erases the darkest days he's ever lived. He wonders if her laughter is so much more
spectacular because it's newer than anyone else's.

Elliot tosses back the shot and it's alternately smooth and searing hot as he swallows it. It's
got a buttery aftertaste, and he wonders what it would taste like on Olivia's lips. On her skin.
The singer starts another song. This one is slower. The guy is crooning and all of the activity
in the restaurant seems to slow down. It's one of those songs that remind him of jazz in the
French Quarter in New Orleans, not that he has ever been. The wind tonight is gentle, and
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the front of the restaurant is still wide open to the boardwalk. He has no idea what day of the
week it is; he's got no recollection of what day of the month they are on. Olivia's elbow comes
up to rest on the bar and her fingers spear through her hair as she looks at him.

"So?"
Her lashes are lowered so much that she looks almost sleepy. But he can see her moving just a
little bit to the music, and he knows she is just sinking into this. Into the nights on the
boardwalk, into the soothing play of the ocean breeze. He finds himself praying that one day
she will sink into him.

"So?" he counters, feeling the corner of his mouth tip up in response.

Sultry, he thinks. He can't even remember not looking at her this way. Her eyes are
devastating. Dark magic. Intent.
"When do I get my partner back?" Olivia's voice is husky. She barely moves her lips when
she speaks, yet they are all he sees. He can tell by the easy way that she says it that she assumes
it will be soon. She thinks he's got an answer but the truth is that he doesn't know. There is
something nebulous in him that he hasn't sorted out just yet and he feels the constriction
begin to coil around him when she asks. She wants answers. She thinks he's got them. He
should probably tell her what he's been feeling, ask her to help him sort it out, but he's afraid
she won't respond well.

Eight months he's been away and she still calls him her partner. He ignores the uneasiness
that is given life within him.

"Trying to decide," he says quietly, hoping it's enough. Because he's never given Olivia
much, it's all the answer she needs. It's all that she expects. He ignores the voice inside of
him that tells him that she doesn't need more information because she's already got her
expectations.
She grins at him. "Got a pen?"
"Why do you need one?" he fires back. "You've already got my number."
Olivia rewards him. She laughs and she's uninhibited and she's radiant. He feels sorry for
every bastard who has ever taken her on a date and heard this sound - Jesus - and then never
heard back from her again.

"Tic Tac Toe," She reaches into the small container on the bar that is full of napkins to use
them as her paper. "Whoever loses has to buy the next shot."

74
Elliot shakes his head, fully intending on playing along "No one ever wins that game." She
shrugs as she sets the napkin between them.
"Then we'll each buy our own shots."
By the time she has asked the bartender for a pen and received one, he is positive that he
doesn't need any more liquor. But he'll never tell her no. He can't. It just isn't in him.
"Just how many shots are you planning on, Benson?"
She arches one eyebrow and she's got that confident, kick-ass smirk on her face. "Gotta
drink until you look good," she retorts. "Hope this place has enough tequila."

And then he's laughing. He's laughing and he could kiss her, yeah - but for tonight he feels
lucky enough to just be the one sitting beside her.
***

When she had been a kid, she used to watch movies about nights like this. There would be a
guy and girl and a summer of no worries. The guy would fall head over heels and the girl
would let herself trust him. They'd walk the boardwalk holding hands in some tiny town on
the edge of nowhere and she remembers thinking that while it was nice to watch, things like
that didn't really happen. Only she's out here tonight and there is a small amusement park far
down the beach. She knows this because she can still see the illuminated Ferris wheel that
towers over everything, even though it has long since gone dark for the night. She's had too
much to drink, but she doesn't feel like worrying about it. Tonight she won't get called in.
There will be no emergencies. She's got nowhere to be but here. She smiles. Jesus. New
Jersey.

The tequila is making Olivia's cheeks warm. Her skin is heated everywhere and the wind has
probably made her hair a mess but she doesn't want to go home just yet. Elliot is paying the
bill at the bar - he's treating this like a date - but she couldn't wait inside. Instead she now
leans over the railing that lines the boardwalk, and five feet beneath her is the endless sand.
She is making up for a lifetime of holding her breath when she breathes out here. She can see
the change in the blackness where the sea meets the night sky and she thinks about all the
things she hasn't done. Without her badge and her gun she's suddenly aware that being a cop
isn't everything. She can see it now, how other people live. She understands that people come
home at the end of the day and live by routines. They go on vacation and they make plans with
the neighbours and at happy hour they have a little too much to drink.

They fall for someone else, and they let themselves go, because everything isn't always going
to go to shit. They believe. Maybe she isn't so different. Maybe. He comes to stand beside her

75
and the sheer size of him changes the wind patterns around her. Elliot leans over the railing
too, his forearms pressed against the wooden bar as he looks at her.
"How you feelin'?"
She knows he thinks she's drunk, but she ate enough and besides, she can hold her liquor
even though she isn't a big drinker. She's tipsy - hell, yeah - but it's just enough that she
doesn't feel the edges anymore. When she looks at him, she smiles just a little bit. She feels
like she's got a secret that is filling her up and maybe she does. Maybe he doesn't feel like
this. He gives her a bark of laughter and shakes his head.

"What?" she asks defensively. He's amused by something, only she doesn't know what it is.
He looks out to the ocean and he's still got the slightest quirk to his lips.
"That Mona Lisa smile of yours."
Her chest stops moving because of the gentle way he says it. As if he's spent time thinking
about it. Elliot's posture is relaxed and sometimes it's hard to remember what he'd been like
back in Manhattan. She remembers the mornings when he'd walk into the squad room. He
always looked untouchable, with his suits and his pressed shirts and the perfect knot of his tie.
Every move had been controlled, and every reaction had been contained.

Tonight his weight rests easily against where his arms are braced on the railing and Elliot
seems content to just stand there, watching the shadows of nature's greatest scene.
Maybe it's just the tequila, but she can't feel the bottoms of her feet. Her shoulders aren't
sore from the way she always holds them up and some of her hair tickles down into the back of
her sweatshirt as it lifts and settles. A couple more shots and she'd probably end up dancing
out here. She can still hear the music filtering out of the restaurant behind them and she feels
the headiness permeate her veins. It's the sea, she thinks. It's got something over all of them.

"Wanna go out there?" she asks.

He turns his head back to look at her. "Do you?"
Every now and then she feels herself stunned a little bit by how little guilt she feels. She
doesn't think about his wife - ex - and she doesn't think about the job or what this will mean.
She is captivated by his face, by the way she has watched him change over the years. She thinks
he is gorgeous, and she flushes for a moment because by the heat in his eyes she can tell he's
got an idea about what she's thinking. Not so secret after all.

"Yeah," Olivia exhales. Yeah she wants to go out there. She wants to walk home on the sand.
She wants to feel it between her toes, the grains still warm from the sun they had absorbed

76
during the day. Before she knows it, Elliot is slipping under the railing and jumping down the
few feet to the sand below. He moves effortlessly. He's all muscle, but he's agile. Fluid.
And then he's standing beneath her and looking up at her and she's laughing.
"C'mon, Liv," he grins cockily.
The tequila has made its way into her soul. She feels ridiculous. She tries to think the words
he's your partner but they won't form. For the moment she doesn't care what he is or what he
isn't, just so long as she can stay with him a little bit longer.

"There are stairs, you know," she retorts, indicating the few wooden steps that lead to the
beach which are less than fifteen feet down the boardwalk.
Elliot cocks his head. "You gettin' soft on me?"
His voice carries against the backdrop of the ocean and she thinks the movies had nothing on
this. It's a small drop down as drops go, and she's got no problem with making the jump. He
knows this. He is a shit anyway. Olivia slips under the railing and she feels like she's breaking
the rules. She kicks off her shoes and they fall to the sand below. He's far enough back that
he's not planning on catching her and she's glad. She's still her. He still knows her. He
hasn't forgotten that she is strong, that she will always take on the dare and that she is fiercely
independent.

She feels free. Free.

She sends herself off the edge and thinks about things like the Mona Lisa and summer flings
and about how maybe having a secret means she's finally got something inside of her.
***

The ocean might be bottomless. Endless. If it wasn't for the white tipped waves that catch the
moonlight, he'd think that he is staring at miles and miles of slick, black oil. The moon is full
tonight and there are reflections of it on the surface of the water.
A night of a thousand moons, he thinks. He is carrying his sneakers and she is carrying her
rubber flip-flops and it's fucking beautiful out here. He's gotten used to the heat and the
humidity and the way that the air is always thick in the summer by the shore. But the tonight
the sky is perfectly clear and he can feel the slightest hint of a crisp edge to the air. It's easier
to breathe tonight. The winds are unnaturally calm.

He can still taste the tequila on his lips. He thinks that if he remembers nothing else of
tonight, that in a hundred years he will remember just how she had looked when she'd thrown

77
caution to the wind and just let herself go. She probably shouldn't laugh out here. She is too
luminous. He wonders what the moon does when it is jealous. He's a bit inebriated and they
are so close to the water that each incoming wave could overpower out the sound of his voice.
That's his excuse for not speaking. He's deferring to nature.

"El?" Olivia says his name quietly and the waves don't stand a chance at drowning her out.
He could hear her anywhere. Nature defers. She is standing next to him, her shoulder nearly
touching his. The water bubbles towards them and then fizzles out and retreats just inches
before touching his toes. The granules are wet beneath his feet and he can feel the impression
his weight has made in the sand. If he moved, the water would soon wash the imprint away,
and he's not ready for that. He keeps standing there - in one place - holding his ground.
"Yeah?" He lifts his chin and looks out at the ocean. He's too drunk to drive and he thinks
it's a good thing they walked to the restaurant. The lights of the boardwalk glimmer far
behind them. They had decided to walk home on the beach, but the house seems miles away.
He feels like they are in the middle of nowhere.

"Whaddya think it felt like to discover that th'earth wasn't flat?"

She is slurring. He grins because she is never out of control. Never. But she is losing her grip
on it tonight and he likes it. He feels like he's got power over everything. Another wave
dissipates inches away. The water doesn't reach them. He could stand here forever. He thinks
about kissing her. She'd taste like tequila. Like five shots of Patron. Or six. Maybe it was six.
They are still standing. They usually are. In the face of them, the tide retreats. It occurs to him
that even though he's a cop, he's not like his father. His father would have never stood at the
edge of the water and just watched the ocean sway. He wonders if his father would have been
disappointed that Elliot spends a lot of time doing just this. And then he stops wondering.
Tonight he doesn't care what anyone else thinks.

"It'd feel like everything you thought you knew turned out to be wrong." His throat burns
and he misses his kids. He doesn't miss the city though, because all he needed of it is out here
with him tonight. He turns his head to look at Olivia. The lunar light illuminates her
cheekbones, the curve of her bottom lip, her collarbone beneath the open neck of the
sweatshirt. She is staring out at the ocean, at the furthest discernible edges of it. He knows
that if she looks at him the only thing that will not catch the light will be her eyes. They are too
dark. They are the night ocean without the waves. She seems small when she stands next to
the water. Tonight Olivia seems almost fragile, as if she is battling something that is draining
her strength. Something is happening in her. He'd seen it rising in her all night, and now,
now she is crashing.

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The waves, he thinks. Her tide is coming in. And then her lashes narrow and her eyes close,
and she is squeezing them shut. He's scared for a moment, because Olivia's chin trembles.
But then he remembers that he's okay if she cries. There was a time when he'd been terrified
of it, but not anymore. He figures if she's gotta let something go, then now is as good as time
as any. He's got her if she breaks. Olivia's lips press shut and she ducks her head. He realises
that she doesn't know he is watching her. Her breathing is uneven. Shallow. Sporadic. It is so
painful to watch her like this that Elliot's gaze drops. He hears the water hiss towards them,
the last edges of what was once a powerful, crashing wave petering out. Again the water stops
its encroachment just inches from them. Her feet make an imprint in the wet, packed sand just
like his do. Two sets of footprints.
He ducks his head towards her. He wants to be gentle, but his throat is rough. "Tell me
what-"
"I don't wanna g'home tomorrow," she interrupts on a rush, as if it is the most devastating of
confessions. She keeps her eyes closed as if she is bracing for something. As if she is
apologising. Apologising. "God help me," she chokes, using the back of her hand to cover
her mouth. He wants to tell her that if she stays, the person God has chosen to help is him.
But Olivia seems so afraid of her instinct to stay that Elliot can't stop himself. His hand skims
over her back and over the hood of her sweatshirt and into her hair. Right at the base of her
neck. Her skin is warm and she shudders as his fingers slip gently around her nape. He puts
just the slightest pressure there, urging her towards him. He doesn't grab, he doesn't pull, he
doesn't demand - even though his fingertips are throbbing. Instead he eases Olivia towards
him, and when he turns his body enough so that he can feel her forehead come to rest against
his jaw he exhales, finally allowing himself to slide his hand upwards just a little bit more.
His palm cups the back of her head and he gets her close enough that her breath is warm
against his shoulder.

Their bodies do not touch anywhere else. His mind is screaming at

him to haul her onto him, but he's got years of experience with Olivia
that tell him too much too soon is the best way to lose her.
He can feel the long, satiny strands of her hair tickle
him between his fingers and he wants to groan,
but this is about her and not about him.
His mouth is on her hairline then, just centimetres
from her skin. He doesn't kiss her. Just kiss her. He
closes his eyes and ignores the need.

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"It's been too much, Liv," he mumbles against her. He doesn't know what he's referring to.
Maybe he's referring to all of the things they have seen, done, felt. Maybe he's referring to
how they've been fighting this thing that lives between them. Maybe it's all of it that he's
talking about. By all rights, they shouldn't have lived this long. As human beings maybe they
shouldn't have been exposed to such extremes. Olivia nods almost imperceptibly. Once,
twice, and just when he's trying to remind himself not to cover her lips with his mouth, he
hears the ragged way she gasps at the air. Elliot pulls her onto him then. All of her. He's got
one hand in Olivia's hair and one hand around her waist and she's not gonna run - she's not
gonna run - because he's gonna fucking hold onto her. He's gonna hold on until she realises
that he needs her more than anyone else does. He hates himself for it, but he wants to say to
hell with everyone who has ever depleted her. Used her. He always blames himself, but
tonight he even blames the victims.

Olivia is not stoic, she's not invincible. He knows this because his hands are running up and
down her back and she's soft and warm and she's just flesh and blood. She's not a superhero.
She's not bulletproof. He can feel the column of her spine through her clothes, and she's lush
and perfect and he wants to be inside of her - deep inside of her - but Jesus, Jesus beneath all
of the armour she's just a woman. Beneath the nerves of steel she is someone who needs to be
protected. Olivia is shaking. He knows what this is. He's been through it. Their exhaustion
runs so deep that when it starts to ease there are tremors. The weariness is a drug, and this is
the detoxification. The corner of his mouth is pressed hard against her temple.

"I don't want you to go."

Over her head he can see the rise of the black water forty feet out. Another wave. They keep
on coming. Keep on coming. He holds onto her and her fingers grip the front of his t-shirt.
No one is drowning tonight. Not anymore. The sea will teach a man to find his second wind,
and if that is what this is, then he's damned well gonna stay alive and kicking. Olivia exhales
against his collarbone. Once. Twice. And then she lifts her head. He wonders if she is looking
back at the lights of the restaurant. There are still people roaming the boardwalk, he knows
this - but he can't hear the sounds of them. He can't hear the music. He can only hear the
rustle of the water and the sound of her breathing.

He can't last anymore. His willpower is fading. He can feel the dip of her waist and the press
of her breasts against his chest and he thinks he's got to pull back too and figure out how to
get his mouth on hers. He wants to taste her. He wants to hold her head in his hands and nip at
her until she opens her mouth and invites him in. All the way. He wants her beneath him out

80
here in the open air. Olivia. When Elliot pulls back, she looks right up at him. Her eyes are
huge. He doesn't see panic but he does see the fear.

Her fear rocks him. It's more gripping than his arousal. It's the most urgent thing in the
world. He has to ease it, just ease it. Don't be scared of me. The swell he'd been watching
must have crashed and become a wave because he can't hear himself think anymore. The
water is probably crawling towards them. It's only inches between her mouth and his, but
she's faltering. It's Olivia and she's never had much. She won't easily believe in this, even if
she believes in him.

"Elliot-" she starts in a ragged protest. He can't scare her. He took his time out here. He's
taken months. Years. He can wait for her. He can. Patience. He leans into her and when his
lips are against her ear, he asks for the only thing he really needs.
"S'okay. I'm not - " He stops. I'm not gonna kiss you yet. "Just give it some time and get
used t'me."
She doesn't pull away. She leans forwards again and her mouth presses into the cloth that
covers his shoulder. The moments tick by before she nods. Agrees. He is holding her then
and it's not because he can't find the words. Holding her is not a replacement for anything.
Touching her is the conversation. The water suddenly gently rocks over his toes, then hers.
The wave dances on their skin and swirls around their ankles before it disintegrates into
nothing. She must be cold because she practically steps on his feet trying to get closer. She
tells him it's okay to touch her by the way she burrows in.

He holds her against the backdrop of the Atlantic, and as the sand smoothes out beneath them
it erases the reminders of where they had once stood, and forms a new, tenuous shape around
them.

The water retreats and leaves them be.

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82
 Chapter Ten

M
y boy plays it pretty close to his vest. Gets that from his father.
Olivia's eyes fly open and she stares immediately at the ceiling. She can hear
Bernadette's voice resonating in her ears and she can't tell the difference between
her memories and the dreams. Her skin is warm, too warm, and the air around her feels sticky.
Her room is flooded with light, despite the closed curtains. It's unnaturally calm outside and
she can tell this because there is absolutely no breeze brushing over her skin. She can feel the
thick humidity and she immediately kicks the covers off of her, lying still again in her t-shirt
and cotton shorts.

She can tell it is long past early morning. She must have slept in. Olivia's pulse is racing and
her mouth is dry. She's got the slightest bit of a headache, but it's not too bad. She's slept
most of the tequila off and besides her thirst she is no worse for wear. The previous night
comes barreling back at her. She closes her eyes again against the onslaught of recollection.
The liquor had loosened her up a bit and she'd told Elliot she didn't want to leave. And he had
held her - held her - right there on the beach. If she had even the weakest line to God she
would ask for some guidance right now. She'd pray for some sign that making the decision to
stay here with him for the rest of her week off is the right thing.

She is worried about how far gone she will be if she stays. She is worried that she is already too
far gone to leave. The pressure against Olivia's breastbone is unbearable when she thinks
about him. She's been awake all of two minutes and she already wants to get out of bed and
find him, touch him, make sure that when Elliot had held her last night it had all been real. She
needs to make sure that he isn't spending the morning alone with his regrets. He'd held her
for endless minutes. She remembers feeling every second go by. Elliot's pulse had been
strong, and he had smelled like tequila and summer. She had pressed her face against his neck
and she could feel the movement in his throat as he tried to swallow, and everywhere she
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touched him, brushed him, he had been strong and solid and just granite - unbreakable, it
seemed.

She had been the first one to pull away. She hadn't been able to look at him as they had walked
home then, but when he started locking up the house, Olivia had stood in the doorway to her
room and caught his eyes. She'd whispered then, her heart racing. Goodnight, Elliot.
He had stood there, unmoving and expressionless, until after she had closed the door and
changed to go to sleep. Her skin is heated with want. It would be almost impossible not to fall
for him - for this. It's the beach and Elliot's assured smile and the way he's confident and
calm all the time. It's the fact that she knows him and she feels like she has a certain right to
him and that if it's not him, it will be no one at all. It's the heady feeling of possibility that
doesn't abate because of logic or rules or boundaries.

Olivia ignores the voices that remind her that she can't stay here forever, that he can't. There
is a tiny part of her that wants to believe they could make something work between them back
in the city. At least for awhile, until they both figure out what they want. Want. The problem
with touching him this much - with being touched - is that her body is learning his, and the
cravings run deep. She knows the parts of Elliot; his sleep-roughened voice, the breadth of his
shoulders, the size of his hands and the dark inkings on his skin. Independently each one of
those things would arouse any woman, but combined, Jesus, combined she doesn't stand a
chance.

There is a voice inside of her that is growing louder. So loud. He's the one it says and she does
everything she can to drown it out. It's Elliot, she argues back. He can't be the one. He can't
be. Only she is forgetting all of the reasons why. She wants to strip down, to take a cool
shower this morning. It's like trying to breathe in a sauna, and she needs to get out of this bed
and pull her hair up. Staying in bed and fantasising about her partner isn't going to
accomplish a thing. Besides, it's not as if Elliot has even asked her if she wants to see if there
is anything between them. Just get used t'me.

Her head tells her that he is waiting for her to get comfortable with the idea; her heart tells her
that she won't be able to withstand Elliot walking away when whatever this is dissipates.
She rolls her head to her right and looks at his mother's journal resting on the end table.
Before she realises what she is doing, she's reaching for it. Despite the cloying heat, Olivia
remains on the bed, her fingers searching for the last page that she had read.

84
January, 1970

Dearest Suhaili,
I am only writing today because I am doing my best to stay awake. I haven't been able to keep
my eyes open for days and Joe has stayed home from work to watch after Elliot. Joe looks at
me like I am disgusting to him now, and I wish that I could blame him.
I've that that I've done a terrible, terrible thing.
It started out so far from where it ended up. Elliot and I were wrapping presents in the living
room and the tree was gloriously lit. His small hands made a mess of the wrapping paper, and
he had more tape stuck to the carpet than to the boxes that contained the gifts we had picked
out for Joe. Elliot was watching me more than made me comfortable, and his little face was so
serious, so solemn, that I couldn't take it anymore. I bundled him up in his parka and took
him outside. It was nearly eight o'clock and the street was so dark, but the snow was coming
down. Big, thick flakes of pure white snow. The flakes were so big that they looked like
feathers that were trickling down from God's pillows.
Elliot had on his boots, but I was just in my slippers. It didn't
matter though because the moment was so exhilarating that I
didn't feel the cold. I ran onto the lawn and waited for my
boy to chase me, but when he finally tried the snow was
already so deep that his little feet got stuck in the
thickness of it. So I told him to chase the snowflakes
instead, to catch all of them. The snow was slower, surely he
could get it. But he got stuck again and this time he fell. And
then he started crying. He kept pointing to my feet and telling me
that I needed to go inside and get my boots. When I looked down, my feet were
bare and icy, my slippers lost somewhere in the white tufts that covered our lawn.
I couldn't stand my beautiful baby boy crying! I couldn't take it! It broke my heart into
tiny little pieces that outnumbered the snowflakes. So I bundled Elliot in the car instead, and
told him we would always be faster than the snow. The snow couldn't beat us. And we started
driving. Just driving. We drove all the way to Broadway and I started singing to him. I sang
Jingle Bells and Joy to the World. I sang Rudolph and God Bless Ye Merry Gentleman. I sang
so many songs! So many. The car was our magic flying reindeer and we were going to bring
good cheer to everyone.
Only Elliot started crying again. He wanted me to stop the car. I didn't understand. Why did
he want me to stop? We were flying! He was such a lucky little boy to learn how to fly so
young. But he cried, louder and louder and I just kept singing and singing, thinking he'd stop
all his bawling and listen to my wonderful songs.
I don't remember anything after that.
85
Joe tells me that Elliot's little body hit the back seat hard when we crashed, and that I am
lucky he didn't fly straight out of the car. He tells me all of the nasty things the ambulance
drivers said about me when he overheard them as he walked into the hospital. He tells me I
should have been the one to break my arm, and I heard him whisper last night when he
thought I was sleeping that I should just do it already - just die - and that I need to leave our
boy out of it.
I remember the hospital. I remember thinking I should die. No one looked me in the eyes. The
nurses were rough with me, the doctors were curt. And when I finally slipped out of the room
they had put me in and walked into the hall my bones hurt. But I didn't ache from the
accident. I ached because I saw Joe, and his head was bowed as he stood near a young nurse.
Her hand was stroking his arm and her palm cupped his face and I knew. I knew.
It's been twelve days since the accident.
Elliot clutches Joe now, and he seems to breathe harder when he is around me. His arm is in a
cast for another six weeks they say, and when I try to do things for him he takes a few steps
back as if he is scared of touching me. My little boy looks at me like I am a monster. I tell him I
love him again and again but he just mutely stares at me.
I don't blame him.
Joe tells me again and again about how hard Elliot cried. He tells me that even with his arm
broken, Elliot had cried in the hospital for hours because he had been worried about me. Until
I went to see him in his hospital room, he had believed I had died and Joe tells that part like I
have failed him. The both of them. Sometimes I suspect that I have failed them because I keep
on living.
So I have been sleeping as much as I can. I am staying away from the two of them until they
stop looking at me this way. I tell Joe that the roads were icy, that it wasn't my fault, but he
says horrible things to me. He tells me I am an idiot, and that I am stupid. He tells me that I
should never have been a mother. He tells me that one day Elliot will hate me and that I will
deserve it.
There are moments when I wonder if he is right. I watched Elliot open his presents using his
unbroken arm on Christmas morning, and he didn't smile once. He struggled with the
wrapping paper that covered his train set and his coloured pens. But he wouldn't let me help
him. Not with one thing. I wonder if he is old enough to be done with me.
I'm tired again. So tired. Maybe now that I have told you this I won't dream of it when I sleep.

Goodnight, Suhaili.
Bernadette

86
The sound of the screen door slamming jars Olivia and she flinches, nearly blinking against
the surprise of her surroundings. Her chest is pounding - hurting - and for the first time in a
long time she feels the acidic burn of anger. She knows his mother was sick, she does, but she
can't separate the clinical diagnosis with the effects it had on Elliot. For the moment she can't
forgive his mother. She knows Bernadette had suffered in a time when medication had not
been readily available, in a time when her condition was not easily identifiable, but that
doesn't change what her illness did to Elliot. She'd known about the car accident, of course.
She'd overheard Bernadette telling Kathleen the story. But being given the detailed images of
Elliot as a child is overwhelming. It's her job to protect him. Her job. Only she can't protect
him from his past. She can't change that he'd been abused as a result of his mother's illness.
Abused.

The word evokes a visceral reaction in her. If she could fight the ghosts for him, she would.
It scares her how so much more about Elliot makes sense now. His nearly obsessive need to
keep his family away from his job. His inability to walk away from his marriage. He had needed
to keep something together, to just create the most protective, idyllic environment for his
kids that he could - no matter what it could cost him. She'd always thought it was him
separating his job from his family, but she realises now he was separating his past from the
present. For a moment, Olivia feels a stab of inadequacy. He hadn't confided in her. Even
after all of the shit they had experienced together - the moments their lives were on the line,
the body count that they both kept as a silent number in their heads - he still hadn't trusted
her enough to tell her the truth.

But then her own choices sit in front of her, glaring with the hypocrisy. She'd been silent all
these years, too. In an effort to disconnect from her past, she had pretended it didn't exist.
Maybe if she had talked more about her own childhood, in some way that would have made it
okay for Elliot to talk about his. He's erased his childhood. It takes her breath away to think
about just how locked up Elliot's been for all of these years. She wonders why they both chose
to ignore their own demons. Maybe it's because every day they were faced with horrors on a
grand scale, and it had seemed indulgent to revisit the bruises they still carried. He had just
been a little boy.

Olivia can almost picture him, his blue eyes too serious, too soon. For a moment she wonders
if a child can possibly overcome a childhood lived in uncertainty to ultimately find some solid
ground as an adult. She hears Elliot's footsteps, heavy on the hardwood floors.
And then the house fills with music. Olivia feels a punch of air escape from her chest when she
realises that he's just kicked on a Bob Seger CD. The easy sounds fill the air and Seger's

87
grainy voice is singing about the summertime and his 1960 Chevy and cornfields. And then
Elliot chases away both her memories and his. He sings a couple of the words. And he's into
it. Jesus, he's into it.
No one can see her, so she lets the smile come. She lets the air back in. The humidity seems
manageable for the moment and suddenly it's summer. It's fucking summer and she's at the
beach and she's got no plans for the day. Her cell phone doesn't ring out here, and she hasn't
fallen asleep beneath the sun for years, but she will today. She plans on it. She'll probably
even go buy some clothes on the boardwalk because she can't live out of her overnight bag
forever. Forever. She rolls her head to the side until the pillow cups her face and she forgets
that she is forty years old. She forgets that she doesn't live here and she forgets that there are
a million reasons why she shouldn't let him hold her.

Elliot must think he's only humming along. But he's loud as hell and he's apparently sung
this song to himself before because he's got every nuance of the tune down pat.
Olivia wants to roll her eyes as she stares up at the ceiling, but the truth is that she wants to
listen to him take on the whole song. Every word of it. She wants to know him. This Elliot. She
wishes she could sneak into the family room and watch him undetected, because she's pretty
sure that Elliot Stabler knows how to play the air guitar. And then she laughs and no one can
see her. The instinct comes from deep in her gut and her palm covers her stomach and she
knows that this moment is a turning point. It's a moment she knows she will remember
forever. It's the pivotal one, the one she will cherish. She'll understand the particular
significance of the moment later, but she understands its importance now.

She is grinning at no one and listening to Elliot and she thinks about how it's amazing that he
can teach her how to let go of her past simply because he is learning to let go of his. Her
fingers skim the leather, and she wonders if somewhere up there Bernadette Stabler knows
that despite it all, her little boy grew up to be the most amazing man that Olivia has ever
known.
***

It's as if the sun is sticking its tongue out at the fierce storm that will roll in later tonight. It's
the sun's last stand. Going out in a blaze of glory, he thinks. He's dripping all over the
kitchen floor, but he doesn't particularly care at the moment. It's after ten and Elliot wants to
wake Olivia up, if only because he's thrumming with adrenaline and she is sleeping the day
away. Logic tells him she needs to sleep and he doesn't want to think about why she is so
sleep deprived. He knows why and it still eats at him that he left her there in Manhattan doing
that job.

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Elliot looks up and out at the ocean though the kitchen window. He doesn't want to think
about the past right now. The Atlantic is warm as hell today - warmer than it should be in June
- and he wants to go back out there. It had been too hot to run, so he'd gone for a swim
instead. There is something inherently invigorating about floating out past where the waves
would break, with no one around. The nearest neighbours to his mother's home are older, so
this stretch of beach is amazingly quiet. He grins. He's gonna drag Olivia's ass out there
today. He hopes to hell she brought a bathing suit because he can't let go of the image of her
swimming with him, her hair slicked back and wet and the saltwater getting caught on her
eyelashes.

His stomach growls in irritation and he expels a breath. He'd only left the water because he'd
been starving, but now that he's inside, he's not going back out there until she agrees to go
with him. Maybe the music will wake her up. Nothing like waking up on a gorgeous summer
day to the gritty sounds of Seger. Sometimes when he's alone he'll sing this song and he'll
imagine for a second that he's an old rock star who's strumming a beaten up guitar. He's
never been able to sing, and maybe it's just middle age, but he thinks every guy at some point
has to have imagined he was Seger or Springsteen or Ronnie Van Zant while crooning in the
privacy of his living room.

Elliot reaches for one of the knives from the wooden block and grabs the cantaloupe. He can't
stop thinking about last night. Olivia had stayed still as he had held her - held her - and...and...
Jesus, he'd held her. His disbelief and utter satisfaction starts and ends there. He had been
aware of how much he had wanted to touch her, but until Olivia was finally there, in his hands,
he hadn't realised just how gut-wrenching the experience would be. He had underestimated
just how powerful it would make him feel to get her to relax against him, if even for just a few
moments. Soothing her had made him feel invincible. Of course it had also turned him the hell
on.

He's an asshole. He's clear on that. But she's also had plenty of time to find someone else -
someone far better than him - and she hasn't fallen for any one of the guys she's met. He's
watched them all come and go - the stockbrokers, the lawyers, the cops and the fucking
reporters - and they've all been summarily dismissed by Olivia. He's spent a dozen years with
her day in and day out; he has to have an inside track. He knows her better than anyone else,
and that has to count for something. He's got the cantaloupe in wedges on the countertop
when he finally hears her bedroom door open. He knows she's bare foot just by the sound of
her tentative footsteps on the wood floors. She comes to stand just at the edge of the doorway
89
into the kitchen, and despite the music he hears her take a deep breath. Elliot doesn't look
up. He's cutting the seeds out of the centre of his slices.

"Careful on the floor. I didn't dry off." Olivia doesn't say anything.
He shoots her a glance over his shoulder, and he almost laughs at her stupefied expression.
"You doin' your best impression of sleeping beauty this morning??" He sets the knife down
and turns around, opening the fridge. He can see Olivia out of the corner of his eyes and she
is standing perfectly still. He's positive she's gotta have some shorts on, but her t-shirt is so
long that he can't tell. He can't look at her legs. He can't. He's gotta focus on finding the
vanilla yogurt in this overstuffed fridge and refrain from ogling her. A ha.

He grabs the container of yogurt and lets the door slam shut, turning back to the slices of
cantaloupe that are now leaking juice all over the countertop. Olivia's legs are still too visible,
and unless he keeps his hands occupied, he's going to try and touch her again. She hasn't
moved. He's gonna give her a second because she just isn't a morning person. Maybe she had
too much tequila last night and she's hung over. Or maybe - maybe she regrets how much she
let him touch her. That stops him. He stops separating the cantaloupe from its skin and drops
the knife onto the cutting board. He exhales, and tells himself to calm down. That can't be
why Olivia is dead silent. She can't be thinking of ways to tell him that she's gonna leave today
and -

"You went for a swim?"Her voice is extraordinarily quiet and suddenly the music is too loud.
Elliot grabs a dish towel and dries his hands, trying to regain his composure before he looks at
her. He can't get angry if she tells him she's going back to the city. Getting angry isn't going
to accomplish anything. Elliot turns, and lets his lower back rest against the edge of the
counter. He tosses the towel next to the cutting board and finally looks up at Olivia, straight at
her. She seems frozen, and she's staring at him. He does nothing but answer her question.

"Yeah."
Olivia nods and then her gaze fall away. In seconds though she's back, searching his face
again. And then Elliot sees it, the nearly imperceptible way that she chances a glance lower
only to immediately whip her eyes back up to meet his. She looks guilty. Guilty. In fact she
looks so damned guilty that she seems to almost flush, and in her nervousness she sucks her
lower lip into her mouth. Because God still takes mercy on him every now and then, Elliot
gets it immediately. He hadn't thought twice about it, but now he realises how it looks. He'd
come out of the water and walked up to the patio before grabbing his towel and wrapping it
around his waist. At this very moment, Olivia doesn't know if he's got anything on beneath

90
the towel, and instead of walking away or ignoring it altogether, she's standing there.
Unmoving.
She does it again then. Only this time it's slower, almost as if she is fighting it. Her gaze drops
and he can practically feel her eyes on his neck, his chest, his abs. And then Olivia looks right
at the knot of his towel and if he didn't want to keep her here so badly, he'd laugh out loud
and call her on it. She catches herself again and this time she whips her gaze back up and locks
eyes with him so fast that he can palpably feel her absolute immediate panic at having been
caught. It's her expression that makes him feel just a little bit arrogant. When she looks at
him like this, he doesn't feel the places where he's got scars. He doesn't think she sees the
faint knife lines that form thin white trails across his chest and stomach. His left shoulder and
arm have small puckers from bullet wounds and his right shoulder still has a tiny indentation
from where he was once stabbed by a scared kid. His elbow bears the evidence of once having
been fractured, his arm was once sliced open and his knuckles are misshapen. But the way
Olivia is looking at him, with arousal instead of disgust - it makes him forget that he is
battered from the ugliness. He doesn't feel the need to cover up around her just to save her
from the reminders of who he has been. Who he still is.

The humid air has an electrical charge to it, as if the pending storm has inhabited the space
around them, even before it rolls in. The music is grating on their brand of silence.
He can't even describe how he feels about her right now. Olivia's classically beautiful face is
devoid of makeup and her hair is long enough that she has it tucked behind her ear. The
moisture in the air has made the strands curl a bit, and he's itching to know how those waves
feel in his hands.

"Hungry?" he asks quietly, trying to break the stand-off.

Olivia smiles just a little bit at that, and he watches as the heat slips into her irises. Even
though he knows she's trying like hell to ignore the thrumming chemistry between them,
she's still feeling it. "Yeah."

He's got to move, or the evidence of his very real need to get his hands sliding up under her
shirt is going to be evident to both of them. Everything around him feels slower, as if a
barometer in the room has registered an intensification of the air pressure. The music feels
like it's coming from far away. There is no breeze in the room at all. He is so attuned to every
movement around him that he feels like he can hear the hiss of the dragonflies that settle in
the brush just past the patio. Elliot turns and picks out one of the pieces of cantaloupe that
he's cut away from the skin. He dips it into the open yogurt container and pulls it out,
cupping beneath the now coated piece of fruit with his other hand.

91
"Here." He moves closer to her, making no
jarring moves. He wonders what she's gonna do. By her expression, she seems to be
wondering too. And then Olivia catches his gaze and doesn't let go. She steps closer to him
and when he holds the piece of fruit out to her, she doesn't reach for it. Instead she lets the
smile form slowly.
"You sure this combination isn't utterly disgusting?" Her voice is sweet, thick molasses,
husky almost. He has no idea who has the upper hand anymore. He's aching. Fucking aching
for her. He knows far too much about how Olivia moves, and too little about how she would
move on him. Beneath him.
"You'll like it," he says quietly. A drop of the yogurt drips off of the melon and into his palm.

The ocean is loud now. Just minutes ago he was out there, his body cold, his blood free-
flowing. Only now everything has stopped. He'd think even time had paused, but he can hear
the echoing ticks of the grandfather clock that sits in the corner of the living room.
Olivia steps closer, and nothing has ever been as sexy as just the way she looks at him. She tips
up her chin and by some miracle he's not already all over her. By some miracle he doesn't
already have her body up against the refrigerator, trapped between the door and him. By some
miracle he lifts the piece of fruit to her mouth. When her lips close around it and take a bite,
Elliot feels the drops of juice slip down his fingers, but he doesn't pay any attention to it.
Instead his focus is on Olivia. Even when her eyes slip closed as she moans just a little in
appreciation of the perfectly ripe bite, he keeps his own wide open.

He watches her. Every movement. He notices the unintentional way the tip of her tongue
darts out and over her lower lip and he notices the way she sways on her feet just a little bit.
This is when a man should die, he thinks. Every man should die in the moment after he's been
shown all he needs to know about living.
***

It's amazing that she can feel paralysed in the exact same moment that she can feel every inch
of her skin come alive. I'm through the looking glass here, Liv. He'd once said that to her.
Olivia remembers how she had been ready to walk away from him, so irritated by his choices
with regards to Kathleen's future yet knowing she had no say in the matter. He'd stopped her
with those words. It had hit home for her then how instantly people could be thrown off their
axis. How the world could be completely transformed from one moment to the next.

92
She feels like that right now. Like she's through the looking glass and she has absolutely no
idea what to do. Attraction to Elliot has always been the greatest taboo. He's married, he's
married, he's married. She's said it a thousand times to herself, even when he had been
separated. She'd said it even when she didn't know why the hell she was saying it. Why the
hell she needed the reminder. Only now he's not married. He's her partner - so it's still taboo
- but absolutely, positively nothing is registering in her head right now except for the fact that
Elliot is feeding her fruit while standing half-naked and still wet in front of her. She's dated
dozens of men, but none of them looked like Elliot. Even if he had no other advantage outside
of his physical appearance, he'd knock every blind date she'd ever been on out of the park. If
anything, he's gotten more muscular since she'd last seen him. His skin isn't perfect - he's
got scars everywhere that bisect his muscles - but she almost feels like those are her marks on
him. He earned those scars because of their joined history and it's irrational but it makes her
feel ownership over him.

Olivia wants to touch him. Even as she forces herself to swallow the sweet fruit, she can't
think past what is right in front of her. Who is right in front of her. Her fingers itch to skim
the hollows and shadows that form between the ridges of Elliot's muscles. She wants to use
her palms to shape his skin, and the light scrape of her fingernail to trace his tattoos. The dips
in his shoulders still seem to hold the slightest bit of salt water and she wants to taste it. Taste
him. His skin. She catches herself just before she moans. She's thirsty, she thinks. It's
sweltering in here. Sweltering. She closes her eyes and grips the doorframe, not quite steady
on her feet. The words this is wrong keep on a loop in her brain, but her body isn't listening.
She thinks that by simply closing her eyes that she'll get some control but then the air around
her intensifies.

"It's good, right?" Elliot rumbles in her ear.

Somewhere over the last twelve years she has to have shut down completely as a woman,
because there is no other explanation for how she lasted this long without touching him.
Olivia forces her eyes open, and she can't tell if it's the outrageously thick heat or the lack of
coffee or him, just him, but she is lightheaded. Elliot is too close to her. So close. And he is
wearing a towel for God's sake. It's just a cotton towel, she reminds herself. Don't look at it.
Just don't. She starts conversations in her head about objectification and partners and
working relationships but it's all a jumbled mess of nothing. She tells herself that falling into
bed with Elliot would be a cliché, that his family - Kathy - would hate her. She tries to picture
his kids, to think about how he'd told his wife he loved her just before the accident had
happened a few years back. She draws on anything she can to clear her damned head. But in
93
the end, it's his presence that wins out. He's big. His body is chiseled. He's strong as hell and
he moves like he's sure of himself.
He's so close to her that he is practically on her. He's so close that she has to look up at him
to see his eyes. Twelve years, she thinks, and Elliot is actually going to kiss her. Her stomach
knots and the fear makes her nauseous. Only he doesn't. He doesn't make a move at all.
Instead the corners of Elliot's lips lift.

"You bring a bathin' suit out here?"

Olivia can still taste the remnants of the cantaloupe on her lips.
"Yeah." Her voice refuses to work properly. She's not sure if she is disappointed or relieved
at the change in direction.
"Good. Go put it on."
While she's seen him in all his male-dominating glory, he's never really directed that attitude
towards her unless her safety was involved, so this is new. Elliot seems to know that ordering
her around is a good way to get himself injured, so he grins charmingly to get on her good
side.

"I'm not going swimming with you," Olivia declares, and it feels good to argue with him a
little bit. It cuts the tension, and it occurs to her that they have argued a lot over the years. She
doesn't want to explore what that means.
He's a smug jerk. "Why not? It's hot as hell out there."
Olivia lifts her chin. "Unless you're hiding a pool around here, you'd be asking me to go
swimming in the ocean." He narrows his eyes, amused.
"Give the woman a badge and call her a detective."

She ignores the slight rise of defence she feels slipping into her shoulders and her lower back.
She can feel the knots forming again in her stomach, but in a perverse way it eases her
physical reaction to him and gives her room to breathe. He's standing right in front of her,
blocking her entrance into the kitchen.
"I need coffee, Elliot. Move."
Elliot stands his ground, and the playful look on his face disappears. Now he's too close to her
again, and his eyebrows are drawn together as he leans down, searching her face and suddenly
serious.
"You've never been swimming in the ocean." His voice is low, too self-assured. He states it
like she's an open book, and she wants to hit him because it's unnerving to have him read her
so easily.

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"No. I haven't. And I have no desire to go out there. Now move." This feels like solid ground.
She sounds like a cop again, and he can't disarm her when he's being overbearing.
"Why not?"
Olivia feels last night's tequila hit her temples. She's hungry and she needs coffee and now
she wants to tell him to put a shirt on because he's too damned naked all the time out here.
She looks up at him then and tries to convey all of her irritation in her expression. This isn't a
subject she is going to debate with him. She doesn't want to explain to him that the idea of
going out there makes her uneasy. She doesn't need for him to think she is weak or afraid of
anything.

"Because I've got no desire to swim in polluted water," she says, thinking he can't possibly
argue with that. The music is making her head throb now, and she wishes he'd just turn it off.
It's gone from a friendly debate to something deeper, and she doesn't like it. She can tell that
Elliot senses that there is something she is hiding, and he's not going to drop it.
"Ocean water is cleaner than a pool filled with chemicals," he states matter-of-factly,
shooting down her excuse as if he knows good and well that it is bogus. He's not even hiding
his curiosity. "What's the deal, Liv?"

He's still blocking her way into the kitchen and she finally pushes on his shoulder. Elliot gives
way immediately and Olivia walks past him then, ignoring the way the taut skin of his bicep
brushes against her bare arm. The coffee pot is still on, but the brew is probably hours old
judging by the condensation on the inside of the glass pot. She doesn't care. Olivia reaches
for a mug and pours some of the liquid, ignoring the way he still stands in the entrance to the
kitchen. Only now Elliot is facing her, his back leaning against the molding and his arms
folded across his bare chest. Olivia ignores him. The coffee is bitter, but she takes a long sip
of it. She doesn't look at him, instead choosing to stare out the window. The ocean is
rumbling today. The waves are curling and crashing closer to the shore, and the white foam is
washing onto the sand in tufts. But just beyond the rise of the waves there is a deceptively
calm stretch of water. It's that stretch that rises slowly, nearly imperceptibly, pushing water
towards land.

"Come out there with me," Elliot presses.

Olivia wraps her palms around the mug, and prays he'll stops pushing it if she doesn't say
anything. She can tell that for him this now has nothing to do with going swimming. Now he
wants to know why she won't do it. He thinks she's got some sort of secret and for some
reason he's feeling confident enough to push her. Only there is no secret. It's not like she
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can't swim. It's not like she is hiding some sort of traumatic experience that she once had on
the ocean. She just doesn't want to swim in it. There are too many variables out there. She
isn't someone who likes to immerse herself in a place where she can't see her feet. She needs
to see the bottom, to know how deep the water is. Olivia wants him to just drop it. Elliot keeps
pushing her though, and suddenly his pushiness is not just about this but about everything.

"I'll save you if Jaws comes after you," he jokes, but the tone of his voice makes it clear that
he's only trying to cut the silence. He's relentless. It's too much then. It's too much change.
Like a rubber band that's been stretched past its limitation, she feels herself snap back into
place. The staying here with him, the lack of boundaries. The way he'd held her last night and
the way he is mercilessly fanning her attraction to him. She's overwhelmed and he's pushing
her and clearly being out here this long has changed him. Changed him. She's afraid to death
of changes.

She doesn't say a word and maybe that will make him give up. Her silence usually works with
him. He usually gives up. Back in Manhattan he would have given up by now. When she
makes it clear something is none of his business, he gets the picture. At least he used to.
"Olivia, talk to me."
The joking is long gone and Elliot's voice is a thunderous rumble. It makes her think of the
storm she's heard is coming in. One minute she thinks she could stay here for days, and the
next she thinks she can't endure even a few more seconds. She says nothing. The coffee sticks
in her throat, but she forces herself to just keep drinking it. The beach is empty, but she can
already see the seaweed accumulating on the edge of the shore, the sea plants that the
pounding surf is churning up and discarding. Abandoning.

Maybe it's just too much togetherness. She's used to being alone and since she arrived here
she hasn't had a minute when she hasn't been aware of him. She's ignored him for so long
that now even Elliot is silent. The CD must have finished, because there isn't even any music
to buffer the oppressive quiet that hovers between them. Maybe now he'll walk away. Leave
her be.

"You scare the shit out of me," he finally whispers. It hits her square in her stomach. Hard.
It's so raw that she almost wonders if he meant to say it. Olivia looks over her right shoulder
and directly at him, and Elliot isn't hiding from her. He's staring at her, and he's laid bare in
that moment. She can see the fear in his eyes, and she remembers the last time he'd looked
like this. It had been during Kathleen's case, when he'd been sitting on the lower bunk,
terrified that he was losing his kid. My boy plays it pretty close to his vest. For the second time
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that morning, she hears Bernadette Stabler's words only this time she thinks his mother is
wrong. Elliot is not hiding anything. He's not holding back. He almost sounds like he's
confessing. She thinks about him as a little boy - locking up more and more year after year.
She thinks about how he contains everything, holds onto his emotions because it's the only
thing that feels safe.

Only he's trying right now. He's trying so damned hard. Olivia doesn't know what he's trying
so hard for, what has prompted this stark moment of honesty. He only does this when it is
absolute necessity. When he is desperate. Sinking. She grips her mug in front of her with
both hands. She is hanging onto it even as she looks at him, unable to pull away from the way
he is locked on her. Elliot doesn't look away. He doesn't blink.
"I can't take it when you leave." Rasping. Grating. "And ev'ry time you shut up like that, I
think that's it. You're gone again."
It's too much to watch him like this. Olivia's heart is slamming inside of her and she feels like
years and years inside of her need to come out. She doesn't know if she wants to yell or cry or
scream, but something has to happen. Something. She's suffocating on the inside, and
hearing Elliot like this, seeing him like this - it's going to make her break. She can't let her
eyes water in front of him.

"I wasn't the one who left, Elliot." Olivia's voice is soft. She doesn't accuse him. She can't.
It hurts too much to even muster up the energy to be angry. She can only think of the way she
had readily accepted his abandonment. The way she had - deep down - felt a little bit like it
was inevitable, deserved, to be expected. She is who she is, and while she knows she is a
damned good cop, she doesn't have much else to give. She's aware of this. She's resigned
herself to it. His eyebrows draw together, and if Elliot has ever seemed fragile it is now. It's a
horrifying thing to see a powerful man expose any weakness.

"The kinda leavin' I'm talking about has nothing to do with being next to you, Olivia. I've
been standing next to you plenty of times when you locked me out. It's when I don't know
what the hell you're thinkin' that I'm..." He shakes his head as if warding something away.
He scrapes his teeth across his lower lip, chewing on it. He swallows thickly. "I got nothin' to
hang onto then."

Olivia can't speak. She's frozen. Inside she's crumbling. She knows too much about his past
now to pretend she doesn't understand, even if he still doesn't. He's been locked out before,
by a mother who was too sick to offer him any sort of explanations for her actions, any sort of
assurances, any sort of stability. At least his mother's illness had been an excuse for why she

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had mentally retreated all the time. Olivia lives inside of her walls because it's easier. It's what
she knows. She doesn't share anything because she doesn't want him to really see her, not
like she sees him right now. Maybe she is afraid he will see that she needs too much or can
offer too little. There is also the devastating possibility that maybe he will see nothing at all.
Olivia looks at the floor because the way Elliot is just ripping it all open is too visible in his
expression. By the time she thinks she might actually be able to speak, she looks up and he's
gone.

She flinches when the screen door bangs shut behind him. And then she's alone in the
kitchen, and she feels like she's rocking, teetering, even though she's nowhere near the
murky depths of the mutable, unpredictable ocean in which she has never, ever been.

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 Chapter Eleven

H
e'd been an avid ocean swimmer as a boy. Some of his earliest memories are
recollections of walking into the water until it was waist high and then jumping over
the waves as they curled and tumbled. If there was one benefit to his mother's
impulsiveness it was that she always ended up by the ocean on her adventures. He remembers
his mother picking him up in the middle of the day from grade school - more than once - and
driving with him for what seemed like hours. They'd end up at one beach or another and he'd
play until long after the sun went down. Sometimes his mother would fall asleep on her towel,
and a few times the police would come find them because she'd forgotten to tell his father that
they wouldn't be home until late. They'd gone to every beach at some point - from Jones
Beach to Atlantic City, and if the day was even remotely warm he'd wade out into the water
and pretend he was an underwater explorer or a rescue diver.

Swimming pools became too sterile. Too boring. There were no fish, there was no sea foam,
and if he could open his eyes underwater without burning them from the salt then he couldn't
lose himself to his imagination. Elliot became used to the pull of the tides. He learned to let
himself go along with a riptide until it released him and that if he was too close to a ferocious
wave to dive underneath until it passed. He learned to stay away from the dangerous currents
that swirled beneath the piers and he taught himself to tread water for hours. He wasn't
interested in surfing, and as a kid he had no access to diving equipment, so he swam endlessly.
Sometimes when he was all the way out, past the buoys, he'd look around and think he was the
only boy on earth. If he was out far enough from shore then nothing could touch him. Nothing
could hurt him. Don't jump. The current will pull you out to sea.

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He remembers the words of the patrol cop a few years ago. A suspect had tossed a black bag
into the lower Hudson and Elliot had been convinced the bag had contained a child's body.
He hadn't thought about his own safety, or even what his life meant to his family - he'd
jumped - straight off the end of the pier and into the swirling currents of a river that pulled
both ways. To this day he remembers the black, cold water, and the dread that had penetrated
his skin. He'd felt the pull of the currents as he had dived under, praying he'd come in contact
with the duffle bag, praying it would have just enough air in it to keep it from immediately
sinking, praying the child inside was still alive. He'd come up empty. That was the only time
that he'd felt powerless in the water. Until now.

He's underneath the surface now by at least four feet and he curses his lungs for not being
able to hold more air. He doesn't want to come up for a breath just yet because he's got to get
some control back. Even surrounded by the muffled roar of the ocean, he can hear her silence.
Olivia's constant, deafening silence. With his eyes closed and the pressure of the ocean flush
against his arms, he can still see the way she shuts down. He can see the press of her lips and
the way Olivia lets her eyes shutter before they go blank. He can still feel the dread that crawls
on him when she turns to him with her expression already masked, with her determination to
freeze him out evident in the rigid lines of her posture and in the lift of her chin.

He can crack a suspect; he can force things out of his children, even his ex-wife. But Olivia is
different. She is the only one he can't control. If he pushes her too hard she won't open up,
instead she will walk away. There is no winning when it comes to her. His arms cut through
the ocean, and he can feel the water against his cheeks, his back, his shins. When he comes up
for a breath he grabs it quickly, and before the sun even has a chance to settle on him he's
back under, moving fiercely forward. His movements are not fluid today; instead he's pushing
himself hard. Further out. He's gunning for something although he has no idea for what.
He's under. Under. The water is getting cooler the farther out he swims, and he's got no idea
if Olivia even walked out after him. Followed him. He had dropped his towel in the sand and
had quickly stormed past the waves, lunging into the depths out here. He's not hungry
anymore and if he came up for air, he wouldn't be able to hear her if she called. Not that she
will. Olivia is probably leaving right now. He's said too much, needed too much, pushed her
and touched her - and she will leave. Her things will be gone when he gets back to the house.
So he keeps swimming. He won't go back yet. He'll be damned if he watches her pack up and
drive away. He'll be damned if he lets her blame him for finally needing to say something. It's
been twelve years - twelve - and he can't pretend that he's not fucked over her. Sometimes he
feels sane around her and sometimes he feels entirely irrational, but the thing is that around
Olivia the bottom line is that he always feels something.

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I wish I didn't.
Didn't what? Didn't care so much? That's what makes you a good partner.

His lungs are searing, burning beneath the way he is denying them air. Huang had been
wrong. It hadn't been about being her partner. It hadn't. He'd known, even back then, and
that was five long years ago. Five damned years that he's been aware that this storm between
them was brewing. They haven't changed, despite everything. He can be divorced; she can be
coaxed out of Manhattan. He can no longer be her partner, and they can find themselves
physically far removed from the job, yet it doesn't change anything. It doesn't change the
core of them. All these years he's chalked up their inability - their unwillingness - to talk to
the fact that there were boundaries. Only now, with all of the boundaries obliterated, he's left
with the sickening feeling that it hadn't been the world that had kept them at arm's length
from each other, but rather who they were, who they still are. Maybe eight months away
hadn't changed anything. Maybe he's kidding himself. Maybe he's just the same old asshole
who hasn't figured out a damned thing.

That thought panics him. If it's all been for nothing then -
He's consuming oxygen too fast. He's suffocating himself and he can't wait. He comes up for
air, gasping at it. The saltwater drips down his face and he stops swimming, trying to get a
deep breath. He's treading water now, and he's far past the tumultuous shoreline. He's
riding on a swell. It's rising, rising. He wipes his face with one hand and looks back towards
the house. He can see it in the distance. It sits there - just one of many - only it's the one she
might be in. He wonders if Olivia is still in there. If she will leave him a note. He wonders if
she has spent any time at all standing on the edge of the water while deciding if he'd come
back. He doubts it.

Olivia does the leaving before she can be left. He's forty-four years old and he doesn't think
he's gonna die anytime soon. He sees his life laid out in front him - maybe another thirty, forty
years. He thinks about how he could end up out here and alone, and if eight months had
seemed like forever then the rest of his life is an eternity. He keeps himself up in the water and
he's getting tired, he should go back. He's too far out. Only he doesn't want to go back to
nothing.For a moment, he's a boy again, treading water out in the ocean. He tells himself
nothing can hurt him.

But the lies don't work. Not anymore. He'd once been young enough to believe that he was
invincible, but now he knows the truth. He's been brought to his knees before, and he knows
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that it is too easy to fall there again. Elliot closes his eyes and tilts his head back and the sun
warms his face. Twelve years of her live inside of him. He thinks of how they started and how
their roles changed have along the way. He remembers days when it was so, so easy. There
was a well of laughter in him that only Olivia could draw from; there were endless nights when
he could comfort her with just a fresh mug of coffee set in front of her on the desk. He thinks
about how there was a day along the way when he started protecting her with his heart and
stopped protecting her with his head. He remembers how it felt to walk the halls of the 1-6,
Olivia's boots in sync as she sauntered next to him. He'd stand up a little bit straighter
because together - together they were something and everyone knew it. Even he did.
And now...now he doesn't know what this is.

Olivia is not his partner, yet he can't reduce her to just a friend. He's lost every defining box
that he could put her in. He simply wants to be with her, however she will have him. He wants
a goddamned day in and day out with her. He doesn't care about the city or his job or what his
ex-wife will think. The world has taken enough from him. From them.

I've been alone my whole life.

Twelve years. The cases, the faces, the names. So many. So many. What about me? Her voice
is the one that is most familiar to him. He can hear her calming him with it. He can feel her
killing him with it. And then he hears - despite the screeching seagulls and the waves and roar
in his head - what she had said to him when he'd told her he was leaving. Okay. Even then, the
quiet, easy way Olivia had said it had shaken him. Elliot's eyes open and he is staring at the
sky. The water hits his chin, his cheek, and the droplets on his lashes soften the bright haze of
the sun. He looks right into it, and he feels the burn crawl into his stomach. He wants to
compel her to fight for something. He wants her to see enough in him to fight for him.

Only he's out in the ocean, alone. Drifting.

***

She stands, holding onto the wooden plank that serves as the railing along the boardwalk. It's
been only hours since she's been here last. Olivia looks down at the impressions in the sand
and wonders which of the miniature dunes were made by his feet last night as he had jumped
down, waiting for her to follow him. That Mona Lisa smile of yours. There are too many swirls
in the sand. Too many dips. Too many valleys. There is no way to tell where Elliot had stood.
Where he had been. That's why she is still here. She doesn't want to lose him.

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She'd watched him through the kitchen window as he had headed straight for the water and
she had been paralysed with fear. If she loses him, she's got no one. She doesn't feel sorry for
herself just because he's pretty much everything she's got - if anyone can be more than
enough, it is him. If anything, he is too much. Too much. Olivia doesn't know if it's been the
last twelve years or the past two days that have done this to her. Made her fall for him. For
Elliot. She wants to touch him, to sink her fingertips into him. She wants to sleep with her face
in the cavern between his shoulder and his neck and she wants to hear him say her name in
that way he does, over and over again. She wants to tell him she won't ask anything more of
him if he would just fall for her, too. She doesn't hold out hopes for wedding rings or kids
anymore in any case. She knows who she is. She's a realist.

Of course the reality is that she will never get what she wants. Not because Fate has
determined it to be that way, but because she is chickenshit. The idea of falling for Elliot is so
utterly terrifying to her that it makes the butterflies in her stomach twist violently, until
all of the fantasies seem morbid and childish and embarrassing.And then the self-
recriminations set in.Elliot is her partner, even if he's still on leave. He's probably been
lonely and she's misinterpreting. She can't risk what she knows for the unknown, and
besides, she's got no idea how to let herself go in the first place. She needs to know where she
stands at all times, and she's got the cloying, clawing feeling that if she ever let him in all the
way that she'd never be able to stand alone again. It would be easy - too easy - to give herself
away to him.

Olivia looks out at the ocean again, and unlike in the murky darkness of last night, today it is
clear where the water meets the sky. She can't fall in love with him, but she can't leave him
either. Eight months apart and she's hungry for Elliot's company, for the easiness that they
sometimes find. Just last night he had laughed with her. If she can find some middle ground
with him then maybe he will come back to the job soon. Maybe she can get back her
equilibrium. They can be Benson and Stabler again and she can stare all the doubters in the
eye and her I told you so's will be evident in her glare. If she can keep a clear head then they
will be better for this. A few days more with him and maybe they will be less breakable. They
will come back better than ever.

Olivia exhales, and some of the pressure in her chest abates. She turns around and eyes the
tourist shops because she needs a few things. That had been the point of her walk in the first
place. She'd thrown her clothes in the washing machine back at the house, but even those few
things weren't enough to live on if she was going to continue to stay. There is a shop straight
ahead that has some racks of clothes that don't seem too terrible. At least not from this far

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away. By the time she's dodged the skateboarders and dog walkers who crowd the small
boardwalk to enter the open-air store, she's far more relaxed. If she can keep herself in check
for a few more days, Elliot might even come back to the city with her at the end of her week.
Olivia's fingers skim a rack of twenty dollar casual summer dresses. None of them are fancy or
revealing. Some of them are cut for young girls, but others seem okay. She's never been too
picky. She usually sticks with neutral colours, so she picks up a mid-length grey jersey dress
with short cap sleeves and a shorter black polo style dress. Then the breeze reminds her that
she's at the beach and she adds a long red spaghetti strap dress to the ones currently draped
over her arm. It's got an empire waist to it and she imagines it will swirl around her ankles on
a windy evening. The idea makes her smile just a little bit and she's breathing better. She can
do this. She can.

A yellow tank dress is added to the pile of clothes she is holding. Then a crème dress with
black spaghetti straps. Behind her is a rack of women's t-shirts and she grabs a couple of fun
ones. One is orange and has Surf's Up, Surf City scrawled across it, and she finds herself
grinning, the morning starting to fade from memory. She can only imagine what Elliot will say
when he sees her wearing a bright blue t-shirt that proudly proclaims that she's survived the
Jersey shore. She grabs a pair of cotton shorts and she'll pick up some of the white camisole
tops and a pair of the boxers to sleep in. She sees a pink t-shirt with Jersey Babe across the
chest in glittery letters and she stops, finally laughing out loud at the face she imagines Elliot
would make if he saw her in it.

"If it makes you laugh, you should get it."

She turns to seek the source of the assuring voice. Behind her stands a petite, older woman
who is maybe sixty-five, possibly closer to seventy. She's got a slick cap of straight gray hair
and thick bangs, and she's wearing a long white cotton dress. Her wrists are covered with
shiny bangles and her flat silver sandals boast rhinestones.
"Gladys," the woman offers, smiling easily. She's holding a handful of t-shirts in one arm, but
with the other, she shakes a finger at Olivia. "I've seen you, you know. You're with Elliot."
Maybe she should be wary of this woman, but instead Olivia is immediately amused. Gladys is
so obviously a small bustle of energy, confidence and clattering bracelets that Olivia can't
help but let the assumption slide for the moment. Besides, she's curious.
"How do you know him?"

Gladys moves behind the small counter and dumps the t-shirts onto the surface before coming
around to take the clothes off of Olivia's arm.

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"He's my neighbour. My husband Jack and I live in the red house to the south. Bernie was my
best friend, God rest her soul." As soon as the clothes are safely in her grip, Gladys starts
walking to the back of the store, waving her along. "C'mon now, let's get you into a fitting
room."
Olivia wants to laugh. In under sixty seconds Gladys has both hijacked her clothes and piqued
her interest. Although Olivia does get the impression that Gladys is a talker, she also likes that
the woman makes no apologies for herself.
"I'm actually just gonna buy them," Olivia interrupts. "I don't have a lot of time and I'm sure
they'll be just fine."

At that Gladys stops and turns, tilting her head. Her eyes narrow for a moment and Olivia
can't escape the feeling that Gladys is assessing every inch of her.
"Guess with a face like that and legs as long as those you got there, you can just ‘bout put on a
burlap sack and look like Miss America, huh?" Her face breaks into a sudden smile. "All
those months that boy was alone, and here I was worried ‘bout him. Jack was right. Said Elliot
would find a good woman or a good woman would find him."

Olivia feels the moment of levity slip just a little bit. She too had worried about Elliot every
single day during his absence. Every morning and every night she'd had to fight the urge to
call him, to just indulge in the sound of his voice. To know that this woman worried about him
too makes her feel an instant sort of kinship with her. She wonders how well Gladys knows
Elliot, if she knows anything about his life, or the reasons he is here that extend beyond his
mother's death. Then her curiosity snowballs, and it occurs to her that this woman probably
knew Bernadette better than any of them. She feels a moment of guilt about reading the
journal. Gladys is on the move again and Olivia's clothes are set on top of the pile of t-shirts
on the counter.

"Saw you two out on the beach the other night. You musta just gotten into town, I think?"
Gladys doesn't wait for an answer. Instead she's quickly taking the hangers off of the clothes
and folding them before stacking them into a pile. "Haven't seen that boy so happy since he
got out here. He's kept to himself so much that I kept on sending Jack over to check on him,
especially in the winter. Coupla days went by in January when we didn't see the lights in the
house go on at night, got me worried about him." Gladys lets out a breath. Her smile comes
easily. "But he was there, doin' okay even if he didn't look so good. So you know Elliot from
New York, right?"

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Olivia is unexpectedly caught in the older woman's whirlwind. She's got a million questions,
but doesn't have the right to ask any of them. She wants to know about why the lights had
been off for a few days. She wants to know about Bernadette. In an odd way Olivia wants to
immediately confess she's got the journal, just to see if Gladys would assure her it was alright
to read it. Instead, she just nods.
"Yeah, you could say that." She can't ask questions. She can't. If Elliot wanted her to know
the answers to any of it, he would have told her. She’s got to respect his privacy even though
something inside of her is screaming that this privacy thing they do is a bunch of bullshit.
Something in her quiet response makes Gladys' smile slip. Her green eyes are steady as they
lock on Olivia.
"You got that look he had when he first came out here, you know that?" Gone is the bustle of
activity. Just like that Gladys is still, serious. "What's that city doing to you kids, huh? If I
were your mother, I'd tell you that wasn't any place to live."

Olivia can suddenly hear the ocean again. It is as if someone turned the volume up on the
waves and she can feel them so deeply that she almost feels like she needs to get her sea legs
beneath her. She hasn't been mothered before. Not really. She not used to being spoken to as
if she is someone's child. But Gladys doesn't realise that Olivia's gone quiet. She's a swirl of
colour and movement and jingling jewellery, and Olivia just watches her. She wonders if
Gladys has children of her own. If they love her. If she's been what they've needed. Gladys
takes the silence as an opportunity to continue.

"I thought he was mourning his mama, at first. Then Jack mentioned to me ‘bout the divorce.
Jack talks to him more, you know? They seem to get along." Gladys sighs, looking up at
Olivia as she folds the t- shirts and gets out a bag. "But I don't know. I don't think it's any of
those things that makes him keep to himself so much. What do you think?"
Olivia falters. It's odd to be talking about Elliot with someone else. It's not something that
she ever does. Ever. She keeps all of her questions and fears about him inside of her, and if she
can't figure them out, she quietly boxes them away. There is an innate relief in listening to
someone else talk about him openly. Maybe she should tell Gladys to mind her own business,
but the truth is that there is something about Gladys that is instantly comforting. She might be
petite, but she is a small powerhouse, and in a way Olivia is relieved that Bernadette had the
company of a woman like this right until the end. Even Bernadette, with all of her mood
swings and idiosyncrasies, had found a good friend.

"I don't know," she says softly. It's the truth. She doesn't know. She watches as Gladys
moves, her every moment indicating capability, strength. She is the kind of woman Bernadette

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could have relied upon. And then it suddenly makes sense. The pieces fit. "You were the one
who found his mother."
Olivia flinches as soon as she realises what she's just said.
Gladys had begun to ring up Olivia's purchases, but now she stops, her fingers pausing
against the keypad of the register. Olivia can see the grief in the older woman's face, but it's a
graceful sort of aching. It's the kind of grief that follows closure. It's the kind of pain that
reflects a bruise left behind instead of an open wound that was still bleeding.
"Thursdays we always made a meal," Gladys says quietly. Her smile is gentle. Sad. "Bernie,
Jack and me, we'd eat together when we could, but at the very least we'd do it on Thursdays.
She and I'd go shopping in the morning to buy the ingredients and we'd spend the day
cooking, and every now and then we'd have a glass of chilled white wine while we did it. When
she didn't meet me out on the porch to go to the store, I knew something was wrong."

It might be the sheen in Gladys' eyes, or the very real recollection of the phone call Elliot had
received just a few hours later, but Olivia feels the sharp stab of loss, even though she had
hardly known his mother. She remembers the way Elliot's face had paled as he gripped the
phone on his desk. She remembers staring at his freshly bought coffee and thinking it was
going to go cold, because she knew intrinsically that he was leaving soon just by the way his
eyes had instantly faded. In that moment, Olivia had felt the dread and cold slip into her
bones. At the time she'd thought maybe he'd go for a month, possibly two. She'd never
expected him to be gone for the better part of a year. She knows she had been different back
then, even just eight months ago. She'd been stronger. Less cautious. But when Elliot had left
she had stopped fighting all the numb places that were growing on her skin. It had been easier
to empty out than to let herself grieve the absence of him.

"You're just like she described you, you know that? Bernie respected the heck out of you,
Olivia. Had high hopes for you, from what she said."
Olivia looks up, and she realises that she hasn't said anything. She hadn't even offered her
name. When she meets Gladys's steady gaze, she can see the sharp intelligence there.
It shakes her deep, deep inside that his mother had placed more faith in her than her own
mother ever had. It rocks her that his mother had talked about her, had even thought about
her.

"I know she loved Elliot," Olivia offers, even though her throat feels scratchy and thick. She
does know this. As angry as she is for what Elliot suffered, she knows his mother had never
intended to hurt him. When she admits this now, she feels like she's telling Bernadette.
There is a relief in it. A confession. Gladys packages up the clothes and swipes the credit card

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Olivia hands her. When she hands it back, her hand wraps comfortingly around Olivia's wrist.
"She loved him. I promise you. He meant the world to her. If you can get that boy to believe
one thing about his mama, you get him to believe that."
Olivia can't breathe suddenly. She needs air and some space and the wind to just infiltrate her
lungs. She nods, and signs the credit card receipt because it's all she can do. Her vision is
blurry, her hands shaking just a little bit. Before she knows it, Gladys is stuffing the ridiculous
pink t-shirt into the bag as well with a playful wink. The older woman smiles gently and
somehow compels Olivia to look her in the eyes.
"We were waiting for you, you know. Figured you'd come for him. What took you so long?"
But Gladys doesn't need answers. Instead she's already off, helping the next customer who is
walking in.
***

He's been sitting on the couch for almost an hour. The humidity is so thick that he wishes the
house had air conditioning. The coming weather lays heavy in the air, and despite the still
brilliant sunshine Elliot knows that the storm rolling in tonight will be a bad one. The winter
storms are grey and dreary, but the summer storms seem to bring with them a howling,
twisting wind. He knows the house is set back from the water enough that the encroaching
tide shouldn't cause any flooding, but he'll lock all the shutters after dinner to protect all the
windows and he'll get out a couple of flashlights just in case.

He'd come out of the water earlier and had headed into the house with his back tight from the
dread. He had opened the screen door gingerly, as if that would make a difference, and the
sound of the running washing machine had stopped him. He had managed to say her name
once, twice. Olivia hadn't answered, but by the time he had made his way back to her
bedroom and noticed her things still in the bag on the floor, he had finally, blissfully been able
to take a deep breath. She'd left him a note on the kitchen counter, too. Three words. Be back
soon.

It had been enough to make him grip the edges of the countertop and bow his head with relief.
It had given him the will to eat something and to shower, so that he could wait for her. Calmly.
With hope. With the conviction to be less afraid of her silence. Despite the note, it takes the
sound of the front door opening for him to believe that Olivia is coming back. He hears the
rustling of packages and the bang of the front door yet he forces himself to stay where he is.
He can't crowd her. He'd left her for too long for God's sake, and she's gonna need time to
get used to his hovering again. He hears her footsteps and he thinks it would be okay to stand.
His palms are itching to make fists, but he wipes them on the legs of his shorts instead and yet

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holds onto the piece of paper in his hand. It's already crumbled. Wrinkled. Creased. He's
been hanging onto it since he found it.
And then Olivia is there, in front of him. She's carrying an overstuffed bag of clothing and
another smaller bag from the grocery store. Olivia stops where she stands, and she looks at
him. He is overwhelmed. Maybe he feels too much for her, but he can't control that now. He
takes in the slight curl to her hair, the whisper of a shine to her skin. Her sunglasses are
propped on top of her head and he doesn't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing because
he can see her eyes and they are so stark, so revealing that he can't say anything at all.
Olivia is looking at him as if she's scared, but she's shaking it off. It's a false bravado, he
knows this. He can see the rise and fall of her shoulders and her knuckles are turning white as
she grips the bags with far more force than is necessary. She doesn't move.

He lifts the note. "Thank you for-"

"I can't see the bottom," she interrupts on a ragged rush, not blinking. Not taking her eyes
off of his. The fear, it's all there in her. She's wearing it, plain as day. He can feel her
nervousness as clearly as he can feel the storm. He wants to run his palms over her arms and
tell her not to be afraid of him. He wants to touch her, clutch her and the need isn't
dissipating at all, instead it's getting stronger.
"The ocean," he acknowledges.
Olivia's lips part and she finally blinks, but she's still eyeing him as if she's not sure of
something, but she's gonna try it anyway. She nods slightly.
"I need to know exactly what I'm getting into, you know?" It's a whisper. A roar.
Elliot nods. If she is asking him to understand then he can do that. In this moment, that's what
he can give her and he'll do whatever he can. Whatever it is.
"Okay," he agrees. "Okay." He'll agree to anything.
Olivia is still watching him carefully. He knows she is assessing his every reaction. The room
feels unnaturally still. She finally breaks and looks at the grocery bag in her hand, lifting it
slightly.
"Thought I'd..." She stops, and then she's back, gauging him. Watching. "Dinner. I could
make dinner."

Elliot feels the smile form on his face. It's just the corner of his mouth that is tipping up, but
he watches as she mirrors him. Maybe that is inevitable when it comes to them. When she
smiles just a little bit it's almost as if she is apologising.
"It's lasagna. I'm good at that. And I brought wine. You know, ‘cause it goes with the-"
"Lasagna," he finishes for her.
"Yeah," she breathes, as if she is relieved that he understands.

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Olivia is still standing across the room, but he feels the moment it cracks. He is holding her
note and she is still holding the groceries. He knows then that not being able to communicate
is a bullshit excuse for why this can't work, because she had managed to tell him everything he
needed to know in three words. Be back soon. Elliot sees the clothes in the bag she holds, and
he wants to ask her if she bought them because she is staying, but he doesn't want to push
her. Instead, he takes his cues from the simple fact that she's holding them, and that's got to
be a good sign. He doesn't need to know more than that. Not right now, anyways. He'll take
her any way he can get her. In minutes, hours, days.

He walks towards her, and when he is close enough he reaches for the grocery bag. The
handle is wrapped around Olivia's wrist and he lets his fingertips slip under the plastic of it,
brushing against the back of her hand as he pries it from her. Her gaze falls, and she watches
him do it.
"I won't walk out on you again," he says quietly, under his breath. She lets go of the bag and
sets it into his hand, but before he pulls away, he feels the tips of Olivia's fingers skim his
palm deliberately.

She says nothing.

He hears everything.

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 Chapter Twelve

J
une, 1970

Dearest Suhaili,
Is it possible to be surrounded by people yet still feel totally alone?
I think about this question every day. I've been trying to take walks with Elliot in the evenings,
just to get some fresh air. I feel like if I do not positively force myself to leave the house I would
stay indoors for weeks without realising I haven't ventured out. It is on these walks that I see
the neighbours and I try to make small talk with Lucy Evanston or Amy Fletcher across the
street, but the small talk always falls flat. I don't relate to their long, tedious conversations
about recipes and sales at the mall. I want to talk about the places we could go. I want to talk
about the books I am devouring day after day. But they don't seem interested. I think they
whisper about me. I've seen the looks, but I ignore them. I pretend everything is fine in the
hopes that one day all will be.
I went to the library last week and discovered that I am positively in love with the paintings of
Georgia O'Keefe. She lives out west now, and I think about what it must be like to be her.
What must it be like to live in the desert, with the red dust swirling all around and nothing but
easels and pottery to occupy her days? Does she sometimes get angry at her pots because they
are misshapen? Does she smash them into tiny little bits when she is frustrated? Does she paint
at midnight beneath the wide open skies of New Mexico wearing nothing but her nightgown
and some lipstick? I saw a picture of one of her paintings called Sky Above The Clouds (I
think it's IV, of course I haven't seen one or two or three) and her clouds look like fairytale
stepping stones that lead to the warm, perfect horizon. It's as if you could play hopscotch on
her clouds forever without ever falling through the sky. I want to ask Georgia questions. I
want to know if she is like me, if she feels like she is different from everyone else? Does she
know that she sees things in a special way like me? How come no one calls her crazy?
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I think Georgia and I would be great friends. I imagine when we meet one day we will have
tea and I will tell her my ideas and maybe she will invite me to paint with her. One day I will
visit her. I need to make plans. And when I get to New Mexico, we'll discuss important things
like immortality and all the shades of red. I will ask her thought-provoking questions like is
she less afraid to die now because she's left pieces of herself behind in her art?
The answer to this question is very important to me.
Other than the legacy of my boy, when I die one day I will have left nothing behind. No one
will want my stupid dresses and my silly charm necklaces. No one will want my scarves and I
don't even have any good china to pass along. The truth is that today I am nothing. Even
Elliot has become somber around me. He's too quiet and I'm scared that I have ruined him. I
certainly am no one for him to admire. I've done nothing great or grand or exciting. I dream of
running away, of holding his strong, little hand and running to catch a train that will take us
across country. I dream of soaring with him in jetliners that will take us to London, where he
could befriend young Prince Andrew. But most of all, I dream of days when I am not so tired,
so achingly sad. The dreams are becoming so strong that sometimes I can escape into them for
a few hours, but I am also struggling with what Elliot needs from me. I have to feed him, and I
have to make sure someone picks him up from school and I make sure to read him books. It's
not a terrible list of responsibilities, but some days are easier than others. Some moments I am
so gloriously happy that I can't breathe, and the sun is brilliant and I want to dance on the
tops of my toes. Of course, other days I think endlessly about dying. I think about how no one
would miss me. I think about how no one would know who I had been, not even Elliot. I think
about how I'll probably die alone and I get scared that no one will remember me at all.
I'm afraid I can be erased from the world, like I'd never even been here in the first place.
This is why I've bought some paints and some canvas, so that I can leave something behind
one day. I've hidden these things from Joe. He'll tell me I am wasting money and wasting time
and I confess that I am afraid he will be right. I'm afraid that if I pick up a paintbrush that
there will be nothing in my imagination. What if I paint like an ordinary person? What then?
How does someone live in just the ordinary?
I don't want to live this way. I want to be extraordinary. It is a crushing thing, this growing
feeling in my chest. Every day I struggle more and more with the things that I think.
But enough of this. Enough. Like Joe says, I have to focus on the things that are real. Of
course, Joe doesn't speak those words to me in a kind way. He has taken to yelling, to
snapping at me at every turn. He started working the evening shift last month, and this has at
least helped as we now rarely see each other. He wakes with Elliot and takes him to school
and then he disappears for the rest of the day. I know Joe's shift does not start until four, so I
am sure he is with that nurse or some secretary from the precinct all afternoon but I don't care.
Now I'm simply grateful that he isn't around to say snide things to me. I sleep late into the

112
mornings and there is no one to call me lazy or useless. His infidelity is a small price to pay for
this respite.
The one I worry most about is Elliot. Joe has changed over the last year. I've read that there
are problems within the NYPD, and that a big-deal commission has been brought in to
investigate officers who are conducting illegal drug activities for the mob. I know Joe can't be
messed up in all that, but it must be weighing on him because he no longer has any patience
with Elliot either. He yells at our boy for the slightest things, and I can see the way Elliot
flinches when Joe makes sudden moves nearby. I wonder if Joe has struck Elliot, but I have no
proof of my suspicions. I'll take Elliot away if Joe has ever hurt him. I'll take my boy and
disappear to New Mexico.
Oh, New Mexico! I've seen pictures and it is glorious! One day I will tell you about this artist
who lives there. Her name is Georgia O'Keefe.
I think you'd like her.

Until later,
Bernie
***

Olivia sets the journal face down on her stomach, still open to the page she was just reading.
She's been lethargically sunning herself on the low lounger Elliot had dragged off the patio
and onto the sand for her. She's still close to the house, and she can still hear the lazy sounds
of the music drifting out of the living room. Her bones feel heavy, but not in the aching, brittle
way that they do back in Manhattan. This is a different kind of weight. This is the kind of
weight that might just keep her on this chair for the rest of the afternoon. Even with her
sunglasses on, she has to squint against the glare of the sun as it bounces off of the water.
There are freighters cruising in the far distance, likely moving away from the shore ahead of
the storm. She can see the shadows of them, and it feels like they will be swallowed up by the
horizon. Behind her sunglasses, her eyes close.

She could fall asleep, or she could just rest for a little bit. The thick heat of the morning is now
giving way to the breeze of the pending storm and the waves are kicking up just a bit. It's still
hot as hell out and she's got a bikini on under her tank top and her cotton shorts, but she's
not quite up to laying around half-naked in front of her partner for the better part of the
afternoon quite yet. Then again he's not even here. Elliot had disappeared nearly an hour ago,
telling her he was heading to Jack's to ask the older man a question. Olivia had told him about
her encounter with Gladys and he had simply smiled. He hadn't questioned her; he hadn't
even seemed concerned about what Gladys may have said to Olivia about him. It's vaguely

113
unsettling for her to realise that he's no longer separating his personal life from his
professional one.

Unless he is somehow telling her that she is part of his personal life now. She doesn't want to
think about that. There are too many implications in that notion. She doesn't want to think
about where this is headed, or where it isn't. For now she wants to forget that these moments
won't last. She doesn't want to think about what this will do to their partnership back in
Manhattan. She doesn't want to think about whether this time spent together will make it
harder to be around him or so easy and necessary that she won't be able to imagine anything
else. Anyone else.

She pushes her head into the chair, and the sun warms the column of her neck. She breathes
with purpose. She takes full, deep breaths that slow her pulse. Manhattan seems like a war
zone continents away. She lifts her right arm and lets it loosely settle above her head, and the
sun begins its assault on the inside of her elbow, the palm of her hand. She shifts on the chair
and the journal slides just a little bit on her stomach, but it doesn't fall. Her left hand dangles
off the edge of the chair, and she's so close to the sand that her fingertips brush the warm, soft
granules. She is quieting.

Even the sea birds have gentled. Their calls seemed hushed and the foray for food has eased.
There seems to be a resignation towards the storm. An acceptance that its arrival is as
inevitable as its departure will be. It will come and it will pass, and they will clean up in its
aftermath and go on. They've gone on. Despite everything, they've gone on. It's the one
thing she believes in - them. He's shown her by his very existence that all men are not driven
by cardinal sins, that there exists a higher plane of humanity than the version she sees day in
and day out. He's shown her nobility in the way that he protects his family; he's shown her
bravery in the ways that he has protected her. He's shown her that justice can be a powerful
sword and he's taught her that righteousness is a weapon easily turned on the one who wields
it. He's proved without a doubt that all men are not created equal.

She'd had so many empty spaces in her when she had walked into the 1-6 a dozen years ago.
She'd had no idea back then that the man introduced to her as her partner would one day be
someone who she couldn't singularly label at all. The rhythmic arrival of the waves makes her
sleepy. It seems impossible that the world contains spaces that seem this still, this untouched.
She already can't remember what rush hour sounds like; she can't recall the intense,
inescapable smell of the city in the summer. Olivia's head lolls to the side, and far down the
beach she can make out the shapes of a few children seemingly dancing at the edge of the
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water, running in and out of the surf as if surprised by its encroachment each and every time.
A mother sits back, fifteen feet from the water, and she is upright in a beach chair intently
watching her children play.

She wonders if Elliot knows that despite Bernadette's afflictions, she had loved him deeply.
It's something she's often wondered about her own relationship with her mother. As a child
she had known no measure of security or stability. Her mother had been nothing like
Bernadette. Her mother had been nothing of a dreamer, instead she lived so starkly in a
stricken reality that she had seen very little of beauty or faith. Olivia remembers Serena as
having been so tightly strung, so angry that nothing - not even the guileless love of a child -
could penetrate the hard, bitter walls that she had erected.

Serena had taught Olivia to be a fighter, to be on guard at all times. She'd taught Olivia self-
reliance and she'd created a thick skin on her daughter. Of course she'd done all of it by
drinking, night after night. It hadn't even been the alcohol itself which had been the most
damaging; it had been the dark, silent core of an intoxicated Serena that would thoroughly
pervade the walls, the carpets, the still air of the apartment. It had been the raging, the crying
behind bedroom doors, the sheer absence of soul that the liquor would unfailingly reveal.
It wasn't until Olivia had graduated from the Academy that she had finally been able to see her
mother as a victim instead of an abuser. It was then that her relationship with her mother had
calmed a little bit. She had stopped waiting for Serena to change, and had instead accepted
that Serena's life had been irrevocably damaged on the night of her rape. It was that specific
realisation which had shaped Olivia's instincts as a cop. If she could change things for a victim
from nearly the moment of the attack, then she could set a different course for their life
altogether.

Her job had given her purpose, but it had provided no answers. To this day she wonders what
Serena had felt for her. Love, maybe. Loathing, occasionally. She wonders what it would be
like to live with a talisman of rape staring back at her day after day. She's seen enough of the
damage over the years to know that few women can truly love a child borne in the aftermath. It
takes women with an iron core, women with superhuman strength and otherworldly
conviction. Her mother had proven herself to be just a mortal time and time again. She
doesn't blame Serena, and she's seen too much to feel sorry for herself. She knows Elliot is
the same. He's probably never mourned what he'd lacked as a child. Even his mother had
admitted to Olivia that Elliot had simply blocked out his past and moved on.
Only she now holds the memories that he will never admit to in her hands. They are
chronicled on the weathered pages, written in ink. He can't erase the words of his childhood

115
any sooner than she can erase the lack of them in hers. They had measured themselves against
those who had suffered more in order to come out on top, but maybe the healing was in
admitting that so many had suffered far less.

Olivia tries to open her eyes and keep them that way, but it's too much of an effort. She
removes her sunglasses off her face and lets them drop into the sand next to her. She raises
her chin and meets the sun. The last thing she notices before she drifts off is that the
freighters are gone, and the horizon is unblemished once again.
***

He stops ten feet from her.

The sand is hot around his bare feet. Elliot can feel the last stand of the sun through the thin
cotton of his t-shirt, across the bridge of his nose, against the rise of his cheekbones. He
forgets to move. He has to catalog every detail in what he sees. Olivia is sleeping on the
lounge chair he had brought out for her earlier. She is sprawled at all angles. Her arm is
casually tossed above her head, and her palm is curled inwards. Her tank top has lifted just a
little bit, and he can see the tanned skin exposed across her stomach. One of her legs is bent at
the knee and is hanging off the chair, her foot deeply buried in the sand; the other is stretched
out, toes loosely pointed at the water. He doesn't need to look at her eyes to know she is
sleeping. The even rise and fall of her stomach gives her away.

His mother's journal rests just beneath her chest. It is spread out, open and face down, and it
covers her in a way that oddly makes him think of bulletproof vests. Of shielding. Of
protection. There is something incredibly powerful about the image that is laid out before
him. He thinks of Olivia as someone who is a warrior, who is a fighter. He thinks of her as a
defender, as someone who is on alert at all times. But this moment is the contradiction. It is
the antidote. Out in the open, beneath a not yet darkened sky, Olivia sleeps. He doesn't own
the beach in front of the house. He doesn't own the sand or a drop of the water. He isn't
responsible for the seaweed that accumulates, he doesn't lay claim to the open air. But in this
moment, she is irrefutably in his space. It's where he wants her to be. This is what he can give
her; this is what he can offer.

Within his space, she rests unguarded. Then again, Elliot will always watch her. He's stronger
now than he'd been before he left. Unlike Achilles he's not forever vulnerable to the places in
which he'd once been weakened. Unlike Ares, he doesn't feel compelled to wage war or rage

116
anymore. Every skill he learned on the street he's now convinced had been honed in
preparation for this. For a singular battle. He wants her.

He doesn't want to protect the world anymore. He just wants to be responsible for his family.
For her. There are moments when he feels entitled to Olivia, when he thinks he's got rights.
But there are other moments, like this one, in which he thinks there isn't a chance she could
want him, too. He moves then, but his steps are slow. The sand and waves will muffle the
sounds of his approach, but he is cautious in any case. He understands why people take
photos, why they write stories, why they carve and create and paint. It's to preserve something
- a memory, an image, an idea. He wants to preserve this. He wants to hold this minute in his
hands and not let go.

He's close now, and when he watches her, he thinks it was stupid of the NYPD to entrust him
with her. How they could have ever thought he was enough, he has no idea. He can't explain
what Olivia makes him feel, he can't grasp the scope of it. It's powerful though. Deafening.
He thinks it goes beyond him or her. He's been to church over a thousand times, but it was
the ocean that showed him what a higher power looked like. It's Olivia who has proved to him
the existence of divine intervention.
"Olivia," he says softly. She doesn't stir.

He knows the difference between how adults and children breathe. Adults use their chest, and
the oxygen never quite makes it all the way inside. But children, children draw the air all the
way in because they still take their time. He watches Olivia's stomach rise just a little bit as
she inhales, and he feels like he's done something. Accomplished something. He sits then,
lowering himself onto the sand with his back to the ocean so that he can face her. Her shin
almost touches his lower back, and if he drops his gaze even slightly he will see nothing but
the smooth, endless length of her leg. He holds himself in check and refrains because he can
only take so much at once. He can barely comprehend his emotions; he will have no control
over his arousal.

While Olivia sleeps, he is finally free to let his eyes linger on the length of her eyelashes, the
fullness of her lips, the perfect lines of her sun-darkened shoulders. As her partner, he'd
never looked at her too long. He knows Olivia, and she retreats under the scrutiny. The few
times he's let himself really search her expression for some clue, she's lashed out at him,
challenged him, called him on it. For just one moment he lets himself think about what it
would be like to lay next to her in the earliest hours of the dawn. He imagines slipping his
fingers over her arms, feeling her stir, hearing the soft way she would probably mumble an
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expletive and chastise him before she would pull away, even in her sleep. Only he'd follow her
across the bed. He'd slip into the warm spot on the sheets she had just vacated and he'd hold
her.

Elliot wants that more than he wants anything else. He doesn't think beyond that. He wonders
if she knows. If she knows this is in him. If she knows it's this much, this irrevocable. He
doesn't know when it happened and he doesn't want to know. He's not married anymore, yet
he can't imagine spending time with any woman but her.
"Liv," he tries again.

Only he doesn't try all that hard. He still whispers. She still sleeps. His mother's journal rests
on Olivia's stomach, and Elliot looks at it. He's wondered for a long time what it says, but he
realises now that if Olivia knows it is enough. She'll tell him what he needs to know, she'll
never utter a word of what he doesn't. What that journal contains no one else in the world
knows. Beyond his mother's basic diagnosis, his ex-wife, his children, they don't know the
extent of it. They get of him what he gives them. Olivia gets of him what she sees on her own.
He wonders how much his mother had chronicled. He wonders if the details are right, or if his
mother had painted all of them as judgmental, rigid, unforgiving. He wonders if she mentions
his father, if she'd realised that his father had collapsed under the weight of all of it. He
wonders if she knew how much Elliot blamed them - the both of them. He wonders if his
mother knew that his marriage had been an escape from the past, the first escape he'd really
been given. Getting Kathy pregnant had been a blessing, because there were a thousand
destructive directions he could have gone.

Olivia will know now. He's not scared of what he has risked by giving her the journal. It
hadn't been an easy decision to make, but it had been the right one. She's endured his silence
for too many years, and if his mother can do one thing for him now, it will be to tell Olivia. To
explain to her. To give her his history so she can understand the present. He wants her to
know. Elliot reaches for the journal, intending not to read it, but to close it. His fingers slip
around the binding, beneath the pages. He'll raise it slowly, so he doesn't wake her. Only he
can feel the heat coming off of her. His fingers are under the tent of the book, and between
the pages and her skin his knuckles are suddenly unbearably warm. They are probably
millimetres from the bare strip of skin that is exposed by the rise of her tank. Elliot closes his
eyes and stays perfectly still; willing himself not to move for just a moment, just until rational
thought has a chance to win.

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But then Olivia inhales, and her stomach lifts just, just enough. The back of his hand brushes
against her and he can't help it. He can't do anything to stop it. His eyes open to watch what
is happening. Beneath the book, Elliot wants to turn his hand over and let his palm slide
across her hot skin and under the edges of her white top. He wants to rub his thumb lower,
over her belly button. But he runs out of time. Her skin is gone, the contact is broken and he
takes in air as she exhales and retreats.

But then he realises. It will happen again. It is happening before he can move. Another inhale,
and this time Elliot's hand tightens around the spine of the book so that he doesn't openly
reach for her. Instead, he gives in a little bit and lets the backs of his fingers intentionally
brush against Olivia. He wants to throw away the damned journal so he can see it play out; he
wants to watch when he touches her. He wants to press his skin into hers and fuck, this is why.
This is why he doesn't let himself think about this. It's too much from so little and he's so
damned aroused that he can't breathe in the stifling heat.

And then the contact is broken again. He waits, staring. He waits for the blessed heat of her
against the mangled mess of his knuckles. He's hard just from this and he...
The inhale never comes. He closes his eyes. He knows. He knows. Olivia is holding her
breath. He can practically feel her rapid pulse jump the space between his fingers and her
stomach. He should just move the book. Move his hand. Apologise. He can't look at her and
he can't move, because God help him he wants her so badly that it fucking hurts. Even his
temples are now pounding.

Elliot grips the journal so hard that he's sure his knuckles are white. Everything inside of him
is lit up, and he thinks that this is why it's dangerous. He's got no control. None. If he could
just lift his head and open his eyes, he could at least say he was sorry. He's so, so sorry.
But without warning, the heat is back. He surprisingly feels her skin against his hand, and
he's sliding along the reveal of it before he can stop himself. Only he isn't chasing it this time,
instead she's there, refusing to exhale, nearly, nearly encouraging him. Giving to him.
Elliot opens his eyes. Beneath the book, he turns his hand over.

He can feel Olivia's breaths become shallow, rushed. His palm opens across her stomach and
every inch of her is smooth, as if untouched. His fingertips slip under the edge of the fitted
shirt and the pad of his thumb reaches the dip of her belly button. He traces it, and his mouth
wants to follow the outline. He finally lifts his chin, turning his head to look at her, wondering
what he will see.

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Olivia's eyelids are lowered, and she's gazing at him unflinchingly through the haze of her
lashes. He doesn't know if it's the sun that is giving her the drowsy, heated look she is
wearing, but he suspects that she is fully awake. He risks everything. Looking right at her,
Elliot rubs his fingers across her stomach again. It's a slow, slow drag. He feels her breath
hitch and he watches as Olivia's lips part in the faintest nod to surprise. Despite the burn of
the sun, her skin becomes dotted with goose flesh and she nearly flinches.

Olivia doesn't blink.

"You looking for something?" she murmurs huskily.
The corner of his mouth lifts in a smile. He's dying, but she's not giving him reason to believe
it wasn't worth it.
"Think I found it," he grins.

And then before she can think too much about it, he stands, taking the journal and closing it,
praying she doesn't realise just how aroused he is.
"You got five minutes to grab a beer, then we're playing Frisbee," he informs her. His voice
is too low. It's a giveaway, he thinks.
"Game on," she says without missing a beat. One eyebrow arches, and he can tell by her
expression that she thinks she will win. Just like that, he adds forgiveness to the list of the
things Olivia Benson has given him.
***

She isn't herself.

It's the only way to explain it. She doesn't know who this is who has taken over, but she can't
fight it, doesn't want to. There is an exhilaration inside of her that is stronger than the fear, at
least for now. There is something new within her, something untouched and burgeoning. She
didn't run and he didn't and maybe for just one day the world will not fall apart around them.
The world makes sense, if only for an afternoon.

She looks up at the sun, and despite her sunglasses she needs to shield her eyes. The heat is
melting her skin and she likes the way it feels. She doesn't have the urge to shiver or hide or
duck into the corners. She doesn't feel dark and empty. She doesn't feel the filth or the
nightmares. She's outside, in the heavy, sun-saturated air and she can feel the energy of the
coming storm. She's revitalised. Of course, this is all ridiculous. Perfect. At least for now. To
her left the Atlantic tosses and swells and she doesn't think about reality. To her the water is

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perfectly clean, unmarred. It is timeless and it doesn't stop moving just because the skies will
soon darken. It plays with the shoreline, and the ocean feels like it is a living, breathing thing.
You want him.

She shakes her head, trying to clear it. Of course she feels like his hand has forever branded
her skin, but she is trying to focus.
"Ready?" Elliot calls from twenty feet away.
His voice only partially carries. He's got the Frisbee, and they are completely absurd. Or
maybe this isn't the absurdity at all, but the normalcy. People do this, cops do this. They hang
out and they drink beer and they play childhood games. They laugh, and the world doesn't
judge them for moving past the brutality they have seen. Maybe, just maybe, they deserve a
day like this. You let him touch you.

She isn't wearing the responsibility today. Not today. At least not for today. Olivia smiles at
him. She stops thinking. She's probably grinning, and her beer is probably getting warm on
the patio and her knees have sand on them still because the last time he threw the Frisbee,
she'd been forced to dive for it. Nothing matters. There is music blaring from the patio, and
Elliot is dropping back to send the plastic disc into the air. He takes this game so damned
seriously. Of course she does too and hell if she'll let him win. It's up then, coming towards
her, only she needs one last look at him. He's wearing red swimming trunks and a backwards
Yankees hat and he's dropped his t-shirt into the sand. She can see the hard slash of his
eyebrows even from here because he isn't wearing his sunglasses. He's glimmering, the
shifting, sweat-slicked muscles of his tanned chest catching the light. He's powerful,
stunning and for the afternoon, he is hers. Hers.

"Olivia!"
Her name is faint as it carries across the distance and it's drowned out by the rush of the
ocean. He is laughing. Laughing. Then he is shaking his head in amused disbelief because she
looked at him for too long and there is no possible way she's gonna catch up to the Frisbee
now. It's moving past her, arcing to her right and she should have had a running start if she
was going to go after it. Olivia tries anyways. She never gives up. Only it's a terrible toss and it
catches the wind and does what it wants to. She sees where it's heading, and it's gonna go
over the thigh-high, partially-leaning and rather pathetic wire fence that surrounds the
neighbours patio. She watches the thing land, right in between two parched rosebushes. She
is breathing hard, and her skin is damp with the exertion.

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There is an old woman sleeping on a lounge chair a few feet away on the patio. Her husband
sleeps on the chair next to her. He's got a hat over his face and she can hear him snoring. The
woman's skin is dark brown and wrinkled, yet still covered in thick tanning crème. She can't
wake them. It's ridiculous. Ridiculous. She almost bursts into laughter. You can't breathe
when he touches you. Olivia looks over her shoulder and Elliot is grinning widely at her. He
nods towards the patio.

"Go get it," he mouths.

The old man lets out a sound that is a cross between a snore and a cough and his hat shifts.
She can't wake them. She can't. The cherry red plastic taunts her from three feet away. She
looks back at Elliot, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head. Admit it. This is the best
time you've ever had. Elliot makes a motion to her hip, where she normally clips her badge.
Then he shoos her forward. She knows what he's saying, the brute that he is. She's a cop,
she's let herself into a million places where she shouldn't have been - quietly stepping over
the fence shouldn't be any big deal.

But she's not a cop. Not right now. Right now she's just encroaching on her sleeping
neighbours. His neighbours. Something like that. Having a crush isn't wrong. Letting said
crush get away with things is. Olivia promptly gives him the finger. Elliot laughs so hard that
he has to bend over. His hands are on his knees and what a jerk, what a jerk but she's
laughing too and trying not to make a sound. Fine. So he's a sexy jerk.

She gingerly steps over the fence and onto their patio. The searing concrete burns the soles of
her bare feet and she's more afraid of waking an old couple than she is of hunting an armed
suspect in a dark warehouse, and that's probably wrong on so many levels. Then it occurs to
her. Not a cop today. Not his partner for the moment. She's got the Frisbee in her hand then,
and she's trying to climb back over the wire fence without knocking it over when the old
woman grumbles from behind her.

"Got a door to the gate," she grouses irritably. "Try it next time."
But Olivia is over the fence and she's caught Elliot's eyes and he seems proud of her. She's
got the contraband. She looks back and the woman's eyes are still closed and Olivia is
probably losing her touch. She used to be so good at breaking and entering. Out here she
can't even steal back her own Frisbee without getting caught. She gets Elliot back by sending
her next toss wide to his right, straight towards the ocean. Unfortunately he's fast as hell.
When he heads straight for the water without stopping, she exhales in disappointment.
If you lose, you can always poison him with the lasagna to even the score.

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She grins and for a moment she is just like everyone else. Satisfied with the plan to get him
back, Olivia decides that she might as well enjoy the view. Elliot tosses his hat onto the sand
behind him as his feet hit the water. Without hesitating, he dives after the Frisbee and into the
ocean.

For one day, time stands still.

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124
 Chapter Thirteen

H
e's used to the storms out here. He's not surprised anymore about how quickly they
roll in. He's no longer in awe of how resolutely the thick atmosphere can lay cover to
the sun. As surely as the afternoon yields to the heavy demands of evening, daylight
has now bowed to the coming rain.

It's barely five o'clock, but the black clouds are visible at the edge of the sea. They look like a
mountain range on the watery horizon, solid and imposing. The winds have just begun to take
on sound, and he latches the last of the shutters closed so that the wooden shields will protect
the sunroom windows from succumbing to the storm. Above him the sky is a gradually
darkening grey, as if warning them about what is to come. Elliot looks around the patio, and
he's done what he can to protect the furniture. The lounge chairs are stacked and tied down;
the table and grill are locked together by a metal chain. He's pulled down the umbrella that
sits over the small table and he's brought in some firewood. Despite the month and the heat of
the day, the night will become surprisingly cold and he's used to losing power in the worst of
the thunderstorms.

A gust of wind whips through his t-shirt and the thin cotton ripples against him. The waves
have risen, and the swells seem to inflate and sway before they finally pick up speed and rush
at a furious pace towards the shore. Already the debris is piling up at the edge of the
encroaching tide - the sea plants litter the wet shore and the normally smooth sand is
embedded with rocks and broken shells. Elliot looks upwards, wondering how much time
they have left before it's upon them. By his best guess the clouds are still moving slowly, and
while that will buy them a few hours, it also means the storm will linger above them longer
than expected, and the forecast had already called for it to last well into the following day.
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He doesn't mind it. After a while the sun becomes monotonous. He can think of a thousand
things that would be worse than locking the doors and waiting out the rain inside with Olivia.
Satisfied that they are prepared, he pulls open the screen door, once again feeling the snaking
winds that slide past him and into the house. The door slams shut prematurely, and he has to
open it again to close the outer door first. There is a nearly ominous feel to the pressurisation
of the air, as if this will be a particularly unpredictable storm.

Now fully inside, he can smell the sautéing garlic. By the time he rounds the short hallway and
makes his way to the kitchen, he can hear the rustling of pots and pans over the gentle sounds
of a rock ballad playing from the stereo in the living room. He stops short, hovering at the
edge of the doorway into the kitchen. In front of him, the kitchen has been transformed. What
had once been white ceramic countertops is now a mess of ingredients. The surface is littered
with cutting boards and herbs, discarded utensils and bowls. He sees empty pasta boxes and a
half sliced loaf of bread. In the midst of it all sits an open bottle of cabernet and a half-filled
wine glass, which is right now resting inside of an empty ceramic baking dish, as if it had last
been set down in a hurry.

Olivia either doesn't know he is watching her, or she doesn't care. Her hips are moving just
the slightest bit to the music, and she's wearing a t-shirt and jeans with nothing on her feet.
She's got some sort of apron tied around her waist, and her hair is loosely pulled up. He finds
himself drawn to the way the perfect column of her neck is revealed to him, and he wants to
wrap the wayward strands of her hair that still fall down around his fingertips. Elliot leans
against the doorway, content to just stand there and watch her. He's seen his ex-wife make
dinner hundreds of times, but it didn't look anything like this. When Kathy had cooked it had
been with the cleanup in mind. She had only taken out what she had needed, and she had
washed and put away after every step in the process. Preparing dinner had always been a
rushed affair, something done as efficiently as possible because there were baths to be taken
afterwards, there were stories to be read, there was homework to be done.

Olivia has a million things going at once, and all of them seem like they are on the verge of
ruin, but she doesn't seem to care. She adds a jar of tomato sauce to the simmering garlic, not
paying any attention to the spattering of the ground beef in another pan, and before she
bothers to turn down the heat on any of it, she stops to lift her wine glass, taking a sip as she
pauses leisurely to survey everything in front of her. Elliot can't help it. He laughs. He loves
the mess. He doesn't care what this ends up tasting like, because watching her do this is
priceless. In typical Olivia fashion, she thinks she has the chaos under control. Olivia doesn’t
even turn around.

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"You better not be laughing at the sight of me cooking, Stabler," she warns, taking another
sip of the wine and seemingly trying to decide what to do next. "Because you have to eat
whatever I make, and I can try my best to make this edible or I can just throw all the shit in at
once and watch you squirm."

It's the little maroon bow at the small of her back that is killing him. Where Olivia found what
is probably one of his mother's old aprons, he has no idea, but the strings of it are tied just
above the waistline to her jeans. It's a ridiculous urge, but he wants to tug on it, undo it. Her
t-shirt is an ungodly shade of hot pink and he can't believe that he's been her partner for all
these years yet she can still be someone he doesn't as yet fully know. He can't keep himself
this far away from her. It's less than three steps and then he's right behind her, nearly
touching her. He can tell by the way Olivia's chin jerks up and she looks over her shoulder at
him that she is surprised by how close he is.

"Need help?" he murmurs.

He can see the flare of recognition in her expression. Olivia's eyes widen, her fingers tighten
on her glass.
"You can drain the pasta."
Something inside of him shifts. It's surprisingly easy in this moment. He had held onto an
expectation that the transition from their life in the precinct to something like this would be a
difficult one, but if anything this feels right. It's not a large kitchen, but they move in sync
around each other, and he doesn't feel crowded. He's not lonely when Olivia is here, and
there is a warmth in the shuttered house right now that all of his months of living here alone
had not managed to accomplish.

Since she's arrived, the house has felt less like some place a life had ended. Instead it feels
new, like a clean slate. He probably looks at her too long, but Olivia doesn't look away. For
the moment she doesn't appear to be afraid of him. She doesn't look like she's lost in her
thoughts, and she doesn't seem like someone who has spent more nights in the company of
nightmares than without. In fact, he catches a slight smile on her face, one that gently lights
her eyes. He knows what is causing it.This moment feels like it should be a secret. It's
something to be put away, locked up, guarded.The same song starts over again on the stereo,
and he reaches for her wine glass.

"CD stuck or are you just a big fan?" Olivia lets go of the glass and watches his mouth as he
takes a sip of it.
"It's a good song. Why ruin a good thing?"

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He doesn't have an answer, but he feels like he needs one. For some reason he wants to show
her a hundred other songs, he wants to make her love at least half of them. But he also feels
like there is time. He thinks about how one day he'll sit on the floor with her and go through
the discs one by one. She'll probably make him listen to horrible theme songs from every
movie she's ever seen, and he'll make her listen to oldies from Zeppelin and Steely Dan.
For now he's content to simply stand next to her in the kitchen. He sets the wine glass onto
the counter in a place they can both reach for it, and then pulls the simmering pasta off of the
stove, turning down the heat beneath the meat.

Next to him, he could swear Olivia is humming the words as she dices a green pepper. They
work in silence and every now and then he looks up and out the small kitchen window,
catching sight of the clouds in the distance. He feels the storm bearing down on them, but this
is the calm before it. There is a stillness in the air, in him, even as Olivia sways just slightly. He
refills the wine glass they are sharing, and she stirs the sauce, adding freshly chopped basil.
He preheats the oven and she lathers butter onto the fresh slices of bread. The song plays
again. And again.

A gust of wind rattles the storm window in front of him, but it's not going to break. It's one he
replaced in the winter, one he should have replaced a long time ago for his mother so that the
drafts wouldn't slip into the kitchen in the cold months. It's warm now though, and he feels
some measure of satisfaction at least that Olivia doesn't even look up in concern about the
weather outside.

"You ready?" she finally asks, rinsing her hands in the sink.
All of the ingredients for the lasagna are now ready, and all that is left to do is the layering
before it goes in to bake. Despite the storm outside, Olivia's eyes are clear, almost bright.
The shadows - the ache that has become so familiar on her - seems to have receded. The urge
to say things to her hits him, and he wants to use this evening as evidence for the case he wants
to make. He needs to make sure that she is right here with him. That she is paying attention to
what this feels like. Instead Elliot nods.
"Yeah." He knows how to do this, but this is her show. "Tell me what you want me to do."

A lock of her hair falls out of the clip and forward, sliding across her cheek as she reaches for
the pan. When Olivia straightens, he can't help himself. It's blocking his view of her profile
from where he stands, and she doesn't seem to be making a move to fix it. Elliot reaches out,
using his fingertips to trap the strands, to control them. He wants to tell her he loves her hair
like this. He wants to tell Olivia that no matter how hard she had tried to look tough by
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chopping it off for so many years, that he wasn't fooled. He wants to pull the clip out of her
hair and he wants her to let him. Instead he simply tucks it back, behind her ear. Olivia stills
mid-motion and he can now watch her as she lowers her lashes. It's moments like this in
which he forgets what she looks like with a weapon in her hand, he forgets that she's a cop.
She's just a woman, and he's falling for her.

"It's gonna be good," he says under his breath, his thumb skimming her earlobe before he
finally lets his hand fall away.
Olivia doesn't deny it. Maybe she is telling herself he is talking about the food. He lets her
believe in whatever it is that will preserve the moment. Her smile is slow to form, but when it
does, she looks almost proud of herself. She chances a quick look at him, and he thinks it is
amazing that she can stare down a suspect, but with him her glances are tentative, almost
hesitant. As if he's gonna see too much if she lingers. Elliot does what she tells him to, and
she's so sure of herself as they layer the ingredients that he doesn't point out that she's
forgotten to add the browned meat that still sits in its pan on the stove. He can almost feel her
growing confidence in the mess that surrounds them. He pours another glass of wine for them
when theirs is finished and hopes that she doesn't notice what she's left out.

She doesn't. Instead Olivia steps back from the now-full pan, dusting her hands off on the
apron before reaching behind her and untying it. Her chin lifts, and he knows that look. He's
seen it on her when her hunch pans out, when she knows she's got a suspect right where she
wants them. He's been faced with this expression when she's right and he's wrong, or when
he'd get a shit assignment from their captain compared to the plum one assigned to her. He
knows what is coming.

"I cooked," Olivia declares, reaching for the fresh glass of wine. "You clean."
Her eyebrows lift as she catches his eyes, as if daring him to protest or point out that he'd
helped. It's best just to agree with her. Elliot knows this too. A dozen years haven't amounted
to nothing.
"Fair enough," he says, trying to keep a straight face.

If she is surprised by his acquiescence, she doesn't show it for more than a split second. She
tosses the apron over the edge of the sink, and then she's gone with her glass, off to do God
knows what. He could swear to God that her t-shirt said Jersey Babe on it, but she moved so
fast that he can't be sure. Couldn't be. When Olivia is safely out of the kitchen, Elliot peels
back the edge of the foil that covers the pan he needs to put in the oven. If he's careful, he can
add the ground beef beneath the top layer of noodles and knowing Olivia, she'll never realise

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she had forgotten to add it. For now, the storm still lingers in the distance, and the rain has yet
to fall.
***

August 3, 1970

Suhaili,
I need you to know that I am sorry. When I tell you this, I hope you will realise that it was a
mistake. It was just a stupid mistake but no one believes me. You should see the way they look
at me. Their eyes are accusing, and I know they are talking about me. Whispering.
They've locked me up because of it. This place is called Creedmoor, but I know what it is. Even
with its freshly painted white walls and the sun coming in the windows, I know this is a
prison. They've trapped me here in a land of the soulless. Two weeks, they said. Just stay two
weeks at least. I told them I didn't want to come here but Joe said I have no choice. He said if I
don't come here, I should never come back home. I almost agreed. I did. They've already
taken Elliot from me, so what is there to go back to?
All because of a mistake.
They're trying to make me talk to them, and tonight they say I need to be good and take what
they give me again. I'll take it. Fine. But I won't keep the poison in me.
I've learned to throw up quietly.
I asked for you, I asked to bring you here with me. Please forgive me, but I didn't want to be
alone. You do understand, right?

Bernie

Her throat doesn't work. She tries to swallow, just to clear the knot, but it doesn't ease the
strain. Olivia sits on her bed, the bedside lamp on because her windows have been darkened
by the shutters, and she is gripping Bernie's journal. She can smell the lasagna beginning to
bake, and the wind is finally starting to pick up. It's not bad yet outside, but the eerie stillness
has passed, even if the rain has still not made an appearance.

Elliot's hushed voice filters through the open doorway to her bedroom. He's probably in the
living room, and by the easy, coaxing sound of his words, she knows that he is on the phone
talking to Eli. Olivia reaches for her wine glass and takes a sip, letting her head fall back onto
the headboard behind her. Her feet are planted on the bedspread, her knees drawn up and she
closes her eyes for a moment. She listens to him ask his child question after question, thereby
encouraging Eli to talk.

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The sound lulls her and there is a warmth in the house right now that she has never before
experienced in any place before. Elliot's tone is low, soothing and he laughs gently before
lapsing into silence. She imagines that Eli is telling his father about preschool or a visit to the
zoo. Or maybe he's weaving a tale about an afternoon spent with one of his siblings. She
thinks about how fiercely Elliot loves his children, how they were born with parents who will
fight vociferously on their behalf. She understands Elliot's overwhelming need to control
their environment and experiences. He's seen the worst in the world and he protects them the
only way he knows how.

Olivia's wine glass is still nearly full because she is sipping it slowly. The liquid is rich and
thick, and she can almost make out the undercurrents of blackberry, vanilla and oak in the
taste. The journal is in her lap, and the glass in her hand sits close to her chest. She keeps
listening to Elliot. He calls Eli little buddy and champ and it is so cliché that it's perfect.
It's becoming harder and harder to read the journal entries. She's dealt with people afflicted
with bipolar disorder before, but she's never watched it unfold like this.
She is scared to find out what his mother did to prompt her stay at the
facility, and she wonders how much Elliot remembers of any of it. She
wonders if he relives these things when he watches his own children, if
he knows how incredible it is that he has managed to break the cycle.
He'd been given every reason to withdraw from the world around
him, yet he'd taken it on instead. His protective instincts aren't
selective, his sense of right and wrong never blurs.

Even sitting in the next room, Elliot still manages to be larger than life when
she pictures him. He talks to Eli about baseball and his new tricycle and he
tries to sound stern when he reminds his child not to use crayons on the wall. He asks about
swimming lessons and he sounds amazed because with Dickie's help, apparently Eli now has
a new pet frog. Olivia's chest is heavy and it hurts, but she doesn't mind it. It's not a
cavernous ache inside her anymore, instead she feels like there ’s so much within that she just
needs to learn how to process it all.

August 7th, 1970

S-
I feel like they don't hear me. They sit with me now, after they give me those pills. They stay so
long that my bones become heavy and I don't feel like arguing anymore. I wait for the

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afternoons - like now, when I am in-between their visits. For a little while at least I start to feel
like myself, but then dinner comes and they make me take more.
I say to them again and again that those things that they give me aren't working. Surely they
don't want me to drown all the time? They give me those things and I feel like blankets have
been put on top of me. Piles of them, until I can't get out from underneath. Until I can't breathe
and I can't see and my skin feels like it is covering someone else. I am inside of me. I am! I am
trapped in a
dark box in this chest and I yell and yell only my mouth won't form the words. Everyone
around me is moving quickly but my legs are so heavy that I can do nothing but sit and watch
them go.
Joe doesn't come. He hasn't been to see me once. I asked the nurse and she said he was busy,
cleaning up after the fire, getting the house ready for me to come home. It wasn't a large fire,
don't worry. It was just a bit of the kitchen, and I told Joe it was because our stove was so old.
He said only crazy people boil oil in a fry pan, and only a loony would take a nap on the
couch while it warmed. He said that's why I had to go away. But he sent Elliot away too and I
don't know what we've done that he doesn't want either of us. My boy wanted French fries
and I was tired, and the whole world is acting like we did something wrong.
I know Elliot won't blame me though. They told me he was the one who woke me up by
shaking me. I think I remember his little hands patting my face, but I was a little out of it. For
such a little fire, it caused so much smoke. Silly thing.
They're coming again. I can hear them. They look at me like they are better than me. They all
do. But they don't know me, Suhaili. They don't know me like you do.

Love your friend,

B

"How long you wanna keep the lasagna in for?"

Olivia is startled, and she looks up to see Elliot leaning in the doorway to her room. He must
have been standing there for awhile, because he looks a little too comfortable in his current
position. His arms are folded over his chest and his ankles are crossed, and he's added a
zippered sweatshirt to what he was wearing before. There is an immediate need in her to make
Elliot walk into the room. Her instincts are at odds with what her brain is telling her. There
are warning bells going off in her brain that she's too close, she's too comfortable here, but
she can't seem to do anything about it. He's so solid as he lazily stands there, watching her.
The frantic, stilted life they know in Manhattan seems like it is years in the past, not months.
She's been here so long that this no longer seems jarring to her. Instead, it's the years of him
going home to his wife that seem impossible to recall. They were different people back then,

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and it was so long ago. They had been young and invincible, and every case had been given
their all. She knows she isn't the same anymore, and she sometimes feels guilty about it. Her
ability to empathise with the victims has dulled a little, her belief that justice will prevail isn't
as strong. She wonders if she's half the cop she once was, and she sometimes wants to
apologise to everyone because there are moments when she simply doesn't have it in her
anymore.

"Liv?"
She hasn't answered him, and the way he says her name is nothing more than a rumble from
the back of his throat. He's looking at her now in a way that makes her wonder if it's the wine
or his eyes that are causing her skin to heat from the inside out. She recalls Elliot's hand on
her earlier and she almost shivers. She doesn't know what had thrown her off more - the heat
of his palm on her stomach or just the fact that Elliot wanted to touch her in the first place.
"Needs about an hour," she answers quietly.
He nods once and then straightens a little bit, still leaning on the door frame.
"You up for a drive?"

She's curious now, because the storm is coming in and she had expected that they were
bunkered down for the night. But if he's asking her to go somewhere then it's not without
reason, and a little rain never hurt anyone.
Olivia smiles at him.
"Sure."
He looks relieved for some reason.
"Grab a sweatshirt and wear something warm. You'll need sneakers, too. I'll meet you out
front."

She wants to ask questions, that's just in her nature. But something tells her that if Elliot
wanted her to know where they were going, he would have told her up front. Olivia sets down
the journal on the bed and swings her legs off the bed.
"I'll turn off the oven."
Elliot glances at the kitchen as if debating whether or not it would be fine they left it on while
they were gone. She sees it then. She sees the hesitation. He wants to leave it on so they'll
have food ready when they get back, and it would probably be just fine. But there is something
in his expression that tells her he does remember. He remembers too much.

"El," she prompts softly, making him look back at her again. "It's fine." Her voice is
probably too breathy to give him any assurance, but her chest is contracting again.
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"I'm not that hungry yet in any case."
He doesn't know that she knows. He's got no way to know what his mother had written on the
pages or how far along in the journal Olivia is. But he seems grateful in any case. Elliot blinks
once, slowly, as if willing something away. And then he's back. Focused, as if he's got
something up his sleeve.
"Meet you at the truck."

She sits there for a moment after he goes, and she takes one last sip of her wine. She pulls a
sweatshirt out of her new bag of clothes and jeans out of her duffel, and she grabs her sneakers
from where they sit next to the bedroom door. She has no idea what Elliot is planning, but it
doesn't matter. The one thing that hasn't changed over the years is that she'd follow him
anywhere and into any situation. And if it was dangerous, she'd do what she could to walk in
before him. Of course, he usually somehow manages to go first.
***

He had traded the Jeep for something more conducive to having a baby right after Eli was
born. He'd wanted something big, something sturdy. Something that would win the battle in
any accident if - God forbid - his child should ever be in a car again when the worst happened.
He'd bought a Tahoe, and he had Kathy's car traded in towards an Explorer. It might have
seemed paranoid, a knee-jerk reaction to the accident that surrounded Eli's birth, but he'd
almost lost everything once and he wasn't about to risk it again.

Maybe it's irrational, especially considering the dangerous thing Olivia does for a living, but
he feels good about having her strapped into this truck right now. They sit high off the
ground, and he realises that after eight months away from the job he feels more protective
towards her now, not less. He's never told her that in the nightmares he'd had after the
accident that he'd imagined losing her. He's also never told her that when Fin had come for
him to give him the news of the accident that Elliot had only found his breath again when he
remembered that Olivia was with Kathy. If anyone could pull everyone through, it would be
Olivia. If anyone would survive, he had faith in Olivia.

She is now curled up in the passenger seat as they drive down the straightaway of Long Beach
Boulevard, heading north towards Barnegat Light. The fog has rolled in ahead of the storm,
and it feels like the clouds have dropped as low as the dampening road beneath their tires. Or
maybe it's just the steam rising from the scorched pavement as it cools. There is the slightest
drizzle falling now, and even in the closed car he can smell the unique scent of a summer rain.
The boulevard is normally busy, surrounded on both sides by motels and gas stations, taverns

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and nail shops. But this evening the streets are nearly deserted, and the glow of the street
lamps are a series of hazy, illuminated moons that pass by. The wind occasionally makes a
street sign or a stoplight sway, and soon the rain will sweep right to left across these streets as
it rushes in from the ocean.

Olivia says nothing, and her head is relaxed against the seat. She's lost in thought, watching
the town pass by outside of her window as they makes their way north. He wants to know what
she's thinking about, but he's scared that she will ask him the same question in return. He
can't answer her, not yet. Not when he hasn't figured out how to tell her. He knows he has to
though, because what he is doing isn't fair. He just wants Olivia to want him first, before he
tells her the truth that he finally knows. He needs her to want him. Maybe even love him.
That's the only chance he's got.

He wonders what she'd do if he just came out and told her that he sees nothing without her.
He wonders how she'd react if he told her that he'd be a dad, but he'd never look for more if
she walks away. He'd had a rocky childhood, and his marriage hadn't worked out, but he's
had the world compared to her. She won't believe anyone easily if they promised her a happily
ever after. Not even him.

Olivia's hair falls over her cheek as her head tips to the side, and Elliot wants to touch her
again. There are times when the idea of her in his bed makes him groan aloud in pain, in need.
But there are also times - like now - when he just wants to touch her, hold her hand. He thinks
about it, debates it. If he reached over and pulled her hand off of her lap, would she recoil? If
he slid his fingers in between hers and closed his palm around hers, would Olivia stiffen,
withdraw? It's the possibility that she would let him, that she would squeeze back slightly and
leave it be that drives him crazy.

The rain is a mist on the windshield, and the radio is a soft hum. The wipers slip across the
glass in a slow beat. He wishes he knew how to do this. How to take them from the past to this,
how to make her see that he's no longer someone she has to take care of. He wants Olivia to
let him show her what it's like to be looked after. If anyone has ever deserved the security of
family, it's her. Whatever she is thinking about makes her flinch, and all of a sudden Olivia
rolls her head so that she can look at him. He can feel her stare at him, but she doesn't say
anything. He presses the brake, and the truck rolls to a stop at the red light. He looks at her
across the shadows of the storm.

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Olivia says nothing, but she doesn't look away. Her eyes are wide open and her breaths are
deep. Elliot sees nothing but the fear in her irises, the tangle of her eyelashes. She's telling
him something by looking at him like this. I don't know what's happening here. He hears her.
I'm scared. He knows. He is too. I can't stop this right now. He is infinitely grateful.
She doesn't blink, and maybe it's the strain that makes her eyes remind him of the black
pavement. It's not quite wet, but it's waiting to just be buried beneath the coming flood.
Trust me, he wants to say. Olivia. It's me.

But then he thinks that in this moment, she doesn't know everything. He hasn't been entirely
honest with her, and until he tells her he doesn't deserve her trust. He's kept her here this
long out of his own selfishness; even if he likes to tell himself it's out of hope. The light
changes and he looks away. They keep heading north on the empty boulevard.

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 Chapter Fourteen

H
e turns off the main road, and she knows they have only been driving for ten minutes,
maybe fifteen, but she feels like she's been through years while sitting next to him.
She's changed. Something tonight has changed her. Maybe it's always been
building, maybe this is just some tipping point, but she's different tonight than she's ever
been before. She's worn a layer on her over the last few years and she doesn't know what it
was made of. Resignation maybe, self-protection probably. Elliot is peeling the layer off of
her, and she's not sure she likes what she sees.

She's scared. She's terrified. Elliot is making her want things that she had thought she had
long since buried. She'd given up on having a home, she'd forgotten that as a kid she'd
dreamed of gardens and simplicity and the quiet of an empty street. She'd told herself that
some people were meant to do a job, and that she shouldn't fight her life's trajectory. She was
okay with the idea that she would never be a mother; she had decided that marriage wasn't for
everyone. But tonight Elliot is stripping her. He's not confronting her, he's not challenging
her. He's not even touching her - not as much as she wants him to - but he's showing her.
He's showing her just how much she's been lying to herself, and he's doing it in a way that is
disarming her. She doesn't know why but he's gentle with her in a way that is humbling. To
watch a man like Elliot tread lightly for anything is a powerful thing. To watch him tread
lightly for her is leaving her shaken, exposed.

She's not sure that she wants to know who she is beneath the shield. She wants to clutch
tightly to the idea that she had come to terms with being alone, that it was the best thing for
her. She wants to believe that her solitude was an active choice. If he shows her that she had
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just given up inside, that the choice was actually just defeated acceptance - there will be a
price to pay. If she's been denied despite her wants, then she'll grieve for what she will miss
out on in this lifetime. Looking in the mirror will be a painful, brutal thing.
She's tired of telling herself that the isolation is for the best.

There is a growing fear in her that when this week is done, the depth of her want is going to be
crippling. She can steel herself against Elliot's rage; she can dismiss the physical attraction.
She can insulate herself when the man in front of her is a husband before he is her partner.
But she had loved him already as her friend; it wouldn't be that hard to fall for the rest.
Olivia tells herself that she hasn't already fallen. It's this mantra that keeps her from running.
She tells herself that she could walk away at any time. She tells herself that back in Manhattan
surely it won't feel like this to be next to him. It's the setting. It's only the setting, and when
they are once again sitting a sedan on a stakeout one night, she won't feel needy like this.

Elliot turns the truck down a side road, one that is

made of two lanes of gravel separated by a foot-
wide lane of unkempt grass. On either side of
them are overgrown weeds, some so high that
they are as tall as the truck itself. The vehicle jerks
a little bit in the ruts and Olivia can see the way
Elliot's hand grips the steering wheel. He
manoeuvres confidently on the rough terrain with
just one hand; as if he doesn't even feel the way
the truck pulls and bounces. And then the foliage
clears and she can see straight through to the
ocean. It's laid out in front of her, and the clouds
seem to skim the surface in some places. Olivia
sits up straight in her seat, because seemingly
rising out of the water is a lighthouse whose top
half is painted a dark, brick red. It towers over the
shore, and its light is actually on. The beacon
shines atop the structure, turning slowly. It's
mystical, cutting through the fog as if standing
guard.

"Jesus," she exhales, tucking her hair behind her ear. "They still use these things?"

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Next to her, Elliot gives her a quick glance and a smile before turning his eyes back to the
road.
"Town just raised the money to get that light on again last year. Was out for over fifty years."
Olivia's hands grip the edge of her seat as she strains to see the top of it. They're getting
closer to it and there is no one around. There is not a single car on the makeshift road and
ahead there is a small parking lot that also sits empty.
"How long has it been here?"
The truck finally enters the clearing that serves as the lot, and without hesitation Elliot keeps
driving, straight towards the huge jetty on which the lighthouse sits.
"They lit it up last year, a hundred and fifty years to the day after it was first put into use."

They are so close to it that she can't see the top while sitting in the truck, and she wants to get
out even in the drizzle and get a good look. The beacon illuminates the sky in front of it, as if
it's in a standoff with Mother Nature, defying the power of the storm. It's regal, she thinks.
Stoic and resolute. For the moment everything else is forgotten. "What do they call it?" she
asks, and she wonders if it's open to the public. By the existence of the adjacent parking lot,
she's assuming that people have to be allowed in at some point. She wants to come back
tomorrow or the day after and go inside.

"Welcome to Barnegat Lighthouse," he says quietly, almost reverently. Elliot pulls into a
spot right up against the base of the structure, and to her right is a concrete walkway that
seems to lead into the building. He kills the engine and the lights before he turns to her. In
this moment she can see hints of what he would have been like as a boy. He's proud of himself
as he reaches into the pocket of his sweatshirt. Then his eyes are back on her, and they are
clearer, bluer than they've been in years. From his hand, Elliot dangles a set of keys that have
nothing to do with the truck. And just like that, Olivia goes back years with him. She's not
forty and half-gone. She's not jaded; she's hasn't seen it all.

"You have the keys?" she breathes. For some reason, her chest is pounding. It seems
impossible, all of it. Surreal. "How?"
Elliot's self-satisfaction is evident in every inch of his grin and it's such a familiar sentiment
on him that she almost laughs.
"Jack. They've got a committee that runs this place, and some part-time help. But he's the
unofficial keeper. Has been for years."

So that's why he'd gone over to Jack and Gladys' earlier in the day. The fact that he'd planned
this takes her breath away. She doesn't know what the hell they are doing or who the hell they

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are in this moment, but she doesn't care. This is one of those moments that she will
remember in vivid detail for the rest of her life. Olivia is out of the truck before him and she
throws her hood up over her head as she closes her door. As she waits for Elliot to the lock the
truck, for one moment she turns her face upwards and closes her eyes.

The mist lands on her cheeks. It's all going to come down soon, she knows this. But then
Olivia opens her eyes, and the beacon has turned the sky above her into a warm yellow haze.
Strong enough to bring ships in, she thinks. Even in a storm.
***

He's been out here before. It's been maybe a half dozen times that he's come out here over
the months. It's how Jack had first made an introduction. Elliot had been closed up in the
house for two weeks after the funeral last November before the older man had knocked on the
door. Jack had given Elliot his condolences about his mother but he hadn't lingered on the
subject. Instead he'd been straight to the point. There was a mechanism in Old Barney's
beacon that would rotate out the bulbs when one of them burned out, but they must have had
a defective bulb waiting in the wings because on last night's rotation the new light never
turned on. If Elliot could just help him wrench off the top of the turntable, Jack would be able
to get in there and replace the bulb manually.

Elliot had wanted to say no. He'd been intentionally isolated in the house for days, and his
mother's death was still too recent. But there was something in the simple way that Jack had
asked. The man was probably nearing eighty, but he stood tall. His back was straight, his
shoulders were broad and he still seemed strong. Elliot would eventually learn that Jack had
served in the Korean War and in Vietnam, and he'd later come to realise that Jack could have
easily handled the turntable himself, but in that moment he hadn't wanted the old man to go
alone.

Elliot remembers his first glimpse of the lighthouse. He'd never had an emotion about a
building before, but there was something gripping about the way it had persevered on the
shoreline for more than a century. It wasn't the recipient of a huge number of donations, but
it got what it needed to go on. Jack told him of the keeper's mansion that had once been built
alongside it, and how that had washed into the sea shortly after it was built. He told Elliot
about how the first version of the lighthouse had been torn down back in the mid-nineteenth
century and this one had taken its place. Jack talked about how Old Barney was four times
taller than the original, and as they had climbed the more than two hundred stairs that led to
the top, Jack had described how the Fresnel lenses worked.

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When they had reached the very top and Jack had taken him outside onto the grated deck
around the beacon, Elliot had stood still. The day had been surprisingly bright and clear. The
brilliant sun had done nothing to warm the frigid November sea air or to calm the breeze, but
it hadn't mattered. The cold air had swept mercilessly through his lungs, the ocean had been
endless and he had stood on top of it all as if it were his. It was a kingdom in a glance. The old
man had stood next to him as they surveyed everything that sprawled out infinitely beneath
them. Jack's voice had been thick, roughened by the years, the wars, the icy bits of the wind.

Keepers used to talk of the ships as if they owned them. If the vessels came close to the
shoreline of a lighthouse, the keepers would take on responsibility. Didn't matter if the captain
had kept the ship out there too long in a storm, or if the crew had lost their way. If that boat
suffered or sank, the keepers would take on the responsibility of its loss.

Elliot's eyes had burned then, and Jack had left him be. He'd stared so hard at the horizon
that he hadn't realised Jack had gone inside to give him space. It had been the first time he'd
let himself openly grieve for his mother. He doesn't know how long it was before he'd gone in
too, looking for Jack, but when he did he'd been grateful that the older man hadn't said a
word of what he'd seen. Then again men didn't speak of these things. Of course the bulb
hadn't been broken after all. Not even close.

The rain has picked up just a bit now, and he can no longer qualify it as just a mist. It's a light,
easy waterfall, the kind that is deceptive because it can too easily be interrupted by a sudden
downpour. Olivia rushes up short sidewalk and towards the main door that leads into the
lighthouse. He's right behind her and she's hiding half under her hood. Her sweatshirt is
absorbing the rain for now, but he doesn't want her to get cold. Jack's keys are ready in his
hand, and as soon as he reaches the door Olivia steps aside, waiting.

When he's got the entrance open, he holds the door open for her, and she looks up at him for
a second as she walks in. Her hair is curling around her face, filling the hollows between her
and the cover of the hood. She presses her lips together and grins, and for a moment Olivia
Benson seems surprisingly shy, but then the moment passes and she's shaking off the rain on
the small utilitarian carpet inside the narrow hallway. The hood comes off and she runs her
fingers through her hair, and Elliot watches as she immediately begins scanning her
surroundings. He knows what she's looking at - beyond the hallway the yellow staircase sits in
the middle of a rounded room. There are framed portraits on the wall of the keepers and
preserved drawings done by the locals. There are recent photographs that show the town

141
gathering last year in celebration of the re-lighting of the beacon and black and white images
that attest to the history of the place. While she takes it all in, he takes her in.

Elliot knows when she finally sets her sights on the yellow steel, twisting staircase. She
doesn't wait; she doesn't turn and ask permission. Olivia is off, almost hurrying towards it.
"We're going up, right?" she throws out, but it's apparently a rhetorical question.
He stands still, and she's on the first stair already when she realises he's not following her.
Her hand grips the matching metal railing as she looks back at him expectantly, as if he is
holding her up.
"There's over two hundred stairs," he teases. "Sure you're up to it?"
Olivia's chin lifts just a little bit, but she doesn't miss a beat.
"Just try and keep up."

And before he can say anything, she's on her way. She's up and out of sight on the spiral
staircase in seconds. By the sound of her sneakers clanging on the stairs he knows Olivia is
not pacing herself. When it comes to her physical limitations she's got no sense of caution,
instead she's using all of her instincts to guard her emotional safety. He follows her, and he
wishes he had answers about how to change things for the better once and for all.
***

Maybe she shouldn't have started out so fast. Like hell she'll slow down, though. Not when
he's keeping pace behind her. The grated stairway is narrow, winding in a steep incline along
the brick walls. Every thirty steps or so there is a small landing that juts out to her right, a
space barely big enough for two people to stand and look down through the utilitarian window
at the shoreline below. She looks up, and through the slats of the stairs she can tell she's
about halfway to the top. She's breathing hard and it feels good to exert herself this way. It
would feel even better if she wasn't so warm beneath her sweatshirt already.

"Liv," Elliot says from below her, his voice echoing in the narrow column. "You tryin' to kill
me?"
She knows he's full of shit. He's irritatingly fit and he could probably take these stairs while
carrying her. He's trying to get her to slow down for her own good, not for his.
"You're getting old, El," Olivia calls back, wondering if he'll hear the extra drag of air she
takes as she taunts him.

He laughs and she's sure he knows she's breathing hard. She makes a mental note to hurt him
when they get to the top. She pushes forwards, upwards, ignoring the small landings that offer
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respite every thirty stairs or so. The only sound is the echoing reverb of her sneakers and his,
creating an incessant rhythm on the metal. It sounds like little kids climbing the stairs of a
slide on the playground, only their footsteps are faster, more assured. This is how they've
always moved - quickly and without hesitation. They've charged into hundreds of apartments,
buildings, and down countless alleys with their guns in hand and a belief that they would win.
When it comes to their jobs, they always think they're gonna win.

Her lungs are burning and Olivia relishes it. She unzips the sweatshirt she has on and she
laughs, having forgotten that she was still wearing the ridiculous Jersey Babe shirt that Gladys
had given her. She is closing in on the top of the lighthouse, and she has to catch her breath.
He will be only seconds behind her and she doesn't want him to catch her huffing and puffing
like an old woman. And then she is all the way to the top, and she's staring at a few closed
doors. There is nowhere to go, no way to get outside. She stands in the circular room and
grabs at air, swiping the sticky tendrils of her hair off of her face. Her cheeks are probably
flushed, but she can't do anything about that now because he's almost at the top too. Olivia
quickly leans her back against the wall and crosses her ankles and folds her arms across her
chest. She pretends to look bored.

"Been waiting awhile," she sighs.

Elliot takes the last few stairs and his eyes are smiling at her even if his lips have settled into a
smirk. The damned man doesn't seem to have lost a beat. "Piece of work," he murmurs
under his breath, finally passing in front of her and taking the keys out again, heading for a
white, wooden door that is locked.
"You love it," Olivia fires back without thinking.

He stops mid-motion, one hand on the doorknob and the other gripping the keys. Elliot looks
back over his shoulder at her, and the way he looks at her steals more air from her chest than
the climb had. She can't look away, she's too drawn to him to remember how to. His jaw is
set, and there is an intensity in his eyes that makes her fists curl, and her fingernails bite into
her palms. She hopes he doesn't notice. Then his gaze lowers and for the briefest of seconds
she wants to fidget against the perusal. She's suddenly conscious of how she looks, how she
must be a mess. She's tucking her hair behind her ear and licking her lower lip before she can
stop herself. He watches the motion, his eyes darkening.

"You look great," Elliot says gruffly.

Before Olivia can react, he's got the door open and he's headed up the next set of stairs that
begin just on the inside of the doorway. These are white-washed and wooden, and they are

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half the size of the stairs they had just been on. She follows him. There are less than a dozen of
them, and he slows at the top. As she comes up behind him, she can see the room in the grey
evening light of the storm.

It's a small loft space, and it's got thick, reinforced windows that face both straight out to the
sea and towards the south side, towards Surf City. The floor is the same weathered wood as
the stairs, but there are a couple of faded Navajo style rugs that are so old and thin that they
almost look stuck to the surface. Elliot walks across to the other end to turn on a table lamp
and it gives the room a soft, yellow light. On one side is a wall full of books that don't look like
they've been moved in decades and facing the largest of the windows are two small sofa chairs.
They are a faded plaid, and the seats are so worn that the fabric is a different colour there than
on the rest of the chair.

"You'd think for a guy pushing eighty that a place with this many stairs wouldn't be his
favourite place to spend his time," Elliot says softly, crossing to turn on the only other light, a
shaded floor lamp that sits next to the bookcase. "But he and Gladys still come up here. She's
always packing sandwiches to come sit up here with him."

Olivia thinks of the bustling ball of energy that was Gladys, and she looks at the two chairs.
She can't imagine the woman just sitting still and looking out of the windows, but she likes
the idea that the woman would do it if it meant spending time with her husband. She tries to
picture the older couple sitting here watching the ocean, and the image comes easily.
What doesn't come are the images of the precinct, the squad room. Even trying to remember
the details of her apartment back in the city seems to be an impossible task. She is rooted to
the spot where she stands. The fear snakes around her. Through her. Everything is changing.
Shifting. Elliot stands facing her now, next to one of the chairs. His back is to the windows, to
the clouds that are thick and dark and nearly upon them. It's almost irreverent the way he
seems to be dismissing the scene behind him.

"Thought you might like to watch the storm come in."

Olivia doesn't hear the rain as it picks up outside. She doesn't hear it hit the thick panes of
the windows; she doesn't hear the wind rattle around them. She hears the rumble of Elliot.
She knows this is dangerous. She wants to tell him that this isn't them but the truth is that she
doesn't even know who she is anymore, so she's got no way to define them. She says nothing.
She can't.
"If you wanna go-" he starts. He seems nervous, as if he is afraid he's done the wrong thing
by bringing her here.

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"No."

It's all she's got. She wants to stay. She can't explain it, but she's unable to even fathom
walking away in this moment. She has never been shocked by the cacophonous moments in
her life. It is the quiet ones that always jar her. Elliot nods once and then he leaves her be. He
turns and faces the windows. His rigid back is to her and she eyes the broad horizontal line of
his shoulders. His sweatshirt is thick and he looks warm. She wants to fill her palms with the
fleece; she knows the fabric would smell like Elliot if she were to bury her face against it.
Olivia wants to touch him. She wants to touch him so much.
The depth of that need terrifies her. Maybe she's spent too much time here, because the man
standing in front of her doesn't remind her of late nights and fluorescent lights. He doesn't
remind her of the vics and coffee gone cold. Now she associates him with this. With dinners
and laughter, with the ocean and this perfect, old lighthouse. He's taken her whole world and
turned it upside down.

Beyond him, there is almost a clear line on the sea between where the storm batters the water
and the places that have not yet been touched. She can see the way the colour of the ocean has
changed. It's a deep indigo, it's a muddled brown. It's churning and twisting, and she is
irrationally worried that it will never again be the clear blue she's come to know. She feels like
there is a reason he's brought her to the lighthouse that extends past the view, the history.
The uncomfortable feeling grows, and she starts to wonder about the invitation he'd extended
to her to come out to the shore in the first place. It wasn't just an escape from the city as he'd
presented it. There's something bigger at play, only she can't put her finger on it.

"What is all this, Elliot?" She hates the desperate, cracking sound of her voice. Maybe she's
just got to let out some of these things that are filling her to the point of suffocation. She's too
full inside and the pressure just keeps building. She just doesn't understand what he's doing,
what she is.
"Storm's nothing," he says, ignoring her. "You oughta see ‘em in winter. Clouds are so
black then that you can't tell day from night."
Olivia closes her eyes, willing herself into a second attempt. She knows he's not telling her
something and the things he hides kill her in the end. They always do. She can't let him do
that to her again.

"Eight months you were gone. Eight months, Elliot. I thought you were falling apart. I did.
And I gave you your space. But you've been out here doing what? Doing this? Taking field
trips to the lighthouse and learning to surf?"
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Her words are sharp against the dim lighting and his silence.Elliot doesn't even turn around.
If anything he stiffens, his presence seeming even larger against the sea beyond. An idea takes
shape in Olivia's head, and if it was not such a painful revelation then she would have been
relieved that finally, something made sense. It wasn't about her at all, this invitation to come
out here was about him. Something inside of her retreats, contracts. Maybe she had believed
that he'd been worried about her while he'd been gone. Maybe she had liked that he'd been
attentive towards her over the last few days. Maybe she had started to think he had missed her,
and this was how he was showing her. She had made a mistake though. Another mistake.
"Is that what this is? You're trying to show me you're alright? That you're doing great? Well,
I'm happy for you. I am. But next time just call and tell me that. You don't have to invite me
out here to-"
"For God's sake, Olivia." Elliot cuts her off, nearly cursing under his hissing breath. But he
still faces the ocean.
She's got nothing. She can't even move past the top of the stairs where she stands. She gets
the sudden sickening feeling that he's going to have to tell her to go, that she won't do it on
her own, even now that she knows why he'd invited her out here. Eight months she'd been on
her own, and it hadn't accomplished anything. She still craves Elliot's presence. She still will
take whatever she can get. She's not proud of herself. Not at all.

"Tell me that you've never wondered."

It's a punch in the gut. It comes so out of left field that Olivia can't believe that she's heard
him right. She feels like he's ripped gravity right out from under her.
"About what?" she breathes, praying she is wrong. But she knows what is coming. She can
see it as clearly as she can see the storm closing in.
"Us." It's the harshest she's heard Elliot be since she'd arrived out here a few days ago. "Tell
me it's never, ever crossed your mind." It sounds like an order. A demand. A challenge that
he already knows she will fail.

Olivia doesn't cry often. In fact it's such a rare thing that she doesn't even know how to do it,
how to start the process, how to stop it. But she knows the urge, and she's got it right now. In
this moment everything changes. One way or another, he's changing everything without
asking her first. Other people can ask them if they've ever considered it, but they don't speak
of it between them. Those are the unspoken rules. She thinks about turning around and
taking the stairs. All of them. She can do it if she really tries. She doesn't know how only
minutes ago she was enjoying the sound of their ascent. How she was teasing him, how her
breath had been stolen by the climb and not by his words. She has to stop this. Better yet, she

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needs to get him back to Manhattan. That was the point of this. To bring him back with her.
They just need to get back on familiar ground. Literally.

"Elliot-"
"Jesus." He seems almost angry and she can tell he's tense by the way he's holding himself.
The back of his neck is thick, and she imagines that she can see the furious pulsing of his
veins. "Say no and lie or say yes and tell me what I already know. But don't stand there and
pretend I've lost my mind."
She's thought about it. She's thought about it too much. She'd worked up the courage to say
something and she'd later talked herself back from the edge. She'd told herself that it's was
okay if it happened and she had convinced herself it was fine if it didn't. She let him so far into
her that the truth is she probably gave up on everything and everyone else. But that was in the
past. She'd given him back to his wife; she'd given him to his youngest child. She had given
him space to get his head together and she'd do it all again if he'd just come back to
Manhattan and let things be the way they used to be. That's all she wants. That's the tangible,
the only demand she's got. She needs the consistency, the dependability of a day in and a day
out with him. She'll get that if he just comes back and takes up his rightful place as her partner
again. But she won't lie to him either. He'll know she's lying and that will do more damage to
them than anything else. If you can't trust your partner.

"Olivia-" Elliot presses, and it's not yet dark enough for her to see his reflection in the glass.
"Yeah," she whispers. "Yeah. I thought about it." She doesn't tell him that she can't think
about it anymore, that she won't pick at those scars.

Olivia braces herself for what's to come, for where he will take this. She waits for him to be the
one to prod at the wound, to be the one who pries it open. She wonders if he will humiliate her
enough to make her drive home in this storm. If he asks, then he'll know just how needy she
really is. He'll know she isn't strong, she's not okay. He'll know that she's not entirely
steeped in reality and the concrete. She daydreams. She won't be able to look him in the eyes
when it's done. Only he doesn't ask. Instead his shoulders seem to relax, and his breaths
seem deeper.
"Okay," he says. He nods. Then he stills.

That's all.

