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Chapter Text

He stands, in the doorway to the hospital room, watching her sitting on the bed, clinging to Fin as if her life, her very existence depends on it, like he’s her life-raft in a stormy sea (and considering what he’s witnessed in the last few hours, it’s not far from the truth), and wonders, far from the first time…

It was a routine interview… he thinks.

How the hell did we end up here?

***

Six Hours Earlier - Rikers

“So, what you’re telling us is that you got us to come all the way down here, promised us information and… you’ve got nothing?” Elliot leans back in his chair, staring across the metal table at Julius Greene. “She’s a Captain,” he tilts his head to the side, indicating Olivia sat next to him. “She doesn’t have time for your bullshit.”

“I told you everything I know!” Julius protests. “I told you where Darius picks up the girls, down by the-”

“Old Navy Yard in Brooklyn,” Liv cuts him off. “Yeah, we know that Julius.” She leans forward, elbows on the table. “Now tell us something we don’t know.”

She stares Julius down, the nineteen year old withering under her stare. “I don’t know what else you want me to tell you!” Julius says, shaking his head. “I told you everything I know. I don’t wanna be here man, those tiny little boxes… they make me claustrophobic, you know?” He raises his cuffed wrists, scratches at his blonde hair, his already pale face growing paler.

Liv turns her head, and she and Elliot trade glances. “So give us something useful,” Elliot says, contemplating the man sat across from them. “You scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours.”

“Help us, and we’ll put in a good word with the DA,” Liv takes over when Julius only blinks in confusion. “I don’t think you’re the main player here, that’s your brother isn’t it?” Her voice changes tone, softens. “You don’t want to go down for something your brother did, do you?” She tilts her head as Julius looks at her, enraptured.

Elliot knows the feeling.

“My brother…”

“Your brother left you here,” Elliot leans forward now, mirroring Liv’s position with his elbows on the table. “He abandoned you, left you to take the fall for his crimes.”

“I don’t think you moved those girls,” Liv continues, Julius’s eyes flicking between them. “I don’t think you ever touched them, let alone raped them. But your brother did, didn’t he?”

Julius bites his lip, before nodding. He’s just a scared kid, Elliot thinks. Terrified of his brother. Not innocent, far from that but it’s an in, and we can use it.

“He wasn’t supposed to,” Julius tells them quietly. “He was only supposed to drive them to the next drop off.”

“For the gang he’s mixed up in?” Elliot nudges.

Julius nods. “Yeah. I don’t know how long he’s been running with them. Our mom… she’d have a fit if she knew.” He sighs. “He told me… he told me that he needed my help that night. Gave me a gun, told me how to use it in case they tried to run…” He twists his fingers together, his hands resting on the table. “I wasn’t gonna use it, I swear!”

Elliot blinks. “You shot at the cops who were trying to arrest you Julius,” he reminds him. You shot at us, he adds silently.

“I panicked!” Julius protests. “I’m sorry.”

Liv sighs. “Tell that to the DA,” she tells him. “Look,” she leans in a little closer. “We have the girls from that night,” she tells him. “We have you. Who we don’t have is Darius, and we know that there’s another shipment coming in. We need to protect those girls, and we need your brother. He ran, Julius. He left you, and he ran. Where would he go?”

“I…”

“You don’t help us,” Liv’s voice, louder now, firm and commanding with just a hint of anger underneath makes Julius flinch, and Elliot’s cock twitch.

He always did like it when she got all commanding.

“You don’t help us,” Liv repeats. “You’ll go down for everything. Sex-trafficking, unlawful imprisonment… the DA will want to add multiple counts of attempted murder of a police officer if you decide to be awkward… you’ll be in here forever, Julius. You want that?”

“I’m sure he doesn’t want that, Captain,” Elliot suggests. “If he helps us rescue those girls, find his brother… no-one actually got hurt when he was firing that gun,” thank God he’s an awful shot. “So really… I’m sure we can come to some sort of deal with the DA.”

Liv looks at him, the sparkle in her eyes a sight to see. He knows she missed this; the back and forth between the two of them as they interviewed and interrogated.

“I’m sure, like Detective Stabler says, we can sort out something,” Liv says sweetly.

Julius looks between them for a moment, before nodding. Got him. “There’s a place out in Bushwick,” he tells them. “He’s probably there, laying low.”

“Address,” Liv commands, sliding a pen and paper across to Julius. The kid writes on the paper, sliding it back across to her. “Thank you,” she tells him.

“Don’t hurt him,” Julius pleads, as Liv types the address into her phone. “He’s my brother.”

“We’ll try our best,” Elliot tells the kid, waving the guard over. As long as he doesn’t start shooting at us… 

The guard leads Julius away, leaving just the two of them in the prison interview room. Liv sighs, getting to her feet when Elliot does, only to turn around and rest against the table. “At least we got there in the end,” Elliot points out. 

“Yeah,” she looks at her phone. “I texted Fin the address,” she tells him. “He’ll pass the info on to McGrath and Brewster, who will inevitably pass it back to all of us to deal with.”

“Such is the chain of command,” Elliot chuckles.

She eyes him. “I can’t tell if that’s a dig or not,” she gives him a look.

“Nah,” Elliot shakes his head as another guard appears, this time to escort the two of them out. “You’re in the field just as much as your detectives are,” he says.

“Are you saying I have issues with delegating?” She raises an eyebrow at him. “‘Cause I assure you, I don’t.”

“‘Course not,” he grins at her. “You just like field work.” A beat. “Unlike Brewster.”

She snorts, watching as the guard approaches the gate. “Come on,” she tells him. “Let’s get out of here, so I can get back into more of that field work that I love so much,” she teases him.

He goes to reply, but it’s lost amid the sudden cacophony of flashing red lights and alarms. The guard at the gate swears, before looking to them apologetic. “That’s an emergency alarm,” he tells them, as if they don’t already know that. “Stay here,” he says. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Elliot trades glances with Liv, who returns to her place at the table, sitting back down. “Guess we’re stuck then,” he comments.

“Yep,” she groans. “Hopefully not for long.” She adds, tapping on her phone.

***

Four Hours Later

She’s pacing.

She’s been pacing for the last two hours, the clock on the wall slowly counting the minutes.

He watches her, back and forth, back and forth. “Liv, why don’t you sit down?” He asks. The noisy alarm had gone silent shortly after it had started wailing, but the flashing red lights remain and they can hear a lot of shouting and yelling from elsewhere. 

It’s a full blown riot, so they’ve gathered and they’re trapped in the middle of it.

She shakes her head; continues pacing. “Nope,” she tells him. “I’m fine.”

You don’t look it, Elliot thinks privately.

She’s antsy; it had started with her jiggling her leg, fiddling with her fingers, messing with her phone, shifting in her seat but it had slowly descended into a complete inability to sit still, hence the pacing.

“I texted Fin,” she tells him. “He’s outside, trying to see if he can get someone to come get us.”

In the middle of a riot? Elliot thinks. I doubt he’ll manage it. “Your phone is working?” He asks instead. His own has stayed in his pocket the whole time. “Shouldn’t they have jammers on?” It’s why he hadn’t bothered checking his, after all.

She blinks, pausing in her tracks. “Huh,” she tilts her head as if only just realising. “Guess they forgot?”

Elliot pulls his own phone from his pocket, checking that yes, he does in fact have bars. However, as if talking about it had jinxed it, he watches as those bars disappear, replaced by ‘No Service’. He waves the phone at her. “I think they remembered.”

She looks at her cell, clenched tightly in her hand. “So they did,” she notes, tucking the phone into her pants pocket. “How much longer is this going to take?” She mutters, mostly to herself as the pacing resumes.

“Could be a while.” Elliot says, stretching.

“Don’t say that,” she rounds on him. “I don’t…” Her breathing quickens. “I don’t like not being able to leave somewhere,” she admits in a low whisper.

That’s new, Elliot thinks. “What, like claustrophobia?” He asks.

She chuckles darkly, which unnerves him. “Oh, I’ve got that problem too.” She tells him.

“You never used to,” Elliot points out. She hadn’t; he’d like to think he’d have noticed that during their thirteen year partnership. They’d been in a lot of awkward places for crime scenes, after all. Claustrophobia would have reared it’s ugly head at more than one point, so this… this is new.

“Things change,” she responds, cryptic. “I just need to get out of here.”

“I’m here,” he reminds her. “You aren’t on your own.” I’ll support you, be there for you… if you’ll let me.

“I know,” she looks at him, a grateful smile gracing her lips. “And believe me, I appreciate that.”

It would be a lot worse if you weren’t here, the true meaning of her words.

The banging, the yelling seems to be getting louder, and Elliot frowns at the doors. There’s the iron bars that separate the interview space they’re in from the main hall, and doors at the end dividing that from the rest of the prison. It sounds as though the fighting is on the opposite side of those doors, and it makes Elliot nervous. “Is it me, or is that getting louder?” He asks. The guard had unlocked the gate to the interview area before the alarm had sounded, and the gate stands partly open even now, the electrical circuits that would have closed it clearly having failed along with everything else.

She eyes the doors herself. “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” she admits, twisting her lips. A loud bang sounds as something hits the doors from the opposite side and she flinches.

Elliot, on his feet in seconds, is by her side, his hand gripping her elbow. “How strong are those doors do you think?” He asks, feeling her tense as two more loud bangs echo, someone on the other side clearly trying to gain access.

“I don’t know,” she breathes. “But I think-”

A fourth bang sounds amidst more shouting, drowning out her words as the doors give way, falling under the onslaught of prisoners as they flood into the room.

Chapter Text

He swallows, leaning against the hospital doorframe, still watching the scene inside in silence.

He wants to be closer to her; craves it but he’s afraid. The way she’d been… he’s never seen that before.

Footsteps sound, and he turns to look, seeing McGrath approaching. He grits his teeth, ready to attack, to defend her from this if nothing else but he’s too late; Amanda Rollins, the blonde fireball gets in front of him, squaring up to the Chief as if he’s no more than dirt on her shoe.

“She’s not up for visitors,” Amanda states.

“I know,” McGrath raises his hands in surrender, stopping a few feet away. “I’m just here to check on her.” He leans to the side, tries to peer through the doorway. Elliot sidesteps, blocking his view. “How’s she doing?” The Chief asks.

“How do you think?” Amanda snaps, her patience gone.

McGrath thins his lips. “That well, huh?” He mutters. “Okay… well IAB will want to speak to her,” he says. “Obviously not today.” He sucks air through his teeth, clearly unsettled. “Tell her not to worry about the case,” he adds. “It’s all in hand. I’ve got Velasco and the OCCB dealing with it.”

Amanda nods slowly. “I don’t think she’s too concerned with the case right now Chief,” she tells him.

McGrath shifts from foot to foot, uncomfortable. “Yeah,” he nods. “Well, keep me informed,” he says, turning on his heel and striding off down the hallway, his pace much quicker on the way out than it had been coming in.

Amanda turns to Elliot, a silent look passing between them as they turn to look in on Liv once more. Elliot winces as he turns, stumbling slightly, catching himself on the doorframe. The sight of his cut, bloodied knuckles make him swallow thickly, even as he reaches up to touch the bandage on his head.

“I don’t feel so good,” Liv murmurs, leaning heavily against Fin’s side.

“I know you don’t,” Fin murmurs quietly. “You’re gonna be okay,” he tells her. “Just sit here with me and breathe.”

Only she doesn’t seem to want to, the agitation raising it’s ugly head as she shifts. “I did the wrong thing,” she says suddenly, eyes widening in horror. “He was-”

“No,” Fin cuts her off gently, his fingers stroking her shoulder through the scrub-top she’s wearing. “He wasn’t,” he tells her. “You did nothing wrong.”

She’s looking up at him, eyes wide and trusting, hanging off his every word.

Elliot, in the doorway, is more confused than ever.

***

Two Hours Earlier

Elliot’s eyes widen at the flood of orange-clad intruders. There’s too many of them, far too many of them to stand any chance against. “Run!” He grabs Liv’s elbow tightly, turning her with his body, pushing her in front of him.

There are doors at the other end of the hallway, the opposite end to where the prisoners just broke through and they take the few seconds they have to make it through the gap in the gate to the interview area. In the hallway, Elliot keeps Olivia in front of him as they sprint, a tsunami of orange chasing them down the hall as they run.

It’s only perhaps thirty feet that they have to run, but it feels like four times that, time slowing. Please don’t be locked, he prays. Please…

They’re in luck; hitting the double doors hard, they bounce open and they fly through them, Elliot pushing them shut, holding on, leaning against them with his whole weight as the orange sea hits the other side, yelling and screaming as they batter against the door.

Liv, panicked but thinking, only spares the door a brief glance before she’s looking around for something to secure it. They’re in another hallway; one with only a few doors leading from it and there’s nothing. Only a filing cabinet which, as Elliot realises when Liv tries to move it, is screwed to the floor. Of course it is, we’re in a prison. Everything’s nailed down.

He grunts as something hits the other side of the door; his feet stuck out, heels digging in but sliding on the concrete, he scrabbles, putting his back into it. “Liv, run!” He yells out, knowing that he can’t hold it for any longer. I won’t let them hurt you. I won’t.

“No!” He hears her say through closed eyes. “Here,” she says as he opens them to see her brandishing a broom. “We thread it through the handles,” she says as he holds the doors, letting her do just that. “It’ll buy us a few seconds,” she adds, not even trying to lie; they both know the wooden handle won’t last long under the onslaught.

Elliot takes a deep breath before removing his weight from the door, stepping forward on aching legs but he doesn’t have time for that. Grabbing Liv, he pulls them both into a sprint, tearing down the hallway and around the corner at the bottom, barely out of view as they hear wood snapping. Thundering footsteps follow, and they duck into the first room they see; a storeroom.

Inside, Elliot pulls them around the door, leaving it open in an attempt to deter their pursuers. Hiding behind the solid door, he crushes Olivia between himself and the wall, shielding her with his body.

As the footsteps draw ever closer, they hold their breath, Liv’s face pressed into his chest. He has her tucked into him, one arm either side of her, his legs caging hers, his body weight holding her in place. I’ll protect you or die trying, he vows silently.

She doesn’t fight him; doesn’t try to push him off, doesn’t tell him she can protect herself because, in that moment as they hear the footsteps come to a halt, as they listen outside as doors bang open, rustling noises, banging noises as rooms are searched, as they are hunted for, as she looks up at him, as they stare into one another’s eyes in total silence, they know.

If these men get their hands on Liv…

It’s not something Elliot wants to think about.

The thing is… there’s too damn many of them and he knows, he knows that if they find them, if they get hold of them…

He can try as hard as he can, but he won’t win.

He wishes, for the umpteenth time in the space of the last few minutes, that he had his gun. That it wasn’t languishing uselessly in a locked compartment at the entrance to this godforsaken place. If he had his gun, they might have more of a chance.

But he doesn’t, and so all they can do is hold their breaths and pray.

The footsteps draw closer, some filing straight past and for one, heart-stopping moment, someone is standing in the doorway to their storeroom, looking in.

But they don’t move the door, and the footsteps leave, fading away. The noises fade too, the sound of banging echoing but it’s distant, and Elliot lets his lungs relax, feeling Olivia do the same. “We need weapons,” he mouths to her, and she nods as he steps away.

“We need to get out of here,” she whispers.

“Think we dare go back the way we came?” Elliot asks, his voice barely audible even to his own ears.

She shrugs. “I don’t know,” she mouths. She’s shaking, with fear or adrenaline or both Elliot isn’t quite sure, but the way her eyes dart from side to side in her pale face, the way her sweat dampened hair hangs around her face, he strongly suspects the former.

There’s a steel bar on the floor, from what Elliot has no idea but it’s strong, and it’s a weapon, and he picks it up, turning to hand it to Olivia. “You good with this?” He asks, holding it out.

She looks to it, her face paling further as she reaches out, taking it in her hands, gripping it firmly. “Sure,” she nods, but there’s something about the way she says it, something about her affect that gives him pause.

But she takes it, and he finds one for himself and he has to put whatever it is that’s up with her out of his mind, at least for now because the situation they’re in is far from over. Let’s just get out of here, he thinks. Then I’ll ask her.

“Ready?” He mouths to her silently. She nods, and he steps into the doorway, taking a deep breath and listening out. Hearing nothing, he takes another small step, leaning into the hallway to look.

The thud of metal against his skull comes with no warning. The bar he holds in his hand drops to the floor with a clang as he reaches up, clutching at his head on instinct. The world tilts as he tips to the side, his vision met with white sneakers and orange fabric, his ears with laughter and jeering, before-

His world darkens to the sound of Olivia’s screams.

Chapter Text

She shifts on the bed, Fin’s arm tucked around her as she settles herself tighter against the man’s side, Fin’s only reaction to adjust his grip, settling her more securely against him.

It’s strange, Elliot thinks as he watches the two of them. Seeing Fin like this.

Odafin Tutuola is, and always has been, standoffish. Not one to accept or offer a hug, always looking a little unnerved at shows of affection and caring. It’s the way he is, and Elliot respects that, though he has often wondered over the years just why Fin is at SVU. SVU, where caring, understanding and, often, hugs are commonplace. It’s far from unusual to be hugged by a victim or a family member once justice has been served; Elliot has been the recipient of hugs of thanks, hugs of relief. He’s held children in his arms to comfort them so many times; it’s just… part of the job.

It takes a certain type of person to fit in and work well at SVU, and Fin most definitely does not fit those criteria. Yet… he’s been there for twenty-two years. It shouldn’t work; on paper it really doesn’t yet…

He’s sitting there, on the bed, holding Liv in his arms, whispering words of comfort to her, letting her cling to him like a scared child, and…

I guess it does work, Elliot muses. If the situation calls for it.

“You’re alright,” Fin murmurs to her. “You’re safe now.”

Elliot watches alone - Amanda having gone to grab them some coffees - as Olivia breathes shakily, her hand quivering as she raises it, brushing her hair back behind her ear. Her eyes are a little glassy; the residual effects of the sedative the paramedics had been forced to give her still present. Blinking slowly, she turns her head, looking right at the doorway.

Right at him.

Her brow furrows as Elliot watches, she tilts her head, frowning in confusion.

“El?” She murmurs, her frown deepening, the confusion evident on her face. “What… what are you doing here?”

***

Two Hours Earlier (ish)

The hand shaking his shoulder wakes him. Eyes closed, pain rocketing through his skull, he comes up swinging.

“Hey hey!” A hand catches his fist in it’s grip. The voice sounds familiar, but the pain in his head hampers his ability to place it.

Open your eyes, idiot. The voice in his head, the sensible, reasonable one sounds uncannily like Olivia-

OLIVIA.

“Liv!” He exclaims, eyes shooting open, pain be damned as he’s met with the welcome face of Fin.

Not who he’d wanted to see, not his first choice but a welcome one nevertheless. “Liv!” He says again, shrugging Fin’s hand from his shoulder, pushing himself up and looking around as if calling her name will magically make her appear in his vision.

It doesn’t.

“Elliot,” Ayanna’s voice sounds from his opposite side, and he turns his head to find her crouched down next to him. “Take it easy,” she’s saying, though he’s not sure why. “You took a hit to the head.”

Oh, so that’s what the pain is from. Good to know.

He looks between his own Sergeant and Fin, both crouched down next to him, NYPD vests on, batons in hand and up to where two of Liv’s detectives - the blonde Amanda and the kid Velasco - stand guard over them, vests on, batons raised and it all falls into place.

The interview. The prison. The riot.

Olivia screaming.

“Liv!” He calls out for the third time. Ignoring Ayanna’s attempts to keep him on the floor, he pushes to his feet, swaying dangerously as the world tilts and the pounding in his head reaches a crescendo. Stumbling, he flings his arm out to catch himself on the wall, pain reverberating through his knuckles as his clenched fist hits concrete hard.

He pays no attention; his only objective to locate Olivia.

He’s somehow ended up ten feet away from the storeroom where they’d hid, and he stumbles there now, four sets of feet following him as he calls out her name repeatedly, reaching the storeroom door-

To find it empty.

The whole hallway is empty, he finds as he looks both directions. Only himself, Fin, Ayanna, Amanda and Velasco, and a whole lot of mess. “Where is she?” He says, eyes wide as he turns to Fin. “Where is she?”

“We don’t know,” Fin says as he reaches out to steady Elliot. “We just got through to here, found you first.” His eyes are concerned, worried as he looks at him, the hope in them fading as he seems to realise that Elliot doesn’t have the answers.

“We were hiding,” Elliot remembers. “In there,” he points. “We… we thought they were gone and…” He swallows bile. “She was screaming, Fin,” he tells the other man. “She was screaming.”

His breathing quickens as he turns, missing the reactions of Fin and the others to his admission as he looks down the hallway once more before turning back. “You came from that way, right?” He asks, indicating behind them, the way he and Liv had come.

“Yeah,” Fin nods tersely. “No sign of her,” he tells him. “She must be this way.”

Elliot needs no invitation; he’s off and jogging down the corridor, every step sending shooting pain throughout his body but he doesn’t care.

Olivia is missing. 

Missing in a hell hole of a prison with men who will tear her apart, rape her, assault and abuse her and laugh while they do it.

He won’t leave her alone with them for one second longer than he absolutely has to.

“Liv!” He screams out, ducking his head into rooms as he passes them, finding each and every one empty.

They reach the end of the hallway, reach doors that probably locked at one point but the lock is broken, half of the door hanging from it’s hinges, so badly damaged it falls to the ground, lying there as though it’s been kicked in (it probably was) when Elliot pushes to open it. “Liv?” He calls out again, entering this new, unknown part of the prison.

There are cells, and bars and destruction; mess, so much mess everywhere and silence.

Deathly silence.