The silence comes back, as if it has never been interrupted by them. There is a clock in here
somewhere that is ticking and she can hear the rain start to tap at the windows. She watches
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Elliot as he faces the encroaching storm head on, his head held high. She wants to be there
with him. She wants to be near him instead of hovering back here in the shadows. She wants to
see his face to know if he's alright with what she's just told him, even if she isn't. He looks
back over his shoulder. Elliot's face is clear, as if the last few moments had never happened.

"Wanna sit and watch the storm come in?" The anger is gone, the force has dissipated. He's
coaxing her again and she's almost breathless from the boomerang of it.
He's not pushing it, and she's so infinitely grateful that she feels the relief sweep across her.
His easy acceptance of her admission means something, but she doesn't want to dissect it just
yet. She should ask him the same question in the reverse, but she doesn't want to know the
answer.
"Yeah." His smile would be indiscernible to anyone else, but she sees it in the shift of his lips.

"The beacon's above us. Gives off five flashes a minute. You'll be able to see the light of ‘em
in the clouds soon." He looks out the window again. "The clouds gotta be pretty damned
dark before they'll actually reflect it. Looks like man-made lightning."
She doesn't know if she's more shaken by what she's told him or by his lack of reaction. He
doesn't seem fazed by the admission at all. She fights the air and wins, exhaling despite the
constriction in her throat. He's a silhouette against the windows, and there is something
infinitely reassuring about the sheer size of him. He is her due north. If she knows where he
is, she doesn't think she can lose her way.

Olivia moves out of the shadows towards Elliot. Next to him, she'll watch the storm make
landfall, and she'll pray that they don't suffer too much damage beneath the barreling force of
it.

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 Chapter Fifteen

F
our months after Olivia had joined the unit, Kathy had asked him if he found his new
partner attractive for the first time. It wouldn't be the last time the question would
arise. Elliot had been in bed, and the darkened house had been mercifully silent, his
kids long since asleep. Kathy's head had been tucked under his chin, and her hair had still
been damp from her shower. Her fingers had lazily traced his side, and her words hadn't been
accusing. It was more of a curiosity, and she hadn't seemed worried about his answer. She had
not as yet met Olivia, and although he didn't share his day with his wife, he had still been
optimistic enough to be able to share in hers.

She's attractive, he'd replied. And then he had kept quiet. It was the first time that he had
realised that Olivia's magnetism had little to do with how physically beautiful she was. On any
other woman, Olivia's exotic features and her curves would be the reason she commanded all
eyes in the room. On Olivia they played second chair to the way she spoke, her grace under
pressure, the sheer presence that she had. She was strong, opinionated and justice-driven -
but her ferocity was balanced by the startling compassion in her eyes.

He remembers that first year in great detail. Olivia had been assigned to him as a partner by
the brass, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he had been asked to look after her by some
higher power. It had been easy to be her partner. Putting her safety first had come
instinctively; it had been realising that Olivia would put his first that had been impossible to
live with. He would argue with her, and he remembers feeling both proud of her backbone
and pissed at her stubbornness. He'd watch her bleed empathy on the earliest cases, and he'd
have to talk himself down from the warnings he wanted to give her. Don't give yourself away

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to them, he had wanted to remind her. Instead, over the years Olivia had given him a greater
understanding and empathy towards the job he'd already thought he knew.

Elliot doesn't know when it was exactly when the tables turned. When he stopped feeling
entrusted with Olivia and had started to feel her slipping out of his hands along with
everything else. He remembers the quicksand of rage; how it would suck him in, suffocate him
and then spit him out. He remembers thinking this is it, this is who I am. He remembers
thinking that Gordon Rickett was right, he would be a monster without the controls he'd put
in place. He believed people when they whispered about him - he was burned out, he was a
liability, he was impossible to live with, work with, be with. He had failed and he deserved for
everyone to leave. His wife couldn't take anymore; his partner had seen enough and left. He
was a shitty father and he had so many marks in his jacket that he shouldn't even hold a badge
anymore. He remembers thinking that everyone was moving on without him and that he
wasn't worth coming back for.

Only Olivia had. She'd come back. She'd made him pay of course - and rightly so - but the
end result was that she had been the one to show him that he might be worth sticking around
for. He had repaid the favour by letting her down again and again, in thousands of different
ways. Only she is still here, sitting next to him tonight. She is curled up in the chair, her arms
folded over the edge and her head resting on her hands. Olivia's hair slips down, caught in the
fold of her arms and brushing against the side of the chair. From where he sits, slouched in his
own chair, he can see the top of her head to his right and the ocean straight ahead as the storm
begins to surround them.

He can't seem to process what she told him just a little while ago. Olivia's thought about it.
About them.It's one thing to suspect it. It's another thing entirely to hear her admit it. Elliot
wants to ask her when. He wants to know if it was five years ago or if it was last night. He
wants to know if the idea makes her terrified or if it makes her heart beat a little faster. He
wants to know if she likes being out here with him, if her head is clearing like his did over the
months, or if she is just silently mulling over an unfinished case left behind and looking
forward to going back to the city.

"Do they have kids?" Olivia asks quietly, and she sounds like she's half asleep. He knows she
isn't, but he likes the idea that she could just sit and rest like this next to him.
The rain picks up speed and he can hear it as it hits the metal grates that surround the beacon
above and the windows in front of them. It's become considerably darker in the last fifteen
minutes.
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"Who?"
Olivia exhales. "Gladys and Jack."
If he concentrates, he can actually see the clouds moving. He can almost gauge their speed,
but then they twist and tumble, churning.
"They had a son."

His answer makes her lift her head to look at him. She starts to straighten in the chair, and
even in the dim lighting he can see her eyes start to take on someone else's pain. She never
backs down from the pain of others, it's her own that she shoves away.
"What happened?"
Elliot remembers how Jack told him the story. The old man had been loading up brown,
sealed boxes into his truck in early December when Elliot had spotted him. He'd rushed to
help and had seen the USO addresses that had been printed carefully in thick black marker on
each box. Care packages meant to arrive overseas just before Christmas. Every year, Jack told
him. Whether we're at war or not, there's some kid out there serving who won't be home for the
holidays.

"Kid's name was Nathan. He was a Lieutenant Commander who flew recon planes for the
Navy when Desert Storm started. Navy lost less than fifteen guys to combat, Nathan was one
of them. He was a couple days shy of his thirtieth when his plane went down just inside the
Iraqi border."
He's seen pictures of Jack's son. He's seen the framed flag on the mantel in their house and
noticed the way Jack still calls Nathan my boy instead of having to say his name. Olivia is
looking right at him, even as the wind gusts begin.
"They must have been great parents.” Elliot nods.

He thinks about what they do in their child's memory, even twenty years after his death. They
send the packages; they show off the photos, they make the trip to Arlington twice a year.
"Still are." He can't tell her how much he's actually found himself drawn to the couple. Then
again, she probably already knows. "They're good people."
It's a big admission coming from him. They are so used to finding out the worst about people
that they rarely make definitive statements about character or intention. They've been
surprised by the hidden demons and motivations of so many that it's hard to trust. But he
trusts them. His mother had, too.

Olivia is still looking at him, and she uses one hand to tuck her hair behind her ear as she fully
sits up. He looks at her, and he's got the answers to questions he didn't even know he had

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been asking himself. It's not co-dependency. It's not infatuation. It's definitely not
friendship. She seems to look right into him.
"Time away did you good," she murmurs.
Elliot can read her sometimes. Sometimes she's not at all a mystery. She associates herself
with the city, with the job, with all of the things that wear him down. The rocks on all sides of
the jetty are being coated with the thick white foam of the crashing waves, until the coastline
as far as can see looks like it is smothered in the froth of it. The thunder is getting closer, the
sky now occasionally lit not only by the beams of the beacon, but from the lightning off in the
distance.

Olivia still hasn't told him if she had been angry when he left. In the reverse, he would have
displaced every emotion he had and channeled it into resentment. Into self-pity. He knows,
he's done it before.
"What's it been like for you?"
She blinks against his question, sitting fully upright now as her feet land back on the floor in
front of her. He can see the way Olivia's body stiffens, how her back straightens.
"Fine."
He can take it. Whatever she wants to say, he can handle it. He's so sick of them containing
everything and releasing nothing.
"Liv," he prods with no force behind it. She doesn't make a move. "I'm gonna call bullshit."
Olivia looks at him again, but this time her gaze isn't focused. She skims his face as if trying to
determine how far he will take this before immediately looking away, her expression stoic as
she searches the rocking sea a hundred and fifty feet below them.
"You're gonna push this, aren't you?" It makes him smiles just a little bit because she sounds
so resigned.

"Yeah. Pretty much." She still doesn't say anything. Instead Olivia leans forward in her chair,
wrapping her arms around her waist. The gesture kills him in a thousand ways. When she
starts to rock almost indiscernibly it takes everything he's got not to reach across the few feet
between the chairs and touch her. He's less afraid of making contact with her now that he
knows how she reacts. He knows that she doesn't immediately pull away. Olivia finally drags
her gaze away from the windows. She looks back at him, her chin touching her left shoulder.
"Job's harder."

He can see what it takes for her to admit that it's not the same as it once was. Just by the way
her eyes dull in the shadows Elliot knows that she's tired deep inside. He remembers feeling
the same way. It was the terrifying feeling of not being able to muster up the outrage on a

152
victim's behalf. He had felt bad for their last vic, but as he'd looked in the woman's eyes, he
hadn't been able to equalise her pain with his anger. He'd felt sorry for her, but the burn in
his gut was gone. He wasn't nauseous; his fists didn't form right away. As he had typed up the
report, he had almost forgotten the victim's name. It wasn't that he didn't care; he just didn't
have the capacity to care as much as he once had. He had been numb, and he'd been giving
the cases, the people involved, less than they deserved. Even before his mother had died, he'd
seen the signs that he was fading.

He sees those same signs now in Olivia. Maybe it is inevitable that they would follow, one after
the other. Then again, she's still there. She's going back. She wants him to go back, too. He
knows this. He wants to make her happy, and it is killing him.
"I'm sorry I left you there."
Olivia flinches, blinking quickly before turning away from him again. Outside, nature is
putting on the greatest show on earth. It's raging, bellowing. It looks like the sea is thrashing
in pain. He knows she doesn't see any of it. She nods once.
"I know."

He knows that talking about the cases that she has worked without him isn't going to change
that she'd experienced them alone. The idea that talking will fix absolutely everything is a
cliché, and not one that holds any truth. Not in their world. Talking dulls the edges, but it is
having some sort of life away from the cases, away from the pictures in their head that truly
helps. Respite is found in dirty jokes over a beer, a quiet dinner at home, a weekend spent
with family or - The image hits him hard right in the gut. It's a swift kick to his chest.
It's been eight months. Eight. He asked Olivia out here, but the truth is that he's such an
arrogant prick that he never once considered she might have met someone in the meantime.
Over the last months, it's possible she went home earlier at night, went out, invited someone
over to her place. For the night. He's got no finesse. None. He's also got no restraint. He
grits his jaw, but the words slip out anyway.

"You been seeing anyone?" Even Elliot can hear the bite to his tone, the accusation. He's
got no right to begrudge her anything, but that's never stopped him before. If she gives him
what he deserves now, she'll walk right past him and down those stairs.
Instead, a slight knowing smirk plays at the corners of her lips. Olivia turns to him and lifts her
chin.
"Yeah."

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He can't breathe. His nostrils flare as he tries to slow down his pulse, and Elliot scrapes his
teeth over his lip twice trying to keep from clenching his fists. She doesn't look away. Olivia's
eyes brighten again.
"He's tall, blonde, mid-forties. Hedge fund guy. Family is from Greenwich. Met him out one
night when I was having drinks with Alex a few weeks after you left."
Inside of him, something cracks. It's the wall he's held up between knowing and not knowing
just how deeply this thing runs in him. His jealousy is fierce and he wants to find the guy.
Tonight. He can feel the urge to grab the asshole, to intimidate the fuck out of him. Elliot is
gonna get his shot with Olivia, and this dickhead is just gonna have to live with it. If it were up
to him, Elliot would take his chances right now and tell her what he thinks, how he feels. It's
for her sake that he's taking this thing slow. Fuck the hedge fund idiot.

Elliot doesn't even hear the storm outside. He can't hear the voice in his head that is probably
trying to tell him that she needs someone better, someone who doesn't have all of the
skeletons in the closet, the ties that still bind. He can't hear his own logic because the roar in
his ears is too loud. But Olivia's not done. Telling him about this guy is actually illuminating
her face just a little bit.
"You'd laugh if you saw his place. Upper East, overlooking the park. Bet my apartment could
fit in his bathroom."

Elliot stands up. He can't do this. He can't listen to this. Olivia deserves for him to listen, to
be happy for her, but he wants to ask her what the hell she's doing out here with him then.
What kind of douchebag lets his girlfriend go away for a week without him, to stay with a guy
who isn't married? Unless the shithead doesn't think Elliot is a threat. Girlfriend. It's a
ridiculous word. He wouldn't define Olivia that way. If she gives him half a chance he won't
describe her as something so juvenile or banal. She'd simply be his.

Jesus. It's possible that all it took for Olivia to find someone was to think that Elliot had finally
left her for good. Maybe he was somehow responsible for all those years of her failed
relationships. He had never made it easy for her. He is aware that he'd done everything he
could to draw a very clear line in the sand for Porter, and he can't even articulate the ways in
which he still wanted to demolish the spinelessness that was Moss. He closes the few feet
between where they sit and the windows so that his face is out of her line of sight. He is so
close to the panes that he can see the fog of his breath lightly coat the glass surface. He sees
himself now, the nearly transparent reflection of his profile.

"You happy with him?" he grits.

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He sees nothing of the grandeur outside.
Olivia laughs softly as she stands up behind him. It's an easy sound - light and delicate.
"You make it too easy, Elliot."

He stiffens, feeling the air warm behind him. She's so close to his back all of a sudden that he
thinks he could exhale and touch her. But he doesn't have to. Instead Olivia's left hand comes
to rest on his shoulder blade and he's trying to process that she is touching him. She is the
one doing this. He's doesn't have to worry in this moment if the contact will make her run.
Olivia's palm is hot, the heat of her skin burning through his sweatshirt. He realises then that
he can see her reflection, and she isn't aware that he can. He watches as she ducks a little bit,
her forehead nearly touching the back of his right shoulder. Her hair is a wavy curtain and he
can see enough to know that she has just closed her eyes.

"Relax. There's no one you've got to go flex your muscles for. I'm just messing with you
because you deserve it. You really think I'd date a hedge fund idiot?"
He swears he can feel her breath through the layers of his clothes. She lifts her head, still not
realising that he can see her. Olivia smiles a little to herself, and he is mesmerised by the sight
of it. Olivia isn't infuriated by his reaction, she's amused by it. He's always wondered why she
let him get away with it every time he pulled some sort of bullshit with every guy interested in
her, and now he knows. She is almost smug, as if she knows what she does to him and likes the
power of it. Maybe she likes what his jealousy means.

"Liv-"
Olivia is so damned close to him.
"I'm not seeing anyone," she whispers. Her hair falls into her face as she shifts further
behind him, placing his body between her and the agitated sea outside. He can still see her
just a little bit. Just her face over his right shoulder. "You?"
She is so fucking beautiful. Her flirtatious expressions, the impish amusement, the way she
uses her eyes to say half the things she wants to say. She's delicate and ferocious, a vulnerable
brand of steel.

Twelve years. He's either a saint or a priest, because he knows he's got no right to get his
mouth on her unless she makes it clear she's ready. Unless she makes the first move. Instead
Olivia's fingers dance across the back of his shirt, and he curses that he's worn something so
thick when her touch is so light. He wants it to just be his skin and her fingertips.
"Not yet," he says from the back of his throat. Her fingers still. She knows what he means.

155
A gust of wind brings the rain towards him, and it strikes the window, filling the room with the
sound of a snare drum. He is stone, so still that he is afraid to breathe. She's lowered her chin
so much that all he sees is the curtain of her hair as she watches her fingertips. He feels them
slip down his spine now, across his torso and then up again, her touch so delicate that he has
to concentrate to feel it.

He wants all of her. He wants Olivia to press her body against his, to wrap her arms around his
waist, to breathe into his neck. He wants her mouth there, slipping over his jaw while her
hands slide under the fabric of his shirt. Instead Elliot watches Olivia in the glass and he can
count on one hand the things that have moved him this much. The silence alone is filling the
room to a nearly unbearable level of pressure. He wants to ask her what she is doing; he wants
to ask her never to stop. He wants to ask her closer, to ask her to please, please just trust him.
He wants to ask her if she knows that at the very least, he is in love.

But Olivia is touching him, and it's so rare, so unexpected that he simply stands still. He
thinks it is amazing that she can make him burn when she is glacial, yet freeze when the heat of
her surrounds him. Her left hand comes up and he feels it on his lower left side, and a few
strands of her hair tickle the back of his neck. Elliot needs her to grab onto him, but by the hot
burst of her breath as it hits the neckline of his shirt, he knows that Olivia is testing the waters
and even this much is taking everything she's got. He thinks about what a life has to do to a
person to break them this much, to make them this sure that change will bring devastation. He
can feel her fear. Olivia is clinging to the boundaries of their partnership as if they are a
lifeline. He is worried that the silence will startle her as soon as she hears it. He has to prolong
this. If nothing else, he's not ready for this moment to end. Elliot tries to keep his voice as low
as possible, the words as slow and even as he can manage.

"Remember when the twins were nine and I took them up to the Adirondacks for the
weekend?"
She's silent, her fingers skimming upwards now, barely there on his shoulder and then down
again, as if she's examining him. And then, barely discernible from a breath, she responds.
"Yeah."
He can hardly see her in the reflection of them now. Olivia is so perfectly behind him that he
almost wants to turn and make sure she is still there. If it wasn't for her touch on his deltoids,
he would think she had evaporated.
"The morning Dickie and I were packing up, Lizzie started yelling for me. I remember
turning around, thinkin' something had to be wrong ‘cause all of a sudden she fell silent."

156
By the way his sweatshirt suddenly shifts he thinks she's just closed her fist around the fabric.
He doesn't know what has prompted this gesture from her, but he's nearly muted by it. Only
he knows he has to keep talking. He can't show Olivia how she is throwing him off of his axis.
He has to make her think this is normal.

"Tell me," she says, the soft words hitting the skin at his nape.
Elliot clears his throat, working through the knots to keep his voice intact.
"She was standin' maybe ten feet away at the edge of the campsite, and there had to have been
fifteen or twenty butterflies near her."

The waves smash the jetty walls below and surge upwards before flipping backwards upon
themselves. The clouds deepen into charcoal on the horizon and he curses them. They will
have to leave before the most intense storm cells make landfall. He expects that soon the lights
will begin to flicker, eventually succumbing to the wrath of the wind. Olivia's hand is still
moving, only the pressure of her touch has increased. He can feel her palm against his
muscles, as if she is cupping them then sliding away, elsewhere. He is hard as hell, his body
almost shaking from the want. He tries to focus, to keep up the words that ease the reflective
silence.

"She was tryin' to catch ‘em," he explains. "She wanted to hold one of ‘em in her hands." He
can't mumble like this. His accent is thick, his body electrified. If it's possible Olivia is even
closer now. He wonders if she will lean into him, if she will wrap herself around him. Elliot
wants to be home, in his bed when she does it. He wants her above him, the strands of her hair
brushing his face as she leans over him. Olivia's hands still, both of them clutching his
sweatshirt on either side of his waist.
"They'd die."
He nods.
"Yeah. So I told her to stand perfectly still, with her arms out. If they trusted her, they'd land
on her." I
n the window, all he can see is Olivia's fists, gripping the fabric. Gripping him.
"Did they?" She sound strangled by the question.

Elliot remembers the image as if it had happened yesterday. His daughter's long, blonde hair
had been clipped back by a single barrette and her knees had been dirty from the days spent in
the woods. Trusting her father, Lizzie had raised her arms and lifted her chin, squinting as she
had looked up towards the sun-drenched sky. Next to him, even Dickie had become silent,
waiting to see if it would happen.
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It is this moment in which Elliot falters. He needs Olivia, but he doesn't feel the right to beg
her to stay. He knows she can do better than him but he can't help himself. The months away
have been long, and the introspection has left him far too clear on what he wants. She's
scared, but he is terrified. If she doesn't want him, if she doesn't...she can easily break him.
If she leaves him, he doesn't think he'd even try to feel whole again.

"You shoulda seen ‘em," Elliot tells her quietly. "Two or three of them settled on her right
arm, and one on her left fingertip. One of ‘em landed at the crown of her head, and it looked
like it was the clip she was wearing in her hair." In the window, he can't seem to look himself
in the eyes. But the rest of him is granite, a statue that seems to hover out in the rain. "Looked
like Monarchs. Told her they were but I was wrong. She looked it up when we got home."

She's so close. So close and then - He can feel the softness of her breasts as she presses
forward, into him. Olivia's forehead settles onto his upper back.
"What were they?" she mumbles drowsily against him.
"Atlantis Fritillaries," Elliot exhales. "Weren't monarchs at all. They don't fly as far away as
Monarchs do. They prefer to stay closer to home."

Olivia's breaths are deep, paced, even. His left hand reaches backwards, to his waist, and he
covers her hand as it clutches his shirt. He pushes his fingers down, until hers slide up and
into the grooves of his hold and he tugs enough that her arm slides all the way around his
torso. In the glass he sees their stacked hands, the tangled fingers.
"Glad you stayed," he says. Olivia nods, and he could swear that he feels her smile into his
shirt.
"Me too."
He looks outside, and he watches the tumult of the twisting ocean. The silence is back in the
room, only it doesn't seem so loud anymore.
***

Her eyes are closed as she presses her forehead against the back of his neck. It isn't lost on
her that she is securely tucked behind him in this moment. Elliot's stance is wide, as if he
alone controls the thunderous rhapsody that is reaching a crescendo in front of him. He
doesn't seem to hear the gurgling of the storm; he doesn't flinch as the sky crackles and
reverberates or the rain slashes at the window. In his world, it must be blissfully silent. Olivia
concentrates on breathing. With every deep drag of air, she is filled with him. He smells like
soap and the faintest remnants of shaving lotion. Against her eyelids, Elliot's nape is hot,
solid. She wants to rub against his skin, but the movement will be too much. Her fingers

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contract inside of his grip and he immediately grabs hold of her hand more firmly, as if he
thinks she is trying to pull away.

It's not even an option. If it were, she would have found her own space again, but there is no
possibility she can pull away just yet. The depth of her need is choking her, and her surfaces
are so alive that it's a brutal, brutal pain. She wants Elliot - and it's not any one facet of him
that is taking precedent over the other. She wants to touch him, feel him on her, but she also
just wants to fall apart in the sanctity of his hold. He starts to turn towards her, shifting, but
she stops him.
"No," Olivia whispers. Elliot stills. Stays.
"Liv - "
"Not yet." He can't turn around. Holding him is one thing, but Elliot holding her is another.
If he turns, it won't stop with just this, not for her anyway, and she isn't ready to deal with that
yet. She needs time to decide if she can do this. "Just..."
But she doesn't have to explain herself.
"Okay," he quickly soothes. Elliot tangles her other hand in his and wraps her arms around
him, resuming his position. "We're good. Don't worry."

Don't worry.

She's worried. She's more than worried. The need to just squeeze her eyes shut and let the
nightmares seep out of her is growing, and Olivia knows enough about the stages of catharsis
to know that it isn't something she can indulge in. It's never pretty, that brand of breaking.
Elliot will never trust her as his partner again if he sees her shatter that way. Fragility is not an
endearing trait in a cop. Back in Manhattan, they might be able to overcome touching each
other in order to resume their partnership, but he won't be able to eradicate the unsettling
memories if she cries for no one but herself.

Olivia knows with every truth inside of her that she is close to the edge. Elliot will kill her with
the kindness, the temporary sense of security if he turns. Cocooned by him she will grieve for
every loss she has ever experienced, for every failure that has ever cost her. She will
acknowledge the isolation, she'll feel the hollows, she'll admit she had been afraid in that
prison basement, in her own apartment, in alleys and warehouses and on the rooftop of a
parking garage on a windy, fall day when a gun had been pressed to her temple. She hadn't
been able to hold Elliot's stare that afternoon. The barrel of the gun had met the ridge of her
skull and she had closed her eyes so that her partner wouldn't see she'd suddenly realised she
was expendable. If anyone on that rooftop needed to die besides Vargas, she was the best
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choice. She had nothing and no one depending on her, fighting for her own life was selfish if it
endangered anyone else at all. Even Porter had realised that.

Only Elliot had fought for her then. He had come closer - too close. He'd refused to back
down; he had been unwilling to take the risk that she would die. He'd held her afterwards and
she had for a moment indulged in the reckless idea that he needed her. Wanted her. Maybe
even - in some capacity - loved her. Even for just a few seconds, the relief of belonging had
been overwhelming. It had been more than enough to curb the tremors, to slow the
adrenaline, to calm the furious pace of her blood thrumming through her veins.

She could easily have given herself over to the feeling, lost sight of everything else in pursuit
of it. Maybe it is simply a basic human instinct to crave love, but she also knows that love
doesn't last. It doesn't overcome all obstacles, it doesn't provide any guarantees. Ideally it
strengthens those who find it for a time, but in the end it is the most destructive and
weakening of emotions. It's the riskiest of gambles, and for someone living off of their last
stack of chips, it isn't an option. Elliot means more to her than love. She can live without love,
she can't live without him. Olivia is afraid of what he can do to her if he forces her hand. Elliot
has been careful so far, and she's aware of how tenaciously he is clinging to his sense of
caution with her. She is grateful for it, because if he says too much, does too much, she knows
she will run in order to preserve what she still holds. If he tells her that he wants more, if he's
got feelings for her, she is going to die a little inside because once the words are said, there is
no way to retract them. To lessen their impact.

"Lights are gonna go soon," he murmurs, sounding wholly unconcerned.

Olivia feels the rumble of his voice against her cheek but she doesn't want to open her eyes.
She knows he thinks she can't see her own reflection in the glass, but she can. She just
chooses not to look while she is clutching him like this.
"We have to go?" She is exhausted and hungry now, but nothing seems compelling enough
to make her move. She's warm, and Elliot is a wall of muscle against her. Every inch of him is
reassuring, capable, soothing. In the field the sheer cut and strength of his body is another
lethal weapon at his disposal, here it feels like a refuge from the rain.

Elliot doesn't answer her. Instead his thumbs brush over hers and she knows he's giving them
a few more minutes. She starts to let her mind drift, and it's too easy to let herself go. She
thinks of pressing her lips against the neckline of his sweatshirt, of feeling his body go rigid
beneath her fingertips in anticipation. She wants to open her mouth against the tightly corded
surface of his neck and let the sound of his groan slide deep into her stomach. Her eyelids stay
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shut against the military-perfect line of his short dark hair and she wants to push her fingers
through it as she nips at his earlobe. She's so aroused that she doesn't know if she's just
imagining moulding her body to his, searching for relief to the throbbing of the tips of her
breasts, the sensitivity between her thighs and -

"Christ," Elliot growls. "Liv."

So she wasn't imagining then. Her heart is racing and her lips have parted, centimetres from
the curve of his ear. Her breath feels hot, even to her. Olivia stills, her body on fire. She
doesn't know if she is the one pulsing like this or if it his him. She doesn't know if it's the rain
or her heartbeat that is slamming this loud.
"If you're not ready, then you gotta stand still." Elliot's voice is low, rushed, rough. His
rumble is a deep purr, and she can't get past the warmth of it to even process what he is
saying. "I wanna give you time so you can figure what you want, but..." He ducks his chin into
his shoulder, as if he is trying to look at her behind him. "Jesus, Liv. I'm no better than any
other guy. Some point, I'm gonna break."

The clouds that are enveloping the lighthouse now are dark. Too dark. She can almost feel the
building sway, but maybe that is just her - just her rocking on her feet, violently aching for him
to turn her around and lock her between the cold windowpane and his heated body. One part
of her is beyond ready for Elliot to be on her, all over her. That part of her believes they can
enjoy this without needing more from each other, without demanding more, without risking
their ability to work together. She can keep a secret. No one has to know about this. Not
work, not his family - no one. They both need the sex. It's been too long for her, and likely for
him, too. Friends with benefits, she thinks. People do it. They could do it. And when it's over,
it's over.

The other part of her is screaming out that she is a liar. That part is warning her that once
Elliot touches her, she will never allow the touch of another. That part is also warning her that
there is a point of no return and she's headed straight for it, ignoring the lights that are telling
her to stay back.

"I'm not ready," she says quietly. It's a hurried, apologetic confession. He nods, his body
held stiffly in front of her.
"I know."

Just the fact that they are talking about the unspoken is monumental. He wants her. She
wants him. They're talking about the physical, but it's still incomprehensible that they are
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having this discussion. If they take this step, even if it doesn't change everything it will still
change a lot. Maybe too much.

"What're we doing?" It's just a rasp of a question from her. Olivia lifts her head so that her
chin nudges his shoulder. She stares right into herself in the nearly black window. What're
you doing? Her arms loosen around Elliot's waist. He gives just a little bit in his hold at the
same moment.Elliot looks right through her in the window. In their transparent reflections
she can see the white tips of the tossing waves as they extend out to sea. Night has fallen now,
and soon the foam crests will be the only thing visible on the dark, ominous surface of water.
Her hands rest on his waist now, and in answer his arms fall to his side. An irrational part of
her wants him to hold onto her, because it feels like he's retreating.

"What're you looking for here, Liv? ‘Cause I got things to say, but you never want to hear
‘em let alone talk about ‘em."
Olivia drops her hands from him and backs up. Just like that she's suddenly cold. Gone is the
lulling, calm cadence to Elliot's words. She knows this tone. It's one that blends the
accusation and the blame with just enough resignation that she ends up feeling like the bad
guy. She raises her chin just as Elliot turns. The full breadth of him facing her makes her back
up a step or two for the first time.
"The hell is that supposed to mean?"

Elliot must see the rising defence that she is mustering, because he smiles humourlessly, his
eyes flat in the dim light of the room. The wind howls now as it races around the
circumference of the building, enveloping it.
“It means when you don't like what you're hearing, you run." He keeps his voice low. "So
I'm ready to have a conversation with you about what's going on here with us, but I wanna
know you're ready to answer my questions too, instead of shutting me out."
It's the first real confrontation they've had since she'd arrived out here and although it
shouldn't, it feels foreign to her.
"I don't shut you out." Olivia needs to find a better response than that, but right now she's
still reeling from touching him, from the subject they are discussing, from the way she's
suddenly back in Manhattan with him arguing in the bullpen.

"You wanna say that again and mean it?" The corner of his lips tips upward again. He's not
rising to her bait. Instead the more defensive she gets, the calmer he seems to become.
She can't say anything. Elliot's eyes are pale blue right now, and she can see the lamp behind
her reflected in his irises. The truth is that he's not entirely wrong. She holds him at bay,
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always measuring and maintaining the distance between them. He takes her silence as a sign
that he is right.
"I ask you things, Liv. Not ‘cause I wanna hear myself talk, but because there are things I
gotta know. After Ryan and Rebecca, I needed to know how to deal with what I'd done, ‘cause
I thought it was my fault that kid died. I knew we were too close, but I needed to know if we
could handle it. Instead, you left."

If blame still permeated his words, she could retaliate. If the storm wasn't so damned fierce
right now, she could take her chances and walk someplace, away from here. If he was wrong,
she could muster up some sort of scathing response. Instead Olivia wraps her arms around
herself, and the wind brings the rain in waves, making her feel like she is standing in the spray
of the ocean. Elliot cocks his head, and he's unstoppable now.
"I wanted to know why you'd trust Simon when you didn't even know him. When you lost
your shit with Thatcher, I needed to know where your head was, only you let-"
"Porter." Olivia's throat is thick. All along, she thought she was saving Elliot from worrying
about her. She thought that the less she told him, the easier it would be on him. He didn't
need to know every problem she was having. He didn't need for her to cause problems for
him. Only apparently she had. He had wanted to know. Needed to know.

"Yeah," Elliot nods, and his expression tells her that it's still a painful subject with him.
"You let him cover you. A million things turned to shit and every time I was either at court or
partnered with Munch or Fin and when I'd ask you - just fuckin' tell me Liv - you'd ignore me.
Better yet, you'd hand me a file and tell me to read up on your nightmares."
Her eyes shut, blocking him out. Harris. If Elliot wants to talk about this now, she'll find a
way to leave.
"Stop it. Just stop it."
"See?" Elliot's voice is rising, but not in anger, in frustration.

Storm be damned, she'll just start walking. Right now the prospect of gravel roads and wet
leaves and the blackness everywhere doesn't sound horrible. It sounds like a viable escape.
The lightening is hitting close by now, because occasionally it illuminates the
small room. It's not on them yet, it's still out over the water. She'd be safe to just walk. It
couldn't be more than a mile back to the main road. Only she doesn't have her wallet or
identification or even her badge with her.

"Olivia. Christ, you can't keep-" he stops. Maybe he sees the look on her face. She can hear
his heavy breaths.
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Something inside of her snaps. She'd been so content a few minutes ago. Elliot had been
warm and storm hadn't seemed dangerous and she had been almost sleepy with the security of
being locked in here with him. But the truth is that lighthouses are never built where the
shoreline is smooth. It's when the shoreline is a perilous mess of jagged, deadly edges that
they put one of these things up. She should have known better. Olivia turns, heading for the
door. She's got to get out of here. The feeling of being wrapped around Elliot, of being up
against him, is still embedded into her palms, her chest, her skin, and it's causing panic now.
Only he is closer to the exit and by the time she gets there, he's already in position, his back
up against the closed door and blocking her in. She can't even look at him.

"I'm not blaming you," Elliot says gravelly. "I wasn't there for you and hell, even if I was, I'm
not easy to talk to. Kathy, the kids - they've all made it clear I don't understand shit." He
ducks his face, trying to look her in the eyes. She can sense the urgency in him, the panic that
has now permeated him as well. Olivia keeps her gaze focused off to the right, staring at the
unused, dusty books. There's no reason for all of those hard covers to be here. No one is
reading them. They've got no purpose. No one cares what they have to say, or what stories
they tell. They'll sit here, discarded, until one day someone throws them all out.
"Liv, look at me." His voice is scratchy, imploring.

She finally looks at him, and as soon as their eyes connect, her anger and panic deflates
against her will. All she can see is a man who is fighting for more of her, not less. She doesn't
even know who he is trying to help, and the idea that more of her could possibly help him in
any way knocks the breath out of her chest. Elliot smiles just a little bit, as if apologising.
"Try me. Just once. Doesn't have to be tonight. But next time you think you got something
handled," he clears his throat. "Just run it by me. Okay?"

He wants to be there for you. He acts like he's fighting on his own behalf. Olivia can't tear her
eyes away from him. Elliot's beautiful face is shadowed in the dark recesses of this corner and
she blinks, wishing she could see every line, every plane of him. He's a gift, she thinks. A gift.
She doesn't trust herself to open her mouth, so she just nods, keeping her lips pressed
together.

"You asked me what we're doing. You honestly ready for my answer?"
She can't take anymore. Not now. Not tonight. She doesn't trust herself and she doesn't want
to blow everything to hell and most importantly, she doesn't want to leave. She wants to go
home with him - home - and she wants to put that lasagna in the oven. She wants to light up

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the candles Elliot had collected and put on the dining room table, and she wants to wait out
the storm with him. Don't give me a reason to leave. Please.
Olivia shakes her head.
"No," she whispers.
Elliot gives her a half-smile, and she can tell there is the slightest bit of amusement in it.
"Didn't think so. Ready to go?" Her answering smile is self-deprecating, relieved.
"Yeah."

She takes one last look out of the windows as he turns off the lights in the small room. When
all the lamps are off, she can see the faintest glimmer of the bay and inlet off in the distance.
She wonders how the freighters she had seen earlier in the day are faring all the way out to sea.
She wonders if the captains of those ships can see the beacon. She decides they might catch a
glimpse or two amongst the thick clouds. The beacon above them must turn, because a flash
of light illuminates the night sky. It's reassuring to her for some reason. And then Elliot is
ushering her out of the room, and she laughs quietly, because he starts down the steps ahead
of her, as if he could somehow break her fall if she tumbled along the way.

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166
 Chapter Sixteen

H
e turns the truck off and kills the lights, sitting quietly on the driveway in the dark.
The wind rocks the vehicle, and the ocean is so loud that he can hear it even through
the closed windows. The rain had coated the windshield on the way home, and he'd
driven slowly because even the wipers couldn't clear the blur fast enough for him to see the
road clearly. Street signs had already fallen, and tree branches littered the sidewalks. On the
other side of the boulevard a trio of police cars had escorted a utility company vehicle, their
sirens lighting up the deserted street as they screamed by, likely heading to a downed power
line. Olivia's eyes had remained closed to it all.

She'd been soaking, as had he, by the time they had climbed back to the truck. Elliot had
cranked the heat almost in the same second as he had started the engine and she had looked at
him there in the muted overhead light. Her dark eyes had been bright, and her hair had been
plastered to her head, soaking wet. Rain had clung to her lashes and to the tip of her nose, but
she'd been radiant. He'll never forget the look on her face, as if the dash through the rain had
cleansed something in her. Thank you, she'd said.He still doesn't know what she was
thanking him for. The trip to the lighthouse, the stay at the beach, simply turning on the heat
for her - any of it would be a viable reason for her words. He'd simply accepted. You're
welcome.

Olivia had adjusted the vents in front of her to blow the hot air onto her wet skin before
running her fingers through her tangled hair. He never asked her why she hadn't used her
hood to protect her from the rain. Maybe she liked the feel of it. There is something pure and
childish about purposefully letting the rain soak through, and the resulting exhilaration in her

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expression had warmed him long before the truck heater had even been given an opportunity
to its job.

Her eyes had closed even before he had pulled out of the parking lot. He doesn't know why a
fist had formed in his gut when she burrowed into the seat and exhaled, belted in yet facing
him and not the window to her right. The bumps in the road, the cacophony of the rain, the
sirens around them - nothing had prompted her to open her eyes and sit up. So he sits here,
outside the detached garage, hating that he can't get closer to the front door so that she
doesn't get soaked again. He could go in and get her an umbrella, but Olivia would be out of
the car and behind him as soon as she heard him open his door.

"Hey," he prods softly.

"Let's just sleep here," she says, without stirring.

He would. They've been on dozens of overnight stake outs, and he when she would take her
turn to sleep, he would trade the soft hum of the radio for the sound of her paced breathing.
There are some things about the job that he misses like hell - closing in on someone and
knowing she was right there behind him, the victory of breaking a suspect with her in the
interrogation room, the odd stillness they'd find when they were the only two in the squad
room in the middle of the night and he would catch Olivia surfing the net instead of filling out
her share of the paperwork. But it is the long hours in the sedan that he misses most. He'd
never resented the cheap leather seats, the discarded coffee cups, the horrible CDs she would
play. Even over the past winter, it was those moments he would hang onto. He would think
about the bad jokes she would tell him, the way he would tease her about the sheer number of
applications she felt the need to download on her iPhone. They had a game they played - every
time one of them would catch a couple in a public display of affection, the other would owe a
dollar. Olivia had a better eye for the game, and she'd always walk away with at least five bucks
from him. He thinks it's true; hindsight gravitates towards the good memories.

"We could," Elliot acknowledges. "But that would mean that lasagna you slaved over would
go to waste." At that Olivia's eyes open wide, even if she doesn't lift her cheek from the seat.
"I haven't eaten in a year."
He nods.
"Right. Well before you pass out from a severe lack of nutrition and I have to carry you in,
how ‘bout we head inside?"
She's up then, and he knows it has nothing to do with his teasing, but rather with her
increasing interest in dinner.

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"You couldn't carry me," she declares and then she opens the door, again with total
disregard for the sheets of water pouring down from above.
He's got half a mind to prove her wrong. He's had the urge before - not to scoop her up as if
she were a child - but to toss her over his shoulder and drag her away from a situation that she
was only exacerbating. Robert Morton comes to mind. He remembers how she had charged
the serial killer, with no fear at all. He'd seen it coming too. He had watched Olivia's fists
clench, her upper lip curl. Elliot had seen the growing fire in her eyes and then bam, she was
going after the prick full force. He'd only had enough time to snake his arm around her waist
and lift her right up off the ground to hold her back, but yeah, he'd thought about tossing her
over his shoulder until she stopped squirming. She'd kill him if she knew.

The storm is raging around him as soon as he opens the car door. He's soaked before he can
even get the driver's side closed, and while he thinks about making a run for it, she just stops
on the narrow walkway, ten feet from the shelter of the small awning over the front porch.
Olivia looks upwards, blinking against the onslaught. Rain darkens her damp sweatshirt until
he can see it sticking to her neck.
"Look at it," she calls loudly over a rumble of thunder.

He's next to her then and he stops. The water is running in streams down the sides of the
short driveway, and his sneakers are soaked through, but she doesn't even seem to notice.
He looks up. Rain hits his forehead, his cheeks, his chin. It drips down his neck and into his
shirt. But he sees what she does and it makes him stop. Against the night sky and lit by only
the street lamps, the raindrops look like crystals, falling from an abyss. They are endless - the
thousands, millions of them -forever dotting the air as far as he can see. It seems like they are
coming from nowhere, existing for only a fraction of a second before they disappear, losing
their identity in the rivulets and puddles that surround them.

Olivia laughs and closes her eyes, and it's not meant for him to hear. It comes from deep in
her throat, and it's such a personal, unprotected moment that he doesn't want her to realise
he is even here. Her hair is slick now, saturated with water. It's dark and sleek against her
head. He can see who she would be without the world she's left behind tonight. He can see
her in bright colours; he can see her like this always. Tanned, laughing, standing still just
because she can. He's not cold nor wet in this moment. He is simply with her and this is all he
knows.

He wonders if she will let him openly love her. He thinks about telling her and he pretends
that she isn't scared, that she wouldn't run. He watches Olivia soak up the rain and he
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imagines all of the ways it could go in a perfect world. He would say I love you and she would
say something cocky like I know or something funny like how could you not? Or the most far-
fetched of all - maybe she would just smile at him and accept it with a simple okay.
He never goes so far as to imagine the words coming easily in return from her. He's not that
good at conjuring up make-believe. Because he's got no willpower, Elliot steps forward and
slips his hand around her waist. The cotton of her sweatshirt is heavy from the water, and he
can smell her shampoo, intensified by his proximity and the humidity in the air.

"You're beautiful," he says against her temple, but his volume is so low he's sure the words
have been drowned out by the drummer's march of the rain and the dominating bass of the
thunder.
But Olivia lets him touch her. She opens her eyes, catches the rivulets that slide down her
nose by letting her tongue quickly touch her upper lip. She blinks against the rain, once,
twice. And then she smiles at him and lets her forehead hit his.
She exhales onto him.
"You're crazy," she whispers. "I'm not..." and then she stops, as if she doesn't want to
respond with the denial the way she would under any other circumstances.

Elliot thinks he should say something, but he can't. Not when Olivia rattles him like this. He
thinks of myths and legends, and he understands why people once believed in Zeus and
Athena, Aphrodite and Poseidon. When the rain came from nowhere, and
strength was super-human, when love could set a thousand ships to sail and the ocean could
swallow an entire fleet, there had to be some explanation. He feels this way now, as if this is
beyond him and surely no single God could have given him all of this. He wants to kiss her,
but he is afraid that if he does, the world around him will dematerialise. So he just holds her,
and lets Olivia's breath mix with his.

The crack of lightning makes her jump and Olivia grins as the sky illuminates for just a
moment. And before he can even catch his breath, she slips through his fingers and darts
towards the front door, as if she has just realised it is raining and that she is soaking wet.
"You coming?" she calls out from the safety of the front porch.

He thinks about how easy it is to experience love early on in life. He's seen his children love
often and easily. He's seen it in Eli clutching a favourite stuffed animal or his tattered baby
blanket. Lizzie has had a thousand all-consuming crushes; Dickie obsesses nearly to the point
of tears over the Jets and Yankees. They'd just bought Kathleen a malti-poo for her birthday,
and she croons softly and endlessly to the tiny white ball of fur. Maureen lights up around the

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law student she's been dating for three months, and he suspects he's gonna have to get used
to the kid long term. It seems easy for the young to let themselves fall.

"Yeah," he says, nodding although he stands still. The rain is almost blinding and he can hear
it hitting the gutters and rustling the leaves of the small trees.
He's not young anymore. By all rights, he should be too weary, too scarred to feel an emotion
that belongs to the optimistic. His chest should be numb; his skin should be too callused. But
she makes him forget that years have passed since he was in high school, since he was full of
determination to make something of himself. He doesn't want to start his life over - his
marriage had once been good, his kids are blessings, not regrets. But Olivia makes him want
to start again. She makes him see that he's not empty; she gives him hope that there is a
second chance after all.

"Hurry!" she grins, squeezing out her hair.

Elliot smiles back at her and walks towards the porch. The directive is ironic, because with
her, hurrying is the one thing he tells himself that he can't do. No matter how much he needs
to tell her, to just make her understand, he can't scare her off. He has to have patience; he has
to take this slow. As he unlocks the door, Elliot ignores the unsettling feeling within him that
is warning him he is going to blow it. Maybe it is just his own fear that he is only falling deeper
while he's got no acknowledgment from her that she is even considering this thing between
them at all.

Or maybe it's the realisation that like the fury of a summer storm on the Jersey shore, some
things simply can't be controlled.
***

It's a different kind of rain that courses over her as she stands in the bathtub, the shower-head
sending the hot spray onto her forehead, her chest, and downwards, sliding over her thighs
until it pools around her toes. Her wet clothes sit in a pile on the tile floor, but she doesn't see
them. Olivia's eyes are shut as she lifts her chin towards the pelting stream and lets the heated
water penetrate the surface of her skin. She is warm now, almost too hot. The steam in the
bathroom is thick, as if she has brought the storm clouds into the small space and trapped
them. She's been in here for fifteen minutes, and she can already smell the garlic and sauce of
the lasagna as it bakes in the oven.

Her body is on fire, and it has nothing to do with the scalding water. Even the sensation of
rubbing the soap across her body makes her tense, as if she was waiting for something. For
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someone. Olivia's hands now settle on the wall of the tub, and she bows her head, letting the
water slip down her back and over her head. She tries to conjure images of his ex-wife or his
children to counteract the dangerous direction her thoughts of Elliot are taking, but nothing
formulates clearly until she thinks of his youngest child. Eli is always clear to her. She
gravitates towards the photos Elliot shows her of him, she had eavesdropped on the
conversations Elliot would have about his child at the precinct. She tells herself she has no
rights to the little boy, but of all of the experiences she has had, the circumstances around his
birth have affected her the most.

She had watched a woman give birth to Elliot's child, and in that moment it hadn't mattered
that it was his wife who was rightfully giving him that gift. She had been shaken by the
magnitude of what Kathy had been able to give Elliot, and it had sent her spiralling for long
months after. Even now, more than three years later, she still remembers the details of that
afternoon. She remembers the sound of crunching metal and the panic that had gripped her.
She remembers feeling lost, because she knew for certain that she had ruined Elliot's life for
good. She had seen firsthand the damage she was going to cause him, and more than she had
even prayed for Kathy or Eli's life, she had prayed for Elliot's. And then the world had righted
itself - his baby had cried and Olivia had held him against her neck, almost dizzy with the
responsibility of it all. Eli had been so small, so fragile. He had wailed against her, close to her
ear and she had wanted to cry because his child was in her hands yet every hollow of her body
had remained painfully empty. She had known then that she would never have the experience
that had just occurred in front of her. It was an experience meant for other women, other lives.
Even though she knew tragedy was indiscriminate, she hadn't ever believed Kathy would die.
The tiny, new life Olivia had held in her hands needed his mother, and she held Eli only long
enough to hand him back to the woman who had created him, who would love him, who would
rock him when the nights were too warm or the shadows too dark.

For a while after the accident Olivia had tried to build herself some sort of life. She had tried
to date; she had applied to care for a child. She had looked in the Times and on Craigslist on
the weekends for bigger apartments, just so she had an idea of what it would cost her. The
idea had begun to take shape. She could do it on her own. She was capable of raising a child.
She had money put away and she would do whatever it would take. The water is numbing the
back of her neck now and Olivia straightens in the shower, lifting her chin again so the spray
will directly hit her face. It's not enough to clear her thoughts. It's not enough to hold them at
bay.

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It was the prison undercover that had taught her about who she was. She was a cop, not a
mother or a wife. She was someone who was responsible for the monsters; it was her job to
give women like Kathy some sense that their children would be safe. So she had accepted the
reality of it, thrown herself into the job. She became stronger, leaner, faster, tougher. She got
closer to the suspects and gave them everything she had in an effort to break them. She used
her smarts, her body, her guts to do whatever it would take. She was a cop, she was a cop. That
identity became the only thing she had. It is the only thing that she has.

Only out here, in the sunshine and the rain and magic of this place, Elliot is making her forget
who she is. He makes her want things, even though he is her partner and her best friend. She
can't lose him as either, let alone both. She doesn't have enough as it is. There is nothing to
spare. The water is starting to cool, but it's still not as cold as the rain. Despite the long
minutes in the shower, she is still not as warm as she had been against him. She shuts off the
faucet and then stands there naked in the tub, before wiping her hands across her face. For
one moment Olivia lets herself imagine what it would be like to love him, to be loved by him.
She can almost hear the way this house would sound in the summers, filled with the noise of
his kids. She can hear Elliot's voice bellowing that someone is tracking sand in and that no,
Lizzie can't have the keys to the truck. She can hear Eli laughing as Dickie chases him
through the rooms; she can smell the barbecue and see the damp, colourful beach towels that
litter the hot concrete of the back porch. She can almost feel the soft tufts of Eli's light brown
curls as he falls asleep on the sofa in the middle of it all, his nose and cheeks just barely tinged
from the sun and his skin still bearing the faint scent of sunscreen.

Olivia steels herself against it, against all of it. That is Elliot's life, not hers. She is a cop, she
tells herself. That's who she is. She grabs her towels and wraps one around her, quickly
drying her hair with the other. She doesn't bother defogging the mirror, because she's got no
use for looking at herself. She'll come back for the spare towel and her wet clothes later.
When she opens the door, she peeks out, and by the sounds coming from the living room, she
can tell where Elliot is in the house. She's in her room before he notices her, and she closes
the door, settling her back against it for a minute. She tells herself that being a cop is different
from other jobs. It is a life choice, and it is in her blood. It's not mundane like most other
careers. It's not pathetic that it defines her, because it is one of the few jobs that can
determine life or death, and that makes it okay for it to be everything that she is.

Before she knows it, Olivia is clutching her towel around her with one hand and dumping out
her duffel bag onto the floor with the other. She digs into the bottom of it, and finds the
leather wallet. When she flips it open, she sees her face staring back at her. The picture is

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years old, but it's still her, and next to the identification is the gold shield that gives her
purpose. Her thumb slides over it and she settles onto the floor, sitting there with her wet
hair, clutching her life in her hands.

"You're a cop," Olivia whispers, softly enough that she knows he will never hear her in the
other room. Her hair is shoulder-length and dark in the photo, and she had smiled on the day
it was snapped. The photo is from before the war of it all had taken things from her. It is from
before she first shot a man, from before she had become just a statistic. It is from before she'd
watched a suicide, from before she'd chosen her partner's life over that of a child's. It is from
before he had been shot, before he had separated from his wife, before he had gone back,
before she had given up. It is a before photo, and she can still look at it. It is the after that she
can't face in the mirror tonight. You’re a cop.

For a moment it makes sense. She can't have everything. But then she hears Elliot padding
around the living room, and from the sounds she thinks he is probably stacking wood in the
fireplace. Her theories mean nothing when measured against him. Because he is a cop, too,
only he has somehow managed to build a life on the outside as well.
***

His shower had been a quick and cold one as soon as he had walked in the house.
Elliot had closed his eyes under the brutally cold spray and scrubbed his hands over his face at
least a dozen times, trying to shake the coils of tension that were tightening in his body. He
could have given himself some physical relief at least, but he'd ruthlessly denied himself. He
knew all too well that the inadequate solution would only make him want more, make him
want her.

Instead, he had fantasised about confronting Olivia, about straight out asking her if she
wanted him. He imagined listing the reasons why this would work between them and telling
her that she couldn't just walk away again. He went after her in the fantasy, and he didn't back
down. He said things like I know why you turned away all the guys who didn't understand
and don't tell me that I don't get it. In the fantasy he didn't give her a chance to respond. He
was blunt and he made a good argument, and he filled the silences with I know you and I love
you and I want you. He made promises like I'll do everything I can to give you a home and I
swear to you, I know what I want.

Only he knew her too well - she was ingrained too deeply within him, - because even in his
fantasy she ending up angry and telling him to go to hell for messing everything up.
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So instead, he now strikes the long match to the end of the box and lights it, shoving it
underneath the triangle of logs he has put into the fireplace. It's not cold in the house, but if
the flickering lights are any indication, it won't be long before the power goes out. As the
tinder beneath the logs catches the flame, Elliot reminds himself that Olivia needs the
opposite of everything Kathy had asked of him. She needs him to give her space, to give her
time, to keep his hands to himself no matter how much he wants to touch her just to keep her
in one place.

He hears her bedroom door open and he tells himself to relax because she can't go anywhere
tonight. The room is dimly lit, and even though the windows have been shuttered, the storm is
waging war all around them. When the lightning cracks, it's so close that it feels like a jet
airplane is screaming by just above the house and the heavy waterfall of rain sounds like the
marching steps of an encroaching infantry. Olivia's own footsteps make it as far as the edge of
the living room before she stops. It's the fact that she says nothing that makes the tension
wind its way through his gut. There are no comments about the fire, or about being hungry.
She doesn't comment on the half dozen thick candles he's lit on the dining room table in
preparation for the loss of electricity and she doesn't express relief that she is finally dry. She
just stands in one place, and he wonders what he is going to face when he turns around.
"It's nice," Olivia finally says, only she is so quiet that he can barely hear her.

Elliot straightens and turns, but his eyes need a moment to readjust from the bright glare of
the growing flames that he had been staring at. She's now watching them instead of meeting
his gaze.
"Yeah. Pretty safe bet we'll lose power soon." Even after the evening they have had, Olivia
still has the ability to make him feel at home or to make him a stranger in his own living room.
When she finally looks up at him, he realises that his anxiety isn't unfounded. Olivia is
wearing an orange Surf City t-shirt and her cotton shorts. She's thrown on her grey hooded
sweatshirt, but left it open, and her legs are bare. She is clutching his mother's journal. With
her wet hair and her face scrubbed of any makeup, she looks incredibly soft and comfortable.
It's only the stark, reflective nature of her eyes that tells him something significant has
happened since she'd gone in for her shower.
"You get a sale on tourist shirts?" he jokes, trying to dispel the haunted look on her face.
Olivia's mouth quirks, but her eyes don't lose the ache.
"Can't live in NYPD gear forever, you know?" Her voice is hoarse, too gritty for his liking.
He needs something else to distract her, to dispel whatever it is that is now bothering her.

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"Lasagna's ready," he tries, wondering if that will spur her into movement.
She nods and forces a small smile, but she doesn't move from where she stands.
"Can't wait."
When the lightning cracks Olivia inadvertently jumps, and to cover up the movement she
brings his mother's journal up towards her stomach as if protecting herself. The sleeves of her
sweatshirt are too long, and he can barely see her fingers peek out of the cuffs. If he trusted
himself more, he'd reach for her. She looks so uneasy standing there that he is grateful for the
walls around them, because the wind that howls now outside could easily sweep her away.
He focuses on the positive. She is still standing there. She hasn't retreated to her room; she
hasn't closed the door and hidden herself away. Olivia holds her ground, and even though she
isn't talking to him, she's not leaving either. She chews on her lower lip, and she can't settle
her gaze in any one place.

"Liv- " he starts, but he can visibly see her tense so he stops.
It was enough. Olivia finally looks at him. She is so serious that he has the bizarre urge to
laugh, to just tell her that nothing could possibly be as bad as she thinks it is. Only he knows
the truth. Things can be far worse than expected. He's seen the nightmares play out time and
time again; he knows that things end badly more often than they end well. She'd gone into the
shower seemingly content and enjoying the storm, she'd come out as if she had seen a ghost.
If she'd had time to read it, he would have wondered if it was something in the journal that had
triggered this response, but he knows too that Olivia is her own worst enemy when she is left
alone.

Elliot makes his way towards her, listening to the wooden floor creak as he does. Olivia eyes
the kitchen door, the front hall, the candles on the table. She shakes her head a little bit, as if
discussing something with herself. Whatever she is telling herself is only upsetting her even
more because her lower lip is now slightly swollen from the relentless way she is worrying it.
"You know how -" Olivia's voice cracks, so she starts again. "You know how you said back
there that if I didn't have something handled, that I - I.”

Elliot is three feet in front of her and he immediately stops. If she had kicked him in the chest
she couldn't have knocked the wind out of him any faster. He'd asked her to talk to him, but
Elliot had expected it to be weeks, maybe even months, before Olivia would even consider it.
They had once talked about everything - years ago - but they had since then lost the ability to
speak in anything but fragmented sentences.

"Tell me," he murmurs.

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He has no idea where this is going to go. He doesn't know what is doing this to her, but Olivia
looks more exhausted in this moment than she had when she had arrived a few days ago.
Keeping her eyes open seems to be painful, and even in the dim light of the room he can see
the pale tinge that fights with the natural olive tones of her skin. Her lips move but no sound
comes out. Her fingertips are white on the leather surface of the journal she still clutches to
her stomach. He wonders if she is going to give up on talking to him because of the sheer
difficulty she is having forming words. Instead, Olivia's eyebrows furrow and she looks past
him, towards the front door.

"You ever tell yourself something so much that you, you end up believing it?"
He doesn't know what she's referring to yet, and that scares the shit out of him because he
has to answer this question blind, not knowing if his answer is going to help or destroy his
chances with her.
"Yeah," he admits. He can't bullshit her. She'll know the truth when she hears it, and she'll
know if he's trying to cushion his answers.
Olivia looks him dead on then, her bruised irises wholly focused on his.
"What was it?"
He ignores the way the wind almost seems to shake the house. He ignores the way the rain
sometimes hits the front door, yet also seems to be trying to come in through the oceanfront
windows.
Elliot's mouth is dry; his throat is so tight that he can't swallow.
"Told myself I was still in love with my wife when I moved back home."

The way Olivia looks at him nearly kills him. Her lips press together and he can't tell if she is
shocked or disappointed or if he just gave her entirely the wrong answer. But she's frowning
at him, and her eyes are filling despite her efforts otherwise. He doesn't know why his answer
seems to be causing her to panic just a little, but Olivia's voice is high and tight when she
speaks.
"You were," she says, as if correcting him. Olivia nods then, as if sure of it. "You were in love
with her, Elliot."
He takes a step closer to her. The way her words are speeding up isn't a good sign.
"No. I wasn't." He knows this for sure.

Of all the things he has learned over the last few months, this fact is the clearest revelation.
His ex-wife had initially been the one with guts enough to kick him out, but she had also been
the one with enough of a crisis of security that she had been too embarrassed to go through
another pregnancy alone. Of course he had been the asshole who had still been willing to go

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wherever anyone offered him a home, even if his heart hadn't been in it. They had disguised
everything their marriage lacked with new cribs and car seats, with late night feedings and
their son's first words. Elliot isn't someone who wants to be on his own. He'd spent his entire
childhood without a secure place to live and it had taken the months out here to finally teach
him how to spend time on his own. He thinks it's ironic that for all of the ways they are alike,
they are complete opposites in that regard. Olivia knows only of her independence and her
solitude.

"The divorce this time was my idea, Olivia. It wasn't anything we both hadn't thought about,
but getting the ball rolling on it was my doing." At first he'd been unable to forgive himself
for his inability to stick it out with Kathy, now he thinks he's done everyone a favour.
Stability, he thinks, can't be built around a house of cards. Olivia hasn't taken her eyes off of
him in the last few seconds. He wants to know what has brought this conversation on because
that will give him some clue how to proceed. She can't possibly think he's invited her out here
on some sort of rebound from his marriage. He takes a couple steps towards her, and he's
encouraged when she doesn't move backwards. He's so close to her now that he has to duck
his head to see her face. Her hair is damp and curling and he wants to feel it slide between his
fingers.

"What if it's easier to believe what you've told yourself?" she breathes.
The riddle of it all is making him crazy, so he forces himself to breathe. He wishes she'd just
come right out and tell him what she's thinking, but Olivia has always been cryptic when it
comes to talking about herself. It's something he will have to get used to. He shakes his head.
"It's never easier. You can lie to the world, but you can't lie to yourself."
He chews at the corner of his mouth and tells himself not to touch her yet, only he's not that
strong. He reaches up, and he pretends that one of the curling strands of her hair is going to
fall into her face. He can feel the silk of it between his thumb and forefinger as he sets it back
from her face.
"What're you thinking?"
Olivia immediately looks up at him, her jaw set. "I'm a cop."
He can't stop the small chuckle that forms in his throat.
"Thanks for clearing that up." Elliot shrugs. "The way you've carried around a gun for years
had me worried, but now it all makes sense."

The teasing works. Her eyes crinkle just a little bit at the corners and she lets out a small burst
of air as she nearly smiles. Then the moment passes, and he can feel the way the room is
warmer around them. The house shakes with the thunder and the lights again flicker, but he

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stands still. He is fascinated by the way her hair is tumble of golden sun and dark amber in the
firelight. He loves the perfect arch of her eyebrows, the way her eyes are wide-set and almond-
shaped and so damned expressive. She doesn't tell him to stop touching her hair, but she also
drops her gaze, looking instead at the faded Marines logo on his worn grey t-shirt.
"I gave up on anything outside of that."

For a moment, he closes his eyes. He doesn't know if he's grateful that she's talking to him or
if the need to just still for a second is because he'd known. He'd known. He had seen it in her
before he left, the way she was telling herself she didn't need anything outside of the job. He
had watched her quit dating; he had felt the recklessness that was growing in her. The
boundaries Olivia had once kept in place in terms of what she would give to a case were fading
and nothing had become off-limits. Not her physical safety, not the sanctity of her apartment,
not even their friendship had been safe when it came to what she would sacrifice for the job.
He'd known, only until she had verbalised it, he hadn't realised just how right he had been.

"No, you didn't." He's almost harsh when he says it.

Olivia looks up at him quickly, as if he's an idiot. But before she can say anything, Elliot cuts
her off. "You didn't really give up. You can make choices as if you had, but it doesn't mean
jack shit when it comes to what still lives in your head."
She is still staring at him, and he wonders if he's making an iota of sense. He's not good at
this - at philosophy and analysis. He's only got what he knows, so he explains it the best he
can.
"I could move home. I could buy Kathy an anniversary gift and I could take her to dinner
every now and then, but that wasn't gonna make me love her again. Wasn't gonna change the
fact that I couldn't sleep at night, or that I'd play out how my kids would react if I left in my
head all the damned time."

Olivia is mute, but she is listening. He steps closer as his hands fall away from her. Instead, his
mouth is almost on her forehead.
"I felt guilty for wanting something I didn't have. But you know what I realised? That it's
okay to want. Wantin' more keeps us going. It's when we don't want anything more that we
oughta be scared shitless."
In front of him, Olivia sways forward and he forces himself to just hold still when her hairline
meets his lips. He wants to open his mouth, to get his lips against her temple, her jaw. He's
now driven by a need to taste her, to just finally know what that is.

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He thinks her eyes are closed. His aren't. Down the hall he can see the light coming from her
bedroom; he can see her wet clothes on the floor of the open bathroom. He almost grins,
because Olivia has a flaw. She's messy as hell. He wishes that he'd known this fact all of these
years. Everyone in the squad thought of her as being perfect. He would have loved to out her a
thousand times over.

"When'd you get so smart, Stabler?" she teases softly, her breath hitting his neck.
Elliot doesn't know if this means she believes him, but he does know that it means the
conversation is over. He says a silent prayer, hoping what he's been telling Olivia isn't
undoing the things he's been trying to show her.
"I got another bright idea," he murmurs.
Olivia doesn't pull back, so his lips brush against her forehead as he talks. He holds her away
from his body or she will feel just how much he wants her, just how rigid every muscle in his
body is right now because of the restraint he is exerting.
"Oh yeah?" she whispers.
His stomach grumbles on cue, and he swears it sounds as loud as the thunder outside. Olivia
laughs softly and pulls back.
"Good idea."

Outside, the cracks of lightning actually shake the ground a little bit and then all goes silent
before a second whip of lightning strikes. The surf pounds relentlessly, audible even through
the walls of the house. The beach will be an eroded mess of seaweed when the storm finally
moves out late tomorrow. The lights go off then, and he can hear the protesting grate of the
circuit breakers in the house. They stand there in the flickering firelight for a few seconds,
and no one moves. He wants to kiss her. He's thinking about it now, just debating tilting his
head to the right and brushing his mouth against hers. He'll go slowly; he'll give Olivia space
to pull back if she wants to. Christ, he'll find some measure of control to stop when she asks
him to. He wants to slide his hands around her waist, push his palms up beneath the back of
her t-shirt and feel the dip at the small of her back.

But there in the darkness, for the second time that night, Olivia steps forward towards him.
This time her hands settle on his sides, the edge of his mother's journal digging into him, and
her chin rests on his shoulder. He knows what she's doing, she's getting used to this. It's
been too many years of refraining from touching, and this is all new for them. Olivia is testing
the idea each time, letting the movements come more naturally.
He is, too. He's sixteen again, wondering where to put his hands, debating what he can get
away with. He decides that she'll let him slide his arms around her waist, above her t-shirt but

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underneath the thick cotton of her sweatshirt. When Olivia is fitted against him, he can't
speak. For all of the ways in which she has touched him out here, she hasn't just slipped
against him, facing him, yet. Not until now. He can feel the softness of her breasts brushing
against his chest as she breathes. His eyes burn in the darkness because of the quiet way she
seems to become weighted against him. For two people who have seen devastation in all of its
grotesque forms, he can't believe this is the first time they've stood like this just because they
can. He marvels at the fit of her, at the curve of her waist, the heat of her body. The dark is a
cocoon around them. Everything seems easier in the blackness.

"You're what I got," she whispers into his neck, her cheek on his shoulder. "You got kids
and family and...this is all I've got and I don't want to fuck it up."
He's got no idea what to say. Nothing adequate comes to mind. All of the words and
arguments he had conjured in his shower fail him. He's never been entrusted with more than
he's been given in this moment and he can't screw it up.
"Olivia." Her name is just like her. It's got dips and valleys and it makes his voice drop until
it's just a rumble. I won't fuck this up, Olivia. His voice doesn't work, and in a moment of
weakness he pulls her up against his body. His palms splay across her lower back, urging her
towards him. He knows she can tell he's turned on by the sharp breath she takes as her hips
press against him. He groans at the contact and she makes a small sound in the back of her
throat, her fingers biting into his skin at his waist. Olivia's breath comes hot and fast against
his neck.

"It's not risky between us," he finally growls into the dark. "You know me. I know you. Just
let yourself go with me, Liv." He thinks about sliding his hands lower, over the rise of her ass
so that he can pull her onto him a little bit, but he needs her mouth on his first. Screw dinner,
screw any of it. There is no world outside of this for him right now.
Olivia lifts her head, until the tip of her chin pushes into his shoulder.
"You gotta give me time to figure this out, El."

He grits his teeth. He can do this. He can do what she's asking. He tells himself not to take it
personally, he tries to remind himself that this is about her history and it isn't that she doesn't
trust him. But the frustration is growing inside of him. He grasps at logic and tells himself it's
only been a coupla days since she's been here. A coupla days to unravel the boundaries of
years and years isn't much. She's seen him walk away from his marriage; she's got to find
some trust that he won't walk away from her. She'll have to get used to the idea that she'd be
giving up their partnership for something more.

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But his body is arguing with him. He's so aroused that he is nearly at the edge of his control.
He wants Olivia to stop running from him, from this. If she'd just give him one night of no
inhibitions he'd show her. He'd damned well show her that there was nothing to figure out.
This was the one thing he didn't need explained to him. Control. Elliot takes a deep breath,
but he doesn't trust his voice yet. If he opens his mouth, he's gonna say something that he will
regret. He's gonna tell her he wants her in his bed, that he doesn't give a shit about the
NYPD. He's gonna scare her by telling her he doesn't even want to date her. He knows.
She's it for him. She's the only one. And that, that most of all will send her running.

So he tries to agree. Elliot tries to acknowledge that he will give her all the space she needs,
that he can wait. But the lies don't form easily on his lips and he thinks about what he told her
about lying to herself. He can seem to be patient to her. He can hold back, he can climb into
his bed alone and curse the dark and his hard-on and their disastrous histories. But it doesn't
mean that inside he isn't starting to burn beneath the restraint of it all. He's only human. He
doesn't want her to have a choice when it comes to being with him, living with him, loving
him.

"El?" Olivia prompts, and he can hear the slight twinge of panic in how she says his name.
Her body lifts off of his just an inch or two, as if retreating as she waits for him to say he'll
wait. "You'll give me time, right?"
He needs to tell her yes. That's what she needs to hear. Just say yes. But he's slipping. He can
feel it. He can feel the demands starting to hover around him, waiting to be made. Say it.
Reassure her that this can take years if that's what she needs. Tell her you've got time. That
you understand.

"Yeah," he grates. No other words will come.

Apparently it's enough, because he feels her relax in the instant before she straightens. In the
shadows and warm, dancing light of the fireplace he can see Olivia's face now, and her eyes
have lost the fear. He feels like a prick, because he knows he should warn her instead. He
should tell her that while some things have changed, other things haven't. He's still impulsive
and his emotions are still uncontrollable. He should tell her that not simply demanding what
he wants is requiring every fragile cord of discipline that he has.
Instead, she smiles at him.
"Good thing you heated up that food before we lost power."

And then Olivia steps around him, heading for the kitchen as if nothing at all has happened.

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Elliot is left standing there and he can hear the rain smashing into the roof and the
windowpanes. He can hear the turbulent sea and he imagines the huge, dark waves swelling
and then falling back into the sea as if imploding upon themselves. He thinks of the trees that
will fall tonight, and he realises that even the moon has gone into hiding. Tonight, the house
doesn't feel sturdy. He can feel the walls rattle and he imagines the roof ripping away in a
downburst. He can see the tide swallowing the beach, the water flooding into the windows and
doors of this house. He thinks of the mansion that had once been built alongside Barnegat
Lighthouse, and how the beauty of it had simply fallen away into the ocean, as if it had never
existed at all.

Stability can't be built around a house of cards, he tells himself again. He scrubs his hand
down his face and exhales before turning to follow Olivia into the candle-lit kitchen, dread
sliding over his skin. For the first time in months, he feels like he is the house of cards again,
and he can feel the dangerous, destructive winds just hovering in the air above them.

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184
 Chapter Seventeen

"
Don't tell me she's falling for the guy."
Olivia looks up from her wine glass, and her fingertip pauses in its journey around the
rim. Her back is pressed against the couch as she sits on the floor and her bare feet are
being warmed by the fire that is only half a dozen feet in front of her. Their dirty dishes sit to
the left of her in a stack, crumpled napkins tossed into the centre of the ceramic plates.

Elliot sits to her right, and while her legs are bent at the knee and drawn up to her chest, his
are sprawled out. His beer rests on his sweatpants-clad thigh, his palm loosely clutching it.
It's his second bottle, her second glass of wine, and the power has not returned since it went
out right before dinner. The rain has evened out, and it's now coming down in a steady, even
downpour that is punctuated by the occasional, lazy rumble of thunder. She doesn't know if
it's the wine, the fire or his easy acceptance of her request for time that has calmed her, but
she is so content in this moment that she is almost lethargic.

Olivia shakes her head, letting the orange and yellow glow of the fireplace create a haze
around the edges of her vision.
"I honestly don't know. But if Lake is covering for Hernandez, I think Casey believes she'll
get him to talk. I think there's some sort of bond there with the two of them because they both
lost everything over the same case."
She had been worried the first time that Casey had told her she had been to see Lake up at
Sing Sing. Without her license, Casey had floundered for months, looking for something that
was going to give her the sense of purpose the D.A's office had. She finally found what she
was looking for in spearheading a legal aid office in Brooklyn that primarily served battered
women and children. Unfortunately, Casey had retained the restlessness and agitation that
only multiple years with SVU could cultivate. She had started digging into Lake's arrest for

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Crane's murder, taking a magnifying glass to every bit of evidence that had been collected by
the forensics team, Homicide and IAB.

She'd finally called Olivia three months ago and over breakfast Casey had floated her theory.
Lake hadn't even tried to save himself. He had pled guilty, there had been no stab at a
temporary insanity plea, no attempt to prove Crane had come at him first. Even as the media
had crucified Kralik and Crane as the worst kind of dirty cops - and some groups had even
hailed Lake as a vigilante crusader - Lake himself hadn't uttered a word in self-defence.
"You think Lake's covering for Hernandez?" Elliot's voice is gruff, as if he himself is mulling
over the possibility. "Helluva a lot to sacrifice if he is."
Olivia shakes her head before letting it fall back onto the seat cushion of the couch. She stares
up at the ceiling, and the firelight seems to cast dancing shadows on the dark surface of it.

"Maybe not," she says quietly. They both know Lake's history. He'd been a foster kid. No
family, no wife at home. He had essentially been on his own, and there had been no one
depending on him. Sacrifice is always relative. Elliot's intake of air is swift. She knows he's
turned his head towards her, but Olivia refuses to look at him. This isn't about her, this is
about Lake. Besides, she is finding comfort in this, in being able to quietly talk about the
world that is familiar to her.
"Casey asked me to run Hernandez through the system," Olivia continues evenly without
acknowledging the questions she knows are in his eyes. "She'd tried to track him down
herself but she came up empty."

It's not something she is supposed to do. It's against the rules to run a background check on
anyone who isn't actively connected to an open investigation. Technically, Eliza Hernandez's
rape and murder was a closed case, as were the rape of Cecilia Cruz and the death of Thomas
Crane. Next to her, Elliot is probably grinning just a little in the firelight. She doesn't look at
him, but his amusement is clearly evident in the tone of his words.
"You come up with anything?"
It makes her smile too that he correctly assumes she'd done it anyway. Casey is a friend, and
Lake had maybe been on his way to becoming one, and she'd done a lot more to break the
rules for people who meant a lot less. Her days in Computer Crimes had taught her how to
run a check without cluing in the NYPD as to what she was doing.
“He's gone. Job said he simply walked off one day right after Lake pled guilty. Guy just went
to lunch and never clocked back in. We've got no forwarding address. Best guess is he went
back to El Salvador."

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Elliot blows out a deep breath.
"He'd been clear with us that he was still in the States just to visit his daughter's grave. Maybe
with her murder avenged, he finally felt like he could go home. "
She'd offered the same supposition to Casey.
"Or maybe he was guilty of avenging her death himself and didn't want to get caught. With
Lake willingly taking the fall, he had enough time to leave the country." Olivia stops then,
exhaling. In the bullpen they did this with urgency, debating the cases quickly and
voraciously. Tonight this is a lazy, meandering conversation, but one that still roots her.

The rain taps, the fire crackles, the thunderous waves do not relent. Despite it all, she can still
hear Elliot as he takes a drink of his beer and shifts next to her. It's the startlingly easy rhythm
of their back-and-forth that shakes her. This comes so naturally with him that she is reminded
of how long she has gone without. She is reminded of how there is no instinctive give and take
with Fin, there is no volley in how she works with anyone else. This is theirs and theirs alone.
This is what they do best, debating the merits and possibilities of a case. They don't use
caution when they are breaking down the evidence, the signs, the motivations. They don't
tiptoe around each other and they aren't afraid of being right or wrong. This is their forte,
even when their hunches don't align. This is her solid ground.

She's missed this. No, Olivia has craved this. She's been almost numb on the job for the last
eight months since he's been gone. She hasn't felt sharp, she hasn't felt strong. But when he
is next to her as he is now, when Elliot's eyes narrow as he ponders an idea, when he cracks
his neck to both sides as he works something out in his head, she thinks she can go back and
do the job again with more effort. She can push through the fog in her head as soon as he
returns. She lifts her head and stares at the fire again. The flames lash at each other, and the
colours blend into a fiery kaleidoscope that inexplicably forces her to look away. Olivia
watches Elliot's profile instead, and he doesn't seem to notice, even as he lifts his bottle to his
mouth and takes another long sip of the lukewarm beer.

After long moments, his eyes still focused on the fireplace, Elliot presses his lips together and
grits his jaw.
"They gotta have Lake in solitary half the time." It's a dark, grated monotone.
"It's for his own protection, El," she murmurs, before realising how patronising her words
sound. Elliot hadn't told her what tricks his voluntary stint in isolation had played on his
psyche after just a few days, but she could see the realisation in the pale veil that had shadowed
his eyes for weeks afterwards.

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He's thinking about it now, she can tell. The rise and fall of his chest is deep, and when he
slowly blinks against the illumination from the fire he looks like he is protesting the
unforgiving glare of the sun. She knows that Elliot thought locking himself in a solitary
chamber would atone for something, that maybe it would make him more empathetic than he
already was. She doesn't fault him for the need, they have all gone to extremes to try and
understand the shit they see. There is no easy way to justify the suffering they witness; there is
no easy way to comprehend the absolute depths of hell that the human mind can be subjected
to.

Olivia forces herself to turn her head and she closes her eyes against the spectacle playing out
in the fireplace. Even against the shield of her eyelids she can see and feel the orange glow
that heats her skin. Come back, she wants to say. Just come back. It's been long enough.
"Casey need help?" Elliot's voice is a low, dangerous grumble.
Olivia almost shivers from the comforting sound of it. It's the tone of voice he would use when
he going after a suspect, when chafing beneath the injustice he perceived. It's the tone he
would use when gearing up to hunt someone down, when he was in the game and ready to
play.

Maybe it's the way he slips right back into his role as her partner that is finally making her
breathe easier. Maybe she had been holding her breath wondering if he would come back at
all. But she can hear it in him. He's not done being a cop. It's a part of him; just as much a
part of his identity as his family is, as his history is. It's as much a part of him as it is a part of
her, and maybe that is what has been scaring her out here, how easily he seemed to leave it all
behind. When he is her partner she finds her groove, even if she is sitting in a darkened house
by the beach with him at the present moment. She opens her eyes, and the flames are still
alight with movement. They appear and disappear, playing hide-and-go-seek with the
logs. They chew at the fuel of the wood, charring it, turning it to ash as they use it up for their
glory. They seem powerful, but only within the confines of the fireplace. When faced with the
steady, even rain outside these fires would fade and then disappear, no longer a destructive
parasite that feeds on the vulnerable wood.

"Told her I'd help in any way I can." Olivia takes a sip of her wine and darts a glance at
Elliot's profile again. He's running his teeth across his lower lip, and for some reason the rain
now seems soothing, even if it still hits the roof with force. She's become used to it. The thing
she hasn't gotten used to is working without Elliot, and as she watches him process what
she's told him, Olivia feels her throat constrict against the words that are forming in her.
When are you coming back?

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She can't do it. She can't ask him to return right away, no matter how much she needs Elliot
to return to the city with her. She has to let him do this on his own time, when he is ready. She
has to believe that he knows she counts on their partnership, that it is the touchstone that
grounds her and gives her direction. She has to believe it is the same for him and that it won't
be long.

"Courts never gonna overturn a case when the defendant hasn't even contested the original
conviction," Elliot surmises, his eyes narrowing at the flames in front of them.
Olivia nods and goes back to tracing the rim of her glass with her fingertip. Her words come
slowly, without rush.
"Casey thinks she can get Chester to admit he covered for Hernandez. Apparently the
Minnesota courts just rejected an appeal by a bonds company to reinstate the bond on a
fugitive who fled home to El Salvador. Said the US government will never spend the time and
money to go after the guy when the treaty between the countries specifically excludes the
extradition of their own nationals." Talking about the people and things that had once filled
their world is so damned familiar that it makes Olivia's palms ache and her chest burn. "Casey
thinks if Lake feels secure that Hernandez is safe and sound back home, he'll have no reason
to keep up the charade of his own guilt and she can get him out on time served on the
conspiracy charge."

Elliot sits less than two feet from her and Olivia's body is tired now. The combination of the
dark house and the soothing hum of rain makes her feel like she could stretch out right here
and fall asleep. Her wine is so dark that she can almost see the reflection of the flames in the
surface of the liquid. She wants to tell Elliot that he's everywhere in that squad room. She
thinks she sees him a thousand times a day. She gets her own coffee and it's never as good as
when he makes it. No one tells her to go home at the end of the day, no one lights up her cell
phone only five minutes after she's left because they need to ask her one more thing. She
doesn't go out for a drink after work with Fin and when she walks in every morning, she
doesn't feel the need to exhale just because she sees her partner already occupying the desk
across from her. She wants to tell Elliot that on the stakeouts, her partner checks his watch
every fifteen minutes as if he has somewhere else to be, and when someone calls Fin, she can't
tell just by the tone of his voice who is on the other end of the line.

She's only survived this long in the job because what she gave to it was somehow equaled by
what she took out of this partnership. If she was too tired, too worn to work in the unit then
she would lose Elliot, too and that had never been an option. It still isn't.

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He'll come back. He has to. He cares about the things they are talking about. He cares about
justice and the victims. He cares about the squad, about locking up the filth. He even seems to
be telling her that he cares about her. She thinks about what it will be like to have Elliot in the
city again, and Olivia wonders where he will live, if he will find a place near her. She thinks
about how he's given her time to adjust to the idea that maybe they could see each other and
figure this thing out without anyone knowing. He's backed off a little tonight, and his
willingness to do that makes her feel a little more in control. She's not on a train that's gone
rogue. There is time.

He'll come back.

She doesn't know why she keeps convincing herself. She doesn't know why his agreeing to
give her some space has also left her feeling slightly bruised and with a few more hollow
spaces within her. Elliot shakes his head.
"Goddamned job. Messes with your head until you don't know up from down."
Olivia had been about to take another sip of her wine, but now she freezes, her breath audibly
catching. She has to talk herself down from the instinctive way she tenses, bracing for him to
tell her that she is wrong and that he is done, that he is never coming home.

She can't do this to herself. He would have told her if he was done. He'd probably want to
kick around the idea of a new unit with her, and he'd definitely talk to her before he made any
decisions. There would be some sort of warning. She wants to just ask him outright, but even
if she doesn't refrain for his sake, she has to refrain for hers. If she asks him, he'll feel
responsible for her. He will see her as needy, as weak. That is not an option.

"We still got it better than the vics," she says quietly, trying to regain the equilibrium she had
just found a few moments ago.
Elliot looks at her, but she refuses to look at him. She doesn't want to see whatever it is that is
playing across his irises right now. She doesn't want to infer anything, or see something that
isn't there. Maybe two weeks? Three? I know the kids are coming out, so maybe you could
come back to the city with them after their visit?
"And what about when we are the vic?" It's an urgent, low rasp from him.
Olivia's breath shortens and she can feel the dread crawl up her skin. If he's talking about
Harris then this whole night is going to go straight to hell. He knows better than to push her.
He knows better than to confront her. She doesn't respond well to being stonewall-

190
"Even if we forget about that - and like hell I ever will - but let's just say that I'm not even
talking about that." He's picking up momentum now, and she knows this subject isn't
something new for him. He's obviously been thinking about this for a long time, and that
scares the shit out of her. "Let's say I'm talking about what happened to O'Halloran or about
how we almost lost Warner. They weren't even cops in the field at the time, Liv."

Olivia can't look at him. She drinks her wine instead, pretending that Elliot isn't affecting
her. She ignores the red flags that are waving, telling her not to bury her head in the sand, to
listen to what he isn't saying. The vehemence in him is evident, despite the gravelly, harsh
tone of Elliot's voice.
"Say I'm talking about the number of times we've looked down the wrong end of a gun, the
number of times we've been cut with a goddamned knife we didn't see coming. Not normal,
Olivia." He exhales. "Christ. You're the one who told me this back when you went to comp
crimes. You remember that? Get away from the job for awhile and you realize it's not normal
to see the blood and bodies surrounded by crime scene tape, it's not normal to watch your
friends implode one by one. Not one of us has a relationship worth shit." He seems like he's
going to say more but then he stops, almost snarling as he focuses on the fireplace in front of
them. "It's fucked up is what it is. It's fucked up. It oughta be like a political office. The unit
oughta have term limits, and when you're done, they force you the hell out."

Olivia doesn't realise that she's been holding her breath until her lungs feel like they are
about to explode and she lets it all go.
"Jesus." She doesn't even hear the rain or the thunder anymore. All she hears is Elliot, and in
the stillness he is the storm, even while he sits in one place. He is the tornado that can tear up
her world with just his words. She's always getting it wrong with him. Just when she gets
complacent, just when she gets comfortable, he comes screaming though, ripping it all up.
Just when she's conquered the rain and defeated the fire, he comes along and shows her that
what she should have feared all along is the wind. She forces her voice to remain steady and
she can't look at him. "You're done. Is that what you're saying?"

She doesn't want hear this right now. She doesn't. But it doesn't matter what she wants. If
it's the truth, then she needs to know. If it's the truth, then Elliot has to tell her, because what
he hides from her never saves her any pain at all. Say it, then. Just say it. It isn't until she
realises that she no longer sees the fire that Olivia knows that she's squeezed her eyes shut
again. She bows her head forwards and feels the smooth surface of her wine glass against her
forehead. Her instincts are telling her that he's already told her, that she just needs to listen.
To really hear him. Tell me what I'm up against for once. No more surprises, Elliot.
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Olivia doesn't fall apart; instead she slowly starts to go numb. It starts as tingling fissures that
race across her skin, tiny cracks that fragment as she waits for him to deliver the blow. The
truth is that with him there is always that fatal blow. You were with her, then you weren't. You
were a dad again, then you left. You need me, then you don't, then you do. Elliot is wordless
next to her. Only his purposeful, calculated breaths register in her ears. Give me something
here. Just tell me if you're done being my partner so I can pick up the pieces once and for all.
And I will. I've done it before.

I know how, because with you there are always pieces that fall. Instead, she feels Elliot shift
and then his thick arm is sliding behind her shoulders, along the couch, until his fingers are
curved around her, sliding into her hair and tipping her head towards him. He changes
everything when his lips press against her temple. He doesn't kiss her there, instead he just
holds her against his mouth. Olivia is shaking. Maybe not enough for him to feel it, but
enough that she knows she is doing it.

"I'm not leaving you." It's a rush from him. Elliot's fingers rub along her hairline behind her
ear. Minuscule movements and light strokes. He's deliberately calming her and for a moment
she feels like she's being placated, but she wants to believe him so badly that she accepts what
he is saying now and forgets what he said before. "Just relax." Her eyes close as he coaxes
her. "Just sit here with me."

And it's the wine or the flames or the way the wind has stopped howling around them that
slows her racing heartbeat and allows her fingers to loosen on the stem of her glass. She
forgets that she is terrified of him, and instead she acquiesces to his touch until her weight has
shifted to the right, and she's actually leaning on him. Elliot's shoulder is solid and rounded
with muscle, and she can smell the clear scent of his soap as her head inevitably drops onto the
horizontal plane of him. His jaw and neck are rough and darkened with stubble, and she can
feel it against her cheek. Olivia almost moans out loud at the relief of it all. The shaking has
abruptly stopped and she wonders if Elliot can hear the slow, rhythmic slam of her pulse.

"Finish your wine," he urges quietly.

Elliot's fingers spread out, until he's gently rubbing across the nape of her neck and then
back up again. The world disappears as he does it. This is probably cuddling, or something
else equally insane, but she doesn't care. Olivia just doesn't care. He's big and he's solid and
this has to be okay. She forgets that he has ever left her; she thinks it is impossible that he
would. He wouldn't. Not now. Not when they are like this, closer than they have ever been.

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They're too close. She's heard the whispers. But it seems improbable that she could get close
enough. The day has been long and it has taken its toll on her. Only with Elliot's heat next to
her, with the careful way he is releasing the knots in the back of her neck, her eyelids become
heavy. She manages to open them long enough to drink the last two sips before he's using his
other hand to take the glass out of her hands so he can set it by his right hip.

The wine has dulled her inhibitions, and between the heat of the fireplace and the curve of
him, Olivia forgets about being a cop. She isn't his partner; she doesn't know who she is. It
doesn't matter. She is good in this moment even if she is so, so tired. The way Elliot is
touching her tells her that she was wrong to fear him walking away. He's urging her towards
him, not putting distance between them; he's not preparing her for the fall. If she's going to
trust anyone, it has to be him.

Elliot neck is warm and she finds her reserve of air there, up against him. Olivia might be
smiling just a little bit; she might be sinking a hell of a lot. She has thought about this brand of
comfort for too many years, forced herself not to think about it for even more. This person
that she has become wants to open her mouth against his skin. She imagines slipping her own
hands under his t-shirt, and she thinks that his body will be hot and firm. She thinks about the
ridges of his abdomen and how the muscles in Elliot's stomach might contract if she touched
him just right. He's her best friend and that makes it ridiculous and obvious in the same
moment.

"Elliot," she groans, before she can stop herself. He says nothing and she doesn't find that
odd. He's not leaving.
The rain intensifies once again, and with it comes the echoing gurgle of thunder. Absently,
Olivia wonders what the waves look like, but she's too tired to make any effort to get up and
go look. She'll just imagine. They are giants, she thinks. Giants that are brought down by
nothing but gravity before they disappear against the soft sand. Elliot's fingers slip down her
neck and then back towards her ear. She wonders what he'd do if she opened her eyes and slid
over him. If he'd cup her breast through her t-shirt and just look her in the eyes because they
weren't supposed to, they're not supposed to. Maybe she is drunk. Maybe that is what this is.
He's not leaving. There is time.

"El," she manages again. She doesn't know why she keeps saying his name. He doesn't
respond with words, but his pulse picks up. She can feel it. Hear it. Her stomach is full, her
skin is thrumming. The house is dark except for this spot, and there is something reassuring
about that. She is leaning on him, but she wants more of him against her, so she shifts a little
193
bit without lifting her head, and soon she has both of her feet planted on the other side of his
opposite thigh, so that her entire right side is aligned against him.

Against her breast she can feel Elliot's heart beating. She has to remind herself that he
doesn't belong anywhere else right now. He doesn't belong to a wife or the NYPD; he
doesn't belong at home or out in the field. Sleep seems important. She is exhausted and there
are so many caverns on him. His neck, his shoulder, in the crux of Elliot's arm. She should
probably try and focus on the past so that she will remember what the boundaries felt like, but
she is too tired to dig that deep.
"You can tell me to move, you know," she mumbles half-heartedly.
As Olivia's eyes close, she thinks he actually stifles a laugh.
"Like hell," she hears clear as day.

She also thinks she feels Elliot's lip press into the top of her head, as if he is kissing her and
that can't be right. She is probably asleep already. That would explain all of this.
The last thing she recalls is that one of them lets out a deep breath, just before the rain picks
up again.
***

He's wide awake.

By all rights, he should be exhausted. It's been a long day and a longer evening, and he's
navigated enough land mines with Olivia to make a special forces operative in a third world
country proud. The truth though is that sleep is the furthest thing from Elliot's mind.
Outside, the storm has literally found its second wind. The thunder actually has a vibration
that he can feel on his skin, and the rain slams against the siding of the house with the force of
a nail gun, as if the droplets are thousands of purposeful steel shards. Against him, the only
storm that scares him is now asleep.

He is a little stunned at the even way she breathes, at the predictable rise and fall of her chest.
Olivia has been curled up against him for almost an hour, and he hasn't made a move that
wasn't absolutely necessary. The fire has been reduced to tiny, lazy flames that cling to the
remnants of the logs and two of the candles on the table have burned out, but Elliot sits still,
his left hand cupping the nape of her neck while the fingers on his right hand peel the label of
his now empty beer bottle. Olivia is sleeping against me. It's the thousandth time he's
marvelled at it, been overwhelmed by it, been convinced none of this is happening at all. So he
reminds himself by dropping his nose to her hair again, by closing his eyes and feeling the
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strands against his mouth, his chin, by blinking against them as he breathes and letting them
flutter and tickle his jaw. He refuses to look at the golden, bare expanse of her legs that cross
his lap. They are not even an option.

He learns things about her in these minutes. Olivia parts her lips, moves them, but as she
sleeps she breathes through her nose. Her body temperature rises as she falls deeper into
oblivion, until he is grateful that the fire has nearly died out in front of them because her skin
is already warm enough. Too warm. She makes an occasional sound, but he doesn't know her
sounds well enough yet to know if she is half-heartedly talking in her sleep, or if this is just
what she does as she dreams. He doesn't know what she dreams about. He's pretty sure he
knows what her nightmares look like though. He's had them. He doesn't want to have them
anymore. He doesn't want her to.

He thinks about Manhattan. He can almost close his eyes and be in the bullpen again, can
almost hear the sound of creaky chairs rolling along the floor, can almost hear the slam of
Cragen's office door. He sees Olivia - with her super short hair and those tight
black jeans on, - striding in with a cocky grin on her face because she'd nabbed her guy. He
sees her coming down the loft stairs too fast; he can smell the Chinese food that would sit on
their desks for too long. He knows the scuffs on those linoleum floors better than he knows
the lines on his own face. He thinks of all of the history that one room could contain. His feet
on his desk, Olivia's desk empty for too many weeks. He remembers the day they snapped the
black bands around their badges because they had lost Alex, and he almost grins when he
thinks about Casey stomping around the squad on her first case. He thinks of the ones who
came and went, Cassidy and Jeffries, Greyleck and Paxton and even Jo, and he wonders if the
squad was any different than the jetty's that surround Old Barney - if people were any
different than the ships, some just destined to smash up against the rocks of the unit and
disintegrate while others managed to push on.

He thinks about Olivia, and about how many times she has burned up inside because she
couldn't fix everything for everyone. He imagines being able to bring all of the victims back,
into one room, where they all could show her who they were now. He wants to show her how
she's changed them, given them back pieces of themselves, helped them to sleep at night. He
wants to show her that enough is enough, that she can stop proving her worth. He remembers
watching Olivia gather her things a hundred years ago because she was quitting, just like that.
He'd sat back in his chair that day and nodded towards their Captain who had headed straight
for her, words of wisdom in tow. Minutes later she had been back in full force, maybe even
stronger than before. Elliot hadn't believed for a minute that she could walk away. Not then.

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Not in the thick of it. Not in when they still had so much to do. Not when they were still young
enough, strong enough, outraged enough.

They'd been magic once. In the throes of their partnership, they had been unstoppable. He
had used his fists without discretion; she'd done the same with her compassion. He'd truly
felt like he belonged somewhere when he had prowled the squad room, and she'd reigned
over it right there with him. Next to him. In the midst of the hell, they had found reprieve in
each other. He wonders if things would just change as they should if left alone - if left to take
some natural course - or if everything needs to be painfully forced in some way. He thinks
about how Maureen cried for weeks when she graduated high school because it was all she had
ever known of her friendships, and yet she had glowed with possibility three weeks into her
freshman year at Hudson. It's the purgatory that kills, he thinks, it's the time between stages
that makes a person look back and long for the past because the future has no shape as yet. If
there was some way to look ahead and see the best of what was to come, then maybe fear
would be the least influential feeling of all.

Olivia is sleeping against me.

The fire is almost gone tonight, and soon he will rouse her. Olivia can't sleep sitting up all
night, even if he can. The power is still out, and he thinks about how some things aren't
essential to survival after all, no matter how dependent one is on them. The job hadn't held
him together all of these years; the bond had instead been her. He knows where the job is
inside of Olivia. It's in her bones, it's in her blood. He knows it takes up too much space
inside of her. Space that should rightfully be filled by other things. Things like a home, like
kids. Like family and space and time to heal. He knows that there is a healing process, that
what they have seen is no less than a war that ravaged their own backyard. He knows that there
are soldiers who are terrified of a life without combat, and that the re-entry into peace can be
overwhelming to the point of becoming undesirable.

Elliot presses his mouth to the top of her head one more time. He doesn't want to let go of her
tonight, but he has to believe this will happen again. He'll get to hold her like this again,
through the night, through her sleep. Soon. He needs it to be soon.
"Liv," he finally whispers.
She moves just a little bit, awakening slowly. It's so dark in the room that even this close to
her the shadows fall across her cheeks and eyes. He knows enough to know that she isn't
hurrying as she comes out of her slumber.

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He has to tell her things. He has to. Only he can't. Not right now. He needs to tell her,
because the omissions burn on his tongue. He should have told her the truth from the start,
she deserves to know everything. Only he can't come clean tonight. Not yet. Not when so
much depends on how this plays out. He doesn't stand a chance if she knows. He tries to
justify it like a cop or a prosecutor would - he needs time to build a case, to show her, to make
her understand first. If he doesn't do that, he's got no shot with her. She'll never come back
with the verdict he needs if he gives her bits and pieces in no order whatsoever.

"Olivia," he says again, this time just a little bit louder. "Time for bed."
He shouldn't hold her, he tells himself. Not after what he's done tonight. Tonight he's
thrown the grey he's been hiding behind into a centrifuge and spun it into black and white.
The line is no longer smudged between right and wrong. This time she exhales and lifts her
head. There is no mistaking the slow, mischievous smile that crosses her lips.
"You wish," she says in a sleep-roughened voice, still half out.

Under any other circumstances, his body would immediately react to her flirting, to the
teasing that she'd probably never indulge in if she were fully coherent. But tonight, he's got
too many other things on his mind. Tonight he's pushed himself even further towards the
breaking point.
"Hey, you should get some sleep," he says tightly, and he tells himself that if he just climbs
into his bed - if he can't feel Olivia against him anymore, if he doesn't have to clench his fist to
keep from slipping his palm along her leg - that he will find some perspective.
But something has changed with her tonight. She seems more relaxed, less afraid to touch
him. Instead of moving away, Olivia lets her forehead fall back to his shoulder.
"I'm not tired." She follows this by stifling a yawn and stretching before settling back in
against him.

Despite the tension that now is forming in his shoulders, Elliot finds himself marvelling at the
irony and letting his head drop back onto the couch behind them. Of course she would choose
this moment to get comfortable with him. Of course it would be in the one moment that he is
crawling out of his skin with the need to explain the full story to her that Olivia would let him
hold her. She has never been easy to predict, or done the expected thing.
"Tell me ‘bout the kids," she mumbles, her exhaustion evident in the way she almost slurs the
words. "I miss hearing about ‘em."

Elliot closes his eyes, and he focuses on the sounds coming from outside. He tries to separate
the thunder from the waves, the thrashing of the ocean from the rivers being formed by the
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rain. His hand slides down her spine, and without thinking he draws her an inch or two closer
to him. She doesn't pull away when he slips his palm beneath her sweatshirt and her t-shirt,
and his lifelines settle on the bare skin at the small of her back. His right hand cups the
outside of her left thigh. She's perfect everywhere, he thinks. Everywhere.

"Maureen is moving to Philly," Elliot starts, trying to keep his voice even. His fingertips find
the small dip in her back, and he tries to convince himself not to touch her, but Olivia
shudders just a little bit and then stills and he's too weak to let go. "She got into a Masters
program in biology at Drexel, and she's moving at the end of July. She got a research
scholarship to specifically study..." He tries to recall exactly what Maureen had said. "The
viral and airborne capabilities of transmittable Prion diseases." He can barely remember the
words, yet his daughter had rattled off the incomprehensible details at lightning speed when
she had called him. Against him, Olivia laughs quietly.
"You sure she's yours?"
He lets out a breath and lets his mouth fall to the top of her head again. He'd never told her
that for the briefest of moments he had truly questioned whether or not Eli was his. He'd
never told Olivia how he regrets those moments of doubt, feels guilty about them. "She's
logical about everything, and she's so practical about all of her decisions. She's such an easy
kid that I worry we don't pay enough attention to her." Olivia's stomach rhythmically presses
against his as she breathes, and he knows that is the sign of total relaxation. He prays that the
power stays off, because the last thing he wants is to have anything startle her in this moment.
Beneath his open hand he can feel the slight flex of the lean muscles in her leg. He doesn't rub
her there. He can't take it.

"You've always been close to her, El," Olivia murmurs.

He nods. Yeah, he has been. Maureen is his first-born; she is the one who first gave him
direction and purpose. He remembers watching her as a toddler, her blonde curls unruly as
they fell around her face. With her he had still had time to play, energy to build
fortresses and the patience to wear Prince Charming's crown during her games of make-
believe. He laughs now, remembering it.
"When she was four, she convinced me to marry her. Kath had told her that when two people
love each other, they get married, so it seemed perfectly logical to her. She showed up in my
room in her plastic Disney heels and she had made a veil out of the white fitted sheet from her
bed. Maur destroyed one of Kathy's floral arrangements to put together a bouquet and she
teetered down the hall to ask for my hand."

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Olivia's perfect laughter comes out of nowhere. It isn't boisterous; instead it's a gentle,
melodic sound that makes her body vibrate against his. She can't see him because of the way
she is sitting, so she doesn't know that it makes him close his eyes, and he wonders if she
realises that his fingertips are pressing harder into her back. He wonders what it would be like
to have that laughter every day. He wonders what she would be like if the darkness was
eradicated once and for all. Olivia's laughter does not incite his. Instead it makes him
painfully aware of just how somber she has been all of these years. Her laughter is not
contagious; it is the kind of thing a man just sits and watches, unwilling to clutter the sound
with any noise of his own.

He wants to keep going, to prolong these moments.

"Kathleen is doing better, but she's decided to switch majors again. English is out, theatre is
in. Apparently she can only express herself in costume and with an audience." He smiles a
little, even though it will cost them an extra year of tuition, and nothing is funny about that.
It's a small price to pay if Kathleen is happy, if she is committed to something. He knows his
daughter talks to her mother about the therapy sessions she goes to, and he knows he has to
find a way to be more than just authority to her, but for the moment he is grateful that she is
safe, that she is no longer falling further apart.

Olivia's left hand comes up, and she lays her palm flat against his chest, right in the hollow
between his pectoral muscles. His thumb dares to brush against her leg, sweeping slowly back
and forth. Elliot could stay here for a thousand years. When he closes his eyes, he can still
hear the fragmented, hollow sounds of their history. Blink your lights when you get inside.
You can always walk away. You and this job are about the only things I've got anymore. He
thinks about how it is more terrifying to fall for someone who already means everything than it

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is to fall for a stranger. He is in disbelief over all of the damned years it took for him to realise
that he wanted this. This. He doesn't want to know if anyone has ever held her in this way
before. Elliot doesn't want to know if Olivia's always gone without, and he doesn't want to
know if anyone else has ever had the privilege. Against the faucet of rain and the colliding
waves, he tells himself that he can do this. He can slow his emotions down; he doesn't need to
know how she feels about him just yet. He tells himself that he isn't scared that she will
dismiss him like she has all the others. Liar.

"How're the twins?" It's a breathless, sleepy prompt.

This has to change everything. Olivia curled into him like this has to mean the shift has already
happened. He has to believe he will never be asked to let her go. He just has to keep his words
coming, has to keep the cadence of his voice low and steady despite his arousal, despite his
agitation.
"Dickie should be locked up for the next ten years or so. I thought only women liked to talk
on the phone, but he's on his cell all the damned time. I call him, and five seconds later he's
tellin' me he's gotta go because some girl is on the other line. One day it's Brittany, another
day it's Chelsea. Kid needs to come with a warning sign."

Olivia's laughter is softer this time; it comes from under her shaky breath. When it fades
away, even the rain can't penetrate the sensation of silence.
"This..." Another breath. "This is okay, right?"
Elliot grits his jaw, and he fights not to slide his hand up her back, along her bare skin. He
wants to kiss her, to trace the inside of her thigh instead. He wants it to be the right moment,
right now. He wants to tell her that she's not chickenshit, and he doesn't want to tiptoe.
Tonight. He could slide his mouth over hers tonight; make her open hers for him. No, he
wants to tell her, this is not okay. This dance is bullshit. He wants to count on the future he's
got mapped out in his head. He's already lied to her tonight, and he can't do it again. No. No,
this is not okay.

"Lizzie is a dreamer," he says instead, ignoring her. His voice is thick, rough. He's focused.
Determined. "She's quiet and she likes to write. We worried about the hours she was
spending on the computer until she won a creative writing contest at school." Elliot moves his
hand from the bare skin of Olivia's back. He's killing himself with this sort of thing. With the
touching, the teasing contact. Maybe he should just stop, let Olivia go back to the city and
really get the space she needs. He curls his fist against her sweatshirt instead. His thumb stills
on her thigh. "Lizzie is a thinker, old beyond her years. She's Eli's favorite. She's got one

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best friend, and she never wants to party with the kids at school. Only kid who can make her
do stupid shit is Dickie."

This time when he stops talking, Olivia is silent. He feels her hand start to pull away from his
chest as well. Her back tenses and he drops his palm from her leg.
"I'm trying, Elliot," she whispers.
His throat locks. His eyes burn. The devil talks to him, and he forgets everything he knows
about Olivia. His anxiety morphs until her caution is not about her fear, it is about him. He
wants to know if she has ever trusted him enough - and if he broke that trust - or if it never
even existed in the first place. He wants to know who the fuck she thinks would love her more.
He wants to know why she can give herself over to a one-night stand, but she can't deal with
the idea of him touching her like that just yet. He wants to know if her walls are up because
he's got kids, an ex-wife, too much baggage.

"Eli is into music," he continues. His tone has flatlined, but it's a miracle he's talking at all.
He recognises the tension in him as something he had thought was long since gone. It's the
feeling he had when Kathy first told him she was pregnant, it's the feeling he had when he
realised Olivia had left him the second time around. When he's got no control at all, he gets
frustrated. His frustration always manifests in him as a simmering anger. "Lizzie saved up her
money and bought an iTouch, and Eli knows how to use it better than anyone. He loves
nothing better than to try and learn the words to songs." His own words are stilted.
Perfunctory.

He hates the rain right now, because if it would just fucking stop then he could go for a run.
He needs another reason to justify the mounting pressure in his lungs. He learned this in his
months out here, that he needs an outlet when the anger takes hold. He's found an outlet in
forcing himself to fight against the tide, or in spending long hours working on his father's
bike in the garage. He found relief in lying on the floor in his bedroom, crunching his abs to
the point of fire, or in doing push-ups until his arms would shake from the exertion. Only in
this moment, holding her, he has none of those options available to him so he has to work this
out in his head, and in his head alone.

So he tells himself that he's got to count his victories; he's got to just be happy that Olivia is
burrowed against him right now. But even the comfort of that is fading. Instead, the contact is
chafing because it isn't enough. It's more lies, he thinks. He sits here and pretends he is
content to brush her leg or the small of her back, but he's incinerating inside. He is in love

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with a woman who will give him tiny bits of herself and he's desperate enough that he has
been taking what he can get. But he isn't a superhero. He doesn't have the patience of Job.
Elliot grinds his teeth, steels himself. He is scared, because he's lost sight of the man he wants
to be, and instead he is the man he has always been. He wants her to give him something,
anything. If she would just plainly say she'll give him a chance to prove to her that he won't
fail her, even that might be enough.

Instead, Olivia sits up now and pulls her body away from his. Her legs are still bent above his
own. His palms fall to the rug they are sitting on. It's fitting that she can hold him down
without touching him at all. She tucks her hair behind her ear and then she is wrapping her
arms around her waist. She won't look at him. Instead she hunches over until her forehead
touches her knees.
"I'm not easy," she says into her skin. "I'm impossible, Elliot. I know that. It's one of the
reasons I gave up, because...because I'm gonna be too much work."
Olivia's voice is thick with apology. Her back shudders and then stills. She has never cried
easily, and if he knows her at all, she won't start now. Elliot is paralysed. He wants to tell her
it's okay if she runs, that he will come after her no matter how many times she pulls away. But
the truth is that he is bruised, too. He's been left ever since he was a child. He's been left for
the magic of Paris, for the promise of New Mexico. He's been left because he wasn't enough,
because he was too much. He just doesn't want to be left anymore. She's got to meet him
halfway on this because he can't make this work all on his own.

Her fingers spear through her hair, but Olivia still doesn't look up. The seconds pass, and the
fire is dying. It's on its last embers and he won't add more wood to it tonight. He recklessly
thinks about just shattering all the boundaries and telling her he loves her, just letting her deal
with the aftermath. He wonders how bad it could be, but the truth is that he knows. He already
knows.

"Why're you so ‘fraid of me?" he finally asks gruffly.

Her breathing is even now. Too even. It's as if she is ruthlessly controlling it. Her back rises
and drops in short, calculated intervals.
"You were wrong," Olivia finally says. She rests her cheek on her knees, looking towards the
fire instead of towards him. "You told me you were the longest relationship I'd ever had with
a man. But you were wrong."
If silence had a colour, it would be black everywhere around him. If she's kept another secret
from him, if she's -

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"You're the longest relationship I've ever had with anyone." She lifts her head, and she
suddenly faces him. Olivia's eyes are flat. Her face is expressionless, her words are wooden.
"You're the only person in my life that has been good for me. The only one."
This is what he doesn't understand. If he is the only one, then this should make perfect sense.
Then he is the logical choice.
Olivia blinks. She breathes. She looks him straight on.
"Don't make me risk that. Don't." She hardly moves at all. Her voice is just the purposeful
movement of her lips and the manipulation of air. "This is all I know how to do. I'm not like
you. I'm not, Elliot." As devoid of emotion as Olivia seems, her eyes still dampen, but that is
the only change in her. "You want more, but I...I just don't want any less." She presses her
lips together, but when she blinks, her face becomes streaked, just once. She doesn't
acknowledge the tear at all, instead she lifts her chin, shakes her head just a little bit. "I don't
want any less."

He can't even argue with Olivia anymore. He wants to shake her. He wants to fucking yell.
One step forward, nine thousand steps back. He feels the first vestiges of the pain she is going
wreak upon both of them. His fingertips are numb and for a moment he envies her apparent
ability to just shut down, to compartmentalise. He can't hear the ocean churning or the wind
as it races between the houses and onto shore. He doesn't hear the gutters spitting out the
water. He just hears the roar in his own head. He fell in love with her, he thinks. He fell in love
with her.

Olivia's pupils are dilated. He can tell that even in the last flickers of light. Her face is dry
now, impassive.
"You're my best friend," she says. They are childish words, but he knows they are difficult for
her to say. They just don't mean what they used to. Now the words don't bind them, they
break them.
Elliot shakes his head before he can stop himself.
"No," he says, and then he is surprised he has said it out loud. "No." He wants to tell her that
is an excuse, a platitude. He wants to tell her that it's not enough. Not anymore. If he's a liar,
then in this moment she is, too. They're not fucking friends. They're not even partners. He's
a goddamned man and she's a woman and he's sorry that she's scared, but it's time for them
to face the music. It's not just attraction or flirtation. They are co-dependent. They are
interminably intertwined. They're not whole, healthy people, they are clinging halves.
Everyone in the blasted world has seen it, has called them on it. They can't tread in this
stagnant water anymore.

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"Elliot-" Olivia panics.
And then he realises why he hears fear in the way she says his name. He's unknowingly
pushed himself back, out from under her, up onto the couch. He's extracted himself from her
and he's still shaking his head.

"El?" Olivia is still in the same spot on the floor, looking up at him. Only now, because he's
further away from her, he can no longer see the nuances of her expression. It is a blessing.
He stares at the dark shape that she makes beneath him. She's gonna decimate him. That's all
he can think. He is looking at her now, and all of the lighthouses in the world aren't going to
save them. He can't change her in a few days, and maybe not ever. She doesn't want to
change. There is a reason they have managed to be everything and nothing at all to each other
for over twelve years. He thought he knew her better, but he underestimated her ability to
lock down. He stands up and he swipes his hand roughly over his face, trying to clear his head.

"Elliot," she attempts again, his name cracking on the syllables of it. He knows that Olivia's
hair is mussed, that her feet are bare. He's towering over her, and she doesn't move to stand
up. It's incongruous. The fact that he still wants to hold her - to pull her onto him - only
incenses him further. He feels like an idiot. Even when she asked for time, she was just
putting him off, placating him. He drags his gaze over the dark shadows that dance over
Olivia's huddled body and he knows why she came to the beach house. Their reasons don't
align at all. He wanted to bring her here to show her that they were more than partners, that he
was in love with her. She came out here to get him back to New York, to set up their
boundaries all over again. They are both so, so wrong. So fatally misguided.

"This was a mistake," he finally mutters.

Her sharp, staccato exhale sounds like a punch of air in the darkness. It is followed by the
crack of the circuit breaker, and then the beep of the microwave and the oven snapping to life
again. The room floods with light and the effect is garish. His own pupils haven't even
adjusted before he is out of the room, headed away from her, towards his bedroom. He
doesn't need to know what this mess looks like when it is all lit up.

And more than anything, he doesn't need a memory in his head of what Olivia looks like,
sitting there all alone on the floor.

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 Chapter Eighteen

S
he is cold. She registers that much, but beyond it she doesn't feel anything. She lies
beneath the covers on her bed, and she stares straight up at the dark ceiling. He went to
bed two hours ago, although without the clock on the end table she would have no idea
how much time has passed. Olivia doesn't move. Her fingers don't twitch, she isn't restless.
She doesn't moisten her lips, she hasn't cried. She blinks, but she doesn't close her eyes. She
occasionally looks around at the peripheral shadows of the room without turning her head.
Her gaze bounces around the corner of the room and then settles back on the ceiling directly
above her. Her skin is dotted with goose bumps, but it will be too much effort to lift her arms
up and slide them beneath the bedspread, so instead she stays perfectly still.

She has to go back to New York.

She tells herself this again and again, as if there is a magic salve that will be found if she can
just get there. She doesn't overwhelm herself with too many thoughts all at once. Her
composure is only maintained by the detachment that she surrounds herself with. There are
realities that she is holding at bay, just on the fringe of her consciousness. The implications
and ramifications of what she will have to face upon her return to the city are as yet too
devastating; they are too much at once, so she doesn't let them penetrate her awareness.
Instead she just lies here, frozen. Breathing. Steady, she thinks. Steady.

Everything seems like it is in the past now. Things that happened just hours before seem like
they occurred a lifetime ago. The things that happened days ago feel like they are a movie she
had watched but never lived. The moments are brushstrokes in her memory. She thinks about
him chasing her across the sand in the last vestiges of evening, she remembers falling and just
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staring at the night sky, absorbing his presence because she'd been without for so long. She
thinks about running next to him, the sun hot and scalding on her skin.
She sees herself shooting tequila, and then she is reckless and barefoot at the edge of the
shore, in no rush to get home. There is a warm, light wind, and music is playing in the
kitchen. She is laughing with no thoughts of restraint. She is trying on her new clothes; she is
half-asleep on a lounge chair. She is mad that he is so much better at Frisbee than she is, and
she vows to get better, so much better. She has tan lines and her hair is lighter, and the garlic,
the garlic is simmering in a pan while she thinks about drinking too much wine tonight.
There is no air in the room. Even that has stood still, maybe even evaporated. Left her.
So she leaves too. She goes somewhere else. She closes her eyes and she can feel the heat of
the sunshine, she can hear the lulling crash of the waves. The air is thick with salt, and the
seagulls swirl across a bright blue sky. His skin is darker than she remembers, and his jaw is
shadowed because he doesn't always shave. In this world she is free with him. She wraps her
arms around him and his laughter is deep and rough. There is nothing to do today, so they
might take a drive, maybe they will grill for dinner. Her hands roam his body, and she still
keeps her eyes open when he is inside of her because she just likes to look at him, to watch his
beautiful face. She is prettier, she only wears dresses. She easily believes, and she trusts with
abandon. Nothing scares her; he is the only thing that keeps her awake at night. She is full
inside, too full. It's easy to give things away because she knows she has too much. She is a
woman who has everything and he tells her that is just the start. He tells her he loves her, and
she thinks it is such an amazing coincidence, because she loves him too. This is who she wants
to be.

She squints at the ceiling, as if there is something to see beyond the film of moisture that
covers her irises. Olivia holds her breath, fighting the crushing weight that is pressing down
on her breastbone. Her throat is raw yet she has not said a word. The way he had sounded
when he walked away earlier is what is killing her. Like he was disappointed in her, done with
her in every capacity. She had tried to tell Elliot, to explain to him, warn him but...
Olivia stops, forcibly clearing her mind again. Too much. It's too much to think about. She
waits for the numbness to find her. Steady. She knows how this goes. There are five stages to
loss, and she knows them well. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. She
doesn't even bother with the first four anymore.

She focuses on the concrete tangibles and takes stock of her reality. She is single, unhindered
by family. She is a good cop; she could make captain one day. She has a knack with children,
she doesn't have any debt. Her apartment is in a fairly decent section of midtown and there

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are people she can call - friends - if she wants to go out for a drink at night and have some
company. Her demographics imply that she is doing well for herself.

This was a mistake.

It is acid on her skin.

She closes her eyes now, because she isn't strong enough to keep them open anymore. She
wants to ask Elliot what he means. Does he mean their partnership was wrong? Their
friendship? Is he talking about caring for her, is he referring to their time here together? Or
does he now think he was wrong to assume she was worthy of his time, his attention, his...
Mistake. He doesn't love her. He doesn't, and that's good. It's better that way because she
doesn't love him either. She doesn’t.

Her heart races, it speeds out of control as if it is trying to get away from the lie. She is shaking
in her bed. She tells herself that she feels nothing. She's survived on her own, and she can do
it again for awhile. She will give him space and one day he will come back. When this is all in
the far-forgotten past he will come back. It's that thought that she grasps onto. That is what
she will believe. Olivia is still awake, but she hasn't heard movement at all from his room.
Maybe Elliot is sleeping soundly; maybe he doesn't need to know anymore than he already
does. As surely as she knows she will fail him if they pursue any sort of a relationship, he must
see it now too. She is relieved for him; she is relieved that he will stop trying so hard with her.
It will be easier on him this way.

Only there is some part of the fantasy left inside of her. It is a tiny, ignored voice, the last bit of
hope. It tells her that she wants him to fight her on this. It says that she needs Elliot to fight
her, to really fight her. It's pathetic that she can't do this for herself. But she can't. She needs
him to just break her, to call her on the shit rules that she has imposed and to be louder,
stronger, more resilient than she is. Olivia wants the hull to be shattered and he is the only
one who can do it. He is the only one who might possibly care enough to dig deep and find her
faith because she has no idea where to start. He could love her so hard and so strong that she
would have no choice but to fall, and she thinks she could one day be happy on the other side
with him. But he would have to try and try again because she doesn't know how to help herself
get there. She doesn't know how to let go without being terrified of the consequences,
without being deathly afraid that it is all just a time bomb, waiting to detonate.

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If he doesn't break through, then that is really it and the lies of satisfaction and self-
sufficiency she tells herself will have to become her truth. Only she can't ask him for any of
this because she can't guarantee she will ever be able to openly love anyone. It's simply best if
he gives up. It's best for the both of them. Her breaths crash inside of her now. They are the
rogue waves in the storm. They are fierce, gasping, they rise and toss with a ferocity that
seems to come out of nowhere. She is drowning beneath them, and she has the vague notion
to cry, as if that would relieve the pressure. But she can't. She is who she is, so instead she will
suffocate. Her struggle for air comes in a quiet wheezing that rattles around inside of her as if
she has pneumonia. Maybe she does, she is so cold that it is possible. Her body goes rigid, and
she presses her head back into her pillow, waiting for a reprieve. Her hand flies to the bare
skin at her chest, and her palm flattens as if she can hold herself together. Please don't give
up, Elliot.

The pleading voice echoes in the room, ignored. She has to go back to New York. Even he
said this is a mistake. Maybe it's already done too much damage and he will never be able to
work with her again. She could tell him to take a few more months, a year, but maybe even that
won't be enough time away from her. She thinks about the boardwalk, and she remembers
buying a handful of clothes because she was staying here for what seemed like forever. She
thinks about where her things are in the house, and they are everywhere, as if she has taken
over. Her sandals are by the patio door; her wet clothes are still in the bathroom. She will have
to pack up the bottle of vitamins she left in the kitchen; her purse is still locked in his truck.
Please fight me on this.

She dismisses the voice, and she blocks out the recollection of sleeping against him. She
doesn't think about the fireplace and her wine, she can't smell his soap as she aligns her body
with Elliot's and wraps around him in the lighthouse. She will force herself to forget the way
they had stood over the storm; she will pretend she doesn't crave the history and peace that
pervades everything here. She can't keep shaking. She's not bleeding out, so she has to quell
the effects of shock. This is not acceptable. He's just a man, and needing him cannot become
debilitating. Elliot? Are you sleeping?

He's not just a man, something inside of her hisses at her. He's not. He's her partner, he's her
family. He's saved her life, he's coddled her and protected her and called her on her shit a
thousand times. She is surrounded by people all the time - on the streets of New York, on the
subway, in the precinct and in the bars - and no one even comes close to who Elliot is. No one
else could ever be her anchor and her buoy at the same time. Elliot Stabler is the last of the
heat inside of her. You are sleeping. That's okay, you should be. She is the one who pushed

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him away, she thinks. She did this. She is the weak, miserable one. She is the incomplete one.
Only a fool would push a man like Elliot away. The courage she tries to show the world is a
façade. Even Elliot had believed she was stronger, capable.

I'm sorry.

She is a fool. So she does it to herself again. She chooses to lose upfront so that the loss isn't
an unexpected one down the line. She'll go home tomorrow morning, and by afternoon she
will be in the precinct. She will clip her badge onto her jeans, and she will wear a shirt that
covers the bulge of her gun. There are probably files waiting on her desk; there are probably
statements that she needs to take. Undoubtedly there will be another rape victim, and the case
will become hers. She'll hunt down the perpetrator; she'll use everything in her to bring the
case to justice. She might get hurt, she might not. She'll let the case eat at her because the
burn is what drives her day after day.

The city will be sweltering, and the humidity will cling to her skin. The car horns will scream,
and she will have to pry her bedroom window open just an inch or two to get the air moving
through her place. She will draw the curtains in the early evenings to keep the last of the sun
out, and her cell phone will light up in the middle of the night again. She'll make her way to
the precinct while other people sleep, and she'll tell herself there will be time to be tired later.
She has to go back. She's forgetting who she is out here. Olivia stares at the ceiling, and
outside the ocean and the thunder still rumble. Her thoughts scatter, fragment. She tries to
sharpen her focus on the images. She wonders where the seagulls take shelter in a storm like
this. She thinks about the flashing beacon of Barnegat Lighthouse and she wonders if there is
a ship out there tonight that sees it, that is navigating with its aid. She thinks about how Elliot
fits in here, how he is big and solid and comfortable in his skin. She thinks about how he owns
the ocean when he swims in it, how the riptides don't scare him, how he doesn't fear what is
beneath the surface.

To her it is an unpredictable abyss. I'm cold, she thinks. She remains interminably awake.
Unmoving.
***

His sheets stay cold, despite the fact that he has been tossing and turning all over on them for
the better part of two hours. He is now on his stomach, his arms shoved beneath his down
pillow. He forces himself to stay still, even though every inch of him wants to move. Despite
his chilled sheets his body is warm and he thinks it is because inside his frustration has
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become a seething burn. His comforter has long since been kicked off the foot of the bed, and
only a light cotton blanket is now loosely draped over him. Even that has been shoved
downwards, until the top of it rests on the lower half of his bare back.
Elliot grinds his teeth and narrows his eyes in the dark. He can only think of movement. He is
purposeful about keeping his palms flat and opened against the mattress, because the urge is
to form fists, to find something to hit. He's taken his anger out in a million places before.
He's swiped desks clean; he's punched his locker more times than he can count. He's hit
walls, gripped a picture frame in his hands and smashed it against the wall in the apartment he
had once rented during his separation. He's hit too many perps to count, and Christ, in the
worst of it he almost went after Dickie once, right in the middle of the bullpen.

He knows he loses it. He's been told by all of them - Olivia included - that his anger isn't
healthy, that he can't just fume unchecked. So he stays still right now, and he tells himself to
just calm the fuck down. Pounding his fist into her door isn't going to help a damned thing.
The storm has eased just a little bit outside, and that pisses him the hell off too. Just when he
wants to hear the fury of it, it disappears. The rain is steady, half-assed. It's controlled, and he
wants to yell at the heavens in protest.

He wonders if Olivia is sleeping. He is half-riddled by guilt, but the other half of him wants to
go at her, to just call her on every bullshit notion she's got in her head. He wonders if she
thinks this is easy for him, if she thinks because he once had a wife that he knows what the hell
he is doing. He wants to tell her that this is not the same thing at all. He'd gotten married
before he fell in love the last time around, and loving Kathy had thankfully been easy. She had
been eager to get married; she had been excited about becoming a mother. Kathy had a
natural inclination to meet the neighbours, to join the PTA, to debate for days over a pattern
for a kitchen valance she wanted to make. He'd fallen for her because she was everything he
had never known. She had been stable and calm and she was the same person every, single
day. She was practical and her hair never changed and her dreams all revolved around their
home and family. He had loved her in a way that had been comfortable and warm; there had
been a security in her brand of consistency.

Olivia is the opposite in almost every way. She is fluctuating, unpredictable, and she has a
fiery temper that matches his. The PTA would freak her the fuck out the same way it did him,
and she wouldn't notice the presence of a kitchen valance unless it had something to do with a
crime scene. He fell for her when he had no business doing so. He fell for her not as a kid, but
as a grown, adult man who was so damned captivated by her that all of the logic and rationale
in the world couldn't deter him from deciding that she was the one. She makes him burn and

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then calms him with a look. She reduces him to his baser instincts, until he's left just trying to
control his response to her. He recognises her on some primal level, feels the ordained link
between them. He is connected to her in ways that define reason. It is intrinsic - it is in the
way they move, they way they talk in the silence, the way that he doesn't ever feel the need to
explain, because Olivia already knows.

It's just icing on the cake that she's drop dead stunning. He used to laugh mirthlessly at
Kathy, because towards the end of their marriage she would look at him with accusation when
he stayed too long at work. He'd wanted to ask her if she really thought he'd look so damned
miserable all the time if he was spending half his nights in Olivia's bed, but his you're-being-
an-asshole radar had gone off, and he had kept his mouth shut. So no, if Olivia thinks this is
easy for him, she's so far off base that she'd need a damned map to find her way back. The
only difference is that when he sees the rest of his life stretched out ahead of him, he doesn't
have blinders on as to what it looks like without her. He can either shut down now because
loving Olivia is too dangerous, too unstable, or he can give it every damned thing he's got,
because waking up next to her would make it worth it every, single day. He wants the choice
to be that simple for her as well.

Only it's not. And despite what his gut is telling him, his head is breaking down the facts until
all he can assume is that she doesn't think he is worth it, too. He rolls over in his bed, and he
faces the ceiling. He shoves one of the pillows more forcefully under his head, and his fist
doesn't let go of it. He can feel the feathers between his fingers, in the centre of his palm, and
he tries to curb the agitation, the panic. Maybe he needs to just let go. His gut churns angrily
in protest. His gut says to fight for her. His gut is still back there, rooting for him to use his
fist on her door inside of the next five minutes. His gut points out the easy way Olivia fell
asleep on him, and the uncharacteristically shy way she sometimes looks up at him. His gut
parades out the way she had pressed herself against him up at Old Barney, and how she hadn't
said she wasn't interested, just that she needed time.

He's got no clue which way to go, what the hell to do. He needs a run. He needs the air in his
lungs and the sweat on his skin. Only the rain stops him. The sand will be a mess; his sneakers
will be heavy with water. He has to stay in the house for now and -
The bike.

He closes his eyes for a moment, silently thanking the powers that be for the old machine. It
runs fine, but he's been wanting to change out the back tire for a whitewall with solid treads
that Jack picked up at the flea market, and they'd found a brass door handle from 1931 that
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they'd decided would make a great top to the gear shift. It's not more than a couple of hours
of work all in all, but it's enough. It's enough to keep him occupied.
Elliot is out of bed before another thought has the chance to cross his mind. He doesn't care
that it is the middle of the night; he's got nowhere to be tomorrow. If he knows her at all,
Olivia will leave in the morning, and it won't hurt to be dead-ass exhausted when she does,
because maybe with a little mercy he'll actually sleep through the first few hours of her sudden
absence. He rubs the heel of his palms into his eyes and exhales. When the restlessness eases
just a little bit, he digs out an old, oil-stained white t-shirt that is probably ripped already from
all the hours he spent on the bike over the winter, and he pulls on a similarly battered pair of
jeans as well as his beach flip-flops.

He opens his bedroom door quietly, and he notices that there is no movement coming from
her room. The hallway is dark as is the rest of the house, which means Olivia must have turned
off the lights on her way to bed. He looks at the bottom slit of space between her door and the
floor. Her room is dark as well. Good for her, he grits. Maybe she can sleep through all of it.
In the kitchen, he finally turns on a light. Their dirty dishes fill the sink, and it almost makes
him forget his anger. Olivia lives like a teenager, without compunction to rinse the dishes or
put them in the dishwasher. In some ways she has no rules, and in others she has far too many.
Elliot grabs a flashlight in case the lights go off again while he is in the garage, and he uses the
side door to head out into the light drizzle of rain. He makes sure not to let the door slam shut
as he walks out, because God forbid he wake Olivia up from the depths of her unfettered
sleep.
***

She hears him moving around his bedroom, and within five minutes he has rustled around the
kitchen and then he is gone.She hears the door shut behind him.Olivia waits for the rumble of
the truck engine, but it never comes. She wonders where he went, what he is doing in the light
rain that still falls. The house seems too big all of a sudden, too empty. She wants to either
curl up or go after him, but she remains in one place, working instead to slow the pace of her
heartbeat.

For a moment she closes her eyes, and she thinks about what it would be like to just let herself
go, right here, right now. If she were to follow Elliot out, to nod her head in acceptance, to say
she was sorry out loud. She wonders if he would kiss her then, if he'd come at her fast and
hard or if he'd be slow, taking his time, giving her time to adjust. For the first time her skin
warms, and her lips part, expelling a burst of air. She wants to know what Elliot tastes like,

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what it would feel like to hold the mass of his muscles beneath her palms as his mouth fitted
against hers.
She wants to know if Elliot is a thousand small kisses, or one hungry, deep claim. His jaw
would be rough, and she expects that her skin would get reddened by the onslaught. He is
built differently than any man she has ever dated or been intimate with. She usually chooses
men she isn't physically intimidated by, but Elliot is the polar opposite. He's broad, infinitely
capable. She knows his raw strength and has used it to her advantage time and time again. She
goads the suspects, the witnesses, the ones who are hiding something, and when they come at
her she steps back and Elliot is there, fast and unyielding, pouncing on them before they
touch her at all. Her teeth scrape against her lower lip and she feels like the entire world has
gone upside down. She finally reaches over and flips on the bedside lamp, because there is not
a chance she is going to fall asleep and the shadows are far too conducive for playing the what-
if's again and again.

His mother's journal sits on the end table, and she debates on whether or not she should read
more of it. It feels like the right to read the words that are so personal to him and his history
has been withdrawn. He's angry at her, and maybe he wouldn't want her to keep going with it.
But her fingers are reaching for the worn leather and time-yellowed pages before she can stop
herself. Even if Elliot doesn't want to know the details of his mother's life, Olivia now does.
She needs to understand how Bernadette coped, how she survived despite seeing her failures
reflected in her son's accusing eyes. When Olivia opens the book and thumbs to the next
entry, she is startled to see that there is a gap in time. The next entry is long and takes place
two years later, when by her calculations Elliot would have been seven years old.
She takes a deep breath and prays that if even for a short while, she will lose herself to the past,
so she doesn't have to think about the present or the incomprehensible future.

August 12th, 1972

Suhaili -
I haven't written in so long. I'd say I hadn't had time, but that would be a lie. You never helped
me, so I gave up on you. That's just the blunt truth. I'm not sure that I even have anything to
say tonight, but it's not like I have anything else to do. So here I am.
I read my last entry before I started this, and it is strange to know it was made while I had
been locked up. I complained about Creedmoor, but the truth is it was a far better place than
this. Creedmoor at least had sunlight and activities. Where I am now is just a glorified jail cell.
They lock up the crazies and tell families that their loved ones are being helped, but nothing

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here is helpful. It's like they just scooped up the crazies and dumped them here so the world
doesn't have to deal with them all.
They must think that I am crazy too.
This place is called The Hayworth Center, which makes it sound lovely and serene. But I
know what this place is. It's a mental institution. The walls are white, the rooms are always
locked behind us. The people around me do nutty things. They wail and rock, some talk to
themselves and a few others just gape at the walls. I'm envious of the ones who cry, because at
least they have feeling.
I have nothing. I am nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Sometimes I stare out the window, other times I stare at the ceiling. I keep searching inside of
me for something, for some anger, some sadness, for some happiness but nothing comes. It's
like the world has slowed down and nothing registers. I don't even miss home, or my son. I
don't laugh, I don't cry. I don't sing anymore, and I don't care about what is happening on the
soap operas they play on the television all day. Sometimes I wonder why my soul left me
before I died, but then again I can't blame my soul for not wanting to be here, either.
I am hollow, and they tell me I am reacting well to the medication.
I don't even remember all of the things that led me here. I remember sleeping in the guest
bedroom last year, and when Elliot had asked me why I wasn't sleeping in my room I told him
it was because Joe would wake me when he came home late. Joe never once asked me why I
stopped sharing his bed.
The truth was that I could smell her on him. I could smell her perfume on his shirt and when
Joe would slip into bed, I could feel my skin itch as if bugs had begun to crawl on me because
of her horrid perfume. I don't know who she is, but I know she exists. It was one thing to know
that he was being frivolously unfaithful with many women. It's another thing altogether to
know that he had found one woman and that he was with her, day after day.
Maybe he is with her now. I don't even care about that anymore.
I don't sleep. I haven't slept in days. Maybe in weeks. I'm awake at night. All night. When they
check on me, I close my eyes so they don't give me the valium or the sleeping pills that keep me
endlessly drowsy.
I remember bits and pieces of the last year. I remember scrubbing the floor at midnight, and
cleaning the fridge just as the sun was coming up. I became so adept at housework all of a
sudden that even Joe stopped yelling at me. Elliot started grade school and he was gone all
day, every day. I'd send him off with carefully packed lunches and I'd diligently sign all of his
schoolwork. I organised the closets, all of them. I made lemonade from scratch, and I
decorated the porch with pumpkins. Elliot was enamoured with the colour orange, and he
decided he wanted to be an orange for the Thanksgiving Day parade. When I told Joe he had
a fit. He yelled at Elliot and I and told us that no son of his would be a fruit. When Elliot
protested, Joe yanked him by his arm and locked him in his room. As soon as Joe left for work
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I remember opening Elliot's door. It took me thirty minutes to convince him to come out from
under his bed, and when he did his face was streaked and swollen from his tears, only he
wouldn't cry in front of me.
I remember things like that.
The last of what I recall is of renting the house in Wildwood a few months ago, thinking that
maybe we all needed to just get away for a bit. But Joe rarely came out to the shore house to
see us, and I got to wondering if he was bringing that woman into my house back in Queens
for their romps. Joe said some bad things were happening with the NYPD and that guys were
being fired left and right because some drugs went missing, but I know the truth. He didn't
come because he didn't care. I know I was angry, so angry, but now I don't even remember
how the anger felt.
All I know is that I decided to leave Joe. In my rage, I hurled it at him one weekend when he
came to Wildwood. I was leaving, I was leaving. Only the despicable man just stood there,
and said no woman would leave him. Over his dead body would he be the butt of all the
department jokes.
I think that's when I went to get the gun.
I remember the reds and the yellows in my head. I remember the noise was so loud, and I was
bursting into pieces. He was killing me. I knew it for sure, that he was killing me, trapping me,
not letting me breathe.
I shot at him, just so he wouldn't kill me first. In all of the reds, I couldn't see that he had been
holding my boy at the time. I think of that too. What kind of woman tries to kill her son?
So I'm here. Joe had me committed, and he said if I didn't comply that he'd arrest me himself.
This used to hurt me - that my husband would say that - but now it's just part of my facts.
Thorazine, it's called. And Lithium. I remember the first time they forced these things on me, I
felt violated. I tried to claw, to hit them, only they strapped me down to the bed. My wrists
burned against the buckles, but maybe that was the point. When I opened my mouth to
scream, that's when they shoved the pills in. I couldn't even throw them up here because they
were watching. After a time even the fight left me, and now I just do what I'm told.
Joe brought Elliot once. Only once. Elliot had a set jaw and his little body stiffened when I
tried to hug him. His eyes are bluer than mine, and they used to remind me of a clear day at
the shore. Now they make me think of the murky colour of the ocean during a terrible winter.
He's scared of me. I know that. But I also worry about how Joe is disciplining him, because the
last time Elliot came he had bruises on his arm that looked like blue and purple fingerprints.
Despite whatever is going on at home, I can still see how Elliot looks at his father. He used to
watch quietly from the doorway sometimes as Joe would don his uniform and whenever we
would hear sirens, I could see the way Elliot's face lit up for just a moment. I had asked Joe to
spend more time with Elliot. I had asked him to take him fishing or to go throw a ball with
him. Joe always said maybe. Maybe.
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I think of the maybe's every day.
My need to run away seems like it was something of long ago. I can't remember what it felt like
to have all that passion. I can't paint here, and I don't care. I don't read. I wish I would feel
happy or sad. I wish I would scream or laugh, but I do none of these things. I have endless
time it seems, and yet nothing interests me. I feel like most things are a mirage - as if they will
disappear if I try to touch them. Sometimes I think of my skin as dry, cracked mud and I
imagine that if someone touches me, I will disintegrate into dust. Sometimes I wish for that. I
don't listen to the radio, I prefer the silence. I sometimes wonder if the sun has truly dulled, or
if it is just me. The colours of everything have faded into white. I hear conversations as if I am
underwater, yet I keep moving.
I lay down and still I don't sleep. I never truly sleep.
I can keep track of things now, and they tell me that is progress. But all I track are the minutes,
the hours, the days. I track the pills, and the number of footsteps it takes me to get from my bed
to the bathroom, from my chair to the door. I think about a woman who had been named
Bernadette, and I don't know who she was, what she was like.
I'm empty. Alone. The world, it seems, is meant to be lived in by others. I want to know why
God chose me for this. Why he has left me alone. I want to think that there is a purpose for this
isolation, but I think I also know the truth.
God forgot about me.
He made me wrong, in every single way. I am not fit as a mother or a wife, a friend or even as
a patient. I can't be trusted to care for my child, to follow the rules, to properly love my
husband.
I know that I felt too much, that I felt in the extremes. But for every crushing sadness, I felt
soaring joy and for every aching disappointment there was a moment of confident hope. Now
there is nothing but the steady, even, dreadful day-to-day. It is not worth much.
I was broken once, but maybe that was better. These days, I am simply non-existent.

-Bernie

It feels like there is sand in her eyes. Like the winds have kicked up a storm of grains and they
have assaulted her irises. For a moment the light sound of the tapping rain coming from
beyond her windows is not a deluge borne of water, but of the granules, cascading down from
above. Everything around her is raw, gritty, roughened. She thinks about a little boy, staring
down his mother as she holds a gun on him. She thinks about the moment the gun is fired,
how even if the bullet doesn't break the child's skin, how the gunshot still kills the child's
hope, his faith, his trust. She thinks about how this child is Elliot, and how as an adult, he

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consistently finds the strength and reason to put himself in harm's way. Not just on the job,
but with her. With all of this. And she wonders why. Why?

She thinks about his mother, about how everyone had told Bernadette that she was unfit and
weak, not strong enough to hold onto reality. Olivia keeps her eyes open, because it is too
painful to close them. The truth is that at least Bernadette had been willing to experience
emotions, even if they were painful and erratic. It was the nothingness that she feared.
It is the nothingness that Olivia surrounds herself with, because unlike his mother, she is
terrified of just how much she might feel if she ever lets herself go.
***

It's almost six a.m. when he straightens; tossing the stained cloth over the workbench he had
put together back in the winter. His back is sore, and his muscles are tight. His fingers are
covered with evidence of the last few hours. He's got oil stains on his hands, and the skin on
his palms is nicked up a bit. He had only planned on the two easy tasks - changing out the
wheel and the gear shift - but when he realised that he could so intently focus on the bike itself
that he could shut out what was happening in the house less than thirty feet away, he just kept
going. Every part he had ever bought for the bike was now installed - the new filter, the new
bolts for the seat, he had gone so far as to polish the dark red fender to a shine that even his
typically unimpressed father would have appreciated.

He doesn't know why he spends so much time on the damned thing; he only knows that this
bike has saved him, too. He remembers his father escaping on it, and it's provided him the
same reprieve in some of his worst moments. Only now it's done, and the light rain that has
been a steady companion all night is starting to pick up again with the first vestiges of light.
It's going to be a grey morning, so the normally brilliant sunrise has been concealed by the
thick clouds. Instead the air feels oppressive and heavy as he turns off the light in the garage
and heads out through the side door, grabbing a clean cloth as he goes to wipe down his
hands. They are filthy, and it's going to take him days to fully get the discolouration off of his
skin.

As soon as he opens the front door to the house, he knows. The few hours of reprieve, of
shutting down, are immediately forgotten. Olivia's bedroom door is open and the lights are
off, but he can still tell that the bed is already made. He does a quick glance around. Her wet
clothes from last night are no longer on the floor in the bathroom and he'd bet his fucking life
that the dishes in the sink have been washed too. He clenches his fist around the cloth and
tries not to choke on the immediate lack of air in his chest. She's still here, at least. Not that it

217
will do him any good. Elliot can hear her footsteps in the kitchen. But as he glances ahead into
the living room, he also sees the sign that - while not unexpected - still sends the dread
skittering across his skin. Her duffel is packed. Zipped. Closed.
His teeth scrape across his lower lip and he refuses to move. There is a relentless pressure
that builds in his neck, his cheeks, behind his eyes. The leaving. Always with the goddamned
leaving. He wonders why he still even bothers, why the hell he's so stupid as to opening
himself up to this shit. His whole life, this is the story of it all. Nothing lasts and no one sticks
around. He's a fucking idiot who probably couldn't even get a dog that wouldn't run away.
Elliot steels himself against it, tells himself that at least this time he knows where she is going.
New York. Back to a place he had walked away from because he was chafing in it. Christ, he
just wants her to stay here.

He knows by the sound of her footsteps that Olivia already has her shoes on, so he can't just
stand in the front hall all morning and pretend this is going to go away. He suddenly questions
if she has even slept, if he could get her to stay by telling her that she can't hit the road on so
little rest, or by warning her that the next wave of rain is just beginning. He almost smiles at
the absurdity of the thought, as if even the prospect of tornados and earthquakes could
convince Olivia to stay still once she had her mind set. Elliot braces himself. He has to let her
go. This is what he has to do. He can love her without her consent, but he can't force her to
try and love him, too. God, how long has this even been in him? Too long, he thinks. It goes
too far back; it's all of the space inside of him.

It seems unfathomable that he doesn't get to have her. He can't wrap his head around the fact
that Olivia is rejecting him - rejecting this - that all of the plans he had conjured, no - had
counted on - were nothing more than daydreams. Fantasies. Fantasies. The word is a bitter
one. He can still hear his mother's voice telling him that her dreams had always been crushed.
He'd told her they were nothing more than fantasies. He now knows that the only difference
between the two is that a dream falls to fantasy when it doesn't come true. The rage he had
learned from his father, but the rest of it. He is his mother's son. It's the legacy she had
warned him against, had tried so hard to break him from. He inherited it anyway.

His footsteps are heavier than hers, and he hears Olivia slow her movements as he
approaches. He stands at the entrance to the kitchen, and he sees the way she's cleaned it,
how she pauses now, her back to him, in the middle of putting the last of the clean plates into
the cabinet. The dish clatters into place, and he can tell by the shifting of her shoulders that
she is breathing heavily. She is wearing the simple dress she had worn a few days ago when she

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had arrived. It's almost as if no time has passed in the same span in which eternity has
occurred. Gone are the bright t-shirts, the whimsical colours.

She closes the cabinet gingerly and when she's done, she grips the edge of the counter for a
moment, as if working up the courage to turn around. It's the sterility of all it that grates on
him. Absent is the music, the smells of cooking food, the sunshine and the wind. It's the
fragile grey light of a stormy dawn; it's the waves that are now ferocious once again, crackling
in his ears. Inescapable. And then she turns.He almost wishes she hadn’t.

"I'm sorry," Olivia rasps quietly, emphatically, meeting his eyes despite her obvious
inclination to look away.
Elliot can't look away. Her face is too pale; her eyes have dark circles beneath them. Her
irises are red, her lips are swollen. He can tell she's been running her fingers through her hair
for lack of something better to do, and even now she grips the dish towel. He is still holding
onto the cloth from the garage and he knows now that she hasn't slept at all, just like him. He
can't shake the parallels in every nuance of who they are. He's got nothing to say to her. In his
silence, her gaze falters in the same moment that her posture straightens.

"I had a good time out-"

"Don't," he cuts her off. She can't start with the platitudes.
Olivia flinches, but her focus is on the floor now. The corner near the fridge next to him holds
particular fascination for her. There is a moment of fight in him. Maybe it is the raw sound of
her voice, or the way she almost seems to be shaking as she stands. He sees her breaking, and
even in the days after Sealview she hadn't seemed this close to the edge. So he fights, one
more time. He finds a few more words, even if he can't find volume to put behind them.
"I just want you. As you are. You don't have to change or be better at this or any of that
bullshit. You just gotta give me a chance." She grips the towel as if it is a lifeline, so he tosses
his on the edge of the sink and takes a step closer to her. His voice drops even lower. It's a
whisper when he just wants to yell. It's a plea when he wants to order. "It's just me. Not some
stranger. Not someone you gotta pretend with."

She shakes her head. She's trying to ignore what is happening, but her eyes are so full that
they start to spill over. He is guilty, so guilty. The idea that he's deliberately doing this,
deliberately pushing her to this place where Olivia is actually crying because of what he is
saying, doing - it's a guilt that he has to shake. Watching her cry isn't something that he
understands. Benson doesn't cry, even the rookies know this. In front of him, Benson is
cracking.

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"I can't do this." She says this through the defiant tears. She thinks she is hiding what is
happening to her by looking at the towel she is twisting and clutching against her stomach.
Break her.
"You mean you won't. Walking out of here is a choice, Olivia." Now his voice is flat, hard.
Too hard. Elliot needs to relent, to be gentle, but he can't find it in him. "You walk outta here
and this thing - fuck, whatever we've been doing for too many goddamned years - it's done.
You walk out this time, and I swear to fucking God, it's-"

He stops mid-sentence when she looks up at him. Directly at him. Something in Olivia has
shifted and it scares the hell out of him. She's on the edge of something and he's almost afraid
that if he pushes her over that he's gonna lose what he knows of her. Her eyes are almost
desperate with it, and he can't shake the feeling that she's asking for something in this, no,
that she's begging for something, only she won't say a word. He just doesn't know if what she
needs is for him to keep going or to stop, and he's petrified that he's about to get it
irrevocably wrong. Don't hurt her.

"Tell me," he urges quietly, reaching for the towel in her hands and not taking his eyes off of
hers. His fingers brush her palm as he tries to coax the rag from her. "C'mon. Tell me. Tell
me what you need me to do."
It's the least he's ever known. As he watches the clawing, desperate panic in Olivia's eyes
grow, she says nothing. Implosion, he thinks. Implosion. It's the only way he can describe
what he's watching. He's scared of it. Maybe he's gone too far. She's not like anyone else. It
took him months out here to find his way back from the edge, but Jesus, she's still there and
everyone knows that you don't even breathe heavily on someone who dangles on the
precipice. He's gone too far too fast. Jesus.