Trusting that Fin and the others are following him, he ventures forward, straining his ears to hear, hoping that even the tiniest of sound might help, unable to decide if the silence is a good or a bad thing.

They might have left her alone, he thinks, hopes. 

She might be dead, the devil on his shoulder suggests, a rage overcoming him along with self-hatred at the thought.

No, he tells himself. She’s not dead. She can’t be dead.

Maybe she’s not here at all, he wonders next. He’s not sure if that’s worse, thinking she’s either here and alone, here and dead or dragged off somewhere else, to some other part of the prison, alone and screaming and terrified and having God knows what done to her.

His years of SVU experience are really not helping right now; his brain giving him all too many suggestions of what could be being done to Olivia at this very moment.

They keep walking down the line of cells, glancing into each one to find it empty, before reaching a gate at the end. That too is open, buckled under the force of who knows what, and he turns back, glancing at Fin whose face is stony, baton held in a white-knuckled grip as they pass through the gate, to be met with a choice; left or right.

“Which way?” He hears Amanda ask, and he’s trying to decide that himself when-

“Is that… did you hear that?” He asks, turning to the other four. “Was that?”

Loud, shaky panting noises interspersed with sobs echo from the left, and Elliot breaks into a run, homing in on the sound.

It’s coming from a room a little way down on the right, and his soles make a scuffing noise on the polished floor as he halts in the doorway, looking at the sight within in disbelief.

Olivia.

On her feet, brandishing a metal bar, standing over a slumped form clad in blood-splattered orange.

The blazer she was wearing last time he saw her is gone, leaving her in her black jeans and dark blue shirt. It’s torn; her olive skin showing through the rips, fluttering as her chest heaves with the force of her breathing.

The blood isn’t only on the man on the floor, Elliot realises; the blood spatter reaches far and wide, across the floor, up the walls, the bar, and Olivia herself. Nowhere has been spared from the onslaught, and as he takes a step closer, he sees that the unconscious (at least, he thinks the man is only unconscious, it’s difficult to tell) man’s flies are down, his penis exposed making it all too obvious what he’d been trying to do.

What Olivia had been forced to violently defend herself from.

Only… he tilts his head, taking another step closer as Fin and the others join him, Fin sucking in a sharp breath at the sight. She looks… wild, he notes, frowning. Like… she’s not quite there.

It’s true; she hasn’t even acknowledged that help has arrived, that she’s not alone, that the danger has passed. Instead, she stares, breathing heavily, at the slumped figure on the floor, at the man she’s beaten half to death by the look of it.

He needs to get her away from here.

Decision made, he goes to step forward, only for Fin’s hand to press firmly into his chest. Turning, he opens his mouth to protest but Fin shakes his head, passing his baton back to Amanda before easing past Elliot, entering the room with outstretched arms.

He approaches Olivia slowly, like she’s a wild animal. It’s not so bad a comparison; the look in her eyes, wild and feral and checked out, like she’s seeing something else is unnerving even for Elliot.

Yet, as he spares quick glances at Amanda, at Ayanna he sees only sadness and comprehension, like they know something and he doesn’t. Like they know why Olivia is acting this way, like there’s a secret that they’re all in on and he...

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know a damn thing and as he watches Fin reaching out, his heart in his throat at the thought that Liv might not realise who it is, that she might, in her distressed, disassociated state might lash out at Fin, of all people…

It becomes very very apparent that something happened at some point in those ten years. Something and he never asked. Not once.

“Hey Liv,” Fin calls to her gently, catching her attention. “It’s just me,” he tells her, his voice low and soft and quiet. “You’re alright,” he tells her, lies to her since it’s abundantly clear that she’s the opposite. “You wanna give that to me?” He asks, pointing at the metal bar she still clutches.

She blinks, tilting her head as she realises seemingly for the first time that she’s not alone, and looks at Fin. “Fin?” She murmurs, voice high and quiet and scared all at once.

“Yeah Liv,” Fin tries to give her a reassuring smile but it comes out as more of a grimace. “It’s me. You’re okay,” he repeats. “You gonna give that to me?” He asks, pointing at the bar.

She looks down at her hands as if taken aback, and the bar hits the floor with a metallic clatter as her fingers release it, her hands coming up to her chest as her shaking increases.

“That works too,” Fin nods, stepping within reach now the metal bar isn’t an issue. “Can I touch you?” He asks, looking into her eyes.

She doesn’t reply, but she doesn’t try to get away, doesn’t even flinch as he quickly looks her over, simply returns her gaze to the man slumped on the floor, the unconscious (Elliot hopes) and badly injured man that everyone is ignoring entirely.

Not that Elliot particularly cares, considering what he’d been trying to do.

“Come on,” Fin tells her. “Let’s sit you down here, yeah?” He speaks to her softly and gently, taking her shoulders in his hands and turning her.

As he does, her shirt moves; the largest tear up the side moving in such a way that it shows a large patch of skin on her left side and part of her abdomen, skin marred with scars. Long, curved ones, small round ones that Elliot knows were caused by cigarette burns, oddly shaped patches, it’s all there, all visible to Elliot’s horrified gaze.

It’s covered over moments later as Fin sits her down, the bed in the cell providing a temporary place to settle her, to calm her. He shrugs his NYPD jacket off, drapes it around her shoulders, covering the majority of the damage to her shirt, giving her back some semblance of privacy.

She doesn’t put her arms through the sleeves, doesn’t try to bring the two sides together to cover herself properly. Instead, she lets it sit, wrapped around her shoulders like a blanket as she shakes, quivering on the edge of the mattress as Fin crouches down in front of her.

“Liv?” He asks. “Liv, are you hurt anywhere?” He peers at her. “The blood, is any of it yours?”

She looks down at herself slowly, frowning. “I…” She bites her lip, looks at her wrist, her left wrist where it lies in her lap and raises her arm slowly, tilting her head at it.

“Your wrist?” Fin asks, reaching for it gently. “Is your wrist hurt?”

She doesn’t seem to know; staring at it in silence as Fin gently feels it. “It’s okay,” he tells her a moment later, gently lowering her arm to her lap. “Not hurt,” he says. “Not this time.”

Elliot’s heart shatters.

Chapter Text

Elliot’s eyes widen at Olivia’s question, at her confusion. Why would she be surprised that I’m here? He wonders, even as Amanda nudges him forward, as he steps into the hospital room.

He glances to Fin as he does, the other man shrugging the shoulder Liv isn’t leaning on as if to say you’re on your own here, which is… incredibly unhelpful.

Okay Stabler, he tells himself. Winging it it is. Let’s hope you don’t make everything a million times worse by shoving your foot in your big mouth.

“Of course I’m here,” he tells her, approaching the bed where she sits, where she’s pushing herself more upright, using Fin as leverage. “Where else would I be?”

She doesn’t answer him; instead her frown gets deeper, her eyes more confused, blinking as if she’s trying to clear them. “I…” She murmurs, trailing off. She seems wary, almost, like she can’t quite believe what is is she’s seeing. “Are you really here?” She asks, reaching out with her right hand.

He grabs it, interlacing their fingers. “Yeah Liv,” he nods, smiling softly. “I’m right here, see?”

She stares at her hand, at his, at theirs. Head tilted like a bird as she considers, as she seems to try and decide whether or not to trust her own eyes. “I prayed for you,” she whispers, her eyes glassy. “I wanted you to find me, to come get me,” she continues as tears fill Elliot’s eyes. “I wanted it so much, for so long… and you came. You came for me.”

It wasn’t even ten minutes, Elliot thinks. What the hell is she talking about? Elliot glances to Fin, who is shaking his head with sadness.

“Of course I came,” Elliot tells her, taking initiative and moving to sit on her opposite side, sandwiching her between himself and Fin. Her eyes fixed on him, her head swivels as he moves, following his actions as he settles himself on the bed. “I’ll always come for you.”

An annoyed sound comes from Amanda’s direction as he says it, but he ignores her, his entire focus on Olivia.

She’s crying, he sees. Over the years he’s become accustomed to tears; almost twenty years working SVU would do that. Victims cry. Families cry. Suspects sometimes cry (rarely, but there have been occasions). It’s part of the job, and while he’s never failed to feel sympathy for them, over time he’d hardened himself to it, to the point where he could offer comfort, without getting upset himself.

But seeing Olivia cry?

It crushes him. The tears brimming in his eyes spill over his cheeks as he offers his arms to her, as she all but flings herself into them, as she holds on tight as if she’s afraid he’ll disappear if she doesn’t. “Shh,” he whispers, rocking her gently. “I’m right here.”

“You won’t leave me again?” Her voice is muffled, her mouth, her face pressed into his shirt but he hears her. 

He’ll always hear her.

“I’m never gonna leave you again,” he tells her, his heart breaking more and more with each sob.

“You promise?” She asks, plaintive. “You won’t leave?”

He nods, squeezing his eyes shut. How could I? He thinks. I never should’ve left you in the first place. “I promise,” he vows, squeezing her a little tighter.

***

One Hour, Thirty Minutes Earlier

The paramedics arrive faster than Elliot had expected them to; moreso considering the riot isn’t entirely under control.

Fin, he’s discovered, can be damn scary when he wants something, and the way he’d demanded paramedics for Liv…

Elliot isn’t surprised the burly prison guard had scurried off to arrange it without so much as a single protest.

Unfortunately, the arrival of the paramedics means the loss of Olivia in his line of sight. The prisoner she’d beaten is taken out first, rushed off down the hall on a gurney. He’s alive; but Elliot doesn’t know anything beyond that.

After, Ayanna and Velasco herd Elliot down the hallway a little way, sitting him down in a clear patch on the floor to let a paramedic look at the wound on his head. Two more head into the room where they’d found Olivia, and while Elliot can hear them talking to Fin, to Amanda, he can’t make out what they’re saying at the same time as keeping track of his own conversation, in which he’s trying to convince the paramedic that he’s fine, thank you very much and he just needs a band-aid stuck on his head.

The paramedic, to his annoyance, doesn’t agree with that statement, instead bandaging the wound and deciding that he needs to be checked out at the ER by a doctor. That part Elliot doesn’t mind so much; it seems fairly obvious that Olivia will need to be checked out at the ER too, so at least they’re both headed to the same place.

His annoyance only doubles when he’s not allowed to ride in the same ambulance as her.

She walks out of the prison on her own two feet; Fin at one side, Amanda at the other gently guiding her, the two paramedics close by. He’d managed to persuade Velasco to at least find out something, and the kid had done just that; reporting back that she seemed fine physically, but they’d had to administer a mild sedative to help her calm down. Not enough to knock her out, but enough to get her to the ambulance and steady her nerves.

It might steady Olivia’s nerves, but Elliot’s are jangling, his mind racing, every fibre of his being rocketing between confused as all hell and wanting to know what the hell happened, because this?

He grinds his teeth as he stands outside the prison in the warm air, watching helplessly as the ambulance doors are slammed shut, Olivia sitting on the gurney inside, leaning heavily on Fin with Amanda watching on from the seats opposite. The lights start flashing a moment later, the bus starting to roll smoothly away, the sirens kicking into a shrill wail as it reaches the gates.

It rolls out of sight, and he feels Ayanna’s hand on his elbow. “Come on,” she tells him. “Be faster if I drive you to the hospital myself.”

Tearing his eyes from where he’d last seen Liv’s ambulance, he follows his Sergeant to her car, climbing inside.

***

The Following Morning

Liv fell asleep in his arms not long after he’d promised her that he’d stay, and no-one had the heart to try and make him move her (not that he would’ve), so he’d found himself (with Fin’s help) doing a slightly awkward shuffle until he was propped up against the pillows of her bed, with her lying heavily against his side. She didn’t wake, not even once during the careful manoeuvring, testament to the sedatives or sheer exhaustion Elliot doesn’t know.

It had made his own examination, to declare that yes, he has a mild concussion, very interesting that’s for sure.

She wakes slowly, Elliot feeling her tense as she does, as she tries to figure out where the hell she is. Rubbing his hand up and down her arm soothingly, he hopes that she is at least lucid this time, because last night? She sure as hell hadn’t been.

“El?” She murmurs, raising her head. “What the…” She turns her head to face him, her eyes widening at, he assumes, the bandage on his head. “What the hell happened to you?” She asks, pushing herself up, her hand reaching out to touch the white gauze. “Why was I asleep on you?” She frowns down at herself, her scrub top and pants (they’d taken her clothes as evidence), her bare feet. “What the hell happened to me?”

Elliot frowns at that. “You don’t remember?” He asks, shifting himself as she sits up fully, pushing himself so they’re sitting facing one another.

“Um,” her brows furrow as she tries, and all Elliot can do is watch and wait, and-

He sees the moment of realisation; the split second the memories fall into place in her head. Her eyes widen, first with panic, then something else, something he can’t quite place. “The prison,” she murmurs.

“You remember?” Elliot asks.

She nods slowly. “Yeah…” She says, distracted. “I remember.”

There’s a knock on the door before Elliot can ask anything else, and Fin pops his head in. “Hey Liv,” he greets her with a bright smile, taking their sitting up as permission to enter, Amanda following him closely, both of them carrying gifts. Amanda has a large bunch of flowers, and Fin is carrying chocolates, which he waves at Liv before placing on the nightstand. “How you feeling?” He asks her, pulling up a chair for himself and sitting down. “You with us?”

She frowns at that. “Was… was I not?” She asks, pulling a face.

“Not really,” Fin tells her straight up. He doesn’t dance around it, doesn’t try to make out that it wasn’t so bad. He just tells it to her straight, and Elliot knows that Olivia appreciates it. “You sorta… checked out for a while,” he tells her. “You weren’t really making a whole lot of sense for a while there.”

She closes her eyes. “Shit,” she swears under her breath. “Sorry,” she says louder.

Fin shrugs. “Don’t worry about it,” he tells her. “You’re back in the year 2022 now.”

“What year was I in?” She asks, as if there’s a choice, and all of Elliot’s fears, all of his concerns and his worries and his downright terrifying thoughts come racing back to the surface.

“2013,” Fin gives her a look, and she nods to herself.

“Yeah,” she bites her lip. “That makes sense.”

I’m glad it does to you, Elliot can’t help but think as Fin and Amanda nod along with her words. Because I still know nothing and the more I find out, the more scared I get.

“You up for talking?” Amanda asks, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to Fin. The flowers she’d brought have been deposited in a vase, full and pretty and colourful by the window.

“Do I have to?” Liv asks.

“McGrath wants to know if we can charge any of the prisoners with anything,” Fin tells her. “So we need to know what happened.”

She sighs, resigned. “I don’t remember much,” she tells them. “Which is gonna make IAB’s day.” She groans.

“Don’t worry about them just now,” Amanda tells her. “Just tell us what you do remember.”

She sighs again, bringing her legs up, folding them underneath her on the bed. “Me and Elliot went to the interview with Julius,” she tells them. “Um… we finished that, and as we were about to leave, that’s when the riot started.”

Fin nods, scribbling in his notebook. “Okay.”

“We were stuck,” she continues. “Um. Sitting in that room for what… four hours, wasn’t it?” She glances to Elliot, who nods. “Then we heard the riot getting closer.”

Fin nods. “Then what happened?”

Elliot has already told Fin all of this, but he knows that it doesn’t work like that, he knows that both he and Liv will likely have to repeat the whole thing at least three more times when talking to IAB for a start.

“They uh… they kicked the doors in,” she says, her eyes distant. She’s staring ahead, not looking at any of them but not seeming to focus on anything in particular either. “We ran,” she continues, her voice slightly detached. “We hid in a room, a storeroom. We were behind the door…” Her breathing quickens, and Elliot reaches for her hand. “We heard them looking for us,” she keeps talking, her fingers clamped around Elliot’s. “We… we thought they’d left. So we got weapons… metal bars we found, and we decided to get away, in case they came back.” She swallows, licks her lips. “Only when Elliot went to go out of the door he was hit over the head.”

This is as far as Elliot himself knows; his next memory starting when Fin woke him up so this, this information, however much she can tell them, is going to fill in one of the blanks that surround her.

One of how many, he really doesn’t know.

“Okay,” Fin nods. “What happened after Elliot was hit?” He asks gently.

“They grabbed me,” she tells him, nodding slowly.

“How many?” Fin asks, jolting Liv from her reverie.

“Um…” She frowns, thinking. “Five? Six?” She grimaces. “I don’t remember, I’m sorry. It all happened so fast.”

“It’s fine,” Fin is quick to tell her. “Don’t worry. Just tell me what you remember.”

“They had hold of me,” she murmurs, even Elliot having to strain his ears to hear her and there’s only a foot of space between them. “I was trying to get away but I couldn’t… I remember screaming, hoping someone would hear but…” She trails off, bites her lip. “They were taking me away from Elliot, laughing and jeering and… I was so scared.” Her breath hitches, her voice suddenly a much higher pitch as he fingers tighten their grip. “I knew what they wanted and I…” She sniffs, her free hand clasping over her mouth. “They took me to a room,” she continues, her voice slightly steadier, a little stronger. “Forced me…” She closes her eyes, her voice weakening again. “Forced me to my knees. I remember I… I was surrounded,” she tells them. “I remember… a zipper… after that… I don’t know. It’s a blur, I’m sorry.” A pause. “I don’t… I don’t think they actually forced me,” she adds. “I don’t… I don’t think.”

Fin shakes his head. “We were able to work out that much last night,” he tells her, smiling reassuringly. “You weren’t raped, but your clothes were torn, and from what you’ve told us-”

“Sexual assault,” she cuts him off, her eyes on Fin’s as she comes back to the room. “I know.” She shakes her head lightly, the glassiness gone from her eyes. “What happened?” She asks. “How did I… did I get away somehow?”

She doesn’t know, Elliot realises. She beat the living daylights out of a man and she can’t even remember.

Chapter Text

Fin winces at her words, and Olivia being Olivia, catches even the tiniest change in the man’s expression. “What?” She asks, nervously. “What are you not telling me?”

Elliot can’t tell if she wants to know or not; her voice, her expression a strange mixture of nervousness and command. Tell me, but I don’t really want to know, it says.

He gets it; for all the questions he has in his head, for all of the things he’s heard, seen, what’s been alluded to in the last twenty-four hours he’s not sure how to deal with it if and when he gets some answers.

“You uh,” Fin sucks air through his teeth. “You used a metal bar to… defend yourself,” he tells her delicately, a pointed look on his face, a silent message passed between himself and his Captain, a secret of some sort that Elliot, once again, finds himself on the outside of.

“Oh,” Liv replies, her mouth forming the shape as she says it, exaggerated and slow, pursing her lips as she starts to nod slowly with understanding. “That uh… that makes sense,” she says, half to herself.

“How?” Fin asks, leaning forward in his chair as Liv curls in on herself a little, trying to keep eye contact with her. 

“I kinda remember doing that,” she tells him, looking back up from her lap. “I just uh… I thought I was remembering something else.” She licks her lips. “Thought I’d mixed it up in my head.” She’s still nodding to herself. “Um… is… did I…” She trails off.

“He’s still alive,” Fin tells her. “You didn’t do as much damage,” he adds.

There seems to be a silent this time on the end of Fin’s sentence, and it makes Elliot’s heart rate pick up. She’s done this before? He thinks. Had to defend herself with a metal bar, only the last time there was more ‘damage’?

A few things suddenly snap into place in his head, a jigsaw puzzle, albeit still with a large amount of pieces absent, but he’s starting to see more of the picture. The way she’d reacted back at the prison when he’d gone to hand her a metal bar, her hesitation, the look in her eye. She’s been here before, and I wasn’t here. Wasn’t here to protect her but… he swallows thickly, a coldness settling over him. She wanted me, he realises, the memory of her throwing herself into his arms the night before, what she’d said about how she’d prayed for him, how she’d wanted him to find her so much…

What the hell happened? He asks himself, even knowing he doesn’t have the answers. What the hell did I leave her to, leave her to deal with, to endure on her own?

“Well that’s something at least,” she’s saying as he comes back to the room, out of his own head. “How much damage?”

“Badly broken arm,” Fin tells her. “It pierced the skin, which is where most of the blood came from. You gave him a good crack on the head, bad concussion. They already transferred him back to Rikers to the hospital there.” A beat. “Don’t worry,” he tells her. “He’ll be fine, and he deserved everything he got and then some.”

She gives him a look. “Fin…” Her voice is quiet, pleading.

“What?” He shrugs. “I ain’t gonna cry over the bastard who was trying to rape you getting a beating,” he tells her, throwing her another pointed look, one that makes Elliot’s blood run cold.

The bastard who was trying to rape you getting a beating. Elliot forces himself to breathe slowly, steadily. This is not the time to lose it, he tells himself. As much as you might want to, you can’t. You’ll scare her.

You showed up at my house in the middle of the night, the words fall back to him, the memory from December, from the trial. That was hard for me, scary.

She lives in a different apartment now, he thinks. Did… did someone attack her at her old place? His mind is going at a million miles an hour, cop brain in full tilt as he tries to piece it together. Is that why she moved? Was she trapped at her old apartment, begging me to come save her? Was she… was she raped? Those scars… oh my God…

The thought, the thought that that had happened to her, that he’d abandoned her and left her to that fate, that he hadn’t been here to protect her sends an icy dagger through his chest. She’s alive, he tells himself. She’s alive, and she’s still here and whatever happened in 2013… she survived. With a kid who’s roughly eight years old and-

Suddenly he finds himself swallowing back bile. No. No no no.

“Where’s Noah?” Her eyes are wide, almost as if she’d heard his thoughts, his thoughts about her son and his origins - no father on the scene, and she hasn’t told him much, Fin had told him he’d have to ask her oh Jesus - “Where is he?”

“He’s at my place,” Amanda tells her. “With Carisi and the girls. He’s fine, thinks you just got stuck at work. I didn’t get home last night, so the lie holds up.”

She smiles at her detective gratefully. “Thanks Amanda.”