"I left the clothes I bought in the bedroom," she whispers, her words entirely at odds with the
haunted, horrified look on her face. Her wonders if she even knows what she is saying. "The
girls can use them when they come out. And I didn't strip the sheets on the bed, but if you
want-"
"Alright," he says now. "Okay, Olivia. Let go of the towel." His hands forcibly try to removes
hers from the fabric, but she's strong too. He could easily make her relinquish it, but he
doesn't want to hurt her.
"And your mom's journal. It's by the bed. You should-" she's talking too fast.
It's the disassociating that is scaring him. He has known for years that Olivia is scared of
commitment, of risking, but he hadn't realised just how tightly she was holding onto the
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reigns of everything around her, making sure nothing else fell apart. But it's all there - all of
the things she had controlled, all of the things she had covered up the moment they
threatened her world in any way.
" - you should read it. It's something you need to read because - "
The PTSD, the assault, the adoption she was denied, the car accident, the number of times -
too many - that she's been used as a pawn by some sick fuck. Guns to her head, intruders in
her apartment. He thinks about the time she mistakenly had to spend in jail for a crime she
hadn't committed and how he knows how long it was down to the minutes, because he'd been
sure for every one of them that the experience was going to take her back to a place she was
trying to forget. He thinks about how he left her. Just left her.

"Liv - "
"She wasn't oblivious to what she was doing to you," Olivia is saying, her words a rush. "She
wasn't. She was sorry she hurt you. And you need to know that. She was sorry." She chokes
the last of it out. "You have to forgive her Elliot. Just forgive her, because - because she
didn't know any different. And let her go. Don't hang onto her. You deserved someone who
would, who would have loved you better and she was...she was sorry that she couldn't."
Before he can even think to move, before he can even begin to try and decipher everything
Olivia has just thrown at him, she has let go of the towel and she's let go of him. He's frozen
and she's gone. Gone. She's darted past him, and he's immoveable but he doesn't hear the
slam of the patio door, and for some reason that gives him hope. He wants to believe that he
can disprove every myth she has adopted as truth. She's not undeserving, he's not. She's not
an island; she's surrounded on all sides by him. She has to know this. He has to tell her.
Tell her. You keep wanting her to tell you, but you gotta tell her, too.

Suddenly he is in motion, and he finds her in the living room, lifting her bag onto her shoulder
and facing the door. He's five feet from her, and that's fine, he needs to space to say this. To
just lay it on the line. He's got to man up on this. At least then, if she leaves, she'll leave
knowing the facts of this thing. He'll know he's done everything he can. Elliot thinks about
last chances, about how he always sees them in hindsight. He always knows later when the
moment occurred in which he could have changed everything. He sees this moment for what
it is. It's the last chance, playing out. He has to pay attention, make it worth something.
When he starts speaking, Olivia freezes with her back to him. A deer caught in the headlights,
unable to avoid the oncoming disaster but equally unable to save itself by fleeing. All of it.

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"I...I don't know what this is, Olivia. I want to say that I love you, but I'm not...I'm not sure
that's what this is. I loved my wife. And I love my kids. I know what that love is. What that
looks like. What that feels like. But this...."
He's doing this wrong because when Olivia straightens and faces him, she looks devastated.
She's holding her breath and she's just staring at him as if waiting for the fall to happen
anytime now. She doesn't understand. She still doesn't. She seems like she wants him to stop,
to just stop. He can feel her fear; he can see her world shattering in the glass of her wet, black
irises. He doesn't know how to catch all the pieces of her world in his hands, but he has to
because if he's got all the pieces then at least he can put it back together. He can. He knows
he can. It's the only thing he knows.

"This." He shakes his head. Of course he's got no words. Of course he can't explain shit. "I
need you. The way I want you, fuck, I've got no control and I got...I got no right to touch you
until I got that. So I focus on one thing at a time. I focus on making you laugh, or on just
holding you or just bein' near you, because...because I can't comprehend all of it at once."
Olivia is silent. Too silent. She looks like she is going to disintegrate in front of him and he
will be left with just a pile of dust and the water and...she's breathing at least. He can see her
breathing. Just barely, but he's making sure.
She wants to leave. Her bag is still on her shoulder and she's radiating the anxious, frightened
energy of someone who is cornered. He can feel that in the air. She wants to run from him,
again. He's so sick of the leaving. He wants to curse and yell and demand, but he's done that
before and he's always lost. He can't lose Olivia, though. Not again.

There is acid eating through his lungs, and he knows this moment will go one way or another
on a grand scale. There is no turning back from this. The past is a burned bridge, and for the
moment the future seems to have no bridge at all. This is the free fall. He's pled for victims,
he's pled with suspects. He's pled for life before, but it's never been this crucial. He's stared
down the wrong end of a semi-automatic countless times, but he's never been so uncertain
about what he's looking at. He sees nothing past her. Her. Twelve years hasn't been enough.
It's so little time. So little. Maybe it's been too many cases and endless nightmares, but it
hasn't been enough time with Olivia. Every vic, every bloody body on their hands, he'd go
through it again if just to be with her. He'd pay more attention this time around. He'd use his
body to protect her better; he'd shield her eyes when he didn't want her to see what he saw.
His voice is sandpaper and the lining of his throat feels like its shredding against the rough
scrape of it.

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"This isn't love, Olivia. Love happens all the time, and this...the way we are isn't that
ordinary. It can't be." It's coming out in a rush. A frantic, desperate rush of words. "So I can
say I love you, but that...that's a fucking lie of omission because this is more than that."
She seems far away. Her eyebrows are furrowed and she's gazing at him, but he's not
convinced that she's listening to him. And then she blinks, and he's convinced by the way that
her expression changes that he's hurting her. He doesn't know how, but he is. Olivia
flinches, and then her gaze drops. Her eyes close as if she can block him out. She's saying
goodbye because he's said too much. It's like she's mourning him while he's standing right
in front of her. He's losing. He's losing and he's got no plan anymore. He doesn't have
magic. She's the magic and she's gonna leave him. Olivia's chin is almost touching her chest
and her breaths are heavy as they come. Maybe he should apologise. Fuck. He doesn't know
what the hell to do. His ace card just pushed her further away.

The rain is pounding into the sand and the surf just beyond the thin walls of the house. He can
hear the water pellet the windowpanes and he can't discern the thunder from the crashing of
the waves. He just watches her, and the storm rages. She's grieving in that silent, contained
way that she does and he wants to scream at her. He knows she is leaving soon. It's just
seconds between now and then. Even in the thick of the resurgent morning storm, she will
walk away. Her breathing is evening out, and that terrifies him. Olivia's lips part and he can
almost tangibly feel her withdrawal. He's never cried over much, but he knows he will break
tonight. He doesn't have ego when it comes to her. Not anymore. He's laid out right now.
This is all of him. Only it's still not enough.

His throat locks and he feels the beginning of the defeat. His eyes are burning, and he can't
see. Maybe the clouds have come down low enough that they have settled onto the wet sand.
Maybe the heavy sky has finally come down upon all of them.
"I'm shit with words," he manages. It's a rasp against the garish concerto that the rain has
kicked up all around him. He shakes his head, as if he can change the past by simply willing it
away. "I'm a fuckup. I don't know what the hell I'm offering you that a hundred guys
wouldn't be willing to give you. But I swear to God you won't find anyone who will try
harder."
She's a statue in the storm. Pieces of her will fall to the ground before she will bend to his
howling wind. He'll keep trying. He's got nothing else. There is no last stand when he'd do it
again and again.
"You got me. Anything I got. If you want me then...then..." Nothing he is saying makes
sense. He feels it then. The panic. He's never fought for anything like this. He doesn't know

223
if he's fighting for her or for him, and somewhere deep inside he thinks it might be the same
thing. "Please. Just don't go."

He thinks he could keep going. Even if it's begging, he doesn't much care. Survival and pride
are not friends. But then Olivia opens her eyes and he sees everything she's feeling and
nothing of what he's said. It's not that Olivia hasn't been listening, because by her expression
he knows that she's heard every word. And that's all he's got. He's empty now, too. He now
knows everything that he didn't know just a few moments ago. He can't break her. She is
stronger than him, always has been. That's what this will come down to. Everything slows.
The world is grey.

She doesn't even blink before she turns and leaves.

Irrationally all he thinks is that he needs to tell Olivia that she's got oil smudges on her hands,
because his hadn't been cleaned fully yet when he last touched her. He wants to tell her that
she needs an umbrella out there, because she isn't wearing a raincoat or even a sweatshirt
over that dress. He wants to tell her to come back. To just come back. But she is gone. And
then everything in the house is silent, save for the rain and the baritone of the watery infantry
of waves.
***

She is eerily calm. She doesn't feel anything. Nothing at all. She doesn't hear the slamming
tide that barrels towards her. She doesn't look up at the weighted clouds; she doesn't look
down at the packed, saturated sand beneath her feet. She doesn't see the rain, doesn't feel it.
She's soaking before she even gets beyond the barrier of brush that surrounds the patio of his
house, but it doesn't really register.

Olivia doesn't feel uncomfortable by the way her dress sticks to her, by the rain that
immediately drenches her hair, her arms, her legs. The bag slung over her shoulder is
probably getting wet too, and she should probably care about this, because it's only fabric and
everything inside will get wet. All she knows is that the cool rain is somehow chilling her too-
warm skin, and that has to be good. She hears the pounding surf, and she can't decide if it's
raining on her or if the spray is what is soaking her now. Vaguely she realises that she's
packed her keys and they are in the bag. At the car, she thinks, she'll find them when she gets
to her car.

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If you walk away now, you're losing him anyway. She'll find her wallet then too. She has to pay
for parking, and she doesn't remember seeing an attendant near the lot. It's so early and it's
raining and - no, there would have to be an attendant. He won't come back to New York.
The rain has worsened in the last twenty minutes and she's trembling now. She doesn't know
why she is shaking. She should stop. The ocean is violent to her left, it's monstrous and it's
churning up white foam and seaweed and dumping it onto the once serene coast. She can't
see too far ahead because of the onslaught. He knows you're damaged goods. He knows this.
She can't think because of the raucous sound of the waves. Her thongs nearly slide off of her
toes as she walks, and it takes all her effort to keep them on as she trudges across the deluged
sand. Her hair is sticking to her, and her ears hurt from the cacophonous fury that nature is
thrusting upon them again. He wants you anyway. She turns her head to the left, blinking
back the rain. It clings to her eyelashes, and she is exhausted. She looks for the horizon and
she's not surprised that it has disappeared as well. It is just a fragile illusion after all. The
earth never touches the sky. I can say I love you.

She stops then, not sure where she is going. Her arms hurt. Her thighs are sore. Her cheeks
feel bruised. She can't hear anything. She doesn't want to move anymore. Her bag is heavy,
but she doesn't know how to get it off her arm. For the first time in her life, she is truly at a
loss. She forgets where she is going, where she is. She is still, and she scans her surroundings,
unmoving while the world whips into an agitated frenzy. You got me.

There are houses. Some are huge, others are modest. The wet grasses dance angrily in the
wind, and the clouds are riding the surface of the frothing ocean. The rain strengthens, and
there is no one out here. The world has left this place. There is no one on the beach
for as far as she can see. No signs of life. Water coats her. It drips down her back, across her
forehead. It's all been a lie. Everything she has told herself. She is not okay alone. She is not.
If you want me.

The empty, isolated years assault her then and she can't breathe. She faces the ocean, the
maniacal depths of it. She doesn't want to be alone. She's so tired. She's got needs. Needs.
She needs to be wrapped up. Tightly. She can't hold herself together anymore. She's lonely
in all of the hollows; she's bereft in all of the crevices beneath her skin. She closes her eyes
and the rain wins. The bag slides off her shoulder and onto the wet sand. She's never been in
the ocean, she thinks. She's too afraid of it. Her throat is on fire and the barometer in her
lungs drops. She isn't doing well, not like she makes them think she is. She is failing to thrive
beneath the veneer. There is an option, even if it grips her with terror. There is an option even
if she's got no idea how to grasp at any of it.

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Elliot wants her despite her shortcomings. She's never been able to hide anything from him,
yet he wants her anyway. She hasn't scared him or pushed him away in all of these years,
despite her best efforts. He is the mountain she hasn't been able to move. Don't go.
She can only open her eyes until they are blurry slits and she sees the challenging sea ahead.
Her chest makes the thunder, and she flinches against the painful cracks of lightning in her
head. She can't be alone anymore. She has to give up the façade. She wants him. She wants
him. No.

The truth pounds at her. It is stronger than the storm and the sky. She is in love with him.
There can be nobody else. It's a trajectory that had been set in motion years ago, by
something bigger than her. Something bigger than him, if that is at all possible. She doesn't
want to be even anymore. She wants to let go. She can, she can do this. She can let go of the
fear, because surely nothing could hurt worse than this. She loves Elliot. This is the pinnacle
of pain. It has to be. Or maybe it's the burn of sensation returning inside of her, the ache of
coming alive after too many years of just existing, maintaining.

She splinters then. No one can hear her if she cries out here, in the midst of nature's rage. She
is walking towards the ocean before she realises it. One moment her shoes are gone and her
toes are in the cold sand and then the water is on her, rising around her ankles. She can't be
afraid of this, not when the reward is him. Elliot. The water is around her shins and the waves
are huge just ahead. She can't live in the fear, because it's not living at all. It's so loud around
her. Deafening. Water is everywhere. It's above her and beneath her and it's in front of her.
She's never been in the ocean, she thinks. But she is. She is now. She is choking on the lies.
How many lies there are, all of the ones she has told. She isn't different than anyone else, she
is not stronger. She is the same. She wants - needs - just like them. Maybe more. Jesus, maybe
more.

She's sorry for everything she's wasted. All the time she's thrown away. The water is eating at
her surfaces, until she's raw. Exposed. She keeps walking into the ocean despite the swirling
pull and tug of it around her knees and she thinks that she just has to be stronger than it. It
can't pull her under. It can't. She has to defy it. Just defy it.No more fear. The waves are
ahead, but she doesn't see them. Distance is impossible to judge. The white foam clutches at
her thighs. She can't hear anything but this. Her toes sink into sand that gives way and her
dress floats on the whisking surface. She doesn't pay attention. She is probably crying too
loud, but it's lost to the wind and the thrash. She comes undone. Finally. She keeps walking,
seeing nothing around her and yet seeing everything at once.
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 ***

He stands at the kitchen sink, scrubbing his hands beneath water that is too hot. It's scalding,
and it's cutting into the nicks and scratches he earned over the long, sleepless night, but he
doesn't feel it. It's a perfunctory task, and he tells himself to just do it. To concentrate on it -
on the soap, on the lather. He watches his hands disappear beneath the white bubbles, and the
drain catches the swirling water, sucking it away.

He doesn't lift his eyes from the sight. He can't see anything but this. He can't look up at the
empty house, at the empty counters. He can't see the half-empty wine bottle. He is aware that
he is breathing, because his pulse pounds in his temples, his neck. The hot water causes
steam to rise from the sink. He doesn't feel it on his skin so he scrapes at the black oil that
clings to him. More soap, and then he's rinsing again. He sticks his hands under the tap and
suddenly it registers, the fucking burn. He slams his fist down on the faucet and then he hears
the last of the water gurgle as it disappears.

His shoulders are rising and falling too fast now. He reaches for a towel and he realises too
late that he's grabbed the one she had clutched. It slides across his discoloured, broken skin
and he can't let go of it. For some reason it makes him look up. The window frames the tumult
of the ocean. The stretch of beach. That's when he sees it. Sees her. The flash of blue, the
dark cap of her hair. She's walking towards the goddamned waves and he doesn't know what
the fuck she's doing. She doesn't like the ocean. She's never been. But she's in it now.
Olivia's knees disappear into the surface and she doesn't look like she's stopping. The
riptides.

His throat locks and he can't fucking breathe. He's running before he knows anything else.
He's past the door, and he's in the rain. He's yelling for her, he thinks. The sand gives way
beneath each slam of his now bare feet. He thinks he can hear her name ripping from him, but
it's lost to the sucking noise of the clashing storm and the sea. She doesn't hear him.

He's running.

227
228
 Chapter Nineteen

W
hen she closes her eyes, the water slashes across her. It is merciless. It drips
down through her hair and onto her eyelashes. It slides down her cheeks; it
swirls and twists around her legs. Drops slither down her neck; raging bulls
come at her - white, acidic and deceptively frothy. Livid. Frigid. She feels the world tip again
and again and she instinctively curls her toes into sand that disintegrates, trying to hang on.
The ground disappears. She is alone. It is her and the sea. Hell rises up, heaven falls. It
converges here. Now. In between, everything crumbles. Crushes.

She can feel herself coming apart and is powerless to stop it. All the years of hanging on will
be shown for what they are - a lie. She's scared of the intense, unrelenting pressure inside of
her, because she is aware of how people crawl into their head and never come out. She knows
she is breaking, and it's terrifying. The fractures feel like they are snaking across her skin.
They are fault lines that are forming before the big temblor comes in and cracks her into
unrecognisable pieces. Her mind is giving up. Giving in. She can't take anymore. No more
loss. No more isolation. For one moment she wishes the waves would come and take her, just
be done with it for once and for all. Mercy, she thinks. That's what it would be. And the rain
comes down.

She gives in to the deluge. It makes its way inside of her, sneaking in along her lips, landing
on her tongue when she chokes. The salt. It's inside of her now, too. It's making her
disintegrate from the inside out. This is being alone. This is finally it. Her gut is on fire with
the loss of him. He won't come back to New York, not now. She can't be loved and he can't

229
not be loved and they are done. Done. There is nothing left. Her eyelids are heavy, yet her
pulse speeds. Her temples jackhammer. Her vision blurs. She is shaking, shaking, shaking.
She'd beg, but there is nothing left to beg for. You chose this.
She blinks fast - suddenly afraid and trying to keep the water out - but it is a losing battle. The
past is a kaleidoscope, twisting in vivid colours. She's kneeling over him in the street and he is
bleeding black ink, his eyes are blank.The car is sliding across the road and she can hear the
metal scream, can feel the grating tear of it and then she notices the matted blonde hair. It's
her fault. It's her fault.She can feel the press of a gun to her head and she closes her eyes, not
wanting to see the moment the yellow sun disappears for good. It's going to end in a parking
lot, and he will watch. She worries about how it will leave him.

It was just a matter of time, Olivia. She lifts her face and she registers that she is crying and it's
not a good thing. It's not coming softly from her. It is not soothing or cleansing. You were
always going to lose him. This is grief; this is the last and final nightmare. When she opens her
eyes, they burn. Water clings to the surfaces, to the rims; it assaults her stinging irises. Her
fingertips slide into pulsing water. The ocean. The ocean. She's doesn't like it. It's too
unpredictable. Unstoppable. It doesn't know she is a cop. A cop. It thinks she's just another
person so it doesn't defer. It doesn't listen to her at all. She angrily presses her fists against
her ears. Slides them over her eyes. Her fingernails press into her forehead. No. No. No. It's
not like he's dead. She can't cry like this. It's bringing all of the images back, and it's too
much. Too much. No more pictures in her head.

She sees only the grey above, and it is a smear of the colourless. Until the colours. The orange
comes then. It's everywhere on her. If she wasn't covered in it, she could disappear and he
wouldn't find her. He finds her. He finds her all the time. She's behind the boxes, cowering
behind the crates but there is nothing for her to grab onto to protect herself. She can hear the
clanging, the slide of a baton across metal and it's echoing in her ears. She fights. Her feet
push against the wall, her cheek scrapes. He doesn't know she is a cop, either. When they
don't know, she's got no control. Cop, cop, cop.
]
And then the orange becomes red. Deep, dark, sticky red. Her fingers are covered in crimson
blood; there is blood on her brown leather jacket, on the walls around her. Half of the girl's
head is gone and it was just one blast, one. She looks at where her skull once was and thinks
that yeah, yeah sometimes she wants to explode like that, too. Just let it all burst right out of
her head so it would all go away and leave her alone. Her first instinct is to gather the pieces of
the girl's head and put her back together, but she is not God. She's only a cop. She's just a
cop. The dead girl didn't want to be just a cop anymore, either.

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And then the red gathers and she sees the white form around it, until she sees the stripes of
his ripped shirt. He's cut up and he's bleeding and she has to remind herself that he is still
looking at her. He's lucid, and it's not like the last time. She's still standing; she's not
kneeling on the pavement in the dark, watching him fade. He's still alive; she doesn't have to
die yet. She has to focus, but she understands those cuts and she's going to vomit. His skin is
split beneath that shredded fabric and it's all wrong. It's all wrong. She's the one who can
take the fists, the knives, the bullets. It's not supposed to be him, not him. Don't scar him.
He's still good. He's not like her.She's here so he doesn't have to die. She is the expendable
one because no one needs her. Useless.

She hunches over, and the noise is suffocating her. She presses her palms hard into her eyes,
and maybe the knife is slicing her now too because her stomach is ripping open. She is crying
through her throat, her nose, her chest. She opens her mouth and lets the excruciating sounds
out - they need to escape - and she thinks she is failing at this because she can't hear anything.
Everything is muffled. Filtered. Too dull to discern. Help. She’s always fighting the fear.

She is alone. She sleeps with the lights on, the television playing. She wakes at night and hears
the voices of movie stars, comics, newscasters. She rolls over later and she can hear them
selling her something and then something else. Knives. They're so sharp and she should buy
them. They tell her she needs them; there is nothing she can't cut with them. It makes her
thinks about skin. His. Her sleep is marred by the nausea. And then as the light gets brighter
the voices tell her about the night before - all the people who died, the fires, the accidents.
She wakes then. It's been a good night. It's another night hovering on the edge of the deep
sleep, never falling far enough to dream. She doesn't sleep. She needs to get away. Just run.
But she can't. The water is everywhere.

Her skin is blistering cold and she's feels unsteady. Her bare feet don't plant beneath her on
the ocean floor, she can't feel her legs. She's weightless. She's sliding under the surface in
her too full tub until she's completely submerged. She holds her breath for too long
sometimes, and she gives God every opportunity to make her lungs fail. She needs to know
how Nicholas Olsen suffered when she drove the car into the lake. No. She didn't. She didn't.
Help. She reminds herself that she wasn't actually driving. She wasn't. But she has to hurry
because there's a little girl buried beneath the dirt, and she's still breathing, breathing. She
uses her fingernails to get to the child and the soil is wet, damp, sticky. It's just rain she tells
herself, the ground is not saturated with blood. I can't breathe.

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They come after her. In her apartment, on the street. They break her door; they are waiting
for her in the dark. She is always tired. So tired. She's thought about how close she's come to
dying and she's wondered if the last thing she will feel when it finally happens is relief. My
head.She’s locked up then, and the metal clanging is piercing her eardrums. She's going to
be locked up for a long time. She wants to run, just to run, but she doesn't have the energy.
They'll kill her in prison and she thinks okay, okay so that's how it will go. Her limbs are
unbearably heavy, her eyes won't open. Water hits her elbows, her stomach. It steals her
breath. She thinks about how she wants a blanket. Just one. Any kind will do. If someone
could just get her a blanket.

She is tired of watching them, all of the people who are not her.In the biblical rain they always
seem to come in twos - pairs. Mother's and sons, fathers and daughters, husbands and wives,
friends. Friends. She wants to start over, to be someone else. She needs. Focus on the water.
The majestic crests are soundless as they crash ahead of her. She doesn't feel their danger,
can't determine their distance. She doesn't want to die but she doesn't know if she wants to
live. I am nothing, she thinks. She reaches for her hip, to run her fingers over the gold badge
and it's not on her. She feels the bare skin of her abdomen and she remembers, she
remembers. She's underwater. There is no badge here. Here she is not a cop. Nothing.

The ocean is no longer cold; it feels no different than the air. She stares at the grand sea and it
doesn't even feel like she is in it. Her swollen eyelids are heavy again and she can't breathe.
She feels small. Against this watery tempest that rising around her she is not powerful. The
ocean is not impressed by her. Her legs have vanished into the water, vanished as if they have
been so easily taken from her. Disappear. It's all a distant roar in her head. It is underground
freight trains. It is a rumbling avalanche heard from beneath the already suffocating feet of
snow. Someone is sobbing. She is powerless in this.

They warned me this would happen. They said there was a limit. Her arms wrap around her
chest and she holds herself. Just holds herself. Her grip is tight. Fierce. She wants something.
Anything. Inside of her there has to be something good. She is desperate for it, and the
longing is debilitating. Only she doesn't know how. Her chest keeps stuttering. Swaying. It is
heaving at the apex and then sending her hurtling through the denouement. She is rocking
herself now. All of her. And then there is nothing again. Nothing. Until the frightening rise.

Inside of her it builds again. As if it is endless. The rise, the rise. The fire is inside of her, the
imposing water around her. The air smothers her and the ground gives way. And then the
crash. The ocean swallows. It's hungry, devouring. She thinks she needs to find her way out
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before she is too out of sorts to discern the shore behind her from the trough between the
waves ahead. Might as well let it have you. Only it seems too exhausting to go back now. To go
anywhere. It's easier to remain in this. She looks down, and the water is dark. So dark. It is
not translucent as she had expected it to be. She is half-gone into it. This is what makes her
gasp at the air. Short breaths. She marvels at how easily she is consumed. The navy of the sea,
it eats her dress, the colours swirl together. It feasts on her.

When it's over, they'll have your badge. You're no good to them like this. She is numb. She
lets it have her. She wants to disappear into it. She has failed, failed. She's failed everyone.
She can't save any of them when she can't even save herself. They had sent a peasant to do the
job of a king and she is paying the price. She's made him pay the price, too. He is the only one
she managed to fool. The others knew better, but he didn't pay attention, he didn't keep his
head up around her. It's his fault if he's hurt. He knew better. He knew better. Elliot, please.

The sea is not gentle, it is not forgiving. The sky crashes and breaks. She vaguely wonders if
he knows she wants to love him. She does. She just doesn't know how. No one has ever told
her. Showed her. She knows everything about human nature but she doesn't know how to
love him. Someone has to help. I'm so, so sorry. She feels the dismantling and she doesn't
fight it. The crying. The crying. It is a violent thing inside of her. Childish, unstoppable. Then
again, even grandiose glaciers succumb to the water. She could swear she is loud, but the sea
is louder. She doesn't stop herself anymore. No one can hear her.

Fine, let go.

She lets the burn slip through her, lets herself go at will, and the feeling is foreign to her.
Names come to her. Clayton Derricks, Juliet Barclay. People she thought she had long since
forgotten. Jacob Nesbit, Alexis Campbell, Tandi McCain. She remembers a frightening
number of names, of faces. Hundreds of them. Anya Rugova. Melanie Cramer, Carrie Lynn
Eldridge, Cora Kennison. Hayley Kerns. Britney Dunlap. Risa Tyler. She remembers them
and then they are gone, gone. Leaving her. She thinks about her name. Her own name. Olivia.
She holds onto it. It is all that she has left because he is now gone. She's made him go. She's
made him leave her here. Wherever this is. She focuses her eyes, telling herself to look
around. The ocean. Yes. The ocean. Hang on. She can't.

The waves are silent, magnificent. She sways as she thinks about the force of them. They come
at her, racing. Coming for her. She's so tired. The crying ebbs into choking. Coughing. No

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more. Then hiccups and the hazy horizon. She's nothing in the midst of this. She is empty,
and she's not sure what to do with all of the vast, open space left behind inside of her.
Blank. She's being washed away. Her dress is plastered to her chest and her hair is sticking to
her cheeks, her neck, her forehead. The salt is everywhere - in her hair and on her skin and in
her mouth and on her eyes. It's making her fall apart. The rain doesn't stop. It keeps falling.
Falling. Her lungs constrict. Contract. I've been alone my whole life.

She wraps her arms around herself again. She's soaking. She's cold. Too cold. She shivers,
and she wants heat now. Warmth. She needs a surface that won't crack and break. The
blanket, maybe. There are white swirling clouds everywhere, charging at her. She feels like
it's getting deeper and that thought gives her pause. The crying stops. Her head pounds.
When she blinks, she reminds herself to open her eyes again. It's a slow, deliberate process.
Standing is a struggle. I love you.

The barreling thought comes out of nowhere, and it is the most painful, massive abrasion of
all. She stumbles a little, almost losing her balance and pitching forward as if something has
cut her in two. She reaches out to steady herself, but the water doesn't hold her, doesn't give
her purchase. Her arm is halfway into the water and her chest hits the surface before she can
find some footing. She is still unsteady. Soaking. Saturated and too heavy to move.
Elliot. The emptiness gathers and it gains force, until it's a frighteningly powerful torrent
inside of her. Help me.Her name echoes in the distance. She can hear it somewhere far off and
it sucks at her. It draws her back too fast, too quickly and the colours go by at warp speed.
She's reversing through the tunnel and the voices are jumbled, talking all at once.

And then she is in the ocean, just the ocean and she hates him, she hates him for doing this to
her. He knew she couldn't handle it. He knew what it would do to her. He was the one who
was supposed to understand how she was, how she is. He was supposed to accept the limits of
what she could be, how much she could risk. Why would he do this? He pushed her. He
pushed her too far and now she is this. She's just this. And neither one of them knows how to
fix this sort of thing. She always knew he would break her some day. Olivia! It's his voice. His.
She keens into the dull rumble that surrounds her one last time. Just one more. And then she
stops, and she ignores him. She tries to go away back into the tunnel. But he keeps calling
her, calling her. He won't let her leave. Olivia! And suddenly the explosive noise comes
rushing back.
***

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The wet sand cracks again and again as he pounds into it. The rain drenches Elliot and he
doesn't notice. He is focused on Olivia, and can't tell if she has stopped her forward progress,
if she's now standing still. The water is up to her waist and the waves seem too close to her.
He doesn't know what the fuck is happening to them. It also seems amazing that it hasn't
come to this sooner.
They are just people. Nothing more. They had been warned, he thinks. Too many times
they'd been told to get out. But they were too strong, too fierce. They didn't do shrinks, they
didn't need to talk. And the bodies piled up. The victims. The lines were blurred between
their pasts and the violent present. Two years. That's how long people in their units usually
stayed. Twelve. Fucking twelve.

"Olivia!"
He yells and it shatters out of him. But the force of her name is silenced by the storm, the
deafening sound of the ocean. The wind is howling and it makes his white shirt flap against
him as he runs, despite the fact that it is wet. It's so loud, he thinks. So loud. The second he
yells the effort is immediately negated. Olivia can't hear him. Her hair is wet and her dress a
second sheathing of skin against her body. He can't take his eyes off of her. He won't let her
slip through his fingers. He can't. He doesn't know what is happening in her head and that
scares him. Terrifies him. He can't panic. This isn't his mother, it's not Kathleen. Olivia is
not sick, she's just...she's had enough. He has to hang onto that. She's not cracking
permanently. Something has snapped inside of her, though. She just has to be strong enough
to fight it. He does.

His lungs are on fire as he runs. Sprints. He's convinced the next wave will take her, or the
next one. He's convinced the riptides will drag her under. He is convinced that he will watch
her disappear. No one goes out in a storm like this. No one.
They always go where no one else does. The rain is blinding now. It downpours. The drops
are thick, sleeting across his vision. He yells her name. Prays. There is no one else here to
help him and he's not equipped. He doesn't do well in these situations. He shuts down, he
backs up. Christ, he hasn't talked to his own daughter about what happens in her head. But
something is happening to Olivia. It's real. It's right now. And it's just him out here in the
dawn. His incompetency is nearly paralysing.

"Liv!"
Nothing. She doesn't turn around. He has no concept of how far his voice is reaching. There
is too much air in him, not enough. He tells himself again and again that he can do this. He
can be enough to help her. Elliot picks up speed right before he hits the water's edge, gaining

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as much momentum as possible because he knows the tide will slow him down. She's not
moving, he thinks. At least she's not headed out further. It's been too much. They stayed too
long. Gave away everything. Inevitable.

His jeans are a wet weight around his ankles, then his shins as he surges into the ocean,
running against the force of it. He kicks up the saltwater, feeling it push against his knees, his
thighs as if trying to keep him out. Like hell, he thinks. No fucking way. His panic is verging
on anger, and it's a live-wire sparking inside of him. Olivia's dress sticks to her until even
against the rain and the spray Elliot can see the rigid lines of her shoulder blades, every curve
of her shoulders. It hits him then, maybe more starkly, more blatantly than ever before.
Superheroes fall. She stands without her cape now. It's not supposed to go down like this. He
won't let it. No, dammit. No. She is not his mother. She is not Kathleen. She isn't losing
touch with reality. She isn't trying to escape him like they did. He has to quell his frustration.

"Olivia! What the hell are you doing?"

His desperate question is a pathetically weak sound when compared to the rage of Mother
Nature all around him. But it's loud enough this time. Her body goes rigid, the only still thing
in the rocking earth. He fights the water, ignores it as it resists his forward movement. Gentle,
try and be gentle. Fuck. He doesn't mean to yell. It sounds angry, but it's because the panic
fights with his rationale. And then she looks back at him, over her right shoulder. He's two
feet away and he freezes. Olivia's eyes are dark black and red, shuttered and empty. Hopeless.
She doesn't even seem to recognise him for a moment. He thinks she looks otherworldly,
hauntingly ethereal in the mist kicking up from the thrashing swells.

Fear floods him. Despite the ocean and the rain, everything inside of him ignites. The rage is
there, hovering beneath his skin. He can't take any of them looking at him like this anymore.
What is it that he does to cause this? He is the only the common denominator here. It can't be
a coincidence. His mother. His daughter. Olivia. Olivia isn't sick. He has to remember that.
She's got demons, but they don't have to exist forever. Fucking help her. He has to calm the
hell down. She is barely with him. This is bigger than him. This is bigger than the last few
hours, the last few days. This is the end result of all of the years. Maybe this started with the
job, maybe this started when she was a kid, but it's the place she's been heading all along. He
should have seen it coming, should have stepped in sooner.

Too late he wishes he could lift a hand to silence the storm around her. But that's just the
point. They can't control everything. Not anymore. No more interfering with the Gods. No
more relying on them. He's got to do this on his own. He swipes a hand down his face,
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uselessly trying to clear away all of the water that douses him. It falls off the tip of his nose,
slides into his ears. He is immoveable. He can't even think straight. The terror grips him in its
hands. He is frantic deep in his gut. If it's not him who does the right thing right now, then
it's no one. She doesn't have it handled.
Not this time.Olivia keeps on looking at him vacantly as if she doesn't see anything in the
space he occupies. She says nothing.
"What the hell are you doing?" Elliot starts, his voice feels too loud, too forceful in his chest,
but it is nonetheless drowned by the thunderous waves.
Olivia blinks and he thinks she sees him. Recognises him. She seems startled by his sudden
presence. It's surreal, the fury of the storm playing out all around them. It's so fucking loud
out here.
"Leave me alone."
He hears her. Despite the roar and rambunctiousness of the water, he hears her. Her voice is
thready, strands of her hair stick to her cheek as she continues to look at him over her
shoulder.

"Olivia," he tries to overpower the storm with his voice. "Christ! What the fuck is this?" He
swallows his anger, his thrumming frustration. He's got to think clearly here because he's
never won this war before. Not as a child and not as a father. He can't judge her, he can't fear
her. He has to deal with this, just deal with it. Elliot takes another step towards her.
"Don't!"
He stops. She dismisses him by turning her head to face the ocean again, as if he isn't behind
her at all.
"Jesus, Olivia! Tell me what the hell is going on then! Can you do that?" He's yelling just to
be heard. Rain hits his tongue, it slides down his temples. "Talk to me!"

She shakes her head just a little, and it is so slight of a movement that he can't tell if she did it
deliberately, or if it is just the effects of the wind, the sway of the sea. Her dismissal spears
through him; the picture of her wet, vulnerable body half-consumed by the dangerous ocean
sends his adrenaline shooting into his extremities. Fuck this shit. He takes a few steps closer
to her, pushing against the chilling water. His throat is closing up. She is shaking. Even out
here in the midst of all of this, he can tell that she is shuddering.

"Olivia!" he growls loudly again, and he's close enough now that he knows she can hear him.
"Stop ignoring me, dammit! You chose now to come out here? The hell is that?"
It's cloying at him - the way he's so unprepared, so ill-equipped. He's her partner; he's
supposed to save her. Only when he's finally called on to do it, it's not by something easy like

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taking a bullet, by something simple like using his body. It's this. Her head whips around
then, and her hair is plastered to her jaw, her neck.
"I can't do this! I can't do it! I can’t!"

The sand is giving beneath his feet, and he knows that soon it will drop off; creating a depth to
the ocean that will be unexpected. If she goes any further, she will be in the path of the rush of
the waves. The white foam coasts all around his waist. He has to change his tactics. He can't
curse or yell. This isn't like their other fights. She won't find her footing in the counterattack.

"Olivia-" His eyes are burning from the salt spray. He's got half a mind to pull off his nearly
sheer white t-shirt and let the ocean have it because it's sticking to him. Stifling him. But he
can't throw it down. He can't surrender. "This is how you deal with it?" He's competing
with the ocean, the rain. The decibel of the fucking storm is killing him. "Let's go inside. I'll
help you, okay? I swear to God, I'll-"

She starts to leave him instead. She takes another step forward and he can't let her do it. Not
anymore. The riptides are merciless, the waves are too close. Elliot surges forward and lunges
for her, wrapping his arm around Olivia's waist and hauling her back towards him. The water
acts as a buoy and because she is unprepared - as if she doesn't expect him to come for her -
his efforts lift her right off her feet. And then her body is against his. Only she is Olivia, and
she doesn't give up her footing easily. She struggles for it, instinctively kicking back at him.

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" She is thrashing without aim. It's not like her. She knows how to
fight, and this isn't it. This is unorganised. Desperate. Elliot spins in the water, using the lack
of gravity to his advantage. His legs burn as he fights both Olivia's chaotic resistance and the
retracting tide, struggling to move a few steps closer to shore before he sets her down. He has
to put himself between her and the ocean beyond. Her feet connect with his shins underwater,
her elbow with his shoulder. God, he doesn't want to hold onto her a second longer than he
has to. He doesn't know what fighting him will bring up inside of her. How much deeper it
might make her sink. What it will make her remember of a nightmare he only imagines.

"No!" he hears her protest. "No. No. No!"

The fucking rain. It doesn't end. It just doesn't end. She curls her body, contracting it in the
second before he can set her back down. She's deliberately making it impossible to hold her,
to hang onto her. He realises then that his hand is tangled in the hem of her dress because the
ocean has lifted it. Her wet hair whips back into his face as she jerks in his hold.
"Let go of me! You son-of-a-bitch!”
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Elliot sets her down only when he's sure she's not going to fall into the still thigh-deep tide.
Olivia turns then, whirling on him as if the water means nothing. Her dress is so wet it is
nearly black. Jesus. Jesus Christ. The blank stare she had given him earlier has now been
replaced with this. With her fury, with her unfocused anger. He blinks through the deluge of
water that floods his eyesight, and he can tell that her pupils are dilated.

"How could you? How could you! Why would you do this to me?"
Before he can regain his own bearings, the heel of Olivia's hand connects with his shoulder,
shoving him backwards. It only sends him back a single step before he regains his footing. It
doesn't matter. The action is so foreign to her that it sends her reeling instead, so that she is
retreating closer to the shore of her own accord. She turns around, her back to him again so
that she faces the beach, so that he can't see her face. She hunches over.

Olivia convulses so hard that he wonders if she is dry heaving. If she is going to be sick.
Because she can't see him either, Elliot feels like he's got one single moment of reprieve. His
palm tries to clean the water from his face again, but it's useless. He's so scared. Petrified. He
never thought he'd see this. And that's why this is happening. Because he hadn't seen it
coming, he hadn't expected it to go down this way. He'd had ideas about getting Olivia to talk
to him, but his naïve ideas had been about the lighthouse, the fireplace, walks on the beach.
Not this. Not this. There is no way he could have imagined this. Of course this had been their
trajectory all along.

"How could I what?" His words are harsher than he intended. He's got to calm the hell down.
Christ. She shakes her head again, but never turns around. He thinks she says something, but
the low volume of it is left unclear by the surging wind. I can't. He can't take it anymore. He
can't fucking take it. Fuck the rain and the storm and this fucking, fucking ocean. Fuck her.
Just fuck her. Like hell she's leaving him in any way at all. His instincts are to grab her, to use
his physical strength to do what needs to be done. He's got to get her out of the water, and he
could just haul her out, force her to get dry and warm. But somewhere deep down he needs
answers, too. He needs to know why he does this, how he does this to them. He needs to know
if it is him. He loves, yeah, but he ends up alone anyway.

"What is it that I did that's so fucking horrible, Olivia? What is it? I fell in love with you?" His
voice cracks too, now. He doesn't feel powerful or capable.
When she jerks her head up and spins - her wet hair sending more water flying around her - he
knows that she's not fully coherent. Her eyes are untamed. She is a wild filly, and he's in her
sights. Whereas he is still conscious of the water that is a barrage all around him, she seems to
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have forgotten about it. She pays no attention to it. She storms back towards him, her thighs
pushing through the water as if it is inconsequential.
"You couldn't leave me be? You couldn't...Jesus! I was fine. I was fucking fine!"
He closes his eyes. She could so easily make him take the blame. The instinct to hate himself
hovers. He loves, but maybe it is too much for anyone. Maybe he's smothered all of them with
what he needs from them. He opens his eyes and stares at her. She is so close now. Less than a
foot away. He wants to be good for her. That's all he wants. He couldn't save his mother, and
Olivia saved his daughter. Now he just wants to be enough for her. Just once, he needs to be
enough. He just wants Olivia, warm and dry in his hands. Safe. Quieted.

"You weren't fine," he shakes his head. "You were not fine! Just like I wasn't. You gotta talk
to someone, Olivia. Just...talk to me." He doesn't know if he is even making sense. The pain
inside of him is growing, multiplying. His eyes sting and even the constant pelt of rain doesn't
wash the salt away. He can't escape the haunt that is now far too visible in her expression.
Her shoulders are heaving. Her breaths are big, and her lips part so she can get air. She is
stripped of everything out here. Her hair, her dress, they stick to her. Olivia's lashes are wet
and tangled, and the crescents beneath her eyes are dark and swollen. "What do you want to
talk about? Do you even know? You wanna talk about Gitano? Harris? Rojas?" She is gaining
momentum and ferocity and he just stands still, absorbing it.
"You never wanted to talk about them before, so why now? Why now?"

Her accusation breaks him. So this is how he failed. Olivia had brushed him off a thousand
times, and he'd always listened to her, given her space. He had thought he was doing the right
thing, but he sees now. He sees how wrong he was, what his monumental error has cost her.
Jesus. He could vomit just thinking about all the things he's done wrong with her. For her. All
of the things he hasn't done at all.
"You wanna talk? What do you want to know, Elliot?" Olivia's hands come up to shove her
wet hair off her face and she gets closer, separating them by inches. His lack of response is
fuelling her, giving her room to lash out. He's only seen her like this one time before. In an
interrogation room with Thatcher, when she had been close to losing everything.
Olivia's lips curl.

"You wanna know if I lied, don't you? I know you, and you wanna know. You've thought it.
You've wondered. You wanna know if Harris got to me, right? Say it. Say it!"
The storm around him is gone. He only sees the cacophony of her. His eyes are wet from his
own collapse. He wants to deny her, to tell Olivia she is wrong, but he can't. His shoulders
feel heavy, his throat closes. He loves her, he thinks. It's all he knows.

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Her eyebrow arches.
"Then be man enough to ask me for Christ's sake. You want answers, you gotta ask, Elliot!
You gotta ask and ask and ask!"
She's right, he thinks. All along he thought he was abiding by her rules, but the truth is that
he was protecting himself. He is afraid of knowing. His fear has left her alone with her own.
For as much as Olivia is lashing out, Elliot is standing still. He wishes she would come at him
with her fists or her fingernails. He understands that response. He can deal with that
response. But Jesus, he needs to ask her. He's got to push past his avoidance; he has to face
this head on. The silence will not heal them. Not anymore. He tastes copper in his mouth. The
words have to form. He has to look her in the eyes. He has to use the ugly word, he can't do
anything less. Not anymore. She is waiting, just waiting. The black abyss in her stares at him,
daring him to enter. It's Olivia. He can't be afraid.

"Did Harris rape you?" Against the wind and the sea, his words are merely a whisper.
Her chin lifts. Her breaths come faster and faster. But he sees more of Olivia coming back in
the darkness of her eyes. She blinks at him, and he sees the rain slide in rivulets down her
cheek, her neck. She almost says something once, twice. Her lips move but say nothing. And
then she cocks her head, and the fight seeps out of her. By some miracle, she answers him.
"Almost. He was so close. So close. But he got me, Elliot. He had me. I didn't save myself. I
couldn't. He had control. He did. I wasn't a cop anymore."

He sees it now. The bruising inside of her. All of the deep purples and blues of her. She
searches his eyes desperately. Begging for something. Pleading for something. A sob cracks
from her and she panics. And then Olivia is sinking - crying, because it has taken everything -
and his arms are beneath hers before he even thinks about it. Elliot pulls her onto him and her
wet hair is under his chin, then it is in his right hand, his fingers tangling in it as he pushes her
face into his neck. She lets the exodus begin. He feels her submit to it, and he vows to hang
on. He will not tread lightly; he will not accept her boundaries. He's gonna push her and push
her, and she'll get it all out once and for all.

She's his to protect, and as he holds her, he knows this will get worse before it gets better.
He hears thunder, but there is no lightning yet and for some reason that makes him feel safe
even amidst the frenzy of it all.
***

His skin is somehow still warm. It's all that she registers. Somewhere in the distance she
thinks that this is all wrong, that she doesn't cling to him, but it's a nebulous idea at best. Her

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face is pressing hard into the column of his wet, strong neck, and she doesn't really process
where she is, or why. She thinks that maybe she is someone else right now, or maybe this is all
in her imagination. The heat of him reminds her of the sky - soothing, endless. But the world
around her is constricted, suffocating and dark. This is the respite of heaven inside the
destructive walls of hell. She wants to crawl away from the darkness, but it catches up with her
every time. If he could just lift her out. She is still crying, and her bones ache with complete
and utter exhaustion. Her knees don't lock, she can't feel her feet. The water slams against
her legs again and again and her hands grip tighter to the back of his shoulders. His big hand
cups the crown of her head, keeping her in one place. He hangs on tight. The relief is sharp,
acute.

She told him. It's just one thing, but it's something at least. He knows now. He knows she
was scared. That being a cop hadn't been enough. He knows she isn't strong, that she hadn't
been strong enough. And yet he's not leaving her. Elliot holds her. Elliot. The crying slows.
Eases. Subsides completely. Her fingers touch his neck; she feels the wet, sharp and straight
edge of his hairline. Despite the salt and the interminable rain, she can still recognise the
reassuring scent of him. She is shivering. She needs this, this moment of quiet inside of her.
His muscular chest is solid against her breasts, and when he grasps her like this the waves
don't cause her to sway.

She tries to lift her face, until her chin sits on his shoulder. Her eyes are so swollen it hurts to
keep them open, but she can still see the ocean beyond him. Elliot's broad back faces the
waves; as if he alone can hold them at bay for her. It makes her think of the lighthouse last
night, how he had stood between her and the window, as if commanding the sea. She is only
female in this moment. She is not a cop, she is not his partner. She's just a woman, and he's
bigger, stronger. The ache to give herself over to it - to him - is unbearable. She needs Elliot
so much. The sheer recognition of just how much is nearly debilitating. He can't possibly
know just how desperate she is deep down. It would scare him. It scares her. His fingers press
into her scalp and his breathing is uneven, erratic.

When the ocean swells, she can't see beyond the midnight blue of it. Despite the vibrations of
the spiralling water, she thinks she can feel Elliot's heartbeat slamming inside of him. He's so
alive against her.She ought to shush him. To get him to calm. It isn't fair the things she does.
He's a good man, and he doesn't deserve all of this. She knows how much she takes out of
him. He needs someone easy, someone who will finally bring the light and laughter he
deserves. That person cannot be her. She has too much of the ugliness within, too many
nightmares that he can't take on. She won't let it happen.

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Her chest is too empty to even let her cry anymore. Her fingers feel limp, and she turns her
head so that her cheek rests on his shoulder and she can see the shoreline that goes past his
house and beyond. She walked the length of it a few days ago with him, the tequila still on her
lips. That was before all of this. Before. Now she stands here, and the hollows have defined
themselves. She thinks about the woman he should have. In her imagination the woman is
always blonde, she is always smiling. It's not even Kathy. She gives Elliot someone new,
someone who hasn't made this journey with the rest of them. It's someone who doesn't know
the late nights, who doesn't know how to get blood spatter out of a dress shirt. It's someone
who is luminous, someone who glows because she doesn't know. Olivia blinks. Her breathing
slows. She could close her eyes and sleep. She's so tired. For a moment, she is safe.

The woman for Elliot takes shape, and she is a teacher, maybe an interior decorator. She's
athletic, and her schedule never fluctuates. She takes cooking classes and her parents live on
Long Island. She's got friends and they make plans on the weekends. Her girlfriends golf,
they play tennis. The woman doesn't want to ruin her figure by having a child, but she loves
Elliot's children and it is enough for her. Her needs are not endless canyons. Olivia can't do
this. She can't get too comfortable. She has to save him even if he won't save himself.

She peels herself off of him. Her cheek loses contact with Elliot's shoulder; her fingers
reluctantly slip from his neck. She pushes back, lifting her head until his hand falls away,
skimming down her back until it comes to rest on her hip. Her breasts are no longer warmed
by his chest, and water slides between them now, racing between their bodies on its journey
towards the shore as if they had never been together at all. She is lethargic. The sky is loathe
to cease its bleeding. Elliot shirt is soaking and nearly translucent. His skin is dark and tanned
in the places where it sticks to him. She pulls out of his grasp entirely, and he lets her. Elliot is
eyeing her, she knows this, but she is too exhausted to lift her gaze to his. He stands still. His
shoulders fall. His fists are loose at his side beneath the surface.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you," he rumbles hoarsely, defying the sound of the storm.
This is why she can't let him love her. It hurts him. He shoulders the blame. Olivia shakes her
head.
"I can't do this," she finds herself saying, although she doesn't know what she means. She
doesn't know if she means talking or leaving or listening. She could sleep though, she knows
that much. She could sleep. If she could just lie down.
"What can't you do?"

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She doesn't know. Jesus, she doesn't know. She wants to get dry. Warm. All of the emptied
spaces inside of her become weighted, too present. It's even clearer to her now just how
devoid she is.
"Liv-"
The foam clings to his thighs and his jeans cup the thick muscles in his legs above the surface
of the water. The sea slides effortlessly between them, around them. The white froth breaks
up, disappears.
"Olivia. For fuck's sake, look at me!"
Her eyes close at the expletive and she feels the tears that press out before falling from her
cheeks. He won't notice. Not in rain such as this. If Elliot gets angry, he will leave. That's the
thing she missed earlier. He has to be the first one to leave or he won't give up. She has to
make him leave. There is only one way.

"I don't love you." Her words are wooden. Deliberate. She doesn't even open her eyes.
Elliot doesn't miss a beat. It's as if he had been expecting it.
"Then look me in the eye when you say it." His voice is flat, even with conviction.
Olivia hears the thunder then, and the wind picks up. It makes the rain slant sideways at its
whim. She can do this. She'll sever this thing between them once and for all. It's been too
many years of ambiguity. It has to be clear, she has to be succinct. She opens her eyes and
looks at Elliot.

The downpour hits his cheekbones, drips off his chin. His eyelashes tangle but he doesn't
look uneasy anymore. She can see the anger building in him again. He looks formidable. Too
strong. Confident. She is staring at him then. In the midst of the riotous commotion around
them, time stands still. His accusing eyes lock on hers.
"Come on. Tell me how you don't feel a thing, Olivia." It's a challenge. He's goading her.
He's riling himself up. "What's wrong? Dump me, Olivia. G'rid of me like you do everyone
else. What? Don't I deserve the ice queen speech too?" He laughs and it's bitter, cold.
Harsh. "Least I should get that, don't you think?"

Fuck him. Fuck him.

He encroaches on her and she backs up a few steps. Inside Olivia wants to scream, but she
can't. She can't. She's soundless instead. Locking down. Elliot is all muscle as he comes at
her. He's wet and dripping and he's like something mythical rising out of the sea. "How's the
speech go?" Elliot's cocky sneer manifests itself as a smile.

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"Whaddya use? The job?" He shakes his head. "Nah, can't use that this time. So how ‘bout
you're not attracted to me?" His eyes manage to heat knowingly even out here in the chill of it
all. "No, I've touched you. I know you want what I do. So then what? What's left?"
He's tearing her apart. The kid gloves are gone, and somewhere out here Elliot has lost his
fear of her. She knows how he can carve someone into pieces when he's left unrestrained.
She's seen him do it a thousand times. That's why she had put up the boundaries, because she
knows. She knows he sees right through when he needs to. She's got to find the strength to
fight him. Somewhere inside of her, there has to be some fight left. He seems to realise
something because his expression clears, but a moment later she realises this is all part of his
act. He licks the salt off his bottom lip.

"Oh, I got it. You don't feel anything for me. Am I right? That the speech you're gonna
use?"
She can't even listen to this. Olivia tries to focus on the sound of the crests crashing, the
sound of thunder that comes closer. She can't keep looking at the granite in his eyes, the
mocking twist of his lips. She wishes she had never come out here. There is no going back for
them now. None. She'll have to leave if he comes back to New York. She'll have to start
somewhere new. The magnitude of the loss steals her breath.Olivia squeezes her eyes shut
and she forms fists, letting her nails dig into her hands. When the salt stings her palms she
knows she's broken skin and she tells herself to relax, to just relax.Rain cascades down over
her face, along her ear. Breathe. Just breathe. She has to be impenetrable. Unresponsive.

”Goddammit!" he grates. "God damn you, Olivia! Make me fucking understand!"

The storm around them has nothing on what is happening inside of her. It's all a nightmare.
All of it. Every day in the unit. Every night alone. It's been a nightmare since she was a kid,
and she needs a break. Just one. If Elliot could just leave her alone - intact - then that would be
a start. She'd be grateful from now on. She makes promises to God again and again.
Maybe he will go away and just leave her be. Only she hears Elliot moving, and he's now
coming towards her. She hears the splashes, feels the wind hit her where it had once been
blocked by his body. Olivia braces for his hands, for him to shake her, even though it's not his
nature to touch her in anger. Instead he moves past her to her right and then she thinks that's
it. That's really it. He's gone.

She doesn't open her eyes. She can't watch him go, even if she's the one who sent him away.
She doesn't acknowledge him at all. She pretends he isn't out here with her. Elliot's voice
yells angrily from somewhere beyond her.

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"You wanna suffer? Then do it. Do it! You wanna pull this bullshit in the water? You wanna
let the riptides have at you? By all means go for it! I'll make sure I give ‘em your name when
you wash up down the shore."

She is shaking so badly that the fear comes back. His words singe her skin, every syllable
bruises. Olivia opens her eyes and then tries to turn, but her body is so heavy that she can only
look at him over her shoulder. Elliot is out of the water now, standing just beyond the fade of
the tide. She's the only one in the ocean. Olivia just stares at him. If he only knew. If he just
knew how much she loved him. The scope of her need isn't romantic, it's frightening. He's
been everything for so long. She doesn't remember how she got through the days before she
met him, she doesn't know how she will get through a single day after they are done. If she
even survives his onslaught in the first place. He's killing her with this right now. He's got to
stop.

"Elliot," Olivia mumbles. It's a whisper of a protest.

He's too far away to hear her. She can see his fists, the carved shape of his body. But that's it.
The rest is a blurred halo in the early morning grey of it all.
"You wanna leave me?" Elliot taunts loudly from where he is. "Go ahead. I don't care how
you do it! You wanna drive off? You wanna disappear? You wanna fucking walk straight into
the ocean, I don't give a shit!"

Her mother used to taunt her with it. With how little she would care if Olivia never came
home. She'd drink and drink and drink and then she'd accuse Olivia being the one who
wanted to die. Olivia doesn't want to die. She knows this. That's not who she is. It's not what
this is about. She wouldn't kill herself. There are noble ways to go, death can have purpose.
She'd sacrifice for a million reasons, but her choice not to fight for her life doesn't mean she
doesn't want to live. It doesn't. Giving up - succumbing - it is not the same thing as choosing
to die. It can't be. It can't. She shakes her head.
"No," she finds herself murmuring. "No."
She survives. She goes on. That's what she does.Even when she is this tired.

Elliot is charging back at her then, storming through the water as it rises around him.
Somewhere deep inside of her she understands what he is doing. He's pushing her,
provoking her. They do this with the victims because when goaded enough to fight, the
strongest of them usually will. Only she is not a victim. She's not. Jesus Christ. She's not a
victim. She can take the things she's seen, heard, done. The pressure in her head builds. It is a

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mounting, forming tornado that is swirling faster and faster under her skin. Elliot's right in
front of her again then. His voice cuts through the now torrential rain.

"I'm done protectin' you. You got that? I'm done. No fucking reason for me to try when
you're ready as hell to die in any case!"
"I hate you!"
The lie screams violently out of nowhere. Olivia hadn't even expected to speak, let alone yell
like that. She can't seem to catch her breath in the aftermath of the sudden outburst. He
makes it worse when he comes at her immediately. She doesn't understand why he's reaching
for her until she feels the water hitting her chest, the upper parts of her arms. She's fighting
his hands as he tries to get her to straighten, to just not fall into the murky darkness. She
knows that anyone can drown in even a shallow tide. She knows that once water gets into the
lungs it.

Elliot is grappling with her, and she can stand, she can do it if he'd just let go. Olivia feels his
hands curl possessively round her forearms as she sinks backwards into the water. She can
handle this, she can, if he'd just fucking let go.
"Let go!"
He yanks on her arms, trying to bring her to a standing position again.
"Jesus, Olivia. Fuck. Stop fighting me!"
"Then don't hold me! Don't touch me and don't hold me!"

Her anger has been lit and he's got her on her feet beneath the water before he's fully
straightened. She uses her newfound position of balance to launch her weight at him when
he's most vulnerable. It sends Elliot backwards and onto his ass in the thigh-high water just as
the next wave rolls in. For a moment, Olivia stands still. Elliot's gone, under the surface.
Caught unaware and covered by water. Her heart races and just as she is about to panic, the
wave recedes. He's emerging unscathed from the surf, his furious eyes hell bent on her.Water
clings to him everywhere and his face is grim as he rises. He gets to his feet far too quickly for
her liking.

Jesus. All she knows is she's got to get out of the water. There is something in him that has
shifted, and Olivia can feel the frissons of electricity slip across her skin. Fear. Danger. She
turns to head up onto the shore but he's right behind her then, too fast, too easily. He knows
the water and the pull of it too well to let her get ahead of him. Elliot's unforgiving forearm
snakes around her waist with ease.
"No you don't."

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The calm, dominant tone of his voice sends her spiralling. In this moment they are not equal.
Maybe they never have been. He's huge and nearly menacing behind her and she's locked
against him. He turns so she faces the rain, so that she bears the accosting brunt of it while she
scratches at his arms to try and get them dislodged from her stomach.
Only he's a calculating bastard when he wants to be. She's far enough into the water that her
leverage is lost by the sea that envelops her. She has to keep her eyes closed because the way
he's got her makes the rain hit her in the face while her body protects him. She waits for it.
For how he's gonna decimate her. Make her pay. She stays still then, bracing for the words he
will use to finally break her. She doesn't know how all the years came to this moment, how it
was once good and now it's this. It's this. How far they fell.

"I'm sorry," she pushes past her lips. She has nothing else. She should have left him years
ago. Let him be. "I'm so sorry. I don't wanna hurt you. I don't."
Behind her she feels his grip loosen just a little bit on her. She feels the rigid planes of his
body yield. Gentle. She slips down his body a little bit; her toes skim the wet sand beneath the
water.And then Elliot's mouth is by her ear. His voice is low, dangerous, assured.
"It's supposed to be you. For me. Olivia, that's what is supposed to be. It's you.”

The rain hits her eyelids. She can feel the drops bounce on her cheeks, her nose. Water
trickles down her scalp.
"And all of this, all this shit we got in us. All the shit in your head? Doesn't scare me, Liv."
He's braver than she is. Too brave. Why he'd risk it all with her, she doesn't know. But she's
told him. She's warned him and he won't go away. He just doesn't leave. It starts as a hum
inside of her and then it grows, until she's trying to contain the sound.
"I'm gonna fuck it up. I'll hurt you." Olivia's head falls back onto his shoulder as the
wracking pain rips through her.

"Okay," he says calmly as his hot breath sends warm air onto her earlobe.
"I'm not easy, and I...I don't even know how. I can't relax, and I lose it, Elliot...I lose..." She
warns him with whatever she can think of. Instead of loosening his grip around her waist, he
tightens it. His mouth presses into her wet hair.
"Okay," Elliot says again, as if she's not even speaking.
The raindrops fall in such density that the air becomes white with them. The ocean is attacked
by the sky, and even the waves seem to retract in the face of it. Her words come quickly.
Urgently. "I'm not like everyone else. I'm not.”

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It's the most painful acknowledgment of all. It causes her to splinter and she empties again,
her sounds coming from deep within her chest. Even in the moving water, she can swear it is
Elliot who is rocking her.
"Thank God for that," he mumbles.

He's not listening. He's not.

Olivia wrenches out of his grasp and turns to face him, determined not to let the water unseat
her footing. She looks into the flame blue of Elliot's eyes and she tells herself she has to stop
crying, if just for a moment. She has to be blunt. She has to admit this once and for all. She's
never admitted this for her sake, but she will say the words out loud for his. If she could just
stop crying.

"We're gonna be okay," Elliot finally says. His fingers skim the side of her face, and he
pushes the wet strands of her hair back, out
of her eyes. "Liv-"
She shakes her head.
"No." She has to tell him what she knows. "No."
He nods.
"Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be fine." The muscle in his jaw jumps. "You won't feel like this
forever, Liv. You won't. You'll go back to being you. Better than before. You just gotta let it
outta you. Okay? Jesus. I promise you. I promise you."

His assurances make her frantic. He has to listen to her, because her fight is fading. She can't
hold out much longer. He's what she wants. He has been for so long. Her love for him is
visceral. It's a fine line between civility and what she wants. How she wants. She can't be
asked to withstand anymore. His fingertips trace her cheek almost reverently.
"Elliot-" she knows what she has to say, and it's suffocating her.
Lightning flashes in the distance, and it sends her anxiety skyrocketing. Time is running out
because they can't be in the water when the storm electrifies like this.
"I'm not-" Olivia starts.

Only Elliot is pulling at her with his left hand. He's got her hip beneath the water and he's
tugging her towards him. He can't do this to her. She can feel herself relenting. She's so close
to the edge and then she's gonna go over and he'll be stuck with the pieces of her before he
knows any better.

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"Please-" she cracks, trying to dislodge his hand. He has to listen. Just listen. She is nearly
numb. The water is an assault that grates on her.
But he's looking at her now with a heavy, hot gaze even out here in the midst of this. She has
to get Elliot to pay attention to her.
"Why won't you listen to me?" she says, her lips barely moving. She feels like a child.
Vulnerable. She shakes her head vehemently, and water falls off the tip of her nose. She is
pleading then, as if appealing to him. She hits his shoulder with her open palm. "Listen,
Elliot! Just listen!"

He focuses on her.She's defeated by her body, by her exhaustion. But she has to tell him.
Even if it is devastating to lay herself bare like this. Olivia looks him in the eyes, and the sheer
loss of it all wracks her body.
"I'm not whole." The raw, revealing admission breaks her. She is collapsing in on it.
Imploding. "I'm not. I know that. I know it deep inside and I... I... I can't be trusted in this,
Elliot." She is crying and she prays that one day it will be done. When it's all out of her; when
all of the years have been mourned. Then it will be done. "I know better than to let anyone
into my life. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry...but there are...there are things inside of me
that...they're missing. I think they're missing and..."
"Olivia-"
"No! God damn it!" She slams her hand into his shoulder again. The impact of it feels good,
the physical blow releases some of the ache inside of her. "Just listen to what I'm telling you!
We're not alike, Elliot! We're not!" The heels of her palms come up to rub her eyes, and
saltwater grates into her already raw irises. He won't let go of her, and she needs to go, to just
go. She shoves at him again, and then again. His expression contorts, but he stays still outside
of tightening his hold on her waist.

She is crying then, openly. "I'm tired. Don't you get it? I'm fucking tired!" Her voice is
rising, almost shrilling. She is panicking, yet unable to help herself calm down. "I'm so..."
she heaves. "So tired..."
He tries to bring her closer, to shush her, and she renews her shoving. He hangs onto her
seemingly effortlessly.
"I'm sorry, Olivia."
His forehead drops to hers, crowding her. "Jesus. I should have pushed you back then. All
those years. You gotta forgive me."
"Don't." Olivia pushes at him but its frantic, uncoordinated. "Please, Elliot. Just don't." But
her words are falling now. She pushes again, and he takes it, doesn't move. She gets angry.

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She fights him now not as a cop, but as a woman. As someone who is not sure whether to
clutch or to push. She hits him again, always on his arms, on his shoulders. She is not trying to
hurt him, because if she wanted to, she could. Deep down, she isn't trying to hurt him. She
knows that. She just needs. Elliot. He lets her hit. He lets her whimper and fracture. Olivia
hits again, and he stares off in the distance, at the indiscernible horizon, at the wildfire waves.
He isn't wincing; he instead seems to absorb the punishing heel of her hand without
flinching. He isn't upset by her break; he isn't perturbed by her incessant, horrible crying.
It makes her mad. It also reduces her to nothing. She hits him again. And again. It's all
coming out of her, once and for all. She's shedding tears she didn't know she had. She's
shedding nightmares that have lived inside of her for far too long. Elliot takes it, and he
doesn't flinch. He doesn't even watch her; he just lets her have at it. He gives her space
against him to abandon the rest of it. He tugs her closer.

"Keep going. Keep going, Liv. If this is what you need, then do it. Leave it all out here."
His quiet reassurance brings the last of it out of her. That he has pushed her here and stayed
with her through it goes beyond anything they have ever endured. He is unshakeable, she
thinks. Just unshakeable. He holds her inches from him and lets her push, lets her cry. The
end of it comes from deep in her stomach, from an excruciating place she hadn't even been
aware of before. It's a place where she's still a little girl, and she knows too much about
isolation and regrets. She has to let go of it. Eradicate the last of what she holds inside.
Her assault slows and she's spent. She's so spent. She can't pound on him anymore. Her
push is weak, without effort or strength. Elliot's hand catches her wrist this time and he stops
her before she connects with his shoulder again. Her fingers curl into a fist as his
encircle her. Olivia stares at his neck. She can't breathe and the lack of air is making her
panic. He still hasn't let go of her arm.

"Look at me."
In the midst of it all, her eyes meet his. The catharsis has left her bare, raw, exposed. He can't
possibly think that she is strong, that she is okay. But nothing she has said or done has swayed
him. He isn't going anywhere. He hasn't left her out here. She is still struggling for air.
"Breathe, Liv. C'mon." He's so calm. So damned calm. I love him.

It's simple all of a sudden. It screams into her, into all of the hollows she's just created. It's
everywhere inside of her - it's in her chest and her throat, her fingertips and her toes. It's
deep in her gut and it's rising up and she wants this, she wants this. Him. There is no other
option. She will not get through without. She's holding her breath maybe, but she can't
release it. She feels lightheaded. She needs oxygen. He's got to do something. She is

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drowning above water. She wants him. She can't let him go. God help her she's tried. Too
many times.

"Liv-" Elliot starts again, but then something changes in his expression. "Fuck. Breathe,
Olivia."
But her airways feel constricted. I love him. Her temples feel as if they are being pummelled.
Her pulse batters her.
"Olivia, listen to me, you gotta breathe!" His hands are on her face then, cupping her cheeks.
Imploring her. He's rough, urgent. "Look at me!"

She wants to do what he says but her ears are ringing, and she knows by the look on his face
that he knows that she's struggling. Hyperventilating. Her chest heaves in tiny bursts, but
she's not getting air. Not at all. He's gripping her then. His thumbs press into her
cheekbones and he's hauling her against him, without restraint.

"Christ!"
It's the last thing he says before his mouth slams down on hers.

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 Chapter Twenty

S
he is rigid. It's the only thing that he recognises in this moment. The rest of the world is
unfamiliar, unlike anything he has ever known. His hands cup Olivia's face, his palms
holding her jaw while his fingers slip into the strands of her tangled, wet hair. Elliot is
on her, and for one terrifying second he freezes, simply covering her mouth with his without
knowing what he is doing or why he is doing it. Her lips are fuller than he expected, and he
can feel them bump up against his own. He is shaking deep in his gut. He's not a grown up.
He's a scared kid with a brand new, willing heart. No defences, not when it comes to her.
There is no going back now.

Elliot tries to expel a breath into her but it goes nowhere because Olivia keeps her lips closed.
She makes a painful, agonising and contained sound that cuts through the slam of the ocean.
He presses his mouth against hers, brushing against it, nudging her urgently to open. Let
him. Just let him. Olivia is unyielding. She's not responding and he's cracking with the
realisation. He wants to kiss her, just kiss her. He wants her to open her mouth and let him in.
There is a pulsing beneath the surface of his skin that is becoming frantic, disjointed. Come
on, Olivia. Please. A sound breaks from his throat too - maybe it's a protest- because he still
can't feel her allowing him, permitting him this. His hands span the sides of her head, and his
thumbs are probably putting too much pressure on her temples. Nanoseconds pass. Years.
If she wants to pull back, he's got to give her the room to do it, even if she takes him apart
with the retreat. Christ.

It's not how he imagined it. She doesn't suddenly find everything that is right in this; her
walls don't disintegrate on contact. He wants to drag his lips against hers incessantly; he
needs to slide his tongue into her mouth. He wants to taste Olivia, to haul her towards him.

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He wants to tilt his head and just go for it, just goddamned go for it once and for all because he
needs something to be perfect in this lifetime. Just one thing.
Jesus, he can't feel her responding at all. He can fight and fight but maybe Olivia is the
unwindable war. Out here in the morning rain, he's losing her. The one thing he needs - he's
doing it all wrong. He can't save her when he can't save himself. Elliot relaxes his grip on her.
His chest is frighteningly tight, his eyes are burning. The rain, the rain, the fucking rain. He
tears his mouth off of her and inhales deeply, looking at her through the haze of water as he
holds on, still. She is barely inches from him. Olivia's eyes are closed; her wet hair is matted to
her head. Her breaths exist again, but they are ragged and choppy, and she's crying. You'd
cry like a baby when the tide rolled in and washed it all away.

His mother's words. She'd been speaking about a boy who had watched the worlds he'd built
in the sand crumble beneath the waves. She'd said the words to a man who had no longer been
surprised by loss, by the utter disintegration of everything around him. He can't let Olivia go.
No. Nothing more is washing away. Not for either of them. The storm has to back the hell off.
She could move if she wanted to, she could run. He will never touch her against her will, not
even for his own salvation Instead she's still, eyes remaining closed, her expression a fragile,
shuttered mask of pain and apologies. There is a profound guilt in him, one that will not erode
easily. He let it get this far, he let her get this way. Elliot drops his mouth towards her again.
"Liv." She won't mistake this for anything but his desperate need to kiss her, to bring her
back, to keep her with him. His intentions have to be clear.

Her lips are too cold against his, and he can taste the salt that coats them and he presses
forward instead, trying - one last time - to get her to respond. His mouth is tangled with hers.
It's numbing and electrifying all at once. If she knew, if she only knew what she's done to
him, how she's changed him. He doesn't feel the pounding of her fists. He feels stronger
now, the panic ebbs. He sees the seaweed on the torn beach, he feels the next wave dissolve
around his hips and Olivia is starting to sink. He mechanically holds her up, until her knees
lock beneath her again. Elliot can only hear the ocean. Beneath the wet dress, he knows that
her skin has the capacity to heat again. His forearm curves around her now and then he's not
gentle or kind. He needs to touch her.

Olivia doesn't yank out of his hands. She is still. Frozen. As if paralysed by the contact. Even
her crying has stopped. The rain hasn't ceased yet, though. The goddamned rain is
everywhere. She isn't withdrawing and that has to be enough. It has to be. She is still in his
grip and he ruthlessly slams his mouth onto hers and he's nothing more than desperation and
frustration and need all rolled into one. The seawater is on his closed eyelids, it's on his neck
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and his hands and it's on her and he needs this, too. He needs it. Her. He needs her. Fuck the
years and the history and rules and boundaries. He needs Olivia. Maybe he needs to let go of
her, maybe he should pull his mouth off of her, but he listens to her lack of retreat and takes
that as a sign. He slants his head to the right and pushes his mouth against her, opening his
own and praying that she will follow.

He's starving. Dying. This is survival at its most basic level. Elliot covers her lips again.
Sliding up, across them, then down. Learning them. Coaxing her. Open for me. Just to be
inside of her in any way - incomprehensible. Even the rain recedes in his consciousness. He
can't feel the ocean. He is kissing her now, fully. There is no mistaking what he is doing. Her
hands come up and grip his slick wrists and he can feel Olivia's fingertips pushing into his
veins, but that is all. She doesn't push him away and even in her shock she's finally gasping at
air again.

Olivia's chin jerks upwards, and her lips part slightly as she struggles for oxygen. He doesn't
believe she's acquiescing, but she doesn't say no. She just remains. Immoveable. He opens
his mouth, takes advantage of her harsh intake of air and kisses her hard and deep. He's
demanding - and maybe he's too possessive - but this has to be his. The rain frames them. It is
the backdrop, the borders to what is happening between them. He feels like he is the centre of
all of this. That she is. He doesn't retreat. The world slows. Gives him time with her.

Something cracks in him. He can feel the seconds fragment as they tick by. Please, God.
Elliot feels it then. Against him Olivia's mouth softens, becomes more pliable. Her fingers are
not pulling his hands away from her face; instead Olivia is holding his wrists as if they are a
lifeline. Her palms become manacles around him. She's tilting forwards and she's suddenly
crying against him. The tension in her shoulders lessens, the wind fights the rain for control
of the air around them. She doesn't step back, instead she seems closer.The world fully stops
and he is aware of nothing but her.

And then on a roughened gasp her hot mouth opens and Olivia falls forward, towards him. He
doesn't know if she's seeking air or if she's drinking the saltwater off of his skin. Maybe it's
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the impossible - that she's actually kissing him back, but it's a desperate, hungry thing
whatever it is. He thinks it's some sort of fragile acceptance. Elliot's response rips from him,
propelled by the powerful force of his absolute need. It's something greater than him - than
them - this is not in his control. He is starving as he kisses her - hot, openmouthed - and he
can't get enough. It is a tempest, all of it. His mouth slashes over her and his lips aren't
gentle. He takes and takes, and even as she comes at him now - willing, eager, a force unto
herself - he doesn't relent. His tongue is in her and he can taste her - the ocean - and fuck the
water for getting in the way of how he just wants to take her. Just her.
Olivia's hands grasp at his drenched t-shirt and then she's up against him. Her weight adds to
his and he's strong as hell for just one, single blissful moment. He's got gravity enough for
the two of them, even in the twisting water. Her hand sweeps up his chest. He's got no
resistance; she's all acquiescence. Elliot thinks that she's soft, so damned soft, and maybe
that's wrong or a misperception but he doesn't care. No. No, that's right. She deserves to be
treated not as a physical equal but as a woman, as someone who needs to be protected.
Olivia's skin is wet and the world is muffled. It's his. All of this. The surprise disappears from
her and Olivia is alternately submissive and demanding as if she is confused by the force of it.
It's not gentle or easy, it's clawing and ownership and the desperate, uncoordinated bump of
her teeth against his lips. Her mouth is sweet, and she's right there with him.

Elliot can feel her breaths come fast into his chest. He groans, and forgets where they are. He
is not in the ocean or at the beach. He is not here or away. He is simply with her. Olivia.
He must be saying her name out loud, because he feels his lips moving against hers in the
litany of it. He drags her towards him by wrapping one of his arms around her waist, his
fingers gripping the wet fabric of her dress. Yeah. On him. Just like that. He needs her long
legs wrapped around his hips; he needs the solidity of the ground beneath her back. God, to
just lay Olivia down, to show her. She pulls back, and then suddenly her mouth isn't against
his, even if the rest of her is still moulded to him.

"El."
He hears Olivia's ragged cry. Above the raging water, beneath the crackling, dark morning
skies, she resonates. He still hears her. He isn't surprised that she manages to cut through the
noise around him. This phenomenon isn't new. His fingers untangle from Olivia's dripping
hair, and he ignores the mind-blowing press of her breasts against his chest. He thinks she's
used her teeth everywhere on him because he can feel the sting of salt on his lower lip and
he's proud of her. He wants her like this. Unhindered. Without apologies. Elliot drags his
tongue over the small wound and tastes the blood. It's a tiny reminder of some nebulous
victory.

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He realises then that he has to fucking open his eyes to see her. His chest is constricted, his
throat is locked tight. He looks at Olivia and he doesn't know what to focus on first. The wide,
dark abyss of her startled, red-rimmed eyes or the swollen, inviting heat of her lips? He did
this. He's been there. In her mouth. God, he needs to taste her again. Shock registers on her
face. Her fingers fly to her lips. He waits for the recriminations and sees none in Olivia's
expression. Instead he recognises a heady mix of fear and wonder. Interest.
The slight chill of the ocean has done nothing to quell the force of his arousal, the gripping
urgency of it. Her body is still warm against him, and he thinks about how hot Olivia is inside
of her mouth. He can't think about the rest of her, how she'd warm him, take him.
He needs to be inside of her. Deep. As far as any man has ever been in a woman. She's
breathing. Christ, she's breathing. Too much maybe. Her chest is nearly heaving. They both
need air.

Olivia is staring at him, and in the dim light of the burgeoning morning he can see just how
dilated her pupils are, he can feel the pants of air lift her chest again and again. She doesn't
blink even as the water slips across her lashes and trickles off her nose. She licks her lower lip
as if testing it and he groans, squeezing his eyes shut again. She's sculpted to him, their
bodies are soaking, and she has to know, she has to know. The restraint is killing him.

"You kissed me," she says in a numb monotone.

He nods. Grits his teeth. Yeah, that's what this was. Such an innocuous word for the
incomprehensible magnitude of it. Finally, he thinks. Fucking finally. If he buried himself
high and hard inside of her they wouldn't question anything. He doesn't know why he's sure
about this, but he is. He doesn't know why they are surprised by where they are, why anyone
would be. Of course this was going to happen all along. Of course.

When Elliot works up the guts to look at Olivia again, he immediately recognises the stark,
stunned fear in her eyes. Only she's not pulling away from him. Olivia is no longer crying,
she's no longer hyperventilating. She is plastered against him in the middle of the churning,
deafening fury of the storm as if clinging to a life vest. He knows her as a child in this moment,
he understands her as a teenager. He can see her trying for normalcy in college; he can feel
her aiming for justice at the Academy. He recognises the hope she'd had in the first year in
the unit; he can see the passion for the job morphing into a dependency. He sees the woman
who nearly let go of herself, yet who is still - by some miracle - hanging onto him. Over the
years she has commanded the full spectrum of his love.

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He'd felt the words for her, understood the basics. He'd been driven by something greater
with Olivia, but until this moment he hadn't understood how it hadn't been a choice he had
ever made. It just was. It was powerful and a given and it was bigger than vows or rings or
fidelity.
"You kissed me," she repeats numbly.
He won't apologise. Elliot lets his lips fall to her forehead, thinking he will catch his breath
eventually. But a moment later Olivia turns her face, brushing her cheek against his. He feels
her shudder, and then her mouth turns up towards his. Something inside of him settles. Calms
again. His lips skim the bridge of her nose. He can feel her still clutching his t-shirt, and she
seems suddenly exhausted, as if the fight has left her. As if the slap of the ocean water against
her thighs is enough to drag her away.

"Elliot."
It's the guttural way that she says it that rips away his control again. Fuck the rest of the world.
Fuck New York and the rules and every miserable decision he's ever made. Fuck the rain and
the sucking pull of the ocean and the goddamned cacophony of the thundering waves.
Fuck her if she thinks she's leaving him. That she's not good enough, that they even have a
choice in this. He doesn't know anything else. He isn't a shrink; he doesn't have any clue
what else to do. He's supposed to use his body to protect her, so that's what he'll do. It's all
he's got. Elliot's right hand grips her jaw hard and quickly turns her face to his. Olivia looks
up at him through her soaking wet lashes. She still looks exhausted and shell-shocked, nearly
bedraggled if it's even possible for her, but he now sees the slightest hint of a plea.

"Tell me to stop," he growls against the fading thunder.

Even as he holds her face, he can feel the slight shake of her head.
"I can't. I don't want you to, stop,” she apologies, her voice cracking. Olivia tries to keep her
soft, watery eyes on his, but she finally gives up, closing them instead. "I'm sorry."
I'm sorry. She is apologising endlessly then. Her voice is cracking. It is a voice borne of
fissures. Her breasts are smashed against his chest. When she tries to writhe again, he shifts
his hand and it slides up, under the floating hem of her dress. His left palm is on lower back
then, and he lets the rain wash his irises as his hand finds the dip of her spine. He blinks, eyes
wide open, and the sky is loathe to cease its bleeding.

And then he's had enough. She's choking on it, and it sounds like she's got no way to help
herself. She's out of control. He gives Olivia another moment of it, because she needs it. This
may never happen in her lifetime again, and it has to be complete. Catharsis
can't be interrupted. The moment goes.

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"I'm sorry. Elliot, I'm so sorry. I'm not..."
Christ. Olivia doesn't need him to stop. She needs him to be bigger, stronger, and more
forceful than decades of her fear. It’s all he needs to know. It's more than he expected to
understand. She is still crying, and she can't breathe again because his lips don't let the
sound escape. Instead his mouth immediately aligns with hers and he swallows her words, her
tears, her protests. This time when his mouth claims hers, he doesn't feel an ounce of
hesitation. From either one of them.
***

For just a moment, she has no idea who she is. It's the most perfect moment she has ever
known. The relief of suddenly being undefined is so overwhelming that it is nearly painful.
She can still be anyone or anything. She's just a woman in these seconds. Elliot is all around
her, his arms are thick and the shadow of his beard is harsh. The rain is sliding down her neck
and her arms, and she's locked against him. She doesn't have to push him away. She's not a
failure or a mistake; she isn't just another piece of evidence from a crime committed forty
years ago. She can stop atoning for sins she doesn't remember committing; she doesn't have
to be fearless.

Elliot's mouth is on hers. Elliot's. Olivia's knees keep buckling in the water and she doesn't
care. He is holding onto her even as she is reaching for him. All she knows is that she's secure
now. She's not going anywhere. Not with the tide, not with the rain. She's not slipping on the
sand, sinking. Not if he's got her. Elliot jerks her against him and hauls her up, until her toes
no longer feel the unsteady ocean floor. The rasp of him against her skin is hungry, ravenous.
His tongue licks at her and then pushes into her mouth without relent. His hand tangles in her
hair, and he's hard everywhere against her. He seems huge out here, as if he is made of heavy,
weighted stone that doesn't yield to the storm that swirls around them.

In the wet depths of the ocean, Elliot lights every one of her nerves on fire. Twelve years flash
by; emotion surges forward inside of her. If the world fell away she'd be fine left with just him.
He may need other people, but she needs only him. Him. She loses her sense of time and
space as his mouth covers hers. Somewhere deep within Olivia is crumpling beneath the
resolute, dominating force of his absolute surety of her. Elliot kisses her hard, forcefully, and
she can't breathe. She tries to claw at him, to keep him against her. Her fingers bite into the
skin at his jaw, and buoyed by the water he lifts her enough so that her thighs can close around
the wet denim that sheathes his powerful legs and hips. Even amidst the water and fury of it
all, she can feel the unmistakable ridge of his erection. For her.

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The heat of Elliot's body permeates her skin. There is a lulling safety in the hot, sculpted
planes of him. She wants him to take it all out of her. He is the only one who can stand up to
her will, who can challenge her in the deepest recesses of her heart. He is throwing out all of
the concessions she's made to herself, he's destroying the compromises. She keeps showing
him what she lacks, and he dismisses every one of her arguments - first with his words, and
now with this. With this.

If anyone is up to the task of her, it would only be him. She wants to be the woman he thinks
she is. She can be that woman if he doesn't give up. If she doesn't. Elliot's hand spans her
torso and she can feel his thumb digging into her ribcage. His mouth is harsh, unforgiving,
and Olivia wants to taste him, too. It's a dark, desperate hunger that grips her now as she
opens her mouth for him. Elliot has always been a pounding ache inside of her. She fell apart
out here, and everything is still spinning in a wet, grey kaleidoscope, yet he's holding her and
moving. She can feel the thick muscles of his thighs working as he pushes them both towards
shore a few inches at a time.

He bites softly at her lower lip and then groans, coming back into her again - only deeper this
time, with even more conviction. Olivia rips her mouth from his, desperate for air. Her eyes
burn and she closes them as she lets her head fall back just a little bit. He immediately takes
what she is offering. Elliot rakes his teeth gently along the line of her jaw before suckling at
her. His tongue is on her pulse point, hungrily nipping at the base of her ear. Olivia can feel
him scraping all over her and she doesn't stop him. She thinks about how fully he'd bury
himself inside of her and the fight fades even more. She doesn't want to hold herself up; it's
been too many years of being responsible for her own survival.

In his arms, she takes a break from the struggle she's been fighting for far too long. She told
Elliot, she warned him about who she is, how she is. He didn't look at her with fear or pity. He
didn't seem surprised. For some reason he isn't afraid of her. The relief is sharp,
unimaginable. He seems to forgive her for not being strong anymore. Against him, she is so
tired. The numbing exhaustion reverberates in the hollows of her bones. Her stomach cramps
even as her skin sparks beneath Elliot's touch. He rasps his beard across the delicate skin at
the base of her throat and Olivia just hangs on to the flexing muscles of his shoulders, her eyes
firmly shut as she absorbs his reassuring presence. The rain slips across her forehead as she
wraps her arms around his neck and just marvels at the completeness of this. Elliot is no
stranger or one-night-stand. He touches her as if he is learning her, readying her, laying

260
claim. Her nerve endings come alive as Elliot growls in pleasure against her earlobe, and the
low vibration of it rivals her recollection of the thunder which has since disappeared.
Look how great you turned out.

Olivia practically chokes on the words she has secretly clung to for years. He's always gives
her absolution for everything she isn't, for everything she can't be. Elliot is kissing her again,
dragging his mouth across her cheekbone, his lips suddenly feather-light against the corner of
her closed eyelid, and by the way he's moving he's getting them out of the water. She wants to
touch him too but there is an acute exhaustion in her that nearly glues her eyes shut. The
more he touches her the more she sinks into the relief, and she doesn't want to pull herself
out of the soothing, encompassing abyss. It's ironic, she thinks drowsily as Elliot's mouth
brushes past hers. Her arousal is so heavy, her comfort in him so complete that she can't even
find the strength to hold herself up and awake.

"Gotta get you dry, Liv," she hears him say quietly, his resolve giving his words the slightest
edge of finality.
The water is no longer around her waist. It's at his thighs and it's becoming shallower as he
fights the sand and sea to pull them out. She needs to stand on her own two feet. The water
isn't holding her anymore and she needs to stand. But then the last few hours win out.
Olivia's chest is no longer so tight that she is suffocating, instead she feels almost blissfully
empty. She doesn't have any facades left, not with him. There are no illusions when she is
soaking wet and lethargic and her eyes are nearly swollen shut from the way she's cried in
front him. She's not Benson out here. She's not a cop. She's not stoic and she's not the ice
queen. She's fucking scared as hell when someone puts a gun to her head and she sleeps with
the lights on far too often and yeah, she's needed this. She's needed this. She's not okay
alone.

Her chest contracts hard as she forces herself to drop her legs. Elliot keeps her firmly against
him even as he keeps them moving out of the water. Her back is to the shoreline, and Olivia
feels the blistering ache of her exhaustion deep within her. She can barely stand. Maybe this is
the resulting fatigue of the morning, or maybe this is the accumulated fatigue of too many
years. She doesn't open her eyes. Instead she drops her face to the wet cotton of his t-shirt
that sticks to his shoulders like a second skin and just breathes in the scent of him that clings
to his skin.

Elliot stills, and the ocean seems almost docile as it laps around their shins. Her legs are
tangled in his and she doesn't want to move. She'd rather just stand here and let his mouth
261
slide across her for hours. The house is too far, navigating the sand seems too daunting.
Besides, the rain seems to be slowing. It's a soft, sporadic fall now, and by the sound of it even
the waves seem to be taming. She will just stay here. The skies will have to dry sometime, and
then the sun and the heat will fix everything. If he could just hang onto her until then...
His mouth pushes against her temple.

"We'll get you dry and then you can sleep." His voice is steady, assured.
Elliot doesn't know what he's doing to her just by taking over. No one has ever been this
wholly and willingly responsible for her, and the cocooning sensation wraps around her. She
can't shake the memories of all the nights she's spent roaming her apartment, anxious for
daybreak. Olivia thinks about fighting off Brady Harrison in her bedroom, she remembers
crawling into a corner in the basement of Sealview. She thinks about the feel of her gun in her
palm, and she recalls being eight-years-old and sitting on the floor of the bathroom at
midnight with Serena, waiting for her mother to just sober again and praying she didn't choke
on her vomit before she could sit up. And now Elliot wants to get her dry. It's the simplest of
tasks, and he is readily taking charge of it.

Olivia lifts her heavy head, and she realises that she's been letting him lead her backwards.
The water barely covers her ankles now, and she's suddenly freezing even in the rising
humidity. She has to squint to look up at him because the rain and the salt and the tears have
taken their toll on her. She has nothing to say. Elliot gives her a half-smile. He seems
confident, no longer floundering. And then he draws her back into him, and his mouth is
forceful on her temple.

"We're gonna be fine," he says with conviction.

"I just wanna feel strong again," she says, her voice breaking despite her best effort
otherwise. "Me too," he acknowledges.
Olivia's reddened eyes once again meet his from inches away. She really sees him then, and
she realises that he is no different than she is. She'd put him on the same pedestal he'd placed
her on, and it was a distinction that held no honour or truth for either of them. She gets it
now, why the stories of the Gods were always tragic. When placed too high, there is always a
subsequent blood-curdling fall. He doesn't want glory, and he doesn't need to be a hero.
He just wants some peace again. She does too.

The wind wins. The rain fades. The breeze is warming a little bit despite the fact that the skies
are still a deep, heavy grey. She thinks this is the end of the storm. Soon the light will break
through. She feels debilitated by just how tired she is. How disoriented she is in this moment.

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He doesn't recoil from her dependence. He doesn't look at her with pity or disappointment.
"Ready to go in?" It's just a question; there is no urgency in Elliot's tone.
She turns to her right, resting her chin on her shoulder as she stares at the slowly calming
waters behind her. She doesn't know how long it's been since she had decided to walk into
the tumult of it, but she feels like it's been years. Her bag and flip flops lay scattered and
soaked on the saturated sand and she can't even muster the effort to get them. It's too easy to
stay right here, leaning into Elliot, feeling the heat of his skin through the transparent
remnants of his t-shirt. Olivia's eyelids are heavy and she can feel the need to sleep pervading
every crevice of her body. She thinks about being warm and dry, and she imagines the expanse
of clean sheets and her partner's solid frame next to her. She daydreams about the heated
cavern between his shoulder and his neck; she pretends she can feel the rough surface of his
unshaven jaw beneath her palm as she sleeps next to him. Her breathing evens out, and the
world around her loses focus. Elliot's laughter is soft, gentle.

"Hey, you can't sleep standing up."

Yeah, she can. Yeah, with her head tipped onto him like this now, she can. It's going to be a
deep, undisturbed sleep, too. It will be the kind she can remember experiencing sometimes as
a kid, the kind that only lends itself to waking for a short while before crawling back into the
blissful, healing darkness again and again. It's the sleep she used to allow herself when her
mother was finally home and safely tucked into bed for the foreseeable future. It's the sleep
she'd indulge in on the nights her mother stayed home, reading aloud, her voice filling their
apartment long after Olivia's eyes would lull shut. It's the sleep of respite, of peace, of safety.
Of security. When Elliot tugs her forwards, she hangs onto his hand. When he lets go only
long enough to sling the strap of her wet duffel over his shoulder, she waits. And when they
finally reach the patio door and he opens it, Olivia doesn't let go of him as he brings her
inside.

He closes the door on the wind and the rain. Within moments she can no longer remember
the sound of the once hungry, all- encompassing waves.
***

Olivia sits on the seat of the closed toilet in his bathroom, still wearing her wet clothes but
now wrapped in a dry towel. Her head is leaning against the wall immediately to her left and
her eyes are closed. He can't look at her for too long because the exhaustion that is so
painfully obvious in her features cuts deep into his chest. He's been a fool to think that a few
days out here would be able to eradicate the damage years and years of self-protection has
done to her. At least her breaths are even now, even if he can still see the goose bumps that

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dot her skin. He sticks his hand into the spray of the shower. It's just now starting to run hot
enough.

"Liv?" Elliot keeps his voice low, not wanting to jar her.
Olivia doesn't stir. As the moments pass he feels more and more possessive of her, of his
responsibilities here. He shuts the shower door and drops to his haunches in front of her.
"Hey," Elliot tries again, brushing back some of the wet, wavy strands of her hair from her
face.
She squints at him, barely managing to open her eyes and lift her head. There is no expression
at all on her face. She doesn't smile or speak or cry. Olivia just looks at him, and the effect is
gut-wrenching. He doesn't know what to say to her, if there are even words. He's still scared
that she will run, that every moment is leading to another detonation of whatever it is that he is
trying to build. He doesn't know if what happened out there in the water is going to give her
reason to stay or leave, so he's just taking this thing one moment at a time. Olivia tips her
head to the right now, towards his fingers that are still sliding the clinging strands away from
her cheeks. His palm flattens against her skin and she squeezes her eyes shut.

"M'sorry," she mumbles.

She hasn't stopped apologising since they walked into the house. It's killing him. He'll have
time to deal with her self-recrimination later, though. Right now he needs her to get warm; he
needs to get them both out of their wet clothes. Neither one of them slept the previous night
either, sleep is his next priority. Elliot had settled her where she now sits and then dumped
the contents of her duffel into the dryer because everything had been soaked through. On the
sink counter next to her sits a pile of fresh towels, and the water is finally creating billows of
steam in the confines of the small bathroom.

He's got to get her under the warm spray of it, but Olivia doesn't seem inclined to move. It's
almost as if she can't. Jesus. He doesn't know why he is surprised by the sheer incapacitation
she seems to be experiencing. He's seen what catharsis can take out of a person; he knows
how completely a body physically shuts down after it is mentally ripped apart. The miracle of it
is that he doesn't feel panicked in this moment. He can handle this. He's got this. He knows
what to do and how to be. He can't remember the last time that he felt so sure of himself.
He stands again and Olivia's eyes track him, although she doesn't move otherwise. Elliot
reaches for the hem of his still wet shirt and tugs it up and over his head. After he tosses it into
the sink, he looks at her again.

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Olivia is still watching him, and she doesn't flinch. She doesn't even blink. His jeans are
making him miserable, and the cuffs of them are scratchy around his bare feet because they
are covered in wet sand. It doesn't matter. He won't push his luck by taking them off. He
doesn't want to give her any reason to withdraw.

"C'mon," he says softly, reaching for her hand.

Her brows furrow just a little bit, but she doesn't say a word. She lets her palm slip into his
and she stands gingerly at his urging, letting the towel around her shoulders fall to the floor.
Instead of pulling away, Olivia takes a step forward and towards him. He swears he can hear
her exhale.

Elliot slides the shower door open and takes a step into the spray, jeans be damned. She's still
wearing her dress, and it's so wet that the navy of it looks like a black, silky sheath that clings
to her skin. The steam clouds his vision and he can hear only the delicate fall of the heated
water. Olivia steps in and he sends the door closed behind her, the sound of it scraping along
its tracks interrupting the now soothing rain that seems to fall in this tiny world. He touches
her then, using her hand to tug her against him. Olivia's wet hair is against his lips and his
hands settle on the maddeningly erotic dip of her waist. Elliot turns them until she is fully
under the fall of hot water and he can feel her shudder with the relief of it. Through the mist
he sees her close her eyes, he watches her arch into the heat as she lets the water slide down
over her scalp, track over her cheeks and onto her shoulders. He is only getting the residual
spray that bounces off of her, but it's enough, it's more than enough.

Olivia is in his hands and she's safe and warm and he's more aware of her than he's ever been.
In this small, protected space Elliot is cognisant of every nuance of her. Her breasts are full
and heavy against his chest, and her bare feet bump into his. Sand accumulates on the floor of
the stall and he wants to slide his hands lower, over her ass, just to cup her, just to bring her
closer to his hips. His need is overwhelming. He knows she's tired, but he wants to kiss her
again, he wants to settle her back against the slick tile walls around them and get his mouth
onto her. He wants to take Olivia's lips with his, he wants to bunch the wet hem of her dress in
his palms and tug it upwards. His imagination is vivid, his need visceral. Before Elliot can help
it, he is thinking about the sheer mercy of clasping the edges of her underwear in his fingers,
of dragging the scrap of material down over her long, wet legs and letting it remain discarded
on the shower floor.

His arousal throbs. Not the time, he tries to tell himself. Fuck. Maybe she knows the
magnitude of his restraint, because she rewards him by turning her face into him. Olivia's
265
arms slip up over his shoulders and around his neck, and it steals his ability to breathe. He
can't touch her enough. His palms learn the column of her spine and the perfect width of her
hips. He can't help himself, he drags up the edges of her dress and his hands make contact
with the bare, wet skin on the outside of her thighs. The shower is the antithesis of the rain.
Water is not all the same. In here it is gentle, easy. It's warm and controllable and he
encourages it to find her skin, to reach his.
He's been given love, he's loved others. It's been nothing like this. She has to know.
Water cascades over her. It covers her eyes, her nose, it drips off of her chin. Elliot's mouth
drops to the top of her head and her hair tangles in his lips.

"Don't run, Liv. When I say it, don't run."

For the briefest of seconds, she stiffens in his arms. Then he feels her force a breath, and the
second her chest caves harshly, he feels her nod slightly against him. Small victories. Elliot
turns Olivia to the left now that the spray has had a chance to penetrate her skin. It's so hot in
the shower that it feels like a sauna all around them. He presses her body against the wall, and
he pushes a thigh between hers. She seems smaller in here, and every curve of her finds a
place in the hollows of him. Her head falls back against the wall and she reluctantly opens her
eyes. Her fingers scrape against his neck and her lips part. He feels the gripping,
overwhelming urge to wrap Olivia's legs around his waist and drive into her. It's only the
knowledge that he wouldn't be in control that stops him. He'd push into her - hard and
unforgiving - and even though he thinks she'd let him, it wouldn't be reassuring to her in any
way. He wants to fuck her, to just fuck her once and make her his. But he won't. He won't.
Jesus Christ, he won't be like anyone else she has ever known.

His throat is constricted; his windpipe feels like it has shut completely. Olivia's eyes are a
delicate combination of wariness and willingness and he steels himself against the multitude
of changes he might see in them in the next few seconds. He is so hard he feels the demanding
throb of his erection fighting with the constricting, damning wet denim of his jeans.

"El-" she starts, as if she is protesting.

"If you think I'd let this happen now-" he interrupts, gritting his teeth and standing perfectly
still, even as her thighs frame his. "We're gonna get warm and sleep, and that's it."
Olivia looks like she is contemplating something for a moment, but then her face smoothes
out again. Her hand slides over his temple, his cheek, his jaw. And she doesn't say anything.
Instead she tips forward, and unlike every time before it, when her lips touch his this time they
are soft, seeking. Searching. Olivia brushes her mouth against his of her own volition,
because she wants to. She doesn't run, she doesn't withdraw.

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His life before this closes.
His life after this begins.
***

She has no inclination at all to return to the world outside of this. It's a swirl of contradictions.
She is floating in the heat and the taste of Elliot, in the soothe of the water, in the safety of the
steam. She can simply close her eyes and find his mouth; she is dizzy with the exhaustion and
the intensity of comfort she is experiencing. But in contrast the surfaces around her are
incredibly solid. Her head is once again pressed against the slippery tile; her feet are firmly
planted on the grainy shower floor.

Then there is the most tangible, concrete reality of all - Elliot. He is giving her no space at all
and she is fine with that. His tongue plunges into her mouth and she groans, her fingers biting
into the unyielding muscles of his slick shoulders. She can't process all of the different
textures of him. His lips are soft; his kisses are hard and penetrating. His face is rough with
stubble, but his arms - the skin that is blackened by the ink of his tattoos - it is made of smooth
ridges and valleys that slope along the powerful, defined lines of him. Elliot presses his hips
into her and she can't breathe. Her dress has ridden up and the only thing between his
twitching arousal and Olivia's body is the fabric of his jeans, the flimsy wet satin of her
underwear. She had started an instinctive protest against this earlier, one that had been given
life by all of the years that had come before. He had heeded it quickly and she wonders if he
knows that she wants him on her, that she's just far too weak and tired right now. Elliot
driving inside of her is going to shatter the rest of her, and she needs some level of strength to
withstand the way he's going to change everything once again.

Elliot tilts his head when he kisses her, as if he is fiercely seeking something. He commits to
it, succumbs to the power and movement. For all of his control otherwise, he kisses like a
hero in a movie, and it makes her want to cry because after all of the shit they've been through
he's still a romantic. Olivia cups his face in her hands, holding him in place as he pushes
small, masculine sounds of pleasure across her mouth. She can feel his hands fist the hem of
her dress and she squeezes her eyes tightly shut, the ache between her legs threatening to
choke her. She doesn't want to open her eyes. She wants to just hold him in the darkness
she's created; she just wants to feel him all over her. Her thighs are shaking and she feels
herself sinking onto the weight of his leg. His teeth scrape across her bottom lip and she can
feel the tightly held control he is exerting. Elliot's tangible, chivalrous restraint breaks some
barrier in her. She thinks about the first time she met him, how she had walked into the squad

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room and known instinctively that he was to be her partner. She had been carrying transfer
files and a duffel bag and he had been leaning back in his chair, hands steepled as they rested
on his stomach. His eyes had slowly lifted, hers had locked on him. He had grinned as if they
shared a secret and something inside of her had tumbled immediately.
It's been more than a decade since that moment, and here she is, still tumbling. Only now he
is unfailingly against her, ready to catch her. She needs to see him, to be able to look at him.
The fear still swirls beneath her skin, but she's too tired to give it much encouragement. It's
easier to trust him, to finally let herself want something. He's such a good man, she thinks.
Deep inside of him, where most people hold a secretive darkness, that's where Elliot secretly
holds hope.

Olivia pulls his face back a few inches from hers, and she feels her stomach twist as Elliot
watches her mouth with a heavy-lidded gaze. He looks as tired as she feels. She trails the back
of her fingers along the darkened skin of his jaw and she senses his muscle jump there. His
lack of a shave and the sheen of water that now slithers across the scars of his skin and the
planes of his muscles combine to make him look dangerous. Only he's not dangerous. Not
here, not in the confines of this space. He's using his body not as a weapon, but as
reassurance. It would have been impossible not to fall in love.She can't screw this up. It's one
thing to let herself get hurt by her insecurities, but it's another thing entirely to hurt him with
it. Her voice is nothing more than a whisper above the gentle tapping of the shower.

"I don't wanna hurt you-"

"You won't," he interrupts on a rough rasp, shaking his bowed head as he dismisses her
warning. Her hands frame his face again. Her throat is on fire. "Yeah, I will. I'm gonna mess
up and-"
"Me too. We'll fix it." His eyes are reddening again, and he won't look at her. He's staring at
her mouth. After everything he's managed to do, Elliot seems oddly vulnerable in this
moment.
Olivia presses her lips together, trying to process this level of faith yet failing. Why she
deserves this, she doesn't know. The fight is gone for the time being. He's too big, too much,
for her to fight.
"I'm gonna do things that piss you off-"
His face finally cracks into a soft, amused smile. "That won't be new."

Elliot's eyes lock on hers. For all the years that he's looked at her and just known, he knows
now. She doesn't know what she is agreeing to when she doesn't pull away, if it's just to date
him, to love him, to be with him forever. But for a few seconds, the past and the future don't

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matter. She has him. Their history seems interminably long. Memories skid by, a blur that
represents a lifetime. Elliot's been her teacher, her friend, her protector. He's been the one
to heal her, to hurt her without even being aware of the pain he was causing. He's set a
thousand examples for her; he's understood her when no one else could. She doesn't know
how or why their fates collided, but she knows now that it isn't a random occurrence.

Elliot leans forward, his lips pressing low on her forehead. The movement makes his body
sink against hers from the ridge of his chest to the thick column of his thigh that separates
hers. His hands feel rough and huge as they grip the wet skin at her bare hip, and she realises
her dress is bunched around her abdomen. Desire surges through her. A choked sound
escapes from her throat. Olivia needs more. He has to touch her more. Despite the pervasive,
intense need for sleep that permeates her bones, she still craves him. She rocks against his
erection, and it seems impossible that he wants her as badly as she wants him.

His mouth is a breath away from hers. His hand slides up her torso, beneath the edges of the
dress, and he's raising it just a little bit. She can't withstand the slow, tortuous pace of his
touch. Olivia reaches down between them and grabs the hem of the offending fabric, and she
lifts the heavy, saturated weight of it over her head, closing her eyes. When it's off she lets it
fall to the floor, and it lands as a weight at her feet. Her actions have the opposite effect of
what she expected.

Elliot takes a quick step back, raking his darkened gaze over her exposed skin. Her bra and
panties aren't fancy - they're basic satin, a neutral colour that wasn't meant to entice - and
Olivia suddenly feels self-conscious. Without his leg between hers as an anchor, she feels a
weighted pull that reminds her of just how tired she is. She's grateful for the tile at her back.
Elliot's bare chest is rising and falling, and then he jerks backwards, twisting his body into the
spray and letting it hit directly onto his face as his eyes shut. He looks like he's in agony.

"El-"
He ignores her, reaching his hand out and finding the soap on the metal rack that hangs from
the shower-head. Olivia flattens her body against the wall, watching him and trying to catch
her breath. The suds lather on his shoulders and slip down his back as he rubs the basic bar
over his body in rough, jagged movements. The soap trails across the scars where Elliot had
been sliced on the night Ryan had died. Even through the steam she can see the small puckers
on his shoulder and arm, the tinier stab wound that resulted when a child had attacked him
with a pen. The scent of the soap is simple, basic like him. It fills the small space, even as the
suds gather at the waistband of his soaking jeans.
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She can't take the space between them. Maybe that makes her weak or pathetic. Maybe it
makes her dependent. But she's infinitely more tired without Elliot against her. Olivia rubs
her fingers through the wet tangles of her hair and she can feel the sand granules that are
trapped in the strands. She wants the soap, too. She wants his hands scraping over her
roughly. She uses whatever strength she's got left to push herself off of the wall. When she's
behind him she leans forward, until her abdomen hits the naked skin and denim that meets at
the small of his back.

"Olivia-" he growls.
Somewhere in her head she's under the impression that he's
started this, and she's not responsible. She remembers
standing behind him and touching him at the lighthouse, and
now there is this. This. She's wet and nearly naked and his
back is stunning. It's perfectly symmetrical, the broad lines of
it tapering down into the waistband of his jeans. Need
blossoms in her and it's like nothing she's ever known. She
presses into his body, her nipples separated from him by the
thinnest layer of satin. And then her palms are open and flat
against his rippled stomach. She can feel the dusting of hair
that trails down into the front of his jeans. Elliot's muscles
contract harshly at the contact. Panic begins to claw at her,
growing and shifting beneath her skin. She needs him, and the
ache at the core of her is so intense that she squeezes her eyes
shut before falling into him.

"Elliot, please."
He is all movement before she can even finish saying the word. He whips around in the small
space and she is up against the wall again. He's on her and this time both of his thick thighs
are nestled between her legs. His fingers bite into the curve of her ass as Elliot thrusts forward
on a tattered groan. She's the one who is out of control. Olivia's head hits the tile hard and
her toes are barely touching the floor as he surges towards her. Elliot's mouth is open and hot
against her ear, her neck. The steam in the shower is thick, billowing. She can feel the wet,
rough denim of his legs against her skin, and the ridge of his arousal is so hard that it almost
hurts as he grinds against her.

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"Tell me what you need," he breathes raggedly against her, starting a rhythm of movement
that nearly makes her scream. She can't even kiss him back because she's so far from being
able to articulate anything. Instead Olivia clasps her fingers over his shoulders and prays he
doesn't stop the onslaught. She's shuddering beneath his mouth; she's being devoured by his
hands as they grip her. She can feel the urgency building in Elliot, although it can't rival the
lashing of her own arousal.
"Tell me," he grates. "Fuck."

Everything is disintegrating inside of her. She's being torn apart by the sheer, visceral
pleasure that is sending her pulse careening out of control. Her back slips against the tile as
he thrusts hard again, and she can't take it. She can't. She's lost somewhere in the
desperation and perfection of it. Olivia tries to reach between them to undo the button on his
jeans and Elliot stops, yanking her hand away. Instead he opens her more, shoves his body
towards hers until there is no space left for her to manoeuvre. He's pounding at her through
their clothes, and she can feel the darkness closing in at the edges of her vision. She grasps
frantically at his neck, his head, until her fingers brush against the edges of his wet hair.

The world glitters. It is colours and sparks and vivid, twisting swirls. Need is a living thing
now, and it's crawling into the crevices of her as Elliot suckles the skin at her shoulder while
he rocks into the tender flesh between her legs again and again. Her exhaustion deepens, her
need intensifies. He's not even in her yet. It's a nearly coherent thought that barely forms
before skittering away. Her head is limp and she lets it fall to the side against the wall. Elliot's
hands are even more insistent. One of his palms cups her breast, and she forgets that her bra
covers her. It feels like he's on her, really on her, and she moans loudly into the scalding, wet
heaven that is forming around her. She is wracked by the white-hot sensations that slide like
fire over her body. Every time he grinds his erection into her, her body convulses. She's
nearly nauseous with the way her need is suffocating her.

Every extremity on her body is pulsing so hard that she is almost numb. Elliot's mouth is on
her jaw, her throat, her chin. His hips circle and she cries out, clenching her thighs around
him.
"Elliot." His name is a strangled, stifled thing.
"Let go," he urges. His voice is constricted, commanding.
She feels like a wild thing, like something without boundaries. Her nerve endings are sharp,
painful. Olivia can't get a breath as Elliot's tongue slides over her lips, opening her mouth to
him. He steals her air as he fucks against her.

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She can feel him hard and bruising on her. Every circle of his hips has her jerking from the jolt
of electric pleasure. She forgets who she is, who she isn't. She's his right now, and she has no
regrets. He works his big body on her, in her. Maybe he's deep in her now, she can't tell the
difference anymore. Her nipples are brutally hard; he's stroking her mouth with his. And the
rhythm of him. The goddamned rhythm. It's sending her hurtling over the edge and she
doesn't want to stop it. She's writhing against him, against the wall, and she knows there is a
precipice ahead, there has to be. This can't keep building, because it will tear her apart in the
aftermath. She feels the convulsions start as small jolts between her legs. Her vision is white
now, it's all white. Her head is full of pressure; her ears are filled with a dull roar. In her, she
thinks. Deep, deep inside of her. She wants to tell him, she needs to tell him. Her legs are
tingling; she doesn't know where her hands are. Maybe this is dying, and she doesn't know if
she's been thrust into heaven or hell. All around them is a sticky sweet steam that clings to
her. Her hair is stuck to her face, strands are catching at the edges of her lips, and it's only
then that she realises she's wrenching her head away from him. She has to breathe, to just
breathe. She needs air. She needs...Elliot.

Elliot!

It's a free fall that causes her to splinter into a million shimmering pieces. She hears sounds -
crumbling, desperate sounds and she doesn't know who is making them. Her body contracts
almost violently before the swelling bursts of gratification start firing in the deepest recesses
of her. She can taste skin, she can feel it between her teeth and it's hard and unforgiving. His
shoulder, she thinks as she arches into the release. She feels the slam of his hips and the
rippling contractions grip her until she isn't cognisant of time or space or identity. Hot, wet
air slips into her lungs as she gasps, undulating her hips on him. It's an animalistic sort of
pleasure that dances on the edge of pain. It's wracking her body and it's like nothing ever,
ever before.

It's a chasm, a fault line that cracks open inside of her between the past and the present. She
stays on his side of the canyon, clutching onto Elliot's rock-solid frame until endless moments
later, when the tremors finally begin to subside. In the aftermath, she's only aware of being
held tightly. She hears her name being whispered hoarsely again and again as time passes. She
feels reassuring fingers rubbing through her hair; she realises her skin is slick with
something. She can smell his soap, and it's a heavy smell that permeates the damp, heated air
again. She doesn't know if she is sitting or standing and it would be impossible to open her
eyes. His name comes to her. Elliot.

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"I got you, Liv," she hears him say.
She's no longer her own. The fight in her recedes.
***

The house is unsettlingly quiet. Elliot stands at the kitchen counter, not quite ready to fall
asleep despite the fact that he's been up all night. He sets down the shot glass, and it echoes
as it makes contact with the tile. It's just after eleven a.m. and he's already two shots into the
whiskey, but he forgives himself. There's no way in hell he's gonna be able to get any sleep at
all without the dulling effects of the alcohol. The two shots should do it. He hopes. Outside,
the rain has stopped. The skies are still gray, but they are a lighter shade now. The clouds are
no longer a solid, thick layer but rather something that is moving, shifting and changing
shape. By afternoon the sun will likely break through, and by evening the sand will begin to
dry out.

Olivia is sleeping in his bed. She’s wearing one of his old NYPD sweatshirts and a pair of his
cotton shorts rolled over at the waist, and she was curled up under the covers in the fetal
position the last time he checked. She had been asleep before he could even get all of the
blinds in the house shut and the front door locked. He scrapes his hand down his face now and
exhales, trying not to shake.

The deep breaths are not enough to expel the tension in him. His fingers reach for the edges
of the countertop, and he grips the surface until his knuckles turn white. The morning is a
blur in his head, and now that Olivia is sleeping and safe he's finally dealing with everything
that happened out there. He lets his head fall back on his neck and he stares at the kitchen
ceiling. She's sleeping, he tells himself. Never mind the rest of it; she's now tucked into his
bed. At least that is reassuring, settling. The remnants of whiskey are a sweet burn on his lips.
His eyes are gritty with the need to rest and he wants nothing more than to climb into his bed
with her, but he needs to calm down first. His body is too aware of Olivia, and even though
he'd taken a cold shower as soon as her breathing evened out in sleep, he still aches. He
thinks about how she had shattered against him, how she had lost control and he now has a
too-clear idea in his head of what it will be like to make love to her. His vision is filled with her
slick, dark hair and the golden, smooth planes of her stomach, her shoulder, her bare legs.
For all of Olivia's reservations, she's uninhibited in the throes of it and he wants her like that -
wild and startlingly responsive, her teeth and fingernails sinking into his skin as he moves
over her, within her.

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Elliot takes another breath and holds it before the release, making sure his body processes the
oxygen. It still does nothing for him. He wants to slide into that bed next to her. Maybe the
sound of her breathing will ease the pounding of his pulse. He pushes off the counter and
makes his way through the shuttered house towards his bedroom. He stops in the doorway
because the sight of Olivia in his bed will never get old. Her dark hair is wavy and still half-wet
as it splays over the pillow. Her hands - tucked under her chin - peek out from the sleeves of
his sweatshirt; the covers are piled high around her chest.

His chest aches, but it's not with pain. His love for her isn't debilitating in this moment.
Instead he feels stronger, more rooted. As capable as she is, he wants to protect her. If he
could erase the things in her head by taking them on himself, he would. She's strong as hell, he
reminds himself. She'll be okay. It’s that thought which makes him close his eyes quickly.
Even though she can't see him right now, he won't let himself cry. Yeah, she'll be okay.
So long as he doesn't break her. It's still a possibility. Olivia doesn't know everything that he
needs to say to her. He tries to tell himself he's doing the right thing, but the longer he goes
without being honest with her, the less sure he is becoming. If he's wrong about this...
God, if he's wrong then she will never, ever forgive him.

When Elliot finally walks into the room, he sits gently on the edge of the bed opposite to
where she lays. Instinctively Olivia chose the side of the bed that usually remains empty,
leaving room for him. He keeps on the faded green Marines t-shirt and shorts that he wears,
and his feet remain planted on the ground. His back is to her, and the sounds that had filled
the morning come back to him. He can hear himself yelling for her; he recalls the gut-
wrenching way she had cried. He hears himself whispering her name and he hears the last
words she had uttered before she had fallen asleep.

You gonna sleep next to me?

His eyes close as he remembers the sleepy way Olivia had asked. Yeah, he'd told her. Yeah.
Only now he tries to shake the restlessness. Elliot quietly opens the drawer of his bedside
table and looks at the few contents that fill it. His watch, his personal gun. His wallets - one
which contains money and credit cards and another that holds his NYPD badge and ID. His
work cell phone sits there, it's a number that doesn't ring anymore. And then there is the last
of it. The white envelope.

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Elliot reaches for it, silently peeling out the letter it contains. He unfolds the paper - as he's
done dozens of times since it arrived - and he stares at the words. He's memorised them
already, but he reads it again in any case. His teeth scrape over his lower lip again and again.
His blood thrums heavily through his veins. This could too easily cost him Olivia.
He prays then, because God knows he's going to need all the help he can get just to get
through the rest of this without Olivia walking away, once and for all.

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276
 Chapter Twenty-One

T
he striated colours of dusk slip across the bed. The room is no longer illuminated by
the bright yellows of day nor is it yet filled with the blues and greys of evening. The
light hovers in the in-between, in a place where the shadows coexist with the pockets
of clarity. Olivia exhales, the left side of her face buried in his pillow. She blinks, feeling the
reassuring weight of the airy feather comforter that is settled across her hips. Her body swims
in his sweatshirt and her right hand rests on the pillow next to her, her palm curled yet open.
She grips the thick cotton sleeve in her fingers, dragging it down over her knuckles and
watching the motion of it.

She knows by his breathing patterns alone that he is awake behind her. Elliot is behind her.
The realisation makes her bones heavy; it makes her swollen eyes want to shut again so that
she can drift back into the comforting sleep. He is in the bed with her and it doesn't make her
heart race with panic, it doesn't make her want to set her bare feet on the floor in preparation
to run. Not for the moment anyway. Right now, the heat of him next to her makes her
lethargic, lazy. Content.

It's then that she smiles a little bit. The light is back, she suddenly realises. Beyond the nearly
closed slats of the blinds she can see the telltale hints of orange and red. The clouds no longer
lay heavy above all of them. The storm has moved on. She can hear the once-familiar call of
birds and she imagines the seagulls foraging in the seaweed that has been washed ashore,
delighted by how easy it will be for them to find food over the next few hours. Tomorrow
morning the sky will be brilliant again; the sun will be framed by the endless blue.
Blue.

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She rolls onto her back and turns her head towards him. The covers rustle in the silence, the
mattress gently creaks beneath the shift in weight. As she had expected, Elliot is awake, also
on his back. His eyes are ruthlessly focused on the ceiling, and it gives her a moment to take
all of him in. His jaw is darkened with stubble and his Marines t-shirt is faded, hugging the
formidable muscles of his chest. The receding sunlight catches the dark inking on his thick
arm and she stares at it, the shape of Jesus and the cross infinitely familiar to her. It's a symbol
of faith, and while she hasn't always believed in God, she's always had faith in Elliot. He
finally turns his head just enough to look at her out of the corner of his eyes. He gives her a
quick half-smile.

"You don't seem like you're in a hurry to go anywhere."

By the husky tone of his voice she knows that he hasn't slept half as much as she has. She's
been out for hours and hours, and she doesn't know how long he's been still and quiet,
probably replaying details in his mind that are just a blur to her. The guilt eats at her, and it
makes her uncomfortable because he's probably replayed all of the things she said and did
that hurt him. She wonders what he's thinking, and her instincts still tell her that he deserves
better than her.

But she lays still. She also knows that by some miracle he doesn't want her to leave. If he's
taught her anything, it's that. He's been fighting so damn hard.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Elliot nods. Just once.
"Okay."
When he looks at her this time, the smile doesn't form. Instead his haunted stare simply locks
on her. The moments pass, and she can't tear her gaze away. Her vision is filled with the
solemn, cadet blue of his irises and the heavy lashes that frame them. He hadn't cried out
there, not like her. But the effects of her breakdown are still evident in him. There is a slight
swell above his cheekbones; his eyes still seem red and salt-burned. Nothing on him moves.
He doesn't even blink. "I can't lose you."

When she hears the rough, scraping sound of his words, she feels the air punch right out of
her. It's humbling - overwhelming - that he could feel this much for her. She wants to be
silent, to just replay his words again and again in her head, but he needs a response. He needs
to know. He deserves some assurance from her that all of his fighting hasn't been for nothing.
"You won't."

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And then she finally sees his chest rise and fall. Jesus. Every moment with him makes her
speechless. Even more than a decade with him hasn't prepared her for this. That she could be
loved beyond anything she's ever seen or heard and that the love could come from him - it's
unfathomable. The magnitude of it has no chance of registering all at once. She needs to tell
him, too. She needs to form the words. He needs to know that she loves him.

She tells herself that the words will come easier the more she says them. Saying them won't
break her; instead it might relieve some of the pressure in her lungs. She can say them. She
has to. He needs to know that she knows all of his good and bad, and that he is her everything.
But Elliot is shifting in the bed, and before she can say anything, he is propped up on one
elbow, just leaning over her. He's so solid everywhere, and it is continually amazing to her
that he can use his body both to intimidate and to incomparably reassure, depending on how
he is needed. Right now the sheer size of him seems like a comfort so deep that it borders on
pain. She's childishly afraid of never wanting to extricate herself out from under him. His
fingers are startlingly gentle as he captures strands of her messy, wavy hair and runs the
texture of them between his thumb and forefinger. She can feel his breath on her skin, and she
can smell the faintest hint of whiskey on him. She knows he's not as unruffled as he appears
by that scent alone.

As Elliot focuses on her hair, she focuses on his face. He's so achingly familiar to her, yet he's
brand new all at once. He's no longer someone who she can't look at too long for fear of
being caught. Instead her gaze now lingers as she gets to know the man who tells her that he is
hers. Hers. Olivia lifts her right hand and lets her fingertips trail over his face, learning him. If
the world lets her, she will look at this image every morning for the rest of her life. The hard,
unforgiving lines of his jaw, the flat planes of his lips, the scar on his chin. His own touch halts
as her thumb traces the hard line of his cheekbone, as her ring finger slips down along his
hairline. She outlines his eyebrow and he closes his eyes, and she can almost feel him shaking.

"Elliot."
It's practice. She says his name not as she would on the job; not in protest or apology or
warning. She says his name as a woman who can feel her heart beating again, as a woman who
is coming alive beneath his gaze, his touch, his infinite belief. Her right hand slides over
Elliot's rough jaw to pull him down to her before she can even think about the changes that
are multiplying between them. She lifts her upper back off the bed and her eyes close of their
own volition as she turns her head to the right.

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And then her lips push against him, dragging along Elliot's mouth until he opens just slightly.
It's just enough so that she can lightly kiss him, so that she can taste what is hers. Her tongue
touches his lower lip and he groans. Olivia is suddenly filled with control, with heady,
feminine power. She pulls up higher off the bed and her palm scratches against the dark
growth on his cheek. She wants more of him. More. Her body is humming already; her hot
skin aches to be touched by him. Her heart races as she slides her tongue deeper into his
mouth quickly before retreating and nipping at his lower lip. She finds herself making a small
moaning sound deep in her throat.

How long she's thought about this. How long she's held the numbing idea of this at bay. That
she could be laying next to him - in this brand of quiet - and simply be permitted to taste his
mouth at will? The reality is reverberating at her core. No running. Staying still. With him.
Olivia wants him. Elliot had held her earlier; he'd remained unbreakable even as she had
come apart in his sturdy, steadying arms. His body, his touch, his voice - it had sent her
hurtling over the edge in release, and for this one moment she has no concept of
embarrassment or consequence. She's not worried about what this will mean. She doesn't
regret. Instead she needs to know who she will be after he fully touches her. Elliot's hands will
be on her. Everywhere. It will be too much. Not enough. It will be too slow, too fast, too
agonising, too much relief.

It would be impossible to lay here with him and doubt anything at all. His mouth dominates,
even though she had initiated. Elliot comes back at her, capturing her lower lip between his,
using his teeth and then soothing. Soothing. Fitting. Olivia reluctantly retreats, letting her
body fall back to the bed, her head coming to rest back on her pillow. She has to open her
eyes, but before she can she tastes the faint lingering notes of whiskey that are now on her, in
her mouth. Her hips want to rise off of the mattress, and she's suddenly unbearably restless
again. Her want is so strong that she's responding to the phantom movements of Elliot's
hands, heated caresses she can already feel in places he has not as yet touched her. She is
shaken by the sheer visceral need she has for him.

When Olivia finally looks at him again, Elliot's irises have darkened considerably. Her hand
still cups his cheek and his mouth is wet from hers. The sun seems to be setting and the
shadows grow. The dark places don't scare her anymore; instead they are now a comfort. The
shadows will soon give way to a long night, to endless hours uninterrupted with this man.
They've erased the day; they're now preparing the world for tomorrow. Elliot says nothing.
After all of the pushing, the fighting, he is now silent as he looks at her. Quiet giants, she
thinks. It's always humbling to watch the bullishly strong tread so lightly. After years of

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learning his expressions, of deciphering every shutter of his eyes, she now knows it was all
meant only to prepare her for these moments. Everything is so still around them that she can
once again hear the steady break of the tide outside. She can also hear every word that he isn't
saying out loud.
When the hazel flecks appear in his deepening irises she catches her breath. I love you.
"I love you, too," she whispers out loud, running her hand across his temple, the corner of
his pulsing forehead. The words cause her to tense before she says them, but in the
afterwards. God. They release space inside of her, leaving her able to breathe. Elliot's eyes
narrow. Intensify. Don't run.

This is what she has to give back to him. She had needed him to fight viciously for her to stay.
He needs to know that in the end, her choice to stay is of her own volition. He needs to know
that she is sure about him. She's scared as hell, yes. But she's sure she'd rather be scared as
hell and trying right here with him than miserable somewhere all alone. And that's the most
concrete truth of all. Without him she will be just a shell of who she wants to be. She's always
survived, but she wants to do more than that now. She wants a life that is illuminated by him.
Olivia's hand drops from his face and her other hand reaches for his. She can feel Elliot's
broad wrist in her grip, and his skin is so, so warm. He's pliable, and as her fingers brush
under his to open his palm, he lets her lead. She can feel the calluses on the pads of his hand
and it makes her shiver involuntarily in anticipation. He is still leaning over her as she draws
his hand closer to her body, towards her left hip beneath the covers. Elliot is watching her -
he's carefully measuring her every move.

She knows what she is doing. Soon he will know this, too. When his palm lands just beneath
the hem of the sweatshirt she is wearing, she locks her gaze on his. And then she starts to pull
Elliot's touch higher, beneath the fabric. She remembers this, how this felt when they had
been under the hot spray of the shower, and the effect is no less startling when his skin meets
hers now. Olivia sucks in a breath and her abdomen contracts so sharply that she almost jerks
away from him. In the shower, she had been desperate. She is no less aroused now, but this is
no longer about panic and release. This is now about learning, discovering, about showing
him and being shown. After the harsh, brutal noise of the lives they have lived, this is the
mystical silence of regeneration.

The rough brush of the scraped pads of Elliot's fingers along her torso makes everything
inside of her tense in anticipation again. She draws his hand upwards and she fights to
breathe. He's staring at her in the dimming light, unflinching to the point of being nearly

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immovable, but he lets her guide his hand until he is spanning the left side of her rib cage.
Maybe Elliot will always shake her this much. He is inches from her bare breast. She can
barely keep her eyes open from the stark pleasure of his touch and the unbearable wait until
his hand cups her.
"Liv," Elliot rumbles almost indiscernibly. "We don't have to do this now. We can wait until
you're sure."
If the wait costs him half as much as it is costing her, then he's even more remarkable than she
had ever imagined. His patience, his willingness to wait and make sure she is ready is
maddening in its selflessness.
She smiles just a little.
"I'm sure.”

And she is. He is her partner, she thinks. Then again the title explains nothing and everything
all at once. Olivia can't think past what will happen in the next few seconds. His fingers shift
just under her breast and she can only pray that relief is inches away if that. The soft cotton on
the inside of his sweatshirt rasps against her sensitised nipple and Olivia wonders if he can
feel her shaking.
"Unless you don't want to?" she teases gently, knowing full well that he is as desperate as she
is. She wants him inside of her so badly that it is bordering on pain. His thumb almost brushes
the rise of her, and she lets go of his wrist because she needs to breathe. She's probably
gripping him too hard.

"Fucking hell," he grates, ignoring her lighthearted words. He squeezes his eyes shut and the
muscle in his jaw jumps. His fingers pause just millimetres from her breast.
"You gotta trust me first, Liv. I can't do this ‘less I know you trust me. If we gotta work on
that then - "
"It was never you I didn't trust," she murmurs.

The urge to cry rears again when she sees the way Elliot's head immediately bows even while
his eyes remain shut. The rigid way he had been holding his body dissipates and he closes in
on her, dropping his forehead until it touches hers. His breath is hot against her ear, her
temple. She can't imagine the damage she's done. She doesn't even know how far back it
goes. Her hands frame his face then and everything wrong suddenly feels right. She has been
given him because of everything else she has been asked to withstand. He is her equaliser.
Olivia's lips brush his cheek, his temple. And then his mouth dances across the tip of her
nose. They are both shaking. His palm opens, slips upwards.

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Elliot's thumb is there then, rasping against the soft skin of her breast. He doesn't stop,
instead pushing further, until his hand closes in over her bare skin. Around her. There is
absolutely nothing between his skin and hers. Her nipple scrapes against his hot palm and she
nearly cries out with the excruciating sensation. Her breath catches in her throat and her body
goes rigid. She needs to be touched everywhere. It's an immediate panic, a slow slide of
molasses. It's fiery heat that licks her shivering skin. Elliot growls deep in his throat and
shifts, his hand closing around her more firmly, testing her weight.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” he mutters.
His finger circles the sensitised tip and Olivia squeezes her eyes shut, gritting her teeth.
Something cracks in her chest and she's fighting back the emotion that threatens to suffocate
her. No one has ever touched her the way he is. Reverently. Delicately. She wants to just hold
Elliot, her shuddering arousal be damned. She wants to grasp him, to slide her arms around
his neck and somehow reconcile the past and the present. This isn't sex. It's more than
making love. It surpasses teenage fantasies of romance; it restores unabashed, childish hope.

Maybe she has been his from the start. Maybe that's what it has been. She thinks about all of
the rumours about them, about all of the people who thought they were having an affair. How
wrong they all were, how naïve to think that anything between them could be casual or simply
physical. Touching each other has never been easy. It's always been something to be
negotiated, accounted for. Until now.

Elliot's thumb barely passes over her nipple again before the heat of him is suddenly gone.
Before she can exhale he's slid out from under the sweatshirt and has pulled away, once again
rolling onto his back. It's such a startling loss that she makes a sound of protest as she turns
her head on the pillow to look at him, instinctively terrified of what she might find. Elliot's
hand swipes down over his face and his eyes are closed. He just remains there, breathing hard.

"El?" She can't control the crack in her voice.

She sees the visible way he grinds his teeth before he opens his eyes and looks upwards again.
"Just gimme a minute."
Olivia starts to sit up, and her body feels sensitised to the point of agony from one simple
touch. She can't let the panic have her. She can't assume the worst. He can't possibly regret
this, he wouldn't change his mind. She sits up then and brushes her hair away from her face.
She can feel the uneven waves of it and it reminds her of chaos. It reminds her of the blur of
the ocean, the hot rain of the shower. She needs Elliot to touch her, to ground her again, but
he hasn't moved. Her throat closes and the fear is right there, willing to take her back. Even

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after the release he gave her, even after all the hours of sleep, she can feel the brink, lurking
just steps away. This is not rejection, she tells herself. It's not.

"Where you goin'?"

She turns her head to the right and looks back down at him over her shoulder. His words are
deep, gravelly. He thinks she's leaving, and she can see the way he braces himself. They have
never left each other - not really - not in any way that implied finality. Yet they both seem so
convinced that the end is just around the corner. The trepidation has got to stop sometime.
Olivia pushes the covers down, off of her bare legs. The shorts of his that she wears are
bunched around her hips. She can hear his breath, can feel the tension ratchet up in the room.
She closes her eyes, gathers whatever strength she's got left. There is no turning back. Not
now. Not anymore.

She slides out of the covers and then turns towards him, slipping her right leg over his hip
until she sits on him intimately, her knees braced on the bed on either side of him. Elliot's
arousal is nearly painfully hard against the core of her again and he groans in surprise,
clenching his fists even as she rocks once against him. Her fingers stroke through her hair,
and she's probably a mess. When she drops her chin to look at him, locks skim her shoulders
and then fall forward. She can feel the unruly curls of it, and it's another thing that is no
longer controllable.

Elliot's eyes are dangerously dark as he looks at her. His jaw is square, his body stone.
Two layers of cotton shorts separate them and Olivia almost falls forwards onto him with the
strength of her own desire. Her body isn't at all sated by the way she had come for him earlier,
instead she's more sensitised than ever. Seconds is all it would take her to get him inside of
her. She's ready for him already, more than ready. She is nearly all the way there again just by
this, just by feeling the pulsing length of his erection at the juncture between her legs. His
eyes slam shut.

"Liv. What are you-" he stops, grinding his teeth one more time. "Christ. Sit still."
But she can't. This is hers. He is. She has to undo some of what she's done, some of the fear
she's caused in him. He can't think that she's been coerced into this, that she will change her
mind. As terrified as she is, she knows this much. If she's going to get herself back, then she
has to take on some of the responsibility for getting herself there.

"Open your eyes." Her voice falters in the command, even though her body does not. She
moves a little bit, unable to stop the shifting of her hips. Her hand lands on his stomach and
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she feels the throbbing inside of her escalate. The size of him everywhere beneath her is
making her drowsy with want. With desperate, excruciating craving. Elliot's heavy eyelids lift
and he looks straight at her.
"You don't have to do this," he says quietly.
Then he swears under his breath.
"Gotta stop movin', Liv. Please."
Her smile lasts no longer than a breath. He doesn't understand. He doesn't know how much
she wants him. Olivia knows that he is her privilege, not her right. She can't stop the way her
body squirms on him, the way she instinctively wants to grind onto him, because that alone
will easily send her over the edge in the next few seconds. It's not even sexual; it's the basic
urge to get him closer, inside of her. That's as close as he can be, and that's what she wants.
Her fingers slip along the bottom him of his t-shirt, dancing against the waistband of his
shorts. She can feel the rough hairs of his lower abdomen, and she remembers the way Elliot's
muscles contract as she touches him.

"You said you wanted me," she murmurs into the spreading shadows.
"'Course I do," he rumbles.

His desire is so thickly laced in the words that it makes her straighten on him a little bit. It
closes the last bit of space between her hips and his and he bucks upwards, as if she's hurt
him. She feels the edges of climax already closing in on her again. Without the cotton
between them, he would be within her now. She can imagine the thick length of him sliding
inside of her, pushing deeper and deeper until even air was given no room between their
bodies. God.

Breathing becomes impossible. That's how close she wants him. If she can't crawl into him,
then he will have to crawl into her. Her thighs clench and she rocks again, her palm slamming
down on his stomach. It sends her hair into her face again, and she almost gives in right there
and then. She's never been this turned on before; she's never had to ruthlessly hold her
climax back just from the brush of a man against her.

"Then dontcha want to see what you're getting?" she whispers, her weight braced against her
lodged palm. Her words remind her. Her words give her purpose again. Olivia struggles to
open her eyes again. To just stay still when what she wants is to ride him, just a little bit. Just
enough. For a moment she has a vision of the man beneath her as he had been in the squad
room. He's wearing a suit and he's untouchable. He's saying her name - Liv - and she's
trying to focus. The same man, she thinks. She's on him. He's beneath her. All that is left is

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for him to be inside. In her. Elliot. The reality of all of this is startling, incomprehensible.
Inevitable.

She is reaching for the hem of the too-large sweatshirt she wears before she thinks about it. In
one movement she pulls it up and off her body, letting it fall to the bed behind her. She smiles
just a little bit, because she's getting used to stripping down for him. The air hits her bare
skin, and it wisps across her brutally hard nipples. His shorts sit low on her hips and that is all
-all - that she is wearing.

"Fuck," she hears him grate.

And then his hands grip her hips and he drives up beneath her, nearly getting into her despite
the cotton. She rocks, once, twice. Her eyes are closed and the air is cold on her bare skin and
her breasts shift, unhindered by fabric. His right hand lands hard under the weight of them
and then his thumb and forefinger trap her left nipple, working it, learning her reactions to
him. She can feel every ridge of his cock against her, and she pushes down, rolling her hips,
letting her clit find the blessed steel of him.

He is swearing. It's a litany, a tirade, a monologue. Elliot sits up in one swift movement
beneath her and his left arm wraps like a vice around her waist. Through the haze she hears
her name. Olivia. Then his mouth is on her. He doesn't waste time; his lips immediately close
around her nipple and tug it into the deep, hot cavern of his unforgiving mouth. He draws it
in, sucking gently and she can't take it. Not anymore. Olivia clutches at his head, and he slips
his hand lower, so that it spans the curve of her ass. He pulls her down onto him, encouraging
the way she rides him.

He's not even in her, she thinks. He's not even, no, not this time. This time she wants his
clothes off, hers gone. This time she needs to feel him push hard up into her. Elliot tilts her
body back and his teeth scrape across her nipple. She closes her eyes and bites back a cry of
pleasure, letting it instead reverberate in her throat. This isn't sex, she thinks. Desperation.
Craving. Owning. His tongue laves her skin and she is trembling as she jerks against him.

He is all power and basic instincts beneath her. He's raw, gruff, his hair-roughened skin is
chafing her. Elliot's hand cups her right breast as his mouth works her left and Olivia curls
over him, her mouth landing on the top of his head. She can't think anymore, she can't
process a world outside of this bed, outside of him. His mouth trails upwards and her neck
falls back, his lips opening against the pulsing base of her throat as her fingers try to grip the

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impossibly short wisps of his hair to keep him against her. He feels hungry beneath her. He's
eating her alive.

Olivia locks her knees around his hips and pushes at him, until he falls back onto the bed,
bringing her with him. Her breasts smash against the soft cotton of his t-shirt and Elliot's
hands slide down the naked expanse of her back, pressing against her spine until he cups her
ass. When he's got a firm hold on her, he rolls, and she's on her back then, beneath him.

Yes.

There is something innately reassuring about being beneath him. His big body takes out the
last of the filtering light, and Elliot leans over her, his right hand tracing her breast, his thumb
pressing against the hard peak of her nipple. He is watching his movements, watching her
chest rise and fall as she drags in as much air as she can.

"So beautiful," he says into the quiet.

It's too much, and her stomach contracts instinctively in protest of his words. She wants to
tell him that she's not beautiful, that she sees the scars on her when she looks in the mirror.
She sees the fight she once had with a suspect in the small mark above her eye; she sees a train
station and a dead child in the faint, wispy white line on her neck. She's been hit countless
times; she knows the searing burn of a knife splitting her skin. In any other moment, she
would point these things out to him. But in this moment, she feels beautiful. When he says it,
it's not like the men who threw the words out casually - men who wanted something from her.
Elliot wants to give. That's all. He wants to give.

His fingers trace between her breasts, and his eyes follow their movement. His forefinger slips
lower, until he touches her navel. She's sure he can hear her needy reaction in the hiss of her
breath. His hand stops where the waistband of the shorts she wears begins. Elliot slips his
fingers under the elastic, cupping her abdomen, and the shorts push inches lower on her. She
is aware of every one of her curves, even the ones she battles. He is incomparably fit - hard and
sculpted everywhere, but he seems to relish the elemental differences between them as his
hand strokes over her left hip, until his fingers close around her, tugging her towards him.
Olivia's reaches up, holding his cheeks in her palms. His eyes are focused on her mouth as he
leans over her. His eyebrows are furrowed. Elliot is hard as hell and she can feel the way he
jerks when the thick length of his erection brushes against her thigh. He's holding back,
though. She can feel his control - the maddening pace of this - reverberating beneath his skin.

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"I want you inside of me, El," she says. She prays it will alleviate his hesitation.
His nod is slight, and he grits his teeth. And then his gaze skims up her face, until it locks on
hers. The churning emotion in his eyes is at once both terrifying and heartbreaking.
"There were days I thought..." his voice is a rasp. He shakes his head as if trying to dislodge
the rest of the words clear. "I thought this wasn't gonna ever happen. When I went back for
Eli. Liv, I -“
He loses shape in front of her as her eyes fill. It's the sheer, raw confession inherent in his
words that makes her want to grieve. She'd wanted him, too. There had been a hope in her
back then that she can't deny. There had been days, months when she had seen possibility for
them. He'd been single - nearly - and then she had learned that nearly could end up meaning
nothing at all.

"You had to try, El," she whispers. It's the truth that may have always been far clearer to her.
"You couldn't really move on unless you knew once and for all that-"
His mouth covers hers, halting her forgiving words. Just like that, the past is once again
silenced.
***

Her skin smells like his soap. He doesn't know why this is particularly sexy to him, but it's a
welcome thing. It's as if he's already taken her, marked her as his. Olivia's breasts are perfect.
The shadows of evening had played over the rise of them a few moments ago, and the small,
dark circles of her nipples now press into his chest. He covers her mouth with his and slides
his tongue deep into her; his hands are at her hips, tugging the waistband of her shorts
downwards. She lifts just a little bit as he captures her lower lip between his, and it's enough
to get those damned shorts down far enough that he can now push them the rest of the way
without lifting his mouth from hers. In seconds they are discarded by his feet and Elliot groans
as his hands hungrily slide back up the length of her thighs, finding no fabric to interrupt his
journey.

Against his body Olivia is completely naked while he remains fully dressed. He can't wait any
more. Elliot wrenches his mouth off of hers just long enough to push his weight upwards,
using his right hand to tear his shirt over his head in one, quick movement. He sends it off the
bed and onto the floor before falling back onto her, flattening her between the bed and his
body. She lets out a strangled cry as he kisses her again, and her nipples are hard as they press
into the heated, bare skin of his chest. His hand slides between them, over her breast and then
down again, along the curve of her hip. He can't touch Olivia enough. He can't learn enough

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of her to get his body to slow down. When his hand finds the back of her thigh, he draws her
upwards, creating a cradle for his body in the perfect spread of hers.

Elliot wants to touch her, he wants to push one finger into her and feel her contract around
him, but he's goddamned human and there is no way he'll survive that. Not right now. Not
yet. So he kisses Olivia again. Deeply. Wholly. Her breath is ragged, his is harsh. It's a clash
of teeth, a combustion of frantic need and the profound gentleness that has underscored the
last twelve years. He's licking at her lips, and his mouth smothers the small sounds that she is
making. Her hands roam over his back and down over his ass, pulling him towards the crux of
her thighs.

"Need you," she murmurs in between kisses.

Elliot lifts his head and inhales roughly as he looks at her. Olivia's eyes are closed, her skin is
already reddened from the effects of his beard and the hungry, unrelenting way he kisses her.
His cock is throbbing, nearly killing him, but he needs this moment more than he even needs
release.
"Look at me," he practically snarls.
Olivia does what he asks, her hands stilling on him. She looks him straight in the eyes,
searching his as he stares at her. Elliot uses the palm of his hand to feel the texture of her hair
again, to cup the curve of her cheek. He's got to be more than he's ever been with her. He's
got to try harder, he has to give more. He can't shut her out - ever - and he'll willingly be
responsible for the years in her life before he even knew her.

He scrapes his teeth over his lower lip again, trying to find the words.
"This isn't new for me, Liv." He hopes she understands. He's not rebounding here, he's not
unsure. He's wanted her for longer than he wants to admit, and she needs to know this is
something solid inside of him. She nods.
"I know." She seems almost languid, drowsy despite the hours of sleep she had found. "For
me either."
This is what he needs to know. He needs to know this isn't something he's pushed on her,
that it isn't so new she'll be stunned by it later. Olivia keeps her hooded eyes on him as her
hands shove at the waistband to his shorts, pushing them down. Only she won't be able to do
it alone, not with the way she is pinned beneath him.
"I want this, El. I want...please."

It's an almost dark response that she creates in him. It's a burn in his veins, and he wants her
hot and liquid, writhing under him. He lifts his hips and then in a tangle of hands he's kicking
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off the last of their clothing. When he settles back onto her, he nearly jerks away from the
spike of sensation that results from the intimate contact as their bodies align. His breathing is
sharp, jagged. He wants to shift, to spread her thighs and push into her, but he holds himself
ruthlessly still. It's mind-numbing. Even before he touches her with his hands, he can tell she
is ready for him.

He hears the softest laugh come from her, and he's searching her eyes again. Olivia is smiling.
His chest is slick with sweat, and he knows his fingers are burning into the flesh of her breast,
but she's smiling. She'll kill him one day with the mystery of her.
"I'm gonna fucking die here and you're laughing," he bites out. Elliot's hand slides lower,
over her abdomen. He wants to kiss her everywhere, to let his mouth slide across her golden
skin, but he doesn't have the strength to peel his body from hers right now. Later, he thinks.
There will be time for all of it later. Olivia's mouth is by his ear then.
"You're the one taking your sweet time," she whispers. Hell.

His hand pushes lower, between her legs. Elliot cups her intimately for a moment before
slipping his finger deeper - through her - and she's no longer teasing. Instead she cries out as
he curses into the silence. It's costing him, the pace is costing him. Fuck. He can feel the
slickness of her, and she's gonna be tight as hell around him. His thumb brushes her clit and
Olivia rockets upwards, towards his touch. She's perfect everywhere. He wants to see her, to
watch himself touch her, but there is only so much he can endure.

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"Jesus, El," Olivia gasps, her hips seeking his hand.
He's so painfully hard that he can't even talk. He's too close to the edge to even say a word.
His male pride is gonna take a beating in a few seconds, because he's gonna come before he
even manages to get inside of her.
"I'll make this better next time," he promises, his accent thickened with dark, hungry need.
Next time he'll learn her, next time he'll go slower. He needs to know the grip of her now, he
needs to ready her for him otherwise he'll hurt her when he fucks into her. The edge is
coming closer by the second. Elliot pushes one finger deeply into her, keeping his thumb
against the bundle of nerves that is pulsing against him. Olivia hisses, her hips jerk violently
beneath his as her back arches. “
Elliot. I can't... I can't..."
And then her hand is between them before he can warn her to back off.