Another knock on the door sounds, and this time it’s to reveal someone Elliot isn’t familiar with. A Black woman, natural hair tied back behind her head, Captain’s badge clipped to the lapel of her blazer, stands in the doorway. “Is this a good time?” She asks.

“Captain Curry,” Olivia greets the newcomer with a soft smile. “Hi. Um… sure,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting IAB to come all the way down here,” she adds. “Thought I’d have to come to you.”

“Oh, this isn’t official,” Captain Curry waves her hand dismissively. “I was here talking to the doctors who dealt with the injuries you gave the prisoner yesterday, thought I’d come by and check on you while I was here.”

Olivia nods. “Thank you,” she smiles at her. “I’m doing okay.”

Captain Curry nods. “Good to hear,” she replies. “I do need your statement,” she tells her. “Doesn’t have to be today,” she adds. “Tomorrow is fine.”

Liv nods. “I uh… I don’t remember a whole lot,” she admits with a wince. “Everything happened so fast I…” She shrugs helplessly.

“We already know what happened,” the Captain tells her. “One of the prisoners involved owned up, flipped on the other five and told us everything.”

Olivia nods slowly. “Okay,” she says slowly. “I don’t remember properly. I remember hitting one of them, but I don’t know what happened to the rest. Like I said, it’s a blur.”

“They ran,” the Captain says. “And I shouldn’t have told you that,” she gives her a look. “Look, off the record… I just need your statement so I can close this up. I have detectives interviewing the other prisoners involved, and I doubt anyone will argue when I declare it self-defence.”

Liv nods, blows out a breath. “Thank you,” she tells the woman, grateful.

Captain Curry shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it,” she tells her. “Just take a few days though, yeah?” She asks. “Look after yourself, it was a bad situation.”

“I will,” Liv nods. “Thanks again.”

Captain Curry nods, first to Liv, then the rest of them as she ducks back out of the room, the door clicking softly closed behind her. As soon as the woman has left, Fin turns to Liv with one eyebrow raised. “You are going to take those few days, aren’t you?” He gives her a pointed look.

“We have the-” She starts to say, to backtrack but a pointed cough from Fin has her relenting. “Fine,” she acquiesces. “I’ll take the rest of the week. Happy?”

“Yep,” he grins lazily at her. “You can look after Mr. Mild Concussion over there,” he nods in Elliot’s direction. “Since we all know that he won’t look after himself.”

She turns to Elliot then, wide-eyed. “You didn’t tell me you had a concussion!” She says, reaching forward, fingers tracing over the bandage on his head.

He ducks away, catching her fingers in his. “It’s nothing,” he tries to tell her but she’s having none of it, and he ends up having to let her poke at the bandage while he glares at Fin, who gives him an innocent shrug. “Doc said I’ll be fine in a few days, maybe a week.”

“Were you even going to tell me?” Her accusatory tone, her sudden complete disregard for her own injuries, her own trauma in place of his own is familiar, and has an odd settling effect on him.

“I didn’t get a chance!” He retorts. “We woke up, and less than a minute later Fin walked in."

That takes the wind out of her sails, and she narrows her eyes at him instead. “…fine,” she tells him. “But you can’t go home alone.” She rounds on Fin. “Where’s my doctor?” She asks. “Can I go home?”

“You can,” Fin tells her, clearly trying not to laugh. “She wants to check you over again, but she said as long as you’re lucid, which you are, she won’t have a problem. Thinks you should see someone to talk to though.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’ll call my therapist,” she tells him, spotting her phone on the nightstand. “Today,” she adds as Fin opens his mouth. “I’ll make an appointment, okay?”

Fin nods. “As long as you actually do,” he tells her, like therapy avoidance is a thing for her.

Something else I can relate to, he says silently.

“I will,” she promises. “Now can you go find my doctor for me so I can get out of here?” She asks. “And clothes,” she adds. “Or just shoes.” She frowns at her bare feet.

Fin looks around the room for a moment, confusing Elliot. “We brought clothes!” He announces, before turning to Amanda. “You forgot the clothes!”

She looks at him. “I was carrying the flowers!” She protests. “All you had was the chocolates, why couldn’t you carry the clothes?”

Fin looks back at the two of them, exasperated and Elliot covers his mouth to hide his smirk. “I’ll go find your doctor,” Fin says. “While Amanda gets the clothes she forgot out of the truck.” He gives the blonde a pointed look, and she narrows her eyes at him before getting up, muttering under her breath as she heads out of the door. “Be right back,” Fin says with a wink, before following her.

The door closes, and Liv closes her eyes. “I hope the precinct is still standing when I go back to work next week,” she mutters. 

“I’m sure it will be,” Elliot smiles at her, trying to keep the tone light but now they’re alone, the thoughts are creeping back in. What the hell happened to you?

“I hope so,” she replies, picking at a loose thread on the scrub pants. “I just got the place remodelled.” Snapping the thread, she looks up at him, at his face. “What’s wrong?” She asks.

He blinks. “What makes you think something’s wrong?” He asks, trying to cover.

“The look on your face,” she tells him. “I can see the cogs turning Stabler. What is it?” She’s smiling at him as she waits for him to answer, an open, innocent smile. She probably thinks I’m about to make another stupid comment about the precinct, he thinks.

“What happened in 2013?” The words leave his mouth without permission from his brain, and as her face falls, as her smile disappears he kicks himself.

“What do you mean?” She tries to shrug it off, her hand leaving his as she pushes up from the bed, to a standing position. 

Away from him.

“Liv…” He says her name, but she doesn’t look at him. “I know something happened,” he says to her back. “The things that have been said… you’ve beaten someone before, haven’t you?” He keeps talking. The horse has bolted now, may as well let it run. “With a metal bar?”

She flinches before tensing, her back still firmly to him. “It was nothing,” she tries to deflect. “Just another… self-defence thing,” she says. “Don’t worry about it.”

Stop minimising, he wants to tell her. It’s clearly more than that if the memory of it got you trapped inside your own head for hours. He sighs, realising that she’s not going to tell him, not unless he pushes. “I saw the scars, Olivia.”

Chapter Text

He watches her tense; her spine straightening as he lets silence fall. She turns her head slightly, so he can see her profile and for a moment he thinks this is it, she’ll open up, she’ll tell me-

“What scars?” She says instead, innocently, evasively and he clenches his jaw. Oh, we’re gonna play it like that, huh?

“You know what I mean,” he bites back. Don’t get angry Stabler, he reminds himself. It won’t get you answers, it’ll only make her more pissed.

She shrugs, turning to face him, her bare feet slapping on the tiled floor of the hospital room. Her eyes are cold, emotionless as she looks at him, and it makes him shiver. “I have a few scars, Elliot,” she says darkly. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

He breathes in sharply at the implication, but plays along. “The ones on your left side,” he tells her.

She raises her chin, the corners of her mouth turning down as she nods. “Oh,” she says. “Those. Right.” She keeps nodding, like one of those dogs you get to stick on the dash of your car. “What about them?” She asks, the nodding stopping as she turns her piercing gaze onto him.

Elliot sighs, trying not to show his exasperation. What did you think was going to happen? He asks himself. You’d ask, and she’d just tell you? Come on, this is Liv. She’s never been forthcoming when it comes to things that hurt her.

“What happened?” He asks her, deciding to step back a little, let her come to him.

“I got hurt,” she shrugs, like it’s nothing. You have scars Olivia, he wants to scream. Permanent marks on your skin. That’s not nothing.

“In 2013?” He asks, sensing that if he doesn’t at least try and push her somewhere in the right direction, they’re gonna keep going around in circles.

“Yeah.” She nods.

Hallelujah, he wants to exclaim. Now we’re getting somewhere. “So the metal bar incident and the scars are related,” he states. “What the hell happened?”

She scoffs. “There are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year El,” she tells him, quirking her eyebrow. “Just cause they both happened in the same year doesn’t mean they had anything to do with each other.”

He grinds his teeth as she turns away, having seemingly decided that the conversation is over as she rounds the bed, heading for her phone where it lies on the nightstand. “Liv…” He pushes himself off the bed, fighting off a wave of dizziness as he stands.

“What?” She turns to him innocently, sparing him a brief glance before turning back to her phone, her fingers tapping noisily on the screen.

“Come on,” his voice takes on a pleading tone, but he doesn’t care; if it works, then he’ll take it. “You gotta give me something here.”

Her fingers stop tapping, and she turns her head, looking at him with an expression akin to disbelief. “I don’t have to give you anything,” she snaps. “You’ve been back for a year and four months Elliot,” she continues, her phone clenched hard in one hand. “You’ve never asked me one thing about anything in those ten years other than did I date anyone, like that’s all that could’ve happened to me while you weren’t here.” She shakes her head at him. “I don’t owe you a damn thing.”

He winces, taking a step back at the force of her anger. “I’m sorry,” he apologises, meaning it with every fibre of his being. “I didn’t word that very well.”

“You think?” She snaps, sarcasm heavy in her voice.

He looks to the floor. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I just…” He sighs. “Yesterday… it scared me, Olivia.” He’s never been one to admit when he’s afraid, but he’s trying to be better at sharing his emotions rather than bottling them up. “What happened, the way you… checked out…” He swallows thickly. “Something obviously happened while I was gone,” that’s the understatement of the damn century, he thinks. “I just… I guess while I was gone I thought you’d be fine, that you were better off, and that you were safe. I never let myself think that you might not be.”

It hurt so much to admit that, to admit that he’d lived in a dreamworld, imagining her safe and happy without him, better without him, that he may as well have torn his heart from his chest and presented it, bloody and still beating on a platter for her to take, but as he looks at her eyes, at the realisation in them as her hand, phone still clasped within it, drops to her side. He thinks she’s about to say something, but instead she starts to chuckle.

“Funny that,” she shakes her head. “After a little while, I started to think the same way.”

The brief flash of panic that he’d felt when she’d started to laugh fades, and he finds himself snorting along with her. “Always so in sync, huh?” He raises an eyebrow.

She nods, a soft, sad smile on her face. “Kathy wasn’t so wrong after all, I guess.” She sighs. “I’m sorry,” she tells him.

“No,” he shakes his head. “You’re right. I’m pushing and I have no right to. I’ve been back for so long and I’ve been so wrapped up in myself, in my own problems I’ve barely asked you anything, and the one thing I did…” Was borne of jealousy, he adds silently.

“Was because you’re a jealous bastard, always were.” She gives him a look, her eyes twinkling as she voices his own thoughts. “Shouldn’t have been too surprised, really.”

He goes to retort, only to be interrupted by the door to her room opening, admitting her doctor closely followed by Fin. Unable to voice a response, he gives her a look instead. This isn’t finished, he tells her silently.

She smirks in response, before turning to her doctor.

***

Noah is still at Amanda’s, apparently learning to cook with Carisi so Olivia decides to leave him there, asking Fin to drop them both at her apartment instead.

As Elliot stands by her in the elevator, as he follows her, one pace behind her but their steps falling on the hard floor of the hallway leading to her apartment as one, he’s glad. Conversation definitely not over, he thinks as she unlocks her door.

Her doctor had discharged her with only a promise to talk to her therapist (at which Olivia had turned her phone screen to her doctor, showing her an email that she’d just sent, requesting the first available appointment with said therapist), and the usual wound care instructions for the miraculously few cuts and scrapes she’d obtained at the prison.

She opens the door, letting Elliot enter first as she waves off Fin where he stands at the end of the hall, making sure she gets home safe before he heads back into work. Closing and locking the door again, she rests her forehead against the wood and Elliot hears her taking a deep breath before she turns to face him. “You’re only here because I promised your doctor that I’d keep an eye on you,” she states, sweeping past him and further into her apartment, heading for her kitchen.

His face falls. “I thought we could continue our conversation,” he says quietly as he follows her in, standing awkwardly on the other side of the counter as she gets a glass from the cupboard, filling it with water and placing it down in front of him.

She sighs, giving him a look. “Take your pills,” she tells him. “I’m going to get a shower. Hospital ones never make me feel quite clean.”

Another hint, he thinks as she turns, disappearing further into her apartment and out of sight. Downing the pills as she told him to, he listens out, hearing doors opening and closing, followed by the faint sound of water running. Unsure how long she’ll be, he decides to settle himself on her couch.

***

“Better?” He asks as she emerges almost an hour later, damp hair in a messy bun, wearing leggings and a long, soft, thin sweater.

“Mmhmm,” she nods as she settles at the opposite end of the couch. “The Great British Baking Show?” She raises her eyebrows at the TV. “Didn’t think you were into that.”

He snorts. “I just picked something at random,” he tells her. “Passing the time.”

“Mmm, sure,” she nods, a teasing glint in her eye. “I’ll believe you.”

He rolls his eyes at her, the natural teasing between them a welcome reminder of what they once had. Before you ruined it, the little voice in his head reminds him. Before you left her.

He decides not to push; she looks so happy, so content that he can’t bring himself to ruin it, so he turns his head back to the TV instead, watching as one unfortunate contestant has a disaster of epic proportions with what was once a very tall cake. He grimaces at the pile of crumbs that’s left, turning his head to see Olivia sporting a similar expression.

***

They sit in comfortable silence for a while, finishing one episode and watching the next before Olivia speaks, her voice soft, so soft he barely hears it over the presenter shouting about how much time the contestants have left.

“What do you want to know?” She asks, and he turns his head, his eyes widening as he realises what it is she’s saying, what it is she’s offering.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” he says, shaking his head. “I overstepped, I know that.”

“It’s fine,” she tells him, turning her body, pulling her legs up underneath her. She rests her right elbow on the back of the couch, her cheek on her hand as she looks at him. Some of the hair has come out of the messy bun she’d fastened it into, curling wildly as it dries.

She’s never looked more beautiful.

“You have questions,” she continues. “I’m not going to promise all of the answers, but…” She pauses, pursing her lips. “We’ll see.”

Chapter Text

He swallows hard; knowing that while this may be the one chance he gets to ask her… if he goes about it wrong then she’ll clam up and he’ll not only never get any answers, he’ll likely put a fracture in their friendship - relationship? whatever they’re calling it these days - that may never be repaired.

He hurt her, he knows that. He hurt her deeply when he abandoned her and he’s hurt her (unintentionally, but still) since he came back on more than one occasion.

She’s looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to start the conversation and he’s staring at her blankly as he tries to pick a starting point. Just say something Elliot, he tells himself. Or she’ll back off, think you don’t want to know, you aren’t interested. 

“In the hospital,” he starts, seeing her relax slightly when he finally opens his mouth. “When you were talking to Fin about what year you went back to…” He licks his lips, nervous. “It seemed like… there was more than one option?” He chooses his words carefully.

A shadow crosses her face. “Yeah,” she replies quietly. “That’s true. There were… two, I guess.”

Elliot nods. “So… 2013,” he says, nodding when she does. “And…?”

“2008,” she says, which takes him aback. Hang on, he thinks. I was around then… he furrows his brows, thinking hard.

“Sealview,” he breathes moments later. He hadn’t forgotten what had happened, or, rather, what she told him which wasn’t a whole lot, but the year had escaped him.

She nods. “I screamed back then,” she tells him quietly. “For help. Begging for someone to just hear me, come get me.” She bites her lip. “I screamed then like I did yesterday.”

“You never told me what happened,” he says. It’s not an accusation; it’s simple fact. She hadn’t.

She smiles sadly. “No,” she agrees. “No, I didn’t did I?” Sighing, she shifts position slightly on the couch. “He trapped me,” she tells him. “Harris. In the basement… he attacked me. Assaulted me…” She rubs her hand over her mouth. “He uh… he had me on my knees,” she continues. “Trapped… like those men did yesterday. He undid his pants… like they did… then Fin came in.”

Elliot doesn’t know what to say. He’d always known that something had happened down there; the bruises, her edginess after had told him that much but to hear this? To hear that it had gone this far? He blinks, rubs his hand down the back of his head. “Please… tell me he didn’t…” Rape you? He can’t find the words.

“No,” she tells him. “Fin got to me in time.” She chuckles darkly. “I mean… he only had a few seconds to spare, but he got there and that’s all that matters.”

Elliot feels the age-old surge of anger in his gut. No Olivia, that’s not all that matters! He wants to yell. You were assaulted, you can’t just play it off like it’s nothing! “Liv,” he starts. “It’s not all that matters,” he tells her, voicing his thoughts. “It shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

She shrugs. “I knew what I was doing, putting myself in that situation,” she argues. “I knew there was a chance I would get attacked, it was the whole point, remember?”

Elliot grinds his teeth. “The whole point was for Fin to protect you!” He snaps.

She sighs. “He did!” She retorts, her voice loud, anger seeping in. “And he looked out for me after, and he never left me!” She’s shouting now, and no sooner have the words left her mouth than she gasps, her jaw clicking shut, her hand clasped over her lips. “I’m sorry,” she mutters, moving her hand. “I don’t know why I said that.”

Elliot blows out a breath. “You don’t need to apologise Liv,” he shakes his head. “It’s the truth.” As much as I wish it wasn’t.

“You did what was right for you,” she replies, dismissing her own feelings about how he’d left just like she always does. “I can’t, I shouldn’t still be angry at you for that.”

He sighs. “I did what Kathy wanted,” he admits, the truth hanging in the air between them. He only has vague memories of the night he’d first come here, the night he had, in a drug induced stupor, confessed that he hadn’t in fact written that damned letter, but what he feels now and what he can remember from then… isn’t dissimilar.

Liv tilts her head. “What do you mean?” She asks.

He leans back into the couch, resting his head on one hand, mirroring Olivia’s position. “I uh… I was a mess, after the shooting,” he tells her. “Couldn’t sleep, barely ate. Poured all the alcohol down the sink after one bad night… I didn’t want to become my father,” he tells her, watching as she nods, understanding. “I… didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he tells her quietly, the memories, the dark, swirling abyss he’d found himself in back then making him shudder. “I didn’t want to leave you,” he tells her. “But I wasn’t sure if I could go back to SVU.” He bites his lip. “IAB cleared me… with conditions that I’m sure Cragen told you about.”

She nods. “Yeah, he did. I figured you’d be pissed.”

He snorts. “I wasn’t happy about it,” he recalls. “But after I sat down and thought it through… it didn’t seem so bad. I just…”

“You needed time?” Liv suggests, a knowing look on her face.

You always knew what I was thinking, often before I did, he thinks to himself. “Yeah,” he nods. “It was still too fresh. I wanted time, time to think, time to… grieve, I guess.”

Olivia nods. “I get that,” she tells him. “So what happened? You… think about it, decide you couldn’t do it?”

He sucks in a breath. Now for the hard part. “It wasn’t like that,” he answers. “I asked IAB for some time, they didn’t argue with me. Then… then Kathy starts talking about travelling.” He rubs his hand over his mouth. “Turns out she’d found out how much money I would get from my pension,” he tells her. “She did some working out and started talking about how if we sold the house, between that and my pension we could move. We could spend time travelling. How she’d always wanted to, but she’d never been able to. With my job, with the kids… she started saying how yeah, we still had Eli but one kid was better to travel with than four or five, so why not?”

Olivia nods with an understanding expression. “She guilted you,” she snorts, shaking her head.

Elliot shrugs. “I guess in some ways she did,” he can see that now, even if it is still difficult to admit. “I felt so bad, I’d left her to raise the kids, working all hours, wouldn’t talk to her about work when I was home, spending all that time with you…”

“You felt you owed her,” Liv finishes the sentence.

He nods slowly. “Yeah,” he says, finally able to admit it eleven years down the line. “Yeah, I did.”

She nods. “I get that,” she says quietly. “I don’t hate you for that El. You deserved it, you’d worked so hard, put everything into the job, you deserved to walk away if that’s what you wanted to do.”

“I didn’t,” he whispers quietly. “I didn’t.”

She sucks in a breath. “Either way,” she continues. “Why couldn’t you just… say goodbye to me?” She shakes her head, tears in her eyes. “You know how much that hurt me? Never speaking to you again, wondering why you just… ghosted me like that?”

He thins his lips, his own eyes damp. “I told you,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” she sighs. “If you’d heard my voice… I know.” She shakes her head. “I just… I couldn’t have had that much influence over you El.”

“But you did,” he whispers, the words hanging in the air between them. “I saw you once,” he blurts, her eyes widening. “It was before I put my papers in. Me and Kathy, we were in Manhattan, shopping I think, I can’t remember. But I looked up and there you were,” a soft smile curls at his lips, the memory in his mind as though it were only yesterday. “You didn’t see me,” he adds. “Obviously. But I saw you, and… and Kathy saw me looking. Saw the look on my face when I was.”

“She wasn’t happy.” Liv states the fact for him.

“No,” Elliot shakes his head. “She wasn’t. Told me to make my mind up. My family or the job, but either way the house was going on the market and she was heading to Europe. With or without me.”

She shakes her head. “I never realised she hated me that much,” she mutters. 

“She didn’t,” Elliot tells her. “I don’t think. Not you, anyway. No-one can hate you, Olivia.” He looks at her, at the way her drying hair shines in the light coming through her apartment windows. No, no-one could ever hate you, he silently repeats. “She just… didn’t understand us,” he says. “I don’t think anyone ever really did, not even us.”

She snorts at that. “Especially not us,” she jokes.

“You still believe in soulmates?” He asks. It’s an innocent question, but the look on her face when he asks it… “What?”

She sighs. “I think I need alcohol for this conversation,” she mutters. “Shame I finished my last bottle of wine last week and never got the chance to replace it when we caught this case.” She groans. “Soulmates is a…” She trails off.

“Touchy subject?” He asks, head tilted, confused. Are you hiding something else from me? 

She sighs. “Remember years and years ago, I told you about an older man I dated when I was sixteen?” She asks.