The uncontrollable force of his arousal almost makes him angry. He can't wait, he simply
can't. He's sorry, and he hopes she knows. Olivia's hand circles his erection, and he's lost to
the rest of it. He wants to yank her hand away; he wants to curse at her for tearing at the last
shreds of his control. But she's tugging him towards her body, and she's making incredible
sounds of encouragement that echo in his ears. Don't hurt her, he thinks in the red haze. It's a
mantra he can't shake. Whatever you do, just don't hurt her.

He's there then, he's between Olivia's legs and he's at the edge, at the edge, and then he's
sinking. He drives into her in one deep thrust and he doesn't know if the words they are using
thank God or forsake him. She's all around him - she's hot and wet and clasping - and he's
got one of her thighs curved over his forearm. He's inside of her, he's deep the fuck inside of
her. He's dying. Fucking dying in the blissful, velvet heat. He feels his pulse, and it's
pounding in his veins. Lust drives him now, sheer, visceral lust. Her skin is flushed and
Olivia's head is tossed back, burrowing into the pillow. He can see the smooth column of her
neck in the blur of his vision, and he thrusts again, grinding hard into her. He wants to watch
her reactions closely, but he can't. He just can't. Olivia is a smooth, wet silk around him and
he is an arrogant bastard for taking her like this. He simply can't withstand anymore.

On a bitter, ragged curse, Elliot drives his body forward, opening her even more for his
possession. He's surrounded by Olivia, by the scent and feel of her; by the way she bucks up
against him in response. She's all movement and searing heat beneath him, and he can feel
the scratch of her fingernails along his back as he works himself further into her. He can feel
his heavy length tearing into her body, but she clutches at him as if he's not hurting her.

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Instead she rakes her nails down his slick spine and over his ass, seeking even more. He's
inside of Olivia.

The impossible notion of it spurs him again, and he's dropping his mouth down and onto hers
then. He rocks into her in a hard, driving rhythm, and one of them is begging, maybe both. He
takes her and the way he penetrates her is dark, provocative, unchecked. It's the opposite of
how he kisses her. For every savage drive of Elliot's hips, his mouth makes deliberate love to
her. He licks at Olivia's lips and she's nearly gasping into his slanted mouth. He is moving
inside of her - wild with the raging, gripping burn he has found within her. She takes him as he
is, stretching to accommodate him. There are no apologies forming on his lips anymore, he
doesn't worry that she won't understand. His hunger is primitive, earthy and she is just like
him. Just like him.

He loves her so fucking much. He sees her release coming a second before he feels it. Her
eyes fly open, and she appears almost panicked for a moment. Olivia makes a sound like she's
choking and Elliot strokes hard into her again, feeling the fierce grip of her impossibly
strengthen around him. He struggles to stay in her tightening body, watching her face register
every merciless thrust.

"I can't..." she struggles. "I can't..." But she can. She can and she will, because she wants this
as much as he does. Olivia is wrapped around him, and their skin is slick between them. She
tilts her hips, and he finds the last of the space inside of her and fills it. She shatters around
him. Her orgasm is unabashed, almost violent. Olivia's eyes slam shut and her neck is taut
with the strain. He pushes her legs even further apart and lifts higher into her. Her body
contracts like a pulsing vice around him and it's all he sees, it's all he knows before he's lost
to it as well. Elliot takes her hard, without apologies. He takes from her, and in the desperate
clutch of her, he recognises he's giving too. Years of need course through him and he's alive
again, he's fucking alive. He feels himself thicken inside of her - and he's tortuously hard in
the second before his vision narrows and the darkness presses at the edges of his awareness.
Elliot fights for breath as he finally explodes into her.

He smashes into pieces from the force of it. He can hear Olivia's ragged voice, he can hear the
primitive growl that tears from his own throat, but he is not cognisant of anything else. He
buries himself into her so deeply that he's convinced he's broken her, he's sure that when
this is done she will no longer be whole beneath him. It's a powerful, searing thing that
wracks his body as he comes into her. He plunges deeper, the jackhammering pleasure so
brutally intense that he nearly feels sick with it. He keeps coming, his body wracked by the
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convulsions. It's never-ending. It's endless, fucking endless, just like everything else about
them. He's spilling himself into her.And still Olivia hangs on.

He senses her grip on his slick shoulders, and Elliot grunts, dropping onto her when the last
of it pulses into her because he doesn't have the strength to do anything else. It's a fight for
air then, the both of them struggling to breathe the same pocket of air as they try and regain
their awareness, their sense of self. Olivia's heartbeat is racing; her skin is slippery beneath
his. He's pressing her to the bed, trapping her between his body and the mattress and Olivia
doesn't protest. She doesn't even shift. Her breath stops suddenly then and it doesn't start
again quickly like he expects it to. Elliot lifts his head, still unwilling to untangle their bodies,
refusing to withdraw from the heat of her. Olivia's eyes are wide, and she's blinking fast. Too
fast. He knows. He knows.

"I didn't know," she says, her lips barely moving as her eyes take on a stark sheen.
Elliot drops his forehead next to hers and closes his eyes. He slides one arm beneath the small
of her back and draws her even closer to him, still buried inside of her and careful not to slip
out. His weight now rests on his left forearm and he can feel the damp tendrils of hair at her
temple against his own. He's imagined this for years.But there is nothing he could have
conjured that would have come close to the reality of them. Just like Olivia, he hadn't known
either.
***

In the deepest part of the night, she wakes. It's not the first time she has arisen during the
course of the last hours, it's the third. The first time his hands had been on her, just skimming
her bare skin beneath the covers. Elliot's body had been moulded to hers, spooning her, and
when she had sleepily asked what time it was, he had murmured one word. Midnight. He had
touched her then, his hand shaping the curve of her waist, the weight of her breast. She should
have been sated, but in moments she had been writhing in the bed, pushing back against him.
Elliot had quieted her, his mouth trailing the outline of her ear, the hollow of her neck. His
naked body had pressed closer and his arousal had nudged at her insistently, between her
legs. He hadn't taken her right away. Instead Elliot's fingers had learned the tightening of her
nipples, the soft skin of her inner thigh. In the darkness he had rolled her onto her back, and
his mouth had trailed kisses along her collarbone, the valley between her breasts, the hard
ridge of her pelvic bone. Olivia had tugged at him then, needing him on her.

In the pitch blackness, Elliot had been an overwhelming presence. He'd been the smell of
soap, the scratch of his beard, the aching familiarity of his reassuring voice. He'd been

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indestructible muscle and the gentlest of touches. He had pushed into her slowly, careful of
her already sore body. Elliot had kissed her then; he had paid extraordinary attention to her
mouth. His hips had rolled just a little bit, barely moving in her as the kissing drifted on. She
had revelled in the flex of his back, the crop of his short hair under her fingertips. The size of
him filled her completely, and beneath the stretch of his skin she could feel him shaking just a
little bit with the restraint.

He'd come first, never asking her about birth control despite the fact that he had found his
release inside of her again. After he had brought her over the edge, Elliot had once again
spooned her, and she'd told him about the contraceptive shot she gets anyway, thinking he
needed that assurance. She didn't want him to ever think she'd take advantage of this with
him or jeopardise his family in any way just because she still thought about becoming a mother
one day. Elliot had been quiet for long moments after. He had apparently known that the shot
would stay in her system for a long time, that it wasn't the choice for women who wanted to
have

children soon, because he'd asked her why she had chosen that particular method.
Olivia had wanted to tell him she takes it because she's a realist, and she'll probably never
experience carrying a child. She wanted to explain that she's not someone who could have a
child with a donor - because she's not gambling with genetics in any way - and she would
never trust a casual boyfriend with fatherhood. But those were the peripheral reasons, and if
she used them, he'd catch her in the lie. He'd caught her in the silence in any case.

"The job," he'd finally gritted, his arm tightening across her waist as he pulled her back
against him even more securely.
She had nodded slightly, not trusting herself to speak. The back of her head had been tucked
beneath his chin, and Olivia had pressed her eyes closed, willing the ache to disappear along
with the memories. The haunts had no place here. Elliot's voice deepened, quieted.
"Started after Harris, didn't you?"

Yeah. Yeah, she had. In the moments when Harris had gotten a hold of her she had thought
about it. About what would happen if. She'd decided in the weeks afterward that the pill was
too unreliable for a cop in her department. There were too many times when she didn't have
access to her purse, or when a case would cause her to forget about herself for days. She
couldn't play fast and loose with the possibilities, and Harris had brutally reminded her of
that.

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"No use repeating history," Olivia had tried to say casually, forgetting he could feel the
tension that slid through her despite her best efforts otherwise.
She had heard his goddammit and felt the way Elliot had shifted in the bed, pressing his lips to
the back of her head for long seconds. He hadn't let go, and eventually sleep had covered her.
The second time she had found herself awake, Olivia had been facing Elliot, her thigh pushed
between his. She had kissed the increasingly rough skin across his jaw, and lifted her head to
brush his lips with hers. Elliot had groaned in the darkness, sleepily teasing her that it had
only been an hour since she had last fallen asleep.

But when her hand splayed on his chest, feeling the coarse hairs there, his groan had changed
from one of humour to one of desire. The sound had sent goose bumps across her skin, and
she had shuddered with the reverberating pleasure that warmed her from the inside out. In
bed with Elliot. The idea hadn't seemed so unbelievable in that moment; instead she had
forgotten about failing, she had forgotten about damage and scars. They had both been
unblemished in the deep, forgiving darkness and when she slid her body onto his, she had let
go of her name. Of his. They were just them, and that was more than enough. It was a lazy
cadence that they set as he pushed up into her then. There was no rush to completion, no
urgency. Olivia had been half- asleep on him, and Elliot's hands had cupped her ass to move
her gently, rocking her around his thickness. Years spent rationing his touch had seemed
interminable. A life without him inside of her seemed unfathomable. She wonders what time it
is now.

Olivia shifts in the bed, rolling over to face Elliot's dark form. He's deep in sleep, the
shadows of his chest rising and falling in a perfectly timed rhythm. She wants to touch him,
but she's had hours of sleep that he hasn't and she doesn't want to wake him yet. Her
stomach rumbles loudly, and for a moment she freezes, wondering if the sound will disturb
him. When Elliot sleeps through it, Olivia almost laughs out loud. She's starving, and it's no
wonder. She's gone more than twenty-four hours without anything in her stomach besides
water. As quietly as possible she slips from the bed, opening the far blinds just a little bit to let
the moonlight stream in. The reflection of its stark light tells her that the sky is crystal clear,
free of any clouds at all. It also illuminates her naked skin. Material tangles around her toes,
and as she bends to pick it up, she realises it is Elliot's Marines t-shirt. Perfect.

She puts on the shirt before navigating through the room with the help of the moonlight, and
she can still feel small puddles of water that are drying on the hardwood floor. In a beach
house she supposes this isn't going to damage the floors anymore than they already have
been, but the water reminds her of how she ended up here, in his shower, in his room.

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Olivia shakes off the murky recollection of yesterday. She's not ready for it yet, not now. Not
in this idyllic darkness.

Instead she makes her way slowly across the creaking floorboards, heading down the hall and
into the living room, then the kitchen. Moonlight streams in through the kitchen window, and
when she opens the fridge she is rewarded by a manna from heaven. Leftover lasagna. In less
than two minutes, Olivia has the pan on the counter and a huge piece on a plate, ready for the
microwave. As the layered pasta heats, she wiggles her bare feet and licks the fork she just
used to dig it out of the casserole dish. Her hair is probably a mess, and she knows her bag had
been soaking when Elliot had brought it in so she probably ought to go throw everything into
the dryer. But for the moment, Olivia doesn't care about appearances or responsibilities. She
can smell the sauce as it heats - the tantalising scent of garlic and cheese filling the small
kitchen.

She kills the power on the microwave two seconds before it beeps so that it doesn't wake
Elliot. With a paper towel and an open beer in hand, Olivia grabs the hot plate of lasagna and
is about to head for the living room when she hears his voice coming from the bedroom.
"Better be hauling your ass in here with that," Elliot rumbles.
Olivia stands still in the living room, letting the sound of his teasing voice wash over her skin.
She's in love, she thinks. She's in fucking love with him and by some coincidence Elliot had
literally fought hell and high water to keep her here, to make her admit that they were far more
than just partners.

She's standing in the middle of a beach house in the dark before morning, wearing the marks
of his lovemaking and his t-shirt, while drinking beer at half past three. She's a wreck in a
thousand ways and on a thousand days, but for one, perfect night she is more than enough.
She walks towards the bedroom then, and she can tell before she gets to the door that he's
turned on his bedside lamp because the dim light filters out into the hall. When she gets to the
doorway to his bedroom, Olivia leans against the frame. She crosses her ankles, as if she is
settling into her stance for awhile.

He sits up in the bed, his back against the headboard and the sheets draped precariously over
his hips. Elliot's chest is wide - sculpted and perfect - and his eyes are mesmerisingly dark.
He takes her breath away. A physical ache grips her, urging her to just climb back in next to
him. She doesn't see him as her partner or someone else's ex-husband, she doesn't think
about New York. She needs this, Olivia tells herself. If she cracks or withers in the fear, she

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will lose him and that is not an option. Not anymore. Fearless. She's got to walk the walk this
time.

"Think you're getting some of this, Stabler?" Olivia taunts, indicating the steaming plate of
lasagna in her hand.
The corner of his mouth tips up in a smirk. His heated eyes rake up her bare legs, lingering on
the hard peaks of her nipples which she knows are visible through the thin cotton of his shirt.
"Be glad to come get it," he retorts in a gravelly warning.
Olivia's breath catches, her pulse races. Her stomach also growls again. Loudly. Elliot's
satisfied, amused laughter incites hers and something within her shifts. She thinks it's all of
the cracked pieces of her, finally settling into the promise of him.

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298
 Chapter Twenty-Two

S
he stands at the edge of the patio. The sun slips across her shoulders, and the day isn’t
overly warm just yet. Her hands are wrapped around a mug of still steaming coffee and
her feet are bare on the heated concrete. The sea is calm this morning, unnaturally so.
The water is cerulean, serene. Light shimmers off the gentle waves and if she squints at the
sky, the silhouettes of seagulls slide across the horizon. She thinks of how the storm has
started the world again. Olivia takes a deep breath, and she can smell the salt, the remnants of
the rain. She is calm in a way that almost makes her sleepy again. She wears only his faded
Marines t-shirt and it dances around her thighs in the light breeze. When the wind wisps
through it, she can smell him on the fabric and she exhales, closes her eyes.

Her breaths are heavy. Slow. She lifts her mug to her lips and just listens. It’s a faint sound,
but she can hear children playing further down the beach. The crests of water seem to rock
her and the birds lazily call to each other. The peace is so thorough inside of her that she feels
her eyes water. Her throat closes, but not in the way it used to. It’s not because she needs to
let something out, it’s because she needs to keep all of this within. She aches for his touch, his
presence, but for nothing else.

She grins against the edge of her mug before taking a sip and letting the rich liquid settle on
her tongue. Maybe there are things she should worry about, but she can’t find the energy right
now. She can still feel the solid muscles of Elliot’s shoulders beneath her fingertips; she can
almost taste his mouth as it covers hers. Her breaths quicken then, as she recalls the powerful
muscles of his thighs, his back. He rumbles in her ears when he is inside of her, and
sometimes he lifts her hands over her head as he moves above her. His palms flatten against

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hers, his fingers slip between hers. He holds her hands. Just holds them when he moves, their
lifelines pressed together.

She keeps her eyes shut, and lets the sun settle on her eyelids. From inside the house she
hears movement, and then the soft strains of the stereo filter out. She smiles, because Elliot
has never been someone who talked about music, yet he plays it all the time out here. He likes
the old rock classics, and somehow that is perfect. It’s reassuring that he would appreciate the
All-American types – Seger, Springsteen and what he is playing now, something by Petty.
Nothing exotic, nothing too dark, just solid classics that don’t wither over time.

She hears the patio door open behind her, and Olivia keeps her eyes closed, her chin lifted to
the still slightly damp morning air. Elliot is behind her then, and his body aligns with hers.
Her back is against his naked chest, and one of his arms slips possessively around her waist.
She can feel the soft denim of his unbuttoned jeans against the back of her legs; can feel his
bare feet bump along hers. Even now, even after all of the hours, she can feel his arousal
against her. It’s comforting instead of an urgent thing, and he, too seems content to just hold
her. Her pulse is in her throat as the rough skin of his jaw rasps against her temple before his
lips press there for one long moment. She sinks into him, and he takes her weight against him.
His big hand splays across her stomach. He makes her drowsy.

She wonders if everyone feels like this, if this is what the mysterious magic of love is all about.
Maybe this is the thing that people spend their whole life seeking, searching for. It’s not the
puppy love of childhood or the dependent love of early adulthood. It’s a gentle, quiet thing – a
respite from the world that turns all around her. She understands the driving need to find this
now. She thinks of the explorers who seek sunken treasure – who spend their lives compelled
by the mystique of Atlantis, never sure that it truly exists - and she gets the appeal of the
search. It’s the possibility that it is out there and that the reward will be unimaginable which
makes the painful, consuming journey worth it.

She will love him. She does love him. She doesn’t how the details will play out just yet, what
this means, but she knows this much. She ignores the rest of the details and consequences for
now, because she can only handle one thing at a time.

“Mornin’,” Elliot finally murmurs against her hair.

Olivia opens her eyes at that, and she stares at the water. She thinks of who she was – who she
doesn’t want to be - and of the crumbling woman who had walked into the water in the storm.
She left so much of herself out there, in the depths of that sea. She thinks it holds all of the
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darkness that had taken up residence inside of her. She left people, places, time out there. It’s
out there somewhere, dissipating in the wash of it all. She is grateful for the water, for taking it
out of her. It is big enough, powerful enough to absorb what she shed within it. The ocean is
no longer something that she is deathly afraid of; instead it is her ally, a newfound, demanding
friend who is willing to bear the burden so that she can live as she should.

She stands here with him, now. Lighter. With more space available inside of her for this. For
him. She is thankful, so thankful. She has reached a new understanding with the sea. Who she
was, all that she had held onto, it’s out there. Not gone entirely, but it’s held now by
something bigger than her. It’s no longer just her responsibility.

“Gonna share that coffee?” Elliot grumbles sleepily

against her cheek, his lips sliding across the right
side of her jaw. She smiles as she lifts her cup
towards her shoulder. He doesn’t take it from her.
Instead she tips it upwards towards his mouth, and
she turns her head so she can give him a sidelong
glance. He takes a sip, groaning in pleasure as soon
as he is done. It’s still startling to see Elliot so close
to her. It’s still hard to reconcile, to process. She
doesn’t think of all the years that they went without
this as a waste, but she aches for the time she has
missed while trying to deny this existed. It seems
impossible that she could be near him and not
touch him.

“It’s so beautiful out here,” she says under her breath, once he readjusts and pulls her even
closer to him. He’s so still against her that she thinks he may have fallen asleep again.
Elliot mouth brushes against the crown of her head.

“Damn right.”
Olivia laughs softly and it fills up some of those spaces she has so recently found. She knows
his eyes are still closed, and that he doesn’t mean the scenery. Suddenly it’s not enough to feel
him behind her. She lifts his hand from her stomach and turns in his arms. Elliot is squinting
at the ocean beyond, and he looks formidable. Rough. Stubble covers his chin, his jaw. His
tattoos are dark and dangerous, especially in comparison to the clean, glimmering light of the
morning. He is covered in scars that she has traced, that she’s slid her mouth along during the

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long night. There are spots along his neck that are reddened from the way she marked him,
his shoulders bear the slight crescent remnants of her fingernails.

Her free hand slips up and around his neck. His body is solid everywhere. Even his neck has
dips and valleys, pulsing cords of veins. He is so alive, everywhere. His skin reminds her that
he is unnaturally resilient, that he clings to life. Even bullets and knives don’t stand a chance
against him. Olivia raises her chin, and Elliot doesn’t hesitate at the invitation. His mouth
takes hers, and he breathes into her as he captures her lips with his. It’s not gentle, and she
doesn’t want it to be. His tongue pushes into her mouth and his unshaved skin is abrasive.
Olivia can taste the coffee on him, or maybe it’s on her. He has more leverage because he has
both hands, and she still holds her mug. One of his hands spears into her hair while the other
slides over her ass, pulling her against him. He is relentless, opening her for him. She doesn’t
want control, not in this moment. She lets him have it, and he rewards her, brushing his
mouth along her lower lip, nipping at her, turning his head and coming back at her.

The sun slides over the back of her legs, and she can feel the heat on his skin. His shoulders
flex under her fingertips and he kisses her. He kisses her. He is hard, ready again, and she can
feel his arousal and the open button of the jeans he wears presses against her stomach. He
causes something in her to come alight, something primal that alternates between possession
and submission. Give and take. It’s a dance they have done for years. They are on the open
porch and it’s just late enough in the morning that people are already walking along the
beach, coming out of their homes. She pulls back a little bit, and as she opens her eyes she
sees him grin through his hooded eyes.

The colour of his irises steals her breath. Nothing else nature has created compares. It’s the
dramatic contrast of the shifting shades of blue against the dark frame of his eyebrows, his
thick lashes, the hard line of his jaw. His tongue slides slowly across his lower lip, as if he can
still taste her. Her blood pounds beneath her skin. She can tell that he is watching her just the
same, as if trying to figure out if the morning has brought with it her fear, her anxiety. She
wants to be free of those things entirely, but she doesn’t think it’s something that will
disappear overnight. It’s manageable, though. It’s not suffocating, and she knows now that it
fades even more when he is near.

“Gladys has been watching us for the last few minutes,” Elliot says casually, completely
unperturbed by the notion.

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She can’t believe she’s been standing out here in her underwear with him, making out like a
teenager while the other woman has been observing it all. She lifts an eyebrow as he reaches
for her coffee mug again and takes a sip.
“And you didn’t think to tell me sooner?”
He shrugs, trying not to smile.
“Why deny her a good show?”
Olivia shakes her head, and the soft laughter comes so easily.
“Pervert. She’s old enough to be your mother.”

He grins widely, as if proud of himself. There are moments when he is still a naughty child, a
prankster schoolboy. She tumbles in those moments, understanding why people describe this
as falling head over heels. He scratches his chest and keeps at her coffee, and she lets her gaze
drift across the planes of him. He is tanned everywhere that she can see, except for where his
stomach tapers into his jeans. She wants to put her mouth there, right against where his jeans
hug his hips. She wants to taste him, to drag her tongue across his abdomen and lower. Elliot
smirks, catching her.

“Now who’s the pervert?”

Now her laughter is loud, amused, guilty. She wants to turn her face back up to the sun, to talk
to whoever has given this to her. She wants to say things like thank you and I didn’t know.
Behind her the ocean continues, undisturbed by all she has given it. In front of her he stands,
resilient and capable. She had once been asked to handle Elliot, and she thinks it’s ironic,
because in truth it is he who knows how to handle her.

“How are you with eggs?” she asks, amused by the normalcy she finds in what had once
seemed so absurdly impossible. He narrows his eyes, as if wondering how she could dare ask.
“Genius.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Elliot shakes his head, before handing her coffee mug back to her and heading back towards
the patio door.
“Next time remind me to fall in love with a woman who knows how to cook,” he says over his
shoulder.

She knows that change is possible because she doesn’t examine his comment. For a moment,
she doesn’t find her shortcomings; she doesn’t worry if she isn’t enough. So she can’t cook,
she thinks. He’ll live with it.
***

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He watches her as she sits on the edge of the counter, holding her plate of food. Olivia
concentrates on picking at her scrambled eggs with her fingers, and her hair is soft, relaxed
and framing her face in haphazard waves. In his t-shirt, and with her long bare legs crossed at
her ankles as her heels smack against the lower cabinets, she is an anomaly to him even after
all of these years. Elliot’s food sits on a plate next to her hips and it’s getting cold, but he
doesn’t care. He’s washed the last of the pans; put away the loaf of bread and jams. His head is
in too many places for him to eat right now. He’s been inside of her, he thinks. Maybe his
stunned disbelief starts and ends there. It actually happened and she didn’t run in the
aftermath. Olivia is sitting on his counter. Eating breakfast. Wearing the effects of last night
on her skin. Wearing him on her skin.

He knows she isn’t entirely settled – she’s still anxious just a little bit – but on the whole there
is a growing contentment he can sense within her. After all of the times he has questioned
God, doubted his faith, he finds it again in this moment. His breaths are no longer shallow,
now they begin deep in his stomach. His shoulders don’t strain with the tension, his fists
don’t instinctively curl. There is something inside of him that has quieted, gentled, and he
feels calm for the first time in too many years.

New York is a million miles away. The job belongs to other people, in another lifetime. He
forgets he’s in his forties, that he’s lived a life before this. He’s in love for the first time,
maybe. A strand of Olivia’s hair falls across her forehead, onto her cheek, but she ignores it
and licks her fingertip before tearing off a piece of her buttery toast. She doesn’t realise he is
watching her. Or maybe she does and she doesn’t care. His breath hitches. Yeah, there are
things he needs to tell her, but he’s becoming surer of himself. Maybe she will understand. It’s
possible the world won’t fall apart.

He wants Olivia, even now. He wants her beneath him, looking up at him from between the
fan of her dark lashes. There were times when he was inside of her last night when she would
simply stare at him, her eyes wide. She wouldn’t smile or cry or furrow her forehead in
apprehension. She’d just lock her gaze on his and hang on even as the press of her fingers
loosened on his arms or his shoulder or his back. He’d feel her touch as a stroking skim of
sensation then, and he knew she had no awareness of what she was doing. Tell her. The words
bounce around inside of him. Just tell her.

But he needs more time. He needs more of this. She does. Olivia has to understand why or she
won’t forgive him. Elliot takes a deep breath, trying to quell the unease. Waiting is a two-
pronged sword, because the longer he puts it off, the more he impossibly falls for her. If she
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leaves. He blocks it out, ignoring the thickness in his throat. It’s not the time. Not right now.
He just wants to stand here and watch her. Elliot thinks about the previous morning and he
will someday need to privately grieve for what he had seen, for what he had experienced with
Olivia out there in the churning ocean. Watching her break has changed him. He is no longer
afraid of her, but he is also more on guard on her behalf. He’s more aware of the magnitude of
what she has lived without, the magnitude of what she now needs.

These are things he needs to know, because he has every intention of giving her all of it. All of
it. Everything that a woman deserves. Marriage. Home. Children. Whatever she wants. He
will not ask Olivia about what she wants now, not even soon, because it’s too much too fast
and she can only assimilate so much. But it’s hers for the taking. There are no limitations to
what he will do to soften the edges of her life. It’s about her, he thinks. He doesn’t feel like
he’s losing himself by putting her first, instead it makes him feel stronger, more capable.
The ring of the phone jars him from his thoughts, and even Olivia looks up from her plate of
food in curiosity. The phone rarely rings out here, and when it does, it’s usually one of his
kids or Jack.

He grabs the portable from counter, grinning at Olivia’s rapidly disappearing plate of food.
Good? he mouths.She smiles at him, her fingers stilling midair while pinching another bit of
the scrambled eggs. She pops the bit into her mouth and nods. Her lips are shiny from the
melted butter of her toast and he wants to lick the sweet taste of it off of her.

“’Lo,” he says into the phone, contemplating what Olivia’s reaction might be if he were to try
and feed her with his fingers. It’s possible she’d shoot him, but then again she doesn’t have
her gun in the house right now. Odds are in his favour that he’d survive the attempt.
“Dad.” Lizzie’s voice has an unparalleled ability to sound exasperated at all times. She’s
uncannily bright, and he usually gets the feeling that she’s frustrated with anyone she
considers to be a mere intellectual mortal.

“Hey, baby,” he answers, watching every nuance of Olivia’s movements.

Her eyes quickly lock on his as she brings another bit of eggs to her lips. This time when she
eats it she lets her fingertip linger in her mouth, making a show of sucking at her skin. But her
actions are incongruous with the immediate look of panic that crosses her expression. He gets
it – she knows it’s one of his daughters and it’s a reminder of his life outside of this haven. He
can’t feed her tension. If he just relaxes, sets the tone of how this goes, then she’ll take her
cues from him. It’s not as if he hasn’t spent time imagining the reactions of his kids when they
realise he’s in love with Olivia. He’s prepared for approval or disapproval. He’s prepared for
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the looks of curiosity, of suspicion that this has been going on for years. He’ll deal with it.
He’s their father after all; he’s the one who gets to set the rules.

“Tell me you didn’t tell Richtard that he could bring Tyler out to the beach house. You know
how I feel about that abhorrent, abominable cretin.”
He grins. Every time he speaks to Lizzie he’s convinced she spends too much time reading
the dictionary.
“Hi to you too, kiddo.”

Olivia’s eyes lock on his, searching for something. He knows she’s looking for the damned
line he usually constructs between work and family. He’s been an asshole for too many years,
hiding from Olivia all of the nuances of his life at home. He knows she thinks his line of
demarcation existed because he associated her with the job, but it’s the opposite – he didn’t
need Olivia to see the mess he’d made of everything. He hadn’t wanted her to see him as
someone who was failing, who had too many shortcomings. She’d seen anyway. She’d saved
them too many times to have any illusions anymore.

It’s why he’d given Olivia the journal to read. He knows the life he’s lived. She didn’t. He
needs her to know the depths of what he’s hidden for far too long. He needs her to know that
there are no more boundaries.
“Dad, seriously. If Tyler is coming, it will positively ruin my vacation.” Lizzie’s voice is
insistent, her panic evident by the rapid-fire pace of her words.
“Liz-”

He grins at Olivia, trying to dispel her questions. He’s not uncomfortable right now, not at all.
He doesn’t want privacy to talk to his kid. He doesn’t want to maintain the line. She blinks at
him, and then he sees the tension physically seep out of her. Her exhale lets her shoulders
drop. Olivia swipes her tongue over her lower lip and leans back on the counter, letting the
hem of his t-shirt slide dangerously higher on her magnificent legs. She sets her nearly empty
plate aside on the surface next to her and reaches for a piece of the toast. Her breaths are
short, but they haven’t stopped. Olivia is working through the changes between them, just
like he is.

“Tyler likes me, Dad,” Liz implores. “He likes me. He’s always following me around, and I’m
positive that’s why he maintains this inexplicable friendship with Richtard. He fails to
understand that he has the mental capacity of a gnat, and that-”

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Elliot closes his eyes, trying to listen to what his daughter is saying to him without being
distracted. Tyler’s a good kid, he tells himself. He’s one of the few friends his son has that
Elliot actually trusts. He’s seen the kid grow up; he’s known Tyler’s parents for years. The kid
is polite and quiet, kind of a social nerd. It’s a wonder Dickie even maintains the friendship in
the first place.
“It’s only for a week, Lizzie. And I can promise you that the first sign Tyler’s even thinking
about you that-”
“I’m doomed.” His daughter sighs resignedly on the other end of the line. “Good thing my
bedroom has a lock, because I’m staying in there the entire time.” The entire time.

Just when Elliot thinks the peace inside of him can’t get any more profound, he finds new
depths to the reprieve he’s been given. The whole summer. That’s what they had decided
upon. Maureen and Kathleen would come and go on occasional weekends as their schedules
allowed, but Lizzie and Dickie would spend their summer before senior year with him. Eli was
coming out for a week or so, then again towards the end of August for the Labor Day
weekend. Lizzie would get the room Olivia had stayed in, and Dickie the other guest room
that had the twin bed and rollaway futon. Eli would stay in Elliot’s room, and Gladys had
already asked to help with his youngest as needed.

Elliot’s leave from the NYPD would take him until September, so he had time before he had to
work again. His kids would work, though. Dickie had landed a lifeguard job on the Surf City
beach and Lizzie was planning on working at Gladys’ store. He’ll be home for all of it. He’d be
able to watch them come and go. He can teach Eli about the ocean and he has a pair of kites he
bought on the boardwalk stashed in the garage already. There’s a Costco in Manahawkin, and
he’s well aware that it’s going to take a truck filled with food and supplies to get him through
the summer. He’ll probably catch his older son sneaking beers out to the beach and he’s
going to have to urge Lizzie to get her nose out of her books and onto the beach, especially
during Eli’s stay. Eli idolises his sister and at three-and-a-half he’s already full of mischief, so
he’s sure that someone’s iPod will likely end up taking a fatal swim in one of the toilets.
He looks at Olivia. He doesn’t want her to leave. He wants her here, for all of it.

“Dad? Are you listening to me?”

Shit. No, no he isn’t. He’s been daydreaming about the possibilities. He’s been watching
Olivia as she finishes her toast before surreptitiously glancing at his still full plate.
“Yeah baby, I’m here. What were you saying?”

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“I was saying that if you see any ads for any other stores that need help will you tell me? I need
more hours than Gladys can give me. I’m getting close to what I need for the down payment
on the Beetle, and if I work thirty hours a week, I’ll be able to get it at the end of the summer.”
Olivia’s eyes narrow in contemplation at the food. She doesn’t think he’s watching her, so
she’s openly debating the merits of digging in. Elliot chuckles, and it quickly draws both
Olivia’s guilty look and his daughter’s exhale.

“Seriously, Dad. You’re not even listening. This is important to me. Richard said he’d buy out
my half of the Jeep you gave us, and that would give me enough to put down on the car so that
the payments are manageable in the fall.”
He tries to focus on Lizzie’s responsible words, despite the fact that Olivia is watching him,
her fingers dancing on the hem of that maddening shirt. She’s playing him. Distracting him.
As if that will make him give her his breakfast. He’s not kidding anyone. Of course he’s gonna
give it to her, he’s just gonna make Olivia work for it first. Elliot lets his gaze settle on her
teasing fingers, at the promising tunnel her t-shirt makes across her slightly parted thighs.
God, he wants his lips there. He hasn’t done that, experienced that with Olivia yet. He can
only imagine the soft skin of her inner thighs against his mouth while his palm flattens on her
abdomen, holding her writhing body down as he.

“Someone is there with you.”

His daughter’s accurate assessment finally jars him. How his daughter knows this he’ll never
understand. But Lizzie is the remarkably intuitive one. Maureen had been All-American –
smart, a cheerleader, numerous boyfriends, and an affinity for designer labels, while Kathleen
had been dark and creative, with a fiery temper that could be easily set off for days. Dickie was
still all teenage boy – full of hormones and caught between wanting to spend all day watching
sports or girls in bikinis. Eli was sponge, soaking up all of his older brother’s antics and trying
to outdo them, pleading innocence with his angelic grin.

But Lizzie is the one who analyses all of them. She is the one who fills her bedroom with books
he can’t pronounce the titles to and who keeps tabs on the emotional state of everyone in the
family. She writes short stories and goes to see poetry readings in the strangest of places, and
she’s organised to the point of compulsiveness. She’s also too clever for her own good.
“You’re there with a woman?” Lizzie’s voice rises, and while her words clearly convey
surprise, they hold no accusation. “Holy shit, Dad.”
“Elizabeth-” he starts.
The use of his child’s full name in that tone makes Olivia’s eyes widen, all pretence of
playtime over. Her fingers still in her lap, and her back straightens.

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“It’s Liv, isn’t it?”
This is it. This is the moment when he will lie to keep things the way they have always been, or
he can tell the truth and take the next step. Olivia is either part of his life or she isn’t, and
while he hadn’t expected this moment to come this soon, it’s here nonetheless.
He locks his gaze on Olivia’s. He wants this to be clear to everyone, including himself. His
voice is gravelly, dead serious.
“Yeah, Liv is here.”

There is silence on the other end of the line. In the kitchen he is waiting for the world to fall
apart. He’s waiting for his daughter’s wrath and for Olivia to withdraw, maybe to even walk
away from him because it’s just too much too soon. But Olivia sits unnaturally still, her
knuckles white where she grips the counter. Her lips form a flat line and she seems lost all of a
sudden. She’s bracing herself, he thinks. She’s waiting to be dismissed. His daughter’s voice is
small when she finally speaks again.
“That’s good, Dad.”

Maybe it’s Lizzie’s quiet, too-aware acceptance that finally breaks him. Maybe he’s just been
so afraid for so long of doing the wrong thing. Maybe he’s still just raw from yesterday, or he’s
terrified of hurting all of them. When he closes his eyes this time, he feels his chest contract
too hard. He’s been convinced he’s a screw-up for longer than he can remember, and it seems
impossible that as soon as he stopped fighting life, he began to get everything he ever really
wanted.

Elliot steps forward towards Olivia, unable to breathe as he clutches the phone. He wants to
say something, but words lock in his throat. Lizzie isn’t a little girl anymore, and he gets that.
He understands that. She’s been his baby girl for as long as he can remember, but for the first
time he realises that aside from Eli, his kids are now practically adults in their own right. It’s
time for him now, he thinks. It’s his time.

“Dad?” Lizzie’s voice is gentle. “I’m assuming since you’re not working that Liv’s not there
to bring you paperwork. With Manhattan two hours away, I’m also assuming she’s not there
to grab a quick lunch. But I won’t say anything to anyone else if you don’t want me to.”
Olivia’s legs part slightly, just enough to cradle him in the vee of her thighs. Her fingers slide
across the small of his back and her mouth quietly lands on his jaw. He’s shaking, he realises.
He tries to focus on Olivia’ pulse, but his own overrides everything else.

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He knows Lizzie is only one of his children, and the others may react entirely differently, but
for the moment the quiet, composed tone of her words hits him hard. “I’m not gonna hide
anything from anyone,” he manages to say into the phone. Olivia’s palm opens on his skin,
and then she ducks, her forehead pressing into his shoulder. She’s scared too, he thinks. This
is new and terrifying for all of them. Olivia isn’t some random post-divorce girlfriend - she’s
been a part of their family for years and this will significantly redefine everyone’s relationships
with her. He knows Olivia is fanatical about protecting his family, but he also knows she spent
most of her life believing that she was at fault for destroying the only family she had. She has to
be shown that she’s not the destruction.

He prays his kids will forgive him enough for his shortcomings that they won’t blame Olivia
for anything. Olivia won’t be able to withstand causing anyone any trouble or confusion.
Olivia sees anything less than her total sacrifice as greed on her part, and she’d walk away in a
nanosecond to spare his kids heartache. Lizzie is silent for a long time. When she finally
speaks, she’s got her mother’s patience and acceptance in her tone.
“You know what Mom said to me a couple of weeks ago? She said she’s been a child or a mom
her whole life. She’s never just been her.”

Elliot doesn’t open his eyes. He’s cried enough in this lifetime that his father would be
ashamed as hell, but he knows it also means he’s not cold on the inside. Only he doesn’t want
to cry now, not in front of his kid or Olivia. Not for himself. He thinks about what his daughter
is telling him. He knows that Kathy talks to Lizzie in a way that is different than with the rest
of their kids. Lizzie is the one who asks the tough questions, who doesn’t shy away from
needing to know. Maureen has always been remarkably bright and accepting as well, but she
also had the easiest childhood of all of them. In a way, his oldest is too light of heart for the
deeper emotional revelations and he wants to keep it that way.

He pinches the bridge of his nose as Olivia winds tighter around him, her ankles locking at
the back of his legs.
“Your mom and I don’t want to do anything to hurt you guys anymore, Lizzie. You gotta-”
“Did you know Mom can sing?” Lizzie interrupts.
When Elliot opens his eyes and looks out the window, he can see the bright glare of sun light
that turns the surface of the ocean into a white, shimmering haze. Gone is the dark tumult of
the storm, the oppression of the churning black clouds.
“Yeah, she used to sing to you when you were kids,” he acknowledges as the heat of late
morning starts to seep in through the screen and into the kitchen.

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Kathy also used to belt songs out in the shower in the early years, but it’s an intimate detail
that Olivia doesn’t need to hear, even if his recollection of his ex-wife’s voice is clear as day in
his head. Kathy had loved the soulful melodies, and he remembers standing outside the
bathroom door the summer after Kathleen had been born and listening to her croon anything
by Alannah Myles. Kathy’s voice had a throaty quality to it, and if he closed his eyes in those
days he could have easily been sitting in some jazz club down in the French Quarter of New
Orleans.

He’d been an observer to everything around him. He’d watched Kathy carefully back then,
waiting for indications that he was failing all of them. Only he hadn’t seen the fragmentation
that had been happening – he hadn’t noticed the way he’d started to see himself as an outsider
who was there to protect and insulate rather than to participate. He has to participate this
time. He can’t watch his life happen around him. He has to laugh and cry, to celebrate and to
grieve. He’s got to try for things that seem impossible, because they are only impossible if he
doesn’t try. He’s got to really love Olivia, despite the fact that she has the profound ability to
break his heart. He’s got to admit that his kids won’t live free of pain and ugliness, so that he
can support them instead of smother them.

It’s all easier said than done, but at least he realises so much more now. The acknowledgment
is the first step in a journey he never expected to take.
“She’s really good, Dad. I mean, really good. I made her get dressed up and we went to this
restaurant that had karaoke night, and she sang Black Velvet. You shoulda heard her.
Everyone was on their feet.” He can hear the awe and amusement in Lizzie’s voice, and he
thinks he could listen to her talk forever. There was a time when he’d been so stripped of time
and patience that he had wanted his kids to get to the point immediately in every conversation.
He doesn’t care if they have a point anymore, so long as they talk to him.

“You got your mom to sing in public?” He laughs deep in his throat, the idea of Kathy on a
stage somewhere easing some of the guilt inside of him. He can even feel Olivia grin against
his shoulder. Olivia can’t sing worth shit, although he’s caught her humming off-key a million
times as they sat in the sedan on one surveillance or another. He would love to get her ass up
on a stage for karaoke sometime, but he gets the feeling it would either involve him either
winning a massive bet or Olivia consuming a mass amount of tequila.
Lizzie laughs too then.

“Yeah. She wanted to be a singer when she was my age. Did you know that?”
Memories come back to him, and they are tinged with warmth.

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“Yeah,” he admits. It’s how he’d fallen for Kathy in the first place. He’d been forced to go see
the school musical for his English class senior year of high school, and there Kathy had been –
belting out “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” in Gypsy. She’d been golden and confident, her
voice hitting the rafters. He’d taken flack as a jock for dating one of the drama girls, but he’d
gone to all of her plays and she to his games. It had been easy for a long, long time. He used to
wonder what had happened to them, but he doesn’t wonder any more. They’d both lived their
lives, made choices, and in the end they have history in their marriage and the future in their
kids. It had been well worth it. All of it.

“I told her to go for it,” his daughter says gently. “I mean Mom could totally get a gig in some
restaurant or club somewhere. Even if she wanted to get some voice lessons to polish up.
She’s only forty-two, you know? And it’s not like she is aspiring to earn gold at the Olympics.
There’s still plenty of time for her to at least try.” Still plenty of time.
Elliot’s mouth brushes into Olivia’s hair and she still smells like his soap. With his free hand
he rubs her back gently. He wonders if anyone has really ever convinced Olivia of this.
“When’d you get to be so smart, kid?” he says gruffly. He doesn’t trust himself to say more
because he’s perilously close to breaking in the midst of his daughter’s absolution of him.

“If it wasn’t for Richtard being my twin, I’d be convinced that I wasn’t genetically related to
you or mom,” she retorts dryly. “Good thing you have me. Now will you look around for
another job for me? None of those little boardwalk shops post anything online. Gladys needs
me three days a week and she’s flexible, so I can pretty much take on anything.”
For a man who had been so sure of his inability to do anything right, he’s remarkably
surrounded by perfection in this moment.
“Sure thing. But isn’t this supposed to be your summer vacation?”
Olivia’s eyes close against his neck. He can tell because he can feel her eyelashes skim his skin
just once. His breaths even out, his momentary spike in pulse rate abating beneath the
surprising ease of her touch.

Lizzie sighs again. “Dad, having a car that I do not have to share with my shockingly
challenged brother is worth trading a summer’s vacation for, I promise you. Besides, there’s
something I want to ask you when I get there, and doing it would mean I need my own car.”
Elliot can feel the apprehension build just by her casual words.
“What is it? Just ask me now.” If she’s aiming to take a road trip to California, or to drive to
Florida for spring break next year, she’s going to be sorely disappointed with his answer.
Then again, it is Lizzie. Neither option would probably even appeal to her unless there was
some sort of writer’s retreat going on. His daughter laughs.

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“I’m not going on some wild cross-country trip, Dad. Don’t worry. This is a good thing,
okay? We’ll talk about it next week when I get there. Deal?”
Despite the night spent tangled with Olivia’s naked body around his, he can’t get used to this
ability to touch her. He’s frustrated that anyone else exists on LBI, because what he really
wants to do is to take Olivia onto the beach and lay her bare body out on the hot sand. He
wants to feel the granules of it cling to her skin; he wants to fill his palms with the golden bits
of it and then let the sand trickle down slowly, a gentle waterfall that bounces against her
stomach and makes her nipples tighten there in the bright sun. He’s ready for her again. Just
like that.

It means he’s got to trust his daughter with her secret. He’s got secrets of his own that he
hopes are for the best as well, so the tendency to keep them must run in the family.
“Deal,” Elliot rumbles, his hand sliding up Olivia’s thigh. She stiffens beneath his touch, but
he can feel her chest rise and fall a little faster, so he knows that it’s arousal and not fear that
has her freezing up against him.
“Tell Liv I said hi,” Lizzie adds.
He smiles as his hands hit the silky band of the underwear she must have dug out of the dryer
before he woke up. His fingers curl over the strap that crosses her hip, and Olivia’s breath
hitches. He’s got to get off the phone before his daughter hears a moan that she shouldn’t.
“Will do,” he rasps as he starts to tug at the flimsy material.

He wants her here, on the counter. He wants to pull Olivia’s hips towards him and push her
thighs apart so he can get his mouth on her. He’ll never get tired of her response to him, or
the way she says his name in the seconds before she careens over the edge.
“Okay,” Lizzie pauses then, as if she’s trying to find the words for something. “And Dad?”
“Yeah, baby?” He needs both hands to get this scrap of material off of Olivia. He’s got to hang
up. Fuck. He’s a shitty father because of this. Maybe he’s not crap for everything else, but
hanging up on his daughter to have sex? Yeah, that’s a shitty thing to do. He leaves Olivia
sitting there and uses his free hand to shut the kitchen window and then yank the rudimentary
curtain closed. No use one of the neighbours seeing or hearing anything they don’t need to,
either. And hell, the way he wants to make Olivia shatter – she’s going to make some damned
noise.

“Even if one of my lovely siblings gives you shit for this thing with Liv, don’t let ‘em tell you
that you can’t sing. You know what I mean?”
In the middle of the darkened kitchen, Elliot stops. He looks at Olivia and she’s waiting for
him, her eyes hooded with desire and anticipation. Her legs seem endless, and there is a

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growing sense of abandon in her that he’s never seen before. He’s starving, he thinks, and it
has nothing to do with the plate of food that’s been abandoned by both of them. On the
phone, his daughter tells him she loves him and then hangs up before he can tell her the same
thing. Maybe she knows, so she doesn’t need to hear it back. Elliot stands there, and long
seconds later he hears the dial tone reverberate through the small room.He’s doing the right
thing here. He knows this because life is rewarding him for his choices every step of the way.
***

January 19th, 1974

Dearest Suhaili,

I’m leaving.
If you could talk to me, I suspect you’d tell me I was being rash or impulsive, so for once I am
grateful that you cannot speak. My life here is unbearable to the point of being no life at all. I
can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t even hear myself over the sound of Joe’s god-awful, evil
voice. He yells and screams and he’s taken to throwing things. His dinner was cold so he threw
the plate at me, sending mashed potatoes and stew all over the kitchen. His favourite shirt
wasn’t washed so he hurled the whole basket of clothes onto the floor. Yesterday Elliot tracked
snow into the house and Joe pitched the wet boots at Elliot as soon as my boy took them off.
What kind of man throws something at his child on purpose?
Ever since Joe was fired, he’s become an angry animal. I’m not allowed to show emotion at all,
yet he is a sulking hulk of a violent man who attacks at the slightest provocation. It’s his fault
he was fired, I want to say. He is the one who won’t confess about who stole those drugs. He
says it’s not honourable to rat out his friends, but what is honourable about losing his job?
He’s lost his pride and he’s home all the time, which means that floozy he was seeing probably
dumped him, too. He starts work as a security guard at the Moore Chemicals plant next week,
and that’ll keep him so busy that he probably won’t even notice that we’re gone.
I’m leaving this dark life behind. There are lights out there, I know there are. No more of this
medication he forces me to take, no more of the emptiness. I’m sick of my senses being dulled,
and I’m sick of being afraid all the time. I want to breathe huge gulps of air and feel it pass
through my lungs. I want to feel the wind whip through my hair and I want to wear fabulous
coloured scarves around my neck. I’m going to take what savings we have before Joe whittles
it away and I’m going to buy this used convertible I saw at the car lot. It’s a red Chevelle, and
it’s only six or seven years old. It’s a great deal because no one around here is going to buy a
convertible in the dead of winter. No vision, I think. They’ve got no vision at all of the sunshine
that’s just around the bend!

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Elliot and I are going to be world travellers. We’ll see the Grand Canyon one day and marvel
at the shimmering glitter of Las Vegas the next. Elliot is smart, and I’ll teach him things so he
doesn’t miss anything by not being in school. He’ll learn from life, as I will. Maybe I can get a
job in California – we’ll work on a movie lot and someone will see my boy’s blue eyes and tell
him he’s a movie star. We’ll be rich, and we’ll live on the beach. I’ll get Elliot a dog, and I’ll
watch my boy toss a tennis ball into the water as his Labrador chases it time and time again. I
think about falling in love – that fabulous, soaring love that you see in the movies. My lover
will be worldly and strong, and he’ll hold me tight on the beach at night and whisper poetry
into my ears. He’ll look like Sean Connery did two years ago in Diamonds Are Forever – dark
and mysterious, dashing in a tuxedo. Maybe we’ll have another child – a girl, perhaps? Elliot
will teach her how to fish and how to build towers, and she’ll show him how to dance and
how to tie bows in her hair.
Life, Suhaili. It’s the pursuit of life. You’d think Joe would try to find his life since he’s not
bound to that awful job anymore, but instead of celebrating his freedom, he’s dying because
he’s got no identity outside of being a cop. He’s a stick in the mud. He’s got no dreams, no
imagination. He doesn’t laugh ever, so no wonder he’s angry all the time. I can’t have that in
my life, you know? He’s killing my spirit, my joy, all of the passion inside of me.
My momma once told me that when some people are born, they begin to live. Other people, she
said, are born and then immediately begin preparing to die. I’m not gonna be shut down, not
like Joe is. He wants to keep dying, then let him. My boy and I
are survivors. We’re gonna seize the day. Elliot is going to learn to drive from race car drivers,
he’ll learn to paint from Georgia. He’ll swim like an Olympian and he’ll be a Grand Master at
chess. The world is limitless for us now, don’t you see?
It just means we have to leave. We have to cut loose the weights that are holding us back. I’m
not afraid of the unknown, and I know Joe says that makes me stupid, but I think it makes me
brave. That’s what I gotta teach my boy. He’s got to be brave if he wants to be happy.
Happiness to me is a butterfly. For a few people, it will simply land on them. But for others,
like me, we have to go out and find it, capture it, and be willing to let it go when it looks like it’s
dying in captivity, you know? We have to believe we will find another butterfly.
There is always another butterfly.
So off we go. We’ll get maps and we won’t take a direct route. We’ll get lost and we’ll discover
small towns. A grand adventure is ahead of us, I just know it!
I’ve got our bags packed and hidden in the attic. Soon as Joe leaves for work next week, I’m
taking the money and getting that car. Just like your namesake, that fabulous sailboat, the car
will give us all the freedom we need to finally feel our blood in our veins again.
It’s up to me to save my boy, Suhaili.
Surely you understand that?

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Au revior, good friend. Until we speak again!

Bernie

“Bernie’s journal?”
Olivia shades her eyes with one hand and looks up into the glare of the noon sun, although she
already knows that voice. She’s trying to determine how Gladys is going to react to a stranger
reading the diary of her best friend, but before Olivia can even explain, the older woman is
taking a seat in the sand next to Olivia’s beach chair.
“Learn anything in there?” Gladys stretches her legs out in front of herself, draping the long,
printed beach dress over her shins. She wiggles her bright red toes, as if making sure they still
move on command.

Olivia has no idea what to say. It suddenly occurs to her that Gladys really does watch
everything that happens out on this beach, and unease crawls across her skin. She’d made a
scene the morning before, and there was no way Gladys would have missed her neighbour’s
guest walking straight into the waves in the middle of a storm. She places the leather string
into the binding of the page she had just read and closes the journal, pressing it into the
tanned skin of her thighs as she fights the urge to fidget. The orange leather cover provides
stark contrast to the yellow tank dress Olivia had thrown over her bathing suit, the dress a
purchase made at Gladys’ shop only a few days earlier. She’s sure the other woman is going to
ask her questions, and with Elliot on a run and gone for God only knows how long, Olivia has
no hope of being interrupted. Next to her, Gladys laughs out loud.

“I don’t bite, you know. Well, don’t ask Jack about that, ‘cause that man’s seen me madder
than hell and he’d beg to differ, but outside of taking his head off ev’ry now and again, I’m
usually pretty pleasant.”
Gladys’ ability to have a conversation with herself makes the corner of Olivia’s mouth tip up in
a smile despite her discomfort. She can do this. The woman was Bernie’s best friend, and that
has to mean something.
“Elliot asked me to read the journal,” Olivia finally manages, her voice not half as strong as
she wants it to be. She feels guilty in this moment, because maybe none of them have the right
to read Bernie’s most intimate thoughts. Maybe she should have told Elliot no. Maybe Gladys
is about to tell her that the words on the pages are none of Olivia’s business because no matter
what Elliot’s said to her – and she to him – she’s not really part of his family after all.

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Olivia’s fingers skim the leather, and she is clutching the book before she realises it. She
doesn’t want to stop reading. There’s something in Elliot’s mother’s words that is weaving its
way into her, and at the very least it’s giving her insight into Elliot that she hadn’t anticipated,
even after more than a dozen years by his side. That he’s given her this to read makes her feel
like she’s a part of something far bigger than her, and she doesn’t want to be told that it’s just
a misperception on her part. Next to her, the smile falls off of Gladys’ face. The older woman
looks out at the calm ocean and exhales.

“Glad he did that. Bernie would have wanted him to know.”

For a moment, the blazing sun and the intense heat make Olivia dizzy. She can’t separate the
woman in the pages from the woman who sits next to her now.
“You’re telling him, aren’t you?” Gladys turns her head and juts her chin towards the journal
before looking Olivia straight in the eyes. “You’re not gonna pansy away from making sure he
knows what kind of woman she was, right?”
I wanted the sun on my face, she thinks. That’s why she hadn’t worn sunglasses out here. And
now Gladys was able to stare at her as if she can see straight through her.

“She was his mother-” Olivia starts, as if that implies Elliot knows everything about
Bernadette already. She stops mid-sentence, because it’s bullshit. Both of them know that
Elliot had seen what he’d wanted to, just like most people do. Besides, it’s something she’s
been debating for days – how to talk to Elliot about the journal. She’s got a million questions
– things she didn’t know. In all the years they’d worked together he had never once
mentioned that his father had been forced out of his job, or what that had done to the family,
to him. Elliot had always hated Tucker just a little bit more than anyone else, and it makes
sense now. Cops trying to catch other cops – nine times out of ten it was a sick witch hunt –
and Elliot’s father had been a victim of his own misguided loyalty during the worst era in the
history of the NYPD.

Olivia’s head starts pounding. God, how could she have not known? All the times that Elliot
rode the line, all the times that he had been stripped of his badge or suspended...Jesus. She
gets why he hadn’t called her in any one of those instances. She’d felt cut off during his
suspensions, as if he didn’t need to talk to her because she was part of the job and nothing
more. But the truth is that he had probably listened far too much when Tucker or some other
asshole told him he was a bad cop, that he was a failure.

She closes her eyes. Maybe it is a universal truth that children immediately assume the
fallibilities of their parents. Maybe emotional legacies are far more influential than genetic

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ones. Or maybe it’s easier to feel guilty and flawed than it is to look at a parent and realise that
they are not almighty. Instead they are easily capable of making terrible, terrible mistakes.
The confessions seem to come far too easily with this woman.
“I don’t know how to tell him,” Olivia admits softly.

Gladys doesn’t seem too concerned. She shrugs, tilting her head as she looks out towards the
shoreline.
“It’ll come to you.”
Olivia studies Gladys’ profile, from the high cut of her cheekbones to the thick fan of her
lashes which are dark enough to tell Olivia that the woman had once been a striking brunette.
The woman sits quietly next to her, leaning back onto her palms which are curled into the hot
sand. She knows, Olivia thinks. She saw me fall apart out there. For a moment her heart races,
because what little she remembers of the minutes or hours she spent in the ocean is enough to
tell her that she hadn’t appeared to be sane at all. She waits for Gladys to say something, to
judge her, but as the moments tick by without prodding, Olivia realises with a start that no
questions will be forthcoming.

Gladys had been Bernie’s best friend. Bernie – with the mood swings and the highs and lows –
a woman who had decided on a whim to take off to Paris and to fall in love with James Bond.
She wouldn’t find Olivia’s breakdown out of the ordinary at all.
“You saw, didn’t you?” Olivia finally breathes, her fingernails digging into the leather that
protects Bernie’s journal.
Gladys doesn’t shy away from meeting Olivia’s eyes again. She also doesn’t pretend that
Olivia is talking about the little public display this morning on the patio.
“Yeah. Just ‘til Elliot headed out into that surf. Was just making sure he was going after you,
and the boy didn’t disappoint.” The boy didn’t disappoint.

Olivia closes her eyes again and stifles the unexpected urge to laugh at the irony just a little
bit. If only Gladys knew the truth. It went so far beyond her casual assessment of what had
happened during the storm that it’s almost bordering on sacrilege. But before she even opens
her eyes again she gets it. It’s not that Gladys is minimising anything, it’s simply that she
knows enough not to strip Olivia bare with the truth of it all.

Out here, facing the calm seas and the unhindered sun, Olivia takes a deep breath and leans
back into her chair, stretching out her legs before she thinks to even ask Gladys if she’d be
more comfortable on the chair. Of course it had taken her a moment to do the right thing and

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offer – she hadn’t been sure she wanted to make Gladys comfortable enough to stick around
in the first place.

“Gladys, why don’t you take my chair-” she asks now.

The older woman laughs heartily.
“I’m old, Olivia, not broken. B’sides, I grew up sprawling this body on the sand, and I’ll damn
well do it ‘til the day I die.” She grins, and the expression transforms her face, making her
appear ten years younger. “So, you come from a big family?”
It’s a simple question, a genuine one. It’s not designed to make Olivia feel inadequate, or to
cause a sharp tendril of pain to shoot across her shoulders, but it has that effect in any case.
She’s tried to curb the respondent ache, God knows she’s tried, but the lack of insulation in
her life has left her raw in a way that makes her wonder if she’ll ever be able to withstand the
questions about family.
She shakes her head, working through the knot in her throat. Family. Six letters that have the
ability to make or break a person, that have the ability to cushion every fall or sharpen every
agony.
“No.”

It’s not enough of an answer to deter Gladys from pursuing her curiosity. Of course it’s not.
“Any brothers or sisters?”
Olivia scans the shoreline, wondering if Elliot will somehow magically sense the growing need
she has for his presence right now. She needs his voice, his wide stance. She needs him close
enough that she won’t feel like she’s on the witness stand. But he’s nowhere to be seen. The
ocean laps at the compacted sand before retreating, the ebb and flow of it almost hypnotic.
“Half-brother. His name’s Simon.”
The stilted words feel foreign on her lips. She doesn’t really even know what they mean. She
nearly risked everything to find Simon, only to turn her back on him at every attempt that he’s
made to contact her. Olivia had chosen to spend Thanksgiving alone twice rather than sit
down with him and his girlfriend; she’d been too busy for a coffee almost a dozen times.
Simon had left her a frustrated message once, about four months ago, straight out asking her
if he should just stop calling.

Olivia hasn’t responded, even until today. She doesn’t think she has an answer to the question
he had posed. Maybe her lack of response is enough for him. Simon doesn’t owe her anything,
and it’s not as if she’d done anything but ruin his perception of his father. He’d led a decent
childhood, and she hadn’t been able to bear the burden of Joe Hollister’s demons alone, so

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she’d shattered Simon’s memories, as if destroying the one good thing Joe had managed to
achieve would somehow even the scales.

Maybe in the end she had decided that Simon was simply better off without her.
There is a pressure building in her chest now that even the sun and the sand can’t alleviate.
She can see what she’s done; she can finally see the pattern of her behaviour. It’s always
seemed easier to be alone because the alternative meant she’d be close enough to someone to
hurt them. She’s kept everyone at bay for as long as she can remember, trying to save them
from the effects of her. Even in the years before Serena’s death, when her mother was trying
harder than ever to make time to have dinner together every now and again, Olivia had
avoided the contact as much as possible.

It’s a self-realisation that makes her scalp tingle and her eyes prick with unshed tears.
Gladys is mercifully not looking at her. Instead she’s squinting towards the horizon, unaware
of the way Olivia is struggling to maintain her composure. It’s been too much over the last few
days, she thinks. That’s why I’m like this. Just too much going on at once. She misses Elliot
and even that is unfathomable. That she could be needy enough to miss his presence after less
than an hour of his absence is unsettling at her core.
“You close to your parents?”

She can’t do this anymore out here. She can’t. Olivia knows that Gladys isn’t trying to prod at
every bruise she’s ever worn, but it feels that way nonetheless. If the older woman wasn’t so
casual with the questions, Olivia would have told her to mind her own business. As it is, she
knows she is going to answer anyway, because she feels some sort of unfamiliar compunction
to tell the truth to Gladys. It’s inexplicable, but the need to just answer the questions without
hiding or deflecting is paramount, it’s superseding even her self-protective instincts.

“My father died before I ever knew him,” Olivia answers, because the full truth of his role in
her life is too much to share. And then she is speaking without even comprehending the
clinical words she is forming. “My mother was an alcoholic who died several years ago.”
She hears herself then. Olivia hears the confession, the admission. She feels a heaviness that
pervades her body so deeply that she loses sight of the sunlight and the gleaming blue of the
ocean. She sounds so guilty and ashamed that she might as well be saying the accusing words
about herself.

Gladys is looking at her. Olivia senses the woman’s eyes on her, but refuses to meet her gaze.
It’s like something opened up inside of her yesterday and now she’s a sieve, unable to keep
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anything inside of her anymore. Christ. Olivia braces for the sympathy, the pity, the
condolences. She waits for Gladys to apologise to her, she waits for the words I’m sorry and
that must have been rough. Words that don’t mean anything, words that don’t change the
days, the weeks, the years of fear and inadequacy that her mother’s addiction created inside of
her.

“That’s not what I asked,” Gladys says matter-of-factly. “I didn’t ask if she was an addict or an
alcoholic. What I asked was if you were close? Did you talk to her a lot? Did she talk to you?”
Olivia turns and stares at the other woman, her ears ringing from the bluntness of Gladys’
statement. No one has ever talked to her like this outside of Elliot, and even then it took years
for him to even broach the subject of her mother. Gladys presses her lips into a thin line, her
dangling earrings glinting in the sun as they swing on her ears. “Just because someone is sick,
doesn’t mean you don’t love them.” Her chin lifts. “I loved Bernie, even though she would
make Jack and I frantic with worry when she was off on one of her fantastic jaunts.” She smiles
a little bit and shakes her head wistfully. “Bernie never meant to hurt anyone. She just had
things in her head that made her self-destruct. Yeah, she hurt me sometimes when she’d
disappear and I’d tell myself she’d have told me her plans if she loved me more, trusted me
more. I used to tell myself I just needed to be a better friend. Then I’d feel myself start to get
angry with her, because surely if she’d just told me she was lonely, I would have fixed it. I
mean how dare she treat our friendship with so little care?”

Olivia is frozen. She understands what the other woman is doing, what she is saying without
using so many words. Gladys is making her point in a way that doesn’t preach or judge –
instead she’s using her own life experiences to get her message across. For a moment, Olivia
envies the life Gladys and Jack had probably given their son. The woman was a natural mother,
through and through. But then the harsh reality of Nathan’s death crystallises, and suddenly
the guilt is back because there is nothing to envy about any family that is forced to endure that
kind of loss. Gladys exhales and her expression softens.

“Bernie explained it to me once, after she’d taken her car halfway to New Orleans to try and
literally bail out all those hurricane victims from the flooding water. She called me collect,
crying from a payphone in Mississippi because she’d gotten lost. She said she was fighting her
head the best she knew how, and sometimes – well, sometimes she lost and lost big. But she
said that it was always just an accident that she hurt me, because she never, ever meant to. Not
one, single time.”

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Olivia focuses intently on the water now. She seeks out anything of distraction. One of the
dozens of sailboats in the distance, the faintest hum of a lawnmower coming from in front of
one of the houses behind her. She counts the reflections of the sun on the water, and she
realises there are thousands of suns out there, maybe even millions.

“Saw Elliot running after you yesterday and he was running for his life, straight out into the
surf. I’m guessing you weren’t trying to hurt him either now, were you?”
The gentle way Gladys says it belies the harsh impact of her words. Olivia flinches, and she
tries to lock herself down, because this isn’t the life she knows. She doesn’t sit on the beach,
discussing her life with strangers. She doesn’t allow herself to openly crave Elliot’s presence
like she is; she doesn’t have to fight the urge to cry every five minutes. Her body aches, and
Olivia shifts in the chair. She can feel too clearly the places where Elliot has been. She vividly
remembers his lips hungrily slipping across her skin a few hours ago in the kitchen as she had
sat on the counter. She can recall the excruciating intimacy that she had instinctively rebelled
against until Elliot had talked to her, keeping up a stunningly soothing cadence of
encouraging words that made her relax just long enough to allow his mouth to find her. She
had let her head fall back then, against the cabinets, and her fingers had scraped against his
scalp as he broke through her inhibitions before she could even grab a breath.

Elliot. She’s sleeping with Elliot. She’s told him she loves him. She doesn’t know herself and
while that was exciting earlier, now it’s a terrifying realisation. She has to just breathe.
Breathe. She has to believe that the world isn’t going to come crashing down on her for this.
Faith. She’s got to find it and hang onto it because none of this is going to come easy for her.
Out of the corner of Olivia’s eyes she can see Gladys fill one of her hands with sand before
letting the granules slowly fall back onto the endless golden blanket of it.
“Bernie never intended to cause anyone pain, but sometimes when you love and let yourself
be loved, it happens,” she muses. “Gotta just expect to take the good with the bad, and decide
that it’s worth it.”

Olivia’s eyebrows furrow as she stares out as far as she can see. She can’t even turn her head
to look at the woman who can read her far too well. She can hear her mother’s endless
apologies, litanies that Serena would repeat incessantly to Olivia in the moments of sobriety
that followed one of her binges. Olivia had blocked out the apologies as soon as she was old
enough to know how to, because she had decided that her mother couldn’t mean them if she’d
only go back to drinking time and time again.

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But she hears Gladys. It’s the same thing Elliot’s been telling her – that he knows she’ll hurt
him, that he’ll inadvertently hurt her somehow at some point – but that avoiding the prospect
of pain isn’t worth avoiding the love altogether. She thinks about what Elliot told her about
Gladys’ son, Nathan, about how he had died in the first Iraqi war. She has to know how
someone makes it past that kind of loss.
“Your son,” Olivia whispers. “Elliot told me about what happened to him.”

There’s no wind, her whisper is more than loud enough to be heard. Next to her, Gladys
exhales. It’s a long, drawn out thing, but there is no resignation in the sound of it.
“If I knew I’d lose him so young, I’d still choose to be his mother all over again. Nearly killed
me when he died, but even months – years - of the darkest kind of grief couldn’t make me
think twice about the chance to do it again if given the opportunity.”
Olivia closes her eyes. The heat on her eyelids is nothing compared to the burn in her irises.
She’s been so scared to lose. So damned scared. And yet she did almost lose everything. If it
had been left up to her, she’d have let Elliot slip through her fingers years ago. He’s the one
who fights for them; he’s the one who stayed still, even through all of the hurt.

She’s still scared, even now. Maybe even more so. If she lets the last of her walls down, if she
believes – truly believes – and she loses Elliot somehow in any case, she won’t recover. Even
Elliot probably has no idea just how much she feels for him, how much she needs him. He’s
created a capacity in her that’s almost frightening in its intensity. If she does something – if he
does – to make this all fall apart.
“How’d you get through losing him?” Olivia murmurs.
Gladys sits up and brushes off the sand from her hands before standing. When she’s formed a
shadow that shields Olivia’s skin from the harshest of rays, she stands still.
“I started to count all the birthday’s I’d had with my boy, and stopped counting the ones I
hadn’t been given.”

Olivia doesn’t look up. She can’t. Instead she clutches the journal on her lap and stares
unflinchingly at the ocean. She’s so focused on just keeping herself together and calm that she
doesn’t even hear Elliot’s approach from behind her until Gladys breaks the silence.
“If you wanted some exercise, I’ve got plenty of furniture in the house that needs
rearranging,” Gladys teases, calling out to him.
Olivia doesn’t turn around. Not yet. She’s been watching the shoreline for Elliot’s approach,
but as with everything, he comes at her from a place she doesn’t expect him to. He must have
taken a different route, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he’s back, and she’s not

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left alone with her spiralling thoughts. She can feel him come closer behind her, and she just
focuses on evening out her pulse.
“Not a problem,” Elliot laughs easily. “But Jack might be insulted you don’t think he can do it
anymore.”

His voice washes over her – the easiness of it, the slightly noticeable way that he’s still
catching his breath from his run. Just from the sound of his words alone, Olivia’s body reacts
as if recognising her mate. Not her partner, not her friend. No, this is deeper, more intrinsic.
Everything’s changing so damned fast. Gladys is chuckling now, too.
“Trust me, Jack’ll be glad to pass on the task of redecorating to someone else. He never did
understand my need to change it up every now and then. I’ve told him change is good for the
soul, that it’ll keep him young, but he just grumbles that he’s enjoys his old fart status.”
She can hear Elliot’s insinuating smirk in his words as his legs bump up against the back of
her chair.
“He’s a very lucky man.”

He makes Olivia laugh despite herself. There are moments when he is a pain in the ass, others
when he is an impossible jerk, but then there are moments like this, when he’s simply
incorrigible. He’s always found it far too easy to make women of all ages blush when he turns
on the charm. When Olivia glances up at Gladys, she can see the older woman rolling her
sparkling eyes.
“You’re full of an incredible amount of bullshit, kid,” she chides dismissively. But a moment
later she’s smiling broadly again. “So, I was just chatting with Olivia here, but never got to the
point of why I came over in the first place. Whaddya two say to dinner at our place tonight?
I’ve got pork chops marinating already.”

It’s such a simple thing, a casual invitation. But it’s also a rite of passage towards the normalcy
that has always seemed so elusive to Olivia. She tenses, just waiting for Elliot’s response.
Maybe he’ll decline, knowing that being invited out to dinner together will be a first, and it’s
already been a startling number of firsts. Maybe he’s still getting used to everything that’s
happened as well, and needs time alone at home to process.
“You makin’ those mashed potatoes again?” Elliot tosses back, teasing still.
It comes so easy to him, Olivia thinks. The dinners at the neighbours, the interaction with
people outside of the job. She doesn’t know why it’s taken her so long to see just how much
more he’s experienced than she has. It goes so far beyond marriage and kids that she can’t
even wrap her head around it.

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“I can make that happen,” Gladys laughs. “Perfect. We’ll see you at six?”
Olivia flinches as Elliot’s hand brushes against the top of her head. His fingers slip across her
scalp, testing the strands of her hair. It’s a soothing thing, a gentle, steadying touch.
He knows. He knows how hard she is trying to accept all of the changes, the risks.
“We’ll be there,” he rumbles. “We’ll bring dessert.”
Olivia says nothing for long moments after Gladys leaves. Elliot doesn’t move. His touch
becomes bolder though, until she’s practically pushing her head back against his thighs,
instinctively seeking more.

“If we’re going too fast here, Liv-” he finally says, still standing behind her.
No. No. She doesn’t want to be left behind anymore. She’s got to swallow the fears; she has to
just let some things happen on their own. She’s forty years old, for God’s sake, and dinner
with the neighbours is still something new. If she doesn’t try with everything she’s got to just
trust that she won’t screw this up, then she’s going to end up alone no matter what.
After what Elliot’s already given her, shown her, she’s in too deep to turn back now in any
case.

“We’re good,” Olivia says quietly, and she lets the ocean lull her with its consistency,
wondering about the world beneath the surface of it, and all of the other things that she still
doesn’t know.

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326
 Chapter Twenty-Three

I
t's too early in the summer for the water to be this warm. He'd spent enough time on the
beach as a kid to now be aware of what this means for the heat that still lies ahead for the
coming months. Usually June provided the relief of as yet cool waters, and most
vacationers wouldn't trek to their summer homes until after the school year ended, but the
heat that's been prevalent this year has changed everything. The beach is already teeming
with families coming in for a few days to get their houses up and running in advance of the
promised scorcher of a season, and the Atlantic seems to have bought into the idea that
there's no time like the present to sink right into temperatures more suitable for the middle of
July.

Elliot makes his way out of the surf, ignoring the lingering discomfort that his movements
cause. It's not a physical ache that wraps around him, but rather one of recollection. The last
time he'd made his way out of the water the skies had been heavy and ominous, and he'd been
focused on somehow getting Olivia back onto solid ground. When his feet hit the hard,
packed wet sand of the shoreline he takes a deep breath and stops, just staring at the house.
He rubs a hand over his head, and lets the saltwater slide down over his skin. Solid ground.
Jesus, he's such a fucking liar.

He's going to take the ground right out from under her. She’s not in the house right now, and
for one moment, he's actually grateful for her absence. Olivia had made some excuse about
needing to check on her car because she'd parked it in a long-term beach lot for the last few
days. But he knows the truth, and in fact he understands it. She needs a little space to process
the tumbling changes. If a drive in her car to pick up some dessert for tonight will clear her

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head, then he has to trust that the time away from him won't make her second-guess
everything that has happened.

Even though she's got good reason to second guess all of it. Reasons she's got no idea about
just yet. Fuck. He stands there, not quite willing to move. He's got to tell her. The longer he
waits, the worse it will be. The argument that he's hidden behind - that this is the only way
she'll understand - is wearing thin. The problem is that Olivia's trust is still so fragile that he
sees the palpable wariness in her eyes when she looks at him, and it's going to be too easy to
just blow it to bits. He’d seared his lungs with a punishing run this morning, and he had been
relentless during his swim. After the incredible night he'd had, it's amazing he's now
considering heading back into the surf instead of physically collapsing onto a lounger on the
patio. But he's anxious. Restless. You can't avoid this. It's a growing voice in his head. One
that is rapidly gaining in volume.

With heavy steps, Elliot strides across the sand, ignoring the knots that are forming at the
back of his neck and between his shoulder blades. Sand sticks to his wet feet, and it kicks up
to attach to his damp shins. He can feel the grit of it on his skin as he gets closer to the house,
and he eyes the image in front of him. Olivia's chair still sits in the sand, abandoned. Music
filters out of the house - bleeding out through the screen windows and doors. On the patio
table she's left her towel and a huge red plastic cup sitting there, the last bits of ice of her
drink now a lukewarm puddle in the bottom of the container. Beneath the edges of her towel
he can see the tease of orange leather. His mother's journal.

For a moment, he thinks about opening it, about checking out how far Olivia has read. She
hasn't mentioned much to him at all about the contents, and that both relieves him and
terrifies him. Maybe she's not surprised so it doesn't require conversation, or maybe she's so
shocked that she doesn't know what to say. He can't deal with the questions that bombard
him constantly. He wants things to be concrete. Settled. He wants answers that give him what
he wants. What he needs. He needs to know that he's not being greedy - deceitful - by asking
her to just trust him.Elliot scrapes his teeth across his lower lip and exhales, roughly grabbing
her towel and the journal and walking into the house. The music feels a little bit too loud, even
if it is Springsteen. He tosses the journal onto the dining room table and wraps the towel
around his waist, hoping it will absorb some of the water that clings to his swimming trunks.
He can feel the growing agitation crawl over his skin, and he wants to tell it to fuck the hell off.
One damned day with her with no pressure. That's all he wants. One damned day.

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He slams his fingers into the power switch on the stereo, but it's a mistake. The resulting
silence is a mocking, incessant cacophony. Fucking letter. Maybe he shouldn't have. No. No.
He had needed to know. One way or another he had needed to know. Without it, he would
have wasted even more time before inviting Olivia out here. He'd received it and called her
less than two days later. He can't second guess the contents. He can no longer change what is
to come. It's out of his hands, and he closes his eyes, praying that she will understand that
he's not trying to hurt her.

He heads for the kitchen and tries to shake the heaviness that is settling around him. Olivia
had said she loved him. Loved him. As much as he had hoped, he hadn't expected, and it's
more than Elliot can wrap his head around. He knows that being with her is the right thing -
it's the most right thing he's ever known - but the obstacles are far from over. Elliot opens the
fridge and braces his hand on the door of it, letting the cool air within hit his chest as he looks
for a beer in the midst of the leftovers and Tupperware containers. He's got what he wants
now - for a few minutes anyways. He's got Olivia, and he doesn't know why the hell the
anxiety won't just subside long enough to let him enjoy it. No beer left.

He slams the door shut and stands there. Fuck. Fuck. He could tear up the letter, pretend it
doesn't exist. He can't throw this at Olivia - not now. He can't do this to her, he can't...
No. He squints into the nothingness. It's his new truth, and he's got to face it. He won't be
any good to anyone if he doesn't acknowledge that he isn't the same man he once was. He's
different now, whether he wants to be or not. Before he realises it, he's gripping the counter
and staring out at the ocean beyond, trying to control his breathing. He loves Olivia. He's so
maddeningly in love with her that it makes him crazy inside sometimes. She's let him kiss her;
she's let him slide his hands down her bare back and push himself high into her perfect, lush
body. He's heard her come for him, he's felt the uneven way she still inhales and exhales when
she sleeps. God, after all the years, the cases, the nightmares, the wins and losses, the leaving
and the coming home, the denial - it's such a tangled, complicated history that they have and
yet it's also as simple now as being in love.

He thinks of being her partner, how it's an impossibility now even if she thinks it isn't. He's
well aware that Olivia hasn't given up the idea of them working together or she wouldn't be as
willing to slip into this with him. She thinks they'll manage somehow, she's hidden things her
whole life and she thinks they'll hide this for awhile, too.
His chest feels dry. Hollow.

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The ocean is an iridescent colour that reminds him of light blue cellophane. It shimmers, and
he focuses on it. The house is already unbearably humid and it's either a perfect day or the
worst kind of heavy summer heat, he can't decide. Manhattan. He thinks about how the heat
crawled incessantly on them there. He thinks about the days they've spent at their desks, the
air conditioning not enough to counteract the weighted pall of the oppressive weather. He
thinks about the putrid smell of decay at the crime scenes in the thick of a New York summer.
How the blood would crack and dry, how the flies would swarm. He thinks of the shine of
Olivia's badge, and of all the people who had come and gone. Monique, who couldn't find the
line. Brian, who saw the line too clearly and who didn't want to get too close. Dani, who
needed someone to show her the line day after day.

His chest is creeping up into his throat. It's choking him. Lake hadn't cared about the line.
Casey had wilfully crossed it. Stuckey had wanted to redefine it, and as a result Elliot had
watched Ryan bleed out, he had been forced to watch a friend struggling to breathe at the end,
unable to do a damned thing to save him. Sonia's line had suffocated her, Jo's hadn't held
her. Alex had simply run from the constant search for the line, from the day-to-day of
the most fucked unit in the NYPD. She'd needed to make a difference, and there was nothing
about SVU that inspired confidence in the world. The cases only got worse, the victims
younger.

There are boats in the distance. They are regal, graceful. Their sails billow, cutting through
the calm waters. Their passengers probably feel the wind in their hair, and the ocean seems
manageable to them on a day like today. They can breathe, and the air fills them before they
even have to try. The sails give them the power to move. Olivia had been his line. He had been
hers. They had towed each other along, never letting either linger too long in the stagnancy
because a lack of movement meant sinking. He can't stop being her line now. No matter what
it means.

In New York, there are people who are dying. Some will live through the death, others will
not. He thinks of how he used to be so surprised early in his career with the unit. Both with
the good and with the bad. The extent of human survival and depravity had managed to stun
him for a long time. And then the shock wore off. Everything wore off. He wore down. He
thinks of Olivia. Of being her partner. He thinks of invincibility and as he watches the boats
shift in a constant tango on the horizon, Elliot thinks of running next to her across the
blistering pavement of Manhattan. He remembers feeling her presence next to him in the
field, how she was always just part of him. Benson and Stabler. Her name had always gone

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first, whether she was introducing them or he was. He knows why. It was her job, and he
would have cycled out years earlier if it wasn't for his consuming need to be with her.
Elliot blinks, and he can see Olivia back in the early days. Her hair had been dark and she had
worn it in a simple cut. Her suits had been too big, her hands too small. Back then they had
both been filled with possibility and hope. They were going to change the world, they were
going to buck the system and they wouldn't be statistics. He was a husband and father; she'd
meet Mr. Right and take maternity leave. They had been cocky and too sure of themselves.
Once.

Once.

Even in the silence out here he can sometimes hear the traffic that clogs and snarls the city
streets, until everyone is just sitting still, going nowhere. He knows the layout of the city
better than he knows the lines in his own face. He knows the alleys, the back room bars. He
knows the heights of the gleaming skyscrapers and the polish of the Wall Street restaurants.
He knows the graffiti-sprayed caverns of the subway system, and the sound of the unshaven
homeless, pandering for a quarter or two. Years in the squad room, nights in the crib. He
knows.

The cases became so much that they squeezed out everything else. The need to win in some
way became the single most driving ambition for them. If they stayed long enough, tried hard
enough, then surely there would come a sign that the sick fucks were retreating. To quit
meant to lose, and the battle had been all he could see. He never saw the greater loss of his
family, his marriage. Not until the game had already been over. The cases. The cases. They are
a part of him. Of her.He just doesn't want it to be all of them.

Elliot's mouth is dry and he curses the lack of beer. He's not sure of himself anymore. Not at
all. He's fucked up too many times, hurt too many people. He's not sure of jack shit. His
instincts have failed him a thousand times and cost people - children - their lives. And now the
only thing he has to get right is this. This. He can't wait anymore. She has to know. He has to
tell her, and he has to have faith that they'll get through this, too. Behind him, he hears the
front door open. He hears the rustle of plastic bags and he should go help her, but he's frozen
in place. The counter is still holding him up; the muscles in his arms are so tight they are
shaking. He grits his teeth and focuses on the boats. The damned ignorance of the teasing
boats, gliding as if thousands of feet full of danger isn't lurking below their moving hulls.
She's in the doorway to the kitchen then, and he should turn around. Can't lose this, he
thinks. He closes his eyes. Please forgive me, Olivia.
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"El?"
Her voice is uncertain, and he's done nothing to alleviate her concern. He's standing here,
not even acknowledging her.
"Everything ok?"
Olivia's words crack, and he can sense her immediate panic. She's waiting for this thing to
blow up, just like he is. They were invincible in the hell they had lived in, yet they are fragile as
paper in a firestorm in the peace and quiet out here. Tell her. He finally opens his eyes and
turns around, and he's praying in places inside of him that haven't even acknowledged God in
too many years.

Olivia is standing there holding a box from the bakery and two plastic bags filled with six-
packs of beer. Her favourite kind and his. Her hair is tousled, and he realises she had put the
top down on that car of hers. The car she had bought when she'd needed the wind to move
through her, too. The car she'd bought after the accident, after the birth of his child. A car
that encourages air, that forces her to breathe, even when she forgets how. She's wearing a
yellow dress over her bathing suit, and it sets off the golden, gleaming colour of her skin. Her
hair has more highlights in it now, as if the sun has had its way with her.

Her eyes are the only thing without light in them. They've already gone flat. She's staring at
him, and he can tell she's waiting for ground to be ripped away. Emotions cross her face in an
instant. Grief, loss, accusation. Understanding. She's expressionless then, and she's talking
to him in the silence. I can go. The plastic bags slip off of one finger, then another, barely
hanging onto the hook of the last. I'll just go. It's her first reaction, her first assumption. That
he doesn't want her anymore. That she is someone who can easily be left. And just like that
this is not the time.

"You got beer?" he manages, forcing a smile. "Was standing here hoping one would just
materialise."
She's eyeing him, not quite buying into his sudden change in disposition. Olivia's back
straightens though, and she gives him a small, hesitant smile.
"Yeah, we were out of it, and-"
He closes the distance before she can even finish her rush of words. His hand slides around
her waist and Olivia looks up at him, the flash of fear still evident in her irises.
"El-" she starts, not quite willing to let go of whatever she'd seen in him.

He kisses her then, his mouth on hers as if it's been there forever. It takes Olivia a moment,
but she opens for him, finally letting his lips align with the slant of hers. He's starving for her
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again, just like that. He's wanted to be able to do this at will for far too long, and he loses
himself to the newfound freedom of it. Her hands are full, but his aren't, and he uses that to
his advantage. He now cups her head in his hands and kisses her deeply, until she moans into
his mouth. Her tongue is right there, against his, and Elliot feels the blood pounding through
his body in anticipation of her. Olivia is the perfect height against him, and the tangled
strands of her hair are wrapped around his fingers.

The wind. He needs the wind. Not the still, hot air. He thinks about her, driving. The strands
he now holds whipping around her as she glides down the open road. Moving. No longer
standing still. He's hard for her, and it's too fast. Too fast.Somehow the bakery box makes it
onto the counter. The beer is forgotten on the floor. He's backing her out of the kitchen and
they are a tornado - a sudden mess of hands, of mouths, of panic and fear and relief. Her dress
is dropped in the living room along with her sunglasses. His towel falls in the hallway. His
bedroom is still dark, the shades still pulled and the bed left unmade.

Elliot moves her against it, until the backs of her legs bump up against the mattress behind
her. Olivia's body is all dips and curves, and her bathing suit is a teasing black shadow in his
vision. He fastens his mouth against the hollow behind her ear, grabbing fistfuls of her wind-
tossed hair. It's desperation. Assurance. For her. For him. She's on him as roughly and
quickly as he is on her. Fuck the doubt. Just fuck it. He can feel her fingernails on his
shoulders, they scrape hard down his arms, and Olivia is making a sound of pleasure deep in
her throat. It's frantic. Frantic. It's a swirl; it's a gust of movement. His palms slide under the
band of lycra at her hips and this isn't making love, or maybe it is. It's something. It's wild.
Untamed. He's just got to get into her.

Tell her.
In the perfect midst of her all around him, he ignores the warning.
***

She can feel his teeth on her. He's biting at her skin, and he's on her. She's naked and her
skin is damp and the soles of her feet are planted on the comforter as she cradles his rocking
body between her thighs. Elliot groans against her neck, he's not gentle at all. The muscles in
his back are grating as they shift, and his hips thrust hard, driving him so deep inside of her
that it hurts. Olivia cries out, but it's not that she wants him to stop. She wants this, she wants
him like this. Just like this. He doesn't stop.

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It's a late afternoon fuck. They are tangled amidst the thrashed bedding, their bodies covered
in the sheen of this and lit by the deep yellow heated haze that seeps in around the edges of the
closed blinds. Her teeth find his shoulder and he doesn't flinch as she loses herself to all of it.
Olivia closes her eyes, and they are not in Jersey, there is no New York. They are just people,
desperate people, and her need for him is only getting stronger. She understands the fables in
which the heroine falls on the dead hero's sword.

There is nothing without him, nothing that she can see right now. He's big inside of her, he's
relentless. Elliot fucks into her and he doesn't even say her name. They are wordless, and in
the dark she's created behind her eyelids, he's been doing this to her forever. Her body is too
wet for him, too willing, too needy, too ready. His hands are too rough as he grips her breast
in his palm; he sucks too hard on the sensitised tips. She'd been afraid earlier in the kitchen,
and she doesn't know why. But she'd felt the bottom fall away until he had reached for her.
And now he's moulding her body to his. She's taking him impossibly deeper. It's got to be
like this, demanding and possessive, because the fear is hovering over her. She gets the sense
it's on him too, and that scares her.

Her fingers press into the column of his strong neck, they spear up into his hairline. No. No.
She doesn't want to lose this thing she's found. New York can wait; her insecurities can have
her tomorrow. She just needs these moments with him first. Elliot's thighs are concrete, and
she's stretched around him. The pleasure is so intense that it is almost dark. She shudders as
his tongue flicks erotically over her nipple, her body contracts around the incredible
thickness of him. He's started a punishing rhythm; he's got his hands on the inside of her
thighs now, holding her open to him.

"'Livia-" he grunts.
She says nothing; instead she slides her fingers down his slick spine and fills her palms with
the muscles of his flexing ass. Her back rasps against the cotton as he moves them, and the
sheets are pulling away from the corners of the bed. It's hot in here, too hot.The air is thick
with moisture, and sweat slides down the back of her neck. Elliot's mouth covers hers and her
eyes are still closed - closed - and she can hear the sounds of the forceful way he kisses her.
It's wet, it's an uncoordinated clash of teeth and unintelligible apologies. She lets her cheek
fall to the pillow, and Elliot's seeking mouth immediately latches onto her exposed neck, the
shadows of her throat. In her dark world, she can see herself laughing with him, all those years
ago. The sun still finds the squad room, and they don't as yet know every take-out joint within
fifteen blocks. They are years away from finding the Chinese place on Forty- fourth. His cock

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pushes still deeper into her - and she swallows the sound of surprise. She turns her head and
kisses him almost violently, taking. Taking something.

The memories are everywhere, trying to find a place in the present.

She's sitting on his front porch, and it's too late at night. She wants to quit, and when he tells
her she can, she immediately tells him that she can't. There has to be a tether. A line that she
won't cut. He needs to know she can't walk away. She stays for years after that. He doesn't
leave her, even when she brutally teases him with her abandonment. He's there when she gets
back, where he's always been. Elliot's mouth skims her shoulder and then back upwards,
towards the hollow of her neck. He rolls his hips, and she goes taut, the white-hot, searing
need spearing through her. Through all of her. He grinds into her body without mercy or
restraint, and his perspiration and hers slip together. There is nothing smooth about how he
is fucking her now, it's all jagged edges and uneven groans. It's a thousand disagreements,
it's having the same hunch. It's the need to just launch at him in the locker room and feel him
tear at the horror of the day as he tears at her. It's the need to have the history mean
something that has nothing to do with the badge.

Elliot.

He's a stranger and the only man she's ever known, he's her family and he's just the job. He's
violent, he's so frighteningly uncontrollable sometimes, but even when she's scared for him
she gets the beauty of his brand of violence. Justice has been defended with his fists, with his
words, with his heart. Elliot draws her body up now at her hips, and he doesn't lift his head
from the nape of her neck. He's breathing hard against her skin, fucking. Just fucking into
her. This isn't slow. It's gripping, clawing, slick skin slipping along its mirror. He makes a
sound like it's hurting him, as if the gruelling pace of this is pushing his limits. Olivia opens
her eyes and stares at the ceiling. She hasn't known this, the safety of being below a man like
this, his big body shielding her. Elliot's tried to show her over the years, within the confines
of his marriage, but this - this is new. Every pore on her body aches in the relief, in the
assurance he's giving her simply by the desperate way he's taking her. The powerful slam of
him into her.

She loves him. She loves him.

And then her ass is in the palms of his hands and he's surging into her, apologising. She's
wrapping herself around him, and her head lifts off the pillow, her lips against his earlobe. It's
so hard, the pace of it, the demand of it. She can't breathe and she doesn't care, and she loses
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sense of time or sound or place. It's a rising thing, it's an excruciating build. She's going
higher, higher. Olivia clings to him, and she parts her lips just to get air. Her arms wrap
around his head, and she's half off the bed. Elliot's got one arm around her waist, a manacle
that won't let her go. His other fist is pressed into the bed, holding them up. And he's
driving, driving still. He's cursing, grating, angry and desperate all at the same time.

"Fuck," he grates loudly. "Fuck." He pounds into her on each word. Deep, slow, all the way.
A groan tears from him, and she can feel his body go rigid in the second before he convulses,
shuddering against her. He’s lost to his own orgasm, and it's not the thrust of him that finally
sends her over the edge. It's the heat that fills her, the sensation of his seemingly endless
release warming her from the inside out. She comes quietly, closing her eyes and
disintegrating willingly around him. She makes no noise, and he will only know that she has
tumbled too by the way her body constricts again and again because of his. She pays attention
to the way his release eradicates the hollows in her, to the way it makes her feel like she
belongs.

Elliot doesn't pull out after, not even long moments later when their skin sticks together. She
doesn't bring up her earlier fear; he doesn't lift his weight off of her. Their history is a series
of flashbacks that plays as her eyes close in anticipation of the sleep that will soon follow. The
last thing she remembers isn't the gun to his temple or the feel of his blood against her
fingers. It isn't the fear she feels standing outside a closed warehouse door as Elliot fights for
his life without her. It's not the sight of him bound and torn, his eyes pleading with her to save
herself.

The last thing she remembers of their past is of a night when she'd sat on his porch with him,
drinking tea while he sipped on a coffee. The case had gone to shit, but they hadn't. He'd
been her friend that night. Her best friend in the whole damned world. She had wanted to slip
her hand into his, but she'd dismissed the urge that night as childish and inappropriate.
Now, his breaths even and deep despite the fact that she knows Elliot is still awake, she finds
his powerful arm resting next to her head, and she pulls his hand out from beneath her pillow.
He opens his too-blue eyes.

She watches her fingers intertwine with his. He grips her back. Hard. Elliot's thumb brushes
hers, and he bows his head to the lacing of them. His mouth skims her knuckles. It's the most
profoundly intimate moment she has ever known. She falls asleep to the image of him kissing
the clasp of their hands, and just like that, the past finds a place in the midst of this.

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 ***
"Not yet."

Elliot leans back against the wall just outside the locked door to the bedroom Olivia had
originally occupied a few days ago. His ankles are crossed and his head rests against the flat
surface. His beer is now more than half-empty and he's damned sure he's going to get
through another full one before she finally relents.

"The hell you doin' in there?" he calls loudly. It's been fifteen minutes of this. He knows
because he's checked his watch almost once every sixty seconds during that time.
"Get a hobby, Elliot," Olivia retorts in exasperation from the other side of the door.
He grins and brings the still-cold bottle to his lips. He won't admit it, but standing here and
harassing her while she makes the very feminine move of taking forever to get dressed is
actually amusing him. He's used to her meeting him exactly thirty minutes after they are
called to a crime scene in the middle of the night, sometimes sooner, so it's taking some
getting used to that Olivia Benson might actually be fussing over how she looks. He takes a
long drink. He seriously needs to wipe the smirk off his face before she comes out. She won't
appreciate his amusement. At all. It's been about thirty seconds though, so that means she's
due for another taunt.

"I have a hobby," he says earnestly. He lowers his voice. "You're it. And I'd like to do my
hobby right now."
He waits, eyebrows raised, expecting something to hit the wall right near where he's currently
leaning. When nothing happens, he can't say that he's not disappointed. It's very possible
that he's got to up his game.

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Then he hears her footsteps come towards the door and stop.
"You wearing pants, Stabler?" she says throatily, just loud enough for him to hear her.
Christ. He's in his mid-forties for God's sake. He shouldn't be aroused this damned much
without a little blue pill. Men his age slowed down, got a grip. He'd like to get a grip, alright.
If she'd let him, he'd go for her as his first choice of things he'd like to get in his hands.
Second choice would be that he'd take care of his growing problem all on his own. He'd had
her not three hours ago, and he hadn't been gentle. Not that she had complained at all, but
still. Three hours ago. Her. Him. Bed. All her damned curves and that sun-kissed skin. The
length of Olivia's legs, the dark brown tips of her perfect breasts.

Elliot closes his eyes and his fist tightens on his beer bottle. He could call Jack, tell the man
they're gonna be a bit late. Surely another man will understand. Better yet, they could cancel
dinner altogether. He shouldn't have agreed in the first place.
"No," he finally answers. He's not wearing pants, and that's the truth. He's got a pair of
khaki shorts on, but if she takes his answer to mean something otherwise - something that
might encourage her to open the door - then he's got no problem with what he's implying.
"Go put some on, then," Olivia sighs through the door, losing all pretence of flirtation. "If
she's making dinner, least we can do is look presentable."

He stills. Two days ago she was anti-relationship and now she's in full on girlfriend status.
He's smiling like an asshole before he realises that even as his partner she'd tell him when he
looked like shit. Fuck. No matter which role she's channeling, the end result is the same.
He's got to change.
"You be ready by the time I'm done?" It's an honest question, he tells himself. In fact, he's
only asking out of concern that they make it next door on time.

No answer. He's used to this, too. Olivia is actually better than Kathy at giving him the silent
treatment. At some point Kathy would follow up on all her pointed glares by just cursing him
out. Olivia, on the other hand, has the remarkable ability to continue on like he's not even
there in the first place. For days. For a moment, her ability to shut him out causes his gut to
clench. His earlier anxiety isn't gone entirely; it's just that he's told himself he'll talk to her
tomorrow. Over dinner. If she's not planning on taking more leave then he's only got two
days left with her on this trip out here, so he can't put off the conversation forever, but it can
at least wait until tomorrow. He needs another good night with her, he needs more time.
He's chewing on the inside of his mouth and he's got to stop. Tomorrow. Elliot exhales.

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"If you're not dressed yet, can I offer a suggestion?" he tries, and his attempt at humour is
more for him than her. He wants the evening to be kept light. Easy. She has to know this can
be easy. He can't let his own fears sabotage this thing before he even gets started. With his
right temple now pressed against the wall, he feels the reverberating impact through the wood
before he hears the loud smack of it. A shoe, he thinks. Had to have been.

"I'll take that as a no," he calls magnanimously. "You can put the other shoe down."
He hears the soft sound of something dropping on the other side of the door. The amusement
is back, full force. Jesus, they used to tease each other like this in the early days of their
partnership. She'd try not to laugh and he'd try not to smirk but damn if everything wasn't
some sort of inside joke. He doesn't know when it was exactly that they lost this side to them,
but he can feel it coming back, slowly but surely.

He loves the hell out of her, pain in the ass tendencies and all. No one else could possibly
drive him to drink, swear, curse and fuck the way she can. Elliot pushes himself off the wall,
and beer in hand he heads for the master bedroom, still grinning. He could easily take a
lifetime of this. The teasing, the nagging, the domesticity of it all. That he's doing all of this
with Olivia is still going to take a hell of a lot of getting used to, but he's enjoying the shit out
of having her here with him. Tomorrow. God, he's got to stop thinking about it. Olivia can
read him too well, and if she senses his growing apprehension, she's going to assume he's not
comfortable with this newfound thing between them. She will never assume that his
discomfort has to do with his fear of losing her.

He's got to stop analysing this tonight. He's wearing a clean off-white t-shirt, so he figures
it'll go with pretty much anything else he's got. He's not used to caring about clothes - Kathy
had matched his suits and ties and left them on hangers together, and during the first
separation he'd just thrown on whatever was comfortable, even for the few misguided dates
he'd tried to go on. Out here, he usually doesn't give a flying fuck. Although he's got a slight
urge right now to find something that looks decent. Clean, at least. Ten minutes later he's
managed to find a pair of camel-coloured linen pants that as yet had the tag on them, a present
from Maureen for his birthday earlier this year. With the same shirt on, and his beer now
finished, he makes his way back towards Olivia's still- closed door.

"Liv-" he starts, about to knock on her door.

The door opens. He feels like a semi just barrelled into him. He takes one look at her and
immediately looks away, focusing over her head at the wall by the bed. Jesus.

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Looking away isn't helping. The image of her is seared into his brain, and even if he didn't
have that picture in his head, he'd be able to smell that damned scent on her. She smells like
gardenias and coconut, as if.

"El?"
It's the hesitant tone of her voice that draws his eyes back to her. He tries to lock on her eyes,
but while her face is more familiar to him than his own, he's still knocked on his ass by the way
she is looking at him. It's not that she's put on much makeup - if anything she's played up
that natural sun-glow she's got - but it's rather the overall effect. Her hair is loose and falls in
waves around her face. The perfect concave of her clavicle is highlighted by the two delicate
gold chains she wears. And the dress.Olivia's lips turn up just a little bit at the corners.

"You like it."

It's not a question she's asking. Instead she seems almost surprised, a little bit relieved. A tad
smug. Yeah. Yeah he likes it. Even though the red fabric falls almost to the floor and hides her
legs, the dress makes up for it by criss- crossing over her breasts, by holding up the dress with
straps that seem almost precariously delicate. It's not that it's fancy - it's apparently just basic
cotton - or that it's revealing in any way that isn't perfect for the beach, it's just that it's red.
Brilliant red. It's just a beach dress, he tells himself. That's all. Beach dress. Fuck.

He can't stop looking at her. Olivia is wearing flat gold flip flops and a few thin bangles and he
knows she didn't come out here with those things. Maybe she bought them from Gladys a few
days ago or maybe she bought them today, he's got no idea. But it doesn't matter. The effect
is spectacular. She looks like a woman who's spent her life on the beach, who entertains on
her waterfront patio and who sings to the bands that play on the boardwalk. Olivia's skin is
perfect, everywhere.

Fuck dinner. Elliot wants to taste her. He wants to put his mouth right where her dress
crosses in the shadow between her breasts. He wants to grab fistfuls of the cotton and bunch it
up in his hands, until he can pull it up to her hips and urge her onto him, the curtain of the
fabric draping across his thighs as he pushes into her. He can't stop skimming Olivia with his
eyes. He's used to the thick, black band of her watch on her wrists, but tonight the damned
bangles clang together softly, tempting him to press his mouth there, on the inside of her
wrist.

"Ready?" she says quietly.

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Elliot realises then that he hasn't spoken. He doesn't trust himself to. He knows he's seen
her dressed up a hundred times before, but this is different. It's insane that it makes a
difference, but it does. This time she dressed up for him. Not for anyone else. It makes him
burn with the want. His hand is on her waist again. He loves to touch her there, right above
where her hips slightly flair. He loves the dip of her waist, the way she curves just right. He
looks down between them, and Olivia has ducked her head just a little bit.

"I love you," he practically growls. Elliot doesn't know how else to tell her what she does to
him, just how profoundly grateful he is that she's already given him so much of her life, her
faith. He needs to tell her that he's humbled by the fact that she's even trying with him, that
she thinks he's worth working through a lifetime of fear. But he can't articulate all of that. His
voice won't give him enough leeway. Olivia's chin jerks upwards, until her startled, dark eyes
settle on his. He can see the panic that still flashes through her, and he can feel the way her
breathing becomes shallow. She's tempering down the flight response that lives innately
within her, and he knows it's a painful battle for her.

"We're gonna be okay, right?" she whispers without blinking. "We're not doing anything
wrong here." She searches his expression. "We're not. Right?"
Elliot widens his stance and pulls her closer to him. He tucks some of her hair behind her ear,
watching the movement. He doesn't want her to hate him for what he hasn't told her. She can
be angry, she can curse him out and tell him to go to hell, but he can't take the hate. It will be
too easy for her to think he's a deceitful liar, a manipulator who she had no business trusting.
It's a struggle to remind himself that he's trying to do what's best here. For everyone. Even
for her. Finally, Elliot meets her gaze.
"We're gonna be fine," he says, hearing a conviction in his voice that he doesn't feel.

She doesn't buy into his assurance right away. He can see the way she gives in to the wariness
for a few moments longer; he can feel the thrum of tension that hums beneath her skin. And
then she locks her focus on him again. Olivia tries to smile, but it falters.
"I'm so far out of my comfort zone here, El. One minute I think I'm fine and the next," she
shakes her head and looks down. "The next I think that I've thrown my life onto a roulette
table and the odds are, I'm not gonna win."
Her honesty will break him. Right here, right now. If she keeps talking to him like this, he
isn't going to be able to hold the conversation that he needs to have with her until tomorrow.
If she keeps talking - if she asks him straight out.

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"It's me," he rasps instead. "Just me. You know who I am. More than anyone, Liv. You know
me."
Olivia presses her lips together and nods, still not looking at him. Her fingers bite into his
forearm where he still holds her. When she looks up, the self-recrimination and apologies are
evident in her eyes.
"Yeah, I do. But I don't know me. Not like this. I know my accuracy rating. I know I'm good
with the vics, especially the younger ones. I know how to tell when a perp is lying, and-" she
stops, her voice cracking. She waits a moment before clearing her throat. "But this?" She
closes her eyes again. "I could so easily fuck this up and end up hurting you."

The pressure builds in him. The back of his neck tightens, his fingers feel numb. She's
worried about hurting him. Him. Elliot feels the knots forming between his shoulder blades
and the guilt becomes a solid, choking obstacle in his throat. He can't wait until tomorrow.
Every time he touches her, talks to her, and doesn't tell her, it's a lie he's telling. If she
doesn't know the whole truth, then he shouldn't be taking any of her. It's already been too
much, gone too far. This was a bad idea. He should have come clean in the beginning and
taken his chances, because at least then she might have forgiven him one day.

"Olivia-" he starts. Dinner will have to be canceled. Jesus, she may leave and this, this will be
the last of how he gets to touch her.
In his arms she straightens, exhaling.
"No. You don't have to say it. Just...I'm sorry. It's...I'm just getting used this, you know?"
She smiles then, and even though it doesn't touch her eyes, he can see the way she's
desperately trying. "They're probably waiting, so...we should go."
And then she's out of his arms, slipping past him through the doorway and heading towards
the kitchen, no doubt pulling out the dessert box out from the fridge.

Elliot rubs his hand across the back of his neck, trying to curb the headache that is forming
right at his temples. His gaze skitters across the mess Olivia left behind in the room. She'd
apparently tried on a few of the dresses she had bought, and the clothes from the dryer are
scattered across the bed, not yet folded. Her shoes are discarded near the door, and he sees
her cell phone left in the middle of the clothing pile, as if she's really not concerned about
anyone from the city calling her at all.

In under an hour, she had turned the room into a mess.He, on the other hand, has let his mess
build for far too long.

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 Chapter Twenty-Four

A
s houses go, it's not unusually large or small. Jack and Gladys' place is not sleek and
modern, but neither is it dated in the way some of the original oceanfront homes are.
A raised, ranch-style structure that sits ten feet above the beach, wrapped on three
sides by a wide wooden veranda that plays host to rocking chairs and a hammock, to rattan
patio furniture and an ageing bicycle. A wooden staircase leads down to a concrete patio that
features an outdoor dining set and barbecue grill. Bloom-filled pots line the perimeter,
overrun by impatiens and gerberas, geraniums and black-eyed susans.

Olivia stands silently on the veranda holding a glass of pinot grigio, watching Elliot and Jack
as they hover near the grill below. Light music filters out of outdoor speakers that are tucked
inconspicuously into the edges of the rooftop. Elliot is grinning at something Jack is saying,
and he lets the older man do the cooking while he leans back, tipping his beer to his upturned
lips.

To watch Elliot like this, at ease and relaxed, his obvious admiration for Jack openly apparent
- it's incongruous to the man she's known for the better part of twelve years. There are few
men that Elliot trusts, lesser still whom he looks up to. When the idol of his adolescence and
the namesake of his oldest son had turned out to be no better than any other perp, she'd seen
the very visible signs of Elliot's eroded faith. No one who crossed their path for months
afterwards had been given his benefit of the doubt in any way, and Olivia had understood the
bruised instinct all too well.

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It is always far easier to expect the worst than to hope for the best. But this particular moment
blossoms inside of her, growing in its simplicity, its beauty, the sheer rightness of it all. She
can see Elliot's respect for Jack in the way he defers to the older man; in the way he helps to
light the grill but doesn't take over, in the way Elliot anticipates the tools, the hand towel, the
plates that Jack needs and hands them over on cue. This is who Elliot would have been - could
have been - as a son had he been given the opportunity.
"They're good for each other."
Gladys cradles her own wine glass as she walks out of the open kitchen doorway. She nods her
chin, indicating the patio below. "Elliot's a fair bit younger than our Nate would have been,
but I think Jack sees the essence of our boy in him."
Olivia can't help but smile. It's a startlingly honest admission, but she would expect no less of
Gladys. The woman embodies both confidence and candour. She reminds Olivia of someone
who might be friends with the Kennedy's up at Kennebunkport. Her home is tastefully
decorated in Ralph Lauren prints and shabby chic furniture, her linen slacks and silk t-shirt
are understated yet elegant, and the meal she has prepared is far from the simple pork chops
she had promised. The menu includes fresh fruits, seasoned asparagus, mashed potatoes and
a homemade mango salsa. Gladys makes it all look effortless.

Gladys continues on, unperturbed by Olivia's silence.

"Never knew Joe Stabler, but from what Bernie said the man could be a real son-of-a-bitch.
He wasn't so consistently awful that she could ever muster up enough hate to leave, but I
know he didn't always use his words to solve his problems. Know what I mean?"
She watches Elliot. Yeah, she knows what Gladys means. There's been enough in the journal
already to tell her far more than Elliot will ever admit to. She remembers her own fights with
her mother - and she will never forget the feeling of her mother's hand brutally connecting
with her face for the first time. Something had been lost in that moment. Some essential sense
of safety that should have been nurtured instead of severed. Olivia meets Gladys' gaze and
tries to hold it. But the older woman's eyes are far too assessing, and it sends Olivia's focus
back towards the scene below.

"You and Elliot are a lot alike," Gladys muses. "After you came out here a couple years ago,
Bernie would always say that her daughter-in-law was either a saint or stupid, because if Joe'd
had a partner that looked like you, Bernie would have just packed her bags."
Dread slides down Olivia's back. It's one of the things she's afraid of - what Kathy will think
of her. She respects the hell out of Elliot's ex-wife, because twenty-five years of being married
to a cop is damned near heroic no matter how the marriage ends. Kathy is capable of things
Olivia will never be able to accomplish, and it is important to her that his ex-wife - despite

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whatever else she might think - doesn't see Olivia as someone who has always been just
waiting in the wings for their marriage to collapse.
"Elliot would never have cheated on his marriage," Olivia finally manages. She takes a sip of
her wine, but her mouth still feels dry nonetheless.
"You wouldn't have disrespected his marriage either."
It sucks the breath out of her. This absolute faith she's being given by someone who is
essentially still a stranger is overwhelming. She looks at Gladys and tries to keep her voice
from shaking. The confession is swift, unexpected.

"I thought about it."

The other woman grins, and her eyes alight with amusement.
"I'm sure he did, too. No harm in thinking ‘bout it. Hell, you shoulda seen Mary Kendrick's
husband, Frank. They lived across the street - a block off the beach - for eight years. Just
moved away two summers ago. You would have thought Paul Newman lived in the
neighbourhood. Had a good time with Frank in my head more than once or twice, you
know?"
The laughter that breaks from Olivia is so wholly unexpected that she almost drops her wine
glass. Affectionate warmth immediately floods her -not for this place, for this evening or even
for Elliot. Instead it's for the woman who stands next to her. In her unwavering acceptance,
Gladys seems to offer the protection of her friendship.

"Bernie was lucky to have you," Olivia says quietly when her laughter subsides.
Gladys shakes her head and downs the last of the wine in her glass.
"I was lucky to have her. A lot of people looked at her like she was damaged, but the truth is
that beneath all of chaos she wore on the outside, she was probably the most hopeful person I
ever met. She believed in true love and magic and endless possibilities. The only darkness she
saw was in people who didn't believe."

His mother and hers. Similar in some ways and yet total opposites in others. Serena had given
up; Bernie had waited for something to happen until the day she died. Neither one had found
any sort of happiness in their reality because they hadn't been able to see it for its truth.
The truth is, she loves Elliot. She has for a long, long time. He's the start and the end and all
of the in-betweens. He gives her moments like this, when the only thing that is difficult is her
ability to grasp how easy it is. That realisation shakes her - it's not hard to love him. It's
painfully perfect against the backdrop of their convoluted history. From the patio beneath
her, Elliot looks up. He shields his eyes from the sun and grins at her.

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"Any chance you want to bring a coupla cold beers down here with you?" It's a rhetorical
question, because in no time at all he's back to his conversation with Jack. Gladys chuckles.
"I'll grab ‘em. I've got to bring the food down anyway. You go ahead."
"I can help -"Olivia starts.
The other woman shakes her head.
"Jack's been plotting and planning a deep sea fishing trip with Matty. I told him he's too
damned old to go out there like he used to. My guess is he's trying to rope Elliot into going
and bringing Dickie so I've got no excuse to put my foot down. Sooner you interrupt that
conversation, the better."
The way Gladys so easily prattles about the future is a little bit unsettling, but Olivia tampers
the inexplicable unease.
"Who's Matty?"
The mere mention of the name makes Gladys' face illuminate to the point where she looks
fifteen years younger.
"Our boy fell in love in high school, and didn't admit it until his third year at Annapolis.
Jessie's her name. Kept saying he wanted to marry her, but one thing or another made Nate
put it off. First it was his career, then she started med school." Her smile falters just a little
bit, becomes more melancholy. "They were inseparable until he had to leave for Iraq. Finally
put a ring on her finger the night before he left."

Something inside of Olivia twists painfully. She knows how this story ends, how Nathan never
came home. There is sadness for what Gladys lost, but it's more than that. It's all of the signs
that keep hitting her, reminding her about the dangers of putting everything off. It's too late.
She's said that to herself a thousand times. She's used those words to explain why she
stopped trying, why she stopped believing in any sort of personal future. Only it's not too
late. She's still breathing, still standing. It's a powerful, heady and frightening thing - the
awareness that it isn't too late, after all. Gladys doesn't halt in the face of Olivia's silence.

"Took Jessie a year after Nate died to find someone, and when she did it turned out to be
Nate's best friend from his squadron. He's a good man, and if anyone was gonna help Jessie
through her grief I'm glad it was Peter. They bonded over losing Nate. A year after that they
got married and had Matty. He's Dickie's age - been part of our lives right from the start, no
different than if he'd been Nate's son." Gladys' eyes twinkle with grandmotherly pride.
"They live out in Cherry Hill and have a daughter now too - she's nine and just a beauty - but
Matty is the one who spends a lot of his time here." She smiles again, waving off the story as

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she heads back into the kitchen. "Those boys want their beers and here I am telling you our
life story. Go on down, I'll be there in a minute."

She's gone before Olivia can utter a word. There is an image that Gladys paints that just
mesmerises Olivia. It's a landscape that goes far beyond the sand, the shoreline or the
sprawling evening sea that she is staring at. This is what she had imagined as a child. Families
formed in unusual ways, yet family nonetheless. Routines. Consistency. Acceptance. It's the
powerful healing that can come after a splintering break. It's been less than a week out here,
and already she feels her faith in humanity growing. Just a few days without the ugliness has
changed her. She thinks about New York and her first grainy recollection is of being bathed in
sweat, of sitting up in the middle of the night on the couch with her heart already racing. Over
the last few months that has happened so many times that the nightmares don't even faze her
anymore. The demons had blended together in her dreams, until the attackers didn't have a
discernible identity. Instead it had been the darkness, coming for her, night after night.

As she takes the stairs down, Olivia wonders if it will be different now with Elliot by her side.
If she can sleep next to him at night, maybe she won't hear the sound of the traffic or feel the
restless pulse of the city crawling on her skin. Maybe if he's holding her the apartment won't
creak and groan and the nightmares will subside. She'll make a concerted effort to talk to him
about the worst of the cases, and when he comes back and the shit starts to pile up she won't
let him bottle up his anger inside.

It doesn't seem real. It's a life she can't picture, and for some reason her inability to make
their world in New York crystallise unnerves her. Still got a day or two left out here, she
thinks. They can talk about all of it later - what they are going to do about the job, where he
will live, what they will say to Cragen or Munch or Fin, if anything. It's all a weight that she
doesn't want to acknowledge right now. She just wants to enjoy this. The here. The now.
Olivia steps onto the patio, and Elliot is grinning widely.

"How d'ya feel ‘bout deep sea fishing?" he asks as she comes closer.
For some reason the image of Elliot and Dickie packing for a boat trip is instantly clear. Too
easily she sees the equipment piled on the driveway of the beach house; she can hear Eli
begging to go. The screen doors bang every time they are opened or closed, and Lizzie is
there, scooping her younger brother up while promising him a trip to the boardwalk and the
Ferris wheel, telling him they'll win a goldfish or two instead.

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"Liv?"
Too quickly, her gaze snaps up to his.
"You okay?"
It's a casual question, but she hears the concern in his voice. Olivia nods and smiles.
"I'm fine." Elliot nods, but his eyes linger on her. Watching her, as if waiting for her to run.
Like hell.
It's an ironic thing that he thinks she could leave, because the truth is that even if she wanted
to run, at this point she wouldn't even know where else to go. No, no running.
She's better than she's ever been, right where she is. She is with him.
***

He's probably looking at her too much. He's also grateful that he's safely sitting down right
now, his lap hidden by the wooden tabletop. Gladys is saying something - he's long ago lost
track of the conversation - and Olivia seems enraptured with whatever it is they are
discussing. She's leaning forward, her plate now empty - and her chin is resting on her fist as
she grins. Olivia is luminous. The evening sun finds her, saturating every dip and crevice and
curve. He thinks about how he'd been on her, only hours before, and he wants her again.
Only this time he wants Olivia straddled across him as he sits here. He wants the thick, dark
oranges of the sunlight slipping over her skin; he wants her naked in the open air. He's at
dinner with the neighbours yet he's hard as hell, again. Again.

Unfuckingbelieveable.

He'd been stupid to think he'd ever fully sate himself inside of her. Instead his physical
awareness of Olivia is only growing, literally. Dinner had been amazing, and he knows he still
has to endure dessert, but after that he's getting her the hell out of dodge and back into his
bed. Elliot shifts uncomfortably in his seat and tries to clear his throat inconspicuously.
Olivia's eyes catch his, and she holds his gaze. It's just a second too long, and all of a sudden
he knows that she knows. She knows he wants her right now. She knows he needs her. Damn
her arrogant, tempting smile. Damn the way she too easily teases him, plays him. Damn the
taunting shadow between her breasts, damn the hollow of her neck. His fists clench on the
napkin across his lap - her hips are perfect. He loves the way she fills his hands, how her body
is strong and takes his without any threat of breaking. He likes to scrape his teeth gently
across the underside of her breasts, where her skin is impossibly delicate and soft. He wants
to -

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"Elliot and I found a rhythm," Olivia is saying. "It's not quite the same with anyone else, so -
"
She's not talking about sex. He knows this. He's entirely sure that she wouldn't do such a
thing with strangers, let alone with Jack and Gladys. So he just has to pay attention, get back
into the game here and -
"It'll be good to have him back at the squad," she finishes.
Just like that, he's paying attention. Olivia looks at him again, and even though she smiles
once more she is telling him something. There is a message in her expression, in the
dichotomy between her suddenly forced grin and the questions that flash across her irises.
When? Elliot wants to say something that will assure her, but at the moment, he's too
concerned about Jack's reaction. The old man is still sharp as hell, but his complicity isn't
guaranteed. Immediately, Jack's body becomes rigid and he sits up straight. He looks Elliot
dead in the eyes, entirely unamused.

"So, kid. When're you planning on heading back to New York?"

Jack knows the truth. He knows because when Elliot had needed someone - anyone - to talk to
about that letter, he had chosen Jack. He can't do this right now. He needs another night,
maybe two. He has sworn to himself that he will find the right time to talk to her, but now, now
isn't it.
"Haven't decided yet," he manages. Fuck. His beer is empty, too. His lying throat is locked
up tight, and he's got nothing to reach for. He's made decisions. Necessary choices, but
choices nonetheless.
Jack's laughs mirthlessly.
"That right?"

The silence sits heavy at the table. If Elliot opens his damned mouth, he's only digging
himself further into the shit-hole. But the awkward tension is palpable. Unlike Elliot, Jack is
straight up. His sarcasm isn't lost on anyone. Elliot grits his jaw and stares at the empty beer
bottle.
"He'll be back when he's ready."

Elliot's eyes almost close at the breathy sound of Olivia defending him. She sounds uncertain
as hell, but she won't leave him open to scrutiny either. Not if she can help it. She might
confront the shit out of him herself, but no one else will, not if she can help it.
The knowledge of what he's doing to her nearly chokes him.

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"Job isn't easy to begin with," Olivia continues gently, filling the lapse in conversation. "El
takes the cases more personally than anyone. Having kids," she pauses. "Has to make it even
more impossible to withstand what we see. He needs the break, however long it takes."
Everything around him feels abrasive. The wooden chair against his back, the sun on his skin,
her absolving words in his ears. Elliot peels the label from the beer bottle, and he thinks this is
the lowest he can go. This has to be it. He's sitting here like an asshole, withholding the truth.
He's told himself a thousand times that she had to first love him before she would understand,
and that was the purpose of bringing her out here. But the way Olivia defends him - Jesus, in
truth he didn't need to ask her out here to Jersey to find out how she felt. She's the one with
the family history relevant to their unit. She's the one who stares her lineage in the face every
day. Yet she sees his suffering as being more acute?

It's Gladys who gently responds. "You ever think about doing something else?"
Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see Olivia lean back in her seat, bringing her wine glass
with her. Her fingers trace the rim of the glass.
"I've tried other units, but..." Her laugh is soft, almost self-depreciating. "SVU is...it's who I
am. Can't imagine anything else."
Elliot's got no right at all to feel the burn of anger or frustration in this moment, but the
emotion seizes him regardless. All of a sudden the sun is too bright, the night too warm, the
food too filling. He grips his beer bottle and tugs at the label. He doesn't give two shits about
dessert, and he sure as fuck doesn't want to continue this conversation. Maybe he should just
tell her. Maybe -

"You never wanted to get married? Have kids?"

Elliot's gaze whips to Jack's face, wondering what the hell the older man is thinking by
pursuing this line of conversation. He's talked to Jack. The man knows about Olivia. He's
heard Elliot's observations about her; he knows what Elliot wants for her and what she's
never had. He tries to catch Jack's gaze to no avail. Instead Jack is staring intently at Olivia.
"Jack-" Gladys interrupts with a warning.
Instead Jack tips his chin towards Olivia, his eyes focused solely on hers.
"She can answer for herself. Seems to me she's got all the answers."

Elliot can feel the burn in his gut. Jack's always got a reason for everything he does, and he's
sharp as hell, but right now the need to protect Olivia in the same way she had defended him is
paramount. Only Elliot doesn't actually want to defend her choices. He wants her to see that
her choices are bullshit. He looks at Olivia instead, knowing that if she needs him, she will

353
catch his eyes and give him the signal that it's okay to jump in. She meets Jack's perusal head
on. Olivia's head lifts and she straightens, just as clearly as her eyes shutter.
"Sure. Just didn't work out that way." Her answer is clipped, practiced.
Jack chuckles and shakes his head.
"That's the problem with you young people. You think life is about fate and destiny and
what's meant to be. That's all a bunch of crap. Life isn't a ride you're on; it's a car you're
driving. When time passes you by, it's because you let it. When a marriage falls apart, it's
because someone broke it. Even when bad shit happens, you choose how you're gonna
handle it. Be damned sure that there's always a path that will leave you better off and a path
that will leave you in the crapper. You get to choose."

Everyone is silent at the table. Olivia is unmoving. She stares at Jack, and Elliot doesn't see
any anger in her expression. She can probably count on one hand the number of people who
have called her out on the table, and of those few, for some reason she seems to be listening to
Jack even if she suddenly seems too vulnerable to Elliot. She willingly gives the older man the
audience he needs.

"If you weren't a detective - if you weren't a cop at all - what would you do?" Jack continues.
Olivia's smile makes a brief appearance before it falls away.
"Thankfully I haven't had to find out."
Jack leans forward, his arms resting on the edge of the table.
"Bullshit. ‘Course you have to find out. That job's only a part of you. It's what you do, not
who you are. You might find meaning in it, and that's fine, but who you really are is who
you'd be if that job were taken away from you. That's the girl you gotta meet. Hell, that's the
girl I'd like to meet."

Elliot hasn't taken his eyes off of Olivia's face. Not for one second. Her startled gaze now flits
to his and he can see the chinks in her armour clear as day. He sees the ways she thinks she is
lacking, he sees the possibilities she fears. He knows that she feels like a fish out of water and
that for all of her confidence and swagger, she still has profound moments of insecurity.
"I know her," Elliot interrupts quickly, and Olivia locks eyes with him immediately. He
knows his timing is right when the flash of relief crosses her face. He grins wolfishly. "And I
can promise you're never going to meet her, Jack."

The innuendo isn't lost on Olivia. Her skin flushes, and her half-smile tells him she knows
what he's thinking about.
"Jesus, Elliot," she whispers under her breath.

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Gladys tosses her napkin at her husband.
"How about you get your bossy butt up and help me bring down some dessert?"
Jack doesn't move. Instead his assessing gaze is still on Olivia.
"Wasn't a question, Jack. Direct order. Get up and give these two a break." Gladys taps him
on the back of his head affectionately. "Now, Jack. Now."

When the older man reluctantly gets up and follows his wife up the stairs, Elliot leans back in
his chair.
"You okay?" he asks quietly. She is watching the ocean, breathing deeply. Olivia says
nothing.
"Liv?"
When she finally looks at him again, the corner of her mouth tips upward. "Nathan was a
lucky kid." Olivia's voice is rough, her eyes too dark against the late day sun. "You ever
wonder what it would've been like to have that? To have someone in your life that was always
the voice of reason?"
When her voice becomes husky like this, it always makes his breath a little shallower. If she
hadn't asked him a question, he'd be content to just listen to her talk.
"I've got that," he says instead.

Olivia gives him a long look. It's not full of anguish or pain; it's not glittering with her
amusement. It's just her, letting the silence speak for itself. The breeze is picking up as the
evening wears on, and he wants this day to happen a thousand times. She could wear this red
dress forever, they wouldn't get older. They would just stay like this, endlessly.
The ocean draws her attention again, and he knows she's thinking about what Jack said to
her.
"I never saw you as just a cop, Olivia."
Her eyes fill as she watches the tide.
"It was enough. For a long time, being a cop was enough."
He doesn't trust his voice. As it is, his throat is scratchy as hell.
"And now?"
She smiles again, still focused on the ebb and flow of the waves.
"I don't want dessert."

Olivia finally looks at him. Her eyes are soft, and she wears a sadness that makes him itch to
touch her.
"You think Gladys would mind if we headed home? I just -“

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He's always more sure of himself when there is something he can do for her. Hell yeah, he can
make excuses and get them home.
"Got it covered," he grins as he pushes his chair out and stands up.
Olivia is right behind him, and before he takes the first step, she reaches out and catches his
hand, pulling him back towards her. Elliot turns on his heel, and she's so close. So damned
close. Her fingers are a little too cold in his, and before he can even think about how to warm
her, Olivia is surprisingly up against him.
He wants to groan at the sheer fit of her, but he can feel the urgent press of her fingers at his
lower back. She's shaking just a little bit, and he can tell she is trying to get herself under
control. That she seeks his body for comfort takes his breath away.

"It feels good," she whispers into his neck. It's a confession, the gentlest of admissions.
Elliot is the one facing the ocean, but he doesn't see it. Olivia is in his hands - of her own
volition - and when she chooses to touch him it never fails to startle him. He doesn't question
her words, doesn't prod at them or ask her to explain. He gets it. Beyond the attraction, the
sex, the desperation and the ache, there is also a simplicity to being with Olivia that goes
beyond anything he has ever imagined. It is two pieces snapping into place, the magnets
finally being allowed to lock together.

So he holds her on the neighbour’s patio, and his palms slide up and down Olivia's spine. Her
breath finds his and matches it. Seconds pass and she exhales, the rigidity gone again. He
forgets for a moment about what he needs to tell her, and she seems to forget that she is in
new territory. And while his body will never be sated because of her, his chest is complete.
Olivia's mouth brushes his jaw.

"Is the rest of the world a million miles away?"

In fighting for this, there is a fight that also finally ends.
"Yes," he answers.
For a moment, it is the truth.
***

She stands in the middle of the Atlantic summer dusk. She is by herself, yet not alone at all.
Her insides are warm, her cheeks are heated. If she tries really hard she can actually feel the
salt air settle on her skin. She's not even close to being drunk, but she's holding a half-empty
glass of wine and the rest of the open, chilled bottle is planted in the sand behind her, just out
of reach of the receding tide. It is a moment of mercy. She breathes.

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The ocean is fierce and gentle, and she thinks it's like him. It can suck her under or it can
buoy her up and it can wash her clean all at the same time. She can hear the strains of music
that come from the house, and she's alone out here, but she expects she won't stay that way
for long. He will find her. He always does. She isn't scared. For just one moment in time, she
lets the belief take hold. She's been a decent partner to Elliot, and he's still with her - more
than twelve years later. He hasn't walked away, so maybe she has actually been enough.
Maybe she can be more. Maybe he'll stay. Maybe she will.
Maybe she can do this. Love him, the way he deserves to be loved. She could love Elliot
without expectation and inside of comfortable silences. She can love him just as she sees him,
just as he is. He wouldn't have to be one person on the job and another when he leaves. He
could bring his nightmares home to her, and he wouldn't be alone in them. Olivia closes her
eyes and the beach is not only in front of her. It is everywhere. It's between her toes and
shimmering up the sails of her dress and it is behind her, in that house that has become a
refuge from the life she has known. She feels like she is moving on the water and if she really
concentrates she can feel the way the waves rock the ground beneath her. She stands still and
lets it move her.

The breeze is on her face. Her hair blows gently and she closes her eyes. This is why little girls
dance on their tiptoes, she thinks. They feel just like this. Free. With life ahead of them,
instead of left behind. Laughter comes now. It's not the sort of laughter that is meant for
anyone else. It's quiet, gentle - a soft settling of her chest. It's not something designed to
prove she's okay, to tell a lie, to deflect the truth. This is her truth. She is okay.

It hits her like a rushing wave. She has believed for too long that she was too broken for this.
She has told herself that she didn't deserve love, and that even if anyone - if he - tried, she
wouldn't know how to love him back. But she does. It's in her. She might actually be able to
do this. She wants to love the hell out of him. She's gonna try damned hard. That's all she can
do. She can try. He wants to try and love her, too.Maybe it is that simple after all.

The wine is sweet and bitter and the crisp edges of it are fading as it warms in her glass. It
coats her lips, but she doesn't worry about drinking too much. She's worried for years that
the nights of too much tequila meant that she was inherently an alcoholic, but she's not that
either. She hasn't killed anyone in a fit of rage; she didn't accept it as her legacy when she
became a vic. She's not them.She's not her father. She's not her mother. She's got cracks
inside of her, sure, but she's not irreparable. Olivia closes her eyes and loses herself to the
warm air, the sliding breeze, the water that flirts with her toes at the ocean's edge. Of course

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Elliot would be the one to do this for her. Really, it couldn't have happened any other way.
She's in love with him.

The laughter comes again. The fear isn't gone, but it's a weakening storm within her. She
might not be just like everyone else, but she's not alone either. She's going to have someone -
him - and there won't be restrictions on how she can touch him, how much she needs him,
how much she wants him. One day he's going to kiss her in public, and she's going to leave
him a suggestive note in the pocket of his sport coat. One day she will be so comfortable
sleeping next to him that she will shake him slightly when he snores, and she will push him
away in the morning when he tries to kiss her before she's brushed her teeth.

She is going to argue with him and tell him he is wrong when he is right and maybe he'll shut
her up by just finding his way inside of her. There are other things, too. They'll stay partners
for awhile at least, and when she brushes up against his sport coat, she won't have to pull away
and pretend it doesn't affect her. She'll be able to look at him too long, and when Elliot leans
in to talk to her and she can feel his breath hit her skin, she will openly let him see the want
slide over her.

The laughter is soft, but it keeps coming in small little bursts from nowhere. It's so, so
ridiculous and it makes perfect sense. All the voices of reason fade, the caution takes a break
and she is just her. Olivia. And he is just him. Elliot. And the world isn't conspiring against
her. Instead this is, this is all hers. It is too much and just enough inside of her.She smiles a
little too much. When she looks down, the ocean tickles the hem of her dress, and she makes
no move to step back and away from its reach. Maybe it's just the effects of the wine or him,
but the water seems warmer than she remembers. It's clear as it splashes over her painted
toenails and she's grinning.

She's in love with Elliot Stabler. Her partner.She's going to get so much shit for this back in
New York. Olivia finishes the glass of wine in one reckless sip and then she's drawing things
in the sand with her toes. Her dress is wet, and she...she's wearing a summer dress. Her eyes
blur before she realise what is happening. She's living for herself in this moment. Just for her.
Her chest contracts sharply, cracking wide open on the release. She's out here, exposed, and
she's not self-contained. A surprised cry breaks from her before she can stop it. It's not grief,
or guilt. It's digging deeper than she ever thought she could and realising she's not dead after
all. She's alive. In the core of her, she's still alive enough to hope. I'm so sorry, Mom.

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It's an apology that she's said a thousand times, but this time it's not because she failed her
mother. She couldn't have saved Serena, not before the rape and not even in all the years
after. Olivia is no different than Elliot is in that regard. Neither one of them had been
responsible for their parents. So she is sorry - yes - but this time it is because she knows what
her mother missed. Her mother never experienced this moment; she never felt the healing
that comes only beneath the light of possibility. She thinks about Elliot, and how it took her
forty years to find her first love.

Okay, Elliot. You want me? Then you've got me. In truth, you've had me all along. And then
the music coming from the house seems louder, the empty wine glass needs to be refilled and
she's just gonna stay here and hang out with the ocean for awhile. It's as good a place as any
to nurture her fragile yet growing belief.
***

It's late enough for the sun to have disappeared, but the last vestiges of light to still cling to
the scattered clouds above. It's a perfect east coast summer evening - the heat lingers, but the
breeze is gentle and the humidity is gone. He's always thought it was a bit odd that even at a
quarter past nine, the darkness would not as yet envelope them. He'd heard the patio door
open as he went in the master bedroom to change, and now - once again comfortable in shorts
and bare feet - he stands just inside the sunroom, hands in his pockets as he watches her.
She's a splash of red that stands on the precipice of the sleepy tide.

He can only see the back of Olivia. From here he can tell that the very bottom of her dress is
catching the disintegrating foam coasting in on water that barely makes it over her toes. She's
not heading into the calm, almost lazy waves and so he just stands here, taking her in.
Sometimes her head lowers, and she watches the water at her feet. Other times she raises her
chin and stares out at the fading horizon beyond. Olivia's hair lifts in the light wind, and he
can see where it dances on her upper back, skimming her exposed skin.

The dress billows, flares, then rests. She doesn't go further into the water; she doesn't retreat
back into the sand. It must be her CD that she's put into the player behind him, because this
isn't his music. It's low, earthy, driven by the soulful melody of a guitar. The vocalist rolls the
notes, and it's a throaty, heated sound that fills the house and filters out onto the beach in
front of him. He doesn't smile, he doesn't narrow his eyes. He just waits. Watching. He
wonders what she's thinking about, if she's wondering what she's doing out here. She looks
down, and her hair tumbles forward. Her toes drag through the wet sand in an arch, and she
holds her dress up a little bit to observe the lines she is making. She stops then, her foot in

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mid-stroke. She looks like a dancer, pointing her toes, as if she's going to take a leap. Only
she doesn't move. Even from here he can see her gripping the fabric of her ankle-length dress
too tightly with her empty hand. He can't see her expression, but he knows by the bowing of
her head that she's closed her eyes.

He can imagine her out here night after night, as the summer fades and the fall rolls in. He can
picture Olivia standing in front of the tide in rolled up jeans and one of his sweatshirts, her
hands wrapped around a still steaming mug of coffee. He can see her standing on the packed
sand in boots and a coat, her breath forming crystals in the air around her. The seasons
change and her hair grows longer, the dark circles under her eyes fade. She trades her lip
gloss for chapstick, which she keeps in the pockets of everything. He thinks about the fridge,
covered in handwritten notes she'd leave for him to pick up more detergent or Hershey's
kisses, because she doesn't ration how many she eats anymore. He thinks they'd subscribe to
Netflix, and they'd argue over what was next on their queue. She'd drive the truck on empty
just to make him crazy and one day he'd come home with some pathetic looking dog from the
pound. They'd have sides to the bed - his and hers - only every now and then she'd switch it
up just to get a reaction.

Olivia's writing something in the sand with her toes now, admiring her handiwork. He
doesn't know how he is going to tell her. He knows he loves her and that he's got ideas, but
she is complicated and he doesn't navigate things well, and there are so many - too many -
ways to lose. The tide comes in further than she expects it too, and suddenly Olivia is on the
balls of her feet, holding up her dress and backing up too quickly. The childish movement
makes him smile. If this is who she is less than a week into being out here, then he can only
imagine. He can only imagine.

Elliot pulls the screen door open quietly, and the salt air floods all around him. Against the
fading colours in the sky, the dark shadows of the sea birds sweep grand, graceful arcs. The
sand is thick and soft against his feet, sifting between his toes with each step he takes. By the
time he reaches her, she is standing still again, her gaze focused on the other end of the
ocean. Olivia doesn't say a word as he stands next to her. She doesn't even look at him. She is
expressionless, but her breaths are deep. He looks at her over his left shoulder.
"You okay?" he says quietly, trying not to jar her.

Olivia nods, blinks, but otherwise remains as she is. He can tell just by her profile that she's
not totally okay. But somehow he gets the sense that whatever it is that she's thinking about

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isn't destructive to what he's trying to build here. It’s that notion alone that gives him
courage to press her.
"Help to talk about it?"
Her eyes flutter in an attempt to close, but she manages to keep them open. Her jaw sets, her
lips press closed. She's right next to him and a million miles away all at once. He waits.
They've been together for too long for the silence to get to him anymore.

Finally, Olivia's brow furrows. He can tell that her eyes fill just a little bit. Not enough to
qualify as crying, but just enough for him to know that she's fighting something inside. She
looks like she's about to say something, and she starts to form words more than once, but
stops every time. Elliot wants to make it stop. Whatever it is that's eating away at her, he
wants a shot at it. If she'd talk to him, maybe he'd have a prayer of knowing what the hell to
say, what the hell to do. There is also a good chance she'll tell him, and he'll only make things
worse without meaning to. There is a better chance that she won't say anything at all.
Minutes pass. The sky starts to shutter its colours. He's not even looking at her when she
finally speaks.

"I miss my mom," Olivia whispers, almost indiscernibly.

He turns his head to look at her now, and Elliot's gut feels bruised, as if he's taken a punch
that he hadn't been prepared for. She still isn't crying, but her words feel wet, barely formed.
"Not the way she was at the end, or the way I knew her as a kid. But who she was before. I
don't know who she was. What she was like." Her chin lifts, and she's looking for something
on the horizon. "I know your mom hurt you, and God," Olivia exhales harshly, shaking her
head. "I don't envy what you went through, but I, I envy that she said she loved you." She
blinks quickly, trying to stem the need to let go. She is rigid, and she's doing everything she
can to keep her focus in front of her.

His first instinct - maybe his only instinct - is to grab her. Elliot's palms ache immediately, and
he wants to touch her, to tell her that undoubtedly her mother loved her, too. But he didn't
know Serena well enough to have an opinion that Olivia will believe or trust in this case. His
assurances would be empty, without anything of substance to back them up, and they both
know it. Without warning, Olivia turns her head to face him. She uses the back of her hand to
swipe her cheek roughly, as if disgusted by the idea that she could too easily lose the battle
with her emotions. She takes a sip of her wine to clear her throat.
"I'm sorry. This is pathetic."

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He wants to wrap his body around hers; he wants the platitudes to work. Instead, he just
shakes his head and meets her gaze steadily, hoping that if he treats her as if she won't break
that she'll keep talking.
"You couldn't be pathetic if you tried, Olivia." He gives her a small smile, trying like hell to
encourage her without giving in to his instincts.
Whatever she sees in him, it seems to calm her just a little bit. She faces the ocean again, her
eyes slowly scanning the distance from left to right and then back again.
"I was thirteen when she told me. I was relieved at first." Her smile is self-deprecating. She
frowns then, as if still at a loss to understand. "I finally knew why she didn't hold me, why she
drank so much. I understood why she didn't want to be home. Why she'd lock herself behind
closed doors." Her expression tightens and she's blinking back the tears. "I was relieved.
She tells me she had been viciously raped, and all I could think was that at least I finally had a
reason."

"You were thirteen, Olivia-" he manages. His words come from a scraping place in his throat,
and Serena isn't just a victim to him. She's to blame, too. She's to fucking blame.
Her teeth scrape across her lower lip. Once, twice. It's such a frantic movement that he thinks
she's going to break skin.
"My eyes weren't like hers. Our hands looked nothing alike. I found myself looking for the
similarities between her and I every day, because I needed them to be there. Even if she was a
drunk, at least she wasn’t., she wasn't him. But then I blamed her all over again because I
needed her. I needed her, Elliot. I knew what she'd been through, and I blamed her for letting
him win. Because every time she drank, he was still hurting us. He was still in the room. She
drank all the time, and it felt like, it felt like she let him move in with us."

Olivia's face is wet now, and if she would give him even the slightest inclination that it would
be okay to touch her, that she'd keep talking if he held her, he'd go for it. But he's not sure
enough of her yet, of how this goes, and so he stands there, paralysed and burning
uncontrollably on the inside. When she whips to face him, he knows it's not good because she
doesn't make a move to dry her face at all.
"I know his name, but I don't know what he was like. I know he was sick, and that's it. Half of
me, Elliot. I don't know anything at all about half of me. Doesn't that scare the shit out of
you?"

He can't help the short burst of mirthless laughter that breaks from him. He shoves his hands
back into his pockets, because he can't reach for her. They have to have this out on even
terms - face to face, with Olivia still standing on her own two feet. He doesn't understand the
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anger that gurgles in him, that threatens to command his voice, his words. Maybe he's angry
at Serena for not being stronger; maybe he's angry at Hollister for being a sick fuck. Or
maybe he's angry at Olivia for not understanding, for not believing him when he says she's
exactly what he wants.

"You know what scares the shit out of me?" Elliot grates, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he
tries to breathe, to just calm down. He stares out at the disappearing line between the sea and
sky.
“You leaving me. That's where my fear starts and that's where it ends." He shakes his head.
"Nothing more, nothing less. You leavin'. The rest of this shit -“
Olivia comes closer to him. He can feel the fight that she's wearing on her skin. She's not
breaking down now, she's gaining strength in all the wrong ways.
"I was jealous of you. Did you know that? Tonight, when Gladys packed up all those things
for you to bring home, I was jealous. What kind of rational person is jealous of leftovers?"
He can't let her bait him. Even if his chest is on fire, even if his fists are clenching in his
pockets. He can't let her do this. She's close to him, so Elliot widens his stance, rolls his head
on his neck a little bit, trying to force the tension to ease. He doesn't give her the satisfaction
of looking at her.
"So you really like pork chops. Doesn't seem abnormal to me."

It's the wrong thing to say. He knows it as soon as he says it that he's fucked up.
"This isn't a joke, Elliot." Her words are quiet.
His left arm reaches out and grabs Olivia's elbow before she can take a step. She looks at his
hand on her skin before looking up to him, her dark eyes surprisingly without accusation.
"You're right," he acquiesces. "I'm sorry."
Olivia blinks, and the fight fades almost instantly. She's staring at him though, and he can see
every insecurity she's got in the wary way she looks at him.
"Why were you jealous?" It's all the words he's got, even though he can feel the realisation
coming at him. Even before she tells him, he knows what she is going to say and he's an
idiot...a damned idiot for not putting this together sooner.

"You get this. You know how to do this. They like you. They treat you like their kid." It's a
rush of apologetic words then. "I'm an outsider to this, El. The closest I ever came to this
world was your family. Your marriage."
It slams into him like a sucker punch then. Elliot almost flinches from the impact, but instead
he finds himself gripping her arm even tighter. It all makes sense then. All of her fighting for
his family, the way she'd take on the responsibility of his marriage. He'd thought it was simply

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out of some impossible level of friendship, but he gets it now. She had been living on the
fringes of his life, preserving it no matter what it cost her because it was all she'd ever really
known of family.

Only he hadn't really ever included her. Not like he could have. He'd seen the dysfunction
under his roof and he had tried to keep it from Olivia because it made him feel like he'd failed.
He hadn't wanted to be embarrassed, exposed for everything he lacked. He needed one
person to see him as whole, as good enough, and the price had been that he'd held Olivia at
bay. He hadn't invited her over for Christmas, or to the kids' graduations. He'd kept silent
about his problems with Kathy, shutting Olivia down and closing her out at every turn. He
doesn't know how he could have missed it, how he hadn't seen. But the realisation almost
makes his vision blur. Jesus.

"Why do you think I kept quiet about my marriage falling apart? Why do you think I didn't
ask for help with Kathleen before that night?" Even after that night, he hadn't asked for help.
He'd never been able to ask for help. Nausea swirls in his gut. He knows the answers to his
questions, but he needs to hear Olivia say the words. He needs to hear what he's done.
She drops her gaze, until she's staring at the patch of sand between their feet. She licks her
lips, and he can feel the uneven way she's breathing.
"Liv-" he grinds out. "Tell me."
"I was the job." She shudders involuntarily and she won't look at him. "Couldn't bring that
home."

Fuck. Fuck. It's a raging, burning thing in him. He needs to goddamned go back, to just go
back in time. He needs to do this differently; he has to start this over. Twelve years - he's been
doing this to her for twelve years. He can't help himself, not now. Elliot palm slides along her
jaw and his grip on her cheek, her chin, is firm enough that Olivia has to look up at him
whether she wants to or not. She looks bruised, exhausted. He wants to kiss her despite the
moment; he wants to soothe the open wounds.

"You're not the job. Not now and not then. I've told you this, Liv, and you gotta listen to me
when I tell you things. I'm not gonna bullshit you, okay? Can you give me that at least?" He
can't help the harsh way he's talking. It's all he can do to even form the words. "You fucking
kept my kids together when I couldn't. You'd have saved my marriage if I had let you. And the
only reason - the only goddamned reason - that I kept you separate from my family is because
I didn't want to fuck up in front of you."

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For some reason, Olivia is listening to him. Out here in the deepening darkness, something
he is saying is making sense to her. The water hits his toes, and in minutes it will cover the
tops of his feet as the tide rolls in. Her eyes are wide, locked on his, and for five seconds out of
her whole life, Olivia seems willing to believe anything he'll say and take it at face value.
The words. He's got to find them. Something. Anything.

"My father beat the shit out of me," he finally says, not knowing at all where he's going with
this. "I don't know if my mother wrote that down in that book of hers or not, but he did.
Started after I turned ten. Maybe he saw me as big enough to fight back by then, I don't know.
And I've almost hit my kid. You saw me go for it." He shakes his head, willing himself to go
on. "I've got a daughter that's only sick because of my genes, not Kathy's. I treated my wife
no better than my father treated my mother. The only difference is I didn't cheat or hit her. So
no, I don't care about some half of you that you think is the great unknown. We just gotta
make do, Olivia. We gotta make the best of whatever happens, and when the shit hits the fan,
you gotta just clean it up and move on." Elliot stops then, because he doesn't do the
speeches, he doesn't even know if what he's just said makes sense. "I can't pick the journey,
Liv. But I sure as hell can make sure I've got the best damned traveling partner by my side,
you know?"

She tells him. It's how she looks at him. She tells him he's said - done - the right thing.
Olivia's face softens, and her eyes close. Just as the darkness settles in fully for the night, she
immediately steps forward and tucks herself into the heat of his body. Against him she takes
another sip of her wine and she's probably done with the glass now. Her free hand is slipping
beneath the hem of his t-shirt, and he can feel himself responding immediately. He holds her,
and even though she thinks he's done talking to her for the moment, he's not. He can't be.
He can't do this. He can't hold back anymore. The truth, the truth, the truth.