“Yeah…” He says carefully, suddenly almost certain he’s not going to like where this is headed. “What about him?”

She leans further into the back of the couch. “He showed back up, late last year,” she tells him. “You were running around with the Albanians,” she answers before he can even ask the question of where he was during all of this. “To cut a really long, really messy story short, we uh… rekindled some old feelings,” she says, her mouth twisted in disgust. “Then it turned out that he is a sexual predator and I was more than likely his first victim.”

She says it so matter-of-fact, but he can tell that it’s not easy for her to say; she’s tense, uneasy in front of him, likely waiting for the explosion that the Elliot of old would have displayed.

But she needs better than that; she deserves better than that, so he forces the ball of rage down deep into his gut. “I… I am so sorry, Olivia.”

She purses her lips. “Yeah, you and everyone else,” she blows out a breath. “We couldn’t charge him with anything, I confronted him… he wouldn’t even admit that what had happened between the two of us all those years ago was wrong, so I… I got no closure, not from him, anyway. He left, and I… I moved on. Then…” She sighs, rolling her eyes. “He showed back up a couple months ago. Full of apologies that time. In recovery… he’s an alcoholic. He… seemed genuine. I’m not one-hundred percent sure he actually was, considering we ended up charging him with raping a woman, but… part of me… part of me wanted to forgive him Elliot.”

“Did you?” He asks.

“No,” she tells him. “No, I didn’t. But part of me did want to, and the rest of me… the rest of me isn’t sure if I can trust my own judgement when it comes to that man.”

Elliot purses his lips. “Sometimes… sometimes people can find closure in forgiveness,” he says carefully. “We’ve seen it before. Sometimes it’s the only way to let go.”

She tilts her head. “Yeah,” she muses. “Maybe. Or maybe I just need to take the acknowledgement I got from him and let it lie.”

He nods. “That too.”

“So… to answer your question in the most roundabout way possible,” she takes a hard left turn, breaking the emotional weight hanging in the air. “I did believe in soulmates. Now… now I’m scared to. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I just… I had a lot of thinking time, in those early months before I got bored and ended up taking on private security work,” he tells her. “Figured that soulmates might be the best way to describe the two of us.” It made sense in his head back then; still does now when he thinks about it. Finishing each others sentences, so alike yet so different, like puzzle pieces that form one complete jigsaw, the perfect fit for one another.

She smiles, a gentle smile catching the corners of her lips. “I uh… I used to think that,” she tells him. Used to? He wants to ask, but clamps his jaw shut. “Then when everything happened with Burton… it made me doubt everything.”

Burton. Elliot makes a mental note of the name, and to ask Fin about it. “And now?” He queries quietly.

“Now…” She looks at him with soft eyes. “Now I sit here looking at you and think I should never have doubted what we have. Because for all you left me… you came back. Like… maybe it was supposed to happen.” A beat. “I do have one question though,” she adds. “Something that has bugged me for over a year now.”

“Anything.”

“You told me that if you’d heard my voice you wouldn’t have been able to leave… yet you were planning on coming to my award ceremony, giving me a letter that your wife wrote, and then what… going back to Italy?” She tilts her head. “I think at some point we would have exchanged words, El.”

He finds himself chuckling despite himself. “Yeah,” he nods. “I uh… I didn’t really think it through all that well.”

“You think?” She raises an eyebrow. “You really would’ve gone back?” She asks, her voice softer, almost child-like, pained at the thought.

“No,” he shakes his head, speaking honestly. “The second I saw you that night Liv, I knew.” Among the blue and red lights, the smoke still rising from the burnt out car, the sirens, the people everywhere… the second he’d laid eyes on her he’d known. She’s home. “I couldn’t have gone back. Even if Kathy hadn’t have…” He trails off. “It ripped my heart out, leaving you the way I did,” he tells her. “The second I saw you, it all came back and I… I couldn’t do it, to me, to you… not again.”

She sniffs, rubbing at her eyes. “I’m glad you didn’t leave,” she tells him quietly.

He smiles. “Me too.” He bites his lip. “Would’ve liked it to be different,” he adds. “Didn’t want the kids to lose their mom but…” I’m glad I got to see you again, be around you again… see if there’s more between us.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Me too.”

Chapter Text

They sit in silent contemplation for a few moments; Elliot watching Olivia as she sits, lower lip caught between her teeth, watching him in silence.

He wonders what would’ve happened, had he not left her; how different things could have been. Would he have somehow made his marriage work, despite Kathy’s insistence on heading to Europe? He doubts it. No, he thinks. We would have divorced, stuck with it this time. Shared custody of Eli, all that. 

But what would have happened after that? He wonders.

“What are you thinking?” Liv’s voice is soft, inquiring as she watches him.

“About… parallel universes.” He tells her.

She tilts her head. “The one line I know was from you,” she quips. “What about them?” She asks.

“Just…” He shrugs. “Wondering if there’s a world out there where I never left you,” he says. “Wondering what would’ve happened.” It will always be you and I.

She raises her eyebrows. “That’s… deep, El.” She comments. “What do you think would’ve happened?” She asks, curiosity sparking in her eyes.

“I…” He sighs, purses his lips. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I guess… if I hadn’t have left, what does that mean?”

“What, you not leaving SVU, or you not leaving New York?” She asks.

“Exactly.” He shifts position, makes himself more comfortable on her couch. “If I never left SVU, then we’d have stayed partners. Things…”

“Would’ve been so different,” she says, a faraway look in her eyes. “Think I would’ve made Captain if you’d stayed?” She asks.

“‘Course,” he’s quick to tell her. “You were always meant for that office, Olivia.” She frowns at his words, and he finds himself mirroring her. “What?” He asks.

“I just…” She pulls a face. “I don’t know if I would’ve gone for the promotions, if you’d still been there,” she admits. “You would’ve been ahead of me in seniority for a start,” she reminds him. “And… it would’ve meant the end of our partnership.”

She looks so conflicted, so confused it breaks his heart. “If you think for one second anyone would’ve given me a promotion with my jacket Olivia,” he raises his eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have wanted it anyway,” he tells her. “Supervisor stuff…” He shudders. “Definitely not for me. I’m too reckless.”

She laughs at that. “You say that like I’ve somehow become strait-laced since I got a shinier badge.”

“You haven’t?” He says, grinning.

She snorts. “Ask Fin, he’ll tell you some stories,” she tells him. “Or maybe don’t,” she adds with a wince.

“Oh?” Elliot tilts his head, a teasing lilt in his voice. “I’m sensing a story there.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “More than one,” she mutters. “Let’s just say… it’s been said that I’m really, really bad at politicking.”

Elliot snorts. “I can’t quite see that, somehow,” he teases, poking his tongue out at her when she glowers at him.

“Funny guy,” she rolls her eyes. “Anyway,” she says. “I… I don’t know,” she tells him. “If they’d passed you by, offered the sergeants exam to me, I still don’t know if I would’ve taken it if it meant the end of us.”

“I would’ve driven you down to the exam myself and walked you into the goddamn room Olivia,” he tells her, meaning every single word. “I would never, not ever, let you hold yourself back because of me.”

“But-”

He shakes his head, cutting her off. “Olivia, we’re twenty-four years in,” he tells her. “We didn’t speak for ten years, you’re now three ranks above me, we work in different departments and still, still call each other partner,” he reminds her. “Nothing is ever gonna change that. Nothing.”

She chuckles. “Yeah,” she muses. “I guess you’re right.”

“You know I’m right,” he grins at her, and she rolls her eyes at him. “What about us, though?” He asks, can’t help but wonder.

“What, this… whatever it is that’s between us that everyone seems to have an opinion on?” She asks, seeming almost exasperated.

“You aren’t getting grief because of me, are you?” He asks, eyes wide, hackles rising at the thought of someone giving Olivia trouble because of her relationship with him.

“No, no,” she shakes her head. “Just… people refusing to mind their own business,” she mutters. “Making comments about things they know nothing about, that’s all.”

“Fin again?” Elliot asks, curious.

“Nope,” she grins at that. “He hasn’t said anything,” she clarifies. “There’s just a lot of eye-rolling and pointed looks. He’s too scared I’ll put him on weekend calls forever if he pisses me off.” She laughs.

He joins in, chuckling. “He knows you too well,” he laughs.

“Pity everyone else couldn’t take a leaf out of his book,” she adds wryly, before sighing. “I wish it was true,” she says sadly.

“What?”

“This… parallel universe,” she says. “I wish you’d never left me. Things… would’ve been so different.”

The way she says it, coupled with everything else he’s seen, everything else he’s heard in the last two days… there’s a heaviness to her words, an unspoken truth hidden under it all and he wants, so desperately to know what it is.

“You think we would’ve gotten together?” He asks instead, the burning question in his mind niggling at him. “If I’d stayed?”

“You talking about at SVU or just in the city?” She asks.

“Either.”

“I dunno,” she smiles lazily in thought. “I mean… we can’t seem to get our act together now,” she gives him a look. “So I don’t really think much of our chances, to be fair.”

He snorts. “Maybe… we should just get it out of our systems,” he says, meaning a kiss (oh, how he’s dreamt of her lips on his) but her eyes widening in shock makes him take pause. “What?” He chuckles, trying to play it cool, but deep down the hurt swirls.

“Do me a favour El, don’t say ‘get it out of our systems’,” she shudders, eyes wide. 

He frowns, confused. “Why?” He asks.

“Something Rollins said to me a couple months ago,” she waves a hand, dismissive. “Just… trust me, you don’t wanna know.”

I think I do, he thinks, but lets it go. “Okay…” A beat. “I still stand by it though.”

She groans dramatically, and he snorts. “Maybe we would’ve El,” she shrugs. “I don’t know.” She sighs. “I don’t…” She twists her lips. “I don’t like thinking about the maybes,” she tells him quietly. “It just…”

“Makes you think about something that you wish was different?” He prompts.

She nods. “Yeah.”

“Something… that you wish I was there for?” He tilts his head, the memory of her flinging herself into his arms the previous night at the forefront of his mind.

She frowns. “Why do you say that?” She asks, suspicious all of a sudden.

He grimaces, knows that he has to tell her. “Uh…” He winces. “Last night, when you were uh… in 2013,” he says carefully. “You saw me. The way you reacted…” I wanted you to find me, to come get me. “It… you said you wanted me to come find you,” he tells her. “That you prayed for me to come.”

She closes her eyes, an odd mix of devastation and embarrassment on her face as she tries to hide herself from him. Reaching out, he touches her hand, taking it in his own when she doesn’t pull away. “Liv?”

“I did,” she whispers. “I did then, just like I did when… at Sealview.”

“I was coming then,” he tells her. “I was on my way, I was outside… they wouldn’t let me in.”

She opens her eyes, looks up at him. “You were?” She looks at him like this is entirely new information to her, which, he realises, it is. “You never told me that.”

“I… I guess it never came up,” he says, unsure as to the reason fourteen years and some change down the line. “I… I should’ve told you,” he adds. “I’m sorry.”