"Liv-" Christ, he has to find the words. How the hell does he tell her? "I need to talk to you
about something."
Olivia murmurs something as her palm lazily slips around to his lower back. Her nails scratch
lightly against his skin, and she makes a soft sound against his neck.
"No more talking, El. Not tonight."
She thinks he wants to talk about her. She doesn't get it. He is...he should have never done
things this way.
Elliot can feel the press of her body against his and he is rigid with both the need and the
restraint.

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"Please, Liv." His heart begins a heavy march in his chest. The dread, the guilt, it's crawling
on him. Maybe he should just forget the letter. Maybe.
No. He's got to think about his kids, too. He can't hurt them anymore. Eli is still so young,
and he, no, he can’t.

God, he just wanted everything. That's where this started. He wanted everything and it made
him greedy enough to fuck this up for good. He doesn't know why he ever thought she would
understand. There is only one way she will take the news. She’s gonna hate him. Leave him.
Olivia starts to peel herself back from him. When she looks up, her smile is slow, seductive
and sheepish all at the same time. He can see the effects of the wine in the flush of her skin.
"Twelve years I was ready to talk to you, and you choose now? It's gotta wait, El. ‘Cause I
want-" Something occurs to her, because she tilts her head to look at him. And then she's
looking at his lips. Fuck. With his left hand, he grips the fabric of her dress where it lays
against her hip. He can't grip Olivia's body, even if her finger now brushes his lower lip. He
can't. The only problem is that the dress pulls easily, it fills his palm and all he can think about
it is dragging it upwards. All the way. Over her perfect thighs.

"There's more wine," she whispers encouragingly into his ear. Elliot closes his eyes against
the shadowed sea. "Olivia."
Less than a week ago, he would have killed to have her on him. Now he's holding back. He
doesn't know how anyone gets things right. He doesn't get jack shit right. Her fingers are
now skimming the hard set of his jaw. He can't look at her.
"It's dark," she murmurs. "No one can see us."

He can't help but let his eyes flick over her face. Olivia seems different right now. There is a
freedom in her that he's never seen before and he thinks that no one could possibly be more
seductive than she is in this moment. Her eyes are hooded and so black that the lights of the
houses behind him reflect in her irises. The darkness falls fast around them. The ocean is in
no hurry tonight. His love for her is a freight train inside of him. It slams into him sometimes,
so fast and furious that he can do nothing else but watch her, need her, try to say her name. He
can't speak now.

Olivia lifts her chin, and she smiles as if she's just made a decision. She's tipsy and flirtatious
and dangerous all at once. Her hair is falling into her eyes and she's about to laugh.
"I'm not drunk. I know you think I'm drunk, and I'm-" she stops and looks at the tide as it
slips around her ankles. The dress shifts in the tiny whirlpools that form around her. "I'm not

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drunk." When she looks at him again, there is laughter in her eyes, and it steals the rest of
him. "Wanna dance?"
She'll kill him with this. When Olivia is fierce, she's stunning. But like this - full of trouble
and mischief and daring - he's a dead man. He should tell her she is beautiful and that she is
more than he deserves. He should tell her that anyone who doesn't know her is missing out.
He should tell her that he's just a man, but she is beyond definition. The words are locked in
his throat, tangled up with the fear and the intensity that only Olivia conjures.

"Here?" Elliot's voice is gruff, and without thinking he's lifting her dress even more, sliding
it along her leg, trapping the fabric between his hot palm and her skin.
Olivia moves slowly but deliberately. She's holding her empty wine glass, and she snakes that
hand around his neck. Her hair is in her eyes, her enticing lips align with his.
"Here," she whispers huskily.

He can't feel the ocean. Wind stops. The moon falls out of the sky. She is the only thing he
has ever truly known. It's just her and the music. Springsteen now. She's apparently got the
CD changer set to random play, and it makes him smile because she's never before chosen
what she can't predict. Elliot's got her against him before he can register another thought.
Olivia wraps herself around him, and she doesn't tense when he kisses the side of her head.
She is pliable, almost lethargic as he moves just a little bit. The music is faint, but it's enough.
He can feel Olivia exhale into his neck, and the wet fabric of her dress hits his ankles as she
moves with him. He can't help himself but to touch her.

He lets go of her dress and while his intention is to hold her waist, his need wins out and his
hand slips over the curve of Olivia's ass, pulling her in contact with his arousal. Her body
presses into his in the same moment that Elliot makes a startling discovery. He can feel every
intimate curve of her beneath the dress.
"Jesus, tell me you were at least wearing underwear during dinner?" he growls into her hair.
Olivia lifts her head from his neck and focuses on his lips, laughing breathlessly.
"Maybe." Yeah, he's fucked.
And he is most definitely done with the talking for tonight.
***

Her mother had loved Hemingway. His first novel The Sun Also Rises had been Serena's
favourite, although she had never explained why. Serena would always say that the man had
written just enough and never too much and somehow that left the reader with the ability to
imagine everything. Olivia had rarely seen her mother truly sober for more than a few days at a

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time, but when Serena picked up something by Hemingway she would stay lost and focused in
the words for days on end. Isn't it pretty to think so? It was her mother's favourite line. The
last line of the book. It repeats in Olivia now in the lilting, dreamy cadence of her mother's
raspy voice. She understands the words in this moment. She tells herself this will work with
Elliot and it's the most beautiful, fragile thought she's ever known.

Tonight, reality has taken a bow. It's left her on an empty stage, and she can be whoever she
wants to be. Against Elliot, she is someone indestructible. Against him she is someone who
notices the deep black sky and the shifting of the night winds around her. His mother's house
is perfect, and history doesn't hurt as much. The ocean holds the untold, and it's magical not
malignant tonight.

Inside of her, the euphoria finds hollow spaces it has never seen. She's smiling and she's
dancing with Elliot Stabler and if he catches her grinning like an idiot, he's going to watch her
in that way he does. He'll smirk. He'll get cockier than he normally is. He'll use his voice to
send shivers across her skin. She's definitely had just a little too much wine, and it is making
her unusually warm. Of course she is draped all over Elliot, and the hard surfaces of him may
very well be the source of her heat. Jesus. The muscles on this man. It's a little ridiculous that
he should be this hard.

The sexist thought makes her laugh against his shoulder and Olivia wonders if it is
objectification anymore now that she's sleeping with him. Objectification. It's a damned big
word for a woman half-drunk on wine or the wind. If she could just shut her mind up she could
fall asleep dancing on him. Olivia's lips slide across Elliot's neck and her toes step on his in
the warm, shallow water around them. He's swaying and it's making her dizzy with the sheer
relief of it. Olivia closes her eyes and lets him watch the night sea on her behalf. Her cheek
aligns with his. She's smiling again before she can help it. She's definitely had too much of
the wine. To hell with it. It is damned good wine.

"What's so funny?" Elliot asks quietly, his mouth at her ear.

"You're not very graceful, Stabler," she teases as his feet bump hers for the tenth time. Not
that she's counting.
Elliot turns, pressing his lips into her hair.
"We'll get better at this." His hands rest on her lower back while hers are curved loosely
around his neck. Her wine glass is long gone, lost somewhere in the sand for now.
"You need more practice than I do," Olivia retorts.

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"Yeah? Who you been practicin' with?" He pulls back, and her dress has soaked up the water
until it is wet to her knees. Elliot's eyes are the soothing light against the deep, night sky. His
face crinkles as he smiles. It's one of those perfect little boy smiles, too. It transforms his face
until he's maybe a little too smug, a little too sure of himself. She likes him this way. Loves
him. She is in fucking love.

Olivia cocks her head and shrugs a little.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"
Elliot furrows his brow.
"Goddamn Munch. I knew he was waiting for an opportunity. I'm going to kill him."
It's the seriousness in his expression that has her laughing again. She steps up into Elliot, as
close as she can be. Her breasts push against his chest, her stomach slides against his. The
summer still lies out ahead of them, and when Olivia closes her eyes, she thinks about coming
out here with him when they aren't on call. She'll be able to escape the city, and after all of the
years, she will finally find a balance.

His mouth presses into her temple and his movements slow.
"I think this is what she wanted for me," Elliot murmurs against Olivia's skin. "She'd talk
about finding my peace and daydreaming and having a vision, and -“ He stops talking and
moving. Olivia can feel the heavy rise and fall of his chest, and the way his fingers bite just a
little bit harder into her back. "I didn't understand. She said I was the crazy one."
It's been a lifetime with him, yet it's taken this week to give them the ability to say anything at
all. She thinks about damage, and how it is a mutable, changing thing. It isn't permanent. It's
not a badge to be worn, or a scar to hide. It's something to be confronted, because while it
might never disappear completely, it could possibly fade enough to let them live.

"She wasn't that different from my mom, Elliot. They both wanted to escape," Olivia lifts her
head, and her lips land on his shoulder. His mother's house sits directly in her line of vision.
Soft yellow light seeps out of the living room, and she thinks about how much she loves the
house. She likes the creaks and groans of it, the way it withstands the ocean. "You and I?
We've been living so far into reality that we lost sight of anything else."
They're both still, then. She's breathing and he is, and she finds a moment like no other. She
doesn't want to step forward or go back, she just wants to remember every nuance of this.
But Elliot shifts, and his hands are on either side of her face. He tips her head up in the same
moment that he bends just a little bit, searching her eyes.

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"I won't lose sight of you. I may have in the past, Olivia, but I swear to God-" Elliot shakes his
head and grits his jaw. "Won't happen again," he says fiercely.
She can do nothing but look at him. Their life before will always flash across her mind - the
cases, the nights, the anguish and the tempered victories - but now the future takes up space,
too. She doesn't know how exactly it will work, but she believes that it will. Even though it is
as yet unwritten, she knows Elliot and maybe that is enough. Her mother had been right. Just
enough, but not too much and she can somehow imagine everything. Yeah, Olivia thinks. It's
so pretty to think so. She ducks her head, and in the middle of Hemingway and memories of
her mother, she slips into the possibility of Elliot again.
***

"Fuck you, Elliot."

He can't take his eyes off of her. He also can't stop laughing. She is such a pain in the ass. She
keeps saying his name with such emphatic irritation that he might be purposely egging her on
at this point.
"Just saying that maybe you don't need to find it right this second." He's trying to be
rational, but she has absolutely no use for his logic at the moment. He doesn't care. He's got
time. Olivia is ten feet ahead of him, searching for her discarded wine glass in the dark sand
dunes while holding her soaking dress up off the granules, as if that will help anything. She is
a beautiful mess. The dress is half-wet and sand is clinging to it everywhere. Her hair is
tangled from the way she keeps brushing it haphazardly off her face, and her glare - well, he
can see that from here but it's not intimidating at all for once.

She stops and lets her dress fall back to the sand.
"Can you just help me find it?"
He widens his stance and crosses his arms over his chest.
"Sure. Before we go in, I'll find it so no one steps on it tomorrow. Happy?" He doesn't wait
for her answer. "Now c'mere."
"I need the glass, Elliot," she insists in exasperation.

Fuck. That dress is killing him. The dip between her breasts, the bare expanse of her arms.
The moonlight catches her skin, and he wants nothing more than to yank that dress up and
sink himself in her. No underwear. Christ. Olivia spins then, and she's back to looking for it.
It's too damned dark out here, and there's not a chance she's finding it. He'll have to go in

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and get a flashlight if they're gonna have any luck. It's definitely something that can wait until
later.
"Olivia-"
She ignores him.

He changes tactics.
"If you want more wine, why don't you just drink from the bottle?"
That idea makes her stop mid-motion. By the time she has turned and made her way back
towards him, he's got the nearly empty bottle in his hands. Olivia stops a foot in front of him,
never meeting his eyes. She reaches for the bottle and he holds it away from her.
"Give it to me, Elliot," she orders, arching her eyebrows and ignoring his pointed eye contact.
He grins because his mind is a dirty, dirty place. "I was planning on it. But if you get any more
inebriated, you'll never stay awake lon-"
"Drunk." Olivia narrows her eyes at him. He doesn't need sunlight to know what this
expression looks like. "Just say drunk. Don't show off with big words. And I'm not. So stop
being a jackass and give me the bottle."
He scrapes his teeth over his lower lip, buying time.
"And if I give it to you, what do I get?"
Olivia steps up to him - right into his space - and raises her chin.
"You get to live. Now hand it over."
She's so, so close to him. He can smell the wine, the salt air and Olivia. He likes her like this -
uninhibited, full of fire and sexy as hell. There is no past tonight. Even the things he has to
face tomorrow have disappeared.

"Fine. Kiss me," he rumbles dangerously under his breath, staring at her mouth. "And you
can have whatever you want."
He knows what he wants, and that's to toss her back onto the sand right here and get that
damned dress off of her. He's pretty sure no one would see them, not in this darkness. It's
late, and most of the houselights have been turned off. Even the music from his house has
shifted to something quieter and he wants her before she has any more of that wine. She's
right, she's not drunk - but she could be soon and he's got lots of other plans. Olivia squares
her shoulders.
"Just a kiss?" Her suspecting eyes land on his. "You sure that's all?"

It's a game, he knows this. But hell if it doesn't rile him in any case. He's gone too many years
being denied the relief he finds in Olivia's body when her legs are wrapped around his hips,
so it's too easy to conjure the frustration he had chafed beneath. Her hands frame his face.

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"C'mon then." Olivia's smile is slow to form. It slips across her expression, and she tilts her
head, eyeing his lips. "If you're gonna do it, then do it."
He wants her. He's seen her take control like this, only he's never before been the one on the
receiving end of Olivia's all- encompassing seduction. Men have fallen for her time and time
again- men who tried to date her, perps who tried to bait her - but Olivia always stays in
control.

Not tonight. Elliot is gonna get her out of control. He wants her wild. Without boundaries.
He wants her here and now, right here on the goddamned beach. It's a little bit of reckless,
and it's sweet as hell. Olivia’s lips lift. And then it's the searing heat of her mouth against his.
Elliot tries to stand still, to let her kiss him, but the light, teasing contact makes his fist clench
around the neck of the wine bottle in his hand. He remains immoveable, and Olivia ups the
ante, sliding the rise of her half-exposed breasts against his chest. Her cold, wet dress hits his
shins. One arm slips over his shoulder, and she opens her mouth, capturing his lower lip
between hers. She moans and then turns her head the other way, coming back for more.
He's harder than he's ever been in his life. He can't fucking breathe.

"Give-" she starts, and then nips at his lips again. "Me. The." Her tongue darts out and
pushes into his mouth. Her hips push forward, and his body jerks as she grinds against his
arousal. "Bottle."
Olivia's fingers crawl down his arm, past his wrist and onto the bottle he is holding as she
kisses him. The wine is sweet on her lips, and every time he thinks she's about to open her
mouth and let him in, she pulls back. She's trying to distract him, too. Her fingers are
working his off the heavy glass. No. No. He wants to be inside of her. If he's gonna tell her
tomorrow, then he wants tonight. He needs her mouth, her hands, the heat of her. Elliot takes
a sudden step back, jerking out of Olivia's grasp. Her eyes lock on his, and in the shadows he
sees the challenge in them, the spark of interest.

"Playing hard to get?" she grins with interest.

He takes another step back, and the ocean is behind him. Olivia looks strong all of a sudden,
as if the colour is back inside of her. Even in the dark, he can see the way she is coming back
to life. She is playful, and he can't see the burdens in her for a moment. The waves are steady,
but they break out in the surf instead of around them. Elliot remembers holding her in the
storm, and feeling her shaking body against his. How they have made it to this, he has no idea.
Maybe God intervened. Maybe.

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The night stretches out ahead of him, and it's endless. This is the edge of the world and the
edge of sanity and she is the only thing - the only thing - on his mind. Elliot holds up the
bottle, and because Olivia is smiling, he is, too.
"Come and get it." He can't help it. His eyes rake up over her body. She's so disheveled and
determined and fucking gorgeous. He doesn't want to think it, but the thought is there
anyway. His wife hadn't had any curves. She hadn't, and Olivia... He's starving for her. Fuck,
she isn't making a move. He's in the water up to his knees when he realises that Olivia isn't
coming after him. She would make this a stand-off. A battle of wills. She laughs.

He can hear the perfect cadence of it over the waves. Olivia is laughing on the beach with him,
and Elliot forgets about anything that could hurt them. He's bigger, stronger, faster than he's
ever been. He's enough for his kids, he did the best he could with his marriage. He's saved
people; he's helped them move on. He didn't fail his father, because Elliot had managed to be
a good cop for a long damned time.
And he didn't fail his mother, because he's out here - believing.Dreaming.
"Think it's a good idea to make me come get you?" he calls, narrowing his eyes at her.
Olivia doesn't buy his intimidation tactics. For a moment he thinks it's because they've been
partners for so long, but then he realises that her confidence is coming from her newfound
self-assurance as a woman. She knows what she does to him. She shrugs and stays where she
is.
"I know how to handle you, remember?" Olivia fires back.
Years ago, the idea had bothered him. That the brass thought he'd been so out of control that
he had needed a keeper - yeah, it had burned him. He'd been too damned proud to say he
needed Olivia; he'd had stupid ideas about proving he was fine on his own. When she'd come
back from Oregon, he'd tried to show her that he had thrived despite her absence. But the
truth is that he isn't okay without her. He never will be.

She needs to know this. The way he loves her has to be a part of her, embedded so deep that
she won't ever forget, even if she tries to after tomorrow. He has to be inside of her. He'll tell
her then. He'll tell her he's always close to falling to his knees without her. Elliot tips the
bottle up to his own lips. The wine is warm now, but it still feels good slipping down his
constricted throat. It's not about waiting for her to come to him. Like hell. Pride has no place
in this. He'll go to Olivia every damned time if that's what it takes. No matter what happens,
he'll go to her. Elliot starts out of the water. He goes straight for her. Only she's making her
way towards him now, probably to protect the last bit of the wine before he drinks it. He's still
in the edges of the surf when she gets in his face, reaching for the wine.

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He holds it out of her reach.
"Olivia-" he grates. "Listen to me-"
She tries again, and he doesn't let her have it. She bursts into laughter at the futility of it all.
"Fuck you. Just give it to me."
Elliot manages to get one arm wrapped around Olivia's waist to still her. He ducks his face
towards her and she finally looks up at him. The laughter falls away, and she just blinks, as if
she is surprised by how close he suddenly is. In the black ocean and the dark night, her eyes
find his. His find hers. The tide splashes around their unmoving shins. He can't look away.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow he will tell her. Tomorrow the very same eyes may be looking at him
with anger, with betrayal. If she leaves him-

"Don't leave me." It's a rasping plea for mercy that rips from him before he can stop himself.
The playfulness is gone from Olivia, just like that. She's frozen in his grasp. He's still holding
the wine, and he doesn't know why he makes the choices he does. He always thinks he's
doing the right thing, and only later does he see how wrong he actually was. He's gonna hurt
her, and he's sorry. He's so damned sorry. Olivia stares at him. Her hair is damp from the
saturated air, her dress is wet. The delicate dip of her waist gives way to the strong curve of
her hips and he should just shut the hell up and get her beneath him. The vapours of the salt
sea are burning his eyes.

She's rigid, and he wonders if she knows, if she realises that he is going to pull the rug out
from under her. Olivia is struggling for air against him, and he can feel the weight of her heavy
breaths against his face.
"I won't," she finally manages. Her fingers come up and trace the side of his face. "Elliot,
what's wron-"
But he's on her then, before he can stop himself. He's backing Olivia out of the water by
encroaching on her with his body, the fingers of his free hand tangling in her hair as his mouth
finds hers. He's relentless, desperate, greedy. His tongue slides against hers and their legs
intertwine because he doesn't give her any space as he pushes forward, towards the sand.
Olivia is off balance, but her mouth is hot - so damned hot - and he can taste the wine on her.
Elliot feels the fabric of her wet dress stick to his shins and all he can think about is how she's
got nothing on underneath it. Nothing. She's all long legs and smooth, slick skin beneath the
fabric.

Not gonna leave him. She's not. He won't let her. Olivia is grasping at him, too. Holding on.
She is turning her head and letting him have at her, opening her wet, hungry mouth and
letting him devour her as they move out of the ocean. She's gasping into him, and her fingers

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are pressing into his face. Elliot can't breathe or think or comprehend anything else except
for this.

"Love you," he grates. But the surf may have taken his words. He tries to tell her again, in the
seconds between kisses. "I love you, Liv. I just...Christ...I love you."

And then the water is gone from around them. The sand beneath their feet is still wet, but it's
hard-packed now and the tide only occasionally taps at them. He drops the wine bottle and
holds her face inches away from his. Her hands fall from him, and Olivia's eyes are wider than
he's ever seen them before. She's breathless. He can only make out the colour of her lips and
her red dress in the warm, summer darkness. Her shoulders and her chest rise and fall, but
she doesn't look scared. He recognises the expression on Olivia's face, the emotion in her
focused, midnight eyes. Anticipation. Readiness.

Her lips quirk in amusement inches from his. Her breath steadies.
"We're sort of a cliché."
Elliot can't take his eyes off of her.
"Yeah," he nods quietly. He can't move. The air is on pause around them. He could swear
that even the ocean has stopped mid-motion.
Olivia's smile grows.
"I could be okay with that."
Elliot nods again. His heartbeat is slamming inside of him.
"Me too."
"Then let's do this thing, Stabler. ‘Cause I don't want to be them. I don't want to be like my
mother or yours. I don't want to be alone, or wait or pretend I'm okay. Not when -“ Olivia
steps up until her body is flush with his. She snakes one arm around his neck, and she is
grinning against his mouth. "Not when I can have you. I don't know how we're gonna explain
this to anyone else. But tonight? Shit, El," she exhales against his lips. "Tonight I don't
care."

And then expectations and plans be damned, Olivia is on him. She's tugging his shirt off and
he's got her hair in his fists and her fingers are on the button of his shorts. He pulls her down
into the sand, and he's the one on his back. Of course he is. His head hits the sand. Olivia fits
against him and she is everywhere around him. He grabs the hem of her tangled dress and
hikes it up around her thighs as she straddles him. Elliot looks up and realises the night isn't
moonless after all. She is illuminated above him, and her skin shimmers. The tide hits the
bottom of his feet, and he slides his palms up the strong columns of Olivia's thighs. He's
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prayed to God in the holiest of churches, but he's never been humbled like this. Olivia is out
of breath and she slams her palm down into the sand next to his head. He groans from the
sheer agony of her perfect weight on him.

Olivia is above him and they're both too tense to even get their mouths on each other. Instead
Olivia lifts her hips, shifting, and he jerks violently as his arousal comes in contact with the
heat between her legs. The tide comes in, and it simmers around them. It's an ebb and flow. It
goes on and on. Her hair is wet, the sand is on his skin and when she descends to kiss him, her
mouth is both salty and sweet. The kiss is slow, heavy and languid. Time is no object. The
seconds hover around them, the minutes stand still. The air is thick, and in the distance the
waves crash in upon themselves and then disintegrate. Her mouth is soft, and she takes her
time brushing her lips across his jaw, his chin, the corner of his eyelid. Elliot can feel the way
her bare thighs tense as he scrapes his palms along her skin, over her ass and up to the small of
her back beneath the sheath of her dress.
Olivia raises her head and looks right at him. The corners of her lips lift the slightest bit. Her
eyes are heavy, and she just stares at him. Elliot reaches up to brush the damp strands of her
hair away from her face with the palm of his hand. They don't kiss, neither makes a sound.
Her open eyes locked on his, she starts to move nearly imperceptibly. At the edge of the
water, he is going to make love to her. There is a hunger and simplicity to it that makes him
believe in resurrection and religion all over again. Buried deep inside of her, she will renew
his faith.

Despite how desperate they had both been, they slow down now. This will be a quiet thing
between them tonight, and they will find each other in a place that hasn't changed over
hundreds of years. He had come to the beach months ago because it had felt like the end of
the world. Tonight, the sand and sea meet in a place where his world begins.
Tonight he will not take from her. Instead, tonight he will let the endless tide be the thing to
rock them both home.

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377
 Chapter Twenty-Five

H
e'll take the sunrises. He'd heard once that it was the sun which determined where
one lived. Those who celebrated beginnings lived on the east coast, and looked up
towards the pale yellows and delicate oranges of the sunrise. Those who celebrated
the endings preferred the rocky coast of the west with its deep, burnished and fiery hues of
sunset. It's not even six a.m., and the heat is already rolling in. There will be no wind today,
no breeze. Even the seagulls seem to be arriving slowly, as if they know it will be a long,
stifling day ahead.

Elliot stands at the edge of the water, staring at the unblemished horizon. There are no boats
that as yet dot the place where land meets sea. Even the waves have disappeared, and the
surface of the water is defined only by the gentlest of ripples and the playful, harmless swells.
The sun is still just a promise, its pending arrival signalled by the watercolours that deepen
exponentially by the moment. The calm is an illusion. A mirage. He knows what deceit looks
like because he'd looked at himself in the mirror this morning.

He'd left his bed a half an hour ago, and he'd started the coffee without waking Olivia. As
soon as he had been able to grab a cup, he had brought it out here, to where he could think.
He had spotted her wine glass and the empty bottle from last night right away, and as he had
retrieved both he hadn't smiled at the memories of last night. Too much weighs heavy inside
of him. He is going to tell her today. There is another conversation he needs to have first
though, and that is why he is out here. He doesn't know if he will be heard, if - after all these

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neglectful months and years - he is still entitled to the audience he needs right now. He tries
anyway, because he is on the edge of losing her.

Haven't talked to you much lately, God. I don't need you to forgive me, not this time. Please
understand. It's her forgiveness I'm asking for.

He began this day with her in his bed. He wonders if he will end it alone. He thinks about how
intentions and consequences are sometimes at odds, and about how love can be as fragile as it
is strong. The first of the seagulls appears, sliding down onto the surface of the ocean. Feet
first it settles in, its feathers ruffling and then smoothing.

I've know I've blamed you when I've had no other explanation. But I've also believed in you
when I didn't have anything else. You ask us to believe. My mother asked the same of me. You
both seem to think that believing is enough.

He spots a few willets as they settle onto the wet shoreline. A pair of black scoters appear, as if
out of nowhere.

So I'm gonna trust you, God. I'm going to pray that she'll hear me out. I can fight for her, and I
will. But the rest?

Elliot exhales, and the sun pushes up over the horizon.

The rest I have to leave up to you.

The sky blooms with colour, an everyday miracle he's missed far too many times.

Help me to believe.

The heat hits his shoulders. Elliot stands still, not yet ready to face the day of reckoning.

Amen.
***

Pale yellow light slides over the bed sheets. It's the first thing that she notices as her eyes
slowly open. She is stretching before she knows it, her leg lazily sliding across the mattress as
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she rolls over onto her back. She realises almost immediately that Elliot is no longer in the
bed, but she doesn't need to look beside her to come to this conclusion. She could feel his
presence in a room even if she was left sightless and soundless. Elliot is her push-pull,
connected to her in ways that defy rational explanation. Olivia lets her eyes drift shut again,
and she listens for him in the house. When she hears the ocean whispering just a little bit
louder than it should, she realises that he must be outside because he'd left the sliding glass
door open in the living room.

She smiles and exhales, pushing her face back into her pillow while dragging the one he slept
on against her body. It smells like Elliot - like soap and sunshine and everything solid - and
Olivia thinks she could fall back asleep for days if left just like this. I love you. The words come
easier now. She told him again last night, more than once. Elliot's strong body had pushed up
into hers out there on the sand, and she had collapsed down onto him until he had rolled the
both of them over so he was on top of her. Want crawls across her skin now as she recalls the
determined surge of him, the weight of his body, the way they fit into each other. She shatters
for him completely - maybe too easily - and it leaves her weak in the aftermath every time. Her
body is sore right now, her breasts are tender.

It's an incredibly soothing thing to feel the proof of his lovemaking on her like this. Olivia
opens her eyes again and turns over to scan the room. The towels they had left scattered on
the floor are nowhere to be seen. She'd stripped off her soaking dress and left it on the floor
of his bathroom before they had showered last night, and she can see far enough to know
Elliot has already picked that up. She curls into the t-shirt of his that she now wears and grins.
He's the domestic goddess of the two of them. Whether he knows it or not, he is made to be a
husband and a father. The awareness should scare her, but for some reason it doesn't. She
can't think about the future right now. She doesn't even want to. The present is far too
perfect to skip over a moment of it in anticipation for something else. The obnoxious and
shrill ringing sound jars her.

She immediately scans the end table across the bed, looking for the source of the abrasive
sound. An alarm clock, his watch, his - shit. Her cell phone. It hasn't rung in days and she'd
forgotten what it sounded like. Elliot had plugged it in to charge it last night at her request.
It's Monday morning, and even though she is technically off, she hadn't wanted to be
completely out of reach. Now she regrets the decision, even if it had been a necessary evil.
The screen tells her it's Cragen, but before she answers she says a last minute prayer that this
is something that she can handle over the phone. It's the fact that it is barely after seven a.m.

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that tells her otherwise. She knows as she answers that it is an emergency, and the dread
blooms in her stomach. She doesn't want to hear about it. She doesn't want to -
"Benson."
"Didn't think you'd answer," Cragen says curtly. "But I'm glad you did. I wouldn't call
unless we needed you."
Her skin starts to ache in protest as she sits up. Her eyes burn before she can help it. She
doesn't want to hear what he has to say. She doesn't want to hear the details of her job while
she is out here, in a place that is untouched by the horror of her day-to-day back home.
She thinks about Elliot, and she wonders if he's off on a run, or if he's simply sitting at the
edge of the water, coffee mug in hand as he stares out into nothing and everything. She wants
coffee, too. And she wants a long, lazy day with him. She wants to stroll on the boardwalk
again, and after dinner she wants to curl up with a glass of wine and his mother's journal.

"We've had the unit on round-the-clock's all weekend. Have you seen the news?"
She can feel it already, the way the ocean and the air are being pried away from her. Olivia
clutches the comforter in her free hand and closes her eyes, bracing for what is to come. She
has an irrational urge to throw her phone across the room, to go back five minutes in time and
turn off the phone before it lit up. She can feel the stiffening of her back, the way her pulse is
slowing to almost the point of stopping. She tries to focus on the sound of the ocean, on the
easy rumble of the waves. Instead Cragen's words echo in her ears.
"No. I haven't."

"We had two little girls go missing Friday afternoon. Sisters, six and nine. They walked out of
York Prep on the Upper East and vanished in the twenty steps it would have taken to climb
into their mother's truck."
Olivia tries to picture the girls. She imagines them as blondes for some reason, and they're
wearing navy plaid school uniforms. She doesn't ask the usual questions about custody
battles, enemies of the parents, or family secrets because if the squad has been working the
case for two days now then those questions have already been explored and answered.
Besides, she doesn't want to ask the questions. She doesn't want to hear any of it, and that
scares her. She's a cop, and it's her job, but she wants to burrow back into the bed and
pretend she hasn't processed any of it.

There is a terrifying instinct in her to just back away from the details of the case. For a
moment, she wants someone else to deal with it; she wants someone else to bear the burden,
to take responsibility. She wants to focus on the kids she's seen out here on the beach. She
wants to hold onto the sandcastles and laughter and the way the tide chases little feet until

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they dance in amusement. Cop. Think like a cop. She presses her fingertips to her forehead,
as if she can massage away her reluctance to listen. She's straining to hear the waves, but they
are fading, and an insistent buzz is starting in her ears. Tension starts to weave its way across
her neck, down the column of her spine.

"Everything points to a stranger abduction. Three this morning a patrol unit for the 1-2 found
a fourteen-year old girl half-dead in an alley. She's a working girl, and she's not talking.
Whatever happened to her is bad enough that she's in shock. She's mumbled a few things
though - two words of which are the names of our missing kids. She's sedated at St. Vincent's
right now. Fin used her photo out on the street to get a name. She goes by Rosie and she's
been out there for at least two years."

The ocean doesn't make a sound anymore, and even if it does, Olivia doesn't hear it. She
doesn't notice the sun on the bed, and she starts to think about where her things are. Her
eyelids are heavy, her cheekbones begin to ache. It’s the names of the kids that will completely
drag her out of the euphoria she'd found out here. She knows the names are coming. It will be
real then. It will be two little girls who aren't where they are supposed to be. She's lounging
in a bed at the ocean, perfectly safe, while two tiny girls are terrified or dying. Maybe already
dead.

"Cassie and Caitlin Gallagher. We've got amber alerts out but no hits. Patrols have been
monitoring the train and bus stations, but nothing's turned up."
Olivia flips back the comforter and sheets, and she can feel her blood slowing. She is suddenly
freezing, and goose bumps crawl over her. Her skin is numb. Her toes and fingertips feel icy.
She needs to get dressed, to slip on her badge and hook her holster to her belt. She'll wear
her jeans, and the sundresses will be forgotten. She's crawling back into someplace familiar,
and she can't seem to help herself. She doesn't want to go, she knows that much. She doesn't
want to slip back into the darkness.
"You think Rosie knows where they are?" she asks, her voice cracking.

Her feet hit the wooden floor, and it doesn't creak like it should. Or maybe she just doesn't
notice the sound of it. If a child prostitute knows where the girls are, then it's a possibility
they were snatched to be sold or worked. Nine. Six. Olivia closes her eyes and exhales. She's
weighted again. Her fingers ache, her arms are sore. She's no longer filled with energy or
anticipation. She dreads the moments ahead, knowing the coming details will only make this
worse. The stories always get worse. She's heard cases like this before of course, but for

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some reason it's even more revolting now. It's horrific, impossible. Her defences have been
weakened, and she can feel the vulnerability she now wears. The bile is acidic in her throat.
"She might." Cragen sounds exhausted. His voice is thick with gravel and his pause is long,
heavy. "That's not the worst of it. We had another taken about a half hour ago. Seven year-old
snatched outside of Hamilton Heights. Whoever is grabbing these girls is moving fast, and
they don't give a crap that the city is on alert."

In the silence, Olivia hunches over on the edge of the bed. She wraps one arm around her
waist and feels her throat thicken with the loss. Her grief is not for the girls this time, even
though that's where her regrets should lie. Instead she aches because the next two days have
just been taken from her. She fell in love, she thinks. She admitted it. She needs some time.
But the world isn't going to stop for her. Love isn't going to stop the filth in a pedophile or
the anger in a rapist. Loving Elliot will only save her, and when three children are missing,
saving herself can't be a priority.

There's no crying in baseball, Elliot had once said. She wants to ask him now if the game was
the job, or if it was this - the rest of it. Because right now she wants to cry. She doesn't think
she's strong enough to go back, especially without him. She's stripped herself too bare in the
last few days; she doesn't have the layers wrapped around her that will protect her from the
case, the kids, the victims. The stark, emptying isolation. She'd left the cop in her behind for
a few days, and now she doesn't know how to go back. The badge had felt like a shield once,
but now it's just metal. He'd been the shield. The barrier of protection had been Elliot all
along.

"Liv?" Cragen's voice is gentle now, tinged with hesitancy.

The job. She has to focus. There are kids out there who need her. She has to hang onto that
fact, and that alone. There are children who are depending on her and their lives may rest on
her ability to earn the trust of a victim who might have answers.
"If you're with Elliot -“ Her captain pauses again and then lets the question hang there.
She can't tell Cragen she is in her partner's bed, wearing his clothes and his marks on her
skin. He might suspect, but he doesn't really want to know. Olivia straightens, and her
cheeks, her eyes, her throat - it all throbs as she tries to contain herself. She knew all along
that she couldn't stay out here forever. She'd requested two more days off, but this is an
emergency. They need all the help they can get, and even without Cragen asking, she knows
that he thinks she can get Rosie to talk. It's what Olivia is good at. It's what she does best.

"I'm at the beach house," she admits, without acknowledging anything else.

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She hears Cragen's hard breath. She can hear his weariness and the years of the job in the
defeat of his exhale.
"If you think he's close to being ready, now would be as good a time as any for him to come
back," he says quietly. "You two are the best we've got."
Olivia nods, pressing her lips together. She thinks about Elliot, about how he's out there on
the beach right now. She thinks that he is calmer out here, he laughs more. She desperately
wants him back with her in New York, but she also feels the protest growing in her. She
doesn't want to rip him away from this just yet, either. The kids, she thinks. Those kids. They
aren't home with their families. They could be hurt or scared or in the middle of being abused
at this very second.

"I'll ask him, Cap," she whispers into the phone. Her voice doesn't work. She wants to cry
because going back seems impossible. She's afraid of losing what she's found. She just
needed a few more days to find her footing, to get the ground solidly beneath her
feet. "You got the number for her doctor? I'll head straight for the hospital." Cragen is silent
on the other end.
"Cap?" She closes her eyes. She won't even be able to say bye to Gladys or Jack, or get one
more walk on the beach with Elliot. He's got the kids coming out in a few weeks though, so
maybe he'd come back with her for this case and then come back out again with the kids.
Maybe she could make the drive back with him then.

Olivia holds onto that thought. Elliot will come back with her today. If she asks - if she tells
him she needs him, he'll come. They could keep working on this thing between them back in
the city. The case will be the priority, but at least they'd be near each other.
She can't do this without him. Not this time. Not after everything that has happened out here.
He made her open up, he made her need him. Going back to her apartment alone at night...
She can't.She's too aware of how much she wants, how much she loves Elliot. She doesn't
want to know what it would take to shut down again and live alone for the coming weeks or
months.

She'll ask Elliot to come home now. For months she had avoided calling him to ask him to
return to New York. But he's asked her to talk to him, and he's said he needs her to depend
on him. She has to trust that her needs will mean something to him. He can stay with her until
he finds a place. It would be unimaginable to go home with him at night, to walk in the door
and feel his presence in the hollows of her usually empty apartment.

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"Sorry to do this to you." It's a curt apology, but it's sincere. Cragen has never been as
unaffected as he tries to appear. He looks out for his people far more than he should. He's
made her take her share of shit from the brass, but it's always been well-deserved. She opens
Elliot's bedside drawer, looking for a piece of paper and something to write with.
"We need to be there." His drawer is filled with random things. A package of hand wipes,
some photos of his kids, a box of crayons and his wallet. There is an envelope in there and she
grabs both it and a blue crayon. "Got the doctor's number for me?"

She scrawls it across the back of the envelope as Cragen relays it to her. She probably should
turn the envelope over to make sure it's not something Elliot will need, but the thought is lost
as she stares at the area code she just wrote down. New York.She's got to go back. Today.
Now. It doesn't seem real at all.

"I'll be there before lunch," she says into the phone as she stands up, clutching the paper in
her hand.
Cragen hangs up just as Elliot suddenly fills the doorway of the room. He's wearing another
one of his threadbare white t-shirts and a pair of cotton shorts and he's holding a mug of
coffee towards her as he leans against the doorframe. He's tan and he's wearing a soft smile
and she stills, just drinking the sight of him in. The ache blooms across her skin immediately,
because she had wanted today. She had wanted hours of Elliot and absolutely nothing of the
outside world. She's in love. In love for God's sake. With Elliot.It might mean everything to
her, but it's jarring to realise that it's not going to stop the rest of the world.

Her eyes sting. She's wearing his shirt and her feet are bare and this is not, this is not how this
morning was supposed to go. She tosses the envelope onto the bed and turns to face him
immediately.

"El," Olivia says softly, her throat thick with the ache of loss. He reaches out and hands her
the mug. "Hey. You okay?" No. No, she's not okay.
She grasps the offering, and winds her fingers into the handle, grateful for the warmth of the
ceramic. In the dawning hours of a heated summer day she is shivering. She doesn't want to
talk right now; instead she needs the heat of him. Olivia takes a few steps forward until her
body brushes against the solid planes of his. She holds the coffee between them and lets her
forehead rest on his shoulder. She almost groans with the immediate way her body reacts to
his - her thighs, her stomach, between her legs - it all comes alive the moment she touches
him. She can't leave right now. She can't.

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She tries to think about the squad room, about the noise and overhead lights. She thinks
about the faces that are always illuminated on the board. Victims and perps. The guilty and the
innocent. She tries to put herself in a place where there are lab reports and LUDs, where the
legs of a metal chair scrape along the floor of the interrogation room. She thinks about how
sometimes she hopes a crime scene has evidence of blood because it helps a case, and because
she's forgotten that blood means someone's been bleeding. Elliot's hand immediately slides
across the base of her neck and up into her hair, rubbing her gently.

"Talk to me," he rumbles.

Olivia can't say anything. She just wants this. She's too tired to go back. She's exhausted
deep inside, in a place where her aches have nothing to do with a lack of sleep. That's what
this protest is. She's worn down, and even a week out here isn't enough to eradicate the
weariness that comes with the job. A week ago she would have just kept going - dying a little
case by case. But she sees a life ahead of her now. She sees how other people live.
"I shoulda been here. When you woke up, I shoulda been here. And if you're still having
second thoughts then you just gotta tell me ‘cause-"

It's the way she fiercely clutches his t-shirt with her free hand that stops him. She can't cry.
It's her duty to go back. It's his as well. This is what they do. Her brows furrow against his
shoulder as she tries to contain herself. They have a responsibility to those children.
Olivia finally lifts her head. She closes her eyes, bracing herself, and with his fingers sliding
through her hair, she tells him.
"I gotta go back. Cragen called."
Elliot tenses against her. His touch stills mid-motion.
"No." There is a thrumming danger inherent in the way he growls the word under his breath.
She looks at him then, and he looks like he's disappeared. His eyes are suddenly hollow and
guarded, and he simply stares at her as if she is an apparition. Elliot shakes his head slowly.
"No," he bites off. "No, this is your vacation, and-"

"Elliot." He can't do this to her. She needs his support, not his anger. Besides, he's never
been one to question the demands of work. If anyone is supposed to just get it, he is. "We've
got three missing girls under the age of ten. The city's on alert and the one witness they've
got is a teenager who won't talk because she's been attacked." He's stiff, unmoving. Olivia
tilts her head and it's her turn to touch his face. "I've got to go and talk to her."

He backs away from her. It's just a step, but it's enough. Olivia drops her hand, and she grips
her mug now with both hands just to stay warm in the face of his hardened response.

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He thinks she can leave him. That's what this is. He thinks she can walk away this easily. He's
so, so wrong.
"Come with me," she breathes. She dares to look him in the eyes only to find him looking
over her head, staring at the wall behind her.He says nothing. He blinks, and his eyes narrow
but he doesn't acknowledge her at all. It’s her first moment of panic, but she tempers it,
ignoring the warning bells that are going off inside of her at Elliot's lack of response.
Tell him what you need. He's said to just tell him. She straightens and tells herself that he just
needs a moment or two to process what she has asked.

"I can't do this alone, El," Olivia says quietly. Her heart is slamming painfully inside of her
chest. She doesn't notice the way the sun slides across the room now. She can do this. She can
ask for help. This is what he's taught her. It's not weak to need him; it's not desperate or
clingy. He wants this from her. He can handle her dependence. "Come back out here when
the kids do, but work this case with me. I don't want to do it without you anymore." His eyes
are reddening, and it's better than his empty stare, so she keeps going. She is pushing herself
past every comfortable boundary. "I told you I'd be fine working alone, but the truth is... The
months you were gone? I just..." It's her turn to break. She's wanted to tell him this for so
long. It feels good to not be contained, to not have to control every emotion inside of her. Her
face is wet, and she lets it stay that way because it's honest, and that's all she can be. "I need
you, Elliot."

He says nothing. He doesn't look at her, but he's shaking. His jaw is set and his eyes are
narrowed and wet.
"I knew you needed time." Her breath is ragged, as if she has been running for hours.
Olivia's lungs burn, but God, she just has to trust him right now. She has to do this - to just
say what she needs. It's Elliot. He won't hurt her. He won't. "But I'm asking you now. Come
back to the city with me. If not this morning then tonight, or tomorrow. I can’t -“
"Olivia-" he rasps. Elliot's eyes are bloodshot, his voice is sandpaper.

He's going to assure her that she can handle it, that she is strong. But the truth is that she
isn't. She hurts just like everyone else. She's got too much in her head to do this alone. She's
not together, and she's not okay in the dark alone. Olivia shakes her head. "I can't, Elliot. So
I'm asking you- " The words are rocks in her throat. If she listened to herself, she'd probably
be horrified. It's outright neediness. She pushes forward anyways.
"Tell me you're ready to be my partner again."
Nothing moves in the room. He's stone. Immoveable. Only his eyes give away that he is even
still with her. Her skin begins to crawl with apprehension. "Elliot?" Her voice is too weak,

387
too desperate. Without realising it, she takes a step back from him. "Say something," she
whispers.
He is frozen.

The roaring in her ears is growing. Her heart speeds up; her movements slow and then stop
altogether. She searches his face, and he gives her nothing. Elliot is looking at her, but she
doesn't even know if he sees her at all.
"Say something," Olivia manages to implore again. She can barely hear herself. "El, just
say-" but she stops, because suddenly she doesn't want him to say anything at all. Her gut
twists and churns with the forming realisation. He's not talking because the words he will say
can only make this worse. The floor is too hard on the bottom of her feet, but at least she is
still standing. Her fingers are burning on the coffee mug, her phone is ringing again and she
makes no move to pick it up from the bed.

It's a tidal wave that is hurtling towards her. It's the swallow of the ocean, the merciless grip
of a riptide. Only this time he won't save her from the churning water, instead he is going to
be the thing that pulls her under. Her vision blurs. The room sways. Her skin feels like it's
been shredded by razor blades, but she ignores the clues, the warning signs. She won't voice
the truth that is crystallising, so she finds another excuse for his response.
"It was too much, wasn't it? It's too much. See? You said-" That's what it is. The panic takes
over then, the embarrassment. She said too much, and it's too soon to cling to him like this.
Olivia turns and sets down the coffee on the end table, and she looks for her clothes. They're
in the other room. Dammit! She's got nothing in here. No pants, no shorts. She needs
something, something. "You said to tell you things, but it was too much. I knew it would be.
It's not us, Elliot. It's not how we are, how I am, and-"

"Stop it," he hisses. He's suddenly behind her, gripping her elbow from behind.
Olivia freezes mid-motion. The only place her skin is warm is where he is touching her. She
squeezes her eyes closed. Something is coming. She knows it is. She might even know what it
is, but she doesn't want to acknowledge it. Just a few more seconds of ignorant bliss, that's all
she has. "I need you to be my partner," she pushes out of her clogged throat.
He doesn't inhale or exhale behind her. His grip on her arm loosens. And then she can feel
him lean in towards her ear.
"Liv-" It's his tone. She can hear it in Elliot's tone. It's all of the apologies, not one of which
will save them this time.

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He'd brought her out here to love him, she thinks. He did this to her purposely. Intentionally.
He's manipulated this for some reason, even if the fragments are crashing down around her
too fast for her to put them together. Elliot's words are echoing in her ears. It's all of the
things he's said to her over the last few days, all of the pieces that she didn't put together until
now. Just let yourself go with me, Liv.Jesus, she had. She'd fought him, but in the end, she'd
opened herself and fallen. Only he hadn't given her the whole truth. She
knows this now. Instinctively, she knows.

"Say it," she says hoarsely.

Olivia presses her lips together. She knows what is coming. After all of the years, he'll tell her
like this, right now. He'll tell her in the worst possible moment, at a time when she has
allowed herself to need him the most. She’ll cry. With her back to him, she'll cry like hell. But
she'll be damned if she makes a sound. She should have known, she should have seen it. How
could she have missed the signs, the clues? Goddamned job, he'd said. Messes with your
head until you don't know up from down. Her teeth sink into her lower lip hard and her hands
shake. He's going to say it now. This is where it ends. He's done. He's done with the job and
New York. Which means that inevitably he'll be done with her.It's standing on the tracks and
just waiting for the train to smash into her.

So she waits now, she just waits for him to finish what he's started. She'd believed, she thinks.
She'd believed. It's the only thing that keeps running through her head as she tries to count
all of the pieces of her. Such a fool she'd been. Love and the beach and all the romance, and
he's known all along. He'd hinted. He'd buried the clues beneath her belief. He'd expected
her to fall so hard for him that she'd give up her life, too. The unit oughta have term limits,
and when you're done, they force you the hell out. Seconds pass. Maybe minutes. Her
temples pound, because the clues had all been there. She'd been listening to what he said, but
the truth had always been in what he didn't say. He'd never said he was returning to
Manhattan, to her. Elliot won't say the words. He won't move a muscle next to her.

He had orchestrated all of this. This was just Elliot, trying to get his way. Again. She doesn't
know why she is surprised. Why she didn't see it coming. He can't be alone. If she knows one
thing, it's that Elliot Stabler can't be alone. He'd figured her to be just dependent enough on
him that he could get her to stay here. They'd probably all turned him down - Kathy, the kids -
and he needed someone. Anyone. It's the white-hot burn of having been played so skillfully
that finally forces her to speak.

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"You're not coming back. Not to the unit -“ The magnitude of it is too much to process. Her
words are wooden; she has no sensation on her skin. "And not to New York."
His forehead lands on the back of her head. She doesn't react. Not to his touch, not to his
heat. He can touch her now - just for a moment or two - until she gets her bearings. After this
she'll never let him touch her again. She's teetering on the balls of her feet. The room seems
to dance in front of her and she can't focus. I need to talk to you. Please, Liv. Olivia closes her
eyes, because she doesn't want to see any of it. Not the rumbled bed, not her bare legs and
definitely not the ugly, devastating truth that is staring her in the face. I'm not leaving you,
he'd said. He’d. No. He's not leaving her. He's twisted this so that she will be the one who is
forced to leave him. "I'm so sorry," Elliot whispers into her hair.

Everything inside of Olivia disappears.

***

For the longest time, he just stands there. She had stepped away from his body and
repositioned herself at the foot of the bed and out of his line of sight. She's not talking to him,
and he can't turn to see if she is even looking at him. He is terrified of the look he will see on
her face. Instead he's frozen in place, trying to wrap his head around what the hell he is
supposed to do next.
"Olivia," he finally manages. His throat is burning.
"Don't," she whispers harshly. "Not yet."
Olivia sounds breathless, and it makes him close his eyes. This isn't how this is supposed to
go. He doesn't know what he expected, but he sure as hell knows this isn't it.
Elliot pries his eyes open, and he tries to inhale. He can't let her get inside of her head on
this. He has to tell her, to explain to her - shit, she'll spin theories and scenarios that he'll
never be able to get in front of if he gives her too much time.

"Liv-"
"I said shut up, Elliot," she hisses. "Just don't say anything. Nothing else."
His gaze travels across the bed now, and the disheveled covers are a painful reminder of where
they had been only hours ago. Minutes ago. He can feel everything he's ever wanted slipping
away from him. Every second that ticks by, she's withdrawing.
"Let me-" he rumbles.
Her breath is ragged, and he knows she's struggling.
"When? That's all I want to know. When did you decide?"

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He can hear her thready control in the tightness of Olivia's voice. He wants to turn all the way
around to look at her. But he's caught sight of something now, and his pulse manages to
ratchet up even further. He knows it's just a matter of seconds before she sees it, before she
realises what she is looking at. He can't even grab it without drawing her attention. Not that
he even would. He can't lie to her. Not anymore.

"Answer me, dammit!" Olivia growls. "After all this shit you've pulled out here, I've at least
got a right to-" her voice trails off. The air stills. He hears her rushed intake of air, the way she
almost gasps. Olivia makes a tiny sound then, and it stabs its way into him and rattles around
beneath his skin. It is a sound he will never, ever forget. He turns then, because he deserves
this. He deserves to see the look on her face when she realises just how far he's gone. He
doesn't even remember how he got here, how he had ever thought this was a good idea. He
realises the magnitude of what he's done now, though. He can see the way the golden colour
of her skin has paled. He can see Olivia's wet eyelashes, and he can see the painfully even rise
and fall of her chest, as if she is willing herself to breathe. She's staring at it. At the envelope
that lies face up on the bed.

The mask she tries to hide behind falls away; her eyes go wide with gut-wrenching
vulnerability. He'd realised the truth would hurt her, but he couldn't have imagined this
expression on her face. After all of the people who had hurt her over the years, after all of the
obstacles and disappointments, he is the one who has taken her to this place. He sees the way
belief slips from her, how the fight fades. She might be in his bedroom and only a few feet
away, but Olivia finally looks utterly and totally defeated. She doesn't take her eyes off the
envelope.

The one that bears the insignia of the New Jersey State Police Department. He doesn't look at
it. Instead he watches Olivia, and he has the urge to simply shut down. He doesn't want to feel
any of what is to come. He knows he should fight her on this, he should argue and protest and
tell her his side of it, but the truth is that he's locked in the fear again. He's paralysed by the
knowledge that his explanations probably won't keep her here. He's going to lose her no
matter what he says, and he's goddamned terrified. Losing her this time will kill him. He
knows too much of loving her, of having her. This will send him spiralling.

He can only imagine what he's about to do to her. She won't understand. Not this time. His
fear doesn't compare to the fragile, stricken look on her face. He watches her shoulders fall.
Olivia's eyelids seem heavy. She is rigid and transfixed. He doesn't even exist in the room.
Not right now. Not to her.She gingerly reaches for the envelope, and he doesn't stop her.
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Olivia's movements are slow but deliberate, and it's in her fingers before she finally
straightens. She's draining out right in front of him and he says nothing at all to stop it from
happening. He's losing, that's all he knows. He's losing. The paper rustles loudly in his ears
as her fingers play over the insignia.

"I love you," he grates into the heavy, oppressive silence.

It's the wrong thing to say on so many levels. He doesn't have the right to say it, not in the
face of what he's done, but it's all he's got in his defence. It's one last reminder of what they
have before the gavel falls. She doesn't acknowledge him. Instead Olivia's head is bent, and
she turns the envelope over in her hands, seeing a number she had written earlier on the back
of it. Her teeth scrape over her lips, and she blinks. Her hair falls into her face, and she
doesn't bother to push it back. She's trembling. He can tell by the way the paper shakes in
her hands. Her lips part and she exhales, wholly focused on the incriminating evidence in her
hands.

And then her eyes lift to meet his. She doesn't say a word, but he can see it all in her
expression. It's everything he's given her and then taken away. It's one last question, one last
plea. It's disbelief and resignation, it's loneliness and isolation. It's her begging him to make
the truth disappear, to make it all different. He's never seen her so utterly bewildered by what
has happened to her, so starkly lost as a result. She's standing there in his t-shirt, wondering
how he could have done this to her. He's got no answers, because he doesn't know either.
This is his fault. All of it. He knows it and she knows it, and she's going to fall through his
fingers like sand when this is done.

Olivia gently pulls the paper from its sheath, and then she is unfolding it carefully, as if it
might disintegrate at any second. As if she might. It's the letter Olivia should have known
about before he even received it. It's the one thing out of everything that he should have
talked to her about, the one thing he should have prepared her for. She had a right to know
from the very start. He doesn't make her read it.

"They offered me a job up in Sea Girt," he says lowly. Her eyes are on the words, but she
deserves to hear this from him. No matter how late it is - too late - Olivia should hear it from
him. "Training up at the State Academy. They got funding for more courses in sex crimes
after the public embarrassment over the backlog, and they need instructors." He thinks his
words are blending together, and Olivia doesn't lift her face. Her fingertips are as white as the
paper, and he doesn't know if she can even hear him. "It's three days a week and pays full-
time, so I can stay here and commute."
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She furrows her brow, but she remains silent aside from the harsh punctuation of her breath.
She doesn't move.
"It's off the street, Liv," he tries to explain. "It means no more live vics, no more middle of
the night calls. But it still does some good because there's-" his throat thickens, and maybe
he's the one disintegrating. Someone is. "It's training a new group, people who are good
people, who -“
She's nearly shivering. Olivia's shoulders shudder and she makes a small sound, staring at the
offending paper in her hands.

"People who aren't us," he whispers. He can't help himself, so he takes a few steps towards
her. Olivia doesn't pull away or run, so he takes another step. Then another. She has to
understand where he is coming from, what he wants for them. Elliot is in front of her now, and
her head is still bent. He wants to know if Olivia is even listening to him at all. "We did our
time out there, Olivia. We gotta let someone else take over. It's been too much. They need
more instructors. You could do this too, and you'd be-" He stops, because she is giving him
no reaction at all to his rush of words.

Olivia closes her eyes.

"You got this letter just over a week ago," she mumbles weakly.
"Yeah," he acknowledges. She's so close to him now that he can touch her. He reaches out
and his fingers dance lightly on the edges of her hair. She doesn't pull away. He's afraid it is
because she can't even feel him anymore.
"So you got this letter and then called me to invite me out here."
He knows where this is headed. It's headed straight into hell.
"Olivia-"
She takes a deep breath, and she tosses the letter back onto the bed, still never looking up at
him. Her spine stiffens.

"What made you think this plan would work, Elliot?" she asks without any inflection at all in
her voice. "Did you think I was so lonely - so pathetic - that I'd just fall into line and give up
my life in New York for you?" The ironic thing is that there is no sound of life at all behind
her words. Olivia looks up at him then, and she isn't even crying. Instead she is hollow, her
irises flat and vacant. "It was pretty easy, wasn't it?" she whispers, her lips turning up in a
self-deprecating smile. "I was yours in just a few days." She shakes her head and presses her
lips together, and that's when her deadened eyes fill without spilling over. She stares off
towards the door to the bedroom. "You shouldn't be scared of being alone, Elliot. I've done

393
it my whole life, and after awhile, you just get used to it." She chews on her lower lip, and
she's crying now, although she doesn't acknowledge it at all. When Olivia looks up at him
again she is as vulnerable as any battered child he's ever encountered. "My life back home
may not look like much to you, Elliot. But it wasn't yours to throw away."

Before he can say anything, she steps around him and heads towards the door. Her footsteps
seem too loud for a moment, and then they disappear completely as she heads down the hall to
get her things. He stands there unmoving, wondering if the flip side of heaven will always be
nothing less than sheer hell.
***

She sits on the edge of the bed in the guest bedroom, her bags half-packed next to her. She'd
thrown on jeans and a t-shirt, and her sneakers are tossed by the door, ready for her to put on
before she leaves. An hour ago she had been lounging in his bed, anticipating a long, lazy day
ahead. Life with him had been ahead of her, not behind. She'd been on the verge of laughing,
she'd smiled easily. Life has always changed too fast for her to keep up. Olivia presses her
forehead into the heels of her palms and desperately tries to calm herself down. She can't do
this here. She can't break down. It's just been a couple of days, she tells herself. Her whole
life isn't going to fall apart because she spent a couple of days out here with him.

Of course, it feels like her entire world has been shot to hell. And maybe it has been. Because
she's not just losing the last few days, she's losing everything she has depended upon for as
long as she can remember. There were times over the years when she had expected one of
them to transfer, but that is as far as her imagination would take her. He'd still be in the city -
close by - he'd still be there for her. Not anymore.This place might only be a few hours from
the city, but it's a whole new life for him. A separate life. He's done with being a cop, with the
city. He's done with the things that still make up who she is. No more Benson and Stabler.
Not as cops, not as -

This is where they will have to go their separate ways. Her chest is burning as if it is on fire,
and the air around her is stifling. There is a roaring in her ears that won't subside, and she
can't seem to breathe without reminding herself to take each and every breath. She feels like
someone carved her open and she's bleeding out from a thousand cuts. She needs to just get
her things and go, but her legs are shaking so badly that she can't seem to stand up just yet.
He lied to her. All of this was a lie. Maybe he hadn't used deceitful words as such, but there
was deceit involved nonetheless. This was a lie of omission. He'd played her. That's all she
can think.

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He'd played her. The ache is brutal, almost debilitating. She doesn't know how she can even
open her eyes, let alone get her things together and drive back to the city to focus on a case.
She wants to scream, to yell, to just curl up in the fetal position and pray to God that she will
keep herself together. She's survived a lot of losses, but nothing will compare to this. To
losing him. She loves him - loves him - and he's not coming back. Not as her partner, not as
her lover, not in any way at all. That part of her life - the part with him in it - it's over. Over.

Olivia's chest cracks, and for one terrifying moment, she thinks she is going to break here, in
his house. She slides off the bed and crouches, turning her face into the edge of the bed to
muffle the sound of her agony. Elliot had known all along. All those moments of loving her,
holding her, touching her - he'd known that he was never coming back. He'd known that he
would end up forcing her to choose. She has to go. She has a life in New York, a job, a
responsibility. She can't just walk away from that life like he can. All along she'd thought
she'd have to balance both loving him and doing the job; she never thought she'd have to pick
one or the other.

He expected her to choose him. He thought she had so little that it wouldn't be a choice at all.
That's how he sees her. It's how everyone sees her. Desperate. Needy. Alone. Jesus, she just
has to pack her things and go. She can do this. She can. She's not weak or pathetic - not like
he thinks she is. She can stand up, hold her head up, tell him to go to hell on the way out.
Not coming back. So this is it. This is being alone. The one person she needed - loved - and he
is essentially walking out of her life unless she gives up what she knows. It shouldn't be a
surprise; she's never been able to hold onto anyone. She can't hold onto people, but she can
hold onto her dignity, and that means no crying. No goddamned crying. The door creaks
open, and she immediately regrets not locking it. She knows Elliot is standing there, watching
her huddled over, and she has to stand up. She won't give him this; she won't give him what is
left of her.

"If you're going to hate me, then at least hate me for the truth," he rumbles. Elliot stands in
the doorframe, essentially blocking her way out.
His voice washes over her, and it's like pinpricks assaulting her skin. He needs to just give
her some space, just give her a few minutes so that she can get the hell out of here without him
crowding her, without him plying her with more of his manipulative bullshit.
"Leave me alone," Olivia manages as she stands up again. Her irises feel as if she's washed
them with acid, and her mouth is dry. She blinks, trying to focus on the things scattered across

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the bed. Olivia starts shoving her belongings into her bag, already writing off things that will
require her to walk around the house in order to gather them.
"Jesus Christ," Elliot swears. "You think I asked you out here ‘cause I'm too much of a pansy
to live alone? Fuck, Olivia. If that was the case, I'd have gotten a goddamned dog and been
done with it."
He's angry. She closes her eyes for a second just to process the shift in him. His anger is
going to require more from her in the next few minutes than his guilt would have. She's going
to have to toughen up, face him head on. She's got to get angry too or he's going to walk all
over her.

She shoves her sweatshirt into the duffle, ignoring the cotton dresses that lay scattered. She
doesn't have room for everything. She definitely has no room for more of his crap.
"I can see where it would have been a toss-up between calling me and the SPCA," she cracks
bitterly.
Her voice holds up. That's the first positive thing that's happened to her in the last twenty
minutes. She can do this. Just a few more minutes and she'll be able to get the hell out of here.
She won't say goodbye. She can't. After a dozen years, it will come down to avoidance and
slammed doors. Maybe it had always been headed for this. Maybe combustion will always be
followed by destruction.
"This wasn't about me, Olivia," Elliot fires back. "This was about us. About you and me
building some sort of decent life!”

She finally looks at him, and she's grateful for his anger now, because it has started the slow
burn in her gut as well. This is who they are, who they have always been. When kicked, they
come out firing.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Elliot grits his teeth and glares at her, and she can tell he's done an about face in the last few
minutes. He's suddenly fighting, and by the determined and fiery look in his eyes, she is
unsure of just how far he is going to go with this.
"I'm talking about a house, about kids, about maybe getting married. Christ, what the hell
did you think this was? You think after a dozen years, I'd be playing at some game here with
you?"

She stares at him, because he takes away her ability to rationalise or reason. Right now he is
even taking away her ability to move. It's too easy to see what he's throwing at her. The
fantasy he is conjuring is so tangible that it is almost nauseating. For one single moment she
wants to just sink, right here, right now. She wants Elliot to be telling the truth, she wants him

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have his head screwed on straight. She wants him to be able to make guarantees. But he can't,
and that's what she has to hold onto. He's always desperately grasped at straws when faced
with living alone. He's never been alone at all in his life. Not really. Not like she has. He
doesn't know how to cope with it. He's using her right now, even if he doesn't realise it.

"You've lost your mind," she whispers angrily.

His haunted eyes narrow and he leans against the doorway then, as if he has no intention of
moving anytime soon. Elliot's fists are clenched, and he seems even bigger than he usually
does.
"Have I really?"
She hates him then. For one blistering, searing moment, Olivia hates him. She hates that he
has dragged her through this agony, she hates that he has the ability to hurt her like this. She
hates that Elliot has always, always been the single most powerful pull in her life. She can't
seem to escape him, no matter what she does. And he drags her through his shit, time and
time again.

"You have all of that, Elliot!" she throws back at him. "You've got the kids and the house and
you had the marriage. Isn't that what you like to shove in my face all the time? You've got it
all. Why the hell would you want to start all of that again with me?"
He straightens, and his eyes darken as he takes a step into the room.
"You haven't had that. You haven't-"
"Don't do me any favours!" Olivia yells before she can stop herself.
All of a sudden, the determination in his expression disappears. Elliot freezes mid-motion and
just stares at her, his eyes unsure and wary.
"Dammit, Olivia. That's not what this is. Of course that's not what-"

But she knows who she is better than he does. She knows what she lacks, what she's been too
obvious about all of her life. He's seen her for who she isn't all these years, and he thinks he
can rectify all of it. He thinks it's still his job to take care of her. Even worse than the past
week being an exercise in fixing him is the realisation that it might have been an exercise in
fixing her. She doesn't want to be his project. She can't be. He'll shred her pride to pieces if
he pities her.
"Yeah it is, isn't it?" Olivia says softly. "That's what this is. Screw you, Elliot."
Her insult doesn't have the intended effect. The hard lines of his face soften instead, and his
eyes lose their fire. He comes closer to her, and damn him, because he's always had the ability
to make her want to touch him, even in the midst of her fury.

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"I'm not the one who sees you as damaged goods, Olivia," Elliot says quietly.
It's the sincerity in his tone that makes her flinch. This is the same man who had held her last
night, who had danced with her in the sand. This is the same man who had laughed with her,
who had pulled her out of the surf. She thinks about the storm, about watching the lightning
from the majestic perch of the lighthouse, and her anger fails her. Instead she feels stifled by
the armour she is trying to wear again. She wants to slide back against Elliot, to go back to the
fairytale she'd been losing herself to.

A fairytale that doesn't exist. A fairytale that had been built on less than the whole truth.

"You can't expect me to just give up my job-" she starts, trying for as much anger and
indignation as she can muster as she tries to zip the overstuffed duffel bag.
But Elliot is too close to her.
”It's just a job."
Her hands still on the bag. She can't look at him.
"You know that's not true."
"When does your dad's legacy end, Olivia?" His breath hits the side of her face. "When does
yours begin?"

She can't look at him. If she turns even slightly to her right, he'll practically be on her. Space.
She needs some damned space.
"The victims need me," she grits, reaching for the shopping bag that will have to hold the rest
of what she needs to take with her.
"Stop lying to yourself," he hisses ruthlessly into her ear. "You need the victims, Olivia. You
need them more than they need you. You tell ‘em they need to find a life outside of being a
vic, and you do, too. You don't owe the world for what your father did. You don't owe the
world for what happened to your mother! You keep using the vics to justify your existence,
and that's when you know you gotta walk away!"

The anger flares again. Damn him for always having justification, for always being so damned
sure of himself. He's not her father or her husband or even her brother. He's not her shrink.
Elliot was once her partner, and that's all they should have ever been to each other. She can't
think about him touching her, holding her, whispering in her ear. She can't think about the
way he soothes her, or the way he stays steady as she sways against him on the beach. She
won't think about being soaking wet and clinging to him, she won't dwell on how easy it is to
sleep through the night next to his solid body.

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She won't think about twelve years; about history and futures and absolutely nothing ahead.
She won't think about the way her visceral need for him had exploded inside of her over the
last few days.
"And you're going to make that decision for me?" she retorts instead.
She's got to focus on the present, on what he's telling her. Elliot is done with the job, with
Manhattan. Unless she gives up everything to move out here with him, this is the end of the
road for them, too. She loses either way and she loses big. It’s like a battering ram to the gut.
Elliot's face is stoic when she shoots him a glance.
"You need help, Olivia."
She shoves her bag across the bed and whirls on him. Anger, she thinks. It's the only way out.
"Go to hell."

Her words reignite the fury in him. His lips thin as he sneers a little bit at her.
"Who are you without the badge? Do you even know?" he growls at her.
He's too close, too far into her space. Olivia takes a step around him and heads towards the
bedroom, bending to grab her sneakers. Her skin feels bruised, and she's too dizzy for her
own liking. She's still sore from the way he had loved her last night, and she wants
a shower, but it will have to wait until she's at the squad. She'll steal a searing hot shower in
the crib and - She practically chokes on the reality of it. She's going back to New York in a few
minutes. Without him. Forever without him. It's done. All of it, it's done.

"Fuck you," Olivia whispers, not trusting her voice. "You don't get to stand there and judge
me just because you're feeling washed up."
It's irrational and unfair, but she feels betrayed by his unwillingness to take on the job again.
She feels humiliated by what she fell for out here, and she's furious that he didn't respect her
life enough to consider it at all in his grand scheme of things. But most of all she feels
startlingly alone. She's going back to nothing, she thinks. It'll just be the job now, and
nothing else. She's choosing the job. The crystal clarity of it steals the air from her chest.
Then again, the job is the one thing that's always been there for her. It's the one thing that
has always given her purpose, the one thing that has needed her every single day. It's the
steady, the constant. She forgot that out here.

She didn't have much to start with. How could he expect she'd give up the little she had?
He says nothing. Elliot stands there, unmoving. His fists open and close and his breaths are
laboured. He is looking back at her, over his shoulder, and he is unnaturally still. Eerily so.
Screw him for staying composed. Screw him for that. He's a selfish bastard sometimes, and
for once - for once - she's gonna make him pay.

399
"You want to be done?" Olivia pushes, because she has to find her footing. "Then do it. Do
it! But don't you stand there in judgment of me. You got that, Elliot? Because I'm not done
with the job!"
He turns slowly, his lips almost twisted into a sneer.
"No," he says. He is dangerously quiet. "You're just done with the rest of your life."
Olivia flinches hard.
"I'm not ready to give up yet!" she yells angrily. Her chest is hollow, and her fingers are ice-
cold, even in the summer heat that is filtering back into the bedroom. This is a nightmare, she
thinks. She woke up in some alternate universe, because this can't be happening. She can't
be losing everything all at once.

He's furious now. Elliot's lip curls and his eyes narrow, until she can practically feel his gaze
burning her skin, her throat, her cheeks.
"You think that's what I'm doing?" he says menacingly, closing in on her once again. "You
think I'm giving up?" He's in her space now, anywhere and everywhere around her. He
bends a little, getting eye level with her, until she has no choice but to look him dead in the
eyes. It knocks the breath out of her to see him like this, so determined. So maddeningly
righteous. "I'm fighting, Olivia. Right now? I'm fighting. I'm fighting to get the nightmares
out of my head. I'm fighting to know my kids again. I'm fighting for some sense of normalcy,
and goddammit, I'm fighting for you!"

She can't manage a single word. He's too far into her space. She finds the slightest sliver of
belief inside of her, and it's desperate for him. Only she can't have him. He wanted her here
out of loneliness, and she knows what happens when he reaches out in desperation. He'd
done the same thing to Kathy years ago, and the need hadn't held. He'd still ended up
walking away from her in the end. He wants her right now and she wants him. But in the long
run they will both need something more. She can't just walk away from everything she's ever
known like this, she can't. But he doesn't understand. She can see the disbelief in his
expression, the realisation that he was wrong about what she'd be willing to gamble in
exchange for him. Her eyes burn with unshed tears. Her fingers long to curl into the cotton of
his t-shirt. She wants to feel Elliot's heat against her, and she wants him to hold her. Just one
more time. Just one more.

"That job cost me my marriage," he whispers, staring at her unrelentingly.

Olivia closes her eyes and shakes her head. She can't fall into this. Not again.
"No, no you let go of that, Elliot. You did. You're the one who stopped talking to your wife."
She looks at him again, and he blinks, as if he hadn't expected her to come back at him like
400
this. But she won't placate him, not now. Not when he needs to hear the truth. He escapes,
that's what he does. When life gets uncomfortable, he seeks what he knows. It's why he had
sought her out again, only she hadn't seen his invitation to come out here for what it was. "It
was easier to stay away, wasn't it Elliot? It was easier to stay at the 1-6 than to go home to your
wife and kids."

The colour in his eyes flattens, and he straightens. He doesn't spark or ignite; he doesn't
head straight for the rage. Instead he just shakes his head, as if seeing her for the first time.
"And it's easier for you to stay at the 1-6 than to come home to me." His smile is bitter and
mirthless. "We're not so different after all, are we?"
The panic crawls all over her again. She can hear the defeat in his voice now; she can almost
feel the resignation in the air. They won't fight anymore this morning. Maybe they won't ever
fight about this again. Elliot walks towards her, and Olivia instinctively backs up, until her
spine hits the wall near the doorway. Only he doesn't come at her. Instead, Elliot walks to her
left, heading for the sunlight that drenches the hallway. He stops though, right before he
walks past her.

"I thought that when I walked away, the job would stop taking from me. But I was wrong,
wasn't I? ‘Cause it's gonna cost me one more thing, isn't it?" Her head hits the wall, and she
closes her eyes. Olivia presses her lips together and gives up her battle to hold it together.
She's done, she thinks. There isn't any more fight in her. There are no more illusions. She's
going back without him, and that's the life that lies ahead.

"It's gonna cost me you.”

And then he's gone, and Olivia knows he won't try and stop her again. All that's left now is
the leaving.

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 Chapter Twenty-Six

H
e remembers the last day of summer break when he'd been eleven years old. He'd
been at home that day, stuck between the anticipation of starting a new school year
the following day and the regret that the summer was officially over. He'd been lying
on his bed, staring at the ceiling at the Sports Illustrated cover he had taped there. It featured
an image of Catfish Hunter - signed that year by the Yankees - pitching a game when he had
still been with the A's. He'd idolised Catfish since the summer previous, when Elliot's father
had made a passing comment after seeing Elliot and Danny Roache tossing the ball around in
the backyard.

"Y'got an arm like Catfish," his father had mumbled to him almost irritably. "But you'll
shoot yourself in the foot too, boy. And there ain't no way you'll come back from it like he
did."
The thing about Catfish was that he had had literally been shot in the foot, and it had cost him
one of his toes and caused him to limp. It hadn't mattered though, he was still a Cy Young
Award winner, an All-Star, he had still won the Series more than once. There was something
about Catfish that didn't give up, and when the man had become a Yankee, Elliot's idolisation
of the future Hall-Of Famer had been complete.

But that day, as he lay there staring at the fierce scowl on the face of his hero, Elliot had heard
the shuffling of footsteps moving quietly down the hallway. His father had been out - who
knows where - and when he had last checked his mother had been fast asleep. So when he
heard the movement, his curiosity had won out. He had rolled himself off his bed, clutching

406
his baseball, and gone to his bedroom doorway. He'd used one finger to open the door just
enough to peer out and check on the source of the noise.
It had been his mother. She'd been tiptoeing down the hall, shoes in hand and a big bag slung
over her shoulder. Her sunglasses had been perched on the top of her head, and as Elliot
watched, his mother had stopped on the stairs, looking at the pictures hanging in frames on
the wall next to her. She had stared at the one of the three of them as a family, but she had
covered her mouth with her free hand when she glanced at Elliot's school picture from the
year before. He'd been silent, nearly holding his breath as he watched her struggle not to cry.
His mother had gently lifted the frame off the nail and held it against her chest for a moment
before she'd tucked it under her arm and made her way down the rest of the stairs.

He'd heard the quiet way she had grabbed the keys to the car, and he'd noticed the way she
hadn't put her shoes on inside the house. He'd heard the front door close, and he hadn't
done anything to stop her from leaving. In that moment, he finally knew what it was to give up.
He'd stopped her too many times before and it hadn't done any good. He'd begged her
before, he'd pleaded. She still found reasons to leave time and time again. If she was going to
come back this time, it would have to be of her own accord.

Elliot stands in the kitchen now, and he ruthlessly focuses on the beach, the ripples of the
sand, the froth of the gentle surf. He knows Olivia is leaving, and he knows he won't stop her.
Not this time. He knows now that he can't keep dragging her back to him. He'd simply
wanted to show her what could be, and he had hoped it would be enough. But the truth is that
it hadn't been enough, and maybe that's the lesson here. He isn't enough. He hadn't been for
his wife, and he still doesn't know if he will be what his kids need. Maybe he had been wrong
all along to assume he could give her more than the job ever could. He widens his stance, and
shoves his hands into the pockets of his shorts. His chest doesn't even pound anymore. The
anger, the rage, it's fading. He keeps losing the fight. He can hear Olivia moving around the
bedroom, and she still doesn't have her sneakers on. He wonders if she will carry them out in
her hands.

If he's learned anything over the last thirty-odd years, it's that there are some things a man
just doesn't need to see. So when he hears her footsteps in the hallway, he doesn't turn
around to watch. He hears the front door open, and his fists clench. He wonders for a moment
if Olivia will stop and look around at all, if she will take one last look at the life he had wanted
for them. There is a pause in her movement. He closes his eyes, and he's eleven years old
again. He recalls that holding his breath doesn't make a wish come true, and he exhales.

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When the door closes behind her, he prays for the first time that Olivia will be just like his
mother, and that she will someday, somehow make her way back to him again.
***
The world around her feels like a furnace. She'd made her way back to the parking lot and
paid the attendant the enormous fee she'd accrued over the last few days before tossing her
bags into the trunk of the Mustang. The car had been coated in a layer of sand and dust,
rendering the black paint a musty grey, but she barely noticed. She'd unlatched the roof, slid
into the car and started up the engine, sitting there for long moments as the convertible
hummed to life. She has to leave. Olivia sits in the parking lot, staring at the beach ahead,
willing herself not to cry. She doesn't know why this moment surprises her, or why she
doesn't feel prepared for it. It's not as if Elliot's been in New York at all this year, it's not as if
she isn't used to working alone.

It's the permanency that is cutting into her now, though. He is no longer her partner - he
never will be again - and that is the only role she has ever known him in. She's not sure what
she is supposed to do now, or how it will play out. She doesn't even know if they will end up
being friends after this. Twelve years of her life have been wrapped around his presence, and
she's now facing a future could very well not include Elliot at all.

The waves keep tumbling in towards the shore. The last few days are so tangible to her that
she can almost feel the sand between her toes right now. She has the urge to say fuck it to
everything she's ever known, and to just run back to the house. To him. She'll tell him she's
in, that she doesn't want anything without him. She'll let him spin fantasies of kids and family
and dinner around a table every single night. She'll believe in all of it, and she'll let go of the
past. She would, if she could. But the truth is that she doesn't know how. She has no idea how
to let go of New York and the job and the city streets, because she doesn't know who she'd be
without those things. She doesn't know who she'd be with him.

The sun is almost unbearably warm, and her thighs burn beneath the denim. But inside of her,
where she breathes and feels and struggles every day - that part of her is fading. Memories of
her past assault her all at once, and it's all about his voice and his laugh and his damned smirk.
She can almost hear his footsteps running next to hers; she can hear him calling her name out
in the field. She thinks of all the late nights, working by lamplight on desks covered by
scattered cartons of Chinese food, and she feels the bile swirling deep in her gut. She can feel
Elliot on her; she can feel his mouth on her skin and his hands cupping her face. She thinks
about how the water feels on her toes, and what the wind feels like when it lifts her hair off her
shoulders and neck. She thinks back to only days ago, when she had first felt Elliot's hand

408
slipping across her abdomen, and she feels the loss of it all grip her. It's too much to lose. She
keeps losing.
She loses something every day, every month, every year. She isn't getting better, she is
getting worse. She isn't as strong as she used to be, she doesn't believe like she once did. The
only thing she can seem to count on anymore is that everything ends, one way or another.
Her cell rings again, and she lifts it from where she had tossed it on the passenger seat. It's
Cragen again, and Olivia takes a deep breath, letting her head fall back onto the seat for one
more minute.

"Benson."
"You on your way?"
She takes a deep breath and pulls the seatbelt across her lap, fastening it. She lets Cragen's
voice pull her, ground her. She can do this. She can drive away from this place. She just has to
get on the road, she just has to let the wind and the speed take over.
"Leaving now."
"Elliot with you?" Cragen asks brusquely.
Olivia can't answer that. She can't say the words yet. She doesn't trust her voice. Her captain
is silent too, and just like that he seems to know.

"Wanted to let you know that Rosie's just gone in for emergency surgery," he finally says.
"Seems she's still bleeding internally and they're going in to take out her spleen. It will be six
hours at least before we can talk to her, so you might as well come straight here."
She puts the car in reverse, and she blinks back the blur. "Got it."
Cragen is silent again, and she figures she'll let him fill the void in conversation. She can't do
it. Not now. She's driving across the gravel, and she can only hear the seagulls and see the
families piling into the parking lot. She thinks about how these people will stay here all day,
and they'll either grill for dinner or they'll head over to the boardwalk. She thinks about how
the music filters out of the restaurants, and how she'd lost her suspicion and found her faith
for just a few days out here. She thinks about when she'd jumped off the boardwalk onto the
sand, and how she hadn't stumbled at all. He hadn't even had to catch her.

"He's not coming back, is he?" Cragen says quietly.

Olivia's breath comes out in an erratic rush, and she feels her throat lock up. She presses her
lips together, but it doesn't stop the sound of her breaking. There are no words. Everything
she needs is eventually stripped from her. She's learned that trying to hang on only prolongs
the rip. It's best to just fall and then start dealing with the damage as soon as possible.
"Okay," he acknowledges gently. "We'll figure it out."

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She nods into the nothingness, and then disconnects the call. The boulevard is busy this
morning, and she thinks about how the last time she was on this road, the rain had been
coming down. She had been curled up in the front seat of his truck, and she'd been warm and
safe, still as yet naïve to the majesty of the lighthouse and the powerful thrust of Elliot's body
inside of hers. Inside of her. It still takes her breath away that she's kissed him, held him,
made love to him. That it had happened at all is going to take a lot of time to process. She had
driven here alone, but now it feels like she is leaving him behind.

She can't think about this, or she's just going to pull the car over and fall apart. She has to
keep her foot on the pedal, and her eyes focused straight ahead. She has to just get on the
parkway and start driving, until the air thickens with smog and the sun dims behind the clouds
that linger over the city. Olivia ignores the images in her head of the house, the beach, and
him. She tries to eradicate the memory of walking up and seeing Elliot standing there on his
patio for the first time only a few short days ago. He'd been all golden skin and ease; he'd
been the smell of beer and the anticipation of endless days ahead. Only nothing is endless.
Everything finishes one day. It is a lesson she had almost forgotten out here.

She pulls onto East Bay Road and heads towards the Garden State Parkway, reminding herself
that she had existed before knowing Elliot, and that she will somehow find a way to exist in the
aftermath of him as well.
***

It's a long, long time before he musters up the conviction to move. He doesn't want to see the
rest of the house - the reminders of Olivia - right now. Her absence is too abrupt, too sudden.
He knew he had to talk to her today, but he hadn't been prepared for this. He'd expected time
to explain, the opportunity to rationalise or reason with her. He'd expected a fight, but he'd
also expected a fighting chance. All of it had been stripped away when Cragen had called. The
job. It was an all too-familiar culprit.

The ocean is a muted crush of noise that filters in from beyond the screen door. He can't
focus too long on any one thing. The wine glass that sits on the kitchen counter, the flip-flops
that she left behind near the back door. Without realising what he is doing, he starts to walk
towards the bedrooms, and he thinks about how Olivia's red dress is still in the washer. He
thinks about how he never showed her his father's bike in the garage, and how about he had
planned on taking her to the marina for an afternoon. He'd imagined her hand in his, the

410
wooden planks of the dock beneath their feet as they chose a boat or jet skis to rent for the
afternoon.
He half expects Olivia to appear, for her to be at the door without warning. He indulges in the
fantasy of it - imagining how she'd still be yelling, how she'd point her finger and charge at
him full of fire and too much logic, and how he'd listen to every word just because it meant
she hadn't truly left. He stands at the edge of the guest bedroom, and it's empty. Her things
no longer litter the bed and the floor.Elliot's fingers grip the moulding of the doorframe.
Maybe he's wrong about all of this. Maybe he should just go back to the city and... His kids.
They remind him of his choices, and why he's made them. It's not even just about his kids
anymore, if he's honest. He had seen the edge of his world right before he'd walked away
from Manhattan, and he had been encroaching upon it without any brakes. He knows that if
he goes back to the job, it will just be a matter of time before he tosses it all to hell, before he
takes a case so far that he'll lose everything like his father did. If he goes back, he's gambling
with his pension, his security, his sanity.

If he stays here, he loses Olivia. His thumbs dig into his eyes, trying to stop the burn. He tries
to hang onto the idea that he can build something here, something for her to turn to when she
reaches the same place he had. He tells himself that one day - one day - she will come back.
He feels like he is trying to capture mist in a jar. His gaze settles on the end table in the guest
room, and he sees the journal, bound in the worn orange leather. He is captivated by the sight
of it; by how innocuous it looks sitting there. Olivia had read a lot of it; he'd seen her pick it
up day after day. He thinks he knows what it says, all of the secrets it contains, but he's not
one hundred percent sure. He is walking towards it before he realises it.

He stands near the edge of the bed, and gently lifts the book. His fingers scrape over the
cracks and crevices in the hide of it. He thinks of how many times his mother had held this,
how many times she had confided in the pages it contains. He wonders if her words will make
him love his mother more or just disappoint him again; he wonders if he will learn anything at
all if he opens it and focuses on the things she has to say. It stays closed there in his hands.
Olivia had left this behind. She'd left her things scattered in every room, she'd left her scent
on his sheets and she'd left the fridge full of her favourite foods.

She'd left him behind, too.

He needs air. He needs more air than he thinks the sand and sea and wind can give him. But
he's moving before he knows it, and he's manoeuvring through the hallway and the living
room. He's pushing his way out through the patio door, and he's headed to the place that has
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saved him over the last eight months. He's headed for the water, and maybe it's a Catholic
thing. Maybe it's the idea that the water can wash him clean, that it can give him
a new start, that it will forgive his sins and absolve him. Maybe he thinks it will save him.
It isn't until he stands at the edge of the ocean and is about to strip off his t-shirt that he
realises he is still clutching something. He looks down, staring at the journal.

He hangs on, even when he knows that he shouldn’t. Elliot sets the journal on top of his t-
shirt, safely out of the reach of the tide and then he focuses on the calm serenity of the sea.
Do your thing, he silently prays. He's in the water then, and he dives deep, holding his breath
this time only because he has no other choice.
***

They'd been partners for three years before he'd first asked her to buy a gift from him for his
wife. He'd been almost sheepish about making the request, and even before he had asked
Olivia had noticed the way he had been out of sorts. He'd made her coffee the wrong way that
morning, and he'd looked at her too many times over their desks. Elliot had been leaning
back in his chair, just watching her and chewing on his lower lip when Olivia had finally just
slammed down the file she'd been rifling through and grinned at him. What the hell? she'd
teased him.

It had been years before the tension would start to form cracks between them. She had been
sure of him once, been sure of herself. Elliot's physical proximity hadn't been as much of a
burden - she'd been too aware of him for her own good, but that awareness hadn't begun to
burn yet. He'd seemed surprised to get caught by her, but then he'd grinned too. Save me,
he'd pleaded. She’d laughed, because he could use those eyes of his to charm nearly all of
their suspects when he needed to, both male and female alike. She also knew he could worm
his way past all of her defences without even breaking a sweat. He hadn't scared her back
then, though. Not as yet, anyway.

It's my anniversary. Things I do have? Credit cards. Things I don't? A gift for my wife or a
dinner reservation. Her eyes had locked on his, and he'd stared back imploringly, and she
hadn't seen anything but a man who was bravely trying, a man who singlehandedly had set the
only examples of family and devotion that she'd ever known. It had been a random moment,
but it had knocked her breath away. They'd closed a case only the night before, and she knew
all too well what Elliot looked like with blood on his hands, on his clothes. She knew what he
looked like with his gun in his palm, how he swore when he took punch and growled when he

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threw one. She'd seen him fearlessly go toe-to-toe with serial killers and child molesters, with
rapists and gangsters.
But it was this man who awed her. The man who still believed there was a way to have it all.
The one who still tried every day to turn it off so he could be a father, a husband.
Give me the card, she'd smiled while holding out her hand. And call Rosetti's on Thirty-third
and use my name. They'll make room for you. He’d flashed dimples and that brilliant smile,
and she'd felt like a hero. He'd made some smart-ass wisecrack about how and why she could
get the reservation, and she'd thrown back that the owner felt sorry for her after all the
miserable dates she'd had there. There had been no jealousy, no bitterness. It had just been
them being them, and the day had gone on to be a better one than most. She'd bought Kathy a
bracelet that his wife ended up wearing for years, and he'd come in smiling the next morning -
mouthing thank you to her in the middle of a morning meeting in Cragen's office.

The signs on I-95 tell her that she's passing through Elizabeth, and Olivia blinks back the
crystal clear memory. Her throat burns, and she thinks about how it all feels like dust now.
Their history is left only in her head, there is no tangible reminder of it. Their partnership had
once been the most solid thing she had ever known, and now doesn't exist. She thinks about
this year's rookies and how they will never know him, and it seems impossible that the world
keeps spinning. She thinks about how life keeps going, and she doesn't want to think that the
ugliness that they saw together was anything akin to good - but the years with him feel like the
best part of her life.

She thinks about the last few days, and how for such a brutally short time she'd believed she
had finally found everything. She squints behind her sunglasses, and she knows her hair is
tangled. She should stop and put the top up, she needs to gather her hair in a ponytail and put
her game face on before she walks into the precinct. Olivia has left this city with the hope that
he'd come back with her, that the loneliness would be over. Instead she's returning now with
the knowledge that they are done, once and for all.

She'll have to ask for a new partner now. There are no more excuses. She'll have to try and
forget the feel of him on her, the rough patches of his voice and the brutal way the sheer
familiarity of him grips her every time. Olivia sees the signs for the Lincoln Tunnel and she's
choking back tears. She doesn't know if she is grieving for the loss of their partnership, or for
the loss of what she thought she'd found over the last few days. Maybe, in the end, she's just
grieving for the loss of Elliot Stabler. One man, and a million consuming roles he'd played in
her life.

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She gets in the express toll lane, and then sound feels hollow as she enters the tunnel. She
can't emerge on the other side as this person. She can't bring the beach and the sand and the
sun to this place where she has to fight and scrape by every day. She's got a job to do. There
are kids who are missing, and as she looks around at the people in the cars next to her, she
knows that she can't indulge in the heartbreak. The people around her can't save those kids.
These people depend on her to keep them safe, to bring their kids home, to drag the worst of
humanity off the streets. She's just got to know her place, her role.

Olivia reaches over to the passenger seat and lifts up her badge. She grips it in her palm for a
moment, turning it over against her lifeline. And then she hooks it onto her belt loop. By the
time she emerges from the other side of the tunnel, the tears have dried on her face. All
around her is the heat and noise of a Manhattan summer. The horns are honking, the smells
assault her. The sea around her is no longer blue, but rather made up of the yellow of cabs, the
grey of pavement. She's in a gridlock of traffic, surrounded by restaurants and street vendors
and construction detours.

The world closes in on her.

She lets it.
***

He sees her before he even clears the saltwater from his eyes. She's just a shape, a blur that
sits on the shoreline. She is holding the journal, and he knows clearly who she is and who she
isn't. She's not his mother, but she's someone who cares a great deal about him. In another
lifetime, he'd analyse Gladys's motivations for spending time with him. He'd chalk her up to
someone trying to replace her son, and he'd write off her need to nurture as a deficiency. In
the life he leads now, she is a friend. She is no more broken than he is; she is no more put
together. He sees her as someone with something to give, and dammit if he isn't someone
who needs to take for awhile.

Elliot rubs his hands down his face and lets the water sluice down over his chest and arms as
he pushes his way out of the ocean. He doesn't feel like smiling at all, but he finds the corner
of his lips tipping up anyway, because she's sitting there on a towel in one of her white
sundresses, and she's holding out another fresh towel towards him, one she'd apparently
brought from her house.

"Thought you could use this," Gladys remarks dryly when he gets close enough to her to
reach for the terry cloth. "'Course it looks like I should have brought you some swim trunks,

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too. You seem to have a real need to go out there in clothes, Elliot. You should talk to
someone about that."
He wants to laugh at her. He wants to pretend that Olivia is still in the house, and that she'll
be coming out soon. He wants to go up to Hattie's Marina and rent jet skis with Olivia. He
wants anything that doesn't involve facing that empty house. At the moment, Gladys gives him
someplace else to be. He'll take what he can get.

"Sit your ass down," she cracks. "That way you can avoid that house and also tell me just what
the hell you did to send that girl packing."
He closes his eyes, because the pressure in his chest isn't easing at all. What the water failed
to alleviate, he prays the sun will absorb. "Sit, Elliot." Gladys pats the sand next to her. "It's
not a request."
He wraps the towel around his waist and then sits next to her, sliding his toes into the hot sand
until it cakes around his skin. He's got nothing to say. He squints out at the horizon and leans
forward, resting his arms on his knees. Gladys opens up her small beach bag and pulls out a
cold plastic bottle before handing it to him.

"It's not beer. It's just orange juice. It's not even noon, and normal people
don't drink on weekdays before lunchtime. At least that's what Jack says.
Personally I think his rule is a little judgmental." Elliot can't help it. He
grins despite the morning and takes the juice. It's when he hears the clink of
a bottle and the telltale sound of a beer being opened that he whips his head
to the right. Gladys is already taking a sip from her Corona. She winks at
him. "I said normal people don't drink this early." She jerks her chin
towards him. "You're still normal, kid. Much as you'd like to debate me on
that, you're not waving your freak flag just yet."
His laughter comes loud, fast and wholly unexpectedly.
"Freak flag?"
She shrugs.
"It's what Matty calls it. He judges all girls by how obvious their freak flags
are. Don't ask me. I just go with it."

The orange juice is still icy and he almost finishes the bottle in one long sip. The silence
settles between them then, and he thinks about how life had taken from both of them. She'd
lost her son too young, and his mother hadn't been a mother for as long as he could
remember. Yet somehow he'd moved in next door, and it was just easy to be around both Jack
and she. It was like borrowing from another puzzle, and yet the pieces still fit.

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"You wanna tell me what happened?" she finally asks, squinting into the sun.
The thick, heated air has dried all of the droplets on his skin already, and he can feel the burn
of the unhindered morning sun start to seep into his muscles. It seems like a lifetime ago that
Olivia had left, but it hasn't been that long. He imagines that she's just getting into
Manhattan now, and that she'll be navigating the city streets to make her way to the precinct.
For a moment the familiarity of that routine draws him, and he simultaneously wonders how
he could leave that life and how he had stayed there that long in the first place. He sees the
unit for what it is now. It is a necessary job, and they'd done more than most. But it's a job
that requires the complete sacrifice of those who do it. The job consumes perspective, hope,
faith and balance. It's a hungry beast that wouldn't have been satisfied until there had been
nothing left of him.

If it were left up to him, he would have let himself succumb to it. But he's got kids, an ex-wife,
Olivia. They are people who are depending on him whether they know it or not. He's got to
climb out of the mental hole he'd dug himself into over the last twelve years. It's going to be
an uphill battle no matter how he looks at it.

"She knows I'm not going back to New York," he says quietly. The last of the orange juice
stings his throat.
Gladys nods, and then she too is staring at the majesty in front of them.
"And she said you were an asshole for not telling her upfront and then high-tailed it out of
here."
He can't respond, not this time. The ache of it cuts too deep; the devastation that awaits him
in the empty house behind him is too much to process. He looks at Gladys, and she must
sense his gaze because she looks at him, too.
"Do you blame her?" she prods.

He grits his teeth and feels the beat of his pulse choking him.
"No," he finally says thickly. "No, she deserved to know as soon as I'd made the decision.
But she woulda put up the walls from that moment on. She woulda started to cut me out of her
life instead of
letting me in."
"What do you like about Olivia? What draws you to her?"
They are honest questions. Gladys' tone isn't combinative or accusing, it's just plain and
simple curiosity from a woman he respects.

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Elliot starts to the peel the label off the now plastic bottle in his hands. He thinks about how
Olivia had always been the only force he could see in the squad room. Sure, dozens of people
moved around, barking orders and rushing in and out. But she was the one who stood in the
middle of the chaos - tall and regal and stronger than all of them combined. He'd been
ridiculously proud of being her partner. There had been something in the idea that he'd been
the one to keep her all of those years. He'd earned her trust, her faith, her belief. He'd been
proud as hell of that.

"She's immoveable. When she gets something in her head, she'll fight like hell for it. If you
tell her no, she'll find a way around you." Elliot feels the pull of his memories. He thinks
about the day-in and day-out with her. They'd survived when anyone else would have been
dead. They'd burned through a thousand lives together. "She's tougher than any other cop in
the room. If you think you're a goner, she's the one you want at your back. She doesn't give
up." He doesn't see the ocean anymore. He doesn't feel the sand. In truth, for a moment he
forgets where he is, and why he is saying this. "I'd play a suspect, get them to trust me. But
she'd get the victims to trust her. They'd be fresh off of having their whole life ripped apart,
and she'd turn it around and earn a vic's faith when they wouldn't trust those who love them
most. She has empathy that doesn't relent, and she still believes that the world can be fixed for
everyone else." He loses his voice. "She'd give up her life in a heartbeat if it meant saving
someone."

She left, he thinks. She left. It's like a jackhammer to his skull. It's killing him. He wants to
yell at Olivia. He wants to beg, to plead. Fuck, he'll do whatever it takes. Maybe he should just
go to New York and sit on her stoop until she acknowledges him and agrees to listen to
whatever it is he has to say.
"So she's tough and stubborn and committed?" Gladys' tone is gentle. "Seems to me she left
because of all the reasons you love her."
He looks over his shoulder at the woman who had probably once sat like this with his mother.
"She needs to walk away from that job. It nearly killed me. It's bleeding her out too, she just
doesn't see it."
Gladys' eyes soften.
"Olivia is a smart woman, Elliot. She sees it. She just hasn't decided to do anything about it
yet.”

He's scared. In truth, if it comes down to nothing else, he's fucking scared. He doesn't want
to know what the job will do to Olivia. She might stay there forever, fading away day after day.
He doesn't believe that she knows what her limits are, she definitely doesn't set boundaries.

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And in the most chauvinistic reasoning of all, he doesn't want her out there without him at her
back because she doesn't protect herself like she should. He doesn't think she will ever, ever
leave. And he can't go back. All he can think is that in his pursuit of life, he might be leaving
her out there to die.
"You reading this?" Gladys asks quietly, tapping the journal which now rests on her lap.
Elliot stares at the leather. No, no he hasn't and he doesn't plan to. It's a book filled with all
the reasons why he wasn't good enough to make his mother stay. It's all the ways in which he
couldn't save her from herself.
"I used to ask your mom why she didn't go hunt you down in the city. You know what your
mom used to say?"
He can't look up. Every muscle in his body aches and he thinks that this goes beyond
heartbreak. Olivia was far more to him than simply the love of his life. She was the rest of him.
"She'd say that you don't have to chase what's already yours." His.

When it boils down to the basics, that's the tenet of this. She feels like she's his, just as much
as he is hers. Staying away from Olivia had never been an option. He sees that now. They are
intertwined, intersected. They are infinitely vulnerable and flawed when kept apart, and they
are invincible and magic when together. Elliot sounds congested when he finally speaks.
"She was the one who left me, Gladys. All those years, she kept leaving me. She never chased
me a day in her life." He doesn't know who he's talking about anymore.
The older woman's laughter is gentle.
"She kept leaving your father. She'd been chasing freedom, not leaving you, kid. It's all in
your perspective, and in this case, you got it all wrong. Soon as your dad died, she bought this
place and stayed put, didn't she? She got her freedom then. Just like you did when you finally
got that divorce. My guess is that Olivia's feels bound and obligated to that job. But you
showed her a taste of what freedom could be like out here. Now let her figure it out. If she's
yours, she'll come back."

The fear that she won't come back to him is overwhelming. He ruthlessly chews on his lower
lip and narrows his eyes, searching the damned ocean for some sort of answer.

"And if she's not mine?"

Gladys stands up then, and she grabs her bag, The beer bottle in her hand is still half full. She
smiles indulgently.
"Don't be an idiot, Elliot. Now," she thrusts the bottle towards him. "Take this. You're
worrying like a girl. That's your ticket into the freak flag club. Drink up."

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He takes the beer, and somewhere deep in his chest, he finds the smallest pocket of air. It lets
him breathe.
"Thanks," he manages roughly, feeling the pain settle in the back of his neck.
She winks at him.
"And if she doesn't come back soon enough, I'll find my way into that city and drag her back
here by her ear all by myself. Deal?"
It's the visual her words paint that makes Elliot closes his eyes and laugh softly under his
breath. It also gives him the courage to stay still and prepare for the wait. He wonders if it will
be weeks or months. Months or years. Whatever it is, he'll be here.

Gladys is walking away when he finally voices the last of what he has within him.
"I was too late for my mom. I didn't come back here soon enough to save her."
Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees the older woman stop. She turns and stands there, five
feet away and watching him.
"She didn't want to be saved, Elliot. She just wanted to be understood." Gladys tips her chin
towards the journal she'd left on his towel. "Seems to me that it isn't too late for that."
She leaves him with his dignity by turning and walking away before she sees his eyes burn with
the ache.
***

Olivia stands in the hallway, just outside the bullpen. It's become a familiar place to her over
the last two years. They'd lost the old squad room to the broken water pipes and the unit had
been shifted into this space a few months before Elliot had left. For the first few weeks after
their move the change of scenery had been a welcome reprieve. The walls hadn't contained
the blood, the battles, the history. It had felt like a fresh start, and with all of the new
technology they'd been granted, it had also felt like they were actually moving forward, maybe
even finding a way to win the fight.

But she misses the old bullpen right now. She misses the room that had held their partnership
for all the years. She misses the creak of the stairs, the dank air of the crib. She wants her old
desk back, the gunmetal grey one that had bumped up against his. There aren't enough
memories here, and she needs to hold onto what she can. Her fingers splay on the wall closest
to her, and she just blinks, staring at the frenetic scene in front of her. No one has noticed her
yet, maybe because she's practically flattened her side up against the wall. This place doesn't
contain the beginnings of Benson and Stabler; it doesn't contain the early victories or the
swagger. They'd only been half of who they'd once been by the time they had moved into this
place.
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Maybe she should be grateful. Maybe moving on will be easier without the reminders of Elliot
in every corner. Save me, he'd once pleaded, with humour in his eyes.Maybe it was inevitable
that she would end up here alone. He shouldn't have stayed as long as he had. He'd always
straddled the promise of something more, something better.

"Olivia?"
It's a gentle, easy version of her name when he says it like that. Her captain has always known
when to fight her and when to cajole instead. He's also always known when she needed him to
just back down. She turns her head, looking back over her left shoulder at him. She can't say
anything. Not when he knows, and he's looking at her with his blend of sympathy and
expectation.
"I'm sure he'll call you, Cap," she says quietly, barely moving her lips.
Cragen nods, never taking his eyes off of her.
"I'm sure he will," he acknowledges easily.
Olivia takes a deep breath, and then another. She won't look away. The man in front of her
had put his life on the line for them too many times for her to give him anything less than the
truth.

"You sure you want to do this without him?" he asks softly. His minimal volume is
disproportionate to the magnitude of the question.
She wants to say yes. She wants that answer to be on the tip of her tongue; she wants it to
come quickly and with conviction. But the recesses inside of her are balking at the future as it
is laid out ahead of her. There is a desperate chaos that is unique to the squad room - the
images of lost children illuminate the board, the coffee smells stale and the weight of defeat
lingers in the air. They've never rested on their wins, but they've repeatedly measured
themselves by their losses.

Olivia looks away, instead focusing on the window across the room, where the sun filters
through and onto the floor in front of it. The air conditioning is running just a little too high,
and the phones are ringing. The desk opposite hers sits empty, as if they've purposely left it
barren, waiting for him.

"I'm gonna need a new partner at some point," she murmurs.

"Fin and Munch agreed to split for awhile. Fin'll take the detective they're sending in from
Brooklyn and you can work with Munch. We can reassess in a month or two."

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She smiles through the pain just a little bit, because they're trying. Only no one can replace
Elliot. Nothing will soften the fractious blow.
Olivia shakes her head.
"No. I'll take the new one. Might as well get used to it now." She looks back at Cragen, lifting
her eyes to meet his. "This time it's for real." It's all in the unspoken but innately
understood. He's not coming back. She straightens then, because she's not a victim. She's not
one of those helpless kids; she's not someone who's been taken from against her will. She's
made a choice, and it's to do her job. She has to do her job. Even if it's without him. Cragen
nods, and as he passes her, his hand brushes briefly across on her shoulder. He doesn't hurry
her; he doesn't alert anyone else that she is there just yet. He gives her time, even though
there isn't enough time in eternity to erase the isolation that she now feels more profoundly
than ever.

Olivia stands there, and as she watches the squad room she says goodbye to the sand and the
surf, to the sound of the ocean and the sea wind. She lets go of the sun that had impossibly
warmed her deep, deep inside. She tries to forget the give of the wooden floorboards and the
soft, lulling light of a fireplace on a storm-stricken night. She forgets the history in the
journal, and the promises for the future made by his make-believe world. It’s not the life she
was meant for. This is who she is. He'd been here for awhile, but he isn't like her. He's a
father, he's been a husband. She is only this.

This was inevitable.

She makes a difference, she tells herself. She's going to bring those kids home to their
parents this time, because she's owed the win. Just this once, she's owed the win. So Olivia
finally takes a step forward, towards the life that she knows, and she prays that she will find a
way to let him go. She just hopes that letting go of Elliot doesn't mean losing herself in the
process.

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 Chapter Twenty-Seven

T
he laughter carries up to the patio from where it originates on the shoreline. It's the
high-pitched squeals and unabashed joy that only the young experience easily. Eli
truly believes that he can be faster than his older sister if he just pumps his legs fast
enough in the shallow tide and Lizzie doesn't clear up the misperception. She gives him a
generous head start every time, letting Eli think he's going to win before she races in,
scooping him up and spinning with him, his tiny toes skimming across the water's surface.

At the moment, Tyler and Dickie - like hell he'll call him Richard - are tossing a football, and
Elliot's positive that they think he's lost his hearing in his old age, because they swear and
taunt each other as if there isn't a parental figure within a twenty mile radius. He's had to shut
their language down more than once. The boys roll their eyes at him, just like they did the
other night when he had caught them on the patio at nearly two a.m. as they had sat on the
loungers while drinking a beer. Lizzie had been lying on the third lounger, and it had been the
sound of their voices that had roused him from his bed. He'd surprised them when he hadn't
confiscated the beers right away. One, he'd growled. Just one.

They'd rolled their eyes then as if ignoring him, but he'd listened to their movements from
his bed for another hour after that. They hadn't gone for the second beer. Letting them get
away with something had been oddly liberating. His fists hadn't tightened with fear that
they'd take it too far, he hadn't imagined the worst. Instead he'd been able to relax, and he'd
eventually drifted off to the sounds of their voices and the soft snores of Eli, who sleeps
soundly next to him every night.

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His son's deep, even breaths have helped with the ache that settles deep into his gut in the
middle of the night. Sometimes the pressure in his chest is so overbearing that he is positive
he's having a heart attack, and sometimes watching his kids thriving in the sunshine makes
him grieve for what she's missing and for what he left behind. He misses her so much that
even his blood seems to ache, but he'd stopped calling after the first week. She'd sent all of
his calls to voicemail, and he'd finally stopped leaving messages that he assumed she'd been
deleting. A month - maybe two - he figured. Then he was going to New York himself if she
didn't pick up her damned phone.

The burgers are done - ten of them, because the boys eat like starving thoroughbreds - and he
flips them onto the waiting platter of buns. Elliot focuses on listening to Eli's joy while the
evening sun slides over his bare shoulders. The kids have been out for nearly a week already,
and he's dreading that Kathy will come and get Eli in less than two days. He doesn't want
anyone to leave anymore. He just needs time with them. He's missed way too much time.

"Daddy! Save me!"

He is startled when he hears his name called so succinctly. Eli is changing so fast right before
his eyes. His youngest isn't a baby anymore, and he's already emulating the older boys and all
the things they say. Elliot grins at the way Eli and Lizzie are now running up towards the
porch.
"Kick it up a notch, kid," he calls. "Show her who's boss."
Eli is out of breath as he finally makes the safety of Elliot's legs. He grabs his father's waist
and giggles.
"I'm th'boss, Lizzie. The boss!" He taunts her fearlessly as he hides behind Elliot.

The innocent laughter around him settles him every time. Just when he thinks the loss of
Olivia will make him crawl back to the city, he hears the reasons he's stayed out here. It's not

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a choice of one or the other - his family or her - it's a choice of living or dying, and he has to
have something for Olivia to run to one day. If she ever decides she has nothing, then he wants
an empire to be waiting for her.

If Lizzie does anything wrong, it's that she's too indulgent with Eli. Of all of his daughters,
she is the one with the fierce maternal streak, the one who doesn't consider time with Eli
babysitting, or something she should be paid for. She laughs now and rubs Eli's sun-streaked
hair.
"You're the boss of nothing, monkey. Do you even know what a boss is?"
Eli juts out his chin as Elliot scoops him up to put him on a chair at the patio table.
"Yeah, a boss sings!"
"No," she clarifies. "A boss is someone who-" she pauses in the middle of her sentence and
then bursts into laughter. "Oh my God."
"Gosh," Eli corrects sternly as a burger is slid in front of him. "Mommy says God wants you
to say gosh."
His daughter looks up at Elliot, her glorious blue eyes sparkling with amusement.
"I have Springsteen on my iTouch, and I once told Eli that the Boss sang the song he was
listening to." She shakes her head.
"How does he remember who Springsteen is?" Elliot grins. "More importantly, how do you?
Has he even had a hit since you were born?"
Lizzie gives him a dirty look.
"Being young doesn't preclude me from having taste."

"Can't you just talk like a normal human being?" Dickie grouses as he grabs three burgers
and buns and throws them unceremoniously onto a paper plate. Somehow he manages to
scoop up two diet cokes in the process from the cooler before collapsing into a chair. Tyler is
grinning sheepishly as he follows suit.
"Your SATs were in the single digits, Dickwad," Lizzie fires back, reaching past Elliot to pull
a corn-on-the cob off the grill. "Maybe if you spent more time with a book instead of with
those dirty magazines-"
"There are dirty magazines in this house?" Elliot finally interjects. "Dickie, what did I say
about those magazines being demeaning to-"
"Jesus, Dad. You're like the poster child for the women's movement. Sex police ruined you.
When you gonna man up again?" Dickie stuffs half a burger in his mouth before reaching for
the ketchup, not waiting for an answer.

Elliot waits for Lizzie to finish making her plate before reaching for his own.

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"How about we talk about when your job's gonna start instead? Deal was you could spend the
summer out here, but you had to work. Thought that was starting soon?"
Tyler and Dickie shoot each other wolfish, secretive grins. It doesn't bode well for anyone.
Elliot exhales, thinking he's going to need the extra breath of patience. Dickie is
rambunctious and full of mischief, and the kid is far too good-looking for his own good. He's
watched his son flash that grin at anyone who will buy into it. Dickie's conned everyone from
Gladys to the young girls who work at the ice-cream shop on the boardwalk. Usually he uses
his questionable charm in search of free food.

"Spill it," Elliot orders as he finally slips into a chair between Eli and Lizzie. His youngest is
artfully using the ketchup on his plate as finger paint. He tries to stop him with one hand, but
Eli goes right back to his drawing the second Elliot withdraws. He doesn't try to stop him
again. If there is one thing he's learned it's to pick his battles.
Dickie shrugs.
"Lifeguarding. Told you that," he says with his mouth full. "Right," Elliot acknowledges.
"At the community centre."
Tyler almost chokes as he tries to hold back his laughter. Dickie smirks.
"Kinda like that. I'm definitely working with the community."
He narrows his eyes at his son.
"Where the hell are you-"
"Heck, Daddy. Mommy says hell's a bad place, but heck is what we say when we are
fwusterated." Eli's eyebrows arch in superiority as he admonishes his father.

If he wasn't so concerned about what his older son was up to, Elliot would probably already be
laughing. As it stands, Dickie's self- satisfied expression means something is up.
"Dickie," he glares. "Where exactly are you working?"
Dickie shrugs casually.
"Ty and I got lifeguarding jobs at the Seashell."
Elliot closes his eyes for a moment. He knows the place. Everyone knows the place. It's an
oceanfront hotel known for its all day parties and the abundant cocktails that are served both
by the pool and on the resort's private beach. It's the place where the college kids go, and it's
not lost on Elliot that somehow the resort made the mistake of letting two horny teenage boys
run loose in the middle of the summer bikini-fest.

"Does your mother know?" he grits before opening his eyes.

"He told her it was a family motel," Lizzie supplies helpfully and happily.

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"Yeah?" Dickie counters. "Well at least I told mom something. You're the one keeping
secrets from everyone."
For two kids who would go to mat for each other if anyone else came at them, they've also
always known just how to push each other's buttons. Elliot suddenly doesn't care about his
son and the college girls, because Lizzie's visibly paled beneath her tan. She's always been an
open book, and by her reaction alone, Elliot knows this secret of hers is a doozy. Her eyes
widen, and she stares at her brother, communicating with him in that silent way that only they
can.

Dickie must realise he's gone too far, because his teasing stops and he wears his apology in
his expression.
"Shit, sorry Liz. I shouldn't have-"
But Elliot's already forgotten about the food or anything else around him. Lizzie doesn't
typically have secrets. She's not the kid he's supposed to have to worry about. She's the
introspective one who analyses and makes her choices carefully. If she's pregnant, if she's...
"Lizzie, what's he talking about?" he breathes.
She looks at Elliot like a deer caught in headlights. "Dad-"
"So you're cool with the Seashell," Dickie interrupts, trying to save his sister even though
it's already too late.
"Shut up, Dickie," Elliot growls, not taking his eyes off of Lizzie. "Elizabeth, what's your
brother talking about?"
Eli taps him on the shoulder.
"Daddy, is shut up a bad word?"

Lizzie's eyes are watering beneath the scrutiny, and she is frozen in place.
"Eli," she says gently, eyes still locked with her father's. "Finish your burger. Dad-"
"Tell me." Elliot tries to take a few deep breaths. He knows what secrets mean. He thinks of
Kathleen, and of the moment he realised just how many boys she had given herself to. He
thinks about how Dickie covered for Shane, and about the moment a few years ago that Kathy
had finally revealed to him that she was pregnant. He thinks of the secrets he'd kept from
Olivia, and how they'd made her leave him again. He’s never prepared for the aftermath, for
how the secrets have the power to change everything.
"We can talk about it later, Dad. Swear. Just not right now, okay?"

Elliot looks at his daughter, and he notes the anxiety that plays over her delicate features. Her
long blonde hair is tangled and windblown, and she is the only one of his kids with a slight

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smattering of freckles. She still looks like a little girl to him, and the fact that she is keeping
something obviously important from him makes his heart rate accelerate.
"Liz, if you're in trouble- " Elliot starts, trying desperately to remain calm.
"Go inside with your Dad, Liz," comes Tyler's soft urging. "Tell him there."
Elliot's stomach bottoms out. He's out of his chair and heading into the house before he can
even get air again. He hears his daughter get up behind him, and then she closes the screen
door as she walks into the living room. He sits on the couch and rests his forearms on his
knees, chewing on his lower lip and staring at the floor. Lizzie paces for a moment in front of
him, and he can hear her breathing. It's erratic, nervous. Her hands are fidgeting.
Fear crawls over his skin.

She'll tell him the truth, he knows that much. Lizzie can't hide when confronted. She can't
make up stories to his face. That's just who she is. Whatever it is he can handle it, he tells
himself. So long as she isn't sick, or that she hasn't been hurt, he can deal. He will deal. He
can't flip out or get angry. He just has to hear her out and-
"I want to move in with you," she says softly.
Elliot closes his eyes, and something cracks inside of him. It's not a bad breaking. It's a wall
falling. Shattering. He doesn't understand anything beyond the fact that she isn't being taken
from him.
"This fall. I just - I want to stay here."
She wants to move in with him. The words rattle around in his head, as if constructing and
deconstructing themselves. He wonders if he heard her right, if he's just making things up so
he doesn't have to face the horrible thing Lizzie is really saying.
"Jess and I don't want to go to a SUNY school next year. We want to go to Rutgers," Lizzie
says on a rush. "And if we live in Jersey for senior year, we'll qualify for state rates, which
would make it affordable. We talked about it, and she can live with her aunt in Beach Haven.
As long as we can go to the same school for senior year, I won't care about being in a new
place. I won't. And I'll be good, Dad. I swear you won't even know I'm here."

He hears Lizzie, but the words aren't coming. He's only been shaken this much a few times in
his life. The births of his kids, his wedding day, the few times he's been able to save Olivia.
It's the only times he's felt worth something, like he'd done something right along the way.
The logistics of it all escapes him. The details don't mean anything to him right now. Even if
it's because she has reasons that don't include him, she is still willing to stay. To be near him
every day. His kid is choosing him. Of her own free will.

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"I can help around here, too. You know? Make sure you're taking care of yourself and-"
Lizzie stops.
His daughter is justifying herself. She's trying to tell him why he'd be lucky to have her. God,
he knows. He knows. He just can't say anything. He's got no words. He should look at her at
least. He's got to let her know that she's shaken him, that's all. He's just - he's at a loss.
"If you don't want me to, then just-" Lizzie swallows thickly. "Daddy, please say
something." Elliot can't quite make eye contact yet. He can't keep it together.
"You can say no. I mean, I was going to talk to you about this, and not this way. And mom,
mom's gonna be upset. I know that. So if you could talk to her, maybe. Help me with that. I
mean, if you're good with it. But if you're not..." Lizzie stops again, her voice thick and
imploring. "Dad."

He raises his eyes to look at his daughter. He can feel the burn that is probably obvious in his
irises. He keeps chewing on his lower lip, praying he won't make an ass of himself. He wears
all of it in his expression. The relief, the love, the way he is so, so grateful to her for even this
much.
"This is your home too," he manages roughly. "You never have to ask to be here."
Lizzie exhales, and her eyes are red, too. She is looking right at him, as if she can see through
him. Her smile is small and fragile as she cocks her head.
"So that's a yes?"
He loses it. Elliot drops his face into his palms, and nods. He just nods.
"That's why you want to buy Dickie out of the car."

Her laughter is small, delicate and tinged with relief. "Yeah. Figure that way I can go back up
to the city on the weekends to see Eli and Mom. You'll help me talk to her, right?"
Elliot feels the tension seep out of his shoulders, he feels his fists unfurl. "Yeah baby. I'll talk
to her." His thoughts are swirling now with the changes, the implications. He thinks about
how she'll be here, every day. Her things will fill one of the bedrooms; her life will fill this
house. He will hear the sound of her voice day in and day out, and he will be a better damned
father in every moment of it. His second chance becomes more complete.

Lizzie even knows that he needs a moment or two, and she gives it to him.
"Thanks," she whispers. Then, as if she is still a little girl, she thinks better of it and comes
back towards him to give him a quick kiss on his temple. "You won't regret it." Then she is
gone, back to the beach and her brothers and a boy who understandably likes her too much.

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Elliot chews his lower lip and stares straight ahead, too shaken to move.He sits there for a
long, long time, thinking about how sometimes something lost means something else can be
found again, too.
***

It's not true what they say about the city never sleeping. There are times in the middle of the
night when she roams her apartment, awake and restless, and she can't feel any movement
from beyond her windows. She thinks about the empty alleys, streets, and storefronts in the
city, and she remembers all of the dark forgotten corners she has seen in the grid of
Manhattan. The roads are so much quieter in the earliest hours of morning. They are nearly
desolate and forgotten in some places.

She defines the city not by the trendy names attributed to different areas - SoHo, the
Meatpacking District, midtown. She instead thinks of the cases and where they have taken her
- the slick uptown penthouses and the gritty, gruesome downtown crime scenes. Central Park
is littered with bodies in her head, and the weekend soccer games make her think of coaches
who have breached the trust given, and of the kids who have disappeared from beneath their
parents watchful gazes in a single, horrific moment.
Tonight, as she makes her way out of the sedan and into the alley off 2nd at Thirty-Eighth, she
thinks about how the city does sleep, fitful as its rest may be. Beneath the muggy mist that
blankets the city tonight, they have another victim, another life snuffed out. Everything must
sleep sooner or later. Her boots are sensible but light, accounting for the warm summer
night. Her rain coat rustles, and the damp pavement reflects the red and blue lights of the
idling patrol cars. The yellow tape is familiar, the sound of radios interrupting the odd silence
of it all.

She is holding two coffee cups as a uniform lifts the yellow tape for her to duck underneath,
and then she is in the inner sanctum. Her partner looks up and straightens, giving her a
sardonic grin at the gift she holds in her hand for him. He takes his coffee plain and black -
always - and she misses bringing Elliot the crazy flavour of the day and waiting for him to rate
it. He'd either smile broadly and wouldn't share, or he'd thrust the offending cup back at her,
forcing her to trade him for her plain cream and sugar. What the hell is açai and why would
they make it into a coffee? His voice is in her head. All the time. Every day.

Detective Adam Warrick is a good guy, she thinks as he takes the coffee from her. He's in his
early thirties and the same height as she is, though he's not half as built as Elliot is. Adam is
dark and introspective, but not in the same tormented way that Elliot -

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Olivia stops herself. The comparisons are killing her, and she can't seem to get out from
under them. Adam is more like she is, if she really thinks about it. He's in the unit because his
sister had disappeared when he'd been twelve, and they'd found her body six months later,
buried in the backyard of a known pedophile outside of Tampa. He tries to bring Julia back
with every case. She'd first been partnered up with him when the trio of girls had gone
missing a few weeks ago, and his first implosion had come when they'd found the girls.

Three little girls dead because they'd trusted a man wearing a fake policeman's uniform. The
fuck had snatched them from a crosswalk in front of their schools, asking for their help and
playing on their trust. Rosie had made it through the man's assault, but she'd refused Olivia's
pleas of sticking with her foster parents or even a halfway house. As soon as she'd been well,
Rosie had identified their suspect as being the man who had picked her up too, the man who
had taken her to his apartment and brutally raped her while the girls cried in another room.
Then Rosie had disappeared, and Olivia keeps waiting - just waiting - for the day when Rosie
is their vic, only she knows that the next time she sees Rosie, it will be too late for the girl to
get another fresh start.

"Maria Vasquez. Thirty-one. Investment banker on Wall Street. Has a place up there," Adam
nods towards a luxury high-rise that towers upwards two blocks away. "She's got defensive
wounds on her hands and arms, skirt cut in half. Underwear is missing." Melinda straightens,
expressionless. "Gotta get her in, but looks like he broke her neck after he fought with her.
Clean break like that means he sure as hell knew what he was doing."

The rain starts then, a gentle dusting of drops that has the CSU techs scrambling to preserve
the scene. Olivia grips her coffee in one hand, and pulls up the hood of her coat with the
other. She wonders if it's drizzling like this on Long Beach Island, and she thinks about how
she'd go sit out in the middle of it and watch the waves crash if she was there. Or maybe Elliot
would take her back up to Old Barney and they'd laugh about old war stories over coffee in
the dimly lit loft. She'd make him show her the Fresnel lights and she'd enjoy the rain this
time instead of fearing the storm.

"Benson? You with me here?" Adam's head is tilted towards her, and his eyes are as black as
hers. Just as serious and just as burdened. He jerks his head towards the people gathering on
the other side of the tape. Even at this hour, this scene will draw a crowd. Murder and police
lights will coax even those who were sleeping out into the night air. "I'm gonna see if we have
anyone over there who might be admiring his own handiwork."

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The dumpsters that line the alley are overflowing with garbage. Some of the cops here tonight
will search through them, hoping to find a weapon or evidence. Olivia looks down at the
partially covered body of Maria Vasquez, and for some reason the grief hits her hard. Their vic
had been unusually pretty, and judging from the glossy sheen of her hair, her fit physique and
the careful manicure, she had been someone who had taken care of herself. She had probably
lived in a world of car services and doormen; she'd probably frequented only the best
restaurants, health clubs and stores that the city had to offer. It didn't matter. All the caution
and protection in the world didn't mean everything would work out in the end.

"Liv?" Melinda's quiet voice is too close to her ear.

Olivia realizes that she is staring at their vic, unmoving. She meets Melinda's eyes.
"Sorry," she says, giving her friend an apologetic smile.
But Melinda has known her for too long. She knows Olivia as she'd been with Elliot, as
someone who had been hungry for justice and eager for vindication.
"Adam's a good guy," Melinda says carefully. "You like working with him?"
"Yeah." Olivia exhales into the summer rain. She feels disconnected from everything around
her. The lights seem to blend together, and the world feels like it is moving without bringing
her along. It's a strange sense of vertigo that washes over her skin, and she feels like she is
watching someone else's life play out in this alley.

Melinda squares off in front of Olivia. She keeps her voice down and her chin up.
"We've been friends a long time, Olivia. So I'm gonna bank on that history when I say this."
Blood has a smell to it, Olivia thinks. The alley is making her feel like she is coated in a bitter,
metallic dust. She looks Melinda square on, and she doesn't hide the exhaustion, the
weariness, the absolute bruising pain of losing Elliot. She's too tired to cover it all up
anymore.
"Call Elliot," Melinda says brusquely. "You're a really good cop. But together the two of you
were great and maybe that wasn't just an on-the-job phenomenon. Know what I mean?"
Olivia hasn't taken his calls, and it's not because she doesn't want to talk to him. The weeks
that have passed since she'd been out there with him have dulled the anger, but they haven't
dulled the need. She has come to the conclusion that they are both just destined for different
trajectories in their lives, and she doesn't blame him for following his path. He probably
thinks she is ignoring him, when the truth is that she just doesn't want to break down when
she hears his voice.

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And that's what she does. She breaks now. Too often. She cried when she'd listened to the
first voicemail, and the second. The third had left her sitting at her kitchen table, numb and
staring at the wall. The fourth she'd deleted, because she could only take so much.
"I can't," she whispers to her friend. "This job is what I've got."
Melinda shakes her head in annoyance.
"No, it's the other way around. This job's got you. And you don't look like the willing
participant that you once were. It's okay to move on, Olivia. It doesn't lessen what you've
already done. Think about it." Melinda is gone then, walking back towards someone who had
truly run out of chances tonight.

Olivia glances at Adam, and his back is to her. Some of the people he is talking to are wrapped
in light blankets and wearing pajamas, while others had been stumbling home from a night out
when they'd stopped to take in the spectacle of death. She wants to tell Adam that the moment
never comes. There will never be a moment when the work he will do will balance out his
personal loss. He will never feel vindicated if he measures his life against the loss of Julia's.
She knows he is married but he doesn't have kids yet, and she wants to tell him to go home to
his wife and to let his wife talk him out of staying with this unit. She wants to tell him to have
kids and to raise them without the worst case scenarios being too clear in his head.
She wants to call Elliot and she wants to know if it's raining on LBI.
Instead she takes a deep breath, and the smell of this place seeps into her. She pretends Adam
is just a temporary replacement and she prays that the lie will help her to do her job tonight.
Why don't they make the peppermint one all year? Elliot had asked once, revealing in the
wintery blend of coffee she'd brought him. We could open a place that just made seasonal
flavours all year round. We'd probably get rich. S' how it happens, you know. Stupid idea
equals big bucks every time. We could retire on mochas. She'd laughed, and told him that no
one would ever want peppermint mocha in the dead heat of summer. Olivia looks down at her
cup of ordinary brew now and she thinks about how he just might have been onto something.
The peppermint sounds perfect right about now.

It's possible he'd been right and she'd been wrong after all.
***

He could watch Eli sleep for hours. His children all had their idiosyncrasies when it came to
how they'd sleep. As a child, Maureen had gathered all of her stuffed animals around her every
night; Kathleen had always kicked off all the covers. Dickie preferred to sleep sprawled on his
stomach, while Lizzie preferred the fetal position and rarely moved at all.

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But Eli has the most unique position out of any of them. He sleeps on his back, his arms
stretched out straight above his head. Every now and then he'll tuck his small hands under his
head and cross his ankles, and he looks like a miniature teenager who fell asleep watching the
game. His youngest sleeps with deep, even breaths, although every now and then Elliot will
wake up to find Eli's face tucked into his neck. His kids calm him. Being a father to them
again, and being able to give them the time and patience they deserve - it's been a strange and
rewarding experience that has changed him over the last week. When Kathy had called and
hesitantly asked if he wanted to keep Eli for a few more days so she could head to Florida on a
girls trip with some friends, he'd been almost startled by how easily and eagerly he had said
yes.

The rain is feather-light tonight and it dampens the air in the house. It is the perfect night for
a deep sleep, and even the boys and Lizzie had headed to their rooms earlier than normal.
Elliot stays awake, listening to his son breathe while the rain falls in the lazy way that it does.
He wonders what it would be like if she was here. There is space across the bed; there is a hole
inside of him. He pretends she'd be awake too, smiling at him in the dark over Eli's tousled
hair. He thinks he'd slide out of bed and lead her out onto the beach, his mouth on hers and
her back cushioned by the sand. She'd chosen the job.
It's a sharp stab of pain, and he blows out a breath, trying to alleviate the ache of it. He can
still feel the strands of her hair slipping between his fingers, and he can still see the golden
glint of her skin. Her red dress is hanging in the back of his closet, and he catches
that flash of colour every morning when he gets dressed. He wonders if she is sleeping
tonight, or if she's pulling an all-nighter. He'd called Munch a week after she'd left and he'd
asked that Munch pull the file on Warrick. It had been a jacket full of commendations, and
Warrick's accuracy rating was high as hell. The guy was young too, and Elliot liked that,
because it meant he wouldn't give Olivia much of a fight when she wanted to do things her
way. But her new partner is still not him. Elliot's not the one backing her up, and that scares
the shit out of him.

He takes a deep breath and stares at the shadows on the ceiling. The smell of rain permeates
the air, even in here. He thinks about the morning he'd dragged her in from the surf, and how
she'd shivered until he had finally gotten Olivia under the hot spray of the shower. Olivia's
eyes had conveyed her exhaustion and defeat, and he'd been so sure - so unwaveringly sure -
that he could change it all for the both of them. Only she's not here and he's not there and
finding happiness is bittersweet when it's found alone.

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Sleep eludes him, and the minutes tick by. He can hear her voice in his head, and it surprises
him that it isn't her crying that sticks with him but rather her laughter. He can picture her
smirk too clearly, and he thinks about how often they fought and how easily their differences
were erased when faced with a common opponent. She could want to kill him, but damn
anyone to hell who tried to kill him first. Thirteen years. The panic comes now, as it often
does. He tries to tell himself that she won't stay out there forever, that one day Olivia will
come back. He tells himself that if she hasn't found anyone else in these past thirteen years
that it's not likely she'll open herself up to a stranger now. He tells himself it's just time, and
that it won't break him.

He doesn't have faith in any of his platitudes. Elliot's throat locks and he stares ruthlessly
upwards at the nothingness. He grinds his teeth and forces himself to stay still, because his
restlessness shouldn't be allowed to wake his son. It's as he finally pushes the covers back and
swings his legs out of bed in defeat that it happens. His cell phone lights up silently, slipping
across his end table with the vibration of it. He stares at the name that illuminates the screen
and his vision blurs. Liv.

He can tell her how many days, hours, minutes it's been since she'd last spoken to him. He
can answer on a choked rasp or he can just connect the call and stay silent. Instead he swipes
the phone from the table and he's answering before he's even out of the room.
"Tell me you're okay," he growls.
He hears a long exhale and the sounds of cars driving by on wet pavement.
"Tell me you are," Olivia says softly.
He can't. He's being pieced back together again by his kids, but there will always be a void
without her. When he's afraid she'll hang up from his lack of response, he manages to speak.
"Where are you?"
"Midtown. We caught a case." She's breathing hard but she doesn't sound like she's holding
onto the air.
"Bad one?"

Her laugh is hollow and it's gone before it is really there.

"Is it ever good?"
The silence reigns. He's pacing the floor of the kitchen before he knows how he got there.
The clouds must be breaking outside because the moon is filtering through the layers above.
"You get my messages?" Elliot finally asks.
He knows she did. Olivia's answer is in the lack of response. He can hear the world moving
around her, and it's the only indication that she is still there. Elliot's fingers trace the edge of

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the countertop and he can't help but think of lasagna and wine. He thinks of songs on repeat
on the stereo and the mess she'd left behind.
"I'm so sorry," he whispers. "Olivia-"
Her name is both sweet and sharp on his tongue. He stops there.

"You were right you know," she finally says, her voice thick with emotion. "People would
buy those stupid peppermint coffees in the summer. I should have encouraged you to open
that place."
Elliot looks up and out the kitchen window, and maybe it's the tinge of irony and belligerence
in her words that makes him actually smile. The slivers of moonlight are an orchestra that
plays on the waves.
"That's the thing about good ideas," he murmurs. "There's still time for ‘em."
"El-" She says his name quickly, as if it is the whole question. As if she says it just to catch her
breath.
"I shouldn't have pushed you like that, Liv," he admits into the darkness. "I shoulda told
you. Just didn't think you'd stick around."
There is total silence on the other end then. It goes on for so long that he wonders if she's
hung up on him. When he's about to check the phone to make sure the call is still ticking
away, Olivia makes a small sound that nearly breaks him.
"I proved you right." The words are small, cracked and fragmented and barely discernible.
Elliot focuses on the world outside the window. The beach hasn't changed in the weeks since
she'd been here. It won't change much in the coming months, the coming years. Some things
don't change at all. Some things can't because they are destined to be fundamentally the
same.

Time and space, he thinks, aren't so fierce after all. The link between him and her can't be
severed easily. The corner of his mouth tips up in a smile, because even though she tried to
walk away from him, she still felt compelled to reach out tonight.
"Nah, you didn't entirely kick me to the curb. You called, right?"
He doesn't know if she is laughing or crying. It doesn't matter. He listens to the sounds of
her, because he knows that he will have to hang onto them for a long, long time. She inhales
and he can hear voices coming closer to her, calling her name. For a moment, the incongruity
of him being at the house while she is on the streets stings so sharply that he can feel the
bruise of it in his fingers, deep in his bones. She's at the scene - at a place he will never be
again. He thinks about all of the people he left behind, not just Olivia but the friends, the
comrades. For all that he has found out here, the feeling of displacement still exists in
moments like these.

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"Read her journal, Elliot," Olivia says quietly. "You asked me to read it for you. But now I'm
asking you to read it for me. Can you do that?"
He doesn't want to. His first instinct is to say no, but as he watches the night sea, he thinks
about how she'd faced her demons out there in that surf. Olivia had gone in even when she
hadn't wanted to. She'd pushed herself; she'd done what he had asked.
If nothing else, he owes her.

"Yeah," he tells her. "Okay." He makes the promise even before he thinks about the
consequences.
"That's good, Elliot. That's....that's really good." The voices around her gain volume, and
he can feel his time with her slipping through his fingers. "I gotta go. They, they need me."
Elliot closes his eyes. I need you too, he thinks. I do.
"Be careful." Seconds pass before he hears the last of her.
"Night, El."
And then he's left with the fickle moonlight and an empty kitchen. But the beds are filled with
his kids, and the house isn't empty. He isn't either. He thinks about Olivia, and for the first
time in a long time, it makes him smile.
***

She's shedding clothes as soon as the door to her apartment closes behind her. Nineteen
hours. That's how long it had taken them to find Maria Vasquez's rapist. Her killer. In the
world that Olivia lives in, today should technically be considered a good day. They'd found
the bad guy and they'd been able to break him. With the confession they had worked, Steven
Haynes Hollins would go away for life. There is a grit scraping against her irises. Olivia
doesn't know if it's exhaustion or smog or just the filth of Hollins' existence, coating her
every pore. The sun had set nearly two hours ago and she's grateful for the darkness, for the
fact that she can crawl into her bed at the same time as the rest of the world. She turns on only
a single lamp, and she doesn't notice the piles of ignored mail left on the table.

She grabs a beer from her nearly empty fridge, squinting against the harsh light that emanates
from inside the hollow appliance. Her shirt is dropped by the bar stools, her shoes are kicked
off near the couch. She's peeling off her jeans and pushing them down off her hips by the time
she hits her bedroom door. The clothes lay where she leaves them and she doesn't think twice
about picking them up. No one is coming over anyways.

436
Olivia's head is pounding, and as the beer hits her stomach, she realises she hasn't eaten in
hours. She reaches in and turns on the faucet to the shower, and she tries to recall if she has
eaten at all. She doesn't think so and that means the beer will do more harm than good. She
sets the bottle on the bathroom counter and stands there, indiscernible because of the fog that
now coats the mirror in front of her.

You raped her, Steven.

She's said the words a thousand times. She can't even remember the faces or names of all of
the rapists she's gone up against anymore. If there are hundreds of victims, then there are
hundreds of sick fucks out there, too. The water continues to pound on the shower floor and
Olivia reaches out and swipes the fog away on the mirror, looking for her reflection.

It's not rape if she wanted it, Detective. She wanted it. She wanted me. I'm not a rapist.
Olivia sees herself in the distorted blur. Sometimes she's shocked to see her reflection. It's
the hollows in her eyes, the weariness in her expression that always startles her. The years
have passed, and she has let them.

Did she want to be killed too, Steven? When you cut her, did she want that too?

She doesn't know what Elliot sees when he looks at her. There are times when she feels
beautiful - she'd felt beautiful with the heat hitting her sun-warmed skin - but more often than
not, she feels ordinary. She sees the flaws, the years, the shuttered way she appears. She
thinks about standing in front of Elliot in that red dress and she remembers how he'd raked
his gaze over her, as if he'd never seen anything quite like her in his life. She closes her eyes.
If she really focuses, she can be there again. She just has to think about the wooden floors of
the bedrooms beneath her feet and the sound of the ocean. Instead, what comes is the heat of
Elliot's body, the sheer presence of him. Olivia can feel Elliot's mouth skimming her jaw, and
she can hear the masculine groan of pleasure that had spiked her own.
She wants him, even now.

Don't be stupid, Detective. Of course she didn't want to die. But I wanted her to die, and isn't
that enough?

There is too much crap in her head, she thinks. It takes up space inside of her, and it's
suffocating. She unhooks her bra and slides out of her underwear and she's making her way

437
past the shower curtain before she can think about anything else. The water is hot - probably
too hot - and it scalds her skin.

It's too bad we didn't meet sooner, Detective. I've always wanted to see if what they say is true.
Does a stuck pig really bleed the most?

Her bones ache inside of her skin. They feel broken, even though she hadn't actually broken a
thing when she'd run after Hollins and thrown her body at his. It had been a pretty routine
cuff, but she'd felt the effects today. She'd been swallowing the Motrin all afternoon when no
one was looking. It's as if her ability to compartmentalise the pain is fading, and she's not
sure how to keep it in place.

If we'd met sooner, Maria would be alive, Hollins. Because I sure as hell would have killed
you first.
Olivia is shaking beneath the hot spray, and with her eyes shut she is in another shower, in
another time. Elliot's there and his body is warm and solid against hers. His skin is bare, and
his muscles are slick and graceful. He's murmuring things in her ear, and if she just leans
forward a little bit she will fall into the waiting wall of him. Her hand hits tile.

Tell me you're okay.

His voice is fresh in her ears, and she doesn't regret calling him. She'd needed him in that
moment. She'd given in to the basic instinct, and Elliot hadn't made her regret it. Benson and
Stabler. It rings inside of her, again and again. It feels like something of long ago, of another
life. She looks back on that woman and she doesn't want to be her anymore. She wants to tell
that woman that the past has a place, that memories are something to be cherished and
preserved, instead of dissected and dismantled. It had been incredible with him, they'd been
unbeatable. The end of them doesn't lessen what they'd been able to accomplish.

The exhaustion makes her knees buckle, until she is crouching in the shower. Olivia sits then,
and lets her forehead rest on her knees. Hollins had dated Maria Vasquez for seven months
before he'd killed her. He'd held Maria, he'd told her he loved her and when she had walked
away from him, he had taken what he believed was his. Her life. Olivia can still hear the wails
of Maria's mother and she can see the ashen face of the woman's father. She hadn't told them
of the blood, of the pain and suffering their daughter had endured in her final minutes. The
daughter they had nurtured and loved, the daughter they had protected had been ripped away
from them in an isolated alley and nothing would ever make sense to them again.
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She is crying before she knows it, and she doesn't stop the tears from coming. She's alone in
the shower, alone in the apartment, alone in the city. No one will hear her. She doesn't even
know why she is crying. Maybe it is for Maria Vasquez. Maybe it is for the woman's parents.
Or maybe it's because the ugliness just doesn't stop.

I'm so sorry. Olivia -

Maybe it's because she misses him. She misses him. Or maybe it's because she should have
told him that she'd probably been in love with him long before he'd asked her out there, and
damn him for giving her everything and nothing at all. Olivia wraps her arms around her knees
and bows her head. The spray keeps coming at her, hot and relentless on her hair, her scalp,
her neck. She doesn't know if she wants to keep crying or if she wants to just fall asleep. She
is too tired to make a decision, so she rests her cheek on her knee and closes her eyes,
figuring that one way or another her body will take over and make a decision.

I love you.

She hears it in her head, she just doesn't know if the words are coming from her or if they are
coming from him. Olivia doesn't suppose it matters. They are the words that soothe her, that
open up her chest.

Night, Elliot.

Nineteen gruelling hours later, she is finally able to rest again.

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 Chapter Twenty-Eight

T
he bike is done. He's not sure what it means or if it means anything at all, but he's
spent enough time on it to restore it to the point where it could resell for a decent
amount of money. The sun is still rising, and he's been out here for more than an hour
already, painstakingly polishing the fender and shining the seat. The leather has been
conditioned, the steel muffler gleams. He glides the soft cloth over the smooth surfaces, and
he thinks about how his father had escaped day after day on this very piece of machinery.
You're mad that I leave? What about you? You leave every day. You leave your son, Joe! Just
because you don't pack your bags doesn't mean you're any better than me!

Elliot grits his jaw and focuses on the blur of his reflection in the metal. He can still hear their
voices. He hasn't had the guts to open his mother's journal in the days since Olivia's call.
Maybe that's why he hasn't been angry that Olivia hasn't called again - because he knows he
owes her, and he hasn't done what she'd asked of him. Yet. Who would want to stay here with
you, Bernie? You tell me what kind of man wants a broken woman? Elliot sits on the floor of
the garage, and his hand stills. Memory is an unpredictable thing. There are entire years he
can't remember, yet there are mere minutes that remain far too detailed in his head. You can
say I'm no good, Joe, but that boy needs you! He needs you and you're no kind of a father.
You sulk and you feel sorry for yourself and you hate the world. It was just a job, Joe. Being a
cop was just a job!

"Dad?"

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Elliot looks up, yanked from the past into the present by Dickie's sleepy voice. His son is
staring at the bike and him as if they are a mirage that he doesn't quite understand. Dickie's
feet are bare and his t-shirt has seen better days.
"Hey. What're you doing up so early?"
Dickie can't take his eyes off the bike.
"You bought a motorcycle?" His stunned gaze shifts to his father. "Thought you hated
bikes?"
Elliot rubs the cloth along the fender again, thinking about how the thing that helped his
father leave is the very same thing that has helped him to find a sense of peace. “
This was your grandfather's," he says quietly, not looking up. "Didn't know it was still here
‘til I started to clean out the garage a few months ago."

His son comes closer, crouching near the bike and running his fingers across the surface of
the seat.
"You fix it up like this?" The corner of Elliot's mouth tips up in a smile. "Jack helped, but,
yeah.” He looks up at Dickie, and the kid is grinning.
"It's awesome," Dickie breathes, his smile growing impossibly wider. He's got admiration
on his face - a sense of wonder in his eyes that Elliot hasn't seen in years.
Elliot laughs.
"You're not riding it. Don't get any ideas."
Dickie dismisses the comment, already standing and tracing his fingers reverently over the
handlebars and the odometer.
"Jesus, Dad. She's beautiful. You done with her?"

The power of the moment is not lost on him. His son is out here in the garage with him in the
breaking dawn, in a place where they can hear the ocean and nothing else. He watches as
Dickie silently marvels over the details of the bike, and for a brief second, Elliot's chest
constricts with fear. His kid is grown up, and he now looks more like a man than a boy. He's
got a solid build and a square jaw, and his voice has long-since taken on the baritones of
adulthood. But to Elliot, he's still just a child. Dickie is too young for the responsibilities
Elliot himself had faced at the same age, and he worries that Dickie will once again get it into
his head to join the service. For now at least his son has chosen to go to college, but Elliot
knows as well as anyone that everything can change in an instant. He's doing his damndest to
just live in the moment.

"Still gotta shine up the white walls," Elliot responds.

Dickie stops moving and looks down at his father.

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"I'm in. Where are the clean rags?"
Every one of these days teaches Elliot something more about being a father. He's learned
more about time, and about how only he can slow it down. In this moment, the clock isn't
moving at all. He jerks his chin towards a cardboard box.
"Got a bunch in there."
Dickie grabs a handful of them and the sealant, and then drops onto his rear end right by the
front wheel, tossing his father some of the rags.
"You're gonna have to let me take this baby out one day," he duly informs Elliot without
looking up.
Elliot laughs.
"Like hell."
"We'll see," Dickie grins in satisfaction as he starts to work on the shining of the tires.
"Never say never."

Elliot takes a deep breath. He remembers being eleven years old and standing in his bedroom,
watching as his father disappeared on this very machine. He's fourteen and angry, circling the
bike with a baseball bat in the darkness of the garage. He's eighteen and Elliot's the one
leaving now, and he's telling himself he will never, ever look back.
"I'll give you that," he says under his breath.
Dickie looks up for one second, searching his father's expression. He will never tell Dickie
the truth about his grandfather. There is nothing to be gained by telling his child that there is
both rage and anger in his bloodlines, that there is a history of abuse and neglect. He knows
what carrying that burden does to a person. He's seen in it Olivia, in himself, and even in
Kathleen. The cycle of sickness and failing and guilt has to stop somewhere. It stops now.
With his son. With this boy who wants to be a man too soon, but who will be his child forever.
Elliot looks him in the eyes.

"You know you're a good kid, right? The stuff with your mom and I-" He wants to stop, he
wants to say nothing because it's what he's used to. But the silence isn't an option. Not
anymore. His voice is scratchy, gruffer than it should be. "There's nothing you kids did to
make it this way. It's on me and -“ He can't say it. The truth is that he's far more to blame for
the fall of his marriage than Kathy is, and he has to take the blame once and for all. His kid
needs to know that as a man - as a father - he is sorry. "It's on me. You guys deserved better
and I just, I want you to know that."

442
For a moment, Dickie doesn't move. For all of his bravado, he's vulnerable again, and all
Elliot sees is the tousled hair and the question in those hazel eyes. But then his son smiles
again, and this time his grin is full of adult humour and mischief.
"You can make up my horrible childhood to me by letting me take the bike out," he teases.
Elliot throws the dirty rag at his head.
"I take it back. You're a shitty kid. It's your sisters and Eli I love best."
Dickie laughs unabashedly, and the sound echoes in the garage. The morning keeps coming
at them, and Elliot stays out there with his son, giving time permission to move forward once
again.
***

"Hey, where're you catching the fireworks?"

Olivia slings her bag over her shoulder and pushes her chair in towards her desk. Her neck
aches from the tension that has taken up residence there. They'd spent the day with CPS,
investigating a molestation charge levied by a thirteen-year-old girl against her foster father.
Olivia still doesn't know who she believes, and the fact that she even has to consider that a
child might be deceiving her about something like this weighs heavily on her. If Olivia decides
the girl is lying and she really isn't, then the abuse the child will continue to face will be her
fault. The risks are sickening. She doesn't trust herself as much as she used to. Her instincts
are fraying.

She looks up at Adam, and he looks just as tired as she must. Olivia shakes her head.
"Not into fireworks. More interested in collapsing in bed."
Adam shakes his head.
"No way. It's bad enough we had to work when everyone else is at the beach. You can't let
the fourth pass without catching the light show."
It's a cloying, ruthless ache that wraps its fist around her. The holiday hasn't escaped her, but
she's done her best to try and forget. She's been thinking about Elliot all day, and about what
he must be doing. In her head he's got the kids out on the beach, and they've spent the day
grilling and tossing that red Frisbee. She knows - deep, deep inside of her - that he has finally
found the best life for him. He's got his kids, and he's got time. There is a part of her that is
calmer now that she knows that at least he is safe and healing and away from the job. He is no
longer getting worse.

She feels like she is getting weaker. She can feel just how exposed she is these days. She is
actually conscious of just how little she smiles and just how much effort laughing takes out of
her. In the worst moments of doubt there is a voice inside of her that tells her she is now truly

443
alone once and for all. It's the life she has chosen. It should be simple to walk away from it, to
go to him, but she feels guilty about leaving the job. Every victim looks at her with need, with
accusation. She keeps thinking that there will be one case - just one - that in the end will make
her feel like she's finally free to go. Until then the job hangs on.She knows that the best way to
take the focus off of her is to turn it on Adam.
"Where're you guys catching the fireworks?"
Adam grabs his keys off his desk and shuts down his computer monitor.
"Lyssa's out on Long Island at her parents' place already. They have a picnic every year and
the park nearby puts on a demo. You're welcome to come out there with me. Probably be
forty or fifty people there." He grins. "May be some single guy who isn't afraid of you?"

She forces a smile, too tired to try and laugh. He reminds her of Elliot sometimes. Not the
Elliot she knows now, but the man she had known back in the beginning. Despite his demons,
Adam is trying to exist in a world of family and friends and weekend barbeques. She sees how
much effort it takes for him, and it scares her that one day he might just give up and let the job
have him.
"I'm good," she says quietly. "Think I'll celebrate my patriotism with a glass of wine and a
bath instead."
He reminds her of Elliot even more when he looks at her like he does now. He sees just a little
further into her than she wants him to, but at least Adam doesn't push her like Elliot once
had. He nods.
"Get some rest," he says.

Those words last them through the elevator ride and down to the parking garage. It isn't until
she is sitting alone in her car that she truly feels lost. She doesn't start the engine; instead she
just sits there, staring at the concrete wall ahead. Olivia doesn't blink. Her breaths feel
shallow. The night is muggy, and her car warms, suffocates. She waits, perfectly still, hoping
something will make sense to her. She doesn't know when it was that she started to feel out of
place here, but the feeling of displacement is growing inside of her. To exist here she is
shutting down more and trying to cover it up less. It's the middle of summer, yet her feet are
encased in sensible ankle boots, and she becomes almost desperate to feel the grains of sand
between her bare toes. She thinks about the first night she'd gone out there to see Elliot, and
how he'd chased her on that beach, as if retrieving his beer had been the most important thing
in the world.

Her head hits the seat rest and Olivia closes her eyes. This was supposed to feel right. The
job, her life, the routine of it. Solving her mother's rape was supposed to heal the scars,

444
finding Simon was supposed to right the wrongs. But nothing is working because she feels
like a fish out of water even here now, and if she doesn't fit in here then she has no place at all.
She is holding her cell phone in her hand before she knows it. She scrolls through her
contacts until his name fills her screen and her thumb hovers over the send button. She
shouldn't do it. Calling him isn't fair. She is the one who walked away. She is. She wanted to
blame him for leaving her and the job, but the truth is that there is nothing here for him
anymore. He is living the life he is supposed to now. He's probably with his kids, and they're
probably laughing and settling in to watch the fireworks light up the clear ocean sky. She can
imagine Eli on his father's lap, and Elliot explaining the fourth of July to his son as they sit on
damp beach towels.

Her throat closes. Her eyes water. The concrete wall in front of her car is grey and dirty and
she can't see past it. There are no horizons where she is at right now. Jesus. The isolation is
brutal. The need is vicious. Olivia hits send before she can even stop herself.
The ringing echoes in her ear and she doesn't know if she wants his voicemail or she doesn't.
She won't leave a message, she thinks. She can't-
"Hey."
It's just one word, but he says it easily, without question or accusation. His voice is low,
soothing and she immediately wants to curl into it. Olivia takes a breath and gets air this time,
while the day seeps out of her. Courtney Fisher's accusations lose volume; the weight of the
city is no longer resting on her chest. Her body starts to burn from just the sound of his single
word. She can hear the ocean behind him, she thinks. It's steady and still there. With him.

"You okay?" Elliot rumbles.

She wants to say yes, she's afraid she'll say no. Olivia says nothing. The seconds tick by. She
can remember the feel of him on her, and she squeezes her eyes shut, trying to will away the
rough scrape of Elliot's chest and the comforting, protective weight of his body resting on
hers. She thinks of how he kisses her - hot and open all over her skin - and how his fingertips
always push into her scalp when he thrusts higher. Harder. She thinks about Elliot moving
deep inside of her and she rests her forehead against the steering wheel, gripping it for dear
life. Breathing hurts. The summer air seems to freeze before it hits her lungs.

"Come out here," he urges softly. "Just get in the car and drive here, Liv. Whatever
happened today-" "Nothing happened," she whispers apologetically.
“I, nothing happened. I just -“

445
"It's two hours, Liv. I'd come get you but I've still got Eli. Just drive, can you do that? You
don't need to bring anything. Just get on the expressway and I'll talk to Cragen. Take a
coupla days and-"
"I can't," she breathes.
She doesn't know why she does what she does. She thinks that he's got every right to be angry
with her now, because she's the one who left him yet she won't leave him alone. She doesn't
know why she can't go to him. He's not married. He says he loves her. He tells her that there
is a life waiting for her with him and yet she can't seem to grasp onto it. Elliot changes tactics,
backing down.
"Where are you?"
Olivia stares at the concrete cinderblocks that surround her. Her eyes close then, because
there is nothing here to look at. "In my car. Parking garage at the precinct." She can imagine
the orange and red of sunset warming the ocean, and she thinks about drinking tequila shots
with him. She wonders if tonight will be a high tide, and she can almost hear the seagulls -
dark swooping silhouettes against the deepening sky.

It's as if she's dangling from a ledge, and he keeps telling her to let go. To just fall into him.
He's always caught her before, so she doesn't know why this time - He cuts into her train of
thought.
"Are you heading home?"
Home. In truth, it's as if her apartment has betrayed her. For years she went there, seeking
sanctuary. It was the place she recouped, the place she recharged. But then work came home
with her - too many people came after her there - and it became just another place she had to
be on guard. With her eyes closed, he could be sitting next to her. She clutches her phone too
tightly.
"Yeah."

"Have you eaten anything today?"

His questions are brusque and to the point, and she gets what he is doing. He has simplified
her world down to yes or no, the way they do with victims when they think the bruised can
handle nothing more.
"No." She realises how pathetic it sounds. How stupid. It's as if she can't even take care of
herself. And if she can't meet her own needs, then she's certainly not capable of helping
anyone else. She thinks about the beach house, and about the sound of the wooden door
banging closed. It smells like garlic and the storm is coming in. She's making lasagna and she
forgets to add the layer of meat. She hopes Elliot won't notice, but of course he does. He fixes
it, and he doesn't point out how she screws everything up.

446
"Liv?" Elliot's voice falters. "If you don't want to come here then go straight back to your
apartment, okay?"

He sounds worried, and she knows what he's thinking. He knows her - he knows she used to
go have a drink somewhere, and years ago she would have flirted with a stranger. She'd have
bought the guy a drink too and tried to lose herself to the moment. Those days are long gone.
She is unequivocally in love with Elliot. It scares her that he doesn't know. She didn't leave
him because he isn't enough. She left because she isn't. "I'm going home," she whispers.
Olivia's thumb presses downward, disconnecting the call. Twenty minutes pass as she sits
there.

Her phone doesn't ring. One day, she thinks, he won't pick up in the first place at all.
It isn't until she is pulling up in front of her apartment that she sees the delivery guy from her
favourite Chinese takeout place standing on the stoop to her building, pressing the button to
ring her. He's holding a brown bag that holds too much food, and probably all of her
favourites. When she walks up he holds the bag out to her.
"Your order," he says in barely discernible English.
She doesn't trust herself to speak. She tries to give him a twenty and the man just shakes his
head. "Paid for," he smiles, nodding his head encouragingly. "You have good night."

And then she's standing there alone, listening to the crack of fireworks she can't see and
thinking that even though Elliot had left New York, he's still here - everywhere - looking after
her.
***

He can hear the kids laughing out on the patio. Dickie is grilling another round of the
chicken, even though it's after ten p.m., and Tyler and Liz are still sitting by the small
campfire they'd built on the beach to roast s'mores. If Tyler was half the smooth talker that
Dickie is and his daughter was half as impulsive, Elliot would be out there supervising. As it
stands, he gives them space because neither one is rebellious enough to escalate the flirtation
that is growing between them.

It's hours past Eli's bedtime, and his son is practically swaying on his feet as Elliot towels his
child's hair dry in the bathroom. Eli had managed to get an entire marshmallow smeared into
his hair and underneath his short fingernails, necessitating a longer bath than usual. When
Elliot scoops up his youngest - towel wrapped and all - Eli simply sighs contentedly and lays

447
his head on his father's shoulder. The moment should calm Elliot, centre him, but the truth is
that he's agitated as hell. He wants to call Olivia.

The more settled he is out here, the more he worries about her. Every day away from the job
makes him see the absolute mind fuck of the unit even more clearly. He sees the sanctity
offered by this life, and it is killing him that she is still in the midst of the depravity, the death,
the destruction. He knows she got the Chinese food because he called the place to confirm,
and maybe tonight that is the best he can do. She'd called him earlier at least, and that alone
gives him some relief. She can dial and hang up a thousand times, so long as she knows that he
is still here and waiting for her.

"Daddy?" Eli murmurs, already half asleep as Elliot sets him down on the bed. His child's
limbs are nearly limp with exhaustion as he dresses him in Superman pajamas.
"Yeah, monkey?"
"M'not a baby."
Elliot can't help but smile at Eli's plaintive declaration. Dickie had affectionately told Eli that
he couldn't go to the pool with him and Tyler tomorrow morning because he is still a baby. It
has bugged Eli all day.
He lowers himself until he's eye level with his youngest.
"It's not bad to be the baby." Eli's small feet push through the pajama bottoms Elliot holds
out. "That just means you're the youngest. And when you're the youngest, you get the most
presents."

Eli's eyes light up a bit.

"I can get a present?" he asks hopefully.
He nods.
"How ‘bout ice cream tomorrow, then we can go visit your brother and Tyler at the pool?
We'll make sure they're doing their job and not goofing off. Sound good, buddy?"
"'Kay." His kid's grin kills him every time. It's just a bit lopsided and impish, and his dirty
blonde hair has been lightened by the sun. "But I'm not a baby."
If there is one thing Elliot has learned, it's that he will rarely outmanoeuvre a headstrong
toddler.
"Everyone was a baby once, Eli." Elliot messes his son's damp hair, and then pulls back the
covers of the bed, waiting for Eli to scoot in.
"You too? Then how'd you get to be a daddy?"

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Out of the mouths of babes, he thinks. He's been thinking about it a lot lately - about who
he's been to his kids all of these years and what he's deprived them of. He doesn't really know
how he's made enough good decisions along the way to end up with five kids who haven't
given up on him as their father. But the more he thinks about his role with the kids, he thinks
about Olivia. She gave up on being a mother, and it's weighing on him. He should have
pushed her more a few years ago when she'd still believed in the possibility. He should have
forced the issue. But he hadn't. That's his fault. His responsibility. He'd failed as her friend,
as the only person she should have been able to count on to look out for her. Maybe he hadn't
wanted to lose her to a child, to another man, to another life. If he had held back out of his
own selfishness.

Eli is still waiting for an answer.

"I was lucky," Elliot answers gently.
"You sleepin' with me, Daddy?" Eli's small voice is fading as his eyes close and his head
burrows into the pillow.
Elliot climbs into the bed, and with the lamp softly lighting the room, his little boy settles in
comfortably. It's only minutes before Eli's breaths even out and the room is bathed in the
contented sleep of a child. He turns his head to the right, and his gaze rests on the journal.
There is a string bookmark that tells him where Olivia left off, and he tells himself that at least
he can do this. She'd asked him to read it, and he can't fail her anymore.

The leather is soft in his hands. It's battered and scratched,

and he thinks that the last he will ever learn of his mother is
contained in these pages. His chest aches, because it hasn't
even been a year since she died. He is out here this summer
with his kids, filling her house with the noise and life that she
had so desperately wanted to be a part of. His mother had
never known him as the man he is now, as a man who knows
what the beach feels like on his skin or who notices the
difference that the weather causes in the sunsets. She'd only
known him as someone angry, as someone righteous and rule-
bound. He wonders if his kids would have only known him that
way too if it weren't for his mother's house.

Elliot takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut for a second. He can do this. He can. If
Olivia had been able to withstand the truth about her past, then surely he can as well.

449
Maybe the only way to let the past go is to stop running from it. Maybe the past isn't as strong
as he thinks it is, and he won't know if he can beat it until he faces it head on.

June 4, 1977

Dearest Suhaili -
Yes, I've been gone for some time. I left you, you know. I was sure it was you who told Joe of
my plans to take Elliot away from here, because somehow he knew. If you were not the
culprit, then who? I almost burned these pages a dozen times because he found the money I
had been saving. Six hundred dollars, gone! How would he have found the shoebox amongst
dozens of empty ones in the cellar?
It wasn't until yesterday that I realised what had probably happened. Three years later! It
wasn't Joe at all who found the money, but Elliot. He's apparently been going into the
basement for years and stacking the boxes, building grand towers and forts with them for his
military figurines. He found the money, and bless his innocent, dutiful heart, he must have
gone straightaway to tell Joe.
I haven't asked him if he'd been the one to tell his father all those summers ago. The fight that
Joe and I had afterwards that night was just horrible. So horrible that I am sure my boy
remembers it. Joe's eyes went wild when I told him the truth about why I'd been saving the
money. He yelled about how he lived with half a wife, with an embarrassment. I told him I
didn't love him and he came at me then, screaming I was too crazy to know anything about
love. It was only one backhand, but it was a strong one. I remember feeling the ground coming
up at me and the table slamming into my cheek. I remember lying there on the carpet in pain -
dark, red pain - and I could hear my boy crying, using his fists on his father. Stop it! Stop it!
But Elliot was still just a small child then.
Joe hit Elliot that night, too.
It's been three years since I last tried to leave. I don't yell. I got a job at Macy's during the day,
for when Elliot is in school, and the people there are nice. On my breaks I try on the fanciest
dresses - the sequinned ones, the shimmering ones - and I twirl in the dressing rooms. There is
one dress I have fallen in love with. It is the colour of liquid gold, and it has delicate beads that
make it weigh about a hundred pounds. But when I put it on, I am going to the Academy
Awards! I wear it and I think of attending on the arm of Robert Redford or Roger Moore.
There are cameras there, taking my picture and I am floating along in the majesty of it all.
There is no one there but me in that dressing room, and it has become my favourite place to
live.

450
I'm going to take Elliot to see Star Wars at the movie theatre tonight. He's been asking Joe for a
week, but Joe doesn't stay home much. He's always off on that damned motorcycle. Sometimes
I wish he'd come home smelling like booze instead of perfume, but then I think about how
angry he gets out of nowhere, and I think I should just count my blessings that he leaves at all.
I can sense that Elliot knows now that his father isn't a hero. I see the disappointment in my
boy's eyes growing each day. There is still hope there, but it is fading. I wonder what - if
anything - will bring my baby true joy. At eleven, Elliot already acts like the man of the house.
He does his chores, and he does his homework. He doesn't speak too loudly and he doesn't
come home late. He doesn't like anything unusual anymore, either. He gets mad at me when I
suggest we break the rules every now and then. It's like he's always waiting for the other shoe
to drop.
I wonder how a woman with such dreams has made her son crave the ordinary. I wonder if he
will ever experience love and deep joy, if he will ever laugh just because. It will take a strong
person to draw him out, I think. Maybe I am just not that strong.
I think about the future now. I want to make it that far. It's the only hope that keeps me going.
I think about the day when I am free to be a woman and not just a wife. I will always be a
mother, but even that...sometimes I worry that I am not doing it well. I try, Suhaili. I want you
to know that. It's just that sometimes the lights in my head distract me, and I see myself as
someone else. I wonder who I could be if I was not this. At least for tonight, as Elliot and I sit
in the theatre, I will have time to be a movie star.
Save my autograph, Suhaili! It might be worth something someday, you know.

Love,
Bernie

He doesn't know how long he sits there, staring into nothingness. Only the sounds of Eli's
deep breaths remind him that he is not still living in the past that his mother had described.
He hadn't imagined that his mother would have written in such detail, or that she had been
aware of how he'd been shutting down as a child. He doesn't know if he wants to go back and
read the beginning of the journal or if he wants to skip to the end. He doesn't know if he can
read any more at all. Elliot looks to his left, and Eli is sprawled on the pillow, arms again flung
out above his head. His small ruby lips are parted, and his tummy rises and falls in slumber.
The love Elliot feels is fierce, almost brutal in its force. He'd kill anyone who came after any
one of his kids. He can't imagine how lost a man would have to be in order to raise his hand to
his own child.

451
It isn't the memory of his father's fists that seeps into him now, but rather the knowledge that
he broke the cycle. He isn't his father, and he isn't his mother, and his kids - hell, they might
be okay because of him, not in spite of him. His mother would have loved Eli, he thinks. His
son is full of life and noise and imagination, and she would have revelled in it. For the first
time in years Elliot wants to tell his mother that he's sorry she lived with the idea that she had
failed him. He can't imagine what it would do to him to be unable to protect his kids, to watch
them and think he was losing them with no way to fight.

He hears a commotion in the living room and then footsteps. He's out of bed before Dickie's
voice can carry too loudly into the bedroom. He makes it to the hallway before he sees Tyler
and Dickie carrying in the plates from the patio into the kitchen.

"Hope you're planning on washing those, too," Elliot says.

Dickie spins around, the plates he was trying to sneak into the sink clattering safely into the
metal basin.
"Jesus, Dad. Can you at least make a sound when you stalk us? Scared the shit outta me."
"You mean I caught the shit outta you trying to dump those and run. I'm pretty clear it's not
elves leaving a sinkful of dirty dishes for me every morning."
Tyler snickers and looks down, but at least he heads for a sponge and the faucet. Dickie just
raises his chin defiantly.
"Lizzie ate too."
Elliot narrows his eyes, meeting his son's gaze head on.
”Well, then I'm sure she'll appreciate how nice it is of you to wash her plate for her."
"Shit," Dickie grumbles, grabbing a dishcloth.
Elliot grins in satisfaction at the boys as he peers out of the sliding door. His daughter is
laying on one of the loungers just beyond the patio, and she's just staring up at the sky.
"Keep swearing and you'll be scrubbing the grill tomorrow too, kid," he mutters as he heads
outside.

The night air is warm and muggy, but the breeze carries into his lungs as soon as he closes the
door behind him. There is a part of him that simply doesn't want his daughter out here alone,
even if she is still close to the house. But the bigger part of him wants to talk to her, to get
used to this idea that she's going to be living with him for the next year. He takes the lounger
next to hers and stretches out, watching the shadows play on the ocean. Far out the ocean is
nothing but black ink and froth. The smell of barbeques lingers in the air, and the fire they
had built in their makeshift pit is dying out.

452
"Mom's coming for Eli tomorrow, isn't she?" Lizzie says quietly, still staring upward.
He nods without thinking, before realising that she isn't looking at him. "Yeah," he says,
clearing his throat.
"She's not gonna like it when I tell her I want to stay here, you know." She turns her head
towards him. She looks at him for a long time, and he can tell that her decision to move is
weighing heavily on her. "Can you tell her for me? Please?"

Even in the darkness he can make out the concern and ache in his daughter's eyes. For some
reason he sees Elizabeth differently in this moment. She looks less like a little girl and more
like the adult she is becoming. Her features are sharper than Maureen's, and she is visibly
more serene than Kathleen. Liz is happiest in the ocean or on the beach, and she doesn't fuss
with makeup and clothes the way her sisters do. She's always been straightforward about her
opinions, her thoughts, her needs. She is the only one of his older kids who doesn't second
guess herself.

But this decision is confusing her. She wants to stay out here, yet she is afraid of how her
choices will hurt Kathy. He knows too much about this sort of decision. He knows about the
guilt that threatens to overwhelm when self-sacrifice becomes too much and need finally wins
out. But Jesus, he doesn't want his daughter to feel guilty for going after what she wants.
Kathy wouldn't want that, either.

"Remember when I left last year?" His throat feels scratchy, so he focuses upwards, the same
way Lizzie is doing.
"When you came out here?" She doesn't turn to look at him, but she also doesn't shy away
from talking to him, unlike Kathleen who he still catches looking at him warily every now and
again.
"Yeah." It's easier to talk to her when he's focused on the stars that make up the summer
triangle. It's like he is talking to no one and the whole universe all at once. "Felt like I'd
failed all of you. I mean what kind of father leaves his kids?"
He hears the rustle on her chair, and even without turning his head, he knows she is now
looking at him.
"We're all doing okay," Lizzie assures him quietly.
"Yeah, we are. But that's my point. Your mom will be okay, too," Elliot says softly. "We're
all gonna be fine."

He actually believes it. In this moment, he honestly believes that his family isn't surviving on a
wing and a prayer. He feels like they are stronger - like he is. For years, being a father had felt
453
like trying to control a runaway train. But now, these days - tonight - he feels like he's got a
shot at the controls.

"She's still going to be hurt."

He nods.
"Yeah. For awhile. But if you're happy, then it's not without reason."
When Lizzie looks at him now, her face softens into a sleepy smile. The moon settles over her
skin, and he doesn't see the pain he has caused her, he only sees her remarkable resiliency.
"When'd you get so deep?"
His smile is immediate, and he finds himself laughing just a little bit.
"Don't tell anyone."
"My silence is gonna cost you," she teases.
He is grinning at the heavens, he thinks. He must look like an idiot to whoever is watching up
there.
"Every time I'm convinced you can't possibly be related to your brother, you go and say
something like that."
When she laughs too, he almost closes his eyes. He wants to remember this. This is one of
those moments that he will not forget. He thinks about how fatherhood has both brought him
to his knees and given him the strength of wild horses. Or maybe it isn't fatherhood at all, but
rather love, because Olivia has caused the same spectrum of emotion inside of him. One
moment he thinks he can wait forever for her, and in the next he thinks he is going to drag her
back from the city and beg her to stay.

"Dad?"
There is a vision in his head, and it's overwhelming. He imagines just an ordinary day. It's a
weekend morning when Eli is visiting the beach house, and his daughter is just getting ready
for her day. There is noise and commotion and there are Cheerios where there shouldn't be,
and in the midst of it all Olivia is laughing because there is no way she can control a four-year-
old who is determined to play target practice with his cereal. His need is nearly
unmanageable. He doesn't understand at all why she doesn't see it. Why she doesn't trust in
what could be. They've saved kids, protected families, laid down their lives in the gamble of it
all, and they deserve this now. He pictures her laughing. Every single time that he conjures
these dreams, Olivia is laughing.

"What happened to Liv?" Lizzie asks quietly, as if she can read his mind. "I mean, I kinda
thought last month when she was here, when I called and she was, with you. I had just kind of
expected -“

454
For the first time in weeks, the ache is almost blinding. It hits him like the wildest of waves,
and maybe it's because of the delicate yet protective way his daughter is dancing around the
question. She knows, he thinks. She knows that Olivia left him. He can't say anything. Not
about Olivia. He doesn't trust himself, and besides, he doesn't know how to explain it to his
child. He doesn't know how he'd explain losing Olivia in a way that won't make Lizzie feel
like Kathy had been slighted by him. He'd loved Kathy differently, but Jesus, he loves Olivia
more. There. He's said it. If to no one else but himself, he's said it. He loves Olivia more.

"I asked her out here," he admits quietly. The stars seem to shift and dance in his vision. But
there is one, the brightest one tonight, and he hangs onto it, focuses on it. "She's gonna stay
with the job."
The waves are too perfect. Olivia couldn't possibly be afraid of the ocean if she were here
tonight. He matches his breathing to the roll and retreat of the water, and he tries to stay in
this moment instead of drifting off to the moments he wants but does not as yet have.
Lizzie exhales and shifts on her lounger, once again flat on her back and staring up at the sky.
She doesn't say anything, and for that he is grateful. It's got to be enough, he thinks. Olivia
doesn't want to be here, but his daughter does, and that has to be enough. Long minutes pass
before Lizzie finally breaks the silence between them.

"Remember that old movie you made me watch when I was twelve? You said I had to watch it
or you weren't wasting money on the Yankees tickets for me."
Elliot finds himself nearly smiling, because the memory is immediately crystal clear in his
head. Lizzie had wanted to go to the game simply because she'd had a fleeting crush on Derek
Jeter. Elliot had in turn challenged her absolute lack of knowledge about the sport in general.
He'd told her to watch Field of Dreams, because then at least she might develop a respect for
baseball before she went to the game.
"You know that movie's not about baseball, right?" she teases. "The field is just a
metaphor."

He laughs softly. The star he is staring at has a blue hue to it, and it stands out against the
warm yellows of its neighbours.
"Be careful of what you minimise. Shoeless Joe played that field."
Lizzie sits up then, before swinging her legs over the side of the lounger.
"The point is that when Ray built that field, no one believed in him. He just had faith that it
would mean something," she says, smiling to herself as she watches her toes disappear
beneath the sand she is disturbing with them. "So he built it, and he waited for them to
come."

455
She takes his breath away. In all of her seriousness and her analysis, she is light years beyond
him. Elliot looks at his daughter, and for the first time, he isn't scared of his kids growing up.
There is a little part of him that is excited for this - to be the father of adults who will keep him
in check and who will help him navigate his independence as they navigate theirs.

"If anyone asks, tell them you got your IQ from me."
Lizzie laughs out loud as she stands.
"It's Vega that you're looking at," she tosses off, as if anyone would know the layout of the
night sky. "She's part of Lyra, and she's three times brighter than the sun."
As she goes inside, Elliot remembers the little girl who had once corrected him about the
name of butterflies that had landed upon her, and he thinks that as much as some things
change, some things thankfully stay the same after all.
***

Summer carries a weight to it in the city. The mornings are not crisp; the sun is shrouded in a
heavy haze from the first moment it appears. Her skin is already sticky from the humidity and
it is barely seven a.m. She'll change her t-shirt more than once today, and her hair will end up
twisted into a haphazard ponytail before lunch. It's oppression, she thinks. This kind of heat
makes it unpleasant to breathe. The world feels slower these days. It's like she's just trudging
through, and her legs won't move.

She'd had the Chinese food last night, but by the time she'd been physically sated the
gnawing ache inside of her had become unbearable. She knows she isn't adapting well
enough at all to his absence. She's got to let him go, she tells herself. He's not here anymore,
and that's the brutal truth of it. Hearing his voice isn't going to quell the burn on her skin and
telling him about her day isn't going to make her feel less alone. She has to move on. There
will be a life after Elliot. There has to be. She feels less purposeful these days, and maybe that
is the crux of it. She's got to find her drive again. She's got to find her need to win.

Sometimes she feels every beat of her heart. It reminds her of the slow drip of a faucet. It'll
just keep going like this, draining out until someone finally decides to turn it off. The life in
front of her is gone. Olivia stares at the murky Hudson and she doesn't hear the voices around
her. She doesn't see the way everyone is working to fish another body out of the water; she
doesn't feel Adam's presence next to her. She never knows where Adam is. She has to look
for him in a room; she can't pick his voice out of a crowd. She can't read his shorthand and
sometimes she walks too fast for him.

456
"Olivia?"
Some people think the Hudson is beautiful. They see the shimmering reflections on the
surface. She only thinks about what is underneath. Bodies, wreckage, acid that will eat at her
skin. Behind the protection of her sunglasses, her eyes burn as she blinks. Her skin is sticky
with the humidity. She wonders what it is like to be unaware of the depravity. It's true, she
decides, that innocence is bliss.
"Cragen just called and they're pulling another body out by Chelsea Pier. She looks to be
about the same age as this one - twenty, maybe twenty-five." Adam's voice is hushed, his tone
deepening out of respect for the waste of it all.
Two young women who were probably alive yesterday morning are now gone. Just like that. It
doesn't end. She no longer expects it to. It is a parade of destruction and it extends as far as
she can see. Olivia nods and says nothing. She doesn't shift in her stance, she doesn't flinch.
She doesn't even turn to face her partner. The dirty river water cascades down off the nearly
naked form of their victim as the body is lifted from the water. The Hudson, she thinks. It's
such a greedy river.
"Want me to head down there and I'll call you so we can compare what we've got?" he
presses.

Adam asks her questions. He asks her before he does things, instead of just telling her where
he is going. He never runs off half- cocked, and he checks all of his hunches with her before
he acts on them. Somewhere in this city, someone is still in bed. They are with their lover or
their child, and they are thinking about a lazy breakfast and spending the day in the Village.
They'll walk through bookstores and coffee shops and they'll buy something from a street
vendor. She knows this person exists. They have to. Their existence is vitally important to her.

"Sure," she says.

He waits for a moment, and Olivia suspects he is looking at her. He won't see anything out of
the ordinary, not so long as she wears her sunglasses. She doesn't want to face what she
knows is coming. Two bodies, same age, same general timing. Because it is her job to do so,
she wonders if the two girls were friends and she wonders if the killings happened at the same
moment or one after another. There is a chance this isn't the end of it. Maybe bodies will wash
up all day, pushed against the city piers by a current that remains deceptively strong beneath
the glimmering sun. She hopes that the girls died first, and that anything else that happened
to them came afterwards. This is the type of mercy she hopes for. She doesn't waste time
hoping for the best when it's more realistic to just hope for things to end with as little pain as
possible.

457
"You sure you're okay?" Adam asks softly.
Come out here. Just get in the car and drive here, Liv.
She'd worked hard for her badge, she'd busted her ass to try and make a difference. The sun
creates a glare, and the girl's wet, dangling body is just a shadow in her line of vision. No
shape, no form. Just darkness.
"Yeah," she whispers, because there is nothing Adam can do to fix her. He isn't a bad guy, he
just isn't Elliot. That is the problem. No one is Elliot. No one ever will be.

Too close.

She doesn't know why she had ever bothered to deny it. Words they had fought against are
now the words that she clings to. He had been here, once. She'd been here with him, and no
matter what the future deals, it cannot take away that past. Adam leaves and Olivia is left
standing there, looking at a brunette with bloated skin and a tragic history. She tries to think
about what she'd been doing at twenty-five, and what it would have meant if her life had been
cut short at that age. She'd been nearly alone even then. It might have been days - weeks -
before her mother would have noticed her absence. It was Elliot who had first given her a
place to be. He'd cured her wanderlust, he'd halted her search.

Without him, the displacement returns. Her back feels stiff, her neck aches. They lower the
girl's body onto the plastic sheathing spread out on the pavement. The girl's head lolls to the
side, and her lips are a deep, dark blue. Her skin is almost white, and it makes the red bruises
appear to be that much more vibrant. The girl is garishly exposed because she'd been tossed
while wearing only her tank top. It's obscene and vulgar all at once that this girl is now just
skin and bones and evidence to the two dozen techs and police officers that swarm the dock. If
no one loved her, then as of now her life will mean nothing. She will be catalogued, dissected,
assigned a case number.

It's not new, Olivia tells herself. She's been doing this for years and years. This is not the
worst of the cases, not even close. She can't lose herself to this one. But her chest feels too
tight. In moments they will expect her to walk over to the body, to crouch down by it, to look
at the girl's skin and fingernails and tattoos and figure out what the hell happened, as if
anything can explain this away. She doesn't want to get close. She doesn't want to smell the
scent of death and decay. She doesn't want to feel the evil on her skin. She wants the sound of
the beach and the ability to breathe. She wants him.

She was better at this with him. Maybe she was better at everything with him.
458
"Liv?"
Until she hears his voice, she doesn't realise what she's done. The second he answers though
she can feel the weight of the phone in her hand and the smooth surface of it against her ear.
So she's called him then. It doesn't surprise her.
"I got the food last night," she says quietly, her lips barely moving. He exhales, and if she
concentrates she can hear the rustle of bed sheets on his end. "Good. Did you eat it?"

If he were here she wonders if she would be able to keep her distance, or if the need to touch
him would win out over professionalism. When she closes her eyes, he is next to her. His
sunglasses are on; his dress shirt is clean and crisp. Bathed in sunlight, he is freshly showered
and shaved. When the breeze picks up, she can smell the reassuring and masculine scent of
his cologne. His badge is clipped to his hip and she looks at the strong column of his neck too
often. She thinks about pressing her body up against his, she thinks about his arm sliding
around her waist. She stumbles when he touches her, but he holds her up every time.

"She's barely out of college," Olivia tells him, because it will take more than weeks to break
years of habit. "Got another one too, she washed up thirty blocks south of here. Same age.
Timing is too much of a coincidence, had to have been done by the same guy."
"Olivia-"
He is her partner for a moment. There has been no time or space. There's been no ocean, no
shattering of her body around his. He's just her partner, and for a second - just one more -
that is all she needs. Just one more breath as Benson and Stabler.
"You'd make me talk to her mother, if she's got one. You'd make me sit on the couch and
you'd stand behind me. It'd be easier to tell them, you know. When you were there it was a
little bit easier."
He is quiet. She can hear him exhale and she can almost picture him as he probably is, staring
off into the distance while the blue of his eyes deepens.
"You'd lock up on me with this one, El. She's Maureen's age, and you'd-"
"Liv," he interrupts, trying to stop her.

"She's someone's kid and the only thing I can do to make it better at all is to catch this guy."
Everything around her feels like it's tilted on its axis and she's too weighted to right herself,
too off-centre to find any balance. The only thing steady is her voice. It's too steady, as if she
is just an observer of the scene in front of her. "Only it doesn't really make it better, does it?
It won't bring this girl back."
"No," he acknowledges, his voice so low that he needs to clear it. "It won't." He always tells
her the truth, even when she doesn't want to hear it.

459
"Adam went to wait for them to pull out the second girl. He's a good cop, but he's gonna
miss the things you'd see." Her words have too much air in them now. "You always saw more
than anyone else. If I sent you a picture of our vic you'd tell me-"
"Liv, I'm done. Do you get that? I'm done. She's not my vic anymore. She's yours. I'm
sitting here next to Eli and I don't wanna see the pictures. I don't wanna try and think like
some sick-" Elliot stops mid-sentence, and his breath is heavy in her ear. "I don't want one
more of those bastards in my head," he whispers harshly into the phone. "If you want to do
the job, then you do it. But I can't go back." He pauses, exhales. "Not even for you."
He is right. The choice to leave was his. The choice to stay is hers. He loves her and yet she is
still here, sinking in the restlessness. Maybe she is the one who has been tossed underwater.
She feels like that lately, as if she is swimming against an unbeatable current, and there is no
one to drag her out of the riptide. He isn't here this time to haul her out of the sea, to warm
her, to tell her it's going to be okay. Maybe without him it won't be.

"You said I could walk away. Do you remember that, Elliot? You said I wasn't like all the
victims because I could walk away. But how do you walk away from this?" The sunshine is just
so damned incongruous with the scene laid out in front of her. Death, she thinks, shouldn't
be illuminated like this.
"I'm asking you, Elliot," she pushes, her voice rising just a little bit because she has to know.
He left, so he must have some answers. She needs them. She needs them like she has never
needed anything before. "'Cause I see this girl, and I think about how I owe her this. She
didn't deserve to die and I can't bring her back, but I can make this guy pay. That's what I
think about. Making him pay."

His voice deepens.

"You already got the ones you needed to get, Liv. Hollister's dead. Harris is behind bars. The
rest of ‘em? Someone else can go after them. It doesn't have to be you."
"I can't." The sharp honesty of the admission makes her shudder. "I don't know how to walk
away." There is a voice inside of her that wants to yell at him, to tell him that it isn't fair. She
needs someone. She needs him. She wants to tell him that when he'd been inside of her that
more than desire or need, she'd simply felt relief. Peace. "I always thought we'd go
together," she murmurs. "That we'd be ready at the same time."
On the other end, the man who was once her partner is silent for a long time. When he
speaks, his tone is somber, solid.
"You know I'm gonna be here. Whenever you're ready, you tell me and Jesus, I'll come get
you so damned fast-"

460
"Tell me how," she interrupts. "You want me to leave so bad, then tell me how." It's an
impossible request, she knows this. But he keeps acting like he's got all the answers. If he
knows, then he should just damn well tell her.

"I can't," he says thickly. "God knows I want to, but you gotta figure it out, Liv. When I
asked you out here, I thought I could show you, but the truth is I can't. I could show you my
reasons for leaving, but you gotta have your own. It's on you."
It's not the answer she wants. It's not an answer at all.
Behind her sunglasses, her eyes close. Everything around her seems to still except for the
light breeze. Sounds fade, and she takes one deep breath, and then another. It doesn't even
hurt anymore. She's not angry or grieving or aching. She's just standing here, on the dock,
wearing her badge around her neck as if it is some sort of failing rosary.
"You had reasons for leaving, Elliot," she says, trying to justify her tethers to the job. "You
had your kids."
As soon as she says it, she knows what she's done.
"God damn it," he exhales. His accent thickens. "I love you, Olivia. That mean anything to
you?"
If only he knew. To a woman like her, a woman who hasn't been given a whole lot of people in
her life, it is everything.
"Yeah," she whispers.

He exhales loudly into the phone, and in it she can hear him trying to calm himself down. It's
new, she thinks, that he doesn't just give into his frustration anymore. The thought almost
makes her smile. The life he's living has done him a world of good. She looks upwards, and
the skyscrapers tower above her like giant monoliths. The buildings encroach on her, a silent
stampede. Behind her, a young girl needs vindication and she won't get it if Olivia stands here
any longer. She thinks about fighting the ocean in a storm, and she thinks it's far more
dangerous to suffocate in heavy air. When Olivia turns around, Melinda looks up at her from
the end of the dock. They're ready for her to take over now.

"Liv?" His voice is softer, a reassuring rumble.

Her chest might feel too small, her knees might ache, but when he says her name like that, the
corner of her mouth tips upwards despite it all.
"Yeah?"
"You're gonna get this guy. Just be careful, and -“ She can almost hear him scraping his teeth
over his lower lip as he searches for words. "Remember he's not any smarter than any of the
guys we brought in. He's just another prick, and you're the one who knows better."

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In the background she hears Eli's sweet, sleepy voice, chiding his father over his use of a bad
word. The chasm between their lives is painfully obvious. She has always been a cop first, and
he has always been a father first. Despite the differences, he has always found her.

"El-"
"And yeah, sounds like the same guy."
She smiles. For a moment on the phone with him, she isn't alone out here.
"Thanks," she says quietly.
She doesn't wait for his answer. There is a victim waiting for her and the sun is reflecting off
her badge, as if a reminder of the job that needs to be done. Olivia hangs up the phone, and
she takes a moment before she turns back around to face the loss of life behind her.
There is a bastard out there who thinks he's won. In front of her, the city hovers and then
encroaches. For now, she lets the city have her.

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463
 Chapter Twenty-Nine

H
is life now reminds him of his days in the Marines and that's not a bad thing. He
remembers his first day at boot camp, and how he hadn't been afraid. Instead there
had been a sense of righteousness inside of him - he'd had a plan, a future, a noble
sense of right or wrong that hadn't as yet been tested, broken and taped back together again.
He'd been young and full of himself, and life had been ahead instead of behind him.

He wouldn't trade the life he'd lived between then and now, but it sure as hell feels good to
believe he's got a shot at making a difference again. Maybe all anyone needs, he thinks, is the
chance to do something that matters. He'd been living in the futility for too long. He'd been
trying to save a marriage that had been slipping through his fingers. He'd been trying to keep
his distance from Olivia. Worst of all, he'd been judging his own self-worth by the number of
times they'd lost a case or hadn't been able to save a victim. He'd been caught up in the losses
instead of the things left to gain.

In the deepest part of his gut, there is a still a fire that burns for the job. She is still there, and
he doesn't think that he can ever really let the 1-6 go so long as she is still going at it. But the
rest of him wants this - and standing in the virtually empty office on the fourth floor of the
Administration building here at the State Police Academy in Sea Girt, he can easily imagine
himself getting used to this world. This will soon be his office, and there is something that
feels innately right about where he is.

"Sir?"

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Hovering behind him in the doorway is a recruit whose job for the last hour has been to show
Elliot around the campus. The Sea Girt Academy is impressive, and one of the toughest in the
nation. The academy recruits reside on-site during the week, and their nearly six-month stay
includes both coursework and PT, as well as firearms, driving and rescue training. This fall
the curriculum will include a class on sexual assault, sex offences and domestic violence that
he will teach. The new job doesn't start until just after Labor Day, but he'd made the drive out
here simply because he'd been crawling out of his skin back at the beach house. Olivia hasn't
called him in a week.

He's doing his damndest to let her set the pace, but he knows too much about the case she is
working right now. The details have been all over the news, and he's found himself lying in
bed at night and staring at the ceiling, wondering if she is safe, if he should go back - just this
once - because the asshole she is tracking is too dangerous for her to go after with some new
partner that Elliot doesn't know.

"Sir, if you want to stay-"

"No," he says, looking out the window at the PT field below. The class coming through the
Academy now is out there, five lines of recruits all doing jumping jacks in grey t-shirts that are
sweat-stained due to the scorching mid-July heat. There are only two women in the group,
and it makes him think about Olivia and how hard she's fought all of these years to prove her
worth - not only as a female cop, but as someone who had been conceived out of violence and
who needs to prove she has a right to life just like anyone else. He wonders if she knows that
he's not asking her to give up the need to make a difference, but rather to just change her
tactics. "The office is great," he murmurs absently.

The air-conditioning hums to life and Elliot lifts his gaze, looking past the grass field below to
the buildings at the other end of the expansive complex. He loses himself to the idea of Olivia
being here one day. He'd talked to Captain Sorrell about her a few months ago and the man
had immediately asked if she'd planned on leaving the NYPD soon as well. With the newly
allotted state fund now in place to fund sexual assault law enforcement, the Academy is
interested in hiring her to teach a course on victim protocol. Elliot exhales, and he thinks
about what it would be like to send every officer out there armed with the knowledge of what
they should and shouldn't do to gain the trust of a victim in the aftermath of an assault.
They'd be able to get better descriptions of assailants, extricate more complete testimony,
they'd be able to establish patterns of behaviour that might get more of the sick fucks off the
street.

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If she were here, he'd get to have lunch with her in the afternoons, too.
He wonders if the cafeteria could make those Greek wraps she loves, and he bets she could
convince the cooks to make her whatever she wanted. There's no rule about fraternisation
amongst the instructors, so he'd be able to look at her unguarded. He'd peek in on her
classes when he could, because he'd love to watch her teaching others the things that make
her such a great cop. He'd leave coffee on her desk just before four o'clock in the afternoon,
because that's when she gets sleepy, and when their schedules lined up he'd drive her home
at the end of the day.

His life with Olivia racing down the city streets seems like it is a movie he once watched.
There are pangs of regret that he walked away, but then he takes a deep breath and it clears
the nostalgia. What he misses is being with her - the adrenaline was always because he'd been
in the midst of it with her. God, Olivia. Enough is enough. You've got nothing left to prove.

"Sir, I have to get back for my next class. Would you like me to send someone up to show you
anything else?"
Elliot turns then and faces the recruit. Kid's name is O'Hagan, and he can't be any older than
Maureen. His green eyes are clear, and the kid's got a don't-fuck-with-me stance. Problem is
he's barely five-ten and a hundred and sixty pounds. At least he's at the beginning of his stint
at the Academy, so he's got time to put on some muscle. The next four months will toughen
him up, get him into fighting shape. It's nothing less than a fight out there, he wants to say. It's
a messy, brutal fight and you're gonna need all the help you can get. But he doesn't work here
yet, so instead Elliot grins just a little.
"Nah, I'm good. ‘Preciate your time." O'Hagan nods and then shifts on his feet. He looks
down the hall for a second or two, and he worries his lip as if trying to decide if he should say
what he's thinking or not.

"Got something on your mind?" Elliot prods, and he feels more like a father to this kid than
anything else.
O'Hagan's jaw visibly tightens, but he looks Elliot straight in the eyes.
"Sure you've heard worse," he starts. Then he stops, and there is a moment of anger that
crosses his expression before he masks it again. "My girlfriend in college went to a frat party
one night and she..."
Elliot knows what's coming, but he doesn't jump in, even when O'Hagan cracks his neck and
exhales, as if trying to alleviate the obvious tension in his body.

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"She didn't come back that night, and when I saw her the next day she...she was pretty bad
off. She was always different after. Said she didn't remember anything about what happened,
but I think she remembered enough. Wouldn't report it, either."
He knows it starts here, in moment like these. The kid can't say the word, and it's going to be
Elliot's job to make sure that every single one of these recruits is not only familiar with the
procedures in place to deal with assault, but that they aren't at all afraid to talk about it. They
can't be, not if they want the victims to talk, too. It starts with them, and they've got to lead by
example.

"Your girlfriend was raped," Elliot says bluntly. O'Hagan flinches and looks at the floor.
"Yes, sir." "You feel guilty that you couldn't save her."
The kid goes perfectly still. He doesn't look up. Elliot lowers his voice then, years of practice
taking over. He's calm inside like never before. This is what he does, and the need to do it
won't change even if his methodology does.
"A victim goes through their own personal hell, but everyone who cares about them is robbed
of something, too."
"Told her I wanted to marry her and she dropped out of school and moved back home.”
O’Hagan finally raises his head, and the way he is gritting his jaw doesn't off-set the too-fresh
hurt in his eyes. God knows that this probably happened not long ago. With how young this
kid is, it may have just happened sometime in the last year.

Elliot manages a reassuring half-smile.

"You give up on her?"
O'Hagan's eyes flash belligerent fire.
"No, sir."
"You try and get her to report it?"
"Yes, sir," O'Hagan responds, his voice not quite as strong. "I tried for weeks. Told her it
was the right thing to do. She shouldn't let anyone get away with somethin' like that."
Elliot takes a deep breath, and in a way, he relaxes. This is exactly the kind of cop he wants to
see on the street. Dedicated, motivated, full of piss and vinegar. He wants to tell the kid that
he is the reason that Elliot took this job. Instead he simply nods and gives the kid the
understanding he's looking for.
"You decide to become a cop before or after?"
“After."

Elliot nods, because this is how it happens sometimes. He doesn't judge the reasons, not
anymore. On paper, Olivia should have been a liability for SVU, but instead she became the

467
unit's greatest asset. Being too close or too involved isn't something he has any right to
decide upon.
"You know there's nothing you could have done if she really didn't want to report it, right?"
O'Hagan doesn't move. But he's listening. He isn't missing a word. His face is impassive,
but his eyes tell the story. The haunt won't leave him. Elliot knows what it's like. It's the same
look he himself had worn for months after Olivia had come out of Sealview. He'd looked in
the mirror morning after morning in disgust because he'd been her partner and the cloak of
failure that he'd worn had been heavy.

"Maybe you couldn't do anything about it then, Danny, but there will come a time when she
does need you, okay? You just gotta be ready then."
The kid shifts his weight again, clearly uncomfortable.
"Sorry about this, sir," he says, clearing his throat. "Didn't mean to spill my guts. Just meant
to tell you that I'm looking forward to taking your course, that's all." When O'Hagan meets
Elliot's gaze again, he squares his shoulders. "Sure you're good up here?"
Elliot grins now, because yeah, yeah he's good. For the first time in a long time, he sees some
measure of victory ahead. Olivia and he aren't the only two who can do the job. There are
those out there like O'Hagan who want to learn, who want to do the right thing. Maybe the
cases won't stop, but neither will the army of kids who have the energy and stamina to go after
the pricks on the street.

He's just got to arm them with what he knows. That's the job now, and it's one he can do
without sacrificing his sanity.
"I'm fine," Elliot assures him.
O'Hagan gives him a curt nod and the barest hint of a smile.
"Look forward to seeing you this fall," he manages, before turning on his heels and walking
away.
Elliot turns back to look out the window that will one day soon be his. The grass out there is
the deep green of too-ripe cucumbers, and it reminds him of Central Park in the late summer.
He wonders if she is near the park now, and he knows that even if she is, she won't notice the
color of the grass or the sun in the sky. She'll be thinking about the latest woman that has
gone missing - the third this week - and she'll be blaming herself with every hour that passes.
It's killing him to give her the space to make her own decision. He heard the waver in her
voice the last time they'd talked, and he'd expected her to hang up on him when he'd pushed
the job back on her. But she'd listened to him. She'd stayed on the call, and he has to hang
onto that. Her decision, he tells himself. It's got to be hers. Fuck.

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He just prays to God that she'll see enough reason to walk away before it's too late.
***

There is an air of finality to her days now.

She feels the end upon her as surely as she can feel the sun desperately trying to warm her
belligerent skin. She looks at the victims too long, and her footfalls are heavier than they once
were. Her need for Elliot is a fine dust that seems to coat every moment in which she takes a
breath. His desk holds the ghosts of who they once were, the voices in the squad room make
her desperate to hear his. He'd never spent much time in her apartment, but he is there now,
too. Her bed is empty at night; her body craves the cocoon of his. There is no buffer between
the world and her without him, and she feels like she is no longer strong, but rather
disintegrating beneath the weight of her exhaustion and his absence.

At night, when she lays in her bed unable to sleep, she feels as vulnerable as she had been as a
child - unsure, displaced, and wholly aware that her life isn't what it should be. She
daydreams, just as she had done as a teenager. It's a perpetual summer at the Jersey shore
when she dreams. He is strong and his muscled skin is slightly red because he always forgets
to wear sunscreen. He's always barefoot, and she can't understand why this turns her on. He
smells like sunshine and his skin is salty as he pulls her towards him.

He is a warrior to her - wounded, yes - but infinitely strong, breathtakingly unbreakable. He

cracks, but he doesn't shatter. The ease of his surroundings out at the beach hasn't
diminished the power of him, instead his ferocity lives in bright, stark contrast to the way he
so carefully treads across the bowing wooden floors of the new, gentle life that he has built.
The life he has laid out for her, the one he has invited her into.

In her daydreams, she buries her face in his neck and kisses him there and he always laughs
about it - he thinks it's hilarious that she burrows into him every time. She wants to tell him
why she does it - she wants to tell him about how her whole world is safe, unblemished and
solid in the moments when he is all she can feel, breathe, taste and see. She wants to tell him
that these moments make her throat lock and her eyes well and if he could just rub his hands
over her skin one more time - for the thousandth time this morning - he could fix her from the
inside out.

Instead she breathes him in and she doesn't fight him when he laughs at her or teases,
because it's easier than explaining why her fingertips are nearly embedded in the small of his
469
back. Her eyes burn as her true reality sets in. The Visine no longer works and she'd given up
coffee eighteen hours ago because it was making her hands shake. She's been wearing the
same black jeans for two days now, and she feels so grimy that the denim is making her skin
itch. Cassie Drummond. Veronica Sutherland.

They are the first two pictures on the left of the screen. The pictures are revolting, but she no
longer sees the blue tint to their skin or the bruises on their faces. They'd both been pulled
from the Hudson last week within two hours of each other. Cassie had been missing for two
days and Veronica since the day before she'd been found. There are no known connections
between the two. No common clubs or organisations. No crossover in their work history. No
shared former boyfriends and nothing on their financials or phone records to indicate they
had ever even met. Both had shown evidence of rape. They'd both also been twenty-four years
old.

Unfortunately that bond seems to be enough. Tracy Garrison. Shara Hodgson. Anna Benitez.
All twenty-four years old as well. Tracy has now been missing for three days, Shara for two and
Anna had last been seen twenty hours ago. In four hours, they expect he'll take another one.
They call him 24. He'd carved a small, crude sundial into the hips of the first two victims and
he hadn't snatched anyone for the two days this past week when it had been raining. He only
grabs them when it's sunny out, and he makes sure that their absence will be noticed within
twenty-four hours of taking them.

The sun is glaring down on them today. The forecast doesn't call for rain for at least the next
four days. Olivia lets her body sink down into the swivel chair in front of the monitors. Her
back aches and she just wants to wash her face and climb into her bed. She can't handle one
more set of grieving parents, one more crumbling boyfriend or hysterical best friend. He's
picking women who have large groups of friends, who are rarely alone and who come from
large families. He wants his victim to be missed and missed quickly because he wants someone
to know what he's done. Huang is having a field day with this one, but unfortunately even the
FBI hasn't come up with a single suspect.

The truth is that she doesn't know where to start. She wants to say that she has a hunch, but
she doesn't. The squad room is crowded now, because the NYPD is in the hot seat on this.
The local media is all over them, and CNN just added the story to their headline news.
Her head is pounding. Her heartbeat feels erratic. She can't seem to get her thoughts
together no matter how hard she tries.She wants to call Elliot. It's a suffocating, crushing

470
need now that won't let her breathe. Only she can't call him. If she calls, she will unload about
this case and he can't hear about it anymore. She understands that. She does.
Only she is trying to swim upstream in the rushing rapids and she isn't getting anywhere. It
feels like someone is stepping ruthlessly on her chest. She thinks about walking out of the
chaos and never coming back. No more images lit up on the huge, glaring monitors. No more
phones ringing, no more panic and loss. She'd be able to sleep then. She dreams about
sleeping for days and days. It's just fantasy. In reality, she can't - won't - let up on this bastard
at all.

"Olivia?"
Cragen's gentle voice comes from near her ear and it makes her realize that she had dropped
her forehead into her palms. She looks up at him now and she can only imagine what she looks
like. His expression is soft, worrisome. She knows it's bad when he looks at her like this.
"Room 2424 at the Wyndham Garden Hotel in Chelsea."
No. Her throat doesn't work. It's on 24th Street.
"Body or another grab?" she manages.
Cragen straightens and exhales. He is looking at her far too intently, as if he can see through
her. She feels transparent, as if she is paper thin and nothing of substance.
"Jillian Weinberg. She was supposed to checkout this morning and meet her sister for
breakfast in the village. She never showed, so the sister called her cell. It went straight to
voicemail, and the outgoing message has been replaced with the ticking of a clock."

He's playing us, she thinks. He wants something, only she can't figure out yet what it is. If all
of this was just for the publicity, he wouldn't be taking such care to leave them clues that he
knows they'll never release to the media. She pushes back out of the chair and her boots hit
the ground. Her feet are swollen from the heat and lack of sleep, but she can't sit here
anymore. The profiling isn't giving her any clues, and forensics is turning up empty. She
won't even ask about the security cameras at the hotel. He's taken them out before, no reason
to hope that he had forgotten this time. She gets up and heads towards her desk, picking her
badge up off the desk and slinging it over her neck. Wearing it doesn't make her stand up
straighter. It makes her feel heavy and weighted, but she doesn't have time to evaluate what
this means.

"Liv-"
Cragen's taken on a harsher tone now, and she turns around, raising her eyes to lock on his.
"Yeah?"
"Maybe you should let Adam handle this one. I'm sure he'd be willing to come in. Go home

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and get a few hours."
Adam's mother-in-law had passed away two days ago of natural causes, and he had taken a few
days to be with his wife. She won't let this job have another marriage. Not again. Olivia shakes
her head.
"I got it."
"Can't save anyone else if you can't save yourself," Cragen responds cryptically, eyeing her.
She meets his gaze, but her Captain doesn't flinch. He's dealt with her for too many years to
back down in the face of her righteousness or hostility. He's going to call her out, she thinks.
He's going to order her home, and all she's going to do is watch the clock, waiting for the
next missing girl, the next body, the next taunt. She can't go home. If those girls can't go
home, then neither should she.

"He wants something, Captain," Olivia finally says quietly. "I just can't figure out what it is."
Cragen watches her for a few more moments before she sees him relent. She can tell by the
look on his face that he's reluctant to let her keep working on the case, but instead of pulling
her, he simply nods once. He knows, she realises. He knows that she's got nothing else, and
that even this is better than staring at the walls. He knows that the movement is what keeps
her going, and that she can't be left alone with the things in her head.

"It's six. By ten you're home, got it? I don't care where you are or what you're doing, you're
not welcome to stay on the case after that until you've gotten at least six hours of rack time."
His words are clipped, leaving no room for argument. "I want a call from your home phone at
ten p.m. sharp. Understand?"
She nods, and whereas she might have protested about his heavy-handed, babysitting tactics a
few years ago, right now it surprisingly feels reassuring to have someone still bother to tell her
what to do. She is so brutally exhausted that she doesn't have the energy to argue in any case.
It's enough to make Cragen turn around and head towards his office.

"You look like shit," Fin tosses at her as he walks by, collapsing down into his chair.
"Two hours of sleep and you're suddenly a beauty queen?" she retorts.
Fin doesn't take the bait. Instead he looks up at her, shaking his head.
"How the hell he lets this go on, I got no fuckin' clue."
"He doesn't," she says, rolling her eyes as she gets her gun hooked to her holster. "He's
sending me home at ten." She ignores the ache in her shoulders and the way her eyes stay
closed just a millisecond too long when she blinks. She thinks she slept yesterday at some
point. She'd grabbed an hour at least, maybe two. It had to have been just yesterday.

472
"Meant Stabler," he says under his breath. "Knew he was an asshole, but this is a douchebag
move, even for him."
It's been so long since she's heard Elliot's name in this room that even the sound of it sends a
stab of pain shooting through her. She wants to know what Fin means, but she's got to get
down to the Wyndham. "It's not like that," she finds herself saying softly. Fin gives her a
quick assessing look and then goes back to cross-referencing all of the clock stores in the city
with their VICAP database.
"Munch'll meet you at the hotel. He ain't too far. Can't go at this without a partner."
Olivia exhales, hoping it will alleviate the way she is turning into parchment inside of her. She
can feel the dry, grating pressure of her bones, and she finds herself praying to God that she
can hold it together for a little while longer.

She doesn't know what will happen then, but she's got an odd feeling sliding over her skin
that something is about to break.
***

His lungs aren't cooperating. Or maybe he can't breathe because of the thick moisture that
hovers in the air. The humidity is seemingly rising as the summer evening rolls into night, and
as his feet pound away at the sand he is getting winded far too soon. Getting old, he thinks.
Can't keep up the same pace. But the excuses feel wrong. As if he is lying to himself. Over the
last few months he's been feeling stronger, better, the aches in his bones have subsided. It's
only the loss of Olivia that bruises him now; it's her absence that causes his joints to protest.
The run shouldn't be taking it out of him this way tonight, and he can't shake the uneasiness
that is growing beneath his skin.

The waves seem to rumble louder with each push. They are covered in sizzling white foam,
and they encroach rather than lull. Sweat drips down his back, his temples, his neck. His lungs
are searing, desperate for air, yet he pushes himself through. His sneakers meet the wet sand,
and his throat locks. He closes his eyes, tries to shake his head, but the movement just creates
a sense of vertigo. He can't dislodge the way his gut is snarling or the way his fists just want to
open and close. He's got to think about something other than Olivia. Something else.
Anything else. She's a good cop, and she's fine out there. She's got a solid partner; she's got
years of experience. She's fine.

Elliot picks up his pace. He tries to focus on the conversation he'd just had with Jack on the
driveway. The older man had caught Elliot standing outside, looking up at the attic above the
garage. After a little discussion, Jack had offered to help Elliot with the project he'd been

473
thinking about starting, even going so far as to offer to reach out to one of the other
neighbours who was a retired contractor.
Elliot wants to build out the attic - turn it into a loft. A simple staircase from the side of the
garage could be built, and they'd put a solid door at the top. The attic's got space enough to
put a set of bunks, a desk, small couch and a twin bed up there, and with a few additional
windows it would give Lizzie the privacy she deserves. When Maur and Kathleen come out
they'd be able to share that space too. Project wouldn't be cheap, but he's been thinking
about selling the bike for awhile and that would just about cover the remodel.

His stomach tightens suddenly and he feels like someone punched him in the gut. He stops
then, too abruptly, and bends over. His palms push against his knees and he exhales, growling
out into the night. Nothing is proving to be distraction enough.

Olivia.

He can't rid himself of the anxiety. Never mind the way his stomach is cramping, he has the
urge to hit something, to just demolish something. But there is nothing here outside of the
sand and the ocean and the fucking clawing, grasping air. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries
to straighten, despite the spasms forming in his torso. It’s her, he thinks. It's got to be
something to do her. When he finally manages to catch his breath long enough to turn and
face the ocean, it's a black monster out there. It rises up, swelling without limits, and then the
waves come down - hurtling towards him at startling speeds. You can't do this, he tells himself.
She's fine.

He searches the horizon then, and he waits for answers. He wants someone or something out
there to tell him that she is safe, that she's almost done with the goddamned job, that she'll be
here soon. He wants the heavens to give him what he wants and he wants the patience to wait
until that moment occurs. But tonight, nothing feels like it's going to give. He wonders if he
should just call her, if he should just make sure she's okay for himself. She'll rightly tell him
that he can't have it both ways - he can't want nothing of job one day and then need to know
the next - but her irritation will be a small price to pay for his sanity.

He can't shake the growing, sickening feeling of dread.

He may no longer be with the unit, but his instincts regarding Olivia haven't faded.
She's his to protect, and something is telling him that tonight may end up being one of her
worst nights yet.
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 ***

After all of the years, she simply knows. She's developed a sense of the game. She's too aware
of the depths and shallows of the soul. Sometimes she can feel the darkness in people so
strongly that merely brushing by them on the street makes her skin dot with gooseflesh. She
knows when she's closing in and when she's still far from the end, and right now she can feel
the inevitability settle around her body like a rough, wool cloak. They're close.

The realisation should mask her exhaustion just a little bit, but tonight it's not enough to give
her the burst of clarity that she needs. Munch is standing behind her in the late evening
shadows that cover the Columbia University campus, and they are both staring at the stone
structure in front of them. Only the base of the monument remains now, but over sixty years
ago it had been topped by a huge granite sphere that has since been removed. It had once
been a sundial, presented to the university by the Class of 1914. Horam Expecta Veniet.

It's the words that remain on the base of the sundial that tell her they are honing in on their
suspect. Two hours ago when she had walked into Jillian Weinberg's hotel room, they'd
found no signs of foul play. But what they had found had been a note, laying there pristine and
unwrinkled on the bed. Horam Expecta Veniet. That's all it had said. A deliberate clue in
what amounts to a game played by a psychopath. It hadn't her taken long to figure out where
to go, which in turn makes her think that he's knowingly waiting for them somewhere nearby.
A quick Google search on her phone could have yielded not only the translation but the
location of the inscription. She hadn't needed to search for it though. She remembers the
words from her childhood. She'd sat in this very spot for years, waiting for her mother to
finish teaching a course or to walk out of Low Library, which sits straight ahead of her. She
knows what the words mean. Await the hour, it will come.

It's nine o'clock now, and she wonders if this is the hour he intended. In the mix of fading
dusk and the warm glow of the campus street-lamps, Olivia scans her surroundings from
beneath heavy eyelids. Something here either holds another clue, or somewhere here he is
waiting for her. Watching her. The dread slithers down her spine slowly. The air feels heavy.
Thick. She ignores the lazy roll of nausea in her stomach. Her mother had been raped by a
man who had first noticed her because she worked on this campus, and that fact isn't far from
Olivia's mind every time she sets foot on the grounds.

"Think he's out here?" Munch muses aloud.

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Yeah, she does. She does. Out here, in the middle of a sweltering, oppressive summer night,
she thinks he is waiting for them to find him. She says nothing. Summer students stroll the
campus as darkness falls, but no one stands out. There isn't anyone sitting alone, watching
her. Her eyes feel swollen with the need to sleep, but she knows that she can't stop now. If she
doesn't get him tonight, then tomorrow's sunshine will inevitably bring another victim.
They'll get him. They. Munch is with her, and she has to stop thinking that she is working by
herself. She's got backup, and this case doesn't rest on her shoulders alone. Hardly. If
anything, Cragen will be expecting her to call from her apartment in less than an hour, telling
him that she is taking a break. No way that this is ending that soon.

There is no anticipation tonight, only resignation. Whatever it is they will find, it will steal
sleep from her. The nightmares will invade the coming nights. These are the certainties.
We did our time out there, Olivia. We gotta let someone else take over. It's been too much.
Elliot's gravelly words resonate in her head louder and louder with every passing day. She
thinks about how she'd looked in the mirror the other day when she had stared at her
reflection. She remembers the startling flat spaces in her irises, and how pathetically lost she
had appeared to be. Until then, she hadn't realised just how much the world could see of her
truth.
"I'm done," she had whispered, her voice a rasp. She'd said the words to the shadows of who
she'd once been. Then the second time, this time with more volume. "I'm done."

She'd stopped then, the confession one that she didn't want anyone to know. But the
admission hadn't turned out to be the destructive secret she had once thought it was. In the
moments afterwards she had watched her reflection and she'd been the one surprised. She
hadn't disappeared. She hadn't disintegrated. She doesn't know what she had expected. But
it sure as hell hadn't been to still be standing when she was done saying the words.
Who are you without the badge? Do you even know?

He'd asked the question on her last morning at the beach house, as she'd been ready to leave.
She'd pretended to ignore him, but she'd heard every rise and dip in Elliot's voice. She can't
stop thinking about the life he'd laid out for her, and how she'd walked away. He still cares,
she knows that. But she wonders if she's pushing him closer to the edge of walking away for
good. She wonders about the damage she's already done. In her most irrational moments she
wants Elliot to come and force her hand, but she knows he won't. He can't. Her limbo is hers
and hers alone. It has to be this way. She just wonders which way she is supposed to go.

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Tonight there is a smothering pressure that is constricting around her as this case goes on,
and it's only getting worse. She wants to crawl out of her skin, but she doesn't even have the
luxury of taking a shower right now. Their guy is here, somewhere. She can feel it. The bile
swirls in her gut again when she realises it is not that she is in his head, but rather that he is in
hers. It's probably a that tide turned years ago. Her breath slows. It becomes deliberate. A
drop of sweat slips between her shoulder blades, trailing down her spine, licking at the small
of her back.

When her cell phone vibrates in the back pocket of her jeans, she pulls it out and looks at the
name illuminated in clear, white letters. Elliot. She doesn't know why just the sight of his
name makes her eyes water, or why it makes her knees protest holding her weight. She only
knows that if she hears his voice right now it will make her weak - too vulnerable - and she
doesn't have room for the cracks inside of right now. She silences his call, and goes back to
the world she knows.

I'm fighting for some sense of normalcy, and goddammit, I'm fighting for you! Inside of her,
in the very darkest recesses, she worries that Elliot isn't going to wait forever. He'll give up
because she's given him no reason to think otherwise. She's worried that the days are no
longer making him miss her, but teaching him instead to let go. Her breaths are deliberate.
Paced. Forced. Olivia looks over her shoulder, and Kent Hall looms off to her right. The
stained glass window depicts Justice with her sword and scales, but as night encroaches she
can no longer see the details of the image. The building used to house the law school years
ago, but had since been turned into the centre for Asian studies and a student administration
office of sorts.

"The old law school," she says quietly, nodding towards the Latin inscription atop the
building. Her mouth is dry, her throat aches. Words barely form, and she tries to speak, but it
ends up just a whisper. "Law is the art of the good and the just."
"Yeah, right," Munch snorts softly. "You think our guy is rebelling against something?
Wouldn't be the first time that man killed in the name of protesting order."
Her head is playing with her, and she doesn't like it. She's done this before, so there is no
reason for the past and present to keep blurring like this. It's not like they haven't
investigated cases at Columbia in the past. She's not thirteen and sitting on these steps
anymore, waiting for her mother to be done for the day only to later find out her mother had
left hours ago. She's not sixteen and waiting for Kenny Howell to come out from his last class
of the day, praying he will hurry before her mother sees her sitting here.

477
I'm a cop, she thinks. A cop. I'm here for a reason.The air seems too still. Maybe everyone is
waiting for something, anything. She inhales. Hold it. Exhales for so long that it almost
makes her want to close her eyes. She's walking towards Kent Hall with heavy steps then and
it's only when she hears Munch jogging a little to keep up does she realize that she'd left him
standing there without saying a word. She feels the tension knotting in her shoulders and her
lower back and she breathes as deeply as she can one last time before she pushes her way
through the heavy doors.

Liv!

She can hear Elliot's voice cautioning her sometimes, too. Calling out for her. It's the ghost
of their partnership, of all the years they'd fought the world and each other in the process.
He'd be holding her back right now, determined to go in first wherever they had to go. She
ignores the sounds in her ear, and she rolls her neck on her shoulders, trying to alleviate the
knots, the weight that pushes down on her. The hallways are nearly empty. It's summer
session and it's late, and the offices in this building have long since closed.

"Olivia-"
She shakes her head, squinting against the drumbeat that has begun in her temple. Her gaze
bounces off the concrete of the walls and the scuffs on the floor.
"He's got to be here. There's something here." Her lips feel chapped. Inevitability has a
smell to it, she thinks. It smells like mustiness and too much floor cleaner. Like formaldehyde
that's been smeared angrily across concrete walls. The scent seems to burn her irises, her
throat, her lungs.
"I'll call Cap-" Munch says, his voice too quiet for her liking.
He knows too, she thinks. He can feel it coming, just like she can.
"No," she cuts him off on a rasp. "He wants me to go home and I can't. Not yet." The faces
of the missing girls are too vivid in her memory. Tracy with her dark hair and delicate
appearance, Shara with her sea blue eyes and the smattering of freckles that make her look ten
years younger. Then there is Jillian, grinning and holding her infant niece in the picture that
her sister had brought by the precinct.

"You might not care if your ass gets handed to you, but I'm too old to get suspended,"
Munch mumbles.
She doesn't turn around. He's calling it in, and she's got no right to tell him not to. Of
course, Cragen can't send her home if she's already in a place where she doubts her cell will
get reception. The tunnels. The sub-basement. The sharp, sudden realisation almost makes
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her dizzy. Of course. She'd escaped down into those tunnels herself as a teenager, back when
the university hadn't as yet cracked down on the kids who would play hooky between classes
in the sub-basement that they are connected to.
For a moment, Olivia stands still. A second passes, her eyes briefly close. Munch's voice
drones on as he relays the details of their coordinates. She can't shake the feeling that
something is going to end. The end, she keeps thinking, without reason. So this is the end.
She's picking up her pace on autopilot then, her footsteps echoing as she breaks into a slow
jog heading towards the west staircase, Munch trailing behind her while on his phone. There
are a maze of tunnels and hallways down there, leading to the other campus buildings. The
east tunnel heads to Philosophy Hall, the south one to Hamilton Hall. In the middle of the
north wall of the basement, a darker tunnel leads to St. Paul's Chapel. Students routinely
break the rules and organise unsanctioned field trips to explore the old rifle range down
there. But there is another tunnel - one that is accessed by the crude ladder and hatch door in
the northwest corner of the basement - where no one dares to enter. It supposedly leads to
Buell Hall, but it's too hot, too dark and far too dangerous for even drunk teenagers to try it.
She is lightheaded as she takes the stairs downwards. Years ago Elliot would have been here,
taking the stairs first. It had never been about equality or his belief in her, she thinks. It had
been about chivalry, plain and simple. Maybe that's why she had let him do it too often. He'd
always had more to lose than she did, but he'd been stubbornly determined not to lose her.
The rigid set of his wide shoulders had always been in front of her, and she'd been
intrinsically aware of how he would move, how he would react if faced with the need to protect
her.

She misses him and it feels like a gaping, exposed vulnerability. Olivia shudders involuntarily
and then tries to shake it off. She just has to focus on the here, the now. It's on her then, the
feel of it, the growing sense of pursuit. It's the shift when the hunted becomes the hunter, and
she knows, she is positive that their guy is down here, or that at the very least the girls are.

"Olivia."
The far less familiar tone of Munch's voice stops her in her tracks. Her skin now bears the
sheen of perspiration. When she spins to face him at the bottom of the stairs, she realises he is
still on the top step. He stands there, just looking at her.
"The girls could be down here. We can't wait for backup," she tries to explain through
parched lips. It's all she's got. She doesn't want to explain to him that she isn't struggling for
air from breathing too fast, but rather from the fact that she isn't breathing enough. Her
reaction scares her. Her adrenaline should be spiking now, her fight response should be
kicking in.

479
Munch furrows his brow and peers at her from over the top of his glasses. He looks at her for a
moment too long. His skin is paler than it should be and for a moment, time stops. She sees
him all too clearly as he stands there, illuminated by the hallway lights behind him.

"Is it that we just don't care about what happens anymore?" he asks her, and for the first time
she realises that he, too, isn't feeling the adrenaline that they used to.
"We care about those girls-" she protests.
"Yeah. But we don't care about what happens to us." His shoulders have slumped over the
years, and he doesn't even break the wry half-grin she has come to know over the years. "No
vests, no backup and we still don't think twice."

Her chest aches. She wants to tell Munch that he's done his time, that he should retire again
once and for all and go enjoy his life. She wants to tell him to stay there, that she can do this on
her own. He's got the righteousness of someone half his age, but when she looks at him like
this, she can see his years showing too clearly. We've all stayed too long.

The thought hits her out of nowhere. It almost makes her take a step back, just so she can
catch her balance. Her mouth is dry, and she can't do anything but look back up at the man
who will always be her friend, but who she will never really consider her partner.

480
"You coming?" Olivia finally asks, her words infused with too much air.
When he looks at her this time, she knows he sees what she is thinking. They've worked
together for too many years for her to hide it now.
"Of course," he answers, without much conviction. He heads down the stairs then, and his
footsteps aren't as fast as they once were. She puts her phone on silent - no use giving away
her location on the off chance it should pick up reception down there. The fight is gone from
all of them, she thinks.

They're still aiming at the world these days, only now it feels like they're armed with empty
guns.
***

"Hey, baby."
Lizzie looks up from the book she is reading, and he knows she had been lost in the words
because she seems surprised to see him standing in the doorway to her room, even though
he's been here for nearly five minutes already. He'd been lost in thought too as he'd watched
her. His other kids are tech junkies, but outside of her iTouch Lizzie prefers the feel of a book
in her hands as she reads or the scratch of a pen on paper when she writes. The light next to
her bed casts a dim glow over where she sits on the bedspread. She glances at the packed
duffel at his feet and then meets his gaze with concern in her eyes.

"What happened?"
Elliot is deliberately pacing his breaths because he doesn't want to give in to the panic that
seems to be gaining momentum within him. He's tried Olivia's cell three times now, and she
isn't answering. He'd tried Cragen then too, but some rookie had answered at the squad with
the ambiguous message that the entire unit was out on a case. Elliot had already been packing
a bag and his personal weapon by the time he'd gotten the voicemail on Fin, Munch and
Cragen's cell phones. He shakes his head just a little. "Don't know. Just got a feeling."

She isn't a child who believes in drama or theatrics. Lizzie is the antithesis to Kathleen, and
maybe it's because of her older sister's troubles that Lizzie is the way that she is. She nods
and sets her book down on the bed next to her.
"You're worried about Liv."
In the midst of the growing unease inside of him, she finds a way to make him lighten up just a
bit.
"You're too smart for your own good."

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"And you're finally getting a clue," she cracks. "You shoulda gone after her weeks ago."

He notices then that Lizzie smiles with her eyes more than anything. She's incredibly
expressive; she just doesn't yell or cry to get her point across. He'll have to watch for that
with her, he thinks. Her eyes change colour with her moods and he needs to pay attention.
He watches her intently now. He needs to know what she really feels about what he's about to
say. He's glad the boys are out tonight so he can have this conversation with her without their
snide comments and knowing grins.

"You be okay if I brought her back here with me?" The words come too fast, so he clears his
throat and shifts his weight, standing now instead of leaning on the doorframe. "I mean, if it
works out that way. Could just be for a vacation or-" he stops, because there is a far greater
possibility that he will be coming back alone.
"Or for good," Lizzie finishes, her eyes the dark, serious colour of a midnight sky.
He doesn't know what to say. He wants to stare at the wall above his daughter's bed, or maybe
at the floor. Instead he looks at her head on, and he waits for someone to tell him that he can't
have it all.
"How long will you be gone?" Lizzie asks instead.
He thinks of all of the trouble that the kids could get into while he is gone. Too much beer,
inviting the wrong friends over, not locking the house at night. He thinks about how the
ocean wind occasionally knocks the power out, and how Lizzie falls asleep with her lamp on
every night and how he is the one who turns it off.
"Coupla days. I won't take longer than that. You be okay alone here?"
When Lizzie grins back at him, she is the one parenting him.
"We're almost eighteen, Dad. I think we can handle it. Question is, can you?"

Elliot nods, but he can't muster a smile. He watches as Lizzie swings her legs off her bed and
stands, walking directly towards him. He can't tell her about the fear inside of him tonight, or
about how he is afraid of where Olivia is now. He's even more afraid that Olivia will never
leave Manhattan for this. For him. He is also afraid that the city will unnerve him if she stays,
and that being there might dredge up the last fragments of need inside him to be her partner
for just a little while longer.

He can feel the ominous, heavy air swirling around him already. He's going back to a place
he'd left quickly, and without goodbyes. He knows he'd left everything unfinished, but he
just isn't sure he wants to face any of it right now. It'd be easier to just keep looking ahead,
and he isn't sure what it will do to him to walk away again from the life he'd left behind.

482
What it will take to walk away from her.If that's what it comes down to.Again.Lizzie is gaining
height on him every day. She lifts her chin and goes toe-to-toe with him.

"Why now?" Elliot flinches. "What?"

"Why are you going back tonight? It's after ten. Why can't it wait until morning?"
He rubs his face with his palm and exhales. He's leaving his kids again because of a case. He
knows it's not his case per se, but it's still the reason he's leaving. The job. It's always the
job.
"Liv's on a case," he murmurs, gritting his jaw and wondering just what in hell is going on in
NY. He can't keep standing here. He has to get on the road and figure out how to get to
Olivia. He doesn't even know for sure that she needs him. Maybe he just needs her and he's
making all of this up in his head as an excuse to be with her.
"Are you working it with her?"

It's Lizzie's tone that makes him jerk his gaze to meet hers. Her voice had been smaller than
usual, tinged with the slightest bit of fear. She is staring at him now, and her eyes are just a
little too wide. He sees it then, the anxiety in her builds visibly, and all of a sudden his all too
confident daughter seems unsure.
"Elizabeth-"
"Dad, you can't," her words come in a rush, and he can see hint of tears threatening. "It's
not fair. You said you'd be here. I'm moving here and we like it here. Don't you get it?
Everything is different now, you're different and you can't just go back-" She's pleading. For
his sake or for hers, he doesn't know. It doesn't matter. It's the same thing.
He's got her in his arms before she can finish. He can feel her heartbeat against his ribcage
and he can't remember the last time he really hugged her like this. His daughter's hair smells
like the ocean and he presses his lips against the top of her head. His own heart is racing, and
he can feel Lizzie's arms wrap around his waist. His kid, he thinks. He'd been so busy out
protecting the lives of other kids that he wonders just how much he failed to protect his own.

"I'm not going back to the unit, baby. Just haveta check on Liv, okay?" he manages.
Lizzie nods against his navy t-shirt. Her breaths even out and he stands still, hanging on. He
thinks about her eighth birthday, and how she'd instead bought him a new shirt as a present
and brought it to the precinct with a toothbrush because he'd been working for several days
straight. He thinks about how she'd spent her babysitting money to buy him some green
throw pillows and a blanket for his apartment years ago because she'd been appalled that
everything he'd furnished the place with had been dull shades of grey. He thinks about the

483
day they'd brought home Eli, and how that first night Lizzie had volunteered to wake up with
her little brother because Kathy had still been sore from the accident.

"Make sure she's okay," Lizzie finally exhales as she straightens.

He nods, and reaches for the duffel bag. The responsibility weighs on him. Somehow, he's
got to make sure everyone ends up okay.

Everyone.
***

The stifling, humid heat causes her shirt to cling to her skin and her hair to stick to the back of
her neck. It smells like rotting flesh and stagnant water in the tunnel and bile hovers in her
throat. Olivia's palms are scraped from the rough, rusted metal that she has been pulling
herself across as she stays on her stomach, navigating the narrow channel solely by the grip of
her fingernails and the push of her toes. Every time she moves she sets her gun ahead of her
quietly and then pulls her body towards it.

It's been a painstaking process, and she wonders if they have backup upstairs by now. Not
that backup will find them right away. If they follow procedure, the team that will assemble
will demand that blueprints be sourced and that perimeters be set up. They're on their own
for the time being. Another two feet gained and Olivia's t-shirt shifts beneath her, until the
metal scrapes her stomach, too. Munch is directly ahead of her and she can see the grate at the
other end now. The tunnel they are in seems to open about two feet off the ground in a small,
dimly lit room ahead, and she knows already by the stench emanating from the other end that
what they'll find won't be good. She just wonders if they'll find their guy in there, too.

A bead of perspiration slides down her temple and across her cheek. She can hear Munch's
heavy breaths, and for the tenth time she regrets that he is ahead of her. They'd flipped for it,
and he'd won. The loss is killing her because she can only move as fast as he can, which isn't
what it used to be. Then again, she isn't who she used to be either. She tries to ignore the
dread that nearly paralyses her. It isn't fear, it's darker than that. It's this growing feeling that
she's making a monumental mistake, that she is approaching the point of no return.

She closes her eyes as Munch stops again, listening for sound. They are waiting for footsteps,
for the telltale sign of heavy breathing, for even an unexpected shift in the thick air on the
other end. If their guy realises where they are, they'll be sitting ducks. A few shots into the
tunnel from head on and they'll both be dead before they can get a shot off. Olivia can't shake
484
the need she has for Elliot to be the one in here with her. His presence would calm the erratic
beat of her heart; he would give her back the invincibility. She lets her eyes drift shut for one
second, and she pretends he is the one just inches away from her. He'd move gracefully,
because he always does. He'd navigate this space easily - maybe because of his military
training - and he'd lift his head to look back over his shoulder every now and then just to catch
her eyes, even in the shadows.

The smell is getting stronger, more repulsive. Sweat drips off her nose and onto the dusty,
dirty metal beneath her. It's the faint yet unmistakable sound of a woman's weak moan that
jars her.Ahead of her, Munch's body goes rigid. They both stay still, waiting for the addition
of another voice. When nothing comes after twenty-five seconds, Munch moves again, this
time a little more swiftly. It's less than ten feet to the end, and she tries to find the safe space
in her head. It's the place she's gone to for years when her surroundings have become
overwhelming. She just needs to focus on the grate, on the sound of the girl's moan, on
succeeding instead of failing.

But by the smell in the air, Olivia already knows the truth. There are bodies in this place.
Nearby. Young lives that this bastard has ended violently. They've failed no matter what.
Her eyes sting and her lips feel like they've cracked. She's thirsty and it doesn't matter. It
can't matter. In here, in the death and the decay, she doesn't matter. She shifts forward. Two
feet. Then four. The stench is overpowering.Olivia tries to picture the beach and the shadows
of the seagulls against the blazing sun. He is grinning at her and he's got an icy cold beer
dangling from his fingertips. It's something that happened in another lifetime, and it's that
thought alone that makes her chest constrict as if she'd just taken a kick to the chest. She
doesn't feel strong right now. Instead she feels like she's made a horrible mistake. She should
have picked up his call.

She can't shake the foreboding that slithers up her spine, and she morbidly wonders if that
had been it. Her last opportunity to talk to Elliot. To tell him she is sorry, to tell him that he
has given her more than she could have ever expected. Protection, support, understanding.
His love. He loves me. In the tunnel, she stops for just one moment. Her head bows forward.
There are victims nearby, just a few feet ahead, and she's thinking about her life instead.
Maybe it's fitting - that life cut too short should remind her to live her days differently.
In front of her, Munch reaches the grate. Olivia's burning eyes lift and she watches as he looks
into the room with as much discretion as possible, searching for their guy. She sees the fall of
his shoulders and the way his breathing slows.

485
"No sign of him," he whispers. "We're in the clear."
There's more. She knows there is. By the tone of his voice, she knows he will take a moment
to compose himself before he tells her. They don't let their voices waver anymore. They have
had years of practice in shutting down. Compartmentalising. Disassociating.
The moment comes and goes.
"Five of 'em are laid out on the floor." Munch pauses again. "No sign of life there. Jillian's
cuffed to a mattress in the northwest corner."
Olivia's throat closes. Her teeth grind together and she presses her lips closed. She won't
make a sound. She won't.

It isn't the faces of their vics that comes to mind in the oppressive heat and shadows of the
tunnel. It's the faces of the mothers, the fathers, the sisters of these girls. It's the look of fear
and pleading on the face of Anna Benitez's fiance. It's the grief in the eyes of Cassie
Drummond's father, dying from cancer himself. It's the begging - the wailing and begging -
that Mrs. Sutherland had started right there in the middle of the squad room when her knees
had given out from beneath her. Life after life after life decimated. It's been a parade of
destruction for too long.

"I'm going in," Munch mutters, pushing on the grate.

The creaking of the metal causes her to shudder. It's the last seconds before the revolting
images are burned into her brain, and she thinks back to her rookie year. She'd borne the
weight of her mother's life upon her then, but that had been all. She'd thought that the job
would give her vindication, that it would absolve her of the guilt. Instead it's piled the horror
on top of her again and again.

She now knows what it's like to sit on the floor of her bathroom in the middle of the night with
her nail file and scrape blood out from beneath her fingernails. She knows what it's like to
watch children fade away, to see the light go out in their once unguarded eyes. She knows
what it's like to fail another human being in the worst way possible. She'd felt guilt for
existing before she'd become a cop, but it's being a cop that has - in the blackest moments -
made her think that dying would just be easier. Ahead of her, Munch is sliding out of the
tunnel, bracing himself as he lowers himself to the floor. Olivia pushes herself forward on
shaking arms, exhaustion making her bones feel brittle. The pounding of her head causes the
base of her neck to tense, and her skin begins to numb in preparation for what she will see as
soon as she enters the room.

486
I look at people sometimes and I wonder if they feel like I do. If they feel like the blackness is
just hovering at the edges and only if they run, really run, can they escape it.
Words she'd read in a journal entry weeks ago. A journal that she'd read in another world a
lifetime ago. The beach, Elliot, the history and newness of it all - it had felt impossible and too
fragile to hang onto, but the truth is that maybe it had been the most solid reality of all.
Her gun rests on the bottom of the tunnel a foot in front of her. Another - her personal
weapon - is strapped to the back of her ankle. She pushes forward, because there is nowhere
else to go. She can see Munch straightening beyond the open hatch and she focuses on him.
Her hand closes around her gun and she's inches from the opening. She just has to get
through this case. Wherever this guy is, she has to find him, and then she'll call Elliot. She'll
call him and maybe she'll take a break for awhile. Maybe she'll take leave and -

She hears the shots reverberate like crashes inside the room. Two of them, one right after the
other. Time stops. His body falls then, right past her narrow line of vision and onto the floor
below. She feels herself choking, bile rising in the back of her throat as she almost heaves.
Olivia's fingers grip her gun and she forces herself to breathe, to just breathe.
Her eyes water, her airways spasm. Oh God. Oh God.

He's not dead, she tells herself. Munch will pull through. Elliot's been shot and he's made it.
She knows the truth though. Two shots at close range, and even someone with the strength
and resilience of Elliot would be lucky to survive. Get Munch out of here. You've got to get
help. Get help now, Olivia! On autopilot, she reaches back to her hip, her fingers closing
around her radio. Her vision swims and she blinks, trying to stay focused. She can't panic.
Panic will get all of them killed. Three lives hang in the balance. He's still alive. He has to be.
"C'mon Detective Benson, come on out," comes the sickly call.

"If I'd known you'd be here this soon, I would have made the place a little more presentable.
Guess it wouldn't have mattered though, seeing how your partner just went and messed it all
up by bleeding all over the place."
She looks down at the rusted metal that she rests on. This can't be where - not now. Jesus, not
now. She unclips the radio and prays her fingers will stop shaking. It has to be working down
here. Her cell doesn't have signal, but her radio...
"Throw out your radio and your gun, Detective," he orders gleefully. "Now."

She's trapped. Laying flat on her stomach in this deathtrap, she doesn't have a single chance
at defending herself. He wouldn't have to do more than reach around and shoot errantly into
the tunnel for him to hit her. Think, Olivia. Just calm down and think.If he's not dead already,

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he's bleeding out. You're the one who wouldn't wait for backup. You brought him down
here. More blood on your hands.Think!

"Oh come on," he taunts, sounding bored. "You're smarter than this. That's why I like you.
The clues, you know they were for you, right? Pretty clever don't you think? Saw you at a
scene a couple of months ago and man," his laughter is hollow. "I've been enjoying getting to
know you. It's been a lot of work."
Olivia no longer smells the scent of death in the air, or feels the muggy heat on her skin. It's
not the first time she's come across a bastard like this. They've singled her out before. It's
not unheard of that a predator would find fascination with a female cop. It's always about the
balance of power. But she doesn't feel the anger this time. She doesn't feel fierce or strong.
She feels the inevitability encroaching upon her. She's been lucky too many times before
now.

She could cry for what she's about to lose. For what she's about to give up. For what tonight
will cost not only John and herself, but what it will cost Elliot. Maybe it was true that together
they were invincible. History was right. United they stand, divided they fall. She is going to
fall. She can tell that the road will come to an end tonight. I'm so sorry, Elliot. So, so sorry.
Forgive me.

"The gun and radio," he insists, his voice taking a harder edge. "Now." Her eyes focus on
the screen of her radio. No signal.
She tosses it out and hears it clatter to the floor. She shifts in the tunnel, numb to everything
but the world she now inhabits. The gun beneath the leg of her jeans remains in her
possession. She flips the safety on her gun and pushes it out gently. It clangs as it drops.
"Now come out. Hands in front of you. And once you land on the floor, stay there face
down." His mother's words come back to her again. One more time they say everything that
she can't.

Please help me.

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489
 Chapter Thirty

T
he red taillights of the cars on the freeway make his blood boil. He needs wide open
lanes right now. The frustration is killing him. How the hell is traffic clogging the road
at ten thirty at night? He presses the accelerator on the truck and veers right without
warning, pushing the engine as he darts through a narrow opening between cars. Screw this.
He's technically still a cop. If he gets pulled over, he'll ask for a damned escort into the city.

Why he's doing this, he doesn't know. He still doesn't know a damned thing, and it's killing
him. He could be racing like the devil for absolutely no reason at all. Although if Olivia is safe
and sound in this moment and is just ignoring his calls, he's going to throttle her himself.
He feels powerless in this moment, and it's making him frantic. He'd spent years trying to
maintain the boundaries between the two of them, and now, without them, the responsibility
he feels for her runs unchecked. He knows he has to let Olivia stay with the unit until she is
ready to leave, but it doesn't mean he has to like it. It's ironic that a decade later, he finally
understands what he had put Kathy through. The waiting, the worrying, the thousand
scenarios that run through his mind when Olivia doesn't pick up her phone. He'd assumed
that Kathy had always been better off not knowing, but he realises now that in the absence of
information, the imagination runs wild.

He clicks redial with his thumb and his phone illuminates as it dials her. In seconds, his car
fills with the sound of her voicemail coming through the speaker. Hi, this is Detective Olivia
Benson of Manhattan. Fuck. He slams his fist against the steering wheel and takes a deep
breath. The fear is worse now than it would be if he was with her, no matter how dangerous
the situation. At least if he was there, he'd have a say in how things played out. If there is even
anything going on right now at all. No one is answering their phones, so he's got no idea what

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he's up against. It's just instinct at this point that's telling him she's in trouble. Sheer
instinct.

He'll try Cragen one more time and then he's calling dispatch or goddamned One PP. At this
point he doesn't care what sort of hell he raises. His gut is churning with anxiety. He knows.
That's just it. That's all of it, and the extent of his explanation for his behaviour. Twelve years
of being her partner, and he's got ties to Olivia that defy logic or reason. Eighty. Eighty-five.
He manoeuvres the truck in between station wagon sand minivans and sports cars, and all he
sees is her. If she's in trouble, and he's the one who left her.He can't shake the crawling on
his skin that is getting worse by the minute.

"Elliot."
He exhales when he hears his former Captain's voice come through.
"Jesus, why the hell isn't anyone answering their phones?"
Cragen is silent for a moment and Elliot can hear the telltale sounds in the background.
They're setting up a command post. He can tell by the number of voices and radios going off
around Cragen that something big is about to go down.
"We're in the middle of a case," he responds tersely.
"I got that. Where's Liv? Put her on the phone."
"You might not work for this department anymore, Stabler, but that doesn't mean I now work
for you."

There is an open straightaway in the slow lane straight ahead. He sends the truck across three
lanes and pushes the speedometer up another five miles an hour. He's got to calm down.
He'd never really said his goodbyes, and maybe that means he isn't on good terms with
anyone back at the squad. He'd never really considered what they'd think of him when he left.
He'd worried about what Olivia would do, how she would react, but he hadn't been able to
comprehend anything past her. He still can’t.

"Just tell me she's okay," Elliot rasps apologetically. He takes another breath and tries
another tactic. "Please."
It's in that moment that he realises it's not that Cragen is being short with him. It's not about
him at all. It's that the man doesn't know how to tell him the truth. He feels like someone just
shoved their fist straight into his gut. Nausea swirls in his stomach and he's grateful for the
weapon he's got on the seat next to him. If she needs him, he's in. Tonight it's not about
boundaries or going back - it's just about her. It's about Olivia's safety and he doesn't care
what it costs him. God, he hopes that she knows that. If it means she's safe, he'll give up

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everything. He blocks out the life he'd left forty miles behind him. Right now this is all that
matters. He can't shake the feeling that he abandoned her. That this - whatever it is - it's his
fault.

"You can't just show up here," Cragen starts, defeat in his tone. "Don't show up and start
throwing your weight around, alright? It's not going to help anything."
Elliot takes a breath, then another. The exits fly by now. He's making his way back over to the
left lane and then heaven help anyone who drives too slowly in front of him. He's still an hour
out. A damned hour. What had he been thinking living so far away? Did he think he'd be able
to protect her like this? His fear overrides everything.
"Tell me," he hisses.
Cragen says something to another officer while muffling his phone before he comes back
online.
”We're at Columbia. Munch and Liv tracked our guy to the university. There's a maze of
tunnels beneath the campus, and they went in after him."

He has to keep his eyes open. The pain, the rage, it can't force his eyes closed. He asks the
question even though he already knows the answer.
"Backup?"
There is a pause on the other end, and then a ragged sigh.
"No."
Elliot's fists close brutally around the wheel and he doesn't know what to say. There is
nothing to say.
"The rest?" he murmurs.
There is more. He knows there is more.
"They're in a remote corner of the sub-basement. Munch called it in, but they didn't wait.
We're waiting for blueprints now."

He's so furious right now that he is having trouble keeping his vision locked on the road. He
doesn't who his anger is directed at. Olivia for going in, Munch for letting her - because he
knows that is exactly how it went down. She's been too reckless over the last few years; she's
been giving away parts of herself that she'd never have sacrificed in the beginning. She's been
offering herself up to every case as if she alone can make amends for everything that ever went
wrong. He's pissed that Cragen is sitting there and waiting for blueprints and plans and
protocol, and most of all he's livid with the sick fuck who started all of this. This life - Christ,
he'd left this behind for a reason. There is no in between in this world. It's horrible or it's

492
manageable, but it's never, ever good. It's never okay. There is always a day ahead that will be
worse than the one that has just passed.

Something doesn't sit right with what Cragen his telling him, and he's got to get his head
screwed on straight if he's going to figure out the missing piece. There is one. There's
something -
"What the hell's caused the command centre?" Elliot growls into the phone. "Why not just
go in after her?"
Her. Munch is in there with him and he can't even acknowledge that much. How had he
maintained being Olivia's partner all this time with this absolute lack of perspective? It's
amazing that he's ever let her do her job at all. He wants her locked up at the beach house. He
wants her safe and barefoot in the sand, with the water swirling around her ankles. He wants
her listening to music and grinning at him. He wants her beneath him in his bed, her legs
curling up and over his hips as he drives into her body. It's the life they deserve. They've
earned it. They've earned it.

"Shots fired," Cragen says quietly.

Elliot hangs up.
He's on the ass of the car ahead of him, easily pushing a hundred miles an hour.
***

He's standing at the top of the stairs, watching her. It's been a long, hard climb and her legs
are heavy from the ascent, but she's almost there. Near him. He waits there expressionless,
expecting her to take the last few steps, but she's slowing down despite her determination to
reach him. She needs him. She needs him. It's imperative that she just keep moving. He is
perfectly still. She has to do this on her own. He knows it and she knows it, and getting to him
will be entirely up to her. Her knees won't move, they won't bend, and she's afraid of slipping
down the metal stairs behind her. The staircase winds all the way down to the concrete floor,
hundreds of steps below. It's ironic that a lighthouse should be this dark, but she's climbing in
the shadows, without a railing to hold onto. The only light emanates from the room behind
him. At the very top. She doesn't think she's going to make it. She stops then, sweat slipping
down her back, and her next attempt at taking a step fails when her ankles buckle. The metal
stair bites harshly first into her shin, then her thigh as she starts to fall. He doesn't make an
attempt to help her, but she doesn't blame him. She gets it now, the reason he won't
acknowledge her. Letting him go up without her was her choice, not his. He'd told her to come
with him. He had. But she'd taken too much time to decide.

493
He didn't leave her behind; she just hadn't kept up with him. He is watching her fail. Fall. It's
the same thing. She is being dragged backwards now. The tug on her leg makes her face hit the
edge of the stair and pain explodes behind her eyes. She tries to dig her fingernails into the
grates but she's got no leverage, no voice to even yell to him. She tries to call out his name. Her
voice is a scrape of nails on a chalkboard. It's a high, whinny scream that does nothing more
than make her shudder. She doesn't think he hears her in any case. She's too far away now.

She's falling down the stairs, and every second brings fresh pain as her body slams against the
unforgiving metal. She starts to tumble, and nausea violently twists inside of her. She's burning
behind her ear, and there is a ringing sound in her head that is relentless. She's hit her head so
hard that even her throat hurts, and she is fighting to open her eyes, to just stay awake.
She'll die if she doesn't stay awake. And then she's on the concrete, and she thinks she must
have fallen all the way to the bottom. The ground is cold, nearly wet and her cheek rests
against it. She's so tired, so damned tired, and she just wants to sleep. She's dead if she doesn't
stay alert.Her eyes open, and the pain explodes within her.

The first thing she notices is the lifeless face next to her. She sees the tangled blonde hair, the
dark black patches of dried blood that matte the strands. She sees the colourless lips, the cold,
dry skin. The open blue eyes that stare into her, seeing nothing. It's as if the life had just
seeped out of her, slowly and inevitably. It's like she'd been resigned to it. Tracy Garrison.
The dead girl lays not two feet from her, almost in the same position she is now in. Face down,
her cheek on the concrete floor. Eyes vacant. Olivia remembers.

She'd been extricating herself from the tunnel when she'd noticed their victims - all dead
except for Jillian - and all sprawled out face down in a circle like the spokes in a wheel. Like
the spindles of a sundial. They are all half-clothed as if they are nothing more than used up,
discarded dolls. He'd hit her hard then, before she'd even had a chance to take a look at him.
Maybe he'd used a crowbar or a bat, she doesn't know. She just remembers the excruciating
pain and then nothing. Nothing.

For one moment, she closes her eyes. She desperately wants to be anywhere but here, she
wants anything but this. She wants to be stronger than she feels; she wants the defeat inside of
her to vanish. She's never given in before, but for the first time the irrational urge crosses her
mind. She wants to just crawl inside of herself and disappear before this monster can have any
part of her.

494
The isolation is oppressive. There is no one else in this virtual mausoleum who can help her at
all. She's breathing still, and her lungs don't wheeze, so at least that means she hasn't been
shot. Not yet. Oh God. Munch. She tries to lift her head, but the room swims and she groans
involuntarily. She lets her head fall back to the floor, her forehead resting on the ground as
she tries to catch her elusive breath.

"Wakey, wakey," the voice taunts. "Let's play."

She doesn't move. She can't. She wants to cry. She's so tired and she doesn't know if she has
it in her this time. One more of these fucks. One more depraved head that she has to crawl
into just to survive. Then again, her own survival can't be her greatest priority. By what they'd
heard earlier, Jillian is still alive on that mattress, even if she's unconscious. She won't let
herself believe that Munch is dead. She won't. So that makes three of them who she is
responsible for. Three lives that rest solely upon her right now. Elliot.

He'll unequivocally blame himself if anything happens to her. She knows this, too. If she dies,
he will bury himself in the guilt of it. It'll destroy everything he's trying to build. Four lives.
Maybe this violence and destruction is just the new world order. For a moment she thinks that
maybe she's been naïve to think that anything good remained ahead for any of them. But then
the images come back to her. She's playing Frisbee on the beach with him, and she is afraid of
being caught by the neighbours as she sneaks onto their patio. He's running next to her on
the packed sand, and the sun is seeping into the forgotten places inside of her. She's shooting
tequila with him and the sounds of an acoustic guitar ride the wind all around her.

The memories feel like ghosts. Like none of it had never happened at all. It is so far removed
from where she lays now that she can't reconcile those experiences with the hell that she is
trapped inside of right now. But maybe it's enough to know that the life he'd shown her truly
exists. The world still has places that remain untouched.
"C'mon Detective. You're tougher than this. It's a little bump on your head, that's all. Time
to wake up. I've got lots of things to show you."
She has to breathe, to focus. If they've got any chance at survival at all, she has to make it
happen on her own. She tries to take stock of what she's still got on her side. She
miraculously still has her personal gun strapped to her leg. She doesn't know how he let that
slide, but she's not going to question the few miracles she's been given. Her hands aren't
tied, her legs aren't bound. She's been out cold, but her clothes are on and nothing's been
broken, so she just waits. Breathing in the putrid air. Praying.

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This guy wants to play with her. To mess with her. It's not the first time. Every one of these
fucks thinks they are different - they think they're the smartest, the fastest, the most original.
It's sickening how unoriginal they always are. Monsters are monsters, no matter what their
motivations are. Olivia pushes against the concrete, trying to lift her head and ignoring the
splintering ache that burns along the back of her neck and her upper shoulders. Her forehead
throbs. She can't escape the horrible smell of the decomposing bodies around her, and she
won't let herself process that he'd already laid her out amongst them, as if she is fated to
become one of them tonight.

She can't end up like they did. She's a cop, and she has to do what she can to get the others
out. The crushing, suffocating responsibility is a vice around her, but she can't give in. It's
not up to her. It's not about her. In this moment, she matters the least. She's always made
herself the last priority. It was Elliot who fought her on that. It was Elliot who had tried to
show her differently. You're beautiful.

She remembers when he'd said the words. She remembers walking up to his house in the rain,
the night storm bearing down on them. She remembers being soaked straight through and yet
the laughter had bubbled up inside of her as she'd revelled in the beauty of it all. His mouth
had pressed against her temple, and she'd felt him say the words against her skin. She could
choke on the pain inside of her. It's an agony that has nothing to do with how hard this
bastard hit her. It's grief for what she will likely lose.

"C'mon, Detective-"
"Fuck you," she spits out, finally lifting her head to locate him.
The room tilts as she tries to get her bearings. Munch is still on the ground, and he's not
moving at all. He'd been shot twice. Twice. At close range. She fights the growing urge to
vomit. The man who had shot him sits ten feet away from her, on the edge of the bare mattress
where Jillian lays seemingly unconscious. He's in his late thirties or early forties, but the years
haven't been kind to him. His dark hair is greasy and tucked behind his ears, and his eyes are
a flat black. He's just an average guy - average height, average weight, average build. There's
nothing notable about him at all. He's wearing a flannel shirt that hasn't been washed in days
- maybe weeks - and stained, torn jeans.

So this is the devil today.She's met versions of him so many times before. She used to think
she'd been lucky to walk away time after time, but she knows now that she hasn't come
through unscathed. He's taken bits of her and she's let him. She's offered herself up before,

496
and she'll offer herself up now. She stares at him. At this thing that will take from her once
again.

He's smiling at her, and he's holding her gun, aiming it

right at Jillian's head.
"Just what I expected," he laughs derisively, shaking
his head a little.
"You're such a handful, Detective." He's rocking
slightly, and it makes Olivia believe that he's amped up
a little - speed, she thinks. It'll make him less
predictable, but it'll also make him more likely to screw
up because it will mess with his attention to detail. He's
already screwed up by leaving her with her gun.

Olivia gets herself as far upright as she can without retching from the brutal ache in her neck.
She's finally kneeling and she is desperate to check on Munch. He's on the floor back near
the entrance to the tunnel, and she can see the blood that has formed a pool next to his arm.
He's curled onto his side and she can't see his face, so she thankfully doesn't know if his eyes
are already wide and unblinking. Lifeless. She wonders how long he's been lying there.
She has no idea how long she'd been out.

If it had been ten minutes, fifteen - maybe longer - then she's wasted crucial time. Time that
John simply doesn't have. Her eyes prick with tears, so she drags in as much air as possible to
control her reaction. She can't cry. She can't give this fucker the satisfaction of her weakness
or emotion. She has to assume that John isn't dead, that she still has a chance. That he does.
For one childish, weak moment, she wants to scream for Elliot. Tonight reminds her of the
basement in Sealview; it feels like a repeat of the scathing nightmare she'd lived a lifetime
ago. Trapped and hunted by Harris, she'd wanted Elliot more than anything or anyone. More
than she'd even wanted her gun, she'd wanted him. In the aftermath, she had never admitted
her need to Elliot. He'd have absorbed her confession and used it to qualify his own guilt. But
she will never forget huddling in the darkest corner of that prison, behind the crates, and
closing her eyes. She'd been screaming inside for him to just come and flip the odds.
To just save her. She hadn't even needed her partner. She'd needed the man. Elliot.
There is no one to save her tonight. This time, she will have to be enough.

When she makes a move to stand, he's all movement, too.

"Did I tell you to get off of your knees?" he barks.

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She doesn't want to die, but sometimes the fight to live seems so futile. She's been at the
edge of death way too many times before and the resignation she feels without Elliot at her
side scares her. For a split second she contemplates what she'd do if she didn't have to save
Jillian or get John out. It terrifies her that she probably wouldn't play the game. Not tonight.
Not this time. She'd just try and draw her weapon and pray that she'd take him out too when
she went down. She stills, and she finally raises her eyes to meet his.

"So that's what this is?" she whispers. "A game of power? You think killing defenceless
women makes you powerful?"
His lips flatten and he sneers at her.
"Of course it does. I'm not any different than you are, Detective. We both play at being God,
don't we? Only I take God's place when I kill them, and you take his place when you try and
save them." He drops to his haunches in front of her, the gun pointed at her chest just out of
reach. "But aren't you curious about what happens when God turns on himself?"
The mind games. It's always about the mind games. She has to play; she just doesn't know
where to start. There's got to be a place inside of her that can rise up to take this one on
tonight. John is alive, she tells herself again. He has to be. At the very least, she owes him the
last of whatever fight she's got left.

"The difference between you and God is that God would get away with this," Olivia rasps,
trying to find her voice. "You won't. You've got a police officer bleeding out and-"
His effusive grin stops her.
"He's dead, love." He shrugs then and stands, wide-eyed. His pupils are dilated and there is a
childlike glee emanating from his animated expression. "Bang bang and boom! He just falls.
Doesn't look like much of a cop to me. NYPD must be desperate if they're letting old men
chase down the bad guys these days."

She ignores him. They'd always been a team. Her and Elliot. Fin and Munch. Cragen. She
pushes back the thought that if John dies, she wants to go with him. She doesn't want to walk
out of here as the one who cost their unit everything. As the one who had finally failed them
after all. The bodies of the girls she's already failed to save fill her vision now, despite her best
attempts to block out the savage scene. She wonders if they died here; she wonders if this dim,
repulsive room is the last thing they'd seen of the world. The way he's got them displayed and
arranged makes her nauseous and her skin crawl, but she can't let her reaction get the best of
her.

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She can feel the precious seconds ticking past, and she knows that every one wasted means
Munch has that much less of a chance - if he's even got one at all. Her temples are being
hammered by the relentless throbbing, and she fights the bile that rises in her throat.

"What do you want from me?"

I'm talking about a house, about kids, about maybe getting married. Christ, what the hell did
you think this was? You think after a dozen years, I'd be playing at some game here with you?
Elliot's words come back to her without warning. It's what he had wanted from her, and what
she had walked away from. For this. Olivia is acutely aware of the putrid stench and the
sweltering heat. It's the contents of the room that now grab her attention. The mattress. The
fold-up chair. The bodies. There has to be another way in and out of this room if he's
managed to get all of this in here. She wants to look around the room for the hidden entrance,
but she doesn't want him to know she's aware of anything but him.

He crouches in front of her again, the gun still pointed straight at her chest. He cocks his
head, and the seconds keep adding up.
"Look at me, Detective," he hisses now, practically spitting on her. "I want to know if you
liked it. The chase? Do you even appreciate how much work I did just to get you here?"
Just like that, the heat is gone. Her chest caves for a single moment as she shivers. She's not
resilient anymore. Not like she used to be. She's worn down; she can't just block him out.
She's absorbing too much of his game, and she's going to lose if she doesn't keep her head
clear.

She knows she will never, ever shake his words. He is blaming her for all of the death around
her right now. He's done this in some way because of her, and he wants her to know that her
life has caused the loss of so many others. Tonight, she feels even more defeated. She isn't
invincible. She's not unbreakable. Her mouth is dry so she licks her lips, lifting her head to
look at him again.

"You did this for me?" She tries to sound interested, to keep the disgust out of her tone, but
she's too tired to do anything more than whisper. It's a half-hearted attempt at creating a
bond with him at best, but it's all she has anymore.
His eyes narrow as he stares into her. He is so empty, so devoid of anything that she almost
gasps as she meets his gaze. The corner of his lips lift.
"Did you like the little touch I added by bringing you here? Figured you'd get the quote.
Probably spent a lot of time here as a kid, didn't you?"

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Jesus. Her lips press together and her eyes burn from the pressure. Olivia's knees are aching
against the concrete, but it's the way that she is shaking that scares her most. Her mother.
Somehow, he knows about her mother.

The bastard reads her horror and just starts laughing.

***
"Get her the fuck out!"

He is yelling like an asshole into his phone, but he's got no way to stop himself or to slow
himself down. His lungs are on fire, and if he thought that a chopper could get him to her any
faster, he'd have demanded one pick him up by now. As it stands, he's less than thirty minutes
out, but it feels like a lifetime. It could be a lifetime. If she dies, then he is wasting absolutely
everything he's got. He's driving way too fast, especially when he isn't even seeing the road.
On the other end of the line, Fin says nothing for a long moment. Instead he just breathes
hard, and voices issuing orders serve as the background noise. Elliot knows they've got a
SWAT team assembling, and they've got a good idea of where she and Munch are in those
catacombs, but they're not in yet. They're not helping her yet, and that's all the fuck that
Elliot cares about.

"It's a tiny room. They're trying to figure out the best way in," Fin finally manages, his own
voice too even, too measured. "Can't give the guy any advance. We got no idea if any of the
vics are down there."
Fin usually loses his shit. That's what scares Elliot most. Fin usually loses his fucking shit. It's
a sign of how bad it is that he is this quiet. Elliot doesn't care as much about the vics right
now, and he won't make any apologies for his biased concern. He's not SVU anymore. He's
not, and he can make this about her if he wants to. He's not her partner anymore; he's just the
one who loves her. That gives him every right in the goddamned world to focus on her safety,
her needs, her hell.

He knew, he thinks. This is why he's been crawling out of his skin tonight. He'd ignored his
instincts for too long, because had he acted on them sooner he would already be there. Maybe
he'd be in the room with her. Maybe he'd be waiting on the outside, ready to take the perfect
shot. Hell, he'd be her partner again, just for tonight. Christ, he'd go back forever if it meant
she'd be safe. He'd been stupid to trust anyone else with the one person whom he needed
more than anything else. He'd give up the beach, the house, the respite if he could just go
back in time so that he'd be in there with Olivia. The problem is that he'd tried to have

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everything. He'd just wanted everything. His greed is going to get her killed. And then none
of it will mean anything.

"Where's Warrick?" Elliot growls. It's a ridiculous question, and he doesn't know why it
matters. Maybe he just needs to know the guy is a decent cop, that he'd lay his life out for her
if need be. Elliot needs to know that he'd left Olivia in good hands with her new partner, at
least.
"He's here. We're suiting up to go in with SWAT."
If Elliot had still been her partner, he'd never have waited. SWAT could have kissed his ass.
He'd have broken a thousand kinds of protocol and he would have broken all of the rules.Like
hell he would have waited to go in after her. They're too close. They always had been. Right
from the start.

"How many shots were reported fired?" Elliot grates, his throat already sore. Fin's answer is
succinct. "Two."
He can see the haze in the night sky ahead of him. He's still too far to see the city lights, but
the glow of them illuminates the darkness. It's a surreal effect, and he wonders if God gives a
shit at all anymore. Two shots. It could mean they're both down. Munch and Olivia. It could
mean she is hurt, alone. It could mean she's wondering if anyone is coming for her as she
bleeds out. It could mean that they are both already gone.

He hangs up the phone without another word and the glow gets brighter above Manhattan as
he gets closer. He doesn't know how he had ever walked within it, how he hadn't seen what
he was giving away, every single day. Elliot's heartbeat slows even as his truck picks up speed.
He knows the curve of the roads, the shortcuts through the side streets. He knows the layout
of its maze better than he knows the lines on his own face. His breaths are shallow, and his
fingers grip the wheel without mercy.

He can't even fathom losing her. It's too dark where he'd go if that happened. He'd know, he
tells himself. If she was gone already, he'd feel it. The loss, the ache, the sucking gravity of it
would be on him already. It would have to be. He can't lose his mind now. He just can't. He's
wound too tight. He knows this. He's coiled, angry and the dangerous, black violence is
making its way under his skin again as he thinks about the soon-to-be-dead fucker who is with
her right now. He's going to take the bastard apart inch by inch. He's going to peel the
bastard's skin from his bones. The rage in him has always held too much power.

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Elliot tries to conjure images of her then instead - just so he can breathe - and the first ones
that come to him have nothing to do with her being a cop. Instead it's Olivia in that red dress,
dancing with him as the waves lap at her toes. It's her teasing him, flirting with him as she tries
to get the wine bottle back from him. It's her fingers tracing along his back at the top of Old
Barney, and it's her mouth - open and hungry for him in the midst of a raging ocean. It's
Olivia, curled up in the front seat of this truck next to him, the rain a steady and soothing
drumbeat all around them as they had driven towards the lighthouse. He remembers how he'd
felt so powerful in those moments because she'd been safe, so safe. He'd been able to cocoon
her, to protect her.

But the moments hadn't lasted forever. He thinks about how he'd easily die for her, but he'd
rather live for her. He thinks about Olivia's pride and her wounds and how nothing is fair at
all. He thinks about a dark, windowless cavern beneath an old university building, and as the
city lights come into view, he feels like he is driving straight into the bowels of hell. Hell can't
have her, he thinks. There will be no mercy in this fight.
***

She is still kneeling in the middle of the room. The position doesn't give her any leverage
when it comes to reaching for her weapon. Her mini-glock is tucked up underneath the pant
leg of her jeans, but it will take too long to extricate it. He'd blow her away long before she'd
be able to take him out. She's swaying. She's tried to look at John more than once, but every
single time the nameless bastard catches her. Look at me! he screams, spittle flying
everywhere.

They'd called for backup before they had come down here. She knows that help has to be
somewhere above her by now. Olivia keeps trying to figure out where the secret entrance is to
this tomb, but there are things stacked against the walls, everywhere. Drywall panels. Sheets
of insulation. An old ladder that looks like it hasn't been moved in years. There could be a
door here somewhere behind the junk and she'd never be able to tell. She keeps thinking
about how she should have waited. She'd been the one to make the decision to come in. If
they'd waited, they'd have had blueprints, plans, backup. A chance.

The seconds keep ticking away, and she's no longer sure that John is alive. There's been no
movement, not a sound coming from his direction. Even Jillian has stopped moaning. Olivia
can feel herself locking down on the inside, because she is absolutely positive that the worst is
yet to come. If John and Jillian are dead, then it's best if she just draws her weapon. Even if

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she doesn't kill the guy, the shots he'd use to kill her will bring in the cavalry. He'd never
make it out alive either and the goal has always been to get him off the street.

Her throat locks, and she thinks about dying like this. Executed while kneeling on the floor of
a room filled with death and destruction. Somewhere deep, deep inside of her she can hear the
ocean. The sound doesn't abate - it's the steady sound of the waves and the melodic caw of
the seagulls. She thinks about her first night out at the beach house and about how Elliot had
just left her in the kitchen, surrounded by groceries and a cold beer and a cutting board full of
vegetables. From the first moment out at the beach house, he'd had faith that she'd find her
place. He'd given all of his space to her. He'd given those precious moments to her.

It is a life she could have had. Different choices, different decisions made and she'd be with
him right now. Maybe she'd be showering the sand off of her body, thinking about finishing
his mother's journal before he climbed into bed next to her. Maybe she'd forego the journal
tonight and just lay there, staring at the ceiling and revelling in how easy it was to breathe
when she was tucked between sheets that smelled like him. All her life she's been waiting to
be loved the way that Elliot had loved her, and she'd wasted the chance. She can't feel sorry
for herself. Not now. She is the only thing standing between John, Jillian and death. It's too
late to change things anymore.

"I thought you'd fight," he finally snarls.

He's sitting on the edge of the mattress now, next to Jillian. He's stroking the girl's hair, and
the length of her dirty, cuffed arm. Jillian doesn't move at all and Olivia hopes that she's out
cold, because at least then she won't know that the filth is still touching her. Olivia lifts her
chin, trying to control the waver in her voice. It's not fear now that grips her. It's regret.
Resignation. It's the effects of enduring too much for too long. Maybe she was always heading
for this. Maybe she's just been careening towards this all along. She's used her life as penance
for someone else's sins.
"You're the one holding the gun. Put the gun down, and then we'll fight," she says flatly.

His expression is cold as he looks at her.

"I meant where is that famous Benson swagger? Aren't you going to try and understand
me?" he mocks.
She doesn't want to. God help her, she doesn't want to. But just by the way he is goading her,
she knows she has to rise to the bait. She needs to get John and Jillian out of here. She can't
let the stalemate carry on. Her words are perfunctory, without inflection.
"Tell me why you're doing this."
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His eyes darken with anger.
"That's the best you've got?" He stands up then, and he points the gun at Jillian's unmoving
head. "Do better, or I'm gonna finish her off."

Where her adrenaline usually kicks in, dread has instead taken its place. He's going to kill the
girl, Olivia's not at all uncertain about that. If she doesn't play the game.

Olivia lifts her chin.

"I know why you're doing this," she states with as much confidence as she can muster.
"You're doing this because your mommy left you, or your girlfriend cheated on you, or your
daddy diddled you as a kid." She's still kneeling, waiting for her bullet, but she narrows her
eyes in disgust. "You think there's a justifiable reason to kill five women?"
The light comes back in his expression.
"Seven," he shrugs, smirking. "Don't forget the two back home when I was a kid." When he
was a kid.

She tries not to react to the reveal. He's looking for her shock, her revulsion, her weakness.
But God only knows if he's telling the truth. God only knows if there aren't dozens of women
who've been tortured and killed by him. If he'd started this psychosis as a child, then there is
no telling how many victims he could be responsible for by now. He's sickly amused, almost
smug with how he's managed to draw her out. "You're wrong, you know. My momma didn't
leave me. She was a two-dollar hooker killed by some john when I was four." He shakes his
head, still smiling.
"Good thing, too. God gave her what she deserved. He punished her just like he punished
your momma. That's why we're alike, Detective. You and me. We're both bastard children
born to whores."

Almost twenty years on the job and she still flinches. It's not worth defending who her mother
had or had not been. Not to him. She can't let him find her weakness; she can't let him
resurrect her instinct to bear the burden of her genetics. She'd earned Elliot's respect, his
love, and in turn she'd begun to see herself differently. He'd showed her that she isn't
untouchable, and he'd asked her to absolve herself of the guilt of her mother's rape. If he's
willing to go to battle with her demons, then she owes it to him to keep up the fight. There's
no room for those demons in this room. She can't let them in. She tells herself again and again
that this isn't about her and in turn she tries to block out the taunting, the revulsion that
builds in her chest.

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There is a place inside of her that this monster can't touch. A place where she won't hear him.
She desperately wants to go there. She wants the feeling of cold air on her skin; she wants to
breathe in the scent of the grass. She wants Elliot's warm, solid body against hers. She wants
space to move. Out in the open. Beneath the clear sky and within a cleansing wind. She wants
to go back and make different choices.

"You don't know anything about my mother," she grits, feeling more and more detached by
the moment. She can feel her skin going numb. The ache in the back of her neck fades, her
knees no longer hurt. There are dead bodies everywhere. Everywhere. Maybe even behind
her. John.Her irises burn. She's losing. She's losing in here, and she doesn't even have a
plan. She can't lose. She can't. But her comment has agitated him. He's shaking his head
again, and a sheen of sweat breaks out on his skin.
"I know who you are!" he yells out of nowhere. "You think I don't know? I saw you,
Detective! Seven months ago, outside of that brownstone on Thirtieth. That girl was killed
-that pretty little girl with the braids? I was there! When you walked out and promised that
reporter that you'd get her killer? You remember that? You made promises like you were
God!"

It's his hysteria that makes her whip her chin up. She remembers that day, that case, but
nothing makes sense. She'd done what she'd promised. Pia Zambora's uncle had killed her,
and Olivia had arrested him within a week of the child's death. There hadn't been any loose
ends. None of it makes sense. She watches him, still unwilling to ask him his name. She just
watches and she sinks back into her head, away from the horror around her. She can't listen to
him. She can't. His words can't mean anything to her. He's breathing hard now, and he uses
a dirty sleeve to wipe the sweat from his upper lip.

"You remember that night? I was there! I was there. Watching you. And I thought - Christ!
She's beautiful. She's so beautiful and she needs the power, too. She gets off on it. And I
knew. I knew I wanted you to come after me, just the way you went after that man who killed
that little girl. I wanted to be the one you wanted. So I did my research," he stops and he
laughs hysterically again in the midst of his tirade. "You're such a handful. Always in trouble.
Always getting awards. You're one extreme or another, and I was thinking yes! Yes, she is the
one. She's just like me. Always riding the line and taking risks because it doesn't matter, does
it? You got no one. You're nothing, just garbage. Same as me. You're not like these girls at
all, are you? These spoiled brats with their families and their friends all weeping over them
when they die. Who's gonna cry over you, Detective?"

505
She hears him. Despite her best efforts to withdraw, she's right here in the room, with him.
With the dead, with the dying. There are still bruises inside of her in the places where she had
once fully believed what she is saying.

”No one," she says in a monotone, staring him straight in the eyes. For so long, it is exactly
what she had believed. She'd treated herself as if she was expendable.

This one seems to know where all of her bruises are.She's going to face it all in here. She
knows this now. He wants inside of her head; he wants to own her fears. He can try and
become all of her demons, just so long as she takes him down at the end and someone comes
to help John and Jillian. She knows where his weaknesses are, too. If he doesn't have power,
then he doesn't have relevance or purpose. Without an identity, he'll implode. He'll self
destruct. She knows this because it's what she'd been afraid of for far too long in her own life.
Without the job, she'd been terrified of being nothing at all. As soon as she'd been given a
glimpse of herself as something else - someone else - the badge had instead become the
burden.

Tonight, it will likely be the thing that takes her down, too. At least she knows that this one is
wrong. They are not alike. Not anymore. She thinks she could have been more without her
badge, not less. Given the chance, she could have been more. There has to be one last fight
inside of her.

"No one is going to cry over me because I'm not the one who's gonna die here," she says
quietly. "You are."
He stills, his lip twitching involuntarily in a sneer.
"Don't forget that I'm the one with the gun," he breathes, that empty black coming back to
inhabit his eyes. "Don't you want to know my name? You haven't even asked, Detective. You
don't want to know the name of the man who's finally going to teach you a lesson?"
There are hundreds of rapists and killers all trapped within him. He is all of them to her. He is
every last one of them. He is the same undeserving parasite that she has given herself to, over
and over again. No more.There is nothing more to give.

"I don't give a shit who you are," she whispers back to him.
The rage builds within him, and his entire face is awash in spasms. Sweat starts to drip down
his temple and onto his cheek. He keeps scraping his teeth over his upper lip and he's
fidgeting more and more by the minute.

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”You want to know why they're all twenty-four years old, right? I know you, Detective. I've
been watching you for so long, reading about you, and I know that you want to know."

But he's wrong. Where she's at now, he can't touch her. He can't goad her. The weight of all
the years is upon her, and she's sinking into it. She wants to fight him, but the truth is that she
thinks everyone else is dead inside of this room. John and Jillian haven't moved in all this
time. She is the only one left, and she's too tired to fight anymore. Even if she dies in here,
she will die without letting him have what he wants. He wants to be important to her.

She shakes her head.

"No," she says quietly.
He is practically heaving with anger. His irrelevance to her is making him furious; his
unpredictability is increasing with every moment. She's doing the opposite of what she's
done every time before. She isn't going to give him what he needs. She isn't going to
sympathise and try to earn his trust. She'd rather die this way, without one more sick fuck
crawling inside of her mind. She dies as she is; not with less. There is still no movement from
anyone in the room but him. She doesn't move, instead she's just waiting for him to raise the
gun as she remains on her knees. She won't give him the satisfaction of shaking. At some
point, she might as well go for her gun. The odds are against her, but there is no reason not to
at least try.

"My momma was twenty-four when she died." He is trying a new tactic to engage her now.
He's trying desperately to be conversational, as if they are friends. As if they have something
in common that binds them. As if she doesn't know that the devil can take on a hundred faces.
"And then when I read about how yours was raped at the same age, I knew there was a reason.
I knew there was a rea-"
"There's no reason," she murmurs dismissively, cutting him off. She lifts her eyes to look at
him dead on and she shakes her head just a little bit. The room, the smell, it all fades away.
Elliot is hovering at the edges of her awareness, but he's no longer tangible to her. He's the
lighter colours in the periphery. He's the air outside; he is a place she will never be again.
He is the one good thing she'd been given, and she'd chosen this ending instead.

She doesn't raise her voice at all.

"We're not alike. You're a rapist. You're a killer. And you're a coward."
He's coming at her now. He's stalking across the room, towards her. The gun in his hands is
shaking, but it's still pointed right at her head. He's all anger and violent, seething,
uncontrollable vengeance.

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"You're half rapist, you bitch! I read about you. I know that you're just filth like me! Running
around playing God and you're just filth!" She can't breathe. Her vision is narrowing and all
she can see is him, coming at her head on. Coming straight for her. His pupils are dilated,
wild with the building frenzy. He is nearly hyperventilating as he approaches her. "You're
nothing! I showed you that! You couldn't save those bitches. How could you? You can't even
save yourself!"

Eight feet away. Then seven. She sees only him and the dark black barrel of his gun. She looks
right into it and it seems impossible that her life is going to end simply because of a tiny piece
of metal that will sear through it. She thinks about Elliot and she wants to apologise to him.
She wants him to know that she is different now, that she sees what he was trying to show her.
Sorry. So sorry. For everything. Her heart is racing. The back of her neck feels damp. It's too
late. She'd had a chance, and now she's here. Her chest rises and falls while sweat slips down
her spine. Her gut is churning, spinning. She's angry now. She's furious. This bastard is
stealing from her. From Elliot. He's taken so much from so many people. The monsters
always take.

"That makes me the only God in this room! Do you understand me? Do you? Say something!"
he yells.
His voice slices at her eardrums, and she just wants him to shut up. He's got to shut up. She
wants to claw at him, to tear him apart. She wants to make him pay for every case she's ever
lost, for every time she's ever failed. She wants to make him pay for what she's going to lose,
and she hates that he's going to steal the fragile peace that Elliot is finding. She's shaking
now, and it's not out of fear, it's out of the injustice of what's about to happen in this room.
The injustice of what's already happened. She doesn't even see the bodies around her. The
room is a blur. Her temples pound with the building rage.

She will not acknowledge him. Will not. His life should be the one to end. His. Only his. But
he just keeps going and going. Yelling. Grating on her. Taunting. It's enough. She's had
enough. She's had too much. Too much for too long. He has to stop. One way or another, he
just has to stop. She's done listening; she's done being the audience for all of them.
"I get to decide if you live or die, you stupid bitch! I'm the one with all the power! Do you get
that? Do you even get that I can blow your fucking brains all over this room?"
Her control shatters.

"Then do it!" she screams back at him as the space between them closes. Her lungs are raw
from the effort. She's still on her knees, but she won't beg for anything. Not for mercy, not
508
for her life. She won't even ask God for forgiveness, because she is so tired of trying to make
amends for who she is, who she's been. Four feet, three feet. Her voice cracks deep in her
throat as she gives in to the blistering fury. "Do it you son-of-a-bitch! If you're gonna pull that
trigger, then do it! Just-"
She's on him before she even realises it. He must have come close enough, he must have
because, because -

She'd launched herself at his knees out of sheer animal instinct. He's falling, he's dropping
back now and her chin slams into his knees as he hits the ground. The pain doesn't even
register. She feels like she's coming out of her skin. She hears his gun bounce on the floor
and slide away and she's off of him then, her breath like fire in her lungs as she lands back on
her knees. The room spins; it's a smear of movement to her. She's reaching for her gun and
he's scrambling for his gun and she's got hers in her hands before he does. He rolls over, and
she sees the dark arc of his gun swinging towards her. She pulls the trigger.

The gun reverberates in her hand. She fires again. Again. Again. Her finger just keeps
pushing at the trigger and nothing fires back at her. She must have hit him. She's got to clear
her vision and make sure she hit him, but she can't get air. She can't breathe and she doesn't
know how many times she shot him. Her gun is clicking then, and she understands. It's
empty. The clip must be empty now. She doesn't move. She can't. For a moment, she forgets
where she is. And then the room explodes with noise.

To her right, the wall seems to break open. The room tears open to twice its size. She turns
her head towards the movement and blinks, off-balance and trying to discern what is
happening. It's a haze. It's all a cloud of heat and dust and she thinks about how he'd
apparently put in a dummy wall. A dummy wall. There are stairs at the far end of the newly
exposed room, and they are full of figures bounding down them. One after the other. And
then more. She sways on her knees, and her eyes want to close. She's aware of the rush of
movement that swarms all around her; she makes out bodies dressed in black and voices
yelling. She feels dizzy, and she thinks she should get up. She should just get up now. She's a
cop. She's got to get up. A warm hand lands on hers, covering her knuckles where she grips
her gun. So she's still pointing it at him, then. She can't even feel the weight of it in her palm.

"Olivia."
She hears the winded voice. The way it says her name with comfort. With gentleness. Coaxing
her. The hand closes around hers, carefully easing her weapon from her. She lets him have it.
She looks up and Cragen is standing there. He seems older all of a sudden, and he's holding
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out his free hand to help her stand. She takes a breath. Then another. She starts to turn her
head to look at what she's done, but Cragen steps between her and the scene and crouches
down to look at her.
"No," he says softly. "It's not worth it. C'mon, let's get you up."
His hand is still out. Waiting for her.

She grips his fingers, and his hold is strong as he helps her stand. When her knees almost
buckle, he reaches for her, steadying her until the ground stops tilting. Her face is wet, but
she ignores it. She turns her head the other direction and she can make out John's shirt being
cut open. His undershirt is soaked in blood and he's completely unresponsive. The medics
are barking out orders and she teeters on her feet. The blood is everywhere. Bodies litter the
floor. Everything seems like it is happening in slow motion, like she is underwater. Or maybe
she is spinning on a roulette table.Her limbs are too heavy.

"John," she whispers, still gripping Cragen's arm. "He needs help."
"I know," he responds softly. "He's getting it, Olivia. He's getting help. Let's get you
checked out, too. Okay?"
She doesn't say anything. Her eyes feel heavy, but she has to check on one more person. She
looks around the room at the kaleidoscope of images. The victims. The blood spatter. She
doesn't register the remains of the monster, but she looks back at the place where she'd been
kneeling, waiting to just die. But she hadn't. She hadn't died. She'd been responsible for one
more - Jillian. She sees the oxygen mask being placed over the girl's mouth and that's all she
needs to know. The girl's not dead. She didn't die on her watch. The blackest parts of the
night slam into her then, and she can't catch her breath. Her palms dig into her eyes and she
hunches over without warning, not making a single sound on the outside. On the inside
though, she can't seem to quiet.
***

His palm hits the double doors that bid him entrance into CUMC's emergency room. He's
already through them by the time they are even fully open. He knows this ER just as well as he
knows every other one in this city. He's been to all of them at least a dozen times. He doesn't
care about the past tonight. He doesn't care about anything but finding her. He knows that
physically she is alright, but that's all he knows. That's all he'll believe without seeing her for
himself in any case.

He takes the hallway at a jog, and he dodges the nurses and doctors who are moving at the
same pace that he is. Everything around him is a blur, and he feels an almost paralysing,

510
single-minded focus. He feels the same as he had years ago when he'd been racing through a
crowded train station, searching for her. He'd found her then, laying on the ground and
bleeding at the neck. Even years ago, Olivia had been able to make his heart stop. He knows
she's here. He'd called Fin and found out that the bus was already bringing both Munch and
Olivia here. He knows that Munch took two bullets to his upper torso, and he knows that
Olivia emptied her personal weapon into their perp.
Beyond that he isn't sure that Fin even said another word to him. He's been alternately
thanking God and cursing him out ever since. Elliot's navy t-shirt is sticking to him by the
time he makes his way to the back of Emergency and into the trauma hallway. He's breathing
too hard, and he stops then for one second, trying to get himself under control before he finds
her. He's got to stay calm. She doesn't need him falling apart. He's here to tell her it’s
alright, not to let her see that he's gone halfway over the edge already.

The smell of antiseptic and bleach washes over him. He turns towards the wall and presses his
palms against it to steady himself, squeezing his eyes shut for one moment as air fills his lungs.
She's alright. She's not dying. She hasn't left him.It's a mercy he doesn't know if he
deserves. It's a reprieve he can't even comprehend. He needs God to forgive him for what he
is thinking - Munch is a friend, and Elliot doesn't want to lose anyone from the unit. They've
already lost too many of their own. But he can't shake how grateful he is to the old man. Of all
of them, he'd never expected it would be John Munch who would take one for Olivia. In truth,
he'd taken two. Jesus.

Munch has to pull through. For all of them. Elliot's probably burning through every favour
God will ever grant him tonight, but he calls them in anyway. They're going to need all the
help that they can get. He can do this now. He's ready. Whatever she needs, whatever state
she's in, he's going to be enough for her. Even if she pushes him away, even if she blames him
for leaving her in this hell, he's ready. He'll take her however he can. He pushes his way
through the last set of doors. He is paralysed simply by the sight of her. Olivia.

She's sitting there on a waiting bench that is pushed up against the wall. She's huddled over
with her arms wrapped around her waist, rocking just a bit. Her hair has fallen forward,
shielding her face from him. An NYPD jacket that is far too big for her rests on her shoulders,
a makeshift blanket of sorts. The relief inside of him is so sharp, so profound, that he thinks it
could bring him to his knees. He knows she's been through a whole new layer of hell tonight
but she's in one piece, and he needs a moment to just look at her.

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He has a thousand things he wants to say to her and no words to use. I love you. Those words
come to him, but they aren't big enough. Not to describe this. He thinks about how he's
being handed another chance, and he thinks about how close he came to losing everything
tonight. The fragility of it all is so clear to him these days. They'd played with their lives for
years, nearly to the point of carelessness. They'd taken too many risks, missed too many
opportunities.
He'll protect her better this time. He makes that vow, and he's making it in front of God
because surely some higher power is here tonight, watching over her. Giving her back to him.
A young nurse now crouches in front of her, holding out a plastic cup of water while trying to
get Olivia to take it from her. Olivia tries valiantly to close her palms around the flimsy cup but
it's taking too much out of her. The nurse thinks Olivia's got a grip on it and she makes a
move to stand up, but Elliot sees where it's all headed before either one of them does.

The cup falls to the floor and the water splashes up, dampening the bottom of the nurse's
scrubs. Olivia is immediately apologising too quickly and too much and her movements are
uncoordinated. He can hear the rise of her voice, her distress at spilling the contents
increasing by the second. The nurse is repeatedly absolving her, but Olivia's leaning over and
trying frantically to clean up the water on the floor with tissues from the box on the small table
next to her. I'm sorry, she is saying. I'm so, so sorry. I'm sorry.

The world narrows and he's closing the distance. She's his. He gets this. He gets her. She
doesn't have to rely on strangers to take care of her. Not anymore. Never again.
This is his part now. After too many years of not being able to be what she needed, this is
when he can make amends. Please forgive me. I'm so sorry. She's saying it again and again,
and the nurse is trying to assuage her, but it's only making it worse. Sorry. So sorry. She's
rocking faster, and he knows the basic movement for what it is - it's designed to self-soothe -
and she's doing everything she can to calm herself down. The nurse takes one look at his
rapid approach and she steps aside gratefully. And then he's in front of Olivia.

Before he can even crouch down to move her hair off her face and get her to look at him, she
gasps, pressing her open palm to her lips. She recognises his sneakers. Elliot lowers himself
until he's eye level with her, and he slides his hands across her trembling arms until he can
grip her elbows. Her head is bowed, and she's still hiding from him behind the curtain of her
hair. He can't stop himself from using one hand to brush the dark strands aside. He does it
more than once, and he doesn't know if he's doing it more for her or for him. She turns into
his touch just the slightest bit and it's all the permission he needs to do it again. She won't
look at him. She's focused on the linoleum instead. He doesn't let go of her. He can't.
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"Olivia." He says every syllable of her name, unwilling to lose a single piece of her.
She shudders. Her breaths are loud, uneven.
"Look at me," he says quietly, his fingertips sliding across her hairline. He brushes his thumb
against her temple, and he can feel the rapid throb of her pulse. It's a proof of life that he can't
stop touching.
When she lifts her chin, the sheer pain and guilt in her wet, reddened eyes makes his chest
constrict. Her head tilts to the side, right into his hand. She doesn't blink; instead her lips
press closed and he knows she is fighting hard to hold off all sound. Her exhaustion is
palpable, and she searches his eyes silently, without crying. He knows what she's looking for.
She is waiting for someone to accuse her of causing all of this. She's waiting for someone to
accept the apologies that she would be all too willing to give.

Like hell he's gonna let her take this on. He knows enough without even knowing exactly
what happened earlier. Whatever she is accepting responsibility for, he knows it isn't hers to
own. It never is.

"No," he tells her, the words rumbling out from the back of his throat. "Not your fault."
Her eyes immediately fill with tears because of the absolution, but she doesn't look away. She
is trying not to cry, but her body is shivering from the effort. He doesn't need her to talk. He
can do that for both of them if need be. He can almost see the last few hours playing out in the
dark theatre of her eyes. She keeps looking at him, and he knows just by how exposed she is
leaving herself to his perusal that this night has irrevocably changed her. It scares him -
terrifies him - that he doesn't know everything that happened.

"You hurt?" he manages to ask, despite his fear of what he'll learn. He'll be ready for her
answer, whatever it is. He knows her - she hasn't let anyone check her out yet, but he'll make
sure she's taken care of. God only knows what happened in that cellar. Something inside of
her eases a little, because the corners of her lips actually tip up for a millisecond before she
takes another ragged breath. The haunt in her eyes recedes almost imperceptibly. He gets it.
She thinks he's as predictable and protective as ever.

He exhales, the last of his panic easing. She wasn't sexually assaulted. The rest they will
survive. Anything else they will handle somehow. Olivia drags her cheek against his palm,
turning into it and closing her eyes. Her chest contracts hard once, then twice. It's all he
needs. He's on her then, pulling her forward until he's got her against him. The first thing he
feels is the reassuring heat of her body, then the slam of her heartbeat against his chest. The
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NYPD jacket falls off of her, but Olivia ignores it, pushing herself right into him without
hesitation.

He's got one hand splayed possessively over her lower back and his fingers tangled in her hair
before he can even process the relief of having her against him again. He's holding her, he
realises. It's incomprehensible how close he almost came to losing her. Olivia's arms slide
around his neck as her control cracks. She grips the back of his t-shirt, closing her fists
fiercely around the material. She's struggling not to make a sound, burrowing her face into
his neck to muffle the harsh, punctuated way that she is breathing.

"Elliot," she rasps, her lips moving against his skin.

Elliot turns his face into her hair and he closes his eyes. The sounds of the hospital around
them fade away; he can feel the knots in his shoulders uncoil.He presses his mouth against her
temple.
"It's gonna be okay," he whispers hoarsely. He believes this. When she finally lets herself
cry, she does it quietly. In the midst of the commotion around them, he is the only one who
can hear her.

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515
 Chapter Thirty-One

H
e's a wave of movement around her, and she just sits there on the edge of the
hospital bed, silently watching him. He's got the door closed and the lights off, save
for the one in the small bathroom. The shower is already running, and the sound of
the water hitting the bottom of the utilitarian stall is oddly soothing. It makes her think of rain
and the ocean and air. Fresh air. It makes her think of places that are anywhere but here. He's
pulling the curtains closed then, and that's when she finally finds her voice.

"No," she whispers. "Leave them open."

Elliot's hands still on the fabric he'd been ready to tug shut. His back is to her, and the sheer
size of him makes her fingers itch to just grab hold of his shirt again. His body had been so
warm and she is still shivering. She can't stop shivering. He turns to face her and his eyes
immediately lock with hers. She knows he understands her request. It's something they had
talked about once years ago, after they'd walked out of a brownstone where several children
had just been gunned down. A few blocks away, life had gone on as if nothing had ever
happened. Street vendors still hawked their goods, horns still blared, people still rushed by on
their way to work completely unaware of the tragedy that had just taken place. He'd said
something to her then about how uncomfortable it was to watch the world just go on all
around them. He'd been almost angry at all of the people who didn't know, who hadn't borne
witness to the things that they'd seen.

She'd told him that day that she felt the opposite. She craved the continuity; she needed to see
life go on. It was the only thing that she had been able to hang onto all these years.
Somewhere, for someone, life was different. Untouched. He leaves the curtains open she can
see. There are lights on all over the city tonight. She imagines that someone somewhere is
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dancing on a rooftop bar. Someone is dashing home and laughing out loud after a perfect first
date. Someone is about to spend their first night in their new apartment. They are from
Kansas City or Missoula or Lynchburg, Kentucky and to them the city still feels like it is
capable of magic. She is so tired.

She should be grateful to just be alive, but the exhaustion is so sharp that it is almost more
painful than the throbbing coming from the back of her head. She thinks about how at least
she is breathing on her own and how it's not fair that she is the only one who walked out of
that hellhole. She doesn't know how John and Jillian are doing. The doctors keep telling her
that they're doing everything they can, but that John lost a lot of blood and Jillian had been
heavily drugged. Wait and see. She keeps hearing it again and again, every time she asks. Give
it time.

She feels helpless. Responsible. The air-conditioning is making her skin unbearably cold.
Elliot is coming towards her then, and she wants to touch him again. It's nearly unmanageable
how strong her urge is to have some sort of physical link with him at all times. The need he can
conjure in her used to scare her; tonight she's just glad her need doesn't scare him. Elliot
comes to stand right in front of her, close enough that all she sees is the solid, dark cotton of
his shirt. She puts her hand out, resting her palm on his stomach. She can feel him breathing
steadily through the fabric of his shirt, and the rhythm of it makes her drowsy. He stakes a step
closer, and Olivia rests her forehead against his chest.

"Can you ask them about Jo-"

"Liv," he interrupts quietly. "You can't ask them every ten minutes. They'll tell you as soon
as they can. You gotta to take it easy, too. The doc wants you to get some rest." He exhales
and she can feel the reassuring movement against her hand. "Take a shower then try and close
your eyes. I'm gonna wake you every half hour or so anyway with that concussion, so I'll give
you updates on how they're doing then, okay?"

The even tone of his voice makes her want to close her eyes, but she's afraid he will stop
talking when she does it. The silence leaves her with the basement and the bodies. The silence
makes her see a face she prays she will one day forget. She says nothing. Elliot's fingers slip
through her hair at the crown of her head. Olivia takes a deep breath, and she can still smell
the fabric softener on his shirt. It reminds her of the sound of the dryer running at the beach
house and her throat locks in grief. Tears threaten. She doesn't apologise.

She's not afraid of letting him see her cry anymore.

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"The hot water will help," he rumbles.
He's done this. All of it. The doctor in the ER had diagnosed her concussion, and when he'd
strongly suggested she be admitted for the night for observation, Olivia had instinctively
protested. It was Elliot who had made sense of it all for her. With Munch in surgery for hours
as yet and Jillian still unconscious, there was no way Olivia would let anyone take her home in
any case. Admitting her would gain her a private room two floors above the trauma centre. It
would give her someplace quiet to wait. To wait with him.

Elliot hasn't left her side.

Painkillers sit in a bottle on the bedside table, next to the stack of clean scrubs, towels
and some basic toiletries that Elliot had rounded up for her from the nurses. She wants to tell
him what it means to her that he's taking care of her like this, but she doesn't trust her voice.
She thinks about how he'd pulled her out of the ocean one morning a lifetime ago, and how he
always seems to know just how to coax her, how to soften the edges of everything around her
every time she falls apart. There is a nurturing side to Elliot that is growing as the weeks pass
and it only makes her realise how much the rage had been a characteristic not of the man, but
of the job.

Her palm finds his heartbeat and without thinking, she makes the mistake of letting her eyes
drift shut. Immediately the black eyes are back. They are staring at her, telling her how it had
all been a game to get her attention. All those lives lost. The lives that still hang in the balance.
He's telling her how he had been gunning for her all along, but she hadn't found him soon
enough. One by one, the girls had been killed and it's her fault. Hers. He's laid their bodies
out to show her what she's done.

"Olivia."
Elliot's voice brings her back and it's only then that she realizes her fingernails are digging
into his skin. She opens her eyes and stays where she is, trying to get her heartbeat to slow
down.
"Tell me what happened tonight," he murmurs.

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But she can't. He'd asked her once to leave him out of this life now, and she can't bring him
back into it. He'd walked away from the job to get away from horror, and she doesn't want
him to have to walk away from her to get away from it, too. She can't tell him about the smell
in that room. About the way she'd been focusing on the gun while it had been pointed right at
her. She can't tell him about how he'd called her out on her genetics, and how he'd called her
garbage. She doesn't want Elliot to hear about the mind games or the terror, the blood or the
details of the dead.

Not anymore. He is right. He walked away and she has to give him that much at least.
Olivia pulls back, her spine rigid, and she grips the edge of the mattress she is sitting on
instead.
"No," she shakes her head before focusing on the floor to her right. "No."
Elliot stands in front of her, and he doesn't move. In the quiet of the room she hears nothing
but his deliberately even breaths and the muffled sounds of the corridor outside the closed
door.
"I'm gonna be with you when you give your statement, Liv," he says quietly. "You can tell me
now or you can tell me then, but either way I'm gonna find out."

She finally looks up at him, and for a moment just the familiarity of his features overwhelms
her. She had truly expected to die tonight. She'd truly thought she'd never see him again.
Ever again. And now he stands here, larger than life and seemingly able to take all of her
nightmares on without flinching. It would be so easy to start spilling everything out of her and
to just trust he'd pick the pieces up. It's not fair though. She knows it's not fair. He'd walked
away to get away from -

"Jesus," Elliot hisses. "I don't want to do the job anymore, Liv. Like hell that means I don't
need to know what happened to you. Of all the people you gotta protect, I'm not one of them.
I heard he had you and doing the job for the rest of my life woulda been a small price to pay if
you'd be okay. That's all I was thinking. That I'd failed you."
Her eyes fill now not because of horror, but because he is hers. How or why it happened, she
doesn't know. But she knows he is not a man who she will shake, and she rediscovers her
gratitude because of him. When he loves her like this she doesn't feel beaten or defeated. She
doesn't feel like she is less than anyone else. It's something she has never experienced
before.

Olivia shakes her head again just a little bit.

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"You could never fail me, Elliot," she manages. It's then that she realises how he'd made it to
her in record time. "How'd you get here so fast?"
In the dark of the room, she sees the faintest shadow of a wry grin finally make an appearance
and she stares at him, just trying to absorb the strength of his presence.
"You weren't answering your phone. I was already on my way."
Despite everything, the tiniest laugh breaks through her tears. He will always be
overprotective. He will always know her in ways that defy reason or science. Elliot steps back
and widens his stance, lowering his chin to look at her.
"You gonna be okay in the shower?"
She thinks about being okay, and about how she had never expected to feel that way again.
The nightmares and her jittery movements have not subsided, but Elliot is slowly weaving
himself around her, and for once she has no instinct at all to protest. He is the only relief that
she feels. She nods. When she stands, she doesn't step around him. Instead Olivia
instinctively aligns her body with his, and she steps forward to slide both of her arms around
his waist. Her lips press into his shoulder and Elliot's powerful arms immediately lock around
her.

"Thank you," she tells him, the words half-eaten by the pervasive rasp of her voice.
He holds her tighter, and she can feel his lips brush across her forehead. Despite everything,
he still makes her want to run her hands along the solid lines of his body. It's affirmation, she
thinks. The need to crawl onto him and get him inside of her has got to be an understandable
reaction after all of this.
"Don't thank me," Elliot whispers. "Not for this. You scared the shit outta me tonight, Liv. "
She'd scared herself. She thinks about how she'd almost given in, how she'd almost given up.
This is what she would have lost. The narrow miss is terrifying.

The air conditioner is still blasting in the hospital, but her skin warms where he touches her.
She catalogues all of Elliot to memory, because these are the things she doesn't ever want to
forget. It's the muscled column of his neck; it's the dip at the top of his shoulder. It's the hard
planes of his muscles and the familiarity of the square set of his jaw. It's his breathing, steady
and strong despite it all. It's the way he just holds her without asking questions and the fact
that despite what she'd seen tonight and all the things she still fears, she wants to open her
mouth along the edge of his t-shirt neckline just so she can taste him right now.

It's the lethargy that only he can seem to coax from her. She understands her exhaustion now
though - when Elliot holds her she stops looking out for herself. She rests. For the longest
time, she just stands there, half inside of him. It's in these moments that she lets herself be a

520
woman without a badge. Against him, she listens to the sound of the shower that is still
running and for a moment, she is no longer in the hospital. As he holds her, she pretends it's
nothing more than the sound of the cleansing summer rain that is waiting for her.
***

As soon as Elliot turns the door handle and steps back into her hospital room, he freezes.
He'd been gone fifteen minutes, tops. Before he'd left, Olivia had emerged from her shower
in bare feet and wearing the scrubs he'd gathered for her right before he'd left. Her damp hair
had already begun to curl into waves around her face and she'd looked at him, all of the haunts
inside of her far more visible than they had ever been. He'd taken his first really good look at
her then, too. He'd noticed the weight she'd lost in the last few weeks; he couldn't ignore the
dark smudges of exhaustion under her eyes.

He'd urged her into the bed, and he'd watched her silently pull the covers up around her neck
before she'd rolled onto her side, facing the door. He'd promised Olivia that he wouldn't be
gone long - he was just gonna grab his duffel bag from the truck and check on John's status -
and he had put the nurses call button into her hands. The plan was to wake her as soon as he
returned.

Only now, as Elliot stands in the doorway, he realises she must not have slept at all. Olivia is
standing right next to the window, her back to the wall so that she is facing him. She's got the
thin blanket wrapped haphazardly around her body and she's still barefoot. He thinks she is
looking at him, but he's already moved on to focus on the other occupant in the room.
Six-one. A hundred and ninety pounds. Early thirties and a wary look in his eyes. Warrick.
Son-of-a-bitch. Elliot tosses his duffel onto the floor to the left of where he now stands, letting
it slide into the nook next to her bed. His jaw jumps as he grits his teeth, and he's trying not to
let his blood pressure rise.

"You must be Stabler," the guy starts, affably holding out his hand. "I'm Warrick. Adam
Warrick. Olivia's par-"
"Watch it," Elliot growls. He's in the guy's space before he knows it. He's walked right up
to Warrick, and he's inches from his face. He keeps his voice low, his intent clear. "You're
gonna say you're her partner, and I'm gonna call bullshit. Her partner would have been in
there tonight. Her partner wouldn't have stood around with his thumb up his ass, waiting for
someone to give him a permission slip to go in and do his job."

"Elliot," Olivia breathes in warning.

521
Warrick doesn't step back; instead he lifts his chin, looking Elliot right in the eyes.
"If I'd have gone in half-assed, that fucker woulda opened fire. Even if I'd have survived
taking those rounds, Olivia would have ended up having to put one more incapacitated person
before herself." He cocks his head. "That what you wanted?"
For a moment, Elliot's fist curls. He wants to deck the guy. He actually imagines his knuckles
connecting with the smug prick's jaw. But the unsettling thing is that Warrick is right. He'd
just have been one more body on Olivia's conscience. It's exactly that sort of logic that Elliot
hadn't - and still isn't - capable of when it comes to Olivia. It's the reason he'd known he was
too close to her to be her partner. He would have gone in to save her, everything else be
damned. The results would have been horrendous. Elliot is still breathing too hard. The truth
is that he'd been the one to leave Olivia in a place where she had needed a new partner. He'd
gone searching for his sanity, and if anyone is to blame for not watching her back, it's him.

"El," she pleads.

When he looks at Olivia, everything inside of him knots again. With her face scrubbed free of
makeup and the blanket wrapped around her, he forgets that she is a more than capable cop.
Equality takes a flying leap out the window.
"Why are you out of bed?" he grates accusingly.
In front of him, Warrick actually laughs a little under his breath.
"You're a lucky bastard, Stabler. Under any other circumstances, she'd have hit you by now.
Can't say I wouldn't pay to watch." He shoots a glance at Olivia and shakes his head. "And
you actually missed him?"

Her lips lift just a little bit, even if the smile doesn't reach her eyes.
"He has his charming moments."
"Think he'll have one of them anytime soon?" Warrick grins at her. "Should I stick around
for the special occasion?"
He lets them talk about him as if he isn't even there. He just can't seem to relax, not yet.
Maybe it's that Munch is still in surgery or that Olivia hasn't told him the extent of what had
happened, but tension still grips his shoulders. It's probably his silence that makes her look
up at him. She clears her throat, as if that will help with her lack of volume.
"Adam said Cragen got them to hold off on taking my statement until the morning."

He can tell by the relief in her eyes that she's glad for the reprieve, and he's got to admit that
she doesn't look up to talking to anyone about the ordeal just yet. But there is a part of him
that wants to know - desperately needs to know - just how far the asshole went. In truth, he
wants to know how much damage has been done to Olivia. He knows she wasn't sexually

522
assaulted, but he also knows how devastating the mental assault can be. Outside of giving her
statement, she's doesn't look like she plans on talking about any of it. She's going to lock
down and absorb all of the effects once again. She does it every time. This isn't Sealview, he
tells himself.
Then again, she hasn't really ever told him about what happened there, either. Everything
he'd learned had come from her case file. This could very well play out like Sealview if he lets
it. He'll learn the truth because of the job, not because she chooses to tell him. She'd tried to
hide the PTSD the last time, but he'd seen it, he'd watched her. He'd known she was
suffering, maybe even before she had. He will challenge her this time. Maybe not in this
moment, maybe not even after she gives her statement. But he will make her talk about the
details of what happened. It's as important for her to tell him as it is for him to hear it. He's
got to know just what sort of nightmares they are going to be dealing with.

"Tucker will be there tomorrow," Warrick says quietly. "He's already sniffing around."
Elliot's eyes narrow.
"What the fuck does that prick think happened down there?"
It's Olivia who shakes her head.
"It's standard El, come on. You know that. John went do-" she falters then. Her chin lifts as
she searches his face. "How is he?"
He doesn't want to tell her what he knows now, but outright lying to her isn't an option.
"He's lost a lot of blood, Liv," Elliot says as evenly as possible. "He's got a bullet lodged in
his lung. It'll be a few more hours at least before we know anything else." He avoids the
details that he's learned. He doesn't tell her that they've cracked John's chest open or that
it's likely they will have to remove part of his right lung if he survives at all. The surgery itself
is a risk because he'd barely been stable enough to begin the process in the first place.

Another shot went right through his right arm, but the muscle there has been badly destroyed.
The hollow look Olivia gives him makes his fingertips numb. He sees the guilt and devastation
she is trying to hide. She knows what he is not saying. She knows the truth of just how bad it
really is.
”If he dies, El-" she whispers before whipping her gaze to Warrick. "Jesus, how's Fin taking
it? He's got to be pissed as hell at me."
"No one blames you," Warrick interjects, his tone low and vehement. "No one. Every cop at
the scene thinks it's a goddamned miracle anyone made it out alive at all. Gransden's a serial
killer who changed his MO at will, and that makes him the most dangerous kind of all. We're
just lucky he wasn't able to rack up a few dozen more to his name before you took him out."
"That's his name then. Gransden."

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Elliot's skin goes cold at the detached monotone of Olivia's words. She turns and faces the
window, the blanket still wrapped around her body. He stands there with Warrick as she tips
her forehead towards the windowpane.
"Didn't even know his name."
He can't breathe. He knows what's coming next, and he doesn't want to answer her. He
doesn't want to tell her the rest. Not now. She's handled too much already, it's been enough
tonight. Enough.

"And Jillian?" she murmurs as if she is a million miles away already. "How's she doing?"
The silence sits heavily in the room. Warrick looks at him, and the other man's eyes register
what Elliot is not saying. Warrick's nostrils flare before he lets his head fall back until he is
staring at the generic plaster tiles above them. He aims for steady. Gentle. God knows if he
will accomplish either one.
"He'd injected her with a nearly lethal dose of heroin and tranquillisers. They've given her
the Narcon." He hates having to tell her the rest. "She's on a ventilator."
When Olivia turns her head to look back at him, her expression is full of defeat.
”She expected to make it?"

Warrick exhales and has the decency to look towards the door instead of watching Olivia.
Elliot's jaw clenches but he says nothing. He doesn't want to lie, but the truth isn't fair
either. The truth is brutal.

She looks right at him now, without blinking.

"Tell me."
As Elliot watches her silently, he sees the struggle that remains ahead. In the months to come,
she will harbour these horrors; she will battle herself on every front. It's his battle too, he
thinks. He's in this with her. For all the times he has failed her, this time he will finally begin
to make reparations. He's not going to leave her alone, no matter how hard she pushes. She
might see the demons, but he will damn well wield the sword. New York, New Jersey, it
doesn't matter. He'll commute if he has to. He'll drag her down to the shore on her days off.
He shakes his head.

"Doesn't look good," he says as quietly as possible.

Olivia's eyes widen before they start to fill. Her lips part as she inhales and her fingertips turn
white where she clutches the blanket.

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"Go," he growls to Warrick without looking at him. No one else should see her like this,
especially not someone who needs to see her as wholly together and professionally steady.
The man doesn't object. He must understand because he's gone before she can even grab at
another breath.

The door closes and then it's just the two of them. She's staring at him.
"I can't be the only one to walk away. I can't be the only one to make it. There's no reason it
should be me."
He's got a thousand reasons and a million prayers that explain her survival, but Olivia is on
the verge of crying and he doesn't think she will listen to any of his justifications. She's losing
her grip, and her breaths are becoming dangerously shallow. He has to do something else.
He's got to give her something to hang onto, something that reminds her of life outside of
this hospital.
"You asked me to read my mother's journal," he tells her suddenly. Olivia flinches at the
unexpected, incongruous comment. "What?"

Elliot heads for his duffel bag, and then he's unzipping it, digging through the basic contents
until he feels the orange leather. He pulls it out of the bag and straightens, holding it in his
hands. He doesn't know why he brought it; he only knows that he had. It had seemed
important at the time that he had it with him. It was the thing that had made her stay all those
weeks ago when she had first arrived at the beach house. She'd been about to turn tail and run
back to New York, but he'd held out the journal and it had mercifully tethered her to him.
She is still, and her shoulders fall a little bit as she exhales. She won't take her eyes off of the
book that he holds.

He clears his throat.

"You asked me to read it and I didn't want to. But I'd promised you." He remembers the first
entry that he had read, and the three that had followed. He'd managed to get through his
mother's words only because he'd been able to hear the sound of his children's voices and the
constant pound of the surf around him. He had been reminded of his freedom, his victories,
and his mother's fantasies hadn't seemed so unrealistic. She had been dramatic and erratic
and ill, but she hadn't been the neglectful, selfish woman he had made her out to be. It's an
understanding that is still taking time to grow within him; the true tenets of his history have
started to take shape.

"Did you read all of it?" Olivia's question is breathy. Her reach for the lifeline that he is
giving her is tenuous at best.

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He shakes his head and gives her a small smile.
"No. I picked up where you left off. Still not done. There's an entry or two left though."
The way she looks at him tells him all he needs to know. She is clinging to the distraction he is
giving her, as if it can drag her away from the hell she has experienced tonight; the agony she
is still facing. She shivers where she stands beneath the thin blanket. He wants nothing more
than to reach for her and to draw her up against the heat of his own body but he knows that he
can't smother her either. The woman who has been his partner for all of these years isn't one
to be coddled. It's always a delicate balance with her between taking care of her and forcing
her to take care of herself.

"You wanna read it?" His words are gravelly as he holds out the journal. "Maybe it will help
you get some rest."
It's what makes her step away from the window and towards him. She is shaking as she comes
to stand in front of him. Her focus is on the leather.
"I was gonna leave, you know," Olivia mumbles. "That first day. And then you asked me to
read this."

He thinks about that day and it seems like it happened years ago. He remembers standing on
the patio and watching Olivia tentatively make her way across the sand. He recalls the
dripping condensation from his beer bottle and how he'd felt invincible in the moment that
she had stood before him beneath the brilliant sun, the majesty of the Atlantic behind her.
His love for her is so intense that it's nearly a violent roll within him. She is the one who is
teaching him about patience and treading lightly. Her love - her faith in his love - it's
something he has to earn, not something he can simply claim. Elliot watches her carefully as
Olivia reaches for the journal. Her fingers skim over the surface.

"I thought you'd moved on without me. I think I knew even then you were done with the job,
I just didn't want to admit it." She doesn't look up. "I couldn't understand how you could
just walk away."
He wants to move. He wants to touch her, to grab her, to kiss her now, because Jesus it's been
too long. But he ruthlessly holds himself still, knowing that he can't jeopardise one moment
of conversation with her. It doesn't matter if she talks about the case or the past or the future,
just so long as she talks.
"I wasn't walking away from you."
It makes her look up at him.
"I know," she nods just a little bit. "I believe you."

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He feels the reprieve shift everything inside of him. Until this very moment, he hadn't realised
how much he had been holding onto that very fear - the fear that he'd broken the trust she had
in him. The fear that she would take his leaving of the unit as more proof that she was
disposable. His throat won't cooperate. It's slamming into him now - harder than before - just
how much he stood to lose tonight. He thinks about how she's standing upright in front of
him, even if she is swaying a little bit - and how he can't ask her for all or nothing. He doesn't
want to take anything else from her; she's already given too much to too many.

"I love you," he tells her, and maybe it comes out a little too harsh. "That's not gonna change
whether you quit or move or stay. I shoulda -" he stops, because it's all rushing out of him too
fast now. He chews his lower lip and tries to make some damned sense in the midst of this
vortex. "I shoulda told you that from the start. You wanna stay here, then fine. We'll make it
work."
Olivia closes her eyes tightly and she holds the journal to her chest. He waits. She's wants to
say something, and he needs to know whatever it is. Every bit that she gives him is vital.
"I kept thinking about all of my mistakes. He had that gun on me, and it wasn't even about
how much he'd already taken from so many people, I was just so pissed that he was gonna
steal so much from me." She looks at him then and her head tilts to the side. "I saw your call,
you know. Right before we went down there, I saw your name on my phone and I didn't
answer and that's all I could think about. How I had wasted even that last chance to tell you."

He's in her space before she finishes.

"Fuck." His hands are on her waist, they are sliding up her back. Elliot buries his lips into her
hair and he curses viciously under his breath. "I shoulda been there."
Her breath is heavy against his neck.
"You were. I woulda given up otherwise. You got me angry enough to fight for something."
He can feel the throb of her temple against his mouth and even now, despite the hell that still
swirls around them, he wants her. His palms slip up the back of her shirt and over the
drawstring waistband of the scrubs. She jerks towards him as his hands flatten on the small of
her back; her bare skin dots in goose flesh. She's still holding the journal between them and
the blanket is tangled around her shoulders, but Olivia presses into him, a small aching sound
breaking from her. He can't take it.

Elliot wants to taste her, to just taste her now. His mouth is on hers then, and he's gentle with
the back of Olivia's head, but his tongue, his lips, they are demanding as hell. He pushes into
her mouth and she is coming at him as if she is starving. He can feel her breath, the push of
her breasts, the tickle of her damp hair against his jaw. He feels the storm of it all and it

527
doesn't scare him anymore. He's always gonna be a little out of control with her. His tongue
slides along her lower lip and she's grasping at him with her mouth. Her free hand snakes up
and around his neck to hold him place and his hands splay along the smooth column of her
spine to anchor her. The feel of her skin against him is killing him. She is the taste of mint and
she is desperate and she is mercifully on him again. Olivia's mouth opens against his and she
isn't gentle at all. She bites at him and exhales right into him and he's gonna come apart if he
doesn't get inside of her soon. His whole body goes rigid. He can't do this. Not now, not
when she is still in pain. He can't -

"Elliot."
He has pulled back from her, and she's staring at him, wide-eyed and out of breath. It's all the
reassurance he needs. One look at her and he knows what it does to her. It is no different for
him. There will be time later. God, she's gonna need her rest because later -
He grinds his teeth in an effort to get some much-needed control.
"You need to get some sleep, Olivia," he says hoarsely. His tongue slides along his lower lip
and he wants to feel her there again. Seeking him.

She stands there for a moment, her mouth swollen from the way he'd gone at her. The way
she'd gone at him. Then she's in front of him again, her mouth brushing across his. It's a
caress this time. It's the opposite of the way they'd exploded a moment ago. She kisses him in
a slow, licking burn and he forgets the weeks they have been apart. It only lasts a second, but
it leaves him without words. Her dark gaze locks on his as she takes a step back.

"I'm not going anywhere," he reminds her.

This time, when she gives him a small smile, there is the tiniest flicker of light that comes back
in her eyes.
***

She can't get comfortable. Olivia rolls over again in the hospital bed, and this time she is
facing him where he sits. The bed isn't made for two, but she wants him to slide beneath the
covers with her anyway instead of sitting there in that horrible chair. Elliot had slid down in it,
his legs stretched out in front of him, trying to get as comfortable as possible. His hands are
folded and they rest on his stomach, and he's watching her from beneath heavy-lidded eyes.

"Your head hurtin'?" he rumbles.

The sound of his voice nearly makes her shudder. She can't believe that only hours ago she'd
been on her knees waiting for the slice of a bullet to end things for her. The knot at the back of

528
her neck reminds her with every pulse that she had been at the mercy of that sick fuck, but
right now, with Elliot sprawled out in the chair next to her, she feels like there is no one who
can get to her. He's powerful even when he is pretending to relax.

She shakes her head against the pillow. "No."

His lips lift slightly.
"Liar."

The truth is that she wants to touch him. Ever since he'd kissed her earlier - or she'd kissed
him - the need for him has grown by the second. Her gaze travels over the width of his
shoulders, the calluses on his fingertips, the way his jeans mould his rock-hard thighs, and his
strength is almost palpable. She's letting herself be distracted by his presence because it
keeps her mind off of what is still happening two floors below in the trauma room. There's
been no word on either John or Jillian in the last twenty minutes, and she is doing everything
she can to fight her anxiety.

"Can you check on-"

"No," he cuts her off. "Go to sleep."
She rolls her eyes, and then regrets the movement. It makes her headache pound with even
more furore. She can take light painkillers if she wants, but it's the pain that is keeping her
awake and she wants to stay this way. She can't just drift off when two people are fighting for
their lives.
"I'll wake you if anything changes, Liv."

In the shadows of the quiet room, Elliot's eyes seem to glitter even as he stays deceptively
still. He looks calm, but she knows that inside he is only now really starting to think about
Gransden. She can tell by the too-even rise and fall of his chest that he is thinking about how
death is too generous a fate for the animal. That's the other reason she can't fall asleep. The
monster is inside of her, too easily conjured by the darkness behind her eyelids. She can still
hear his voice, she can still smell the putrid stench of death, she can still see the hollow,
endless abyss of the barrel. She can't seem to settle. The images are vivid, scathing reminders
and she doesn't feel strong enough yet to face them.

Because Elliot is watching her, he sees too much.

"You want the radio on?"
No. She'd thought about asking him to turn on the television or the radio, but the idea of that
much noise is revolting. Her body aches, and her chest feels too heavy. She shakes her head a
529
little bit and pulls the blankets up around her. The waiting is interminable. She's terrified that
John won't make it. The truth is that she wants to sleep, she just can't. His mother's journal
sits on the end table, and she focuses on it. She wants to read it simply because it reminds her
of another time, another place, but she knows that trying to focus on the words will only
compound her headache. She thinks about the beach house, and if she really concentrates she
can hear the ocean. She can feel the sun on her stomach as Elliot comes to sit by her lounger,
as he lifts that very book from her body.

She misses that peace. She'd had no trouble drifting off out there with one foot buried in the
hot sand and Elliot assuredly nearby. He follows her gaze. They are both silent for endless
seconds.
"Want me to read some of it to you?"
The way he asks steals her breath. It's a low, quiet thing. An offering. He is making an effort
to share something with her, and she knows it isn't easy on him. It's one thing to ask her to
read it when he isn't around to gauge her reaction; it's another thing entirely for him to bare
his history to her by reading it aloud. The amount of trust it would take for her to do the same
is not lost on her. She would do it for him though, she realises. She'd do anything to save him
from the nightmares. She had even been prepared to let him go if that's what it had taken.
He's here. You don't have to let him go.

The relief cocoons itself around her. She looks at him and gives him her answer just in that.
Elliot reaches for it and already the sounds of the hospital seem to fade. All she hears is the
scrape of his chair, the rustle of her sheets, the crinkling sound of pages turning.

"She skips a lotta years," he explains quietly, not looking up from the entries as he searches
through them. "She apparently gave up on the journal, then wrote a few times when I was
eleven. After that, she stops writing for fourteen years."
Her chest feels like it is burning up with heat as she finally feels the rest of her getting warm
again. His quiet cadence slips over her skin and it makes her burrow into the pillow.
"Why'd she stop? She'd been pretty consistent until then."
Elliot gives her a half-smile.
"I know. I skimmed through but didn't read much. She stopped writing just after Christmas
in '77. Then there's this one."
Her pulse slows, and for a moment, she forgets about the night she's just endured. She
forgets about the horror, the battle John is facing, the statements she will have to give in the
morning.

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"You're reading me something you've already read?"
The entry is important to him, she realises. Whatever it says, he wants her to know about it.
The muscle in his jaw jumps. There's an intensity in him now that makes her want to slide her
hands over his face; it makes her want to trace the lines on his skin. Olivia wants to slip her leg
between his, to find space in the hollow of Elliot's neck. She wants to thank him for this, she
wants him to know how unfailingly grateful she is.

She doesn't know who she'd be tonight without him. She doesn't want to imagine the woman
who would likely still be covered in bloody clothes and drinking cold coffee in the waiting
room downstairs. She'd be huddled up, her knees drawn to her chest while she shivered from
the shock. Instead she is here, warm now and being coaxed into sleep. He is all of this for her.

"Always with the million questions," Elliot teases. "Can't you just shut up and listen?"
It makes her smile. Despite it all, he makes her smile.
"October ninth, nineteen ninety one," he begins. His voice is gravel and dust and air all at
once. He gives her the past and it makes her believe in the future.
She closes her eyes, and he steals the silence away from the demons.
***

Hello long lost friend,

It's been a lifetime since I last spoke to you. My world has changed so much since we last knew
each other, and when I discovered you sitting there discarded amongst the boxes in the attic, I
wondered if we still had anything in common. You knew me as a wanderer, as someone lost.
You knew me as someone who lived for the unknown.
Times change. People change. Dreams change.
I'm no longer running away from or towards anything. I'm learning to stay still these days. It's
not easy, but it's easier than before. Does that make sense? Maybe all we need is to make
choices that will make life easier. Life will never be perfect, but I'm trying to make it mean
something. I'm trying to forgive myself for all the things I know I have done wrong and the
choices that have led me astray.
I'm trying to find happiness in moments instead of years.
I realised that the last time I wrote was right before my mother died. That seems so very long
ago. I got the call in January of '78 that she was ill and I left New York for a few months to
care for her. I wanted to take Elliot to Maryland with me, but Joe refused. I remember packing
my bags and thinking that this was no different than outright leaving them. I wondered if I
would ever come

531
back, or if the time away would reawaken my need to just be free. Joe stared at me with anger
and blame before I left, but I realised in that moment that at least I made him feel something.
I'd wondered for too long if he was simply oblivious to me. I'd been terrified of apathy- both
his and mine - for as long as I could remember. It's sad and strange to me that his anger was a
relief. I came back because of that anger. It meant I wasn't invisible to him.
Maybe the only thing we ever really want is to affect someone. If we can't affect them for the
better, then we settle for affecting them for the worse. I've always needed a reaction from
people because it means they see me, they know I exist.
I need to live as loudly as possible sometimes. Other times I need to live in silence. Moments of
noise and moments of whispers, maybe that is what defines a life.
There are high highs and low lows and I don't know if it is those peaks and valleys that I
crave, or if it is the careening rollercoaster ride as I swing between the two heights that allows
me to breathe. My mother used to chastise me for the constant swing of my emotions, but as she
lay dying, she said something to me that has stayed with me for all the years since. She had
been half asleep in her bed, and the cancer had ravaged her hair, her skin, her shimmer. But
she looked at me - really looked me in the eyes - and she told me that hope was precious. She
said that people will doubt hope, they will show it disdain. They will try to take hope away;
they will question hope until it feels like quicksand, slipping through my fingers. But she said
that I have always held onto it, far more tightly than anyone else. She said she loved that most
about me.
I'd never really known why she loved me before that day.
I'm scared these days that Elliot doesn't know that I love him. He's a grown man now, and he
is a new father to two little girls who I adore with my whole heart. They are magical little
beings - all fresh and new and glittering with possibility and light. My boy married a nice
enough girl, she's pretty and amenable and decent. She brings Maureen and little Katie
around when she can. Elliot comes with them sometimes, but I feel the hesitation in him. He
holds himself too stiffly, always a little too straight. I want to tell him that he is still young, he
is still free to dream - always to dream - but he doesn't like such talk. He is focused on his new
job as a police officer, and he tells me vehemently that there are rules; there is order to the
world.
I wonder when he will realise this is not so.
Chaos can be beautiful too, I want to say. There is stunning glory in a summer storm; there is
thrilling energy in the screaming cheers of a crowd. It's not about completing the race at a
consistent pace - it's about running too fast and walking too slow and stopping along the way
just because you can. It's about having your breath stolen from you again and again and
again.
Who cares about winning the race anyway? If the race is a big fat bore, then why even bother?

532
Maybe I am being so reflective because Joe passed away two months ago. He'd been sick for
over a year - and he'd been taking all of this medication. Pill after pill, bottle after bottle.
Sometimes the medication would make him nauseous, and I'd find him huddled on the floor of
the bathroom just retching. It was his heart that was giving out, they said. In all honesty I
think I was his soul that was too tired to go on. We live in our bodies, but we live through our
souls and he had never nurtured his at all. When his body started to give out, he tried to put
off the inevitable with the medicine. It reduced him to a man who didn't know if it was night or
day, if it was warm or cold. I have no desire to breathe if I can't live. Does that make sense?
When my time comes, my body and soul must go together.
Elliot didn't cry at his father's funeral. He was stoic, but I see through him. He is a police
officer because of what they took away from his father when they stripped Joe of his badge.
He's making up for the career his father should have had. He's making up for the man his
father should have been.
He is also making up for the parent that I should have been.
He is living his life in reparation for things that he could never have controlled. He's protective
of his girls to the point of being overbearing, but I understand it. He knows children shouldn't
live as he had. I know this too. I just wish he would rage at me instead of living this practiced,
contained life. I don't want his life to be lived in sacrifice or penance for mine. His
dissatisfaction will come out one day. Experiences are a volcano that live within us, and they
can simmer for years, but one day - one day they will inevitably burst forth.
It's who we are in the aftermath of the rupture that truly defines us. That's the moment in
which we choose who we will be from here on out. That's the moment when we set our course. I
wonder what Elliot's true course will be. I wonder how long it will take him to find it.
Speaking of true courses...
I'm selling the house here and I'm going to look for a place near the ocean now that Joe is
gone. It's because of his death that I found you. In sorting through all the boxes of rubbage
and memories (oh, how sometimes they are the very same thing!) I came across your familiar
cover and I decided to write. I wonder if all of my musings will one day mean something. In
any case, your welcoming pages have meant something to me.
I am so excited to live by the water! I plan on painting, on walking barefoot at dawn and
dusk. I want a home that Elliot will visit with his children. I dream of their chatter, their
squeals, their joie de vivre if you will.
I dream of my boy's life too. I dream of grand things for him. His wife loves him, his children
adore him. He loves them as well. But it's not enough to find our place by loving another - I
hope he learns to love his life as it is, as it would be with no one else in it. That's the only way
to truly fall in love with this experience we are entrusted with at birth. We have to fall in love
with our silences and our noise, our highs and our lows. It's our unique journey after all, and
if we don't embrace it, then who will?
533
Maybe I am fanciful, maybe I am a flibberdejibbet as my mother used to say, but I am also still
full of hope. Maybe that is the ultimate victory. No matter what, I have hope.
See you beneath the sunset and above the sand!

All my love,
Bernie
***

It's so quiet that he can almost hear the ticking of his watch. It's been twenty minutes since
he'd finished reading the entry to Olivia. She'd had her eyes closed the whole time, but he
knows that she hadn't truly fallen asleep until he had read the last word. It was the deep,
shuddering breath she took at the end that told him she'd be okay now - at least for this short
rest. The nightmares would spare her for a little while. He watches her breathing. Every single
breath. Each one could have been taken from him too easily.

In sleep, she oddly seems delicate. He is taken with the fullness of her lips, the way her hair
falls onto her face, the feminine curve of her wrist. He realised tonight that there is still rage
inside of him. If Gransden wasn't already in hell, Elliot would have been first in line to send
the bastard through the fiery gates. But he gets this rage - it's normal, he imagines. The prick
had tried to fuck with his family, so the need to tear him apart has to be justifiable. The journal
sits on the end table once again, and he's coming to an understanding about what his mother
had meant all along. He might still not understand her methods, but he understands his
mother's quest to find something greater. His life would be good with just his kids and the
beach and the new job. With Olivia, his life becomes something that could exceed all of his
expectations. He'd loved Kathy, but there is an understanding that he finds with Olivia that
goes deeper than friendship or companionship or even love. Olivia has always understood his
rage and anger, but she also understands the quiet parts of him, the dark parts, the silence.
He knows now that it doesn't matter if she stays in New York or if she comes with him. He's
going to love her the best he knows how. Hell, he'll learn new ways to show her if that's what
she needs. If there are a thousand terrifying nights like these, he'll pick up the pieces as many
times as she needs him to.

The door opens to his right, and he cranes his neck to see who is quietly walking in. Cragen.
His former captain stands there in silence, and he seems older than he had less than a year ago
when Elliot had walked away from the unit. Don's tie is loosely knotted around his neck and
his rumpled beige sport coat has seen better days. There are circles under his eyes that are
more pronounced and his posture seems weighted by age and loss.

534
"How's she doing?" Don whispers.
Elliot looks at Olivia, and he thinks about how he wants to protect her on every level. He
could lie and tell the man who is still her boss that she's fine, but this man is also someone
who will look out for her. Don needs to know the truth. He deserves the truth.
"She blames herself."
Don's expression tightens.
"They should have waited for backup."
Elliot feels the fear and fury slide down the back of his neck.
"What are you saying? IAB's gonna knock her for this?"
The other man doesn't look at him.
"They'll try. But they both had reason to go in. They believed they had a live vic inside, and
they were right. In the end, that's what it'll come down to."

Elliot hunches over in the chair, exhaustion making him push his fingertips against his
eyelids. If IAB starts a witch hunt - even if it proves fruitless - it will mean weeks and weeks of
Olivia second-guessing herself.
"How's Munch?"
"No news is good news, right?" Don says curtly, still looking at Olivia. "They've lost brain
function on the girl. They're just waiting for her next of kin to pull the plug."

His head throbs and his chest aches. He knows Olivia will take the news hard, and that she's
already at the end of what she can absorb. He wants to rip her out of this life, but Elliot knows
that the best he can do is to stand by her no matter what. He's got to support whatever choices
she makes, even if he disagrees with them. It feels like an impossible task.

Don finally looks at him.

"Can I talk to you outside?"
He's got five, maybe ten minutes tops before he has to wake her. Elliot nods and stands,
making sure that Olivia doesn't wake as they walk out into the hallway. The bright lights are
jarring, and the hustle of nurses, doctors and orderlies grates on him. He doesn't want to hear
about what disappointment he's been, or about how he should have talked to Don before
walking away from the unit. He doesn't want Don to remember him as someone who quit,
who gave up, who couldn't withstand the fight. His father saw him as that man; he doesn't
think he can take the disapproval again.

535
"Cap, I'm sorry," Elliot starts. His words are a rasp, and he tries to look the older man in the
eyes. "I'm sorry I didn't talk to you before I left. I owed you at least-"
"Bullshit," Don interrupts without any anger in his voice. "You don't owe me anything,
Elliot. You gave me your best for over fifteen years."

Elliot jerks his gaze to meet Don's. It's nothing close to what he had expected. He widens his
stance and tries not to show any emotion. It's one thing to bare himself to Olivia; it's another
thing entirely to break in front of his former superior officer. He clenches his jaw and tries to
breathe through his nose. Don cracks the smallest smile.
"Always wondered who would be the first to walk away out of this unit. Guess I should have
known it would be you. You always were the one with the most to live for." His eyes narrow
and he lowers his voice. "You were one of the best this unit's ever seen, Elliot. And you
trained her to be the very best. I know the two of you, usually better than you know
yourselves, so I'm not gonna pretend that my head is up my ass on this one, alright?"

Elliot looks down the hallway, focusing on something, anything, that will keep him from
acting like a child. It's the unequivocal approval that he doesn't know how to handle. It's the
validation that he isn't prepared to absorb. He doesn't know how. He still isn't used to
getting things right.
"I know that whatever happened on her leave changed her, Elliot. And I know she was with
you during that time. If she's got something to look forward to outside of this job, this city -
then you best make sure she knows it. If it were up to me, I'd have forced her to walk away
from this unit a long time ago, but she doesn't give me any professional reasons to pull that on
her. You understand me?"
He looks at Don now, not as someone who gives orders, but as someone who is giving advice.
"Give her something to live for, Elliot. She saved your ass more times than I can count. Save
hers this time."

Elliot takes a deep breath, and for the first time tonight, he feels capable. He feels like he's
going to be able to handle whatever comes at them in the coming weeks, months, years.
Maybe this is all he ever needed - someone to tell him his instincts are right, that he is doing
the best thing for everyone. He's never been as sure of his choices as he is in this moment.
"She's the one, I'm assuming," Don prods quietly.

When he looks back at his former captain, he realises that in the midst of the nightmare that
they are all still wading through the man is actually grinning just a little bit. Maybe his smile is
representative of what has always been a true characteristic of their unit - there is no place
536
where a reprieve is needed more than in the middle of hell. Elliot nods, his lips tipping
upwards despite himself.
"Yeah."
"Good." Don shifts on his feet. "Don't let her stay, Elliot."
He takes a deep breath before admitting the thing that has been hardest for him to accept. "I
can't force her to quit."

Don's response is swift and vehement.

"You're right, you can't. But you show her every day what's she's missing if she stays, you
hear me? I couldn't say any of this to you as her partner, but I'll damn well tell you now." He
swipes a hand down his face and sighs loudly as he shakes his head. "I could have retired four
years ago, you know."
"Why didn't you?" He really wants to know. He needs to know. Maybe Don is really the only
one who could ever give him an answer that will make sense.
The older man is quiet for long seconds. His gaze drifts past Elliot, and he's staring at the
hallway or the wall or into nothing.
"We think we're the only ones who can do this job. And maybe we are. But whether you die
in the line of fire, or you let the job kill you year by year, it's still dying all the same. We forget
that."

The truth of what Don is saying finally hits him hard.

"You want to retire."
Don meets his gaze. He doesn't flinch, he doesn't nod. He just stares at Elliot, unable to say
anything. Elliot closes his eyes and takes a step back, blowing out a breath. He gets it now. He
gets why Don has stayed. It's beyond his comprehension and yet it makes perfect sense.
"You're staying for her."
He shakes his head.
"I stayed for this unit. For this group. But given the chance, yeah, I think -“ His voice fades,
until he is staring at the door to Olivia's room. "Can't imagine John will come back if he
makes it. If Liv walks, Fin will transfer out, too. He's been itching to go back to Narcotics for
years."

The magnitude of what the man is saying weighs heavily on Elliot. Maybe they were always just
dominoes, waiting for one to go first. He'd left the squad with the knowledge that he was
leaving behind something that was essentially intact. With what Don is implying, fifteen years
of his life will soon be a history he can no longer touch. It's the end of something that has

537
always been far bigger than him. Maybe it's fitting they all go out together. It's been a hell of a
long chapter in all of their lives.

Don looks at him for a long time.

"Don't think about the losses, Elliot. Think about the wins. This city was better off having
had this squad, and I was proud as hell of this group. But we worked so hard helping the vics
to find a way to move on - it's time for us to move on, too."
Elliot's reaction is instantaneous. He's desperate to admit the truth to someone, even if he
can't force Olivia to listen to him. "I want her to come with me."
"Then make her," Don responds quietly. "Don't take no. Put up the fight of your life,
because you're fighting for hers." He gives him one more look, and then he steps around
Elliot to walk away.

"Cap?" Elliot chokes, stopping the other man in his tracks.

Don turns around.
“Thanks."

For the first time in all the years he has known Don Cragen, the man winks at him.
Elliot stands there for long minutes afterwards, just watching the fading image of a man
wearing a nondescript beige coat, shoes that have seen better days and an air of honour,
dignity and responsibility that will never be diminished just because he had decided to finally
turn in his badge.

538
539
 Chapter Thirty-Two

S
he had hated the new squad room for months and months after they had been forced to
move. She had missed the familiar creak of the stairs, the stale smell of coffee, the
scuffed floors and the ancient yet sturdy desks in the old place. The new squad room
was too polished, too shiny. Everything matched and there were specific, tidy areas for
everything - there was a kitchen with a small dining table, the interrogation rooms were all
lined up in their own hallway and the computer hub had been designed with efficiency in
mind. All her memories belonged to the old room, and the move had been as traumatic as
leaving a childhood home.
There was too little history in this place.

She is grateful for that now. It will make what she is about to do that much easier. She stands
in front of her desk, her thighs bumping up against the wooden surface. She could sit, she
supposes. She could do the paperwork that has resulted from this case, or she could answer
the ringing phone. She could at the very least throw out the wrappers and paper coffee cups
that litter the perimeter of her work surface. She does none of these things. She finds the idea
of moving at all to be impossible. She keeps thinking about John, and while he'd pulled
through surgery, he is still unconscious. Medically induced coma. She knows what it means,
but she is frustrated by it nonetheless. She wants to talk to John. She wants him awake and
fine and she wants guarantees that he will recover.

Days, they told her. They are going to keep him this way for days. Maybe weeks. It's for his
own good - she knows this - but it doesn't ease her anxiety at all. It's barely noon, but she's
already had a hell of a day.
"Wanna grab a bite to eat?"

540
Elliot's voice makes her flinch although she should be used to him shadowing her by now.
He'd stayed with her in the hospital last night, and it had been just before dawn that she'd
awakened in the narrow bed to feel him laying behind her, his muscled body moulded to hers.
His arm had rested on her waist; his fingers had been tangled with hers. She'd arched back
into his heat and felt his lips press into her scalp. It was the tight way that he gripped her that
told her the truth. She's gone? she'd whispered into the last moments of darkness before the
sun rose. I'm so sorry, Liv.

His breaths hadn't sped up or slowed down. Elliot had stayed even - unfailingly steady and
strong while she had mourned as quietly as she could. He hadn't urged her to quiet; he hadn't
tried to rationalise away her grief over Jillian's death. He hadn't given her platitudes like you
did all you could or there was nothing you could have done. Instead he'd just held her and his
fingers had stayed firmly interlinked with hers as dawn broke. Eventually she had fallen
asleep. By the time Olivia had awakened again, he'd showered and packed up the few things
that they had to their name.

She is still paying for those tears this morning. Her eyes are noticeably puffy and her irises
burn. The Visine hasn't helped, no matter how much of it she had used during the drive over
to the 1-6. She hasn't cried again though, and she's grateful that she's been able to hold it
together since then. The last two hours have been spent in Interrogation Two, going over
what had happened last night again and again. She'd fought Tucker and the Chief to bring
Elliot in the room with her because she knew he needed to be a part of this. She'd finally won,
but she's not so sure if it had ultimately been a good idea to have him in there. He knows the
truth about Gransden now. He knows how close she'd come to dying; he knows that she had
essentially been waiting to be executed. He knows that the bastard had played upon her
mother's rape and her own insecurities, and that Gransden had blamed her for all of the girls
who had died before.

He isn't going to let any of it go until he is sure that she has as well. She imagines that will be a
very long time from now. Elliot's hovering, even now.
"You gotta eat."
His insistence would annoy the hell out of her if she didn't crave the sound of his voice in this
squad room so much. They'd only had months in this place together before he had left, but
it's enough that she had missed his presence.
"There's paperwork I still gotta take care of," she protests softly. "It-"
"Can wait," he finishes. Elliot steps halfway between her and the desk, folding his arms
across his chest as he faces her. "Hell, let Warrick do it."

541
She sucks in air as the dichotomy of it all hits her. She's so painfully used to him being next to
her at work, yet what he's wearing makes it very clear that he is no longer her partner in this
arena. He's gloriously tan and he's wearing that threadbare white t-shirt again with his faded
jeans. He's probably still got grains of sand stuck in the corners of his slip on sneakers. The
most obvious sign that this is not the same Elliot who had once roamed this squad room is that
despite having spent most of the night upright in a chair, he still looks rested.

It's a far cry from the weariness and tailored suits that he'd worn as an NYPD detective. He's
a picture of what she could be, what she wants to be. He seems strong and healthy in a way
that she will never be if she spends the rest of her life under these fluorescent lights and the
weight of the cases. The truth is she doesn't feel like she belongs here anymore. It had hit her
last night in the middle of that basement just how much she wanted something more than just
the job, so she shouldn't be surprised that she feels this way. But she is. Even without a gun to
her head, she wants to walk away.

She wants to walk away. Olivia closes her eyes then and tries to just breathe. The room still
tips on its axis every now and then, and her headache remains a dull throb that emanates from
the base of her neck. Her fingers press into her desk and before she knows it, Elliot's hands
are on her waist, steadying her.

"Jesus, there's no reason for you to be here any longer."

His startling ability to read her thoughts makes her eyes snap open. She stares at Elliot and
she doesn't know how the hell to respond. There's so much truth to what he is saying, but
he's reading her too clearly, too easily. She wonders if he senses her disinterest in the
paperwork or the way that she wants to recoil from the noise that swarms around them.
Watching the movement of the uniforms, the lawyers, the secretaries - it's all making her skin
itch. She braces herself every time someone new walks into the room - dreading that it might
be a victim, a complainant, another case that will land itself on her desk. It's time, she thinks.
This isn't the home for her that it once was. Without him here, this is something she has had
to endure, not someplace that she belongs.

"You're on leave," he growls softly. "There's no reason to stick around right now. Lemme
get you home."
She exhales. So that's what he'd meant about getting out of here. He really doesn't realise
what she is thinking, what she wants to do. That he isn't imposing his opinions on her
somehow makes everything easier. They'd officially kept her service weapon this morning
pending the outcome of their investigation. The loss of the piece should have made her feel
542
bereft, but the truth is that she doesn't want that gun back. She'd lost control of it, Gransden
had taken it and she'd almost died because of it. They can have it.

There is a world outside of this room. It's the same world she has always watched from afar,
always making sure that it continued on despite what happened in this room. Maybe she had
been watching it in the hopes that it would be there for her one day. Last night proved that she
doesn't have time to wait. If she doesn't change her trajectory, last night is bound to happen
again. The job will kill her one way or another. She'd fought for her life then, and she has to
fight for it now. This will be her choice, her decision.

"Where's Cragen?" she manages.

Elliot's jaw tightens and he narrows his eyes at her.
"You planning on appealing the leave?"
She is still exhausted, and her chest still feels like it is hollow, but he makes her smile just a
little bit.
"No, just wanted to see how he's doing. I haven't seen him since-"
"He probably finally headed home to grab a shower and change. Something you might want to
do. It's pretty clear that your wearing my old department t-shirt, and those scrub pants aren't
winning you any awards for professionalism."

The coils that had been forming inside of her loosen. Despite everything Elliot had heard
inside that interrogation room this morning, he is thankfully still teasing her. He isn't treating
her like she is fragile. For as much as he probably wants to haul her up and out of this squad
room, he's waiting as patiently as he can for her to make her own decision to head out. He
probably doesn't know why she is taking her own time on this. He probably thinks she's nuts
for just standing here, watching the activity all around her. She's been the subject of more
than a few curious looks, but Elliot's reputation hasn't diminished. He's guarding her space
like a bull dog, and there are very few people in this precinct who have the guts to challenge
Elliot when he is marking his territory.

She lets him. It's kind of reassuring when he throws his brawn around, not that she will ever
admit it. She looks at him, and he looks at her. She takes in the dark flecks in the blue, and the
thick coat of his eyelashes. He doesn't blink or breathe and neither does she. It's a quiet,
private moment amidst the chaos. It hits her then just how many times she's done this very
same thing across their desks or standing next to him at a crime scene. She thinks about how
he'd puffed himself up to take the fall for her when she'd been after Simon. She thinks about
him sitting outside of her apartment that first year, waiting for her to flash her lights so that
543
he'd know she was okay. She thinks about how scared she'd been as she had waited for him to
arrive in the hospital after the car accident that marked Eli's birth, and she recalls getting
arrested with him, going undercover with him, leaving him.

And now they are here. In a place where they both no longer belong. Elliot is looking at her
without distraction, searching her expression.
"Olivia," he finally says, dragging out her name the way only he does.
He's asking her a question. She wants to give him an answer, but her throat is locked.
She's scared of walking away, that hasn't changed. What has changed is that she knows that
fear can't stop her. Olivia leans forward, and Elliot's arm instinctively slips loosely around her
waist. Here in the middle of a squad room that has always been filled with rules and
regulations she lets her forehead rest against his cheek. People will talk, she knows this. She
just doesn't care anymore.

As a matter of fact, she hopes they talk. She wants people to know how much she has outside
of these walls.
"Take the leave," Elliot coaxes softly into her ear so that only she can hear. "Spend it with
me."
Olivia hears his request, but it's not what she wants. She knows what she needs now, and it's
not what he is suggesting. She's about to tell him he's wrong when a watery voice interrupts
her.
"Detective Benson?”

She reluctantly steps back from Elliot, giving him one last look. She sees the concern already
registering on his face, and it makes her curious as to who is behind her. He deliberately
masks his reaction, but she can feel the tension that slips into the air. When she turns, she's
met with a familiar face. They'd met briefly for the first time less than twenty-four hours ago.
It's a lifetime that exists between then and now.
"Rachel," she breathes.

She can feel Elliot's hand barely brush her hip behind her, as if assuring her of his presence.
She needs him right now. Her blood seems to freeze in her veins and the room chooses now to
tilt. The woman is in her early thirties, but she looks a few years younger. She's petite and her
dark hair has been swept up into a disheveled ponytail. The resemblance is unmistakable, and
the way it brings Olivia back into that basement at Columbia makes her head pound to the
point of nausea. The grief in Rachel's green eyes is palpable.

544
"Are you okay?" Rachel asks. She shifts uncomfortably, her hands clutching the handle of her
purse as if it is a lifeline.
“They-" her words catch. "They told me what you did, and I, I just wanted to know if you
were okay."

Olivia's legs feel weak. She wants to sink down into her chair, but she can't. She has to stay
standing. If Rachel can do this, then so can she. Jesus, the woman had lost her sister only
hours ago when they had pulled Jillian off of life support, and now she is here, checking on
someone who hadn't been able to spare her family the unimaginable pain. It's a compassion
that Olivia has no idea how to accept. It's a strength that she will never forget.

"I'm fine," Olivia manages, although her words are filled with air. "I'm so sorry, Rachel. I
want you to know that. I'm just -“ She can't do this. Her larynx feels like it is burning up.
Elliot's hand tightens on her hip, but he doesn't interrupt. "I'm so sorry."
Rachel nods then, looking away as her eyes fill with tears. She fidgets, as if she is searching for
something.
"There's something I wanted to tell you."
Olivia tries not to tremble. She's holding herself as still as she can. She nods, because she
doesn't trust herself to do more. Rachel swallows thickly and then looks up, her stricken
expression starkly evident despite how brave she is trying to be.
"My dad, he died a couple of years ago. He lost his brother in Vietnam. Least he thought he
had. He never found out the truth. It haunted him though. Every day it haunted him. He'd see
my uncle on the subway and in the park and at church. Only it was never really him." She licks
her lower lip and stands up straighter a little bit, inhaling raggedly. "My uncle Danny is still
listed as MIA."

Olivia knows where this is going, and the pain is already crawling on her. It's too much for her
to take.The other woman reaches into her purse and produces a lavender satin ribbon that has
been folded over itself and secured with a safety pin. It's got a small tag attached to it. Bring
Jilly Home, it says in a handwritten scrawl. She can't cry. She can't do this here, now. She has
no right to grieve, not in front of Jillian's sister.

Rachel's delicate fingers play over the satin.

"We didn't really have a chance to give these out yesterday when she went missing. We were
still making them when you found her." Olivia's chest cracks. She presses her fingers to her
lips and prays she won't make a sound.

545
The woman looks up at her then. There is sadness and ache and disbelief still warring in her
expression. "I just wanted to say thank you. For finding her." Her nose is running just a little
bit and she swipes at her face with the back of her hand. "I got to hold Jilly's hand last night,
and I think -“ She nods, as if agreeing with herself. "I think she heard me tell her I loved her.
You saved me from living like my Dad did, and so, so thank you for that."

Olivia can't stop the way she breaks. Elliot straightens behind her, and despite the heat of his
body that now stands flush with hers, she is not strong or brave or impenetrable. She's
grateful though. Maybe most of all, she is so infinitely grateful to this woman who is giving her
something that means more now than it ever could have before. She is listening to the
forgiveness she is receiving. Olivia believes maybe she's made a difference for the better
somehow, even if the end result isn't what she had wanted or hoped for. Rachel stops playing
with the purple ribbon and then she holds it out, towards Olivia. She shudders again, but she
can't meet Olivia's eyes. Instead she stares at what she is offering as she thrusts it forward.

"You brought her home in time for me to tell her how I felt, and I just wanted you to know.
You should have this."
The squad room is a blur. Elliot is waiting to catch her. After all of the years, she is being
given a stunning moment of true absolution. She takes a deep breath, and the air feels like it's
reaching farther, deeper into her. Olivia reaches for the small ribbon.
"Thank you," she whispers, even though it is hardly enough.
Rachel meets her gaze, and there is immeasurable bravery in the way she doesn't look away.

"You're welcome."
And then she turns, leaving Olivia standing there clutching a colourful reminder of years and
years filled with tiny victories that in the past had always been painfully grey.
***

He still has a key to the house in Queens. It makes sense that he does. His kids still live here;
it's a house he pays the mortgage on. It's a place where he'd raised a family, where he'd
returned for as many nights as he'd been able to over twenty years, give or take a few in
between. It's barely five p.m., and as he uses the key to open the door, he's assaulted by the
almost painful familiarity of this place. He can swear he hears the echoes of the past from right
here in the front hallway. Maureen bounding down the stairs, yelling at Kathleen for wearing
her new shirt. Dickie battling his friends on his new Nintendo in the living room on the day
after Christmas. Lizzie practicing her dance routine in the kitchen, and Kathy warning her not
to kick that high near the simmering pots on the stove.

546
The memories used to hold him here. Today they are a part of his past -a past for which he is
immediately grateful. The memories make him smile and breathe and thank God for what he's
been given. Perfect it hadn't been, but the life he'd led here had been a blessing nonetheless.
He knows this now.

"Kath? Eli?" he calls, closing the door behind him.

He knows instantly by the smell that she's making her famous beef stew. That usually means
she's got corn bread baking in the oven and she'll probably heat up some of those instant
chocolate chip cookies for dessert. With the rest of the kids gone, she's doing it all for Eli. He
grins. It's a routine that had grounded him even when he hadn't realised it. It had been the
consistency that had anchored him during a time when he could have so easily lost himself.
He'd needed this then. More than anything.

"Daddy!"
Elliot's grin widens at the boisterous sound of his youngest racing through the hallway
upstairs. Kathy's instant admonishment filters out of her bedroom.
"Eli! Slow down on the stairs!"
But his son won't be dissuaded. Eli comes running down the stairs at breakneck speed, his
little feet barely making each step before he's onto the next. Olivia had asked Elliot for some
time to herself this evening. There's something I need to do, she'd said after they had left the
hospital an hour ago. He'd let her go after their visit to ICU because he'd known immediately
where she had been headed. It had been the look in her eyes that had given her away. A few
phone calls had verified his hunch. She is good where she is now. He'd seen to it. Besides, he
has every intention of meeting her at her apartment later tonight. So while she is occupied he
figured he'd take the opportunity to see his kid. Kathy had been surprised when he'd called,
but she'd encouraged the visit without hesitation. Her willingness to include him in Eli's life
is a blessing he doesn't take lightly.

"Hey buddy," he says, scooping up the squiggling form of his youngest child.
Eli's eyes light up as soon as he sees what his father is holding in his other hand.
"You gots me a soccer ball?"
After the stress and fear that has pervaded the last two days, just the sound of his kid's voice
and the feel of him in his arms is enough to settle him.
"Yep. Your mom said she got you some new sneaks, huh? How ‘bout you go put ‘em on and
we'll go kick this thing around for a little bit before dinner?"
Only children nod this way. With absolute emphasis, as if they are always entirely sure of
themselves.

547
"I'll go get ‘em. They're blue, Daddy! And they gots pirates on them! From the movie."

Elliot's chest fills to the point of aching. His youngest is no longer the featherweight in his
arms that he once was. He's growing every day and his energy levels exceed that of his siblings
at the same age. Eli likes movies and music with a passion; he can navigate approved websites
on the computer and he asks to pick his movies off of Netflix. He can swim far better than kids
twice his age, and he's got an impressive Twix habit. Despite the fact that Elliot doesn't live at
home, he still feels more a part of Eli's childhood than he had with any of any his other kids.
For the first time he understands that it's about the quality of the time, not necessarily the
quantity. Every moment can feel like a thousand so long as he pays attention. He kisses Eli's
forehead and lets him down. Seconds later his boy almost runs straight into his mother who is
now coming down the stairs.

The first thing Elliot notices is that his ex-wife looks remarkably good. The circles and
exhaustion that he'd come to know on her face are gone, and her hair is blonder and longer
than it had been before. Lizzie had driven Eli back after his visit for July fourth, so Elliot
hasn't seen Kathy in a while. He notices the changes in her, and he must be kind of smiling,
because she returns the expression.

"Hey," she says, finally reaching the bottom step.

Elliot takes in her form-fitting blue t-shirt and her jeans. He even notices the fact that she's
wearing mascara and that she must have recently gotten a pedicure.
"Going somewhere?" he teases.
She flashes a grin and breezes by him, heading straight into the kitchen.
"Maybe," she retorts coyly.
He doesn't know why it's suddenly easy to do this. But all of a sudden it feels more than
possible to just be near her without the tension and anger that had clouded their marriage for
the last few years.
"Anyone I know?" he asks, following her.

It's meant to be lighthearted, but his gut still twists. He supposes it always will in some way or
another. There isn't a perfect science to the art of letting go. She opens the crock pot on the
counter and stirs the contents.
"No way. I'm not telling you, Elliot. I've seen the hell you put the girls through. You're not
prying into my personal life. I'm going out for a glass of wine later and Ella from next door is
going to babysit, that's all you get." When Kathy looks up at him she's got humour dancing

548
in her eyes. Her movements seem lighter as she opens the utensils drawer and starts to
rummage around.

He stands perfectly still, just watching her.She's practically radiant.Elliot waits for the
resentment to begin deep in his chest. He waits for the jealousy to grab a hold of his senses.
He waits for all of the insecurities of his childhood to fester and bubble over. He should hate
that she is flourishing in his absence. He should attribute it to the fact that everyone is better
off without him. Instead he thinks about how she reminds him of the girl he'd met over
twenty-five years ago. Not the girl he'd fallen in love with, but the girl she'd been before that.
The girl who had been his friend, his equal. The girl who had been full of possibility and plans.
Kathy lifts her chin.

"You want a beer?" She furrows her brows then pauses mid-movement when she sees the
expression on his face. "You okay?"
He's trying not to smile, but he can't help it. He's okay now. He's got a hell of a battle ahead
with Olivia in terms of dealing with what she'd been through last night, but at least she is safe.
They'd even visited Munch earlier and the fact that he isn't showing any evidence of infection
or internal bleeding is a good sign. The man is still in a coma, but every minute that passes
without complications works in his favour. So yeah, he's okay right now. He's more than
okay.

Elliot nods.
"I'm good." He heads for the refrigerator.
"You want a beer, too?"
"They're in the garage," Kathy says on a rush as he opens the door. "I got one of those
beverage fridges at a garage sale, and they’re -“ her words trail off.
Elliot stills, letting the door close in front of him. He knows why she's talking so fast. She's
trying to explain away the fact that things have changed. She's waiting for his body to tense,
for him to storm around because these are the subtle yet inevitable signs that this is no longer
his home.

He looks back at her over his shoulder. She's waiting for his reaction, he can tell. Her breaths
are coming faster, and it's making her skin flush. He thinks about going out to get the beers,
but he's got to stop roaming around here like this is still where he lives. It's not fair to her, he
thinks. He's got his own space now. She needs hers. He gets it. Next time, he can't just walk
in here using his key.

549
Eli comes running into the room, promptly dramatically depositing his new sneakers on the
middle of the kitchen floor.
"I can't tie ‘em," he declares, staring at them. "Need you to do that, ‘kay Daddy?"
Elliot meets his ex-wife's intent gaze. Her eyes have always been a paler blue than his.
"You wanna grab the beers and I'll take Eli out back?"
She nods wordlessly, and as he gathers up his son and the tiny sneakers, Kathy keeps
watching him as if she is literally waiting for the other shoe to drop. The grass in their
backyard is freshly cut, and he wonders if she's called a service to take care of it for the
summer. It's a job Dickie would have done, but with the twins at the beach house it's a chore
that now falls on Kathy. There is so much more that she now has to take care of, and even as
Eli sits on the back steps and sticks his feet into the new shoes, Elliot wonders if she resents
him for all that she has been left to do. He'll always provide for his family, but Kathy is
essentially on her own in the day-to-day.

Maybe it's worth the trade. She's got more responsibility than before, but she also has her
freedom. So does he. He helps Eli tie his laces and straightens, looking around the backyards
of the neighbours. His son is already kicking the ball through the lush green blades of grass
and Elliot can feel the wind whisper through the houses. He can smell the barbeques; he can
hear the sound of kids riding their bikes one street over. He'd lived a whole life here. A good
life. A year ago he would have mourned what he'd lost; now he instead focuses on what he's
found. There's a balance, he realises. There's a rhythm to the ebb and flow of how things
come and go.

Maybe the key is to let go when it's time and to reach out
again without fear.
And then Eli is racing around him, giggling and challenging
his father as he kicks the ball towards Elliot's toes. "Get it
Daddy! Get it and kick it to me! C'mon! Kick it to me!"
He's been lucky, he thinks. For whatever nightmares that
have invaded his sleep, there has also been this in his life. So
much of this. Elliot is running then, chasing after his son and
always pretending that his child is faster and stronger than he
is. He laughs when Eli jumps up and down and cheers for
himself as he scores an imaginary goal. He thinks about how
Eli's got real talent here, and he imagines that there are
probably summers ahead filled with soccer camp and
Saturday morning games and dirty uniforms.

550
He laughs. A half hour passes before he notices that his ex-wife is just now coming out of the
house with the chilled beers. She slides the patio door closed and sits down on the stone
steps, her bare feet tapping as she smiles against the rim of her bottle. She leaves the other
one next to her on the step, waiting for him.

"Get the ball Eli! Your Daddy is old and slow, you can't let him beat you!" she yells.
The breeze lifts her blonde hair, and he wonders if she knows he's sorry that it didn't last
forever. He wonders if she knows that he is truly glad that she seems happy.
"Time out, kid," he grins, and sure as shit he's a little out of breath. He heads for the beer
and the relief of the step. He sits down next to Kathy while Eli stays happily in motion. For a
little guy, Eli is surprisingly coordinated.
Kathy doesn't take her eyes off their child.
"If he takes after Beckham, we're set for life."
The beer is domestic and nearly icy, just the way he likes it. Maybe some things don't change
after all.
"If he'd take after Bieber, we'd be set a lot sooner. How old is that kid? Twelve?"
She laughs as she takes another sip.
"I'm scared that you even know who that is."
"Don't tell anyone," he mutters. "I'm not proud of it."

Kathy laughs softly. They sit there in silence and the minutes pass. There is something in
being able to coexist without needing or wanting from the other.
"Twenty five years isn't failing," she finally says quietly. "We've got these kids and all those
years, and I just..." She takes another sip of the beer and then swallows, exhaling. "I just want
you to know that I think we had a really good run for the most part." She shrugs and then
chances a quick glance at him. "I realise now that I wouldn't change it, even if I could. If we'd
stayed together El, I wouldn't have known the rest of me, you know?"

His son stops for a moment, and the wind ruffles his hair. His back is to his parents, but he is
intently watching something. A squirrel, Elliot finally realises. His kid is still fascinated by
something as ordinary as squirrels. Tonight he is counting all of the gifts he's been given,
these moments included. He's content now in places that had always been churning.
"Yeah," he manages. "I get it."
Kathy lifts one eyebrow.
"Lizzie told me about Olivia. That you want her to come out to your place there, maybe for
good."

551
He'd figured Lizzie would tell her mother. He'd been okay with it. The secrets have never
helped any of them. "So I wasn't crazy all these years after all," she whispers. She gives him a
small laugh and it's without resentment that she nudges him. "Told you so."
He doesn't know what to say. He can't even take another sip of his beer.
"Kath-"
"Maybe things are inevitable," she muses out loud, now picking at the damp wrapper of her
beer. "Maybe if we'd just let life lead us instead of trying to force it to go one way or another,
it'd be a lot easier on everyone."
His throat feels thick, his fingers are numb.
"I wanted it to work, you know. You and I, I wanted it to work."

This time when she grins at him, her eyes lighten in a way that he will never forget.
"I know. Me too." She looks out towards their son again then, tipping her chin towards the
child who had given them a whole different set of second chances.
"I'm assuming Olivia is okay if you're here. Saw what happened on the news."
There are details to what Olivia has experienced that he will never share with anyone. He
knows the true depths of what Olivia has been through, and that's enough. He'll work
through it with her.
”She'll be okay."
Kathy nods and then she raises her gaze to meet his.
"I'm glad." She exhales heavily. "She's done a lot for this family. If someone else has to be in
the kids' lives, then I'd..." She swallows and her back straightens. He knows this is hard on
her. It's a huge change on everyone, and they're navigating the new roads as best they can.
"I'd be okay with it being her."

She doesn't flinch. She doesn't look away. She's not smiling anymore, but she isn't shying
away from what they all have to do these days. He reaches for Kathy then, pressing his lips
against the side of her head as he'd done a thousand times before. The smell of her hair is so
familiar, but it's not something that makes him yearn for the past.
"Thank you," he rasps into her, and maybe it's more than he's ever given her.
When she looks at him, the corner of her mouth tips upwards.
"For what?"
He grins at her.
"For all of it." Elliot reaches for her beer bottle. "Now, let's see who you're calling old."
Kathy laughs as he drags her up and off the stairs and into a game of soccer. He won't stay for
dinner and she probably won't ask him to either, and it's more than okay. Tonight, after years
of struggling, it's more than okay.

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 ***

There is no summer or winter, spring or fall down in this place. Instead the endless rows that
fill the warehouse store box after box of evidence from thousands of closed cases. The boxes
are sorted first by crime type, then by the last name of the victim. The rows extend a hundred
feet down and the shelves stack at least ten feet high. The warehouse is windowless, and
despite the fact that most of this evidence will never be examined again, the air and humidity
down here are both maintained carefully. It's never assured that the artefacts and catalogued
bits that have built a case are forever useless after it's been closed. Cases can be reopened;
patterns of criminal behaviour can be reevaluated.

Three-quarters of the way down the fourth row and nestled about six feet off the ground is a
flat box that is eighteen inches wide. As Olivia walks towards it, she focuses on her breathing.
She could probably pick out this box with her eyes closed. She stops when she is front of it,
just looking at the name written on the edge of it in black block letters. Benson, Serena. The
box had been moved to this warehouse only a few years ago, when she'd finally solved her
mother's rape. Olivia stares at it, and tonight the urge to rip it off the shelves and burn it
doesn't make her weak in the knees. She can see her mother's name, and she isn't seething.
She isn't crawling out of her own skin.

She reaches for it and hears the whisper of cardboard on cardboard as she slides it out of its
space. It doesn't weigh much. Her mother had been raped long before the days of DNA
sampling, so the police hadn't saved her mother's clothing or her shoes. There are copies of
the file in here, and small tapes that had recorded her
mother's statement. There are pictures too, and
those are always the hardest to look at. It's so little for
something that has been such an overwhelming
presence in her life. Olivia sets the box on the ground
and then sits on the cement floor in front of it. The
lights are dim and she's grateful. She needs the
darkness right now. Her fingers brush against the
cardboard, the lettering. There is a weight that is
pressing against her chest, but it isn't suffocating.
Not like it once had been.

She removes the top and sets it to the side and then it's all there, the things she had
memorised so long ago. She lifts out the file, and the small cassette tapes rattle around. Her

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mother's voice is on those tapes, but she doesn't want to hear them again. Not tonight. Likely
not ever again. It's not how she wants to remember her mother. When she hadn't been
drunk, Serena had spoken with authority in her voice, with an air of conviction in her tone.
Olivia remembers sitting in the back of her mother's classrooms sometimes and losing herself
to the emotion and passion with which her mother would explain Joyce and Dickens, Aesop
and Shakespeare. Serena had been a realist who couldn't face what she had endured, so
authors who managed to create even a moment of fantasy for her were always treated with the
utmost reverence. Literature was an acceptable - even noble - escape, unlike her other
method of numbing reality. Her mother would pace the front of the classroom, closing her
eyes and reciting passages from the classics that spoke to her.

I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time
I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if
with ropes, into my chair. The Great Gatsby. It had been one of Serena's favourites. Olivia
can still hear her mother's words, and she can still feel the way Serena would commit to the
words, as if she would miraculously lose herself to them for a few moments. Yet high over the
city, our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the
casual watcher in the darkening streets. I saw him too, looking up and wondering. I was
within and without.

Olivia has probably cried more times today alone than she had in the first ten years in the unit.
But these quiet tears somehow feel like they are allowable, like they might finally cure the
ache. Olivia opens the file and the first thing she sees is her mother's grief- stricken face. It's
her mother as a victim, nothing more. This is not the woman Olivia remembers. The photo is
two-dimensional. It's paper and ink. It's just a single moment, frozen in time. Solving her
mother's rape sooner wouldn't have saved Serena. Years later, it hadn't even saved Olivia.
Maybe it had answered some questions, but knowing hadn't been a salve for any of the
wounds.

I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.
Her mother had said that to her one night after Serena had walked in just past midnight. Olivia
hadn't realised at the time that the words actually belonged to F. Scott Fitzgerald and not to
her mother. Olivia knows the truth now though. Serena had hoped she would one day truly
lose herself into the tales of fantasy or the seductive wiles of the liquor, as if losing herself
would ultimately be the cure.

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Olivia had almost lost herself, too. She'd almost given everything away to the job. But it isn't
escape that she wants now. She wants to be present in her life, in every single moment. She
wants to feel and breathe and love. She wants to love.It's a terrifying instinct, but it's the one
she wants to give into nonetheless. Serena's exotic eyes stare back at her from the photo. Her
mother had been beautiful; she'd always reminded Olivia of a foreign actress. Serena had
gravitated towards scarves tied dramatically at her neck and oversized sunglasses. Her dresser
had always been covered with jewellery boxes and trinkets, and when Serena couldn't find a
particular piece of jewellery, she'd dump the boxes onto the bed, leaving all of the glimmering
beads and baubles on the bedspread when she left. It's this way that she wants to remember
her mother. It's everything that isn't in this box that has to matter.

"He was sick, Mom," Olivia whispers. "I don't forgive him, but I don't think he wanted to be
a monster. Sometimes the demons just find a way to win." Her throat tightens. "He had a son,
you know. His name is Simon. I met him and -“
Olivia presses her lips together to keep all the sounds inside of her, even as evidence of her
tears falls to the photo.
"I didn't know what to do. After I found Simon, I just, I pushed him away because he had him
inside of him. But I do, too. I've got him in me and -“ Her breath is ragged, and her whisper
grows softer. "I'm not like him. I'm not any part of him. Not really. Not in any of the ways that
matter. I don't know what I would've done in your place, but -“
The photo blurs and Olivia brushes her knuckles under her eyes to clear the evidence of all
she is trying to let go.

"God, you always wanted me to just do something else." Her wet laughter comes out of
nowhere, muted and shaky. "You hated that I was with SVU, and maybe that was your way of
telling me to let go of what had happened to you. I just...I want you to know that I don't regret
it - being with the unit - and I'm glad that the man who hurt you isn't out there anymore. I
think I'm done though. I think, now -“

She exhales and closes her eyes, clutching the file that is open on her lap. The seconds tick by
and she imagines never coming back here. She imagines letting dust pile up on this box, and
she imagines a day when she doesn't know this photo as well as she does now. The minutes
pass. It isn't until she hears the footsteps at the end of the row that she finally opens her eyes.
She doesn't have to turn to see who it is. She knows. When the footsteps come closer without
hesitation, she straightens her back. She doesn't stand though, not yet. She feels dizzy, and
while she wants to chalk it up to the concussion, she knows that it isn't the reason she is so
lightheaded.

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"How'd you know I was here?" she whispers, not looking up. Her gaze roams the
handwritten words on the paperwork she holds. Columbia University. Single female.
Unarmed. How easily she could have repeated her mother's fate. "Little birdie told me," her
captain responds dryly. She glances to her right and upwards, and Cragen is standing two feet
from her, his hands shoved into the pockets of his wrinkled dress pants.

"You okay?" he asks curtly.

Olivia nods and then looks back at the file, at the nearly empty box.
"Yeah."
”You gonna take the department up on seeing someone on their dime?"
She looks up again and this time she meets his steady, compassionate gaze. He's not ordering
her to see someone, and that means he knows. He knows that he might soon no longer have
the authority to force her to do anything, even though her leave had officially ordered
counselling.

"No," she shakes her head. "Think I got this one on my own."
To Cragen's credit, he doesn't show an ounce of surprise. If anything he seems to relax a
little bit, exhaling loudly into the silent hallows.
"Your partner might take issue with that."
The comment makes her smile just a little bit. He isn't referring at all to Warrick, and the way
he says your partner reminds her so much of the past. Cragen had always said that phrase to
her and Elliot like it was made up of dirty words. Like he was disgusted by how inseparable
they had always been. The truth is that no one had protected their partnership more than the
man who stands next to her right now. Even when Elliot and she had been careless with what
they had between them, Cragen had stood guard.

"You always trusted him to have your back, Olivia. Trust him with the shit in your head too
and my bet is that he'll do the same with whatever he's still hanging onto." Cragen comes
closer, leaning his back up against the stack of boxes as he looks at her, his hands still in his
pockets. His dark tie is loosely knotted and his suit looks a little too big for him. They all need
to take better care of themselves, she thinks. He nods towards the file in her lap.

"She was your reason for joining the unit."

She scrapes her teeth over her lower lip and her fingertips inadvertently brush across her
mother's photo.
”Yeah,” she manages.
Cragen's breaths are steady and even. Calm.

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"Can't confuse having a reason with having a debt, Olivia," he rumbles softly. "You don't
owe the world anything because of what happened to her. Fact it seems to me that the world
owes you."
When she looks at him, she can feel her heartbeat slow down. Everything inside of her is
easing, the spinning and churning is subsiding.

He doesn't look away. Instead he jerks his chin to his left.

"Come with me for a minute. Got something to show you."
She sets her mom's file on the ground, and leaves the box open on the floor. When Olivia
stands, she feels the air shift. He's already walking away, down the aisle, and she waits for a
moment. She watches his back, and she thinks about how Cragen and Elliot have protected
her more than anyone else ever has. Far more than Serena was able to. She thinks about how
innately she trusts them, and how maybe she's always feared that walking away from the job
would mean losing the only sense of family she'd ever had. She realises she has been wrong
about that all along.

When she catches up to Don, he's focused on another box, this one just above eye level.
"See the name on that one?" Cheales, Naomi.
She remembers that case. She remembers all of them, even when she tries so hard not to. This
one was five years ago, right after she'd come back from Oregon. She can still remember
Elliot's words, said casually yet meaning everything. I'd give you my kidney. She'd found
herself smiling at their idiotic methods of tethering themselves to each other. At forgiving
each other.
"That's here because it's a closed case. Justice has been served." Don shoves his hands into
his pockets again and nods towards the box. "See the name of the case detectives?"

Olivia exhales, reading her name on the cardboard. Benson, O. Stabler, E. She can't say
anything, and she doesn't have to because he's already walking on, his footsteps echoing
across the concrete. He stops again, a few rows away. He is looking upwards just a bit.
She follows him, holding her breath. She stands next to Cragen then and follows his line of
sight.
"See those?" he says quietly.
Coyle, Shannon. Crewes, Jessica. Olivia's name is on the boxes, right next to Elliot's. The
years and years mean something in these rows. Even if they hadn't been able to save the
victim, they hadn't let the violations go unpunished. Each of these boxes means some
measure of vindication. They mean some balance was achieved along the way. They'd both
fought so hard for the balance. They'd both struggled so hard to make a difference.

557
"And that one," Cragen practically whispers, looking to his right.
Dutton, Chloe.
"Walk these rows, Olivia. It's not just about your mother's case. Look for your name. For
Elliot's." He turns to face her, and his dark eyes are somber. "Be proud as hell of what you've
done. I am."

Something releases inside of her at the sound of his voice. He's making up for Serena, for Joe
Hollister, for every moment she'd endured as a child seeking approval. He is a man who has
never held up his victories or succumbed to his weaknesses. She knows that unlike her
mother, he fights against his addiction every single day to be the man that he is. She can't
breathe, but she's not suffocating. She feels lighter for some reason, as if the ties that bind
have just come undone.

"Cap-"
"There's shame in giving up, Olivia," he says bluntly. "But there's no shame in moving on.
Make sure you know the difference."
She presses her lips shut, trying to blink back the tears that threaten, yet again. She has to tell
him, and now is as good a time as any. She has to find the words. He deserves to hear them
from her. She finally blows out a heavy breath and meets his eyes.
“I'm -“ This is it, she thinks. This is it. It's for real this time. It's not leaving for another
department, or taking a temporary assignment elsewhere. This is everything. No, she reminds
herself. What comes after this is everything. She stands up a little straighter, and this time she
doesn't look away.

"I'm done, Cap. Think I'm gonna, move on. Maybe take my leave then hand in my
resignation. I've got my twenty years with the NYPD, and -“ Olivia's voice gains volume.
"Gonna head out of Manhattan." She should tell him about Elliot, about how it is between
them and where she is going, but there is only so much she can do all at once.

Cragen's smile builds slowly, and his shoulders seem to fall as he relaxes. It's almost a
knowing smirk that plays across his features now.
"Good. Then maybe you two will be around next summer if I want to bring my fishing boat up
the coast."
Her recognition of what he is saying is immediate. He's leaving, too. He's taking his own
advice and he knows about her and Elliot and -
"You have a boat?" she blurts out instead.
He laughs then, and it seems to fill the empty caverns of the warehouse.

558
"Not yet. But I will, soon as I get Fin's paperwork. He's had the transfer request filled out
and ready since Lake's case, and I'm betting I'll see it in the next coupla days. I'll make sure
he goes wherever he wants to. Time to go for all of us, I think. Time to let someone else take
on the responsibility." He lets out a deep breath, and she will later swear that it was the sound
of satisfaction. He smiles gently. "Besides, if we all go at once, then no one is left picking up
the tab on the farewell party." He shrugs. "Saves one of us a lot of money, right?"

Warmth makes its way to her fingertips, down to her toes. It's affection and appreciation for
the man who is teasing her right now. Its admiration. She nods, and finds herself staring off
beyond him, at the rows of boxes that hold proof of her fight.
"There is that," she admits, playing along.
Somehow, knowing that they will all move on is the last piece of the puzzle for her. She even
has faith that John will pull through. He has to. They all have to have a chance to be something
different. To live their lives. She just doesn't want to lose any of them. It has to be more than
the job that keeps her world together.
"Be up for a reunion sometime?" she tries to quip lightly, hoping it will silence the remaining
tendrils of fear that still grip her.

Cragen steps forward, and he halfway pulls her into a hug.

"You got it, kid," he says against the side of her head.
"In the meantime, I better get more than Christmas cards."
It's the rasp in his voice that makes her sway just a little bit.
"Thank you," she says in the absence of having the words to tell him the rest. "You went to
bat for us so many times and-" She has no idea where to go with this. She tries to blink back
her tears. All of a sudden she finds herself sniffling like a child. "I met the worst of men in this
job, Don," she manages thickly. "But I also met the best of them. I'm so grateful for
everything you've done for me. For El." She deliberately looks him in the eyes. "For the both
of us."

He pulls back and gives her a lopsided smile. Cragen shifts, as if he doesn't know what to do
with what she is telling him. He's always taken his licks in stride, but he's never been a man
who took praise well. "Tell Elliot I said you're not a saint. Tell him I think you're as big a pain
in the ass as he is and that I wish him luck. He's gonna need it. At least I could threaten you
with suspension. He's got nothing to work with when you get difficult."
She can't help it. She's laughing then, and the air feels sharp as it swells in her lungs.
Maybe nothing more needs to be said. He meets her gaze, and he doesn't say goodbye. When
he finally makes a move to leave, it's the way he looks at her that tells her everything else. His

559
eyes are soft, but his back straight. For one moment, the lines on his face seem to smooth just
a bit, and she knows what he's thinking. If John recovers, then they've truly pulled through.
They'd lost friends and colleagues along the way, but the core of who Cragen has tried to
protect for so many years has survived. Every time he has sacrificed, every time he has laid
himself out on the line for them, every time he has lost sleep, every time he has set boundaries
that they had railed against - it has all meant something. It's meant they get a chance to move
on. He can't force them to take what they have earned, but at least he has left them with the
choice.

He gives her a half-smile.

"Take care of yourself, Olivia."
She nods, and chews on her lower lip, and she hopes he knows that her silence, her wet eyes -
it's not regret. It's overwhelming how thankful she is to the man who stands in front of her.
"You too," she manages, tilting her head just a little.

He turns then to walk away. She stays where she is, watching every step that he takes and
thinking about how deeply she will miss him. She thinks about how she won't let weeks pass
without calling him. She imagines him on a fishing boat, and she thinks about how his
patience means he will sit still all morning and afternoon on the rocking water, waiting for the
biggest catch of the day. He'll toss back the ones that don't meet his standards. Maybe he
won't think about taking a drink every day anymore. Maybe he'll think about how it's not too
late for anything. And then he's gone.

Olivia looks back at the open box on the floor. She stares at the contents at her feet. It's the
past, and it needs to be packed up. Put away for good. She gathers up the folder, the tapes, the
photos. Just as she's about to close the lid, she remembers something. Olivia pulls the purple
ribbon from her pocket. Bring Jilly Home. Her fingers play over the scrawled words.
"Nothing ever ended perfectly, Mom," she murmurs into the now empty aisle. "But I did
what I could."

Self-absolution. She knows now that it is the most important forgiveness of all. She tucks the
ribbon into the box before closing it. She slides the evidence back into its slot and then takes a
moment, just trying out her breaths in the aftermath. They come shakily, but they get easier
each and every time. She can do this. She stands there for endless minutes and the world
around her is quiet. The ghosts that surround her in this place are silent for now, and she
thinks it's possible that one day they might leave her be entirely.

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When she makes the decision to leave, she pays attention to what she's done. Her efforts are
everywhere as she walks through the aisles. McCallum, Lainie. McGarrett, Rachel. Purcell,
Holly. Her memories are given their due. She acknowledges them, honours the fight it's
been. The blood, the sweat, the tears. The mistakes, the fear and the anger. The frustration.
Recinos, Maria. The victories. Santiago, Laura. The battles she fought that were about more
than just the victims. Sibert, Gwen. Sun, Kelly. The victims who were left with crushing battles
that they now had to fight on their own. Welsh, Larissa. The victims who taught her about
what it is to truly fight.

When she reaches the exit, she signs out.

Detective Olivia Benson. Badge number 40115.

As the door closes behind her, she doesn't look back.

561
 Chapter Thirty-Three

PART ONE

H
e flips on the lights to Olivia's apartment while juggling his packages and his
overnight duffel. He tosses the key she had given him onto the small table by the
entrance. It isn't lost on him that he'd rescinded his right to let himself into his ex-
wife's house, only to trade for the right to be here tonight. He sees the causes and the effects
these days. He is patient enough to wait for hindsight in order to explain the reasons. By the
still, thick air in the one-bedroom place, he can tell she hasn't come home yet. He flips on the
air conditioner and cracks his neck, exhaling.

The apartment looks like a life interrupted. She'd had no idea that the last time she was here
she'd face life or death before she would once again be able to return home. There is a blanket
tossed haphazardly on the couch, and a stack of mail on her dining table. A pair of Olivia's
sneakers rests by the couch, and as he makes his way into her kitchen, he notices three coffee
mugs in the sink. Days old coffee still sits in the pot, and when he sets down the things he had
stopped to pick up, Elliot opens the refrigerator.

Three beers, some expired yogurt and half a jar of orange juice. He finds himself shaking his
head and sighing. Some things don't change. He grabs one of the beers before closing the
fridge and then turns to the bags on the counter. He'd gone by her favourite restaurant near
the precinct and picked up chicken pad thai, vegetable spring rolls and soup. He'd found a
decent cabernet at a nearby liquor store, and then he'd made the final, most important stop on
his route. The loot from that particular stroke of genius on his part goes in the fridge before

562
he unpacks the foil containers full of food. He sets out plates and silverware and then notices
the half used jar candle on her counter top. A little digging in her junk drawer yields matches.
Even the flicker of the lit candle livens up the place.

He stands back and glances across the breakfast bar towards her living room. The sight of the
discarded blanket makes his gut tighten. He wonders if Olivia's been sleeping out here lately.
He can't shake the pervasive sense of isolation that surrounds him here. She'd done what she
could to make the place cozy, but it's evident that she doesn't really use much of the space.
The bedroom is still dark, and he thinks about how she'd spent years here without anyone to
come home to.

Even when he'd moved out of the house in Queens the first time, he'd still had his kids
visiting him. He'd filled his place with noise, with activity, with life. A heaviness weighs on his
skin when he thinks about how alone Olivia truly has been all along. She'd come home night
after night, and there hadn't been anyone waiting here for her to soften the edges of the world
she lived in. She's been the strongest woman he's ever known nonetheless.

He lets out a breath and grabs his cell phone. He thinks about texting her to say he's here, but
he doesn't want to hurry her. If she's still at the evidence warehouse, then he doesn't want to
interrupt. Cragen had gone to see her there, and he has to trust that his former captain won't
leave her if she needs someone. He's doing his best not to crowd her. It's the most restraint
he has ever shown. Elliot grabs his duffel and makes his way towards her bedroom, and once
he's got the lights on he sees a small alarm clock on her end table that doubles as a music
player and phone charger. A few seconds later, he's got the Pandora app Kathleen had put on
his iPhone playing. Feels much better in here already.

He sits on the edge of the bed then, staring down at his duffel. Elliot rubs his hands over his
face and closes his eyes. For the first time since the whole ordeal started, he thinks about how
tired he is. Twenty-four hours ago he had almost lost Olivia for good. Now he sits waiting for
her in her apartment, and she isn't running away from him. His heartbeat slows. He thinks
about how she might come back to LBI with him for a little while - at least through her leave -
and he does his best not to get his hopes up that she might stay this time. God, how he just
wants her to stay with him. He almost starts down the dangerous road of thinking that if he
just tries harder to show her, to be more for her then -

No.He can't do this to himself. If he's gonna wait for her like he said, then he has to do it
without expectation. Without putting himself first.Even if it kills him.
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Elliot reaches into his bag then, searching for the thing that seems to save them every time.
The battered leather of the journal feels reassuring in his hands for some reason. There are
only a few pages left that they haven't read, and he's almost scared of what it might say. In
truth, he's more afraid of what it might not say. This is the last of what he will get to know of
his mother, and he thinks about how he needs to go back to the beginning and read all of her
words for himself soon.

He turns to the end of the last entry. The one he'd read to Olivia. There's a gap again in the
dates before the next one. This one had been written years later, dated long after he had
assumed his mother had stopped writing in this thing. October 29, 2008. He stills, not reading
any further. The month, the year - it's indelibly marked in his memory. His family had gone
through hell back then. Kathleen had been arrested and he'd almost sent his daughter to jail
in order to save her. He'd been terrified, wholly lost. He'd been willing to sacrifice his
daughter's love for her safety. He'd been willing to sacrifice his marriage, his job, his life.
He'd have given anything to protect Kathleen, and he hadn't understood why his mother
hadn't stepped up to do the same when he had asked.

It had been Olivia who had reached out to his mother and saved all of them. He still doesn't
know what she had said or done, but he had gone from losing everything to getting everything
back - better than it had been before. In the quiet of Olivia's room, he reads.

October 29, 2008

I used to call you Suhaili.

Do you remember that? Suhaili was the name of the boat that Sir Robin Knox-Johnston sailed
around the world all by himself in '68 and '69 (goodness! So long ago...). The journey had
never before been attempted like that. Single-handedly and without company, he took her
around the globe. I remember reading about how Suhaili had been battered by storms, by
waves - yet she kept on. She sailed through the Southern Ocean, around the Cape, she made
her way past Australia. It was a grand voyage she was making, and she kept on, despite how
the sea had broken her. Waves smothered her, her radio was lost, her captain became sick and
yet she toured on. I recently heard that they are restoring her and that she will sail again, and
I thought of you.
I used to idolise that boat, you know? She endured everything that came her way all by
herself, and she didn't know limits. She was committed to the adventure, and in the end she
won the race.
But she was no hero.

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I think about her now and I realise how foolish I was to admire only the boat. She wouldn't be
much without her partner on that journey. She'd have floundered. Suffered. Maybe fallen
apart and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, where no one would find her.
It was her Captain who kept her afloat.
They won that race together - two intertwined spirits who wouldn't quit. He pushed her and
she carried him and when one was withering, it was the other who would step up and find
strength.
I used to be so consumed by the adventure that I forgot that it shouldn't be experienced alone.
Joe has been gone for over seventeen years now. Imagine that. I've been alone for all that time,
with endless freedom. Despite all of my dreams, I can't say that I have been happier alone. My
boy has a wife and his children now - you should see his youngest! - but I don't see them
nearly enough. I don't blame Elliot, because I could easily go show up at his front door as
well. It's my own self- recrimination that keeps me here at the shore. I've always been afraid of
failing him, and even now, I am not the mother I should be. I am not the mother I wanted to
be. I let my child down time and time again. I wish I was a mother who had not made
mistakes, but unfortunately I am just a woman who has had a harder time than most when it
comes to seeing things clearly. It's ironic and tragic that being a parent gives you more
opportunities to make mistakes than in any other job in the world.
He is my son though. He is still my child, regardless of my failures. And I am still his mother. I
hang onto that and it gives me peace deep within. There is something else I have to tell you
though, despite the fact that it hurts my heart. This is the thing that does not let me rest, for I
am filled with worry.
My little Katie is just like me.
A few weeks ago she got herself into some trouble up in the city. She'd been searching for
adventure, you know? I understood it, because when my skin and heart are numb I will do
absolutely anything to crawl out of the abyss. She gave herself away; she lost her sense of
direction. She sees things as bright or dark, as joyful or devastating. She is a delicate spirit
with an admirable temper, and well, she made some choices that got her in a bit of a mess. My
boy came to me and asked me to help her. He begged me to tell the judge that she is sick - just
like me - and that she needed help.
Sick.
I wanted to yell at my boy, to tell him that building sandcastles is a privilege to be cherished. I
wanted to tell him that the ocean air reaches into my lungs and dances there. I wanted to tell
him that when I paint for days on end, it is because eventually my mind's eye will be laid out
for all to see. How could those yearnings make me the sick one? But there was no way I could I
explain these fanciful things to him. How could I make him see that seeking experiences, trying
to feel something, it's not weak. It's not sick. I'm not crazy.

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I'm not crazy. I can't be.
I just can't believe that God would choose to do that to me.
So I told Elliot no, and he looked at me like I'd failed him again. There is a chasm between my
boy and I that has existed since he was a child. He believes in order and duty and I believe in
living by my impulses. I'd long since given up trying to fix things between us, which is another
one of my mistakes.
And then she came to visit me.
I don't know quite how to describe her. I'd heard about her over the years, but she had never
heard of me before Katie got sick. Don't suppose I can blame Elliot for letting everyone think I
didn't exist. She is a beauty, that Olivia. She seemed to me to be a contradiction. Strong yet
soft-spoken. Fierce yet with a heart driven by fanciful ideas of how things could be.
Olivia sat with me that day and she didn't judge. She asked me questions and listened to my
answers. I can't imagine how Kathy has lived with her being my boy's partner all these years -
his wife is a better woman than me. Then again, Olivia is a woman to be trusted and Elliot is a
man of honour, so there is that of course. I remember sitting there with her and thinking that
my boy was lucky to have her as a friend. Even when I told her of how I'd hurt Elliot, she
didn't accuse me or hate me. She has compassion in her, that girl. I suspect that she's living
with some pretty dark and empty spaces in her, too. There is a haunting need in her eyes that
resonated with me.
Maybe that's why I admitted to her that I had lost so much. Too much. I think she
understands the price I've paid for my choices all
these years. She knows what it costs to be alone. I asked, and she told me that she is not
married, she doesn't have children. That seems wrong somehow. God gave a woman like me a
family and I had no idea what to do with it. That girl would be a gift to a child. To a husband.
Next time I see her, I will have to tell her this, because something tells me that she needs to
know.
If there is a next time.
You know, it was Olivia who asked me to talk to Katie. She asked me if I wanted my Katie to
live as I had - with things missing inside of me. Alone? Maybe I couldn't save my relationship
with Elliot, but I could do something to save his daughter. It was clear to me then what I had
to do. I was as honest with my Katie as I could be. Maybe more honest than I have ever been
before.
Kathy tells me Katie is getting help now. I asked Olivia not to tell Elliot what I did. It's too little
too late compared to what he deserves from me. Maybe one day he will know that I love him.
Maybe one day I will earn his forgiveness.
I should tell him that I'm proud of him. I need to tell him that soon, before I lose my chance.
The thing is, Elliot fights fiercely for his children, and that is not something he learned from his
father or me. Even though his marriage likely should not continue any longer, he is a man who
566
believes in doing the right thing. I have hope in me that someday he will feel some measure of
the freedom that I have always sought. I imagine him as someone who could fall madly in
love. He has that intensity in him. Kathy is a lovely woman, and I admire her for raising
beautiful children who love her so, but I don't suppose she is the one for Elliot any longer.
Don't get me wrong, I am so very grateful for the stability she has shown my boy. But
everyone needs a great love, and I don't think she is this person for my Elliot.
I admit that I am rooting for Olivia in this case.
Maybe I am being foolish, but I suspect that she might love my boy, there is something about
that in her eyes too, I think. For all of my boy's smarts, he'd be a fool not to love her too. I'd lay
bets that he'll see what he has in her as soon as he admits that his marriage has come to its
conclusion. I will pray for all of them - for my son, for Kathy and for Olivia.
I want all of them to be happy. Gloriously happy. Maybe it is as simple as that.
Next time I see Elliot, you bet I'm gonna tell him not to treat love lightly. I was too proud to
admit I needed anyone. I hope he has learned from my terrible mistakes.
Last night, I sat out on the beach. The nights are cold now, and I could feel the wind biting at
my skin. The waves thrashed; they were a giant army that seemed to march with fortitude
towards the shore. I had daydreams (are they still called daydreams if you have them when it
is dark?) about my boy. The images were intense and they gave me comfort. I imagined him
sitting on the beach with me. He was wearing a battered sweatshirt and shorts, and his bare
feet were digging into the sand as they had when he was a child. I imagined him having a
beer, and we were having a conversation. Just a regular exchange of words. He was telling me
about Olivia, and there was conviction in his voice. He had no idea how to tell her how he felt
about her, and he was asking for some advice.
We were a mother and son as it should have been.
I had important things to tell him, and he listened intently. I told him that love is not fragile,
and to trust it won't break easily. I told him that on the other side of pain is inevitably a
measure of understanding. I told him that pride rarely provides comfort, and then I told him
that the most powerful thing we will ever control in ourselves is the ability to forgive. I told him
never to see something as a second chance, but instead to always - dear Lord, always - view it
as a new beginning. I told him that the greatest of men believed in what they didn't as yet
know - they simply had faith.
Then I explained that life means so much more if we have even a single witness to our journey.
I told him that falling in love is worth it, even if it only lasts for a single moment.
And then I told him other things.
I told him that I love the blue of his eyes, because through them he has always been more
expressive than he cares to admit. I told him I love that he has made a difference in this world.
I told him I love that he is a good father. I told him I love that he is chivalrous and relentless

567
and driven to protect those who need his protection. Then I told him that without these
strengths, I would love him
still.
Maybe one day he will know.
So tonight, I will not call you Suhaili, old friend. I shall call you my ship and I will be your
Captain. If we stick together, we'll see great places and do great things. You will exist longer
than I, but I am not jealous of your longevity. In fact, I am grateful for it.
In my son, my life was given meaning. In you, my life was given its witness. I am forever
grateful for both gifts.

With love always and forever,

Your Captain,
Bernie

Elliot sits on the bed, unmoving. In the midst of Olivia's room, he feels his faith somehow
steady. He's a grown man who misses his mother, and for the first time that he can remember,
he doesn't feel angry about what he lived through as a child. He feels like his mother is here,
just for a moment. He hears her uncertainty, her apologies. Most of all, he hears her love.
It wasn't perfect - not nearly close - but as a father he learned that love rarely is. He
understands her challenges more these days as he tries to understand his daughter, and maybe
love isn't all that different than justice. Maybe it's equally based on intent and action, and if
that's the case, his mother had never intended to hurt him and that has to count for
something.

He turns back to the start of the entry, several pages before, and he traces his fingers across
the scrawl. He sets the marker in the crease before he closes it and sets it on the bed, thinking
Olivia should read it, too. Elliot stands, moving towards the bathroom even though his skin
feels numb from the recognition that is making its way deeper into him. The water is on, and
he must have been the one to make that happen. He's naked and standing in Olivia's shower
before he realises it. He bends his head, letting the blessed, heated spray hit his face, his neck,
the top of his head. He braces his arms against the tile in front of him and he breathes. Deeply.
Long minutes pass. The steam rises up around him. It's a baptism of sorts into everything that
comes after this.

He is crying then. He is grieving for a woman who had done what she could, who had left him
with her words as proof of who she had wanted to be. He is grieving for the son he hadn't
been, for the days and weeks and months that he had missed with his mother. He'd given his
568
understanding to countless victims. He'd protected them and forgiven them and tried to right
things when they had been wronged, but because his mother had never admitted her illness he
hadn't afforded her the same compassion. She'd loved him though. As he had loved her.

And then he thinks about how despite all of her daydreams, his mother had been acutely aware
of who Olivia had always been to him. Who she would be. Who she now is. He thinks about
how in the end his mother had left them with a home that had changed their trajectory for the
better, and he imagines that wherever she is up there, his mother also knows that he is a
different man these days. He'd fallen in love, just as she had hoped.She'd also gotten her
wish, because Bernadette Stabler had managed to give her son the advice she had wanted to
share after all. He listens to her words, and he whispers thank you into the falling water.
***

When she walks into her apartment, she immediately notices that for the first time in years
and years, it feels like a home. He is here, and that changes everything. She tosses her key
onto the table next to where he'd dropped his, and she hears the shower running. Olivia kicks
off her shoes and makes her way into the kitchen, a smile growing as she sees the burning
candle.

Elliot's a corny, hopeless romantic, whether he will admit it or not. It amuses her to no end.
She notices the food spread out on the countertop and she knows what it is without even
opening the containers. Her favourites. An order they had placed dozens of times. An
unopened bottle of wine sits there too, and she's suddenly craving a glass of it. It's then that
she finally hears the faint music coming from her bedroom. A small laugh breaks from within
her. How this is the same man she has worked with for years, she has no idea. Olivia opens the
wine bottle and pours a healthy glass of it, thinking that she might just surprise him in the
shower. The thought immediately makes her flush. She's grinning against the rim of her
glass, and she supposes she's acting like a schoolgirl right now.

For Elliot. Because of him. It's so ridiculous that it's perfect. She stands there for a moment
in the kitchen, letting her eyes close as she takes a long sip of the rich liquid. She'd called the
hospital on the way home, and Fin had been in John's room. Even though John is still
unconscious, his vitals are getting marginally stronger and that is progress. Maybe it's even
enough progress that she'll be able to sleep tonight.

Olivia turns to grab Elliot a beer from the fridge, but when she opens the door she realises by
the number left that he must already have one with him in the bedroom. Her gaze falls to the
569
small white cardboard containers that sit next to the two remaining beer bottles. Magnolia's
banana pudding. The day immediately forgotten, she eagerly grabs the container and sets her
wine glass on the counter. She's got a spoon deep into the creamy heaven of the pudding
within ten seconds flat. Her favourite food, a fabulous bottle of wine and Magnolia's. The man
is batting three for three.

The man is also currently naked and in her shower. She's an idiot for lingering in the kitchen
because that's the home run. Practically moaning over the dessert she is inhaling, Olivia
makes her way over to her bedroom. His bag sits on the floor and the door is halfway open to
the bathroom.
"El?" she calls out. "I'm home."
Even the domesticity of that simple statement makes her smile again.
"Then get your ass in here," he growls from the other side of the shower curtain.
"I don't wanna put down the pudding," she retorts, deliberately not saying thank you so that
she'll get a reaction out of him.
He is reassuringly predictable in this moment.
"The hell you doin' eating dessert first? And if you're not gonna say thank you, then at least
get in here and show your thanks."
"In your dreams, Stabler," she banters back, the rhythm of their conversation so familiar that
it makes the knots in her shoulder blades start to loosen and her headache fade.
"Damn straight." His voice doesn't hold the ease that she expects, though. "Be out in a
coupla minutes. Not risking your head injury by trying to manoeuvre in this shower anyway,"
he grumbles.

Olivia sits on the edge of her bed, still spooning up the banana pudding. Every bite makes her
want to moan. She'll miss Magnolia's when she's down in Jersey. She has a feeling she'll be
driving up for pudding runs more often than is healthy. Jersey. It hits her then that she hasn't
told Elliot yet about her decision. She's been assuming he's still ready and waiting for her to
go down there with him, but it's still a conversation that needs to be had. He doesn't know
that she just gave up her career with NYPD. He doesn't know just how much she is banking
on this thing with him.

She sets the spoon and the container on her end table, suddenly not hungry. This isn't just a
thing, she reminds herself. She is in love with him. It goes far beyond dating. They've been
dancing around this for years, and he's essentially asked her to move in with him. She wants
to move in with him. She's technically no longer with SVU, for God's sake. She's making
bold and brash decisions, but it doesn't mean she isn't scared.

570
She waits then for him to come out of the shower. When her gaze drops, she notices the
journal on the bed next to her. Olivia picks it up and turns it over before opening it where the
bookmark rests. He'd been reading it, she realises. She also recognises that it appears to be
the start of the very last entry. Her nerves are thrumming as she waits for him, and she figures
maybe the entry will distract her.

I used to call you Suhaili, it starts. Do you remember that?

Olivia's pulse slows, and then she's lost again to the words that have been a bridge to the man
who has steadied her for years.
***

When he finally turns the water off and reaches for the towel, he is immediately aware of the
silence that surrounds him. On the other side of the curtain there is absolutely no movement.
Elliot dries off quickly and wraps the terry cloth towel around his waist, yanking back the
curtain. His eyes still burn from how he'd fallen apart before Olivia had come home, but it
doesn't stop him from seeing the image that is laid out before him. He will never forget this
moment so long as he lives.

Olivia sits on the edge of the bed, clutching the closed journal to her chest. Her head is bowed
so he can't see her face, but her knuckles are white. He knows instinctively that she's already
read the last entry. He knows that beyond the words his mother had written about Olivia,
there is something else in the last entry that resonates with her, too. It's the admission of a
parent that they'd been far too human, and it's not as unforgivable as it sometimes seems to
be.

When he opens the door fully and stands three feet away from her, Olivia finally raises her
chin slowly and opens her eyes. He'd expected that she might be crying, but instead he is met
with her clear, steady, unwavering gaze. She sits there, perfectly still except for the slow blink
of her eyes. She lets him see all of her. Right into her. She doesn't smile, but she seems
calmer than he has seen her in years.

"You read it." It's a statement from him, not a question.

"Yeah," she breathes, nodding just a little bit as she sets the journal to her right. She doesn't
make a move to get up. It hits him again how close he'd been to having his world implode last
night. He can't even process the horror of what she had described in her deposition this
morning. He can't reconcile that the same peaceful, incredibly resilient woman who sits in
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front of him right now is the same woman who was on her knees just twenty-four hours ago,
her life dangling from someone else's hands. She is staring at him, fragility and a miracle all at
once.

"I was so scared," he finally admits. "When I knew you were in there last night, Liv. I just..."
he shakes his head, as if that will erase the way his fear had gripped him. "I thought, Jesus, I
thought -“ He swipes his hand down his face and tries to swallow.
She doesn't move a muscle. She doesn't even flinch.
"I told Cragen tonight," she says simply.
The last droplets from his shower slide down his spine, but he is frozen, transfixed and afraid
to move an inch. He is utterly and completely silent. Her volume is low but Olivia's words are
clear when she speaks. She holds his eyes, as if gauging how he will react.

"Told him I was done with the unit."

Elliot isn't sure he can find his voice at all.
"Transferring?" he rasps.
She shakes her head just a little bit.
"No." She waits, still watching him.
"Then-" he cracks.

Her smile is tentative, and it's the first time in the last few minutes that Olivia has seemed a
little bit unsure of herself.
"Thinking ‘bout moving to Jersey."
For the second time tonight, he feels himself breaking inside. Only this isn't a destructive
force. It's maybe what his mother had meant when she had said that after pain comes
understanding. It takes something giving way to for a bridge to eventually be built, for the
road ahead to clear.

"Yeah?" he manages, trying to remain casual, despite the fact that it is his life too that hangs
in the balance. Elliot leans against the doorframe to the bathroom, and he's sure that she can
tell he is struggling for every breath. Uncontrollable hope is making his pulse race.
She straightens a little where she sits and cocks her head.
"I kinda like this town by the shore down there. It's pretty quiet but the people seem nice
enough." The way her voice trembles belies the offhand and teasing way she is telling him that
the world is about to change shape.

572
There is a laugh that is growing inside of him. It's the powerful urge to just open up and
believe again.
"Heard the guys down there are pretty sexy," he retorts. "Tan, buff beach bods. Sure that's
not your motivation?"
"Eh, they're okay. Exhibitionists if you ask me," she shrugs, trying to stifle a grin despite the
heat that flashes in her eyes. Her cheeks colour just a little bit and it reminds him that he is
having this conversation while standing in front of her half-naked.

He could well and fully laugh now. He could reach for her and break the sanctity of this
moment. After all of it, she isn't making the decision to come with him because he had pushed
her. She's not making the decision out of fear or duress. It's not as a result of an argument, or
a challenge. Instead she is making a choice in the midst of this perfect quiet. He's not ready to
let go of the peace, so he stays where he is.

"You have anyone to live with down there?" he asks quietly, trying to keep up the light-
hearted pretence even though he is desperate to touch her, to demand, to have her make
promises to him.
She locks her gaze on him again and the playfulness is gone. She is suddenly serious.
"I can get my own place, you know. We can take this slow."
Elliot is stunned by how little defence he sees in her right now. She's not dodging the
implications; she's not shying away from what he is asking. Even the way she is sitting leaves
her open to him. Her hands are at her sides, her eyes trained on his. He knows how little she
has had to believe in, and it's profoundly humbling that she trusts him.

"Been fourteen years of falling into this," he says hoarsely, chewing on his lower lip. "Think
it's been slow enough. Don't want anyone else. I won't," he tells her resolutely. He exhales
and stays where he is, looking right into her. "I'm sure of this. Of us."
Her eyes water then and she gives him the barest hint of a smile. It's the soft look she used to
give him back in the early days when she would come to the realisation that her hunch was
right. He can see her bravery now more clearly than he has ever seen it in all the years he has
known her. He knows what this is requiring of her.

Olivia swallows thickly.

"Aren't you scared that I'll just be borrowing your life?"
"You can't borrow what's already yours," he assures her quietly, never taking his eyes off of
her.

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Her laugh is a sudden gentle burst of air and light and intangible things that he wants to hold
in his hands. She shakes her head.
"Who the hell are you and what did you do with my infuriating partner?"
He smirks then, and he probably looks smug as shit.
"Your partner sounds like he's an asshole."

She grins and it's new, it's terrifying. It's perfection, maybe. He could stand here for years if
he knew he'd be guaranteed more of her breathy laugh.
"My partner looks insanely tempting in a towel." Her expression softens. "And despite my
best efforts, I kinda fell for the guy."
He thinks he will remember all of this night forever. Olivia's eyes will never again be this dark
and hopeful; she will never again look at him with so much expectation and trust. The years of
communicating through stolen glances have all just been practice for these delicate seconds.
He clenches his jaw, determined not to blow any of this.
"Lucky guy," he murmurs.

Her fingers grip the edges of her bedspread as she waits, searching his expression for any hint
of regret, of trepidation. Like hell she will find even the slightest hesitation in him.
He has none. She must hear his words in the silence because after long moments, she nods
just a little bit and exhales, her shoulders relaxing. "He's the one I'm moving in with, you
know." Elliot closes his eyes. It's a heat he has never known that crawls into his bones now.
He imagines that if this can happen, then surely time can be stopped as well. Death can be
undone; grown children can be made young again. The past might never be erased, but it can
be reconciled. It's a hope that he owes to her.

"C'mere."
He hears the shift and creak of the bed as she stands, and even though she is right in front of
him and his palm has wrapped around her wrist, he doesn't open his eyes.
"Elliot -"

There is an unmistakable plea of desire in the way Olivia says his name. He can still smell the
shampoo she'd used this morning, and as he pulls her closer to him he feels strands of her hair
brush against his lips. He tastes the skin at her temple, and his other hand splays out over her
hip. Just like that, he is noticeably aroused. He tugs her closer, until his need for her presses
urgently into her stomach. Her breath hitches and Olivia's palm slips around his bare waist to
slide up his back. She turns her head, tipping her body into his.

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"I love you," she whispers, her mouth moving against the rough skin of his jaw.

His eyes open then, and she is so closely moulded to him that all he can see is the world
beyond them, outside of her bedroom window. Olivia's fingers dig into his spine and she
groans appreciatively as she pushes the fullness of her breasts into his chest. Her arm wraps
around his neck and her mouth opens hot and hungry just below his earlobe. Elliot hangs
onto her, and in the last moment before she steals his sanity, he says thank you to every
moment of his past, because somehow, in the end, it has led him here.
***

In the deepest part of the night, he wakes. His naked body is a second skin around hers, and
his arm rests heavily over Olivia's waist. Her hair tickles his chin and as his hand slips up her
body, he reaches for the heavy weight of her breast and palms it. The sleepy yet appreciative
groan that breaks from her is only the prelude to the way that Olivia immediately arches back
into him, seeking his body. It hits him hard sometimes that this is Olivia against him after all of
these years.

There are some moments when she is simply the woman he loves, and yet there are other
times when he can't believe that the woman who had sat across from him for so long is actually
letting him touch her, kiss her, take her. It's both perfectly logical and totally unbelievable
that they would find themselves here after all that time. He is trying to restrain himself from
pushing into her right now, but the effort is excruciating. He is hard and too ready and hungry
as hell for her. He should be able to just hold her, but it seems impossible. When Olivia is this
close to him, he wants to be inside of her. There is no other alternative.

Elliot's hand slides down her stomach and it flattens against her abdomen, pulling her
towards him. Her thighs part and he starts to slip inside of her.
"Elliot," she gasps, half-asleep. At least she can speak.
He nudges into the slick heat of her, slow and easy until he is all the way in, sheathed by the
unrelenting grip. He stills, regulating his breathing.
"Just wanna be in you for awhile," he says into her hair. "Just like this."
He can feel her immediate need in the tautness of her muscles, in the rigid way that she stays
immobile.
"Need you to move, El. Jesus." She exhales harshly, and she throbs with need around him.
"You trying to kill me here?"

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His arousal is painfully demanding, but he doesn't want to hurry. There is a relief that he finds
when he is inside of her that has nothing to do with sex. He shushes her, and sure enough
moments later she relaxes.
"What're you going to tell your kids ‘bout us?" she finally whispers into the dark, silent
cocoon around them.
"The truth," he rumbles, thrusting so gently that he is barely moving.
She shifts just a little bit until she can look back at him over her shoulder.
"You have to ask Lizzie about me moving in, El. She wasn't counting on anyone else being
there this fall. She-"

"She'll be fine," he grumbles, not wanting to talk about this right now. He'd told Olivia
about his daughter's request to live with him this morning as they'd been driving to the
precinct, thinking it would serve as a little bit of distraction when it came to facing the
pending deposition. It's also part of his new attempt at being forthcoming, at not hiding
things from everyone around him. He just hadn't expected that the next time the subject
would come up he'd be in the middle of something far more consuming.

"You have to ask her, Elliot. We can't-"

"So you ask her," he interrupts. He's not going to worry about this. Not when he's wrapped
around her, not when he's very quickly losing his ability to stay still. "You wanna be sure
she's okay with it, then feel free." He moves inside of her, pushing deeper to distract her, and
her responding breath is sharp and punctuated. His mouth falls to the hollow of her neck.
"Got no problem with you talking to the kids, Liv. You're not some stranger," he mumbles
576
against her skin. "Been in this family a long time." His teeth scrape against the sensitive spot
behind her ear and Olivia shudders.

Her hand covers his as he slips it up her stomach, over her pebbled nipple and she's breathing
heavily, or maybe he is. He doesn't kiss her - instead it's the brush of his lips against her
earlobe, it's the teasing nuzzle of his stubble-covered jaw against the top of her shoulder. She
is writhing against his touches, and he almost slips out of her until Olivia reaches her hand
back and onto his thigh, pulling him towards her as she rolls over and into her pillow, her
stomach to the mattress.

Elliot's hand is on her hip then as he lays half on top of her. Her thighs part and she raises her
hips, lifting herself to him just a little bit. He's pushing deep as hell into her from behind
then. Olivia's arms slide up the bed until her hands are clutching her pillow on either side of
her head. His body is plastered to hers and he moves slowly. It's languid; lazy despite the
need.

"When?" she whispers into her pillow.

From this angle, he can only see her profile. Her eyes are closed; her wavy hair splayed out on
the crème sheets. Olivia's skin is exotic - gold and perfect. He always thought she was
beautiful, but this goes beyond beauty. This is deeper. It's the way she just lets him look at
her, touch her, have her - and she does it without hesitation.
Elliot drops his mouth to her shoulder, to the curve of muscle there.
"When what?" he asks huskily.
"When can we go? I wanna go right away, El."

She's a talker all of a sudden. All the years of silence, and now she chooses to hold a dozen
conversations. Of course she does. A laugh rumbles out of his chest, even as he shifts a little
bit to keep up his slow thrusts.
"Well, we're kinda busy right now, dontcha think?"
When his left hand covers hers on the pillow, he grips her knuckles, weaves his fingers
between hers and then he stills. He's starving for the taste of her, so he opens his mouth
against her upper back at the base of her neck. Olivia moans and pushes back onto him,
opening further until he is directly on top of her and her thighs are splayed on either side of
his. Elliot lifts himself a little and grips her hip in his left hand before exploring the curve of
her ass in his palm.

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She buries her face in her pillow and he is completely on her then, until his forehead barely
rests against the back of her head. His lips move through her hair, and he's gentle where
she'd been hit last night. He knows it's still tender there, but she will never complain. All he
can hear is their breathing. All he can feel is the slick, hot vice of her body around his
erection. He fucks into her slow again and, again. Then again.Heated by her skin, he closes
his eyes. It's excruciating and perfect. He's the luckiest bastard in the world. Again.

She comes silently this time. It's just the unmistakable tightening spasms around him and the
sudden hitch of her breath that gives her away. He holds back his own release until Olivia's is
done so that he can watch the way her eyes squeeze shut just a little bit more at the peak, and
he can pay attention to the way her fingers tighten their grip on his as she exhales at the end.

"Let's go tomorrow," she whispers, and it's for him that she arches up, drawing him even
deeper into her. He's taking her home, he thinks. And then all thought is lost and he's
growling into her skin as she too brings him home.
All he knows in the aftermath is that if ever a man has been at the mercy of a woman, it is him
at hers.

PART TWO

The day promises to be thick with the heavy heat and humidity. It's just after six a.m., but
already Olivia can feel the warmth coming through her apartment window. She cups her hands
around her steaming coffee mug nonetheless, as if thawing her fingertips. She stands here in
her yoga pants and a tank top, watching her street awaken. The front door to the brownstone
across the street opens and a young woman wearing an iPod and earphones steps out for a jog.
There is an older man walking a black Labrador, and already the cabs are using the avenue as a
side street to the main thoroughfares in an attempt to avoid traffic. In all the years she has
lived in this place, she has so rarely taken the time to look out the window that she is
completely unfamiliar with the routines of her neighbours. Here she's just been another light
in a window, another random face on another indistinguishable street.

It has been her version of home anyways. It's making her throat lock this morning to think
that she's leaving. It's not grief or loss that she is experiencing. Instead she's just getting
used to the idea of closing a chapter in her life. She'd made monumental decisions - one right
after the other - and while she doesn't regret her choices, she still needs time to adapt.
Maybe that's why she'd crawled out of bed almost an hour ago, careful not to wake Elliot.
He'd been sleeping so soundly that she'd managed a shower as well before she had tiptoed

578
out of the bathroom and into the kitchen, shutting the bedroom door behind her. She wants to
go with him today. That hasn't changed. But she's a little unsteady as the last few days come
crashing towards her. Between Gransden and last night at the evidence warehouse.

She had quit the unit. She would be lying if she said it didn't make her heart race with a little
bit of panic. She'll get leave and then she can use her vacation for awhile, but after that she'll
get the paperwork from One PP and that'll be it. No more badge. No more victims, no more
cases. No more courtrooms after the Gransden case and no more trips to the M.E's office.
She won't sit on surveillance anymore, waiting for their suspect to move. No more shitty
coffee, no more nights in the crib. Holding her mug tightly, her eyes water.

Despite all of the things that her life path has cost her until now, it has been what she'd
known. She's scared as hell - not of loving Elliot, but of who she will be and who she is no
longer. She suspects that there will be a gap in her identity for some time, and she's just got to
get used it. Find her way.
"You okay?"
Olivia had been so lost in thought that she hadn't even heard him open the door. Elliot is
rubbing his face as he halfway shuffles towards her in unbuttoned jeans and nothing else. His
face is shadowed in stubble and his eyes narrow as he tries to focus on her. He is rumpled,
sleepy and so utterly familiar to her that she almost aches with the relief of it. The anxiety in
her calms.

He'd held her last night, made love to her. Nestled against him, there had been no sense of
displacement. If she lets go of this life, she gets one with him. In that equation the sides are
not even closely equal. He is the tether, the glue, the tie that binds. He is the gift after all of
the giving. Olivia nods, and when he instinctively reaches for her mug it reminds her of the
morning on his patio over a month ago when she'd stood under the clear sky and the
shimmering sun, rooted for the first time in her life.
"I'm fine."

He ignores her response, and she can tell he's already dismissed it as an untruth. Without
even complaining about the lack of creamer in her coffee, Elliot takes another sip. She knows
it's killing him. He likes his coffee sweet and thick, and it's always been incongruous but
maybe that's just him. He's always been the safest, most dangerous man she knows.
"Havin' second thoughts?"
He actually manages to sound neutral. Olivia smiles a little and looks up at him through her
lashes.
579
"No," she tells him. She is a little too breathy and she knows she's being flirty and it's
actually possible that this is part of who she really is. "Just getting used to it."
It's enough for him. He kisses her forehead. It's such a simple, nurturing gesture but it
makes her chest tighten with how easily he does it.
"Want me to grab some breakfast?" His voice is still hoarse with sleep. "Not really looking
forward to the Saltines you got in the cupboard."

Olivia laughs.
"We never touched the food last night. Pad thai and the other container of banana pudding
are good by me."
His face contorts in disgust.
"First thing we're fixing are your food habits. Morning food involves eggs, pancakes,
sausages. Cereal on a bad day."
She can't control her smile. He's the most reliable thing in her world yet he's also everything
unknown.
"You going high maintenance on me, Stabler? Seem to recall that you didn't actually wither
up and die when you were forced to eat a Snickers for breakfast every now and then."

He growls at the memory and leans towards her, kissing her quickly on the lips. It's his
natural playfulness that takes her breath away. Yeah, she could wake up to this every day for a
long, long time. Being with him isn't as scary as she had thought it would be. Loving him is
surprisingly easy. Then again, in one form or another she's been doing it for years.
"Don't sneak out of bed again, Benson. Might make me difficult to live with." Elliot's arm
snakes out and wraps around her waist. He pulls her against him and his mouth descends onto
hers. He captures her lips quickly but firmly this time, deepening the kiss for just a moment
before pulling away again. It makes her flush anyways.

"As if I expected you to be a saint," she mumbles against his lips. It's then that Cragen's
words from last night come back to her. "Cap said to tell you I'm not one, by the way. Said
I'm a pain in the ass, too."
Elliot's laughter is loud and sudden and full. He actually has to back up from her because he
almost spills the coffee she is still holding.
Her eyes narrow at him suspiciously. "What the hell is so funny?"
He shrugs.
"I mighta made a crack or two about you being a saint a coupla years ago." He shakes his
head, amusement lighting his expression. "Back when you were hightailing it outta dodge
every five minutes. I couldn't keep a partner and after that Blaine bullshit, Cragen pointed out

580
that I wasn't a joy to work with. Said you'd just been putting up with my crap for years." His
grin is all boyish guilt and it takes over his whole face. He's far too amused by his past antics.
"I said well naturally, ‘cause you're a saint."

"I am." Olivia arches her eyebrows. "Best partner you ever had, best cop you ever worked
with. Don't you forget it."
"Well, you are the only one who could handle me," he retorts wryly.
The memories are clearer in some moments than in others. She thinks about how she'd come
back from Oregon all those years ago only to find him in the throes of a new partnership. It
had stung to see him with another woman; in truth there are times when it had stung to see
him with his wife. She used to chalk it up to the ache of not having a family. She sees all of it
for what it is now, though.

She's been possessive of him. Somewhere, deep inside of her, she had long ago laid a claim to
him that she didn't want to admit because he'd been married. Olivia looks up at him, and she
wants to tell him that she had never had a handle on anything about him after all. He notices
that she is no longer smiling. His expression changes and the way his eyes darken in stages
mesmerises her. He goes from incorrigible to intense in four shades of blue. Elliot blinks and
the seriousness is back.
"You can tell me if you change your mind, Liv. We get down there and you're not happy in a
week, a month, six months, just tell me. Okay?" The muscle in his jaw jumps and he looks
past her, into the kitchen. "You decide you need to come back here, then -“

Olivia can't stop looking at him. She knows what he's offering and what it is costing him.
He's telling her that she can walk away if life with him isn't enough for her. He's risking
giving credence to every demon he's ever had in the offer. She knows that she can't make him
a hell of a lot of promises until she tries the world he is laying out for her. She wants to tell him
that she'll be just fine without the job, but the truth is that she doesn't know. He deserves the
honesty from her.
"I'm gonna hang onto my apartment for a little while, El," she tells him softly. "They're
gonna need me up here on and off as they piece together the case against Gransden, and then
I'll have to testify. I've got some cases with upcoming trial dates, too. Be easier if I have a
place to stay that's familiar when I have to be back up here, especially if Gransden's trial lasts
weeks. I'm thinking another three months or so, and if this works out like we want it to then
I'll give the landlord notice."

581
He's not looking at her. He's gritting his teeth and examining something on the floor, as if all
the answers are hidden in the fibers of the carpet.
"That's fair."
It's the tightness in his words that makes her reach out to him. Olivia flattens her palm against
his cheek, pulling his forehead down to meet hers.
"I'm not looking for a way out with you, Elliot," she barely manages in the small space
between them. "I'm looking for a way in. Okay?"
He nods, and his brows furrow. When he finally exhales, he lifts his head and meets her gaze.
It's the ferocity in him that anchors her.
"I'm gonna be here for the trial. Every day of it."

He's such a hardheaded, overprotective bully and she loves him with everything she's got.
"Didn't doubt that for a second." She tilts her head. "Now, it's almost six thirty. Perfectly
acceptable hour for pad thai. You in?"
He smiles and while she can see the fear that he too still carries in the nuances of his
expression, he shakes his head.
"Only benefit of your inability to stock a fridge is that at least we've got nothing to clean out
today."

He scratches absently at his chest, and Olivia can't help but let her eyes roam over him. She
steps back into Elliot instinctively, dragging her lips along his jaw. The roughness of his skin
makes her want him all over again. It's possible she may never get enough. He ruins her with
the size of him, the cut of his body, the sound of his voice. He is the incomparable.
"Takeout leftovers warm up in two minutes. Soon as we eat, we can go back to bed for a bit,"
she taunts, lowering her voice.
Elliot's lips quirk.
"You always were the smart one," he murmurs.
Satisfied that she's won, Olivia grins. She reluctantly slips out of his arms and turns then,
heading for her rarely used kitchen.
"Coming?" she tosses back over her shoulder.
"Not yet," he drawls behind her, and he's a cocky bastard who is too sure of himself. "But
I'm sure as hell lookin' forward to it." He laughs, and she flushes at the implication. The man
has way too much control over her libido.

She opens the fridge and the cool emanating air does nothing to calm her heated skin. She
takes a deep breath and tries to get used to the newness of this brand of normal. She can't put
her finger on it just yet, but something inside of her is changing in anticipation of the days and

582
weeks to come. Her pulse slows, her body relaxes. No matter how she looks at it, she thinks,
she's crossed one more thing off her bucket list. She's fallen in love - and to the best of her
ability she isn't going to hold back.

PART THREE

He makes his way up the narrow wooden staircase, his sneakers pounding the wood with
every step. This place is a bar downstairs - not as yet open due to the fact that it's barely noon-
but upstairs it supposedly serves the best pastrami sandwiches in Manhattan according to
Kathleen. It's no longer a true Irish pub, and it was never a hipster's hangout. It's a place
tucked away off the main streets, intended for the locals. There are barely six booths occupied
upstairs, and each one is separated by high wooden backs that match the scuffed floor. He
sees his daughter's back facing him regardless, and he immediately notices her latest
experiment in changing her appearance.

"Like the haircut," he observes out loud as he comes to stand next to her.
Kathleen looks up over her shoulder, and she self-consciously tucks a strand of the now super
straight shoulder-length style behind her ear.
"Yeah?"
Elliot slides into the booth across from her.
"Yeah," he grins. It's the truth. He used to be scared by the way she would experiment with
hair colour and piercings and tattoos, but these days he tries to relax. He doesn't let himself
imagine that she alters herself because she is running away from who she is; instead he does
his best to chalk it up to her creativity. "What made you go back to blonde?"
She smiles back at him and looks down at her iced tea, spinning the glass just a little bit.
"I think it's true. Blondes have more fun."

He's a father. He's supposed to immediately assume that this means she's getting more
attention from men, so he assures himself that it's okay to worry about her. She'd once had a
tendency to give away too much of herself, and it's something he hasn't quite resolved inside
of him yet. How he'd missed the signs, how he'd been so blind as to treat her illness with
discipline despite all that he's seen. It's something he hopes he will one day come to terms
with. Her laugh isn't strong, but it's enough to break the tension. Kathleen rolls her eyes.
"Relax. I'm still on the meds."

583
He can't laugh with her. Something inside of him is still fractured when it comes to what he'd
done to her, how he had almost given up on her. He still feels guilty that he had been willing to
let her get locked up if it meant he would know where she was at night.

"I know," he nods, trying to dispel the tension.

"Your mom told me how great you're doing."
Kathleen lifts her head then, and she almost smiles.
"She did?"
Elliot takes a deep breath and relaxes then. This is his kid, and if he's got to make sure she
knows anything it's this: that he's proud of her, that he's sorry. That he loves the hell out of
her.
"Said you were working on an off-Broadway show?" For the life of him, he can't remember
the playwright Kathy had mentioned. "Costume design?"
His daughter looks him the eyes, as if she is waiting for the rest of the inquisition.
"Yeah."

She'll tell him she is an adult a thousand times; it doesn't change the fact that he is her parent.
She'd come out to the house with Maureen a couple of times for short stays, but they haven't
yet mastered the art of talking. The bridges are his to build. He shifts a little, trying to alleviate
the knots in his shoulder. When the waitress takes his order he asks for a beer and then
focuses again on his daughter's hauntingly pale blue eyes.
"Your mom said you met some kid named Henry? Production designer on your show?"
Kathleen is waiting for the other shoe to drop. She doesn't fully trust him yet and rightfully
so. She nods and she is watching him. Just watching him, half-wary and half ready for a fight.
He scrapes his teeth over his lower lip before finding himself almost smiling.
"Need me to run a background check?"

It gets the response he'd hoped for. Kathleen laughs a little bit, and this time it's genuine.
"Thought you weren't NYPD anymore. How are you planning on running that check?"
He tries to keep a straight face.
”Got connections," he assures her with as much menace and intimidation as he can muster.
She shakes her head and rolls her eyes again, completely unimpressed.
"You're such a dork sometimes.”

It's the response he had expected, maybe the teasing is what he'd hoped for. He grins at her
again and then sits there, just absorbing the fact that when he had called her this morning, she
had picked up his call instead of sending it to voicemail. She'd even agreed to meet him for

584
brunch. Olivia had wanted to go talk to Warrick and pack up her desk alone, so he'd figured
that now was as good a time as any to try and mend some of the fractures between him and his
daughter.

"How's Jersey?" she asks tentatively.

"It was great until your brother came out," he teases. "Now it's in danger of turning into a
frat house."
"Richard's got a real way with women," Kathleen snorts. "Too bad his charm doesn't extend
to anyone related to him. If you take a family vote, we'd be happy to vote him off the island. I
don't think even Eli would try and save him." Her eyes focus on him again. "How'd it go
when Eli was out?"
That draws his laughter.
"Kid's a breeze. How that happened, I don't know. Then again Lizzie takes over so much
with him that it probably seems easier than it is."
His beer is slid in front of him, and Kathleen orders sandwiches for both of them. She gets
hers with a side salad and his with steak fries, and he's content to just watch her.
"Lizzie said Liv had been out."

He doesn't look away even though every instinct in him still wants to tell her that it's none of
her business. The truth is that he shuts people out because he's afraid of being told he's
doing the wrong thing. He's always been afraid of rejection. But these days he's trying to
stand up for himself, to actually defend his choices.
"That's right."
Kathleen's back is straight, and maybe it's because of her haircut, but she seems light years
older than the last time he'd seen her.
"How'd it go?"
He hears all of the unasked questions in the curtness of her words.
"Kathleen-"
Her irritation is immediate.
"I have a right to know if you two are dating or whatever."
He agrees. She does have a right. She's not a little girl anymore, and no matter how much he
wants to control the world around her, he can't.
"I know. I was going to answer."
His response appeases her for just a moment. She looks almost apologetic.

“I -“ He doesn't know why it is hardest to tell Kathleen. Maybe it's because she is the child
who most has a right to find fault with him. "It's not dating. Least I don't think it is. It's more

585
than that. It’s -“ Christ. He's stumbling and fumbling over the words, and he owes Olivia
more than the uncertainty he's conveying to his child. He owes Kathleen the truth; he owes
himself the right to some happiness.
"Dad," his daughter says, lowering her voice until she's almost coaxing him. "Just say it."
He looks at her before steeling himself.
"I asked her to move out there with me."
She cocks her head.
"And?"

He braces himself for the onslaught of accusation and derision he is so used to.
"And she is. She's gonna try living with me for a bit. See if it works for us." He is trying to
keep his voice as even as possible, as if that will make all of it jar her world as little less.
The tiniest bit of humour flashes in her eyes.
"You're worse than I am." Her lips quirk in a small smile. "Been seeing Henry for almost
three months now and I keep introducing him as my ‘good friend Henry'." Kathleen tucks a
strand of her hair behind her ear and tilts her head. “So, you and Olivia, you’re good friends,
too?"
He lets out a breath, and it is surprisingly followed by a huff of laughter.
"You could call it that."

Her gaze falls, but despite the way her breathing shortens, he can see the slightest hint of a
smile that remains on her face. She picks at her napkin, tearing off the wet edges of it
"I think I could be in love with Henry," she surprisingly admits, although she is so quiet that
he almost can't hear her. "He's got his shit together, you know? He works two jobs; he's
going for his MFA. He's patient, and he's funny and -“ Kathleen exhales, looking him in the
eyes again. "I don't scare him. At all. He knows everything I've ever done, how I can lose my
mind, and he still thinks I’m, special."

Everything inside of him aches. He feels the burn of his eyes, the way his chest feels like it's
fracturing. This is his child, his daughter for God's sake, and she's surprised by acceptance.
By love. He wants to speak, but he can't even breathe or he's going to embarrass himself in
front of her. She has to know what she means to him, to his ex-wife. If they've failed at
conveying even that then he doesn't know what the hell he's done.
”Katie-"
She rolls her eyes, as if he is an idiot.

586
"This isn't about you, Dad. I get it. You love me. It's not about you or Mom or any of that.
You love me because I'm your kid, and that's how that works. But Henry, he chooses me.
Does that make sense? Every day, even when he doesn't have to, he still chooses me."

He sits perfectly still, staring at her. Leave it to Kathleen to explain everything he hasn't been
able to put his finger on in this thing with Olivia.
"That's what it is with Liv too, right? Even though she knows you can be an idiot, and you can
have a horrible temper, and you have the communication skills of a Neanderthal, you still
can't believe that she chooses you."
He leans back in the booth and closes his eyes for one brief moment. He shouldn't condone a
kid talking about their parent like his daughter is talking about him right now, but the truth is
that she's right. And maybe it's time she's an adult to him. Maybe it's time he
trusts her to be okay on her own. She lets out a heavy, defeated breath.
"You thought I'd freak the hell out about you and Liv.”

He opens his eyes then and looks directly at her. He doesn't say a word, instead he just nods
once. He can see the flash of hurt that crosses her expression when she realises that he's been
bracing himself.
"I might have a freak out one day," she says quietly. "There might be another bad day or
week or month. But it's not right now, okay Dad? Right now I'm okay. Can we just leave it at
that?"
His throat closes and he nods.
"I'm trying, baby," he tells her, his words rough and not enough at all. "I'm working on it,
just like you are."
He manages to do something right. There is something in what he's said that seems to get
through to her. Kathleen nods and then blows out a loud breath. She turns and watches the
waitress flit around the other booths.
"I know."
She sounds like she means it. There is forgiveness in her tone; there is acceptance in her
words. And then there is more.

"You know how Olivia asked me to help her with the Kim Garnet case a few months after I
was arrested?" Kathleen murmurs, still not looking at him.
He remembers. Olivia had asked his permission before asking Kathleen of course, but he
hadn't thought it was a good idea. It had been Olivia who had pushed him, and he had trusted
Olivia to have better instincts on it than he did. Elliot nods.
"Yeah."

587
His daughter meets his gaze then, head on and without blinking.
"It was the first time since the night of my arrest that I didn't feel like a failure. When Liv
asked me, she made me believe that I could fix things, change things. It was like I still had
something to offer and I wasn’t, I wasn't broken, you know? If she does that for you too, then
-“

The waitress is back then, sliding their plates in front of them. The timing is horrible, but he
has no choice but to wait out the moments as they pass. He thinks that is all his daughter will
say on the subject. He is wrong.
"If she does that for you too, then I'm happy for you," Kathleen finally says, dumping
ketchup onto her open sandwich. She says it casually, as if it is nothing. She is wrong; her
approval means the world to him. It is an acceptance he never expected to earn. He just
watches her as she adds ketchup to his fries as well. He thinks about what it has taken to lead
up to here, to this singular moment. He remembers the fort Kathleen built in her room when
she'd been six, and how she had insisted on sleeping in it every night for a week. He thinks
about how during her third grade dance recital she'd seen him in the audience with his
camera, and she'd broken away from the organised line of little girls doing kicks. Kathleen
had come to the edge of the stage, showing off her spins for her father, completely unfazed
that she was messing up everything the teacher had spent months teaching them. He thinks
about how she'd been the one teach Maureen to push the car down the street in neutral
before starting it up, so that they could sneak off late at night to the dance clubs. When they'd
gotten caught, Kathleen had been the one to try and take all of the blame.

And then he thinks about the night he'd found her in an abandoned dry cleaners, so full of
drugs and liquor that he'd had to carry her out over his shoulder while she'd remained
completely passed out. All of that had come before this. The good and the bad. One always
comes with the other. The key is to find more good than bad, and to hang onto it with as much
force as possible. He loves her fiercely.

"I'm happy for you too, baby," he nearly whispers. "And tell Henry I think he's a smart kid."
Kathleen looks up at him, and the look on her face reminds him of the innocence and mischief
she'd worn in her expression as a little girl. "It's his birthday in two days. I could take him to
dinner, you know. Reward him for his brilliance in choosing me as his girlfriend."
Elliot shakes his head, but he's grinning again anyways.
"How much is this gonna cost me?"
She shrugs, stealing one of his French fries while leaving her side salad untouched.

588
"Fifty bucks?" Kathleen smiles so adorably that her nose scrunches up just a little bit. "Or
you could give me a hundred and I could buy you lunch, too."

He shakes his head in amusement and takes a bite of his sandwich, realising that it's going to
be an expensive lunch. Then again it's nothing compared to what he's getting in return. The
price is sometimes nothing compared to what it's worth.
"In that case I woulda ordered the filet," he teases her between bites.
He's rewarded by a devilish sparkle in her eyes.
"Don't think you're getting dessert, either."
And then Kathleen laughs and the years fall away until she's once again just a little girl on a
stage determined to show off her newfound independence to her father. The here, the now.
Somehow it's both nothing like and more than he imagined.Two days ago he'd been
convinced that his world was falling apart, and yet here he sits. He is proof that on any given
day, things can turn around.
***

There are framed pictures on her desk that have sat right in front of her for years. There is a
picture of her mother, and in it Serena's arm is slung over Olivia's shoulder. It's a rare
moment in time when they were both smiling, and Serena's eyes are startlingly clear. For the
first few years the photo had been a reminder of why Olivia did what she did day in and day
out. Lately it's just been a piece of her history, something from a long time ago. A memory
now instead of a reason. Then there is the picture of her and Elliot. Olivia picks it up and
looks at it, trying to think back to the moment in which it was taken. It had been the third or
fourth year that they had been partnered, and Munch had caught the unguarded interaction
between the two of them. Her arms were folded across her chest and Elliot was smirking at her
while the rest of the precinct went on around them. Her chin is tipped up just a bit towards
him, and even then they were standing too close together. A reason now instead of a memory.

Olivia lets out a sigh and places the frame in the small, half-full brown box that rests on the
desk in front of her. A bag sits by her feet, and it contains the sparse contents of her locker
upstairs. Despite all of the years that she's been doing this job there isn't much to take home.
She knows that people are stealing glances at her - the patrol guys, the secretaries, the few
people from social services who are walking by. She doesn't care if they think she's been
forced on long-term leave. She doesn't care if they think she cracked after Gransden. It's a
relief to not care about what it looks like from the outside.

589
She'll call Fin, and she'll be the first to come see John when he wakes up - because he will. At
last check his doctor seemed to think his chances were improving. She's said what she needed
to convey to Don, and she had left a message on Melinda's phone, promising that she will
come see her next time she is in the city. With Alex the changes will mean that they might
finally grab lunch for no other reason than to shoot the shit. The only other goodbye that she
owes is to Adam, because even though it hasn't been long that she's known him, she already
considers him to be a friend.

He appears in her peripheral vision as if on cue.

"If it's because I haven't showered in over twenty-four hours, I can go do that you know.
Hell, I'll even throw in a shave."
Olivia smiles and looks back over her shoulder as Warrick walks towards her. His eyes are
bloodshot and his tie is halfway pulled apart. His exhaustion is painfully obvious.
She gives him a half-grin.
"Add in a haircut and you might just have a deal."
He rubs his dark hair and it only messes it up further.
"Now you're pushing it, Benson. I mean, I like you, but there's only so much sacrifice a man
can make. Besides, why mess up a good thing?"

The smile on her face grows. No one could have ever filled Elliot's shoes, but if anything
could have made the void even a tad bit smaller, it would have been working with Warrick.
She looks him in the eyes and holds his gaze. He doesn't look away.
"Technically it's just leave," she says quietly.
The corner of his lips quirk almost imperceptibly, but his expression remains somber.
“We both know that's a crock of shit." He looks past her then, as if searching for what he
wants to say. "I'm just startin' my time here, Olivia. And I know that I woulda learned a
helluva lot from you. But I'm gonna make sure that I remember what you're showing me by
walking away like this." He finally chances a glance at her again, and his eyes soften. "If done
right, walking away isn't about quitting."

It's uncharacteristic of Adam to be so philosophical, but she supposes that the last few days
have changed all of them a little bit. She exhales and her gaze drops to the photo of her and
Elliot that still sits at the top of the box. He leans in towards her.
"What you're showing me is that walking away is gonna be about hightailin' it to Jersey so I
can sleep with my partner," he adds in a deadpan, whispering the words into her ear.
She closes her eyes and starts laughing before she can stop herself.

590
"First of all, Lyssa would kill you. Second of all, you do realise that you could very well end up
partnered with Fin for a while, right?"

Adam leans back against her desk, stretching his feet out in front of him. He crosses his
ankles and folds his arms over his chest.
"Nope. I'm partnered with that. Good thing she's not my type and Lys knows it, or I have a
feeling I'd be up shit creek trying to explain the late hours all the time."
Olivia follows Adam's line of sight, searching for the newest addition to the unit. She spots
the woman immediately. She's blonde, athletic and petite. She's in her early thirties, and
she's got that Midwest glow about her, as if she's been raised on nothing but fresh air and
blue skies. Her long hair is swept up in a messy ponytail and she's wearing a new outfit that is
trying very hard to look like it's been salvaged from a vintage market. She's currently
standing on the threshold to the squad room and she's carrying a brown box bigger than the
one Olivia is currently packing. She's obviously got no idea where to go.

"I like women who don't look like they might blow away in a stiff wind," Adam continues,
making no move to peel himself off of Olivia's desk to go help his soon-to-be partner. "That,
on the other hand, will probably get tired just filling out paperwork. Forget tracking a perp or
God forbid, tackling said perp." His face scrunches up as if he smells something bad. "Where
are they recruiting these days? Sororities?"
Olivia sighs, watching as the woman's eyes land on a seemingly empty desk. It's not empty;
it's just that the owner of that desk doesn’t mark his space with photos and half-dead plants.
The owner of that desk prefers to store his photos on his iPhone and to keep his coffee cup in
the utility kitchen. The owner of that desk shoves all his paperwork in the top right drawer,
right next to the Mac laptop he prefers to use over the idle monstrosity of a computer that sits
atop the grey surface of the desktop. The woman heads for the desk, oblivious to her error.

"What's her name?" Olivia asks, letting out a breath as the memories of her first day come
back to her. She remembers the stiffness in her back, the fear and excitement that had warred
in her gut until she had thrown up a block before she had arrived at the precinct.
Adam cocks his head, watching as the woman sets the box down and begins to unpack it on
the desk she's chosen.
"Amanda Rollins. Apparently she's some hotshot forensic detective from Atlanta. Think
she's got a Southern twang? Think God hates me that much?" he muses under his breath.
"She probably goes by Mandy, or Manda, or something cutesy and nauseating like Andi."
Olivia knocks his shoulder with her own.

591
"Know what I called you behind your back for the first two weeks?"
He turns to look at her, squinting as if he absolutely does not believe he could warrant any
derogatory nickname at all. "Hanson."
He furrows his brows in mock consternation.
"Like the brothers who sing? That annoying doo wop song from high school?"
She rolls her eyes. "That was mmbop, and don't ask me how or why I know that. Suffice it to
say I've spent too many hours in a car on surveillance trying to pick radio stations that would
annoy Elliot. And no, Hanson as in Johnny Depp on 21 Jump Street. From my high school
years."

He just stares at her blankly. She can't tell if he's doing it on purpose or not. Then again, she
is that much older than him. Olivia rolls her eyes.
"He was a pretty boy detective who worked undercover vice amongst teenagers," she
explains. "No one suspected he was a full grown adult who could actually be trusted with a
firearm."
Adam makes a disgusted face.
"That's mean, Benson. You're leaving me like this and that's the parting thought you want to
send me off on my own with?"
Olivia smiles sweetly.
”You're not on your own. You've got Rollins."
"Fuck," he bites off, straightening from Olivia's desk. "I hope what you're doing to me is
worth it."

She watches as Rollins unpacks photos and two small disconcertingly healthy plants - granted,
one is a cactus - before pulling out new packs of colour-coded file folders and pens and small
notebooks as if it is the first day of school. Rollins will never use half of it, but her earnestness
reminds Olivia so much of herself back then. She thinks about the life ahead of her. She thinks
about how the days seem long and the nights feel too short when she's with Elliot. She thinks
about how the wooden floorboards of the beach house creak as they tell her that she finally
might have something solid beneath her feet for the first time.

She and Rollins still have something in common. It's a powerful thing to feel new again.
Rollins looks up at them in that moment and her eyes are so blue that Olivia can discern the
colour even from across the room.
"This desk alright fer me to use?" Her southern accent bends the words just a little bit, and
the gentle, drawling sound of her voice is incongruous with everything around her.
Olivia smiles without realising it.

592
"The kids will take to her," she says in a whisper just loud enough for Adam to hear her.
"They'll be fascinated with the idea that she talks funny and they'll trust her because she
looks like a Disney Princess. If she's got even half an instinct with them, she'll be the one they
gravitate to."

Adam remains silent, but he's standing straight now.

"It's his desk," Olivia calls out, nodding towards Adam. "He's sorry about his horrible
manners, but he isn't housebroken yet. Name's Adam Warrick and he'll be your partner."
Next to her, Adam rubs a hand down his tired face.
"You practically a member of the glee club now, Benson? That concussion getting to you?"
he mutters.

Across the room Detective Amanda Rollins smiles, completely unperturbed by how her future
partner is ignoring her. It's such an open and honest expression that Olivia can't help but like
her. She's too eager, sure, and she walked in with all of her ideal notions about justice and
protection and saving the world written all over her delicate features, but Olivia's glad about
all of it. She's glad that someone has the energy, the drive, the absolute belief that she herself
had once been consumed with. She’s glad there is someone else. Maybe that's the justice
she's been looking for all along. Maybe justice lives in the fact that there will always be
another person who is compelled to be a hero. Someone who will give it everything they have.
Maybe they will make a difference after all.

"You're Detective Benson, right?" Rollins asks eagerly. Her face falls almost immediately
when she realises that Olivia's picture has been all over the media over the last two days. The
press had been relentless in pursuing the story about Gransden. It's only because Olivia's
home address is religiously protected that she's had any peace at all. "Hell. I mean, I saw the
news, but I knew ya before that. I've been readin' up on y'all's cases, and man, it's a real
honour to come up here and work in this unit."

Olivia smiles again then, because the accent is ridiculous and the new clothes won't last and
she knows that Warrick will end up seeing everything through Rollins' eyes, even when he
doesn't want to.
She doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to because Rollins doesn't really require a
response.
"That desk good?" she asks Adam, arching her eyebrows and jutting her chin towards the
desk mirroring the one she has just learned is his.

593
Despite Adam's general unwelcoming response, Rollins grins beatifically. Her smile lights up
her whole face. Olivia catches the other woman's eyes. They are filled with intelligence and
patience. She's not naïve and full of innocent sunshine, she just wants people to think that she
is. It's how she disarms people. It's how she will earn the trust of the victims and it's how she
will engage the suspects until they break. Adam falls for it as planned.

"Yeah," he finally acquiesces, because anything less will fully pit him as the ass of the
partnership. "Yeah, that's yours. Set your stuff down and I'll show you around if you want."
Rollins flashes another one of those grins at him, and then she looks back at Olivia. She winks
before starting to pack her box up again, easily moving to the other desk. Olivia laughs softly,
and she thinks about how they used to say that she was the only one who could deal with
Elliot. And then she looks at Warrick, and she knows that he will be just fine after Olivia
leaves. He'll be better than fine. Rollins will have him eating out of the palm of her hand in no
time. The bullpen is no different than the rest of the world, she imagines. No matter what
happens, life within it somehow goes on.
***

It's late afternoon when he opens the door to her apartment. Lunch with Kathleen had been
followed by a list of mundane errands that needed to be done. Bank accounts he needed to
transfer, paperwork that had to be completed at the union office. When he walks in he stops
short, his fingers gripping the doorknob to her apartment. He doesn't close the door. Not
yet. He can't move. Olivia is directly in front of him, sprawled across one of her boxes,
reaching for something on the table just on the other side of it. He thinks she's reaching for
the tape dispenser, but he can't focus. Instead all he can see is her long, tanned legs in those
things she probably simply calls jean shorts. Standing straight, they'd probably be long
enough to be decent - he assumes - but from this angle all he sees is the way they cup her ass
and the way her thigh muscles flex as she stretches.

"Good timing," she mutters, half out of breath.

He agrees, but he can't say anything. Instead he now notices the slip of skin that is showing
from where her tank top pulls away from the waistband of those damned shorts. He grips the
knob tighter and tells himself to act like an adult. Even if he's aroused, just like that. Aroused
is a bullshit way to think of it, he concedes. He's fucking hard faster than a man his age ought
to be. He ought to be embarrassed about his reaction to her all the time.
He lets the door slam shut behind him.

594
"Olivia," he grates.
"Some help here, El. Come on," she huffs, finally closing her fingers around the packing
tape.

She doesn't straighten right away, and he forgives himself then and blames everything on her.
His jeans are too tight around his dick all of a sudden, and he's moving towards her before he
can stop himself. There is a bunch of masculine, possessive crap swirling around in his head
now, and he prays that he'll keep his mouth shut about all of it. His hand cups her waist, and
he's not gentle about it as he pushes himself against her. Olivia straightens immediately, a
throaty moan immediately breaking from her.
"Jesus."

His body is flush with hers then, and he forgets how gentle he'd managed to be with her last
night. She's warm and her skin is slightly damp with perspiration already. Elliot slips his palm
beneath her tank top and over her stomach, feeling the way it contracts as she gasps. He trails
the dip of her belly button and rubs his thumb across it, feeling her push back against him
instinctively. Her hair tickles his nose and he closes his eyes. He aches for her all the time.

"Missed you," he nearly growls against her ear. He lets his hand move higher, over her
ribcage and then to the full weight of her satin-covered breast. Until Olivia he'd never
experienced the satisfaction of really touching a woman with curves, a woman whose lushness
and inhibition make him lose his goddamned mind.
"Apparently," she retorts, tilting her head to the side to give his mouth room on her skin.
He takes what Olivia is offering simply because he can. There are no more boundaries, no
more reasons why not. He gets the heady feeling that the world is going to give them a chance
at this, and the rest of it is up to them. He slides his lips across her jaw, her neck, over the
curve of her ear and he feels more than hears the way her breathing changes. Her clothes
aren't particularly revealing, but every inch of exposed skin - her legs, her shoulders, her arms
- it all seems overwhelming to him.

She tosses the tape onto one of the boxes and then turns abruptly in his arms. Olivia's eyes
are heated with need already and he's only got seconds to take it all in before she's back on
him again, fusing her mouth to his. She's as hungry as he is for this. He can't kiss her and not
be in her, the two things somehow can't be separated. He's got one hand in her hair then so
he can lightly tug her head to the side as he pushes his tongue in her mouth, and his other
hand is gripping her hip. He's moving with her, guiding her backwards and she is letting him.

595
It doesn't have to be the bedroom; it can be on the floor for God's sake. The couch. He
doesn't give a shit. Starving. Starving.

Maybe it's the boxes and suitcases that surround him that are making him feel this way.
Possessive, like he's won something and he probably has. She won't guarantee him anything
long term, but there's no way he's letting her go either so they'll have a battle on their hands
if she ever tries to leave him now. The back of her legs hits the couch and she won't let go of
him, she won't pull her mouth from his so he's leaning over with her, guiding her back and
then -It's the way that she sits there, staring up at him. Her hair is mussed and wild, long and
tousled in a way he has never seen it before. Her lips are swollen, and her shorts creep up on
her thighs. Olivia just waits, never pulling her luminous eyes from his.

He stands there, and he's got to calm the hell down. It's everything around him that is killing
him now. The idea that she's packing to come move in with him is the most arousing thing
he's ever known.
"Hell if you're ever moving back here," he promises softly, and there is a hard edge in his
voice that he hadn't expected.
Instead of retreating, Olivia's lips lift slightly. Then her gaze drops and she's looking at the
front of his jeans. She leans forward as if she's about to undo them, but he steps back because
he doesn't trust himself. If she touches him, he's going to lose sight of what he wants now.
Elliot leans over and grabs her behind her knees, tugging her down on the couch. Then he's
on her, reaching for the button on her shorts and she's lifting her hips and he's tugging them
down, down, down. He's on his knees then, and she's gasping when his mouth meets the
inside of her right thigh.

"El-" breaks from her. It's a protest or a plea, but he never figures it out because then she's
arching. He grips her legs and shoves aside the scrap of lace that keeps him from her. One of
her hands makes a futile attempt at grasping the seat cushion of the couch, and her other hand
lands on the back of his head. His tongue makes intimate contact with her and she cries out.
He doesn't ease her into it or tease her or give her the option of moving. His mouth is hungry
on her, demanding and aggressive. He takes her without caution and she's so, so wet around
him. Mine.

The thought hits him fast and furious, and he doesn't try to control it. He doesn't want to
control anything anymore. It's the freedom he wants, it's the space to do and feel exactly what
he wants. He is no longer a man of excuses or apologies. He isn't a man who will hold back,
and fuck, fuck the rules.

596
Olivia's heel hits his shoulder blade hard and her fingers bite into his scalp. Elliot pushes a
thick finger into her and she whimpers or chokes, or maybe that's just his name she's calling
over and over and over. He owns the world again. She bucks up against him, pulling him
towards her instead of pushing him away. He can feel her body pulsing dangerously against
his lips, beneath the relentless pressure of his tongue. Between them, every single barrier is
gone.

Olivia comes fast and hard for him, and he stays on her and in her as she lets herself go. It's
both sooner than he had expected and years later than it should have been. Then again, what
matters is that they are here in this moment at all. He bows his head against her, and they are
both trying to catch their breath.

In the midst of cardboard boxes and packing tape, the last of their concrete walls fall.

PART FOUR

Olivia walks out of the Phoenix Café holding the two drinks and a small brown bag.
They'd driven all the way to the Upper West because this café makes her favourite ground
blend and she had wanted to buy some to take to Jersey. She'd been looking forward to a
traditional cold coffee to go too, but he'd dared her to try the special of the day. She hopes to
God for his sake that a Vanilla Peach Cobbler Iced Latte is actually digestible, or it's entirely
possible that she will dump hers into his lap and let him suffer for the two hour drive.

Elliot is leaning against the side of the truck, his ankles and arms crossed and his sunglasses
on. His lips twist in a smug smile. She flushes, because even though she can't see his eyes she
fully believes that he just gave her the once over.
"You realise that even with your sunglasses on I still know you're leering?" she tells him,
shaking her head. Even after their frantic session in her old living room this afternoon, the
man still seems to have sex on the brain.

Not that she can blame him. At this moment she is seriously questioning their decision to
leave her place a little while ago. If she wasn't so determined to get to the beach house
tonight, they probably wouldn't have left the apartment at all. His dark grey t-shirt hugs every
one of his muscles, and the silver watch that he wears seems like it's straining to stay on
around the sheer width of his wrist. His light grey shorts grip his ass, and his jaw pulses with
cocky amusement.

597
There is something about him that just seems to thrum with sexuality. She's probably always
been aware of it, but now, without the rules in place, it's like he isn't trying to control himself
at all. Olivia isn't complaining.

"Should I be embarrassed?" he retorts. "I'm allowed to look at what I've got." He doesn't
move, but his smirk grows as she hands him the concoction.
She should dump it on him, but she doesn't want to call any attention to herself. The press
had still been outside of her apartment, and Elliot had been forced to use the service exit to
the alley to carry out her things. She doesn't see anyone following them, but no use risking it.
He'll get away with that last comment. For now. Elliot jerks his head towards her car which is
parked right behind his. The convenient NYPD parking placard tucked into the dashboard
will also be something that she misses once she is officially retired from the department.
"Sure you don't want me to drive the Mustang?"

His truck is loaded down with her suitcases and the two plants she'd spent years trying to
keep alive. Her car, on the other hand, is free and clear and the top is down. She can't keep
the grin off her face. The day is stunningly bright and for just a moment, she doesn't hear the
traffic that surrounds them. She's wearing flip flops, jean shorts and a tank top and the sun is
sliding over her shoulders and her thighs. It's a strange sensation to feel like she is on
vacation in the middle of the city but she is already letting go of the sense of responsibility that
had characterised her days here.

"Not a chance you're driving it," she assures him, slipping her sunglasses on. "Ever."
He reaches for her, and out here in the perfect summer heat, her body aligns with his. She is
aware of the NYPD vehicle parked one block south, and she ignores it. Today she is just a
regular person. Sure, she's got her personal weapon in the car, but she's not on duty. She
might not even be a cop for much longer. Not a cop. Olivia exhales. Elliot's hand slips
dangerously close to her ass, even as she holds herself a little bit off of him. He's absolutely
pushing all the limits, but she kind of likes it. A lot. He's trouble and mischief and suddenly
full of sexy as hell expressions that make her feel like she is being devoured alive. She likes
that, too.

"Ever?" he challenges.
"Ever."
"What if I have something you want?" he taunts, arrogant as shit.
Jesus. Even out here in the middle of the sidewalk in the middle of the day, he can make her
burn in ways that the sun will never figure out. She prays that her constant need for Elliot's
598
body and his hands on her will subside a bit as she gets her fill of him. She highly doubts it, but
she hangs onto the possibility that one day she might actually find herself in control of her
response to his proximity. She does her best to dish it back.
"What could you possibly have that I want?" The attempt is a failure. Her voice sounds too
throaty, too much like she's trying to entice him and that's because she probably is.

For a moment Olivia is again aware of the hot wind that rustles the trees in the park across the
street. She hears the sound of horns and the voices of the people passing by. She wonders if
she will ever get bored of the relentless crash of the waves at the beach house, and if she will
make trips up to the city just to get her fill. It's only two hours away, she reminds herself. She
can come up for lunches with Casey, dinners with Alex. She can drag Elliot up for a Broadway
show or she can drive up alone just to sit in Central Park for the afternoon. She'll have
someone to shop for at Christmas, so she can roam the streets of SoHo with a purpose, or
maybe she'll surprise Fin or Warrick every now and then with lunch, just to make sure they're
doing okay.

She'll check in on Rollins. The woman is going to need all the support she can get. Olivia can
have the best of both worlds if that's what she wants.It startles her every time she makes the
realisation.
"Got a motorcycle."
His words jar her out of her reverie. She straightens and steps back from him.
"You've got a what?"

He takes a deliberately long sip of the coffee, which she will never admit is actually not
horrible. He's being nonchalant and ridiculous, and it never fails to stun her just how much
the job had festered inside of him. Without the constraints and responsibility he is a different
man. She thinks about his mother, and how she had actually known something of her son that
even Elliot hadn't seen. Bernadette Stabler had been acutely aware of this side of her child.
It must have torn Bernie apart to watch Elliot coil himself tighter and tighter. Olivia vows that
she will not let it happen to him again. If there is one thing she can do for his mother, it's to
watch out for her son in the way that the older woman had believed Olivia could.

"My Dad's old bike. Fixed it up last winter and it's sitting in the garage good as new."
The idea of Elliot sitting in the garage with grease on his fingers and tools in his hands makes
her smile. It also might turn her on a bit, but then again everything about him does at the
moment.
"I like bikes," she says casually.
599
Truth is, she loves them. She'd had a boyfriend for a few months in college who had been an
avid biker and Olivia had come to love the feeling of dodging through traffic or taking a long
drive upstate for the day. There is something about the power of it beneath her, rumbling to
life. She knows more about their engines, the speed and the weight of them than anyone
would ever guess.

"I know," Elliot grins smugly. "You mentioned the biker boy toy once when we first started
working together. So see? I do have something you want."
"Depends on what kind of bike it is."
"'73 Harley FLH."
Her breath stops in her chest. She flips her sunglasses onto the top of her head and stares at
him.
"For real?"
He chews on his lower lip for a moment before he answers.
"Yeah. Thinking ‘bout selling it though. Was going to use the money to build out the attic
space into a loft for the girls. Trying to keep my mom's life insurance for the twins' college
fund."
"Don't sell yet, El. I want to contribute to the house too. Don't intend to freeload, you
know? So let’s, let's talk about it."

She knows he's up to something because he's trying not to smile and failing miserably.
"Sure. Right after we talk about sharing the Mustang."
Beneath the stifling Manhattan sun, Olivia gives him a throaty laugh.
"Such an asshole," she mutters before walking back towards her car.
"You like it," he calls out.
She slides into her seat, feeling the hot searing of the leather on the backs of her thighs.
Another few minutes out here, and it would have burned her. She will never admit it, but he is
right. She does like it.

A lot.
***

There is no backup of traffic on the George Washington Bridge, and maybe that's fitting.
Olivia can feel the wind in her hair and on her skin. She had tried to tie her hair back, but it
escapes her ponytail and whips against her face anyways. The sun is relentless on her legs, and
the sunscreen she'd used won't last the whole ride down to Jersey. The rest of the bottle is

600
tucked into her bag that sits on the floor of the passenger side and she'll probably have to
reapply halfway through the ride.

It smells like coconut when she puts it on. It smells like summer and clean things and it makes
her think of the beach. She's going to live on the beach. It’s impossible and ridiculous and
perfect all at once. It's the proverbial fresh start, the second phase, the new slate. Letting
herself fall in love with Elliot is like discovering that her favourite book starts again right in
the moment when she had thought it ended forever. The beach. Jesus. She laughs a little bit,
and the sun sinks inside of her. Elliot’s truck is right in front of her, and she sees the trunk of
it piled high with her things. Her heart is in her throat, but it's not uncomfortable. She can't
believe it's only been weeks since she'd last made this drive to the beach house. She'd been
free falling then, and now it feels like she's found a safe place to land. With him.

They make their way through the EZ Pass toll lane and then the Mustang is climbing higher
and onto the bridge. Beneath her on both sides the Hudson ripples and mirrors the sunshine.
Boats slice through the river, leaving trails of white foam in their wake. She turns on the radio,
and the song that plays is folksy. Upbeat. Simple and easy. It's one of those driving songs, and
she raises the volume. Despite all of the wind, she can't breathe. Olivia presses her lips
together and accelerates. The road blurs a little bit and she focuses on the pavement that
disappears beneath her tires.

There is a part of her that knows she will never come back to Manhattan for good, despite her
warnings to Elliot this morning. It's now, in the privacy of her own space, that she feels her
eyes well. Her chest feels too full, and she's grieving and believing all at once. I think we just
did the one thing that is gonna allow me to sleep tonight. Echoes of her life fill her ears and
it's not the haunting moments that she remembers now.

The first years are right there, and she can almost hear their voices, as if no time has passed at
all. You just used your get out of jail free card on this case, Olivia. There's only one in the pack.
It's a collage of memories, playing back in her mind in sepia tones. It's paying homage to the
journey even though she's reached the destination. I sure as hell wouldn't drive to Queens to
save your ass. Yeah, you would. All of them, armed with righteousness and their stages of
youth. She thinks about John, and he's wearing a black suit and his lips are twisted into a
smirk. Hello and welcome to Parole Phone. If you're paying with sex, press 1. If you want to
make a donation to a phoney charity, press 2. Cassidy and his innocence. Jeffries and her lack
of boundaries. The only us and them I see is cops and criminals. She sees Fin, and he's
walking in on his first day. He's full of defiance and he's tough as hell for awhile. I'm his
601
father. And you're also a cop, and no matter how hard you try there's no way to separate the
two. She remembers pulling up in the dark of night to the caravan of Feds that would take
Alex away, and how she'd first truly understood then the horrendous price they were all
paying. Alex, we can't always win. That's just it, even when we win, we don't. She thinks
about Casey and how her rookie year bluster had disintegrated over time, until she'd lost
sight of the line. Lesson number one, no one can handle the children. How do you? I'm not
gonna lie to you, it doesn't get easier.

Olivia blinks back the tears. Her lungs burn in the stifling air. Maybe this is what it will come
down to. Maybe the losses will fade and she'll only be left with the memories of feeling
invincible within the nucleus of her squad. Her squad. She whips off her sunglasses when her
vision blurs. Olivia uses the back of her hand to furiously wipe away the moisture that streaks
her cheeks. She knows it's time to go, but it doesn't mean she won't honour the experience,
both good and bad.

Why should I keep you together? Why should I keep you at all?

But he had. Their captain had held them all together and the experiences had been the
unbreakable thread. Her stomach heaves and she's crying then and it's the catharsis. It's not
letting go, it's the need to hold on to what mattered. They had mattered, each and every one
of them. She looks up, and she can see the Manhattan skyline in her rearview mirror. It's
because they still matter that they have to move on now. There's a saying about one door
closing and another opening, and she hangs onto it as truth, even as the wind dries her face as
fast as it dampens. She follows Elliot now, and the lanes are opening up ahead. Wide open
space and it's a road to somewhere.

All my life I've been alone. I wanted to be part of a family so bad.

She laughs then, right in the middle of her goodbyes. She'd had family. With all of them. Her
family hadn't been given to her at birth, but she'd found it anyways. Manhattan fades from
view, but she knows it's still there if she ever needs it. Not that she believes she will. Loved by
him, she has become a woman of infinite possibilities. And today, she thinks, she will finally
begin her search for the rest of what will be hers.

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603
 Chapter Thirty-Four

T
here is something about the ocean that has seeped into her. The motion of it lives
beneath her skin, in the rhythm of her heartbeat, in the way the texture of her hair has
permanently changed, in the way it has smoothed out the lines of her skin and
illuminated her eyes. Then again, that last part might not have anything to do with the ocean at
all. She suspects that part has to do with Elliot, with his kids, with all of, this.

Olivia stands knee-deep in the mid-summer warmth of the Atlantic, and she laughs. It's the
kind of laughter that starts deep in her belly and it's no longer an unfamiliar feeling to her.
Her eyes always water a little when the contentment pervades so thoroughly. She'd been
without for so long that she never fails to comprehend the magnitude of the gifts she now lives
with. She is thankful every single day. What a difference a year makes.

She turns her back to the waves now, and Eli is waiting again on the edge of the shore. He
waits each time for the crest to build behind her and then he lets out a roar, racing on his small
legs towards the water. He falls every time about the time he gets to where Olivia stands and
she has to quickly haul him up before he goes under, but he's determined that one time he
will manage to stay upright through the charge. He's practicing, he duly informed her, for his
chance to join the Power Rangers. I bet I can be a blue Power Ranger like Kevin if I can walk
on water, he had said this morning over his cereal, his expression conveying all the
seriousness of the situation. If I can walk on water, they'll have to let me be one. For the last
half hour, they've been working hard on his superhero audition.

"You sure you don't want to go rent a paddle board, Eli? Might be easier?" she calls out.
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He rubs his hand down his wet face to clear his eyes, and it reminds her so much of Elliot. Eli
shakes his head earnestly.
"Power Rangers don't care if it's easy! I gotta be tough if I'm gonna be able t'help Kevin
fight the bad guys, Livia!"
She stands corrected. Besides, she can't really argue with his logic. She'd been tough and
stubborn once upon a time too so that she could fight the bad guys. She still fights them now,
she supposes, but she does it differently. Her life as it stands is wholly unexpected, and she
doesn't want to change a thing.

She watches as Eli lets out the victory yell and then charges into the water. His legs pump hard
against the incoming tide and his one arm is raised in a defiant fist towards the sky.
"Die Nighloks!" he screams.
He almost makes it to where Olivia stands before the water hits his waist and he starts to go
under. In the split second before his head would submerge she hooks her arms beneath Eli's
and hangs onto him. His slippery body clings to hers and he laughs.
"Almost did it!" he grins happily as she instantly lifts him up onto her waist. He's almost
getting too big to carry, but she doesn't care. She walks them towards the shoreline, fully
expecting that they will redo the entire process yet again. These days, she has the time.

Beneath the glare of the late morning sun, she looks into luminous blue irises that are fringed
with thick, dark brown lashes. Against the towhead blonde of his hair, his eyes are majestic.
Breathtaking, really. She leans her head towards his until his wet button nose touches hers.
"Are we doing it again, or you ready for some lunch, monkey?"
It's the way his head tiredly settles onto her damp shoulder that makes her stomach clench
and her chest fill with emotion.
"If you're hungry, we can have lunch now," he murmurs amenably.
That's her cue that he's starving. Eli is a perfect Stabler in that he will never admit that he's
giving in to anything.

When they hit the beach, she sets him down and Eli races ahead to grab his Power Rangers
towel. She absently wonders how much longer they have with this obsession of his. He
normally lasts about three months, and then it's onto something else. Elliot tells her that she
can't indulge each fad with toys and games and books and clothes, but she ignores him. She
can do whatever she wants. Besides, the Toys R Us is right next to the Costco, so it's not like
she has to go out of her way to pick up the things they need.

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Olivia scoops up her own towel and she is rubbing it over her face when she hears the back
door to the house slide open. The intense heat of the early July sun dries her shoulders almost
instantly.

"Lizzie! I almost did it!" Eli screeches, dropping his towel as he runs towards his sister. "I
almost walked on water!"
The laughter within Olivia is constant, even when the world around her doesn't see it or hear
it. She holds the newfound peace in the places within her that have quieted.
She is grounded, maybe for the first time in her life. Olivia wraps her towel around her torso
and then follows Eli up and onto the patio where Lizzie is standing. Elliot's daughter is
wearing a long, light blue sundress and flats, already dressed for the barbeque they are having
in a couple of hours. She's also wearing a very smug expression. It’s when Gladys walks out
onto the patio behind Lizzie that Olivia starts to suspect that the two of them have been up to
no good. They usually are conspiring about something or the other.

"So, guess where we were this morning?" Lizzie taunts, grinning.

Olivia searches for her flip flops and Eli's, well aware that the concrete will burn the soles of
their feet if she doesn't hurry and find them. She spots them beneath the table and reaches
underneath.
"I'm scared of you, Elizabeth. Really. Truly. Terrified actually. When you add Gladys to the
mix, I'm convinced the two of you could conjure the apocalypse."
It's been one of the remarkable dynamics to emerge over the past year. While Olivia and
Lizzie have developed a surprisingly comfortable relationship that hovers between sisterly and
an adult friendship, Gladys and Lizzie have become mischievous partners in crime. They are
always cooking up some scheme or another, and usually Elliot and Jack end up the victims.
Olivia's been spared for the most part, but all good things must end, she supposes.

Lizzie rolls her eyes.

"Don't worry. This won't cost you and Dad anything. I mean, not a lot. A little, maybe. But
we actually found you a way to save some money in the long run."
By the time she's got her shoes on, Olivia realises Eli is already inside, probably tracking
water through the kitchen as he searches for cookies or potato chips. She straightens and
shields her eyes, looking back and forth between Lizzie and Gladys. It’s the way Gladys is
practically bursting to tell her something that scares her the most.
"Well?" Lizzie prods. "Are you gonna guess?"
"Just tell her," Gladys nudges Elliot's daughter. "Tell her and then I'll go get it."

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Olivia finds the last vestiges of cop mode inside of her and narrows her eyes at the usual
suspects.
"Spill it, Stabler," she commands.
"We were in Gladys' attic looking for the volleyball net and I found something. Gladys said
you could have it." Lizzie widens her eyes innocently, because even after living together for a
year, she knows Olivia sucks completely at true discipline of any sort. Not that Lizzie is a child
who normally needs to be reminded of the rules, but there are moments, like these, in which
Lizzie reverts to her teenaged ways.
"I'm so lucky," Olivia laughs, unable to keep up the pretence of concern. "So tell me what
I've won."

It's when Lizzie's expression softens that Olivia feels her gut twist. Even Gladys is looking at
her too intently. It's the older woman's gentle smile that captures Olivia's attention and holds
it, even after Lizzie starts talking.
"We found Gladys' old wedding dress. It's perfect, Olivia. It's the most perfect dress. It
needs some work, sure, and you're way taller, so you'll have to add to it or shorten it,
depending on what length you want, but it's this soft crème colour, and it's so simple, so
perfectly simple and-"
"You should have it," Gladys interjects, saving Lizzie from her uncharacteristic nervous
rambling.

Olivia doesn't move. All she hears is the ocean and the seagulls, and maybe the sounds of her
own shuddering breath. Wedding dress. Her eyes close for just a second, and she takes
another breath, trying to slow her racing heartbeat. It still scares her. Elliot had asked her late
one night as they'd been curled up together on one of the loungers on the sand. She'd been
half asleep and tucked into him beneath the blanket, shivering a little because of the early
April evening wind. She'd been wearing his sweatshirt, and she'd been tipsy on the wine.
He'd been brushing his fingers against her temple. Marry me, he'd murmured softly.
She'd been so scared, so instantly panicked that she hadn't answered. It wasn't him who she
was afraid of, it was her. It was another step in this crazy journey, and she'd reverted to her
past, to the woman she had been. She'd already been living with him for over eight months
and she didn't have any regrets, yet the question had thrown her off her axis. Marriages fail,
which means all of it could go away and then what? Why was he always pushing for more,
when what they had was already so much? She didn't want to change the dynamics because
change of any sort inherently brought risk.

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She hadn't said a word; instead she'd pretended to be asleep. He'd waited a few minutes, and
then he'd laughed softly, so quietly it was almost a whisper.

I know you're awake, Benson. I can feel your heart ready to fly out of your chest. Just say
you'll think about it, alright?

She'd nodded wordlessly against him, exhaling harshly onto his neck.
She still hasn't given him an answer and it's been over two months since then. She doesn't
know why she can't seem to say it. The yes sticks in her throat, caught in a part of her psyche
that still has no clue how to really protect her at all. Two weeks ago, he'd recruited Lizzie.
How he'd convinced his child that he should get married again, Olivia has no idea. But his
daughter had been sneaky about it. First the wedding magazines had shown up on the coffee
table, and then the InStyle Wedding specials had shown up on the DVR. Last week Lizzie had
upped the ante, outright asking if Olivia was planning a beach wedding or a more formal
affair? Olivia had just stared at her, and Lizzie had gone on, asking if it was possible for it to be
scheduled around one of her breaks from Rutgers, or better yet before her first semester even
started.

But the wedding dress and Gladys knowing - this is all breaking new ground.
It's Gladys who speaks up first.
"Maybe we should give Olivia some time, kiddo," she says softly. She retreats immediately,
going into the house and calling for Eli while expecting Lizzie to follow her.
Instead, Lizzie stands still. Olivia feels the anxiety slide across her skin. Marriage. It just
seems impossible. Even now, even after all this time together, she is still sometimes hit with
the feeling that the bottom will drop out. She doesn't tell Elliot, but the fear of getting hurt is
still there. It's diminishing every day, but it's not gone entirely. There's no way a lifetime of
self-protection will just give way, even when she wants it to.

She looks at Lizzie then, and his daughter's eyes are serious, intent. Gone is the playfulness
that had been there just a moment before. This is Elizabeth, the young woman who she has
lived with for the past year, the one who has been as much a friend to her as anyone ever has or
ever could be.
"I'm leaving, Liv," she begins quietly. "Another month and I'm moving into the dorms.
Richard's up at New Paltz, Kathleen's got her life in the city and Maureen will probably get
engaged in the next year or so. Even Mom closes on the Marlton house next week. We're all
living our lives, doing what we want to." Lizzie shakes her head, her gaze never wavering from
Olivia's. "He needs this, Olivia. I know that and you know that. He told me he's giving you

608
time, and I told him he is an idiot if he leaves this up to you." She gives Olivia a wry grin.
"You need to make an honest man outta my Dad."

She doesn't know what to say. The truth is that while fear still lives in her, so does faith. Elliot
is everything to her. This life is everything. She's whole here, with him, with his children. She
sleeps with his body wrapped around hers every night; she routinely awakens to the sound of
his shower running in the mornings. She fights with him and makes up with him and she's
kissed him up against almost every wall in the house at some point. She thinks of being peeled
away from this world by circumstance and that is the thought that is most paralysing. Her old
apartment in Manhattan, the old job - it seems like a lifetime ago and it is. It is another lifetime
that she doesn't want to return to. That she can't. Being without Elliot is no longer an option
at all.

There is no reason not to marry him. Yet she hasn't said yes.
"He pushed you last time, Olivia. Let him do it again. As his kid, I'm not supposed to admit
that he knows what he's doing, but he does. I've never, I’ve never seen him so sure of himself.
I know what it looks like when he's unhappy, and he's so, he’s so good, right now Liv." Her
lips lift, and Lizzie tilts her head a little. "You're practically married anyway, so what's the
difference? Besides, I bet Maureen fifty bucks you'd say yes before I leave for school, and I
could use the cash."

Before Olivia can get a word in, his daughter turns on her heels and follows the others inside.
Olivia lifts her chin up into the sunlight and closes her eyes again. She thinks about what it
would be to wear the weight of a ring on her hand. She thinks about walking around all day
with that binding reminder of her home, her life, her place is this world on her. She thinks
about curling up to Elliot, the words his wife echoing in her chest. She thinks about how he
first snuck the keys to the Mustang in the early morning hours two weeks ago, but he gamely
traded with her, leaving the keys to the bike he's never even ridden on her end table at the
very same time. She thinks about how his face slides slowly into a grin sometimes when he
thinks she isn't looking, and how it always steals her breath. She thinks about his voice in her
ears, coaxing her as his body drives her over the edge and then brings her back again.

Her husband.

He is already the man she is in love with.She inhales deeply, and she lets the ocean rush in
once again.
***
609
"Asshole!"

Elliot groans, letting the twenty pound bag of ice drop into the waiting ice chest. He really
should intervene. Eli is going to pick up this language and then it'll cause all sorts of
problems at school. It'll be like when seven-year-old Dickie picked up on the way his father
said son-of-a-bitch all the time and had promptly used it to describe his teacher after she'd
scolded him for squirting his juice box at some little girl. There will be parent teacher
conferences involved, and if there is one thing Elliot hates, it's disciplinary parent- teacher
conferences.

"You are a special kind of douchebag, Dickwad!" Kathleen curses, trying to get her dress to
dry after her brother's successful attempt at using her for Super Soaker target practice.
"Christ, Dad, who the hell bought him that thing?"
"I think it's Olivia's Fourth of July present to Eli," he says, straightening and searching for
the cases of soda that he's supposed to start chilling in the cooler.
Kathleen groans.
"Seriously? First of all, how come we never used to get Fourth of July presents and second of
all, it's bigger than Eli. It holds like nine gallons of water and...fuck!"

Elliot can't really blame his daughter for the truck driver string of expletives that follows. His
college-bound son just managed to let loose with another blast of water from the plastic gun
and it hits Kathleen right on the neck before she can move out of the way.
"Richard," Elliot bellows. "Get your ass over here right now!"
"Yeah, Richard! Get your ass over here right now!" Eli calls helpfully.
Awesome. Of course his kid would choose to follow his lead.
"Eli, you don't know what an ass is. Don't use the word," he scolds, spotting the sodas but
not seeing the bottles of water. And the beer, where the hell is the beer?
He really needs the beer.
"I do so!" Eli protests. "An ass is a butt! Maureen always says her ass looks big when she's
looking at her butt!"

Maureen comes out of the house, both hands gripping cases of beer. One is a fruity light
blend though, and Elliot really does not understand the purpose of that at all. He knows Olivia
drinks real beer, so he assumes this is Maureen's doing.
"You had to have a fifth kid, Dad? Really? You know, it's not too late to return Eli," she
deadpans, loud enough for his youngest to hear.

610
What he'd really like to do is return the fruity beer. He keeps his mouth shut because he
knows better these days.
"You can't return me!" Eli giggles, amused by his sister's teasing. "I'm gonna return you!"
The childish threat is lost on Maureen, who has such a soft spot for her youngest sibling that
she sets the cases down before scooping him up and pretending to eat his belly, getting the
desired response of uncontrollable laughter.
"You can't get rid of me, munchkin. I was here first! You got that? First!"

"Which also means you're old as hell," Dickie mutters, weaving through everyone to reach
for the bag of potato chips on the table. The water gun is slung across his body like an
automatic weapon and he slips it around so it rests on his back before tearing open the bag.
"Those chips are for everyone, asswipe," Kathleen says, smacking her brother on the side of
the head. "Put ‘em down."
"Jesus! Don't hit me! Which Einstein bought one bag for twenty people? You? That's just
being cheap. Bet you didn't even splurge on dip. Now who's the ‘asswipe'?"
He did this, Elliot thinks. He procreated five times. Well four, but the net result is the same.
Total and utter chaos.
"There are ten more bags inside, calm down," Elliot bites off, trying to get to the cases his
daughter had set down.

He grabs the beer Maureen and Jeff had brought and twists the top off of a Corona. It's a
perfect day, and he's got all of his kids out here, and really, this should be fun. That's the goal
at least. Some of the neighbours are coming by, and they'll be able to see the fireworks at the
pier from here, and he's even got a surprise for Olivia. Well, a few surprises. This should be
good. Really.

"Maur, you brought chick beer? You might as well have brought me tampons!" Dickie
grouses.
"The beer isn't for you, Richard," she scolds, setting Eli down. "You're not old enough.
There's juice boxes though, that seems to be more your speed."
"Dad?" Eli asks, tapping insistently on Elliot's stomach. "Dad, what's tampons?"
Elliot pretends not to hear and instead downs half the beer bottle. Next year he'll just take
Olivia someplace quiet for the Fourth. A quiet cabin in the woods maybe. Something that's
not on the map. Something out of cell phone range. Something that's got a big tub and a
king-sized bed and not much else. Next year Kathy's got the kids for the Fourth, so it seems
plausible, at least. He'll focus on that. On total quiet a year from now.

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"Eli!"
Elliot looks down to see what has caused his older son to yell. Ignored by Elliot, Eli had very
quietly taken the opportunity to pull the trigger on the water gun slung around Dickie's back.
The resulting effect is that the back of Dickie's shorts is now soaking wet. That's when the
door slides open again, and Elliot looks up. Olivia is standing there smiling, and she locks
eyes with him. She's holding a piece of white paper, as if she's just printed something off the
computer.

"Guess what I just got?" she says, completely oblivious to the absolute mess of noise and
swear words around her.
There is something in her expression that kills him and he wouldn't change it for the world.
There is a serenity in her eyes that slows everything inside of him. She looks gloriously at
home here, and the realisation never ceases to amaze him. For a woman who had lived alone
for so long, she seems to thrive on the frenetic activity that surrounds her in moments like
these. He doesn't think any of his kids have heard her. They are moving all around, grabbing
drinks, fighting over the water gun, rearranging the loungers. He hears her though, he always
does.

Her lips lift higher.

"They want it."
His heart stops, and he closes the distance between them.
"You're serious?" he lets out before he can stop himself. "I mean, I knew they would," he
amends, scanning the email she has just printed out. It's a quick note from Britt Phillips, who
later that day would be joining the picnic at their house.

L-, it's a go!!! We're locked for a title, too - they love In Defence of Angels. You'll get the
advance we proposed, and they want an option on the next one. They want our first pass in
thirty days - you ready? We have tons of work to do! See you soon girl! xo, Bri

He pushes Olivia back gently into the house and he follows her in. He slides the door shut
behind them and it muffles all of the noise. He's moving with her then, back through the
family room and into the hallway, straight into their bedroom, his hand sliding over her neck
and into her hair. When they are safely in the bedroom, he shuts the door and backs her up
against it with his body, the paper falling from his grip.
"Jesus," he murmurs, dropping his forehead to hers. "Liv."

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Olivia slips her hands around his waist and for a moment, all they do is breathe. He can feel
her trembling just the slightest bit, and his hands slide over the curves that are so familiar to
him now. He knows that she shivers when he trails his fingers against the side of her waist; he
knows that she loves the tease of his mouth before he takes hers. He knows what to do to
make her burn, and it does it often. But for right now he just holds her. She’s worked so hard
for this. He knows what this means to her.

"I'm so proud of you," he mumbles against her jaw.

She stays still against him, and he knows she's adjusting to the stability and surety of what is
to come. He'd been terrified when she hadn't jumped at the chance to teach at the Academy
with him. He'd spent months waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to say she was going
back to New York. The first few weeks - months - they had been far from perfect. He'd been
antsy and she'd been a little lost, and nothing had been a guarantee. Surprisingly, it had been
the Gransden trial that had saved them.

Olivia had finally agreed to a single interview after the trial with a female reporter from CNN
who had been following the case for weeks. She'd trusted the reporter; she had sat with her
and talked off the record in the hallways of the courthouse in the weeks before Gransden was
convicted. The journalist - Jenna Kane - had listened, she had asked smart questions and
hadn't betrayed Olivia's trust, even when she could have had the story of the year. Olivia had
grown to like the woman, as had Elliot. Jenna had become a friend, a confidant to Olivia, so
much so that there were actually many days that Elliot hadn't felt needed at the trial so long as
Jenna would be there.

Olivia had rewarded Jenna's loyalty and discretion by doing the live interview with her after
the trial was over, bravely and publicly detailing her horrific experience in that basement at
Columbia. Olivia had come across as who she was - poised, articulate, fact-driven and strong
as hell. The audience had fallen for her immediately. The fact that the camera loved Olivia
hadn't been lost on anyone at CNN either. Six days after the interview, a little girl - the
daughter of a prominent political supporter of the mayor, no less - went missing in
Manhattan. Warrick and Rollins had the case, and Jenna had asked Olivia to cover it for the
network as a contributing analyst. With her inside knowledge of investigative procedure, the
trust she'd earned by her law enforcement peers and the fact that she knew precisely what to
reveal and what not to, Olivia's on-air career had been borne.

His kids thought it was cool as hell that she was on television, but Olivia wanted more. She
didn't mind the occasional cases, but she didn't want to do it full-time. She didn't want the

613
fame or notoriety, and the day someone asked her who her publicist was, she drove back to
Jersey that night in tears. Olivia wanted to make a real difference, she'd told him that night in
bed. She didn't want the hair and the makeup and the politics of network television when all
she really cared about was the cases, the victims, the families who needed help. The solution
had all been Jenna's idea.

Using Olivia's newfound notoriety, Jenna suggested she write a book that would empower
and educate all guardians of children. It wouldn't exploit the cases which had already
happened, but was rather a guide for parents, teachers and caregivers on how to prevent,
identify and deal with the sexual abuse of children. Olivia could use nameless examples, but it
would be a book that would compel people to be on guard, to know the signs. Britt and Jenna
had gone to school together, but Britt had gone the way of editing for a major publishing
house and would come on board to help. Jenna committed time on the network to promote
the book. The reach they could have would be endless.

Olivia had spent the winter months diligently writing. She'd carried her laptop everywhere
with her for months. She'd curled up by the fireplace in December, in January she had spent
the afternoons at the coffee shop in town. February she had hit a road block, and she'd gone
up to visit Warrick and Rollins for the afternoon. They'd been on a case, and Olivia had taken
a hotel room for a few nights, following the developments. Warrick had picked her brain on it
endlessly, and she'd come home no worse for wear and wholly ready to write again. The
manuscript had been done in late March. And now this. It's a go.

"It's really happening," she whispers against him.

Elliot pulls back just enough to duck his head and look at her. He tips her chin upwards, so
her dark eyes meet his. He will never get tired of this.
"You haven't changed the crusade, just your tactics," he grins.
She smiles then too, only it's not a quick superficial thing. This is the real deal, a smile that
starts slowly and builds, as if something is changing inside of her as it forms. She's a woman
who seems to have fully found her footing again, and he can almost feel the restlessness ease
from her body as they stand here.

"They said they might even want another book. Britt likes the idea of doing one for assault
survivors, both male and female. There are a few of our old cases where I know they'd want to
talk. I'm gonna be discreet, but I just think if victims can hear from true survivors, if they
know there is a difference between remaining a victim and becoming a survivor, then-" she

614
stops mid-sentence. Her eyes meet his again and she looks almost embarrassed. "You know
what I mean."
He nods.
"Yep." His mouth lands on her forehead, and he can smell the ocean air on her. He loves the
long tangled length of her hair, the way she rarely wears any makeup at all anymore. He looks
at her and he is irrationally pleased with himself, as if he's done this. Their past is a blur that
he doesn't think about changing anymore. They are okay now, and maybe that is all that
matters.

"El-" she breathes.

"Who knew you had any clue how to write?" he teases, letting his lips slide down the bridge
of her nose.
"Had I told you I knew how to put a sentence together, you'd have done even fewer of our
reports, if that's even possible." She scrapes her teeth along her lower lip, taunting him.
"Besides, my mother was an English professor. English was not something I could fail at."
He lets out a soft chuckle.
"There anything you've ever really failed at?"

He'd meant it as a joke, but Olivia stills beneath his exploring hands. He stops then, using his
palm to slide into her hair. He sees the way she gets lost for just a second. This isn't
unfamiliar ground for him. It used to happen all the time, and he'd see her hesitation with him
last for days. He finally realised it was some sort of war she was waging within - one that pitted
her belief in them working out against all of the destruction she'd ever known of love. The
moments are infrequent these days, and he's learned by now not to take them personally.
Olivia locks her gaze with his. Inches away from her, he can feel the intensity coiled within her
right now.

"I used to think I'd fail at this," she admits, never looking away.
He knows.
"Used to think I would," he whispers. "Yet here we are."
He loves this smile of hers. It's conspiratorial, and it lights her eyes.
"Guess we're not a couple of screw ups after all," she says. He tries not to laugh. He's got to
be serious here for a second.
"So that means we're good now? No longer on a path to doom?" She shakes her head, trying
for seriousness too.
"I can confirm we're no longer doom bound."

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And then she lifts her eyes to his, and it's the thing they write books about. It's the feeling
that has inspired poets and artists, war and unity. Peace. He feels it so much these days.

"I love you," she tells him softly.

He lets his mouth fall to hers, and while he hears the sliding door opening and pounding of
little footsteps heading towards them, he doesn't hurry at all. On this side of the door, it's just
the two of them.

Her lips part, and he can taste her and this, this has been worth absolutely everything after all.
***

It's the noise around her that she pays attention to. It's a perfect sort of thing, the perfect
kind of noise. It's the voices and laughter of the people she cares about, and there are
remnants of their afternoon everywhere as it slips towards evening. Paper plates fill the
garbage bags, the chips and veggies have all been picked over or they've sat in the sun too
long. The smell of burgers and hot dogs permeates the air, even as Elliot starts round two of
the barbecuing. Maureen tried to make mojitos for everyone, and then everyone got silly -
adding beer or tequila to the mixture, each person claiming they knew the best recipe. Some
of them might be a little tipsy, but no one is as yet going anywhere until after the dark settles
and the fireworks finish, so for now there is time to just be.

Olivia looks around and she pays attention to the details because she is making up for lost
time. For some people this might just be a picnic, but to her this is a brilliant reminder of what
she has. Elliot had surprised her by inviting all of their old friends and colleagues. Don and
Fin had driven together, and Warrick had brought Alyssa. Amanda came with her sometimes
boyfriend - a guy who used to play pro hockey and whom Dickie apparently gets flustered
around - and Jack and Gladys had made it over, several appetisers in hand. Britt had come with
Jenna, both of them without dates, and Fin's been eyeing Bri all night, with the feeling
seemingly mutual. The kids are horsing around with the volleyball net that leans precariously
no matter what they do to it, and Elliot has surprisingly been halfway cordial to Maureen and
Kathleen's boyfriends. Neither Alex or Casey had made it, but one other person had.
John.

Her chest still constricts hard when she looks at him. She will never forget seeing him on the
floor of that basement, blood seeping out of him. He knows, because when he meets her gaze
there is an understanding between them that will never go away. He looks older now, but
surprisingly he looks as if something in him is lighter these days. He'd finally retired and
616
maybe it's that the weight they had all carried had actually been a visible thing. Four months
he'd spent in the hospital. His skin is still too pale, even now. His sardonic grin hasn't
changed though, and that reassures her.

The noise fades until it's all just something she is seeing, filing away inside of her. She thinks
about her mother sometimes, and it makes her ache to think about how much Serena had
missed because she hadn't been able to let go of her past. She thinks about Bernie then, and
about how much his mother would have wanted a day exactly like today. She imagines they are
out there somewhere, watching this. Enjoying this.

"Beer?" It's apparently a rhetorical question, because Fin is already holding out a cold,
opened bottle to her as he comes to stand next to her.
She smiles and nods.
"Thanks."
He shrugs and nods towards the beach, where the kids are loud enough for a small army.
"How you doin' with all of ‘em?"
Her laughter is immediate.
"They're kids, Fin. Not the enemy."
He shakes his head.
"Nah, sometimes they're the same thing. Trust me."

She can't conceal her amusement.

"I'm handling it just fine. But if I need backup, I'll let you know." She nudges his shoulder
with her own. "How're you doing? How's the new unit?"
He exhales and cracks his neck a bit.
"All the bodies I deal with are drug dealers and cracked out hookers. Death ain't usually
right, but most of the time now it's justified or inevitable anyway. Seen some kids though,
some kids who can't handle what they gettin' into. Those are still the hard ones."

She looks down, and she picks at the wet label on her beer bottle.
"How's John really doing?"
Fin gives her a lopsided half-smile. ”He's still crazy as fuck and suspicious as hell. Bullet
mighta hit him, but it sure as shit didn't knock any sense into him. He's still the same old
man, only now he's got too much time on his hands. Give it five minutes and he'll probably
convince someone else to marry him."
"You talking about me again?" John calls from across the patio.
"Fucking spidey sense now, too. Creepy as hell," Fin says under his breath.
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It's said with such affection, such familiarity that she can't help but smile like an idiot. It
immediately upsets Fin's sense of how things should be. He blows out a breath, shaking his
head in mock disgust.
"Don't glow like that, Benson. Only women who are getting laid look like that, and that
brings up images of Stabler I'd rather do without."
"You're just jealous," John calls.
"Jesus," she says staring. There's no way John should be able to hear them at all.
"See what I mean?" Fin complains, as he starts to walk back towards Britt. "Creepy old men,
man. Creepy old men." Elliot is walking towards them then, and that's apparently the final
straw for Fin.
"Yeah man, I said creepy and old. But I ain't talking about you this time Stabler, so don't
flatter yourself."
When Fin walks past them, Elliot just looks at her and laughs. As much as things change, they
also have the power to stay perfectly the same.
***

The early evening sun doesn't seem to relent. There are moments in the midst of the picnic
this afternoon when he's felt like he is in an alternate world. He knows it hasn't been a short
ride to this place he's in, but he sometimes forgets how he got here. It's like one moment he
was on the verge of throwing his career away over a suspect that made him uncontrollably
angry, and now he's here - in the sunshine with his kids, his old squad, his neighbours. And
Olivia.

His beer is still half-full, and he stands in the kitchen, just looking out at the water while
listening to the festivities outside. He'd come in to grab fresh chips and salsa, but the
momentary solitude had made all of this hit him hard. He's so infinitely grateful for all of this,
but sometimes he's scared, too. Sometimes he wonders if he will be able to keep everything
that he has. He has to. Now that he knows this life, he will protect it with everything he's got.
"You planning on hoarding the chips in here?"

He looks over his right shoulder. Olivia stands in the doorway to the kitchen and she steals his
breath away more often than not. He'd spent so many years seeing the toughest sides of her
that this version is utterly fascinating to him, even a year into their life together. She's
wearing the long red dress she'd bought last summer, the one she'd worn the night he'd first
danced with her at the edge of the water. He rakes his gaze over her and he watches her flush.
She still gets embarrassed, and it makes him do it purposely. He's making up for years of not
being able to look at her the way he wanted to.

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He grins at her, ignoring her teasing.
"You know that dress drives me fucking nuts, right?"
Olivia lets out a surprised huff of laughter and she shakes her head at him as if he is an idiot,
but she doesn't go back outside.
"Havin' fun?" he rumbles quietly.
She looks at him for a long time then, but she doesn't say a word. She doesn't have to. He
knows what this means to her. It means the same to him. After all of the devastation and
destruction they'd experienced over the years together, this is so healing that it is nearly
painful.

Her eyes well a little bit, but she stands there in the silence, pressing her lips together.
Maybe only the two of them could ever understand this moment. They'd suffered for so long
together. It's burning in hell only to find that they can now shed their skin and start new
again. He sets down his beer bottle on the counter and closes the distance between them. He
steps into her space, always just a little bit too close.
"We deserve this. You know that, right? The universe owes us this," he growls.
Olivia ducks so that her forehead rests on the top of his shoulder. She exhales.
"Does it feel surreal to you sometimes? Like we're gonna wake up and be back in the old
bullpen, and we'll be going on thirty-six hours without sleep or a lead and One PP will be
breathing down our necks?"
He laughs under his breath, turning his face so that when he speaks his words push right into
the strands of her hair.
"That'd be okay so long as I knew we were headed for this." She is the rest of him, and she is
the part that is easy to love. "I'd do it all again with you."

Her fingers close tightly around the waist of his t-shirt. He admits it to himself now - he'd
fallen for Olivia long before his marriage was officially over. He doesn't let the guilt have him
though. Both he and Kathy had grown out of a marriage they'd entered into when they were
practically still kids. They'd done the best they could, and it had been better and longer than
most. But ending it was for the best - it's given both of them the chance to figure out who they
are as adults. For Kathy it's meant that she's reliving all the years she missed as a single
woman. She goes out at night, she dates, she takes trips with her friends. She's even moving
in a few days and she'll be living in South Jersey - closer to her sister. For the sake of his time
with Eli, he's glad it's going to be less of a drive for him and it'll be easier to co-parent. It's all
working out better than he could have expected.

619
But maybe that's just it. He had never expected things to get better, he'd always assumed he
had to hang onto what he had or things would only get worse. He and Olivia are similar that
way, and it's why he hasn't pushed the need he's got to marry her. He believes it will only be
better, but she has to be ready too. If there was a crystal ball that would show them all how it
would play out, it would make everything so much easier. He can feel her smile against his
neck now.

"Cap always said we were too close. Guess he was right."

"I'm always right," comes from the family room. A moment later the sliding door shuts and
Don appears over Olivia's shoulder. "Took the two of you fourteen years to realise that?"
His arrival makes Olivia instinctively pull out of Elliot's arms, but she doesn't step away from
his body. Years of proving they had boundaries in front of this man will not fall away in an
instant, even when it's obvious how and where they have ended up.
"You know nothing ever happened between us when were with the unit," she says too
quickly.
Her immediate and now irrelevant assurances make Elliot laugh. Her old habits are dying
harder than his.

It gets a chuckle out of Don, too.

"Bullshit. Something happened, it just wasn't anything that I could put my finger on or throw
the book at. And for the record, you bet your ass I'd have split you two up and sent one of you
to another unit if I'd caught you."
Olivia arches an eyebrow.
"I'd be the one you would have kept though, right?"
"No brainer," Don agrees easily.
"Hey," Elliot protests. "I'm standing right here, you know. Hell, I'm not the one who played
musical departments when the going got rough." He nods towards Don. "You tellin' me that
my loyalty wouldn't have been rewarded?"

Olivia rolls her eyes and then pushes past him into the kitchen, handing him his beer bottle
before reaching for the chips and salsa packages.
"The going didn't get rough, Elliot. You turned into a grade-A prick for a while. I was just
teaching you a lesson."
He fell in love with an impossible woman. He doesn't regret it at all. Not one bit.
"You're saying you always intended to come back?" He's playing her, because the truth is he
doesn't care about the past anymore. The past has never solved anything. The point is that

620
she had come back to him, more than once. He shoots Don an incredulous look. "You knew
all along she was coming back?"

Don takes a sip of his beer and deliberately looks at him blankly.
"No, not all along. She came back and you were playing footsie with Beck. Didn't think she
was stayin' after that."
Olivia grabs Elliot's beer out of his hands and scoffs.
“Footsie? Really, Elliot?" She takes a sip of it and then thinks better of it, outright stealing it
from him. "She was just a poor substitute for me," she shrugs nonchalantly before shoving
past both of them, taking the chips, salsa and the beer out with her.
Don looks him straight in the eyes.
"She's surer of herself now, isn't she? In some ways, I'm glad. In other ways, I feel sorry as
hell for you, kid."

Elliot smiles then, because his former captain doesn't know the half of it.
"I can handle her," he states matter-of-factly as he starts to make his way out of the kitchen.
He hears a loud guffaw come from behind him.
"If that's what you think Stabler, you apparently haven't learned shit. And Christ if you two
don't deserve each other."
***

"Can I bring just -“ Eli holds up his hand, all of his fingers stretched out as far as they will go.
"Just five of them? Pleeease?"
Olivia stands in the extra bedroom that doubles as Eli's on his visits. She puts her hands on
her hips and sighs at the charmingly hopeful look on Eli's little face. His clothes are strewn all
over the bed because she hadn't been able to find his favourite Power Rangers sweatshirt until
the very end, and there are at least three beach towels now discarded on the floor. As soon as
the sun had been close to setting she had hustled Eli in for a quick shower to get the sand off,
and then had tried to get him dressed fast so that they could go back outside and settle in
before the fireworks started. She's also got to pack his bag because he's heading back with
Maureen tonight. She figures she's got ten minutes tops before the first sparkler lights up the
sky.

All the kids are heading out afterwards tonight, and the house is going to be oddly empty for
the first time in weeks. She's both looking forward to and dreading the change of pace.
"You're gonna lose ‘em, E. The second one of them falls in the sand, it's toast." She's not
trying to ruin his evening, but the crestfallen look on his face is telling her that is precisely

621
what she is doing. In her defence, the Lego mini figures are practically the size of quarters and
they cost nearly four dollars each, so she's got a stake in this, too. If he loses them, she'll be
the one searching Amazon to replace the exact ones he'll be mourning.

"How about jus- four?” Eli asks, his voice wobbling just a little bit. He uses those eyes on her,
and his lower lip juts out just a little too much.
She can't take it. If he loses them, she'll just have to order new ones. She's infinitely glad
Elliot is not here to see this. He doesn't understand why she can't deny this child anything.
She doesn't want to tell him it's because she will forever remember every second of Eli's
birth. She will never forget his first cry, the first kick of his legs, the way she'd made promises
to God if he would just please, please spare Eli and his mother. She’d been the first person
entrusted with his tiny form. In the life she leads now, she's free to indulge the inherent love
she has for him, so she does it.

She pulls Eli up against her and rubs his back, burrowing her nose in his freshly washed hair.
Touching him makes her chest ache, but it's not a painful thing. If anything, it soothes her,
reminds her that she's not empty inside anymore.
"Take five with you," she relents. "Just make sure you put them all the way deep into your
pockets, okay?" She pats his rear and sends him off towards his toy chest in the closet. "Go
on, hurry up and pick them out."
"You, girl, are a complete sucker. I mean, I can practically see the string you're attached to
wrapped around his pinkie finger." Britt looks up at Olivia from where she is sitting on the
edge of Eli's bed and rolls her eyes. "He didn't even bother to tear up in that act of his."
Olivia grabs up as much of the clothing on the bed as she can and quickly starts folding it,
stuffing the things Kathy had packed for her son back into his backpack while tossing the
items that stay at their house into a dresser drawer.
"He got teary. I saw it."
"Bullshit. He called in that meltdown. No effort at all. Right, Eli?"
Eli looks up at them from where he is crouched by his toys and grins mischievously. His
dimples flash in full effect.
"I didn't call nobody!"

Britt flops dramatically back on the bed, propping herself up on her elbows.
"He's a master," she says, pretending to be disgusted. "He's totally using his looks to charm
the pants off of you. Then again, that is a Stabler trait. Give this kid fifteen years and he's
gonna be a menace."

622
"I'll spot him ten, max," Jenna chimes in, joining them with three fresh beers balanced in her
hands. "His older brother just did his damnedest to charm mine off. Came right out and told
me he thought cougars were sexy, and that we were actually a symbol of female independence.
Am I a cougar? I'm thirty-one. Does that even qualify?"
Olivia laughs, shoving the last of Eli's things into the Star Wars backpack and zipping it
closed before taking the offered beer from Jenna.
"File charges against him for harassment. You'll be doing him a favour. We keep telling
Dickie it's gonna happen one day, but he ignores us. Says we're overzealous sex cops."

"What's a six cop?" Eli pipes up, apparently satisfied with the figures that he'd chosen and
ready to go back outside.
"Yeah Liv, what's a six cop?" Britt asks loudly, sitting up once again to take her beer from a
laughing Jenna as well.
Olivia glares at the two women she misguidedly chooses to call her friends.
"You are both horrible people. I'm just putting that out there."
Jenna's perfectly arched eyebrows rise a little bit, and her sea green eyes dance with
amusement.
"Is that any way to treat the people who have made you a superstar? Networks are after you,
books deals are being thrown at you. We made you, Liv. In a couple of years you're gonna be
buying one of those big houses at the south end of the beach. You'll be traveling first class
with your Stabler sex toy and we'll be the ones to thank. I really think you should apologise."

She's thankful Eli had already grabbed his guys and trotted out to the patio or she's pretty
sure he'd be quizzing her on what a six toy is.
"Like hell. First of all I'm not moving. It took half the winter to finish the addition over that
damned garage. Secondly, the advance is about half my former salary, so I don't think I'll be
retiring in style anytime soon."
Britt looks pointedly at Jenna.
"She doesn't get it."
Jenna shakes her enviable, perfectly smooth cap of naturally blonde hair.
"Nope. Clueless."
"At least Elliot gets it. He likes it and he's gonna put a ring on it before it gets rich. That boy
knows a franchise star when he sees one." Britt whistles lowly. "Man, he's about to have you
show him the mo-ney."

Olivia picks up two of the wet towels and dumps them into the hamper.

623
"Neither one of you took me up on my invitation to spend the night, right? You're both
definitely leaving me in peace later?"
Britt takes a long swig of her beer.
"I dunno. I'm heading out, but for Jenna I bet that depends how the rest of the night goes
with Richard. Maybe she'll go christen the new loft."
Jenna scrunches up her pert nose.
"Seriously. That's just wrong. That's so wrong. Olivia is practically his mother."

It earns her a wet towel tossed at her head.

"Don't attribute that kid to me at all," she laughs, knowing she'd still lay her life out for
Dickie in a heartbeat if need be. Olivia grabs her beer, finally ready to head outside. "You
know a few years ago when he was in trouble, I had him in the interrogation room, and the
little shit turned the tables on me, accused me of sleeping with Elliot."

It's Britt who snorts first.

"Girl, if I had seen the two of you together, I'd have accused your ass too. Elliot looks at you
like you're a buffet dinner all the time, and you aren't much better. You need to just say I do
already and make all of us a pretty little baby we can spoil."
Olivia stills, and it's Jenna's face that she looks at. They'd had this conversation not too long
ago. Britt still doesn't know everything, but Jenna does. She knows about how Olivia had
tried to adopt years ago, she'd listened patiently as Olivia reluctantly voiced her fears
regarding her age, and whether or not she could even physically risk having a child at this
point. She also knows that Olivia has basically given up on the idea of ever having her own kid.
She'd confessed to Jenna that she thinks it would be greedy to want more than all of this, and
that she can't bring it up to Elliot. He's got his kids already, and, Jesus, she hasn't even been
able to say yes yet, so all of it is a ridiculous notion anyways.

"Britt- " Jenna finally says quietly, warning her friend to back off.
But Britt has never been one to step back easily. It's what makes her a great editor and an even
more protective friend. She picks up on the instant tension in the room immediately, and then
she whips her gaze to Olivia.
"He said he doesn't want a kid with you?"
"Bri, come on," Jenna attempts again.
They are quite a pair, her friends. Jenna with her petite blonde All-American good looks, and
Britt with her model height, dark skin and flair for exotic clothing that usually takes its
inspiration from her South African ancestry. Britt usually favours a bold, take-no- prisoners
attitude, but when Jenna quietly shushes her, it actually makes her back down.

624
Olivia knows she needs to say something. Britt deserves the truth from her, it's just that
trusting her friend doesn't make it any easier for her to open her mouth and share anything.
She's not used to this, to having people know this much about her. She's still learning how to
step out onto a ledge and ask for help. She's still learning to voice her fears. The words come
easy on paper, but when she has to say them...
"I haven't brought it up," she admits quietly. "I can’t, I haven't even given him an answer
yet. If I can't commit to that, how can I ask for anything else?" Her heart speeds up. "I just,
he’s given me enough already." She tries to look either one of them in the eyes and can't. She
ends up looking past them, out the hallway and towards the family room at the far end. "He's
the one who finally gave me something to walk away from the job for, and I just feel like I'd be
asking way too much if I also ask him to start again with kids and getting married and -“ Her
voice trails off, and she can't believe her throat didn't burn up as she spit out the whiny
confession.

It's Britt who steps into her space, and she levels a steely look at Olivia.
"He's the one who asked you to legalise this thing you've got, not the other way around, Liv.
And my guess is he felt like he was asking too much of you too so he backed off. Basically,
you're killing him by not responding. Got it? That hunk of man out there? You're killing him.
So you better get your head outta your ass on this one. Put the man out of his misery, say I do
and then tell him to knock you the hell up. Any questions?"
Olivia just stares at her, at a complete loss for words. Britt takes a deep breath and turns
towards Jenna.
"Okay, now where's Tutuola? I need some cuddlin' while America spends a few million
dollars lighting up the night sky like the lovely narcissistic nation that we are."

She starts past Jenna, who lingers hesitantly near the door.
"You okay?" Jenna asks Olivia, her eyes conveying both concern and empathy.
Britt stops in her tracks and lets out an exasperated sigh.
"She's fine. She's tough as shit, but full of it too. She needs some tough love, and she got it.
She's also already got her man, and neither of us do. So let's go."
For some reason, Olivia finds herself laughing.
"You realise that outside of Fin, the only available males out there are my captain and Munch,
right?"
"And Richard," Britt adds helpfully.
"He's eighteen," Jenna interjects. "Please tell me that you realise that's wrong."
But Britt just shakes her head. "I've read Olivia's draft. I know legal and not legal, love. And
eighteen is most definitely on the happy side of the law."

625
Olivia just smiles, because she isn't the only one who is completely nuts after all. Their voices
fade as they leave her in Eli's room. She looks at his sealed backpack and the small mess that
now surrounds his toy box. There is a pillow on the bed that Gladys had cross-stitched for him
that says May The Force Be With You and the lamp on the nightstand bears a shade in the
shape of Darth Vader's head. He's got a small bookcase in one corner, and it's actually lined
with a few books, but it's mostly DVD's instead. His nightlight is shaped like a samurai
sword, and his curtains bear the spacecraft collection of the Imperial Fleet.

And then there is a telltale reminder that he isn't such a big boy just yet, no matter what he
says. She reaches down between the mattress and the end table and pulls out Hank. Eli had
named his absolute most favourite thing in the world. It's nothing more than a cheap
receiving blanket that he's had for years, but it means everything to him. It's worn now, it's
got hole in places, and the pattern on it has faded to a muted grey after hundreds of washes.
None of its flaws sway Eli from needing it at night though. He curls up, scrunching it beneath
his face and hanging onto it for dear life. Every night.

Apparently everyone needs something to hang onto. She holds the blanket up to her face, and
it smells like the little boy who has stolen her heart. She's committed to him completely, and
in this love she is unafraid. She looks up then and Elliot is walking down the hallway towards
her.
"You coming?" he asks quietly. "Show's about to start." She tosses Eli's blanket on top of
his backpack and nods.
"Be there in a sec," she murmurs.
Elliot doesn't go anywhere. Instead he waits, leaning against the doorframe and folding his
arms across his chest. “
I got time."

She shuts off Eli's light and then turns to Elliot, meeting his intense gaze across the dark. She
loves him without doubt or reason. There is no going back, no option for loss. She will make
it work with this man because the life she wants truly does depends upon him being in it.
She will never allow herself to go back to a life without.And then she walks towards him,
because the truth is that there really isn't a reason to keep him waiting any longer.
***

His first memory of seeing the fireworks is from when he'd been six years old, not that much
older than Eli is now. He'd been allowed to go into Manhattan with his friend Tommy's
family, and they'd ended up on the balcony of Tommy's uncle's apartment on 34th Street.

626
They'd had an incredible view of the Hudson from there, and just after nine o'clock at night
the sky had illuminated with a bright green explosion. The lone first firework, the one that
served to capture everyone's attention before the real display began. The chatter around him
had stopped, everyone had stilled and all eyes had turned to the sky. He remembers glancing
at all the balconies below and to the right and left of them, and each one was full with family
and friends.

Yet there was a mystical collective silence as the sky lit up with the magic time and time again.
The only sounds he heard were the gasps, the cheers and the occasional applause. For a
moment in time, even the traffic twenty stories below seemed to stop. Elliot had been
standing by himself at the railing, clutching the wrought iron rails when he'd turned to his
right, searching for his friend. Tommy had been sitting on his uncle's lap, and the older man
had been pointing out the fireworks that shot up like rockets into space. Tommy had leaned
back and stared at the universe, secure in the arms of someone who could be counted on to
protect, to teach, to love.

Elliot remembers the painful longing that had filled him. At six, he could only describe the
feeling as being sad, but looking back he understands it for what it had truly been. He had
craved the stability of having a solid family, even back then. The memory is vivid now as he
comes out onto the patio, Olivia right behind him. The first firework pops open over the dark
stage of the ocean, and he feels the corners of his mouth twitch when he catches sight of Eli.
This ought to be good. Really good. John is laying on one of the half-dozen lounge chairs that
sit ten feet from the patio, embedded in the still warm sand. He's stretched out, hands folded
over his stomach and completely oblivious to the little boy who stands just to his right while
watching him, holding a juice box in one hand and the edge of the lounge chair in the other.
Olivia is immediately distracted by Maureen and Jeff, and it leaves Elliot alone to take a few
steps closer. He just watches quietly as Eli edges closer to John. The chatter around him
seems to fade and all he can hear is the perfect little voice of his son.

"My brother said your name is Uncle Munchie," Eli says confidently, peering over the edge of
the chair and right into John's face, personal space be damned. "That's a very silly name."
John shifts a little bit to look at Eli, but to his credit he isn't fazed.
"Well, you've got the same name as your Dad. How come you couldn't get your own?"
Elliot grins, and he realises that John's got absolutely no idea who he is dealing with.
"'Cause I borroweded it," Eli huffs, apparently irritated that John doesn't know this already.
"And anyways I spelled it different. Daddy is E-L-L-I-O-T and I'm just E-L-I. How do you
spell Munchie?"

627
John drops his chin and looks over his glasses at Eli.
"You'd rather have a spelling lesson than watch the fireworks?"
Eli moves towards the lounge chair, ignoring John's question as he wedges his juice box in
the sand.
"Can you scoot over, Munchie?"

Elliot watches as John shifts enough to give his son room to climb onto the chair. Eli scales
John's legs for a second and then promptly twists, settling himself down next to John and
imitating his new friend's position. His hands fold over his stomach and his ankles cross while
his head settles nearly on John's shoulder. His child's confidence is mesmerising. Elliot steps
out onto the sand and heads for the open chair next to them, but neither John nor Eli seem to
notice. Closer to the water Henry, Kathleen and Dickie have built a small, sorry looking
campfire. Then again they're not trying to stay warm; they're just trying to make some
s'more's.

"That's Uncle Munch to you, kid," John retorts dryly.

Eli giggles.
"Maureen calls me Munchkin. You borroweded your name from me, like I borroweded my
other name from my Daddy. We're twins."
It makes John actually crack a smile.
"Your sister and brother are twins. We're not twins, kid."
But his son is now focused on the way the fireworks have started to come two and three at a
time.
"Yeah, huh. We are so twins. Twins means the same. And we're the same cause we both have
matching names."

When Elliot stretches out on the lounger, John looks at him over Eli's head.
"Is there a way to win? This kid could outdebate the GOP. Heck, the DA's office could use
him."
Elliot laughs.
"I usually end up just pulling the ‘I'm right because I'm your Dad' card. Olivia bribes him
with cookies and Legos until he sees things her way. You'll figure out a strategy eventually."
It's the mention of cookies that piques Eli's interest.
"Dad, can I have some cookies? Livia bought the chocolate and chips and chips ones."
"You mean double chips?" John tries again.

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Eli rolls his eyes and sits up, swinging his short legs off the chair. He sighs dramatically and
glares at John.
"That's what I said. Chocolate and chips and chips. Double means they putted the chips in
two times. Livia told me that."
John just stares at the pint-sized know-it-all who is now standing between the chairs and
waiting for permission to raid the pantry.
"You did this to yourself five times, Stabler?" he questions.

Elliot wants to laugh again at the look of absolute consternation on John's face.
"You got married four times. I'd say we're in the same boat." He realises the mistake he's
just made when he sees Eli's jaw immediately drop, fireworks and cookies long since
forgotten.
His son turns to John wide-eyed and incredulous.
"You have four wife's? My Daddy only has two. Well one now, cause he doesn't gotted my
Mommy anymore. Do you have lots of rooms at your house or do all of you sleep in bunk
beds? Livia said maybe I can get a bunk bed when I'm in first grade."

John scoots upwards on the chair and almost backs up a little bit. He thankfully doesn't
correct Eli's perception of Elliot and Olivia's relationship.
"Kid, don't you have a hobby? An imaginary friend? You've got four siblings, how about you
go torture one of them?"
He should intervene, Elliot thinks. But then again he knows John, and the man has handled
children who had been victimised, who had acted up or withdrawn, who wouldn't eat or sleep
or let go. It's time he handled a perfectly healthy little boy who can run circles
around him. The fireworks pick up speed and colour above them. They are even starting to
see the fancy ones that streak across the sky before bursting. Eli ignores all of it, more
fascinated with his new playmate.

Just in time, John seems to find a strategy.

”Richard and Kathleen are making s'mores. Why don't you go have one of those? I bet you
could get chocolate and chocolate on yours."
"You mean double chocolate," Eli corrects very seriously. Then he furrows his brow as if he
needs to consider John's suggestion. "You gonna want one too, Munchkin?"
Elliot does his damndest to refrain from laughing. He tries to distract himself with the
fireworks, but it's a losing battle. He hears John manage to decline and watches Eli run off
towards the beach before he dares to say a thing.

629
”Munchkin is a good name," Elliot finally compliments him, watching as Kathleen wraps her
arms around her little brother when he arrives near the campfire. She carefully holds Eli far
enough back from the stone-ringed flames so that he's not in danger of stumbling into the
heat.

His son has the world standing guard around him. Eli will never experience the childhood he
had, and for that Elliot is profoundly grateful.
John exhales dramatically.
"I think the last five minutes aged me."
Elliot's lips twitch as he looks over at his old friend. He thinks about how a year ago they had
all been living under such drastically different circumstances. He remembers the way Olivia
shuddered in his arms the night they'd stayed in the hospital, both of them waiting to hear if
John would pull through the fight for his life. He remembers the waver in her voice as she'd
told the jury about the moment she'd heard the gun go off, and how she had seen John laying
on the ground. Elliot knows that if John had died, the life he is living now with her wouldn't
look like this. Olivia would never have been able to come through all of it the way that she has.

"How you feelin' these days?" Elliot asks quietly as he returns his gaze to the light show
above.
"I'm fine," John says, and he too uses the sky as a diversion. "Which is the same thing Olivia
says when I ask her. Is she telling the truth?"
He knows John isn't asking about Olivia's life in general. He's asking about the lasting and
traumatic effects of one particular night in the basement at Columbia. He's asking if Olivia
still blames herself, if she realises yet that she had done everything that she could. There are
details about her recovery that Elliot won't share. There are nightmares that Olivia has
experienced since that night which will never leave the privacy of their bed. There was a
moment after she'd first watched Gransden walk into the courtroom when she'd gotten up
and headed straight for the restroom to lose her lunch. John hadn't been well enough to
attend the trial, and those are things he still doesn't need to know.

"She's good now. You pulling through is the biggest reason she's been able to put it behind
her."
John sits up then, his movements clearly slower than they had once been. He'd come through
the surgeries - four in total - and the rehabilitation, but while the scars might fade for all of
them, they will never entirely disappear. Then again, Elliot doesn't need them to disappear
anymore. They are evidence of where he's been. And like he'd been taught in the Marines,

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there is absolutely no shame at all in coming home from the war wearing proof that the fight
had been valiantly fought.

"Hate to admit it, my friend," he says. "But I have to give you some of the credit for her well-
being, too." The corner of Elliot's mouth lifts a bit. "Liv would kill us if she heard us talking
about her like this."
John stands, laughing in agreement. It's a sound that reminds Elliot of the past. It brings him
back to the early years in the bullpen when they'd been so vindicated by every victory and so
appalled by every loss. Their jackets had still been virtually unblemished, and the rules still
seemed to make some measure of sense. They’d been something else, all of them. Still are.
He looks up at his friend.
"Glad you came out today."

John grins and pats him on the shoulder twice, but doesn't say anything. As he walks away,
Elliot notices the way John's gait has slowed a little, how his knees seem to be a little weaker.
He fully believes that John hasn't noticed though. Inside, there is still some invincibility left in
all of them. It's their survivor's instinct, still intact. The fireworks come like rapid gunfire
now, and it's okay that he isn't sharing this moment with Olivia. There will be more days like
this, more nights like these. There is so much life left to be lived ahead of them.

He watches the nearly fluorescent bursts shatter the endless, dark sky. He thinks about faith,
and about how losing it isn't an irreversible affliction. Tossed away, faith still has a remarkable
ability to boomerang, and on its way back it might even have more force than before.
Tonight celebrating independence seems fitting; the painful ties that had bound them for so
long have finally unraveled and they have the chance to live freely. He inhales the ocean air
until he can feel it in his fingertips, his lungs, his belief. And the lights in the sky go on and on.
***

The world quiets.

From the back patio, Olivia can hear the last of the cars start in front of the house and the soft
melody of a song that is playing on low in the living room. She and Elliot had said their
goodbyes outside to everyone a few minutes ago, and then she had ducked back into the
house, gathering the odd stray cups and napkins. The kids had helped them clean up for the
most part before leaving, and Olivia had packaged up the leftover food for them. The kitchen
is clean except for the floor, but that can wait until morning. The dishwasher hums, the

631
soothing sound of the wash cycle a reminder of the meals and drinks, the people and laughter
that had filled the day.

Olivia shoves the last cup into the trash bag she's holding and surveys the rest of the patio,
making sure there is no other garbage that will blow away overnight and end up littering the
beach. Satisfied she's done her job, she puts the bag in the outside bin and is barely two feet
back into the house when she hears the front door open on a rush and footsteps hurrying
towards her. It's Maureen. Her cheeks and nose are tinged with red from the day spent in the
sun, and her hair - which had started the day straight - now bears the waves created by the
humidity.

"Forgot the leftovers," she explains breathlessly, reaching for a bag she'd set down near the
dining table at some point. "If Eli hadn't asked Jeff for a cookie again, I wouldn't have
remembered at all."
Olivia grins, and the smallest moments are sometimes surreal these days. She looks at
Maureen now, and it's strange and yet it makes perfect sense that they are here, like this. For
so many years it had been Olivia walking away from Elliot at the end of the night so that he
could go home to his family. Tonight, she is the one staying with him in a house. A home.
Their home.

"He's had about six of those cookies already," Olivia says, amusement lacing her tone.
"Hopefully he'll fall asleep before you get to the end of the block. He's got to be exhausted."
Maureen laughs. "You should see him. He's slurring his words already." She holds up the
bag. "Thanks for this. It'll save me a grocery run for the next few days."
"No problem," Olivia responds easily.
Elliot's daughter turns to leave then, but at the last second she stops herself, facing Olivia
again. She hesitates, as if she's debating whether to say something or not. She looks at the
floor, and she's thinking about something, her fingers twisting around the handle of the bag
she carries.

Olivia stills, and years of habit make her brace herself just a little bit. She's still careful with
Maureen. She's the child who had experienced the best of her parents' marriage, the one who
had been ready to leave for college by the time everything had really fallen apart. Olivia
wonders sometimes if Maureen is still unsure of what went wrong, or if she now sees her
parent's relationship as it had truthfully evolved.

Maureen lifts her chin, and then her hesitation seems to dissipate.
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"I just -“ She stops and takes a breath. She looks directly at Olivia and this time when she
smiles it's softer, full of acceptance. Her eyes take on the slightest sheen as she cocks her
head. "Thank you."
It's not about the evening. The way she says it, it's about something bigger, only Olivia can't
particularly define it. She doesn't have to. Maureen isn't finished.
"I didn't know if -“ That's when Maureen's eyes actually well and threaten to spill over.
Whatever she's about to say, she's been thinking about it for a long time and it's obviously
important to her. "My family was good a long time ago," she says quietly. She stops and
chews on her lower lip, and she's so clearly half of Elliot that it almost steals Olivia's balance
just to watch her. "And then, and then it wasn't. And I didn't know if we'd ever be like that
again."

Olivia doesn't do anything. She doesn't move or breathe or blink. Maureen smiles again then,
and despite her age, she's got a shy sweetness in her expression that reminds Olivia of what
Elliot's daughter had looked like as a little girl. She nods.
"But we are. We're good. Again. Now. So, thank you."

The emotion hits Olivia hard then. Everything inside of her fills to the point where her chest is
tight and her throat locks. She wonders if she should even try to speak.
"I didn't do anything, Maureen. It’s -“ She can't get the words out. She's not even sure that
she has any.
But his child saves her. It must be a Stabler trait. Maureen laughs gently.
"Sure you did," she says quietly. She flashes a smile at Olivia again and jerks her chin towards
the bedroom where her father can already be heard moving around. "Take care of him,
okay?"

It's a responsibility that she can tell Elliot's oldest is not handing over lightly. It has taken
time for Maureen to get to this point. Overwhelmed and humbled by the magnitude of
Maureen's trust in her, Olivia just nods mutely, unable to look away. His daughter blinks then
and takes a deep breath. She gives Olivia another reassuring smile, and before Olivia can even
attempt to find words, Maureen is rushing out the front door to the idling car where her
boyfriend and youngest sibling wait for her. Olivia closes her eyes, still standing in one place
until she can catch her breath.

For the first time in weeks the house is totally empty of children, but it doesn't make her feel
like she's at a loss. They are part of this. Their lives are woven into everything here. She hears
the ocean tumbling and receding behind her and the creak of floorboards beneath Elliot's
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feet. She hears the melody that continues, soothing and seemingly endless. The peace within
her is so complete that it almost hurts. The sand that was tracked into the house during the
day sticks to her bare feet as she goes around the house, turning off the lights and locking the
doors. The living room settles into darkness, and the only light remaining comes from the
dials of the stereo. They leave it on almost all the time, and sometimes it plays so softly that
it's barely discernible. It's soothing, it's a soundtrack for the show the ocean plays on the
stage that begins where the beach ends.

And the music plays on. The clichés are all true.She pauses on the threshold to their room,
leaning against the doorframe to watch Elliot's movements. His back is to her while he
puts away some of the sweatshirts his daughters had pulled out earlier in the evening when
they'd been searching for something warmer to wear. He's got a particular place for
everything of his in the closet, and he folds all of it with military precision. She's caught him
trying to clean up her side a few times when it's his turn to put away the laundry, but for the
most part he leaves her things the way she keeps them. He doesn't do anything that makes her
feel inadequate.

Elliot is protective even of her right to be a mess. Her love for him is bigger than anything
she's ever known, it's in every crevice of her life, in every pore of her skin. He's drawn her
away from what she'd known and showed her everything she had never dared to imagine.
Tonight, now. It's time. When Elliot realizes she's behind him, he turns, still holding the last
folded sweatshirt. The bed separates them. He meets her gaze, recognizing she's just been
standing there and quietly watching him.

"Tired?" he asks.
She nods and gives him a small smile.
"Yeah." It's a new kind of tired these days, though. It's the kind that brings sleep instead of
stealing it from her. "You?"
"Yeah," he grins. "But I could be persuaded to stay awake."
Olivia lets her head tip to the right and rest against the doorframe. Her skin heats from the
way he is looking at her.
"I need a shower," she murmurs throatily.
He gives her a knowing chuckle that makes her belly curl with want. He drops the sweatshirt
on the bed, but stays where he is.
"Like I said, I could be persuaded to stay awake."

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She can't take her eyes off of his. Her heart starts to increase its pace, but she doesn't
outwardly show any signs that would give him a clue about what she is going to say. He must
know something is up though, because he doesn't look away either. In all of this -in this room
that needs to be redecorated, in the faded t-shirt he's wearing, in the monotony of putting
away laundry - he shows her what it's like to be ordinary. She's wanted to be ordinary just like
this her whole life. He is unwaveringly focused on her. He doesn't move a muscle. He knows,
she thinks. Of course he does. He knows her and he knows she is about to do this in a moment
that is perfectly ordinary, too.

"Yes," she whispers. It's the loudest whisper she's ever heard.Her eyes betray her attempt at
keeping this casual. They water. "Yes," she says again. She blinks, but it just sends the relief
inside of her sliding down her cheeks.
She watches Elliot press his lips together. He's still across the room from her.
"Yeah?" His eyes redden. It's just a rough scrape of a word. A question.
Olivia nods, and the room blurs. Her face is wet but she doesn't care. It's just Elliot, and he
knows she does this sometimes.
"Yeah."

He looks at the sweatshirt he'd dropped on the bed. He's chewing on his lower lip, drawing it
into his mouth once, twice. Then again. He finally takes a breath and blows it out before
looking back up at her. There is still the slightest bit of fear in him. It kills her that he's still
waiting for her to bolt, but she can't blame him. They are both works in progress, and they've
got time to fix everything. He seems to make a decision then. Elliot turns, pulling open the
drawer in his nightstand. It scrapes open, and Olivia is shaking, grateful for the wall she's
leaning on as he moves things around in it. Her throat closes as she watches him. He finally
pulls something out of the very back before closing the drawer again. She waits.
It's a small box in his hand. Dark blue. She hadn't known. She hadn't known he'd actually
bought one.

She closes her eyes then, because it's all here, right here. It's all hers, and even after all the
months with him, this moment is more than she had expected it would be. There is salt on her
lips, and she can taste it. It reminds her of how the ocean washes her skin.Through wet lashes,
she looks up at him as he comes to stand in front of her.
"When'd you buy this?"
He's shaken too, she can tell. He's not quite steady. He holds the box between them,
unwaveringly watching as his thumb slowly traces the gold insignia of the jewellery store.
"Couple weeks ago," he rumbles.

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Olivia is far more interested in the lines of his face than in what the box holds. Whatever he
gives her, it will be too much. Her breath catches, and she still does not touch him, nor he her.
"You bought this without knowing?" she whispers incredulously.

He shrugs casually, still looking at the box. The muscle in his jaw jumps. Elliot holds it out to
her then before raising his gaze so that he can look at her. His hand is shaking, but he's full of
conviction when he speaks.
"I knew," he says simply.
A burst of air breaks from her. It might be a laugh, she's not quite sure. Of course.She wraps
her hand around his, folding his fingers around the box and squeezing hard. Olivia steps
forward then and presses her forehead against his. He can probably feel her breath on his face.
She can feel his on hers. She looks up at him, his eyes are downcast watching where their
fingers intertwine.

"You wanna see what it looks like?" he asks her, and his accent has never been this thick, his
voice this rough.
"I already know," she tells him.
And she does, he's shown her. It's all around her now, and it's the clearest thing she's ever
seen.He nods, his forehead brushing against hers. He understands what she's saying.
"Okay." It's just a rasp.
Then again, it's absolutely everything.
"Okay." She smiles. His eyes are closed now, but he probably sees.

Inside, the dishwasher shifts into the rinse cycle. The floorboard they are both standing on
creaks. The sweatshirt remains on the bed and the stereo starts playing a new CD. The box is
in her hand or maybe it is in his. It doesn't matter. One of them has it and that's enough. It's
always been more than enough. They breathe. Just breathe. Nearby, the tide tugs at the sea.
It's something that's been going on for longer than anyone can remember.

The ocean lets itself go and tumbles forward, kissing the sand wordlessly.

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637
 Love isn’t always perfect, but it is strong. It exists even when it’s been beaten down by
sickness, by fear, or by circumstance. It has a way of orchestrating forgiveness, of creating
second chances, of healing things that are broken. It is stronger than pride, more wilful than
anger.

Love is the only thing I know that isn’t at the mercy of time.

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639
 Epilogue

SIX YEARS LATER

D
ear Hailey,

It's taken me over three years to start this.

I don't know if this is for you, or if it is
for me. I suspect it's for both of us -
for all of us - or maybe it's just
because I've learned that while life
is short, love is long. If I do nothing
else in this lifetime, I will show you
just how much you are loved.
I want you to know who you are,
and who we are. The rest you will
learn along the way.
In truth I have been thinking about
beginning this journal for some
time.
And then yesterday, there it was - a
sign that the time had come.
I was on the boardwalk with you
and there was a new vendor sitting
there, with all of his products for
sale laid out on a blanket on the
south end. The man's name is Frank

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and I swear he has to be eighty years old. He sells all of these leather bound journals, but he
paints the covers - each one depicts the Atlantic Ocean in some form or another. When I saw
this particular journal, with its magical and regal sailboat cutting through the waves, I knew
the time had come to begin this journey with you.
I'll never forget the way your eyes lit up when you realised I was buying the journal. You
begged me to read you the boat book the whole way home. I don't think you quite understood
that it was blank on the inside, waiting for me to chronicle the story of you.
Instead, last night I told you the story of Suhaili. She is the sailboat that you were named after,
and as I told you about how she sailed around the whole world, battling through winds and
waves and winter chills, your eyes drifted shut.
Hailey.
Your name is magic to me. It is boats and comets and my deepest dream come true. They also
say that your name means "hero" and that seems fitting, because you are half your father.
If there ever was a hero, he is it for me. There are a thousand, million reasons why.
I had decided to start writing this before your birth, but being pregnant with you was such a
terrifying experience for me that I never felt like I had the words. Maybe I was scared you
would slip away. You have to understand that I loved even the idea of having you for so many
years that I was sure you would somehow be taken from me. There were so many risks.
I was older than every other first time mother I have known, and it wasn't an easy process
even getting pregnant. A dozen times I told your father that it wasn't meant to be for me, but he
was relentless to the point of fighting with me. I finally yelled at him horribly one night, three
days before Christmas. I told him not to pity me if I never had a child of my own. Wasn't
marrying him enough? Him, his children, it was more than enough for me. Maybe it was
already too much. I told him that I couldn't stand the way he was pressuring me into the
fertility drugs, the tests, the alternative options he'd begun to explore. I was obviously never
meant to be a mother, I said. And maybe I wasn't even meant to be a wife.
I screamed that last part at him.
Everything fell apart for me that night. I looked at the Christmas tree, at the lights we'd strung
up everywhere, at my life. I suddenly longed for New York, for the life I had led there. I
wanted to be a cop again, I wanted to be fearless and young and so assured that I could
handle everything that came my way. I didn't want to feel needy. I was so scared of how
dependent I had become on the idyllic world I had built here with him. I was being ungrateful
and I could see the fear in your father's eyes. He wanted to run too, I think. He wanted to run
from me before I could leave him.
But he is the heroic one out of the two of us.
He didn't go anywhere.
I will never forget that look in his eyes that night. The fireplace was fading, the chill had
settled into the floorboards where I sat and your father stood there in that grey fleece shirt of
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his - the one I love to touch - and his words were spoken so softly that I think he mumbled
them. "Used to wonder what it would be like to have a kid with you. Even before I had the
right to think ‘bout it. We used t'go out there and save those kids and I'd jus' think about how
we'd be. How goddamned good we'd be."
I figured out then that he was in love with even the idea of you, too.
I cried then. I cried so hard. Your Dad held me that night, the way he holds you when you get
hurt or you have a bad dream. I must have let something go that night, something that was
keeping you from me. It took the fertility treatments and some patience, but by late spring I
was pregnant with you.
I want to say it was a fairytale from then on, baby girl. But while there are a lot of things I am,
a liar isn't one of them.
I was not a radiant pregnant woman by any means. One day you will grow up and see these
glowing beautiful women with their perfect little bellies. These women do yoga up until the day
they deliver and they wear high heels to their baby shower. That was not me, pumpkin. I was
a wreck. I wanted to sleep all day, and I ate horrible things like celery with caramel. For some
reason I felt a need to Netflix every old serial drama that was ever on in the 80's. Your father
looked at me sometimes like I was an unstable hand grenade, and I can't say that I blame him.
I was so scared I was going to do the wrong things for you. I was absolutely convinced that my
body was going to get this pregnancy thing entirely wrong.
Thank God for the Rolling Stones, because their albums became the only entertainment we
could agree on at all around this house. If you grow up and have a strong affinity for Beast of
Burden, you'll know why. It was your Dad air-guitaring one night that finally made me laugh
so hard that I went into labor. He looked ridiculous, and Jesus, he sings so out of tune. I mean,
even now he sings Itsy Bitsy Spider and I could swear he's singing Five Little Monkeys.
You should have seen your Dad's face when my water broke that night. For the number of
times he had done it before, he still managed to turn three shades of grey. He used words that
could have made the paint peel from the walls. For the first time in the entire pregnancy, oddly
enough I was the one who felt in control.
That was the moment in which all of this seemed to be so natural. So...right.
Seventeen hours later, you were here.
I look back now, and those next few days are a blur. The gifts and visits first came from your
siblings, and maybe it's because all of them, even Eli, are years older than you - but they didn't
react with jealousy or indifference. By some miracle they took you in stride. You were
absorbed in, just like I was. Your Daddy has an amazing ability to inflict a hell of a lot of his
faith on everyone around him.
He's the strongest person I have ever, ever known.

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We both look at him the same way, I think. As if he alone can conduct the ocean and brighten
the skies. Although you do seem convinced he's Prince Charming, and I'm more prone to think
he's the Beast - infinitely capable of loving us, but a little rough around the edges sometimes.
Tomorrow will mark the seventh anniversary of my first visit to this house. Your father had
been standing on the patio that day, and he'd been holding a beer when I walked up. He was
handsome and strong and he knew the worst of who I could be, yet there he was - waiting for
me. I remember holding my breath and praying he couldn't see my heart just slamming out of
my chest as he looked at me.
Then he'd smiled, and that was the beginning of everything that matters to me.
You call him "'Addy" and there is nothing he can't fix for you. He makes the pancakes right, he
painstakingly follows the directions to put together the glittery
pink Lego houses. You and he have pretty much turned the
garage loft into a life size dollhouse, and he is the one who
takes you up there every night to tuck your Zeldy and Molly
dolls into their bunk beds. He actually leaves glasses of water
on their end tables when you tell him that they are thirsty,
because he can't lie to you and say he's done it when he
hasn't. He holds your hand when we walk on the beach and
I sometimes find a reason to lag behind.
I watch the two of you in those stolen moments.
You with your dark curls and those fiery blue eyes, and your
Addy with that ridiculous swagger that he's still got. You
swing his hand and you always look up into the sun just a
little bit, making sure he's still there. I watch your hand curl
tighter into his and I know the feeling. I revel in that sense of
security, too.
I watch the two of you and I think about what is mine.
You are mine, baby girl. And I love you beyond reason. You
are my heart walking around outside of my chest. You are all of this to me - the ocean, the
stars, the sand and the air. You laugh and your Daddy and I freeze, because we know what a
gift it is for a child to laugh like that, totally uninhibited and free.
Laughter, I know now, is the most precious thing of all.

Olivia looks up at the sound.

The heat from the sun has already sunk deep into her shoulders and the tops of her thighs.
Her body feels languid, and she exhales on the slight breeze. She's sitting on a beach towel as
she writes, her toes digging into the summer-heated grains of sand. At the water's edge

643
straight ahead, she sees what she's looking for. Her daughter is giggling. Elliot is holding
Hailey while he is standing ankle deep in the ocean. Her green ruffled bathing suit glimmers
in the sun. She'd chosen that particular suit today because it's her "mermaid costume" and
Elliot had promised to play King Triton to her Ariel. At the moment though, one of Hailey's
small hands is batting at her father's bare chest, while she's pointing excitedly at the freighter
ship off in the distance with the other.

She thinks all the freighters are cruise liners, thanks to Liz. The twins have been campaigning
for a Caribbean cruise vacation this winter for the family and only Olivia knows that it's going
to happen. She's made a damned good income over the last few years on the books and
television appearances, and while they've focused on putting money away for the kids, she
also knows they can well afford to indulge when they want to. She's going to surprise all of
them with cabins - Maureen and her husband Jeff will get one, as will Kathleen and her
longtime boyfriend Henry. Neither of the twins are serious with anyone yet, but they'll each
get their own cabin so they can bring a friend. Olivia booked a two-room suite so Eli and
Hailey will have space to play, and she's been debating how to ask Kathy if she wants to bring
her boyfriend as well.
It's still just a little bit awkward for all of them to be together - even all these years later - but
Olivia had gotten through the hardest parts at Maureen's wedding last year. Elliot had walked
his daughter down the aisle, and Kathy had sat with Liz and Kathleen. Even Hailey had been
given a role as flower girl.

But Olivia had sat in the church and the displacement she'd been expecting hadn't
materialised. Instead, she had felt more grateful than anything else. Grateful to these people
who had taken her in, who had given Hailey no reason at all to doubt who her family is. Her
pen-name is still Olivia Benson, but that day their place card at dinner had said Mr. & Mrs.
Stabler and she hadn't thought twice about how crazy it was that they had all ended up as they
had. So she watches her daughter now. She watches her husband as he holds their child. Elliot
has her sitting facing outward towards the ocean on his clasped hands, as if he is her chair.
Hailey stiffens her legs and points her toes so that when they get further into the ocean, she'll
be able to flap them up and down just like a mermaid.

These days, Olivia believes in mermaids and happy endings, too.

Her pen returns to the paper, writing a story not intended for the world. This is a story that
will take years to tell and it will never finish, because it will live on in the life of one beautiful
child.

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Hers.

Sometimes I think back to when I was a little girl.

Your grandmother Serena had been hurt by so much in the world, and she needed to cope
somehow. She found solace in drinking a lot of the time, but there were other times when she'd
find relief in the books she loved so much. The books saved her for a long time, I think. It's
ironic that I too have turned to books in a way. Sometimes I think she would be so surprised
by how my life has changed, and other times I think she wouldn't be surprised at all.
I do think she would be happy for me. I find so much peace in knowing that.
I just finished writing my fourth book last week, and it should be published within the next
few months. In the past I've written about raising safe children, and surviving sexual assault.
I've written about trauma and fighting back and trusting your instincts. But it's this latest book
which has changed me the most.
Finding Atlantis.
That is what I named this last book.
It's my story. Maybe no one will buy it, although Jenna thinks it will be the most successful one
of all. She said that people want to know more about me, but that's not why I wrote it. I wrote
it because I don't think I'm all that different anymore. I'm not the one on the outside of life
looking in. I think I'm like so many people out there who have struggled with finding
happiness. I've faced my battles, but I've also learned that the wars don't last forever. I've died
inside, and I've come alive again. I've lost hope, only to be surprised by miracles. That's what I
want people to know.
I want them to know that if you're brave enough, then joy will somehow find a way.
You are proof of this.
You're an infinite dreamer. At three, you believe wholeheartedly in every fairy tale you are
read. You believe that good always wins in the end, and for awhile I was scared about the day
you would inevitably discover you were wrong. But the truth is I actually think you are the
one who is right. I've seen a mother laugh over a memory of a child she's lost; I've seen damage
healed by love. Twenty plus years on the force and you'd think it would only be the darkness
that remains, but that is so far from the truth. What I remember most about my days with SVU
aren't the worst nights, but rather the best days.
There were many.
We lost often, but we tried our damndest every time. I remember how invincible your Daddy
made me feel. I was faster, stronger, braver with him by my side - and as a unit we were
ferocious on the streets of Manhattan. God himself must have put us together, because all of us
fit together in a way that only he could have been responsible for. We had each other's backs
in a way most families will never even understand. Don and Fin, John and Alex, Casey and

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Adam - they are now your uncles and your aunts, but to me and your Daddy, they are the
people to whom we owe our lives.
Our lives.
What a journey it's been. I am grateful for all of it.
This past February, your father surprised me. He'd been teaching at the Academy for the last
several years, and the job had been good to him. The hours were regular, the days scheduled
long weeks in advance. But when he came home that night, there was something different
about him. You had fallen asleep on the couch in one of your princess costumes, wearing half
of my jewelry and one of my high heels, and he came in and just sat on the floor looking at
you.
I waited for him to tell me. It took him no more than half an hour. They'd asked him to join the
New Jersey State Detectives.
I don't know what he thought would happen when he told me. I certainly don't think he was
expecting me to smile or to ask him when he was starting as I did, because when he finally
looked up at me, he still seemed a little wary. I suppose his fear was a leftover memory of the
last time he'd told me he wanted to take another job. The last time, I'd run from him, convinced
his change of plans meant I'd lose him for good.
But things change. These days I am not afraid. I know what I have.
The truth is I always figured he'd go back one day. Granted, this job is vastly different than
our days with SVU. It's an honor to be asked, and there are only twenty-some State Detectives
in all, but it's still a return to the street in a way. The difference is that he's not the same
anymore. He's calmer and far less prone to anger. He's less likely to make risky choices, and I
will never be someone to hold him back. Over the last few years I've had my time on a case
here or there when I've covered them for work, but he hasn't.
I know he missed it.
He sat there that night and asked me if I thought it would be taking something from you, from
me, if he accepted the offer.
No, I told him without hesitation, because the world out there needs him, too. I told him that
they don't make men like him anymore. Men driven by justice and honor and who are strong
enough to fight for both. I told him I had faith in him, in this. In his choices. I told him that the
State Detectives would be lucky to have him, just as I am.
Just as you are.
Your Daddy doesn't cry often, but he cried a little that night. He nodded, and he was quiet for
a long, long time. I vowed that night to remind him more often about who he is, because I
never, ever want him to forget.
You packed him a lunch to go that first morning before he left for work. His new badge and
state-issued gun were both clipped to his belt, and you couldn't have been more proud of him
as you held out that brown-bagged peanut butter and jelly sandwich towards him. "You need
646
vit'mins if you're gonna be fast ‘nough to catch the bad guys," you told him, just as serious as
you could be.
These days it's one of the first things you tell people. "My ‘Addy is a p'lice officer."
He always tells you that I was one too once, but you shake your head, as if he's got it all
wrong. "No. Mommy is just my mommy."
He doesn't argue with you and neither do I. We both know that I am so unbelievably grateful
that you see me only as yours.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

Olivia stops writing and closes the journal, tucking it into her beach bag quickly before her
soaking wet daughter reaches her. Hailey is running across the beach, kicking up sand like a
dust storm around her ankles. Seconds later Hailey reaches the towel Olivia sits on and she
throws herself into her mother's lap, laughing and trying to catch her breath.
"Addy said he's gonna ‘rrest the sharkies if they get me," Hailey huffs. She haphazardly
shoves her wet locks out of her eyes and exhales dramatically. Her eyes are precisely the same
blue as Elliot's, and she fixates her gaze on her mother. "How's he gonna do that?" She asks,
wide-eyed. "You can't handicuff ns!"
Elliot joins them now, and droplets of water still cling to his bare chest as he stands at the edge
of their towel. Even all of these years later, he's still too fit for his own good. He's got muscles
where Olivia didn't even know the human body formed them. It's infuriating some of the
time, because she has to work so much harder on keeping in shape. The rest of the time
though, his sex-God body isn't something she complains about. At all. He catches her ogling
him even now. He grins knowingly at her, and those eyes of his darken immediately with
promise.

"Tell me she's gonna need a nap this afternoon," he growls softly.

Hailey hears him and gets back on her feet, indignant as all get out.
"I'm not tired!"
Elliot's eyebrows raise, and his amusement is obvious. His daughter barely reaches his waist,
but she's got her hands on her hips and her chin lifted, completely unwilling to back down.
"Well I am," he tells her.
Olivia knows what's coming, but she figures Elliot walked into it, so he'll have to be the one
to deal with it.
“So -“ Hailey starts, thinking out loud. "Then m'be you should go an' take a nap."
He crouches down and looks his daughter in the eyes.
"You realise that you are your mother's kid, right?" he deadpans.
647
fi
Satisfied she's won her argument, Hailey rolls her eyes and collapses back onto the towel,
stretching out and dropping her head onto Olivia's left leg. Her wet hair tickles at Olivia's
thigh while she crosses her ankles and folds her hands over her stomach.
"Mommy always says I'm your kid."
Olivia can barely suppress her laughter. She looks up and locks eyes with her husband, who is
apparently having the same struggle. His lips twitch.
"She was your idea," Olivia tells him, shrugging.
He jerks his chin towards their daughter, who has already contentedly closed her eyes. With
their child minutes away from falling asleep in the sun, he shakes his head with affection.
Elliot's voice drops.
"I'm a smart man."

Olivia looks at him and she won't disagree. As Elliot spreads out his towel next to her, Olivia
reaches for the journal again. Elliot catches what she's doing and he looks at her without
saying anything. They still talk wordlessly these days, and she knows what he is thinking.
Bernie's journal now safely resides with Kathleen. His daughter had cried the Christmas
Elliot had given it to her. Her fingertips had turned white on the worn leather and she'd
stared at her father. He'd told his child that he was sorry that afternoon. That he wouldn't
make the same mistakes again. He'd told Kathleen that Bernie had been a fighter, and that his
mother had been right - some moments were made for magic. His daughter has seemed more
complete since then. Olivia knows he's watching her write this for Hailey now, and out of the
corner of her eye she sees him exhale as he stares at the ocean.

He watches the waves tap against the shoreline and moments later, he grins.

There is something else you need to know about your father.

When I met him, he was the one thing in the world that represented everything good to me. I'd
spent so many years compensating for Serena's choices and her alcoholism that by the time I
met him I'd become satisfied with just surviving.
It was your father who showed me what it was like to thrive.
It was something to see - him balancing it all. He was a decorated and dedicated cop - the best -
yet he had a gorgeous family, too. His desk was always covered with pictures of Maureen or
Kathleen, or with artwork made by the twins. His marriage to Kathy had been infinitely
important to me, because his life represented the very thing that I felt I was trying to protect on
the job. You have to know that family has always - always - been everything to him. Even
when he felt like he'd lost it for a time there, he still believed in that truth.
648
He also believed in me. I will never forget the night he pointed out to me how well I had turned
out, despite my past. No one had ever, ever said those words to me. He was proud enough of
me for the both of us sometimes.
I loved him for a long time before I came out to the beach house that June afternoon. I know
that now. We were magnets all along. Powerfully drawn to each other, yet under pressure we
had the capability of pushing each other away.
It's so important to me that you know that his marriage to Kathy was something that I would
never have challenged, nor would he have breached his vows either. Their choice to end that
marriage was something completely separate from us. That marriage ended long before I
could even acknowledge my feelings for him.
I tell you all of this because you need to know who we are, and what kind of people we try to
be. Not because it will define who you are, but because I don't ever want you to question your
bloodlines.
I want you to know that you are beyond wanted, beyond loved, and infinitely cherished. I
want you to know that everyone in our family is good, honourable, and is doing the best they
can.
Today you are part of something bigger than I had ever dreamed of. I see Maureen's laugh in
your belly laugh, Kathleen's artistry in your paintings. You get lost in thought like Lizzie does,
and you've got Richard's charm and mischief. But it is Eli with whom you are closest. He'll be
ten this year, but he doesn't see you as a baby. He is your big brother, your savior, your
teacher and your confidant. He takes all of these roles very seriously. You tell everyone that he
is your very best friend.
You have all of this, yet you came from me. It is you who inexorably connects me to this family
forever. You arrived, and the last vestiges of restlessness in me disappeared. I am not a part of
this family only because of a name or a piece of paper or a vow. Those things are incredible
gifts from your father, and you have given me even more. Now it is blood that binds me to all
that is perfect.
Your life has given me this ultimate gift of belonging.

Hailey's head still rests on her mother, but her legs are sprawled out over her father's lap.
Elliot lays next to his wife now - his towel spread out next to hers - and while his eyes are
closed, Olivia knows that unlike their daughter he is not sleeping. She strokes Hailey's damp
and tangled hair off of her face. Her daughter's eyelashes flutter, but nothing else on her
moves. Her little monster has been sleeping now for almost an hour, despite her adamant
declarations that she was not tired at all. The sun is bright, the ocean is constant, and the lazy
Saturday afternoon is not unlike so many others that they have had together.

649
Olivia rolls her head to the side, exhaling contentedly.
"You think you'll get called in tonight?"
Elliot turns his face towards her, and his gaze is dark, possessive. It tells her what he's been
thinking about, and the heat that slides over her skin now has nothing to do with the higher-
than-usual June temperature.
”No. Said they'd let me know by noon latest if we were sittin' on the house tonight. Haven't
heard so it's a no go."
He's been working with DEA over the last few weeks on turning a series of misdemeanour
possessions into something that will yield them a distributor. There have been some
incredibly early mornings executing search warrants and a few late nights that he's spent on
surveillance, but it's nothing that they can't handle. Olivia is finally in the editing process
now, so her schedule has relaxed a bit as well.

"I'm sure Gladys would take the little monkey if you wanted to go out for a bite to eat and a
drink tonight," she suggests.
"Tell Grammy we gotta bake the choc'late one this time," Hailey murmurs sleepily, her eyes
never opening as she rolls over and turns her face further into Olivia's lap, not quite ready to
wake up yet. "With the sprinkle f'osting."

Hailey had taken it upon herself to adopt Gladys as her Grammy. And her Grammy, in turn,
had taken it upon herself to indulge Hailey in homemade cakes for dinner and an endless
supply of party dresses that she seems to make once a week.
"Cake isn't dinner, kid," Olivia admonishes, trailing her fingers along her child's arm. "You
need things like protein, too."
"Grammy says cake's got eggs in ‘em, so s'got protein," Hailey counters, slurring her words.
"Maybe Gladys'll keep her for the night?" Elliot mutters, shaking his head. "Or a week. How
about she keeps her for a week?"
Olivia shifts on the towel, smiling even as she closes her eyes again.
"I take it that's a yes; you do wanna take me on a date tonight?"

The wind next to her shifts as Elliot sits up. She hears him searching around in the beach bag
and then seconds later, she hears the sunscreen bottle open. He's gently slathering it on
Hailey before he responds.
"Hell yeah. And sleep now, because I'm not making any promises about how much sleep
you're gonna get later."

650
She laughs softly, and then his hands are on Olivia's legs, covering her with the sunscreen,
too. His strong fingers skim over her calves and slip around to the back of her knees, and then
he's pressing into the muscles of her thighs with his palm, all in the name of protecting her.
Olivia drifts off to his familiar touch and the cawing of the seagulls as they glide atop the light
ocean wind. Her daughter is waking, and soon Hailey will want lunch, or she will want to head
back into the ocean. Her daughter is fearless when it comes to the water and her lack of
inhibition with the waves makes them watch her like a hawk at all times.

But it's a day off of work for Elliot, and because Olivia is home with Hailey more than he is
during the week, he will want to be the one today to make her sandwich and cut the crusts off.
He will gladly head back into the water with his child, and he'll be the one to tell Hailey that
the broken seashells she collects really are the most beautiful ones that he has ever seen.
He will make another sandcastle with his daughter today. He always makes sure that their
creation sits far away enough from the water's edge that the tide won't crumble their kingdom
as it rolls in.

Olivia's breathing slows, until it is effortless. When she sleeps these days, she barely moves.
She falls into it deeply, and the nightmares that once filled her head are no longer. When she
wakes, she'll take a long shower and then she'll go have dinner with her husband. He might
take her into the warm ocean when it is dark, and his mouth will land on hers. Her fingers will
push into his wet skin, and he'll laugh because even now she is still so hungry for him. As he is
for her.

She'll have to wear something she doesn't care much about tonight. She's learned by now,
because she's lost half a dozen good dresses to the saltwater over the years.

Your Daddy is singing to you right now. I can hear the faint lull of it, but not the words.
It's probably We're Going On A Bear Hunt or Hush Little Baby, or maybe you've even
convinced him to sing something from The Little Mermaid. You don't care that he's off key,
and you always ask him to sing another one, and then another.
We went out to dinner tonight and came home at eleven only to find you and Gladys watching
television in our living room. Apparently you'd decided you weren't sleeping over at their
place. You wanted to stay awake so you could take our orders for breakfast. You love making
us cereal and bringing it into our bed on the weekends. It's one big mixing bowl full of milk,
half a box of something sugary and three spoons. Half of it ends up on the floor by the time
you make it into our room, but it's worth the cleanup just to see your proud little face when you
hand us the bowl.
651
It's the smallest moments that have become the biggest definition of who I am now.
It's amazing to me that I am here.
You know, the first time I met your Grandma Bernie, I came out to Surf City without your
Daddy knowing. We needed her help on something, and I wanted to talk to her about it. I met
her for a bite to eat down by the boardwalk, and she brought the photo album we now have
which is filled with pictures of your Daddy from when he had been a boy. I think she was sad
about all the time she had missed with him, all of the ways in which she thought she could
have done better as a mother. She didn't always make the right choices for your Daddy
because she was suffering from a sickness, but when she held out that photo album to me and I
saw her eyes, I knew.
She loved your Daddy with all of her heart. Despite everything, that much was true.
In that moment, she taught me about my own mother's love for me.
The thing I've learned about love is that it isn't always perfect, but it is strong. It exists even
when it's been beaten down by sickness, by fear, or by circumstance. It has a way of
orchestrating forgiveness, of creating second chances, of healing things that are broken. It is
stronger than pride, more wilful than anger.
Love is the only thing I know that isn't at the mercy of Time.
One day you will ask questions about the lives your Daddy and I have led. I will tell you the
truth about all of it, in a way that you can understand. I will tell you about our pasts, and I
will tell you about how we no longer look back and see the agonies that we have endured as
disfiguring scars. They are instead the experiences which brought your Daddy and I together,
and in turn that brought us you.
So the worst moments in our memory have in retrospect become challenges we have overcome,
and only now can I look back and see all of it as something leading towards victory.
This is my infinite victory. Here.
Now.
With you.

In the darkness that fills midnight, Olivia now lays awake in her bed and listens to the ocean.
It's now become such a familiar sound that she hears it even when she is away on a business
trip, far from the water's edge. The waves are a constant; they are a permanent rhythm within
her. She is no longer afraid of the water. She doesn't worry about the ground beneath her
feet. She looks upwards these days. Tonight, with her eyes on the ceiling and the journal she's
finally started for her daughter sitting on the end table, Olivia smiles. A few weeks ago Elliot
and Hailey had spent the afternoon sticking glow-in-the-dark stars and moons on the ceiling
of the bedroom. Olivia had suggested that they do Hailey's room instead, but her daughter
had insisted that they belonged in here. Hailey was allowed to spend one night a week

652
sleeping in her parent's room, and she said that it would make those nights feel like they were
all camping outside.

So Elliot had taken out the directions from the package, and he had started to lay out the
constellations on the bed. He'd gone to get the ladder from the garage and come back in to
find Hailey had rearranged all of the stars and moons on the bed into the shape she wanted on
the ceiling. It's an illuminated smiley face that now glows above Olivia, drawn out by all the
shapes of the universe. She grins back at it and laughs quietly, shaking her head. She rolls
onto her side then, facing her sleeping husband and daughter.

Hailey is on her back, her arms flung above her head as Eli had once done. Her curls are
unruly, and they are dark and shiny against the light coloured sheets. Elliot is half on his side,
half on his stomach facing his child, and he's got one arm shoved under his pillow. His other
palm rests on Hailey's stomach though, as if he had fallen asleep to the rise and fall of her
chest. Olivia slips her fingers across Elliot's strong ones. Even in sleep, he grasps hers lightly
until they are tangled atop this perfect thing they have created together.
She doesn't have to stay awake tonight to hold onto any of this. It will all be here in the
morning. Her eyelids grow heavy and she lets them close. And then it's just the majestic
ocean outside, guarding the sound of their deep, even breaths.

There is a reason I chose the name I did for my story. It's a timeless tale, the one of Atlantis.
Some say it was a glorious place, some say it contained the worst of mankind. Some say it was
as small as an island, some say it was the largest, most powerful continent of all. Some say it
was created by the gods above, some say it was a haven for the devils below.
Everyone agrees that it was heavily guarded, so much so that no one could get in. It was
surrounded by impassable waters and stalwart fortresses made of stone. The people of
Atlantis, it is said, believed that they did not need the outside world.
They say that Atlantis stood on its own for so long that it simply broke one day. The
mountains gave way, the land crumbled. And then Atlantis was nothing more than bits of
itself that sank to the bottom of the ocean, so deeply lost to the dark that no one has been able
to find it.
Yet.
The naysayers will tell you that Atlantis never existed, and that even if it did, it disintegrated
beyond recognition when it fell apart. They will tell you that it isn't worth finding. It isn't
worth saving.
But those with hope - with faith - they will tell you something entirely different.

653
They will tell you that Atlantis still exists beneath the waters that protect it, and they will
assure you it will be found one day. They will tell you that it simply takes one person with an
interminable will to save it. They will tell you that when Atlantis is discovered, it will rise
grandly of its own accord. Intact. No longer broken.
It will be stronger than ever, and this time...this time nothing will ever overcome it again.
See Hailey, I think Atlantis truly exists. Oh, I don't believe it's an island or a continent - but it's
real nonetheless. I think it's something inside of us. It's our resiliency, our ability to start again.
It's our willingness to fight for a comeback when we think we're down for the count. It's that
surprise burst of air when we think we can no longer breathe. It's the precious and
unbreakable core of us - that tightly guarded place where we still exist as something whole and
willing to believe.
This won't be the last of what I write to you, but it may be the most important thing I ever say
as your mother.
Just as there was an Atlantis in me, there is one in you as well. Trust that if you're ever lost, it
isn't the end of your story. You may struggle, and you may have to wait. You may need to ask
for help, and you may be scared. But trust that if you ever fall, you have the miraculous ability
to rise again.
Trust that one day you will be gloriously found.

Just as I am now.

654
 Playlist

• When You Say Nothing At All- Alison Krauss

• New Morning - Alpha Rev
• Night Moves - Bob Seger
• Everything Changes - Staind
• Lover Lay Down - Dave Matthews Band
• Bring On The Comets - VHS
• Somewhere In Between - Lifehouse
• Come Back Home - Pat McGee Band
• Start A War - The National
• Glitter In The Air - P!nk
• Ache - James Carrington
• Letters From The Sky - Civil Twilight
• Breathe Me - Sia
• From The Sky - Peter Bradley Adams
• Something Good Coming - Tom Petty
• Trust Me - Holly Long
• Secret Garden - Bruce Springsteen
• Longest Night - Howie Day
• Hold My Heart - Sara Bareilles
• Breathe Again - Sara Bareilles
• Waiting For My Real Life to Begin - Colin Hay
• Goodbye From the Start - Alpha Rev
• Comes and Goes in Waves - Greg Laswell
• Human - Civil Twilight
• Take The Fall - Brendan James
• Bulletproof Weeks - Matt Nathanson
• New York - Snow Patrol
• Cut - Plumb
• I Won't Let Go - Rascal Flatts
• C.S. Lewis Song - Brooke Fraser
• As I'm Leaving - David Gray
• Days Like This - Kim Taylor
• Pride and Joy - Brandi Carlisle
• Witness - Eliza Gilkyson, Ian Matthews and Ad Vanderveen
• As I'm Leaving - David Gray
• Watch Over Me - Bernard Fanning
• Brand New Day - Joshua Radin
• Everything Familiar - Meg Hutchinson
• I Shall Believe - Matt Brower
• Home to Me - Josh Kelley
• Blood - The Middle East
• Pictures - Benjamin Francis Leftwich
After Rain
BONUS: One shot by Lyricara
 “…and in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.”
- - Truman Capote

S
he’d texted him, so he isn’t surprised to hear the knock at his door, even at one in the
morning.With his kids and his mother at the beach house for the weekend, the place is
uncharacteristically quiet, save for the unending rain and the sound of her hand
slapping weakly at the door. Jesus, even the way she’s announcing her presence tells him this
is bad, the kind of bad that sticks, the kind of bad that finds a permanent place within. Bad has
degrees, and this is off the scale. Tonight’s terror will be tomorrow’s headlines, and she is in
no shape to face anything else tonight.

He’d had his coat in his hand, ready to race to the precinct to get her twenty minutes ago. Fin
had texted him first. Come get her. Bad night. Lost three kids. His fist had barely closed
around his keys when she’d sent him a message. You home? His fingers hadn’t worked fast
enough for his liking. Yes, I’m leaving now to come get you. At his front door, the responding
ping had stopped him. I’m already en route to you.He opens the door now, swings it open,
feeling out of breath with anxiety, trying to prepare himself for what he’s going to see. He
knows what she faced tonight, he’d spent the last ten minutes talking to Fin. Thirty minutes
too late, her squad had arrived to arrest their suspect. A father, a monster, in every way. He’d
already taken his whole family out, unwilling to be accused, unwilling to be betrayed,
revealed, reviled. He’d obliterated his family and then himself, and Olivia had been the first
one through the door to find the carnage. Four innocent lives, lost to four simple bullets. But
one kid, just one, had still been breathing. One had made a sound, one - one had made Olivia
drop to her knees, her hands frantically working on a tiny chest, ultimately to no avail.

Fin had told him they could hear Olivia screaming for help from all the way out on the street.
She’d been so loud, so frantic, that the uni’s were still talking about the carnal sound she’d
made.Christ. He didn’t miss SVU on nights like tonight. He missed her, always. But the devil
wasn’t the same in OCCB. He missed being by her side, and he’d made fucked up choices that
had taken him from being where she needed him for too many years. But tonight, tonight she
is here.

Then again, that’s debatable. The look on her face tells him she’s somewhere else, lost to a
nightmare, still in the throes of it. She’s standing in front of him soaking wet, her light coat
discoloured by the weight of the rain and the blood, and how much it has been forced to
absorb tonight. Her hair is wet, her blouse is wet, her eyes are wet. Her purse hangs limply
from her fingertips, and she’s silent, just waiting there, an offering on his doorstep.

1
She blinks at him, slowly, looking right into him. Her mascara is smudged, her lipstick long
gone. She stands rigidly - an innate, instinctive telltale of her rank - yet her eyes tell him she
isn’t really here, not yet.
“Come on,” he says softly, his hand reaching for her arm to urge her in the door.
She takes the few steps towards him, and then he closes the door behind her, shutting the
world out until she’s ready to face it again.
***

She’s cold.

She’s so damned cold.

The shivering won’t stop, and she wants to close her eyes, to squeeze away the memory of that
little boy, his dirty blonde hair matted with blood. Noah. It always comes back to him, but
tonight had been closer than usual. The child’s frame, his colouring, his small nose. The
freckles. God, the little freckles. Lucy had thankfully stayed, she’d stayed, so her boy is home
safe but she can’t go to him, not like this, not yet. Her chest is beating too fast, her pulse feels
too slow, and she will never, never get used to the children. She’s so damned cold.

She’d stood in the rain for over an hour after, directing, ordering, trying to make sense of the
senseless. She knows there is an ungodly amount of blood on her coat, her shirt, her pants.
Where else could she have gone, where else but here, to him, to him? She had managed to
keep from calling him at the scene a few hours ago, but when it had been enough, when the
rest was meant for morning, for mourning, she’d known there would be no more of her own
two feet tonight. This was bigger than she could take, and for the first time in a thousand
tragedies, he was close.

He’s so close. Right now, he’s so close. He’d brought her straight in here, into the closest
bathroom, the one with the big shower. He’s got his hands on the lapels of her coat, and he’s
tugging it down and off her shoulders. She must have left her bag somewhere on the way in,
because her hands are free and the coat comes off easily. She toes off her boots, instantly
shorter than him, his mouth near her forehead.

“Throw it out,” she manages. Her throat is sore from the way she’d screamed for someone,
anyone, to help her in that powder blue bedroom.He nods. They both know the blood won’t
come out, they know what can be saved and what can’t be. His hands search behind her back,
expertly unclipping the holster, pulling out her gun, dislodging the badge, setting all of it
down, away from her, on the corner of the counter, out of her reach. He slips her belt out of
2
the loops, and she feels the slide of it, the shiver, the shudder, but he does no more, simply
sets that too, aside. He’s pressing a soft stack of clean smelling things - pure white - into her
arms. Towels, she realises. She clutches them to her stomach, her back to the mirror so she
doesn’t have to see herself, not yet.Elliot sees her though, and she lets him.

He’s in front of her. Inches away. He’s big and broad and heat is emanating off his skin. She
focuses on a spot on his neck, the indentation of his clavicle, and he’s so strong, she thinks.
He’s all muscle and height and fluid movements. He’s a fighter, his knuckles are scarred, yet
his fingertips are impossibly light as they trace her hairline, brushing her hair back from her
temples. His thumb skims there, tiny circles. Innocuous and everything all at once. She
shudders, pain and pleasure warring for control of her senses.

“There’s a set of sweats behind you on the sink.”

Oh. His voice. Even in the haze, it cuts through. Low and rough, a purr of relief, of respite, of
safety. He’s coated in the softest material, something navy, a henley, it curves over him, left
loose over his jeans, his bare feet, and she wants to grip the fabric of it, just to stay upright.
Her eyes close. She’s so fucking tired.
“Liv.”

Her eyes open again, commanded by the sheer familiarity of how he says her name. Maybe for
the first time in a year, he doesn’t sound unsure with her. He’s directing her, taking over, and
she needs that desperately right now. She’s done being in charge, she doesn’t want to be, not
in this moment. She wants to be the girl who walked into the 1-6 over twenty years ago, the girl
he’d taken charge of, the one he’d led in those early years, the one who had accepted his
unequivocal protection with ease.This is Elliot. The simple reality of that makes her eyes
prick again, with grief, relief, with the sharp ache of need, buried in her skin a dozen years
deep.

Their history wraps around her tonight, and she pulls it closer. She needs that history right
now, she needs the synchronicity, the melding, the half of her that had been gone for too long.
“Take a shower. Get it real hot, and stand there for a bit.”
She can smell the soap on him now. He must have showered not that long ago, in the same
place he’s sending her into. If he wasn’t back in New York, if he wasn’t here tonight, she
doesn’t know where she’d be. Would she have gone home? A hotel? Stayed at the precinct? If
he wasn’t home, where -

Her eyes fill. Her chest is tight. She doesn’t know what to do, so she just holds her hand up to
him, between them, showing him her short fingernails. Once painted clear, they now have
3
dark, nauseating black rings under them that won’t come clean, even with a shower, the
damage had found its way too deep.
“You got a file around here? I gotta -“
Those blue eyes of his never waver from her face, but his fingers grip hers. “Just shower. I’ll
do it after.”
The idea of him carefully scraping the blood out from beneath her nails, it’s overwhelming.
It’s too much, the relief, the absolute understanding he has of what she’s been through, the
way she doesn’t have to explain, it mercifully lets her draw a full breath. She nods.

He starts the water then, waiting for it to get hot while she clutches the towels tightly to her
chest. He tests the temperature, finally says it’s ready, and then he steps past her, heading
towards the door to give her some space within the cocoon of his home. But the loss of him is
too profound, and it dredges up something primal in her, a need to preserve, to cling, to latch
onto the buoy of him. Someone has to be saved tonight, someone has to live.

“No,” she gasps, grabbing for the waist of his shirt while dropping the towels at her feet.
Whatever he sees on her face when he turns, it stops him in his tracks. He searches her face,
and something akin to recognition washes over him. Her pupils are probably dilated, she
thinks absently. Her movements are jerky, and she’s too pale. Shock. It hits like this
sometimes, a little later, when someone is finally safe, and can let go, and she thinks that’s
what this is. If she can feel it, he can see it envelop her. Her vision feels narrow, she can only
focus on him. The blue, the deep soothing blue of him. It’s a latch, and she hangs onto it.
The water is running. The steam in the room is building. He ignores every boundary they have
ever had.

She feels his hand slip around hers, firmly, and he pulls her towards the hot spray. He doesn’t
leave her, instead he purposefully steps into the glass enclosed haven with her, clothes and all.
Maybe she’s crazy now, maybe she’s finally going to lose it, and that’s why he is doing this.
His clothes are soaking and now hers are too, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Stay with me, Liv.” He says it, but it’s not as if she could go anywhere. She’s in no shape,
maybe worse off than she’s been in eight years. “Just hang on.”
Her hand is still in his. Her lips are tightly pressed together, and she doesn’t know how she
got herself here to begin with. The shock is descending, and she sees the little boy’s face. She
thinks about how it’s raining now, raining and raining and raining, but the sun is supposed to
shine tomorrow and that baby, that child, the one who looked just like her very own, he will
never again play under the sun.

4
Elliot has her back up against the wall now, and her knees feel weak.
“I failed that kid, El,” she mumbles, just so he knows. She’ll confess. To him she will always
confess. “He hung on and I couldn’t save him.”
The blue is gone, her eyes are closed, and he gently guides her down, until she’s sitting there,
on the shower floor in her bloody, useless clothes. It feels good to just rest, to just sink, to
give her weight to him and the tile. He urges her legs out from under her, and it’s big enough
in here to let them stretch out in front of her.

God, the steam. It finds the frozen surfaces inside of her lungs. The water hits her clothed
body, he must have adjusted the shower head so it is a gentle cascade, and then he’s carefully
moving around her, lowering himself down next to her, not leaving her, his back against the
wall just like hers and his right arm pressed reassuringly against her left. His hand reaches up,
guides her head down, onto his shoulder. She lets him. She can’t be left right now, and he
knows.
***

The water comes down endlessly, a warm constant rain that hits both her body and his,
bouncing off the surfaces, the residual spray coating her face in a fine mist.Olivia’s eyes are
shut, her hands folded limply in her lap. He wants to rage, it’s a default state, he wants to
heave fury at whatever has hurt her like this, but the truth is that half of her every haunt is his
fault, maybe more than half, and he can’t waste time right now hating himself.

He wants to pull her onto him, into him, but he’s afraid she will spook. Her breathing is
starting to return to normal, but she hasn’t moved in long minutes so he listens to her, trying
to discern if she’s fallen asleep or not. The black of her slacks, her blouse, it clings to her
every stunning curve now, a second skin that still holds the blood of the things that cut her.
The water that had pooled around them in those first few minutes, it had been tinged with
pink, and he had nearly vomited. She hadn’t opened her eyes to see it, and he had thanked
God for that smallest of mercies.

“It’s a big shower,” she finally says, never lifting her head from him, never opening her eyes.
In the midst of the destruction, leave it to her to try and lighten the mood. She is still wearing
her socks, and he thinks he should pull them off for her, but he doesn’t want to move.
He nods. “It’s a big shower,” he affirms.
“I like it.” She sounds half out of it, meandering through small talk as if she isn’t washing
death off the surfaces of her.
“I like it too.”
Minutes pass, and her head becomes heavier on his shoulder.
5
“It’s a good shower for breakdowns,” she muses, the words almost slurring together. She
flexes her toes, slides her leg closer to his so they align from thigh to ankle. Her wet gabardine
melds with his soaking denim.
“It was a listed feature when I rented this place. Perfect shower for breakdowns.” He shrugs.
“That was the selling point, actually.”
She makes a small, nearly amused sound, and it almost seems like she is coming back to
herself. He glances down at her and her lips are tipped upward, just a bit, self-deprecating and
sad all at once. “If you tell anyone about this -“
“Your secret is safe, Benson,” he assures her quietly. “I won’t tell anyone you’re human.”
The shock is held back, receding now, staved off by him and his guardianship under this
urban waterfall. She hums a little in affirmation. “Better not,” she gives him sleepily.
He exhales then, and sits still. In a few minutes he will get up, exit the shower. He will go to
his own bathroom and dry off, he will give her some privacy so she can finally strip down and
try to wash the loss away. She’s not out of the woods, not yet. She’s still fragile and shaky, still
pressing into him. But the worst if it, the part that scares him, that’s no longer a threat.
At some point he will leave her for a few minutes, but he’s not ready.

Not yet. Not ever. So for now they sit, side by side, clothed and soaking, two remnants of the
fight, one usually more broken than the other. They sit on the floor of the shower, battles
behind them, battles ahead. They’ve fought for so long, they’ve lost sleep, lost people, lost
wars. But for the moment they are safe, she is safe, and he’s got her, his forever partner. He
got her, and she is warm, the night trickling off of her as they remain, together, soldiers in the
shower, ignoring the fact that they are dressed, acting like this is normal. They breathe, they
wait for absolution, and his bare feet nudge her covered toes.

She gives him the smallest, most melancholy laugh, and her toes nudge his back. By some
grace, as they sit there, together, the water never turns cold.
***

He’d debated. Water or tea, tea or wine, food or no food, tv or no tv, lights on, lights off,
couch, bed, talk or straight to sleep? He’d made a dozen careful choices since she’d
acquiesced and taken some privacy in the shower, and as she emerges from the bathroom -
sans makeup, towel dried wet hair curling around her face, his sweats wrapping her up - he
thinks he’s made the right ones. Lights low, he’d put some candles on. He’d chosen music
over the television, he’d warmed up some leftover lasagna his mother had made, poured a
glass of red and set it out on the island with a napkin and a fork, just waiting for her to take a
seat, while he stands, his beer already half finished.

6
She stops a few steps from the kitchen island, head cocked as she stares at the hot food.
Silently she finds his eyes, and he can see the magnitude of her gratitude and it guts him, that
something as simple as a hot plate of food could overwhelm her makes his gut churn.
Fuck. He’s got to do better. So much fucking better. He’d thanked God she’d been single
when he came back, but at the same time felt deeply guilty for it. That there hadn’t been
anyone consistent, anyone to take care of her how she deserved, that no one had found their
way past her defences, it breaks him sometimes.

Like now. When she’s standing there, in his clothes, smelling like his shampoo, barefoot and
not running, but unable to move forward, either.
“Come sit,” he urges her. “You’ll sleep better on a full stomach.”
The way she looks at him is nearly apologetic. He knows they might not sleep, or maybe she
will and he won’t - he’ll sit guard over her if she drifts off - but he doesn’t want her worrying
about anything, especially not about him.
“Come on,” he says again, and somehow she listens. She takes a step forward, then another,
and soon she is sitting down, somehow finding her way to eat, and he watches her bent head,
thinking of all the tragedies it had taken for them to find their way to this. He can’t let it all be
for nothing. There has to be something good that comes from all of it. For them, there has to
be something good. It’s been too much, he thinks, too many near misses and close calls, too
many reasons why not and not enough of listening to the reasons why. He leans over the
island, lets his thumb brush over her cotton-covered forearm.
“I’m here,” he reminds her quietly.

She nods, almost imperceptibly, and manages to take another bite. She doesn’t look up. It’s as
if she’d shed the warrior in the shower and emerged, raw and reeling, unguarded and unsure,
simply Olivia, heart aching and vulnerable and without defence.Christ. That she holds the
rank of Captain is a testament to who and what she is, how she is, why she is. But dammit if he
doesn’t see the weight of it subduing her, he sees her carrying that responsibility alone and
isolated, and he’s just going to have to be as strong as that badge of hers. He’s going to have
to stand up to that badge, stare it down, will it back so it doesn’t take all of her.

“This is good,” she finally murmurs, a mere echo of her voice.

His fingers move to the back of her left hand, thumb circling there, on her soft skin, small
touches, just reminders, circling still. She raises her gaze to his, only half-finished with the
lasagna, although her fork is now left to settle on her plate. Olivia’s dark eyes are huge and
revealing, sheen-covered irises reflecting flickers of candlelight. She doesn’t pull her hand
away. She sits, one breath following another, haunted and yet trying heal.
“Yeah,” he tells her, “this is good.”
7
 ***

He’s gentle.It reverberates through her head, again and again. That he is this achingly gentle
rivets her. She can’t top watching his ministrations, delicate, as if she is a child. She’s sitting
next to him on his couch, her knees drawn to her chest, and he’s holding one of her hands in
his. He’s using the small nail file to carefully scrape the blood out from under her fingernails
and she might scream or sob, maybe both. That he has to do this is galling, that he is doing
this is -

“Other hand.”
He says it so evenly that she nearly sinks into him. She gives him her other hand, and feels the
callouses of his fingers across her palm. Her eyes are watering again, and she can’t really
focus, but she sees his bent head, sees this giant of a man tending to her like this, and she
thinks she might fall apart. She’s needed him so much. For the last ten years, for the year since
he’s returned. She’s needed this man, the one who had learned to match his strides to hers
and not the other way around. The man who had put lunches in front of her, who had sat
outside of her apartment and watched her, protected her, taken the time to know her and
believe in her and trust her.

Blink your lights when you get inside.

She stifles the keening sound that rises, but he must know that she is shaking again. She’d let
him go for all those years, knowing he had to leave, knowing he had people to protect, a
marriage to save, a soul to heal. She’d let him go and it had cost her to not go after him, to
refrain from dragging him back when she knows if she had begged, he would have come
home.And now he sits, her hand in his, quietly digging the damage out of her, as if she is his,
as if she is his wounded animal and he can clean her of the fight.

“Elliot.”
She doesn’t know why she says his name now. Maybe because she just needs to hear it, maybe
because she just needs to see him answer her, lift his head, respond. He stops what he’s
doing, and he looks at her.
“How bad was it?” he finally says.
She knows he doesn’t mean tonight. He means all of it. The last decade, the leaving, the
absence of him, the cases, the struggles, the fights. He still doesn’t know the details of the
worst of it, he doesn’t even know it happened, but he will find out soon, whether from her or
from someone else. Tonight is not meant for that.

8
But she will answer.
“Really bad.” Her voice is thready, it wobbles, she doesn’t try to fix it. “Bad.”
She can hear his breath hitch, his eyes never waver from hers.
“But I got Noah,” she amends.
He shakes his head. “He isn’t a reward for the hell, Olivia. He’s separate. He’s what you
deserved regardless, because you are a mother. You were before him, and so he found his way
to you.”

It’s too much. Her throat locks, he doesn’t move. He’s inches from her and he sees her, all of
her. He sees her uncovered by the shield, by the walls, by the facade. He sees her as a woman,
as a mother, as the girl she once was. He’s back, next to her, and she’d never imagined this.
There had been no homecoming in her head all those years, she’d faced the world in which
she would forever live without. He’s holding her hand and a nail file. She’s wearing his
clothes. She’s in his apartment, her stomach full of food his mother made. The wine is in her
blood now, the rain is heavy on the glass panes that face his unkempt garden. Elliot is home, it
careens through her, unfettered, unbound. This man, he isn’t the carnage of a year ago. He’s
home. She’s in his home. She isn’t alone.

He’s taking care of her, and she feels cared for, and she feels like herself again, like who she
used to be, once upon a time. She isn’t something carved of stone, she isn’t the last line of
defence. She doesn’t have to be rational with him. She doesn’t have to be upright, she can
peel the tape off, let the cracks of her life show. Because it’s him. It breaks from her then, all
of the atrocities. They come bursting out of her chest on an unexpected sob, they gather and
form, a great heaving of weight that has choked her for too long. They are a kaleidoscope of
horror - it’s Lewis, and Noah is missing, a townhouse, and being helpless again, the sounds,
the sounds of someone being raped, an officer down, her officer is down, her brother is gone,
her lover is gone, everyone is gone, gone, gone.

Only he isn’t. He isn’t, and so he lets her fall against him. He gathers her up in one swift
movement, pulls her against him, and she bleeds tears built through isolation into his neck.
She makes ungodly sounds as the pain finds it voice, and it falls out of her, onto him, into him,
she gives it all to him. The words of it all don’t matter, because he will hear her, he will know
everything that has happened because their grief has always been distinctive. He will read the
notes of her crying, and he will know what it’s been. Elliot holds her, tight. He holds her, the
man whose name she couldn’t speak for so long. He holds her and her muscles unfurl, her
spine relaxes, her eyes become heavy. His hand rubs the back of her head, soothing her but
never asking her to quiet. The rain is angry outside. It’s a downpour. It’s got a voice too, and
it’s saying the clouds have been too full and it’s time to purge.
9
He surrounds her, and she deluges him. She is the thing battering on the windows, she is the
thing shattering, she is the thing too overwhelmed, bursting with the grief, with the loss, with
the found. She is relentless, no longer quiet. She is the rain tonight, and he is steady, rocking
her, rocking her still and unafraid of her storm.
***

After the storm, there comes the silence.She’s been asleep for nearly two hours now, and
dawn is coming. He knows every minute of those two hours, because he’s been awake,
unmoving, unwilling to shift even slightly out of caution. He doesn’t want her to wake. He
knows she needs the sleep, but he needs this, he needs her just like this, close, in his arms.
He has catalogued every minute. He knows the rain stopped forty two minutes ago. Thirty-six
minutes ago, she had clutched his shirt in her dream. Seventeen minutes ago she had
furrowed her brow, still sleeping, and his hand had settled on her hip until her face had
smoothed out and she had slipped back into deep slumber.

It’s some kind of miracle that she is here, like this, with him. They are laying in his bed, fully
clothed, neither beneath more than a sheet. He’d asked her to come lay down, and she’d
followed mutely, settled into one side of the bed, somehow instinctively not his side, and there
had been an invitation in that for him to lay down, too. He had positioned himself on his
pillow, right arm over his head, and she had made the move. She’d scooted, shuffled, found
her way under his arm and onto him, and she’d sighed, dug her face into his chest, and not
long after, fallen asleep.

She’d be horrified if he knew he has stared at her most of the time - if he’s honest, all of the
time. In the shadows of his bedroom, the faint strip of moonlight from the now clear sky seems
to slide in through the window and fall solely on her, onto her damp hair and slightly parted,
beautifully full lips. That she is an avenger in leather when she is awake feels like a dichotomy,
because when she sleeps, she is a madonna, all long lashes resting on freckled cheeks,
someone to be protected and honoured, someone to be loved. And he loves her. He fucking
loves her.

The kind of love he feels for her, the kind he has always felt, it goes beyond marriage. It goes
beyond dating and inane titles like girlfriend or boyfriend. It goes beyond lust - even though
his want of her is nearly feral - and it goes beyond need. She shifts slightly in his arms and he
thinks she was ordained to him, a gift given, a confirmation that the universe had been
carefully ordered, and he so ordered as to belong - wholly and unequivocally - to her.

Olivia.
10
His mouth is nearly at her forehead now, his left arm long asleep under her head. He wants to
throw his leg over hers, tuck her closer, slip his lips across the skin of her cheek. He settles for
her hair, fingertips dancing, ever so lightly, against the curl at her temple. He used to spend
his days desperate for her, all those years ago, his fantasies wrought with her, on him, around
him, beneath him. He has the same fantasies now, but these days he shakes through them, the
need so visceral and painful that he sometimes tastes blood in his mouth. She exhales now,
deeply, as if she is comfortable, and he closes his eyes.

“I missed you,” he whispers reverently into the dark, his words finding the top of her head.
She’s fast asleep yet she answers him, a response innate and otherworldly in its clarity. “I
missed you, too.”
He finally drifts off, gripping her, tangled with her, in love with her. He slips into peace,
always elusive without her, and in his dreams she is laughing, illuminated, a future version of
her. Around their intertwined bodies the night slowly dissipates, and they sleep together
through the inevitable rising of the sun.
***

The morning is brilliant in his place. She stands in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a mug
full of steaming coffee, in awe of the sheer volume of sunlight that cascades through his home.
It streams in through the endless windows, refracting over the countertops and the floors,
catching on the metal beams of the ceiling and the shiny silver of the appliances. It’s a bright,
heated yellow here, unencumbered, beating down on the unruly knots of plants on his patio
and seeping into the cracks of concrete below.

He walks into the kitchen in his threadbare t-shirt and sweatpants, still half asleep, stretching,
his eyes half open and warily watching her.
“How did you get out of bed without me waking up?” he mutters, disgusted with himself, his
voice still rough from slumber.
She shouldn’t feel like this. She knows she is a mess. She can feel her hair tumbling into her
face, it will be riotous this morning because she’d gone to sleep with it wet. She’s still wearing
his clothes, and her eyes are probably puffy from all of the crying, while her clothes are in a
wet pile on the floor of his shower, but…but the sun. The sun is so bright, and he’s looking at
her like she belongs here and he’d held her, all damned night long. God. The sun.

There is tragedy in the periphery of her awareness, but there is also this. A weightlessness of
being. A heady sense of being free of something, once and for all. She feels the heat seeping
in, the growth of spring pushing at them, the sunlight too bright to belong to winter.

11
“You snore,” she says, gleefully pointing out his faults, as if she hadn’t fallen apart. -
disintegrated - last night in his arms. “Probably couldn’t hear me walk out over all that noise.”
He raises one eyebrow at her brashness, finding his way to the coffee.
“It’s nearly nine, seems to me you slept just fine.”

She can do this, she thinks. Sleepy coffee and banter used to happen a lifetime ago, in a
bullpen filled with their history. Cragen and Munch, Alex, Casey, Fin - ever still by her side.
Only now they have moved here, to a lifetime later, the same as ever and ever changed. They
can live through the depravity one day and emerge, they can fall apart and fall together.
She’s quiet for a moment, because she can’t ignore it entirely. What had happened had been
bad, today will still be bad, she had crumbled and he had caught her, and she can’t pretend it
had never happened.
“About last night-“
“Olivia.” He’s filled a cup now, and he turns, cutting her off. He sets his steaming mug on the
island, leaning over it to look at her. “If you apologise -“
It’s her turn to cut him off.
“I was gonna say thank you,” she says quietly, looking down at the mug she holds.

Elliot comes around the island to stand in front of her, and he seems almost big enough to
block out the sun. He’s heat and shadows, her awareness of him ricocheting within her, now
that the horrors of last night have found a place. He grips her elbows, crowding her, shielding
her, and this is beyond intimate, being here with him on a Saturday morning wearing his
clothes and standing barefoot in his kitchen.

“Never thank me, Liv. Not ever. The scales between us are so tipped against me that I’ll -“
It’s the rumble of his voice that propels her to shut him up. She rises on her tiptoes and cups
his rough cheek with her left hand, coffee held precariously between their bodies. She reaches
up and presses her lips against his cheek, lingering, heart beating hard, inhaling him and
hearing his breath catch as he stills, her lips on his skin. It isn’t everything but it’s something,
and for the moment maybe that is enough.

When she pulls back, she sees the way his eyes have darkened. He’s warring within himself, a
reflection of her own desire. Free from the agony that had been twisting in her for so long, she
lets him see her, lets her lips part, lets her breath quicken. She doesn’t shutter herself, not
now, not when she’s already turned to dust in his arms. She wants him to know. He is her
home, and he let her in last night. She let him in. The bubble of them, it has been blown again,
it surrounds them and it is starting to catch the iridescent light.He grins then, less than a foot
between their bodies, and his expression is almost boyish.
12
“Hey, my friend Olivia,” he starts.
Her eyes are still raw from the shattering last night, but she laughs softly, disbelieving. He is
incorrigible, relentless, too damned charming for his own good. He’d lost everything once,
had his world ripped from him, and he’s still here, still trying, still putting his faith in
something bigger than himself. Putting his faith in her. The sun slips across the floor, it
tickles at her toes and warms them. She waits, and he doesn’t disappoint.

“Would you and your son like to have lunch with me today?”
Oh God, his smile. That perfect, Stabler smile. He chews his lower lip, sheepishly, and those
eyes of his, the ones that have seen far too much pain, they fill with something akin to hope
and playfulness. He stands there, shifting, a scarred behemoth of justice, and she thinks about
him sitting on the floor of the shower with her last night. She thinks about how he had held
her, cleaned her fingers, enveloped her and never hushed her. He had taken all that she had
spilled, taken the pieces of her and made sure that in the end, that none of the pieces of her
was missing.

“Hey, my friend Elliot,” she starts. She can breathe, she thinks. The air is rushing into her,
claiming the new open spaces, the spaces no longer burdened, the spaces left available to be
inhabited after how she had expelled herself, all of it, it’s the air and the sun sliding in.
It should have been a simple acceptance. After thousands of lunches, after all of the years, it
should have been nothing. But her eyes fill again, and his aren’t quite dry. He can’t take his
gaze off of her, and she’s locked on him just the same. It should have been simple, maybe.
All of it should have been simple.

But it hadn’t been. It hadn’t been simple at all. It had been complicated. It had been
impossible, it had tested their faith and their resolve. It had revealed them, stripped them,
dissolved them on some days. It had been days of what about me and no i wouldn’t have and
you give him stability and you’re the longest relationship I’ve ever had with a man. It had been
years of Elliot put in his papers and nightmares, nightmares of officer down!. It had been
family is everything and I’m your partner and they had lived through every for better and every
for worse, and after it all, here they stand. Her voice is thick with tears, and history and
forgiveness when she says it.

“I think we’d like that very much.”

She sees the reprieve on his face, feels the relief in hers.
“Come to the beach house for lunch today,” he urges, ducking his head even as he quickly
pushes his luck. “The kids are there. Momma.” He lifts his head, and as he looks at her, he is
offering her everything he’s got. “Just come.”
13
Her coffee still in her hands, she feels it, the way the easiness is begging her in. The only thing
she’s got to left to lose with him is what she will miss out on if she says no. She thinks of the
little boy she’d lost last night, and about how all of them, all of them deserve their days in the
sun. So she just nods, and he steps into her. His lips press against her forehead with gratitude,
with latitude, and she closes her eyes, allowing it, all of it, because this is it.

And it is finally their time.

14
 Thank You

A quick thank you to Lyricara for writing this incredible masterpiece and giving us SVU/
Bensler fans a story to lose ourselves in that is our wildest EO Dreams and more. Thank you
for inspiring me to draw again, I hope my illustrations do your story justice and enhance your
words. I had a lot of fun creating these illustrations and tapping back into the creative side of
myself for these middle aged cops, and their love story.

To all of your who download and print your own physical copy of this illustrative version of
Atlantis, thank you so much. The fact that people will have my artwork printed and in their
homes is such a crazy concept to me, but I hope it meets all of your expectations and brings
you as much joy as they bring me. I hope the love I have for these characters and actors is
shown in these drawings.

30 Illustrations. 34 Chapters. 1 Epilogue. 1 Playlist and 1 One Shot.

Enjoy this re-vamped journey into the wild lost city of Atlantis, as we hopefully watch this
unfold for real on SVU and OC. (We can dream, it won’t be written this well).

Thank you again I appreciate all of you.

Tash.