“I wish I’d known,” she murmurs. “Might’ve… I don’t know.” She shrugs. “But yeah. I wanted you then, and I wanted you five years later.” And you didn’t come either time.

She’s chewing on her lip, and he watches her, unsure how to proceed. It feels awkward, too heavy yet somehow not at the same time. “Tell me,” he whispers, the silence that has fallen - the Netflix main screen showing on the TV, the episode of the baking show long since finished - letting his words hang in the air between them.

“Why… why don’t you tell me what you’ve figured out,” she says quietly. “Because I know you, I know you’ve been turning it over in your head, and I’ll see how close you’ve gotten.”

It’s a challenge and a delaying tactic all in one, and he rises to it, nodding firmly in response. “Okay,” he says, drawing his mental mind-map of clues together. “So… 2013,” he starts. “At some point… I’m gonna say it happened in your apartment,” he tells her, remembering what she’d told him months ago.

She doesn’t react; simply watches him in silence, letting him try to piece it together himself. “You wanted me, so it was bad,” he guesses, watching her eyes for clues but receiving none; she can be remarkably closed off even to him when she wants to be. “You… think that maybe it wouldn’t have happened if I’d still been around?”

He’s hinting for an answer, but she gives him nothing.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “You’re claustrophobic now,” he remembers her words from the prison, back when it was only a riot, before… before everything else. “But that might not have anything to do with this, so I’m gonna leave that as a maybe.” But judging by the look I just saw in your eyes, I’m wrong to say that. “You ended up in hospital,” he continues. “You said you don’t like the showers, that they don’t let you feel clean.”

She makes a tiny noise of assent, and he takes it as encouragement to continue. “Despite what you said earlier, I’m gonna guess that whatever it was is connected to the scars,” he tells her. “Because it was bad enough for you to wind up in hospital.”

She purses her lips, tilts her head.

“You beat… whoever this person was with a metal bar, like you did yesterday,” he states, knowing this part as fact. “In self defence, but you caused more damage to this person than a broken arm and a concussion.”

“Mmhmm.” She nods.

He only has one more thing, one more observation and it’s the worst, the hardest one to voice out of them all. “Fin said… trying to rape you,” he says. “When you beat him… did he?” He breathes. “Is that… Noah?” He can’t bring himself to say the words.

“No,” she shakes her head vehemently. “No, Elliot. Noah is adopted. He wasn’t… no.”

He breathes a sigh of relief, a weight lifting that he hadn’t realised he was carrying. “Okay,” he breathes. “Okay.”

“That’s… pretty accurate,” she comments, looking somewhat impressed. “You’ve been paying attention,” she says wryly. “But you don’t have all the facts so…” She takes a deep breath, straightening her spine. “His name was William Lewis.”

Chapter Text

William Lewis. He files the name away, a mental note to look the guy up, see where he’s-

“He’s dead,” Olivia says, a knowing look in her eye. “So you can stop whatever little plan you were cooking up right there.”

“I wasn’t!” He tries to protest, but she gives him a look and he gives in. “Okay, I was.”

“I know you were,” she says, shaking her head at him. “I know you, El.”

That you do. “How did he die?” He asks, but she shakes her head in response.

“I’ll get to that,” she tells him. “I didn’t kill him,” she adds. “But it’s a whole mess and…” She takes a breath. “I need to try and keep it in order, okay? It’s… easier.”

“Whatever you need Liv,” he’s quick to say. “Tell me as much or as little as you want. This is on your terms.”

She gives him a half-smile in response. “Thank you,” she whispers. “So uh… he was a serial rapist,” she tells him. “Probably should say he was a serial killer too, the amount of people who died at his hand but he… he didn’t really set out to do that,” she says. “They just… they were in the way, so he killed them.” She bites her lip. “He just… nothing was gonna stop him from doing what he wanted, even if that meant murder.”

Elliot nods mutely, wanting to speak but worried that if he does, he’ll distract her. This, telling him this is hard enough for her already; her tense posture, her nervousness and upset all too present in front of him. The last thing she needs is for him to make it worse.

“He had a history, a long history,” she continues, looking at him but not quite meeting his gaze. “Several states, several misspelt names. He just kept skating on his charges, getting away with it. Then… one bright Sunday morning in May… he exposed himself to two young tourists in Central Park. An older lady, Alice Parker saw him, and Rollins was there with her dog. They gave chase, and despite it being everyone’s day off, she brought us all in.”

It sounds so… simple, Elliot can’t help but think. Just a straightforward open and shut misdemeanour. So what the hell happened?

“She had a bad feeling,” Liv continues. “And… she was right. He skated on the mis-d and attacked Alice Parker in her home that night. Raped and tortured her for eighteen hours straight.”

Elliot spent almost twenty years in SVU. He’s heard and seen… it all, for want of a far better description but the thought of it, of what this faceless man put an older lady (for Liv to call her older she must’ve at least been in her sixties) and to know that he’d later attacked Olivia…

It makes him want to vomit.

But he can’t; if he was to run away to the bathroom now he knows, he knows that Liv will clam up, refuse to speak because she’s upset him, because one thing he knows about Olivia Benson, one thing that he’s ninety-nine percent certain will never change is the fact that she will always, always put everyone else’s needs above her own.

Always.

Even if it tears her apart inside. It’s infuriating, yet it’s one of the things that made him love her, her selflessness.

But now it’s time for him to take up the mantle, so he swallows the bile, forces it back down his throat and keeps his face straight, refusing to let her know how sickened he is even now, only a short way into her story.

“She survived,” Olivia says, seemingly lost in her own head, her eyes glazed over as she recounts nine-year-old memories. “She was… so determined to make him pay. But she died a few days later. ME couldn’t say it was directly linked, but we all knew it was caused by the stress of everything. We… we tried to get him without her, Barba tried his best but the lab screwed up DNA evidence and Lewis’s attorney was a shark and…” She trails off.

Barba. Elliot doesn’t miss the mention. His only thoughts regarding that man aren’t good, after what he’d done just before Christmas but, as he realises now, he’d never considered the man before the defence attorney. The man who had been SVU’s ADA for a number of years.

The man who was around during what appears to be one of the, if not the worst time of Olivia’s life.

When he himself… wasn’t.

“He walked away,” he murmurs, finishing her sentence for her when she doesn’t, trying to bring her back into the room, out of her thoughts a little, away from painful memories.

She nods, her eyes sharp, looking at him with focus. “Yeah,” she nods. “Judge declared a mistrial, Lewis got bail… Barba was angry, everyone was angry… Cragen told me to take two days off,” she tells him. “I didn’t want to, but he made it an order. I went home that night and…” She squeezes her eyes shut. “There he was,” she whispers. “In my apartment with a gun.”

Elliot swallows thickly. He’s not sure how to feel about getting it right; guessing that whatever had happened had been in her apartment, her old place. 

“He…” She sighs, looks down at her lap, at where their hands are still linked. “I don’t think I can go into all of the details,” she tells him, shaking her head. “I… I thought I could but…” She breathes shakily.

“Hey, hey,” he squeezes her hand, getting her to look up at him. “You just tell me however you want,” he tries to reassure her. “As much or as little as you’re comfortable with,” he reiterates his earlier words. “On your terms, Olivia.”

She looks at him, eyes wide and trusting, before nodding. “I um… he drugged me,” she tells him. “Forced alcohol down my throat…” A beat. “Vodka is not a good idea anymore, just so you know.” She tells him pointedly. “It made everything fuzzy. I guess… it made the pain less when he branded me,” she tells him, shuddering. “That sounds weird when I say it I know, but…” She shrugs.

Elliot shakes his head. “It’s not weird,” he tells her. “I… I can’t imagine.” Branded. He swallows the bile for a second time.

“Probably for the best really,” she says wryly. “Even with the copious amounts of alcohol it hurt like hell.” She shifts position, holding his hand between both of hers now, stroking her fingers across his knuckles rhythmically. “He had me for four days total,” she whispers, making Elliot’s eyes widen in horror, in shock, in anger. Why did it take them so long to find you? He wants to scream.

Stops himself.

“The first night was in my apartment,” she continues, either ignoring or oblivious to Elliot’s struggle to keep himself in check. “Getting me more and more drunk, hurting me, burning me with cigarettes, my apartment keys, wire hangers… whatever he could find.” She pauses, takes a breath. “Taunting me too,” she adds, almost as an afterthought. “Telling me what he was going to do. I was so scared.” She sighs. “I was dating Cassidy at the time-” She gives him a look. “Don’t, El.” Stopping him from making an ill-advised comment. “He was supposed to come over only he cancelled on me last minute. Got hung up at work. Left me a voicemail, and only started to worry when I hadn’t gotten back to him two days later.”

Elliot makes a mental note to search Brian Cassidy out, and punch him in the goddamn face. Who the hell leaves it for two days when someone doesn’t answer a voicemail? He rages silently. A cop, who has her phone next to her near as dammit constantly?

“So I knew, Lewis knew… no-one was coming.” She sniffs then, tears in her eyes. “He didn’t know this, but I knew that no-one was expecting me at work for two days and I thought… I wondered if I would be dead before anyone realised there was something wrong. Because… I knew he wasn’t gonna let me go.”

I would’ve known, Elliot says silently. I would’ve taken you home myself. “Did no-one think that you might be a target?” He asks, before berating himself for interrupting her.

She shakes her head. “He liked younger, college-age or even younger than that, girls and older ladies,” she tells him. “People who would’ve had a hard time fighting him off. Not me. I did not fit the criteria. We’d got into each others faces in interrogation, you know, like you do when you’re trying to get a confession but… no-one, not even me, had considered that he might go after me. If anything, we thought he’d lay low, take the win, such as it was and keep his nose clean for a while but no. He… he had other ideas.”

Elliot squeezes her fingers.

“He moved me, before sunrise,” she tells him, squeezing his hand back. “I don’t remember much. Apparently he took me down the fire escape but I don’t remember that. I woke up in the trunk of a car. Spent the whole day in there… though it felt like longer, felt like weeks.”

The claustrophobia. Elliot realises.

“I don’t like small spaces now,” she tells him, answering the thought without him voicing it. “He was driving, and I could hear him laughing and it just made it worse. I didn’t know why he was laughing, where he was taking me… I didn’t even know what day it was at that point, everything was just so… mixed up. I was tied up, gagged… I could barely move, couldn’t make a sound and he was just driving. Eventually… it stopped, and I heard him getting out. The car… it sat there for a while, it sat there for so long but all the time I was terrified that he was gonna pop the trunk, drag me out and do God knows what to me.” She sniffs again, a lone tear escaping her eye, rolling down her face.

“What happened?” Elliot asks, doubtful yet somehow hopeful that she’d remained in the trunk of the car for the vast majority of the time. Obviously she’d beaten the man at some point, but he hopes that it was during a frenzy, that he hadn’t spent more time hurting her, that he’d left her alone before deciding to carry out his intentions, and she’d fought back then.

He should’ve known better, really.

“Eventually the car started up again,” she tells him. “I was frozen in fear in the trunk, and he drove, seemed to drop someone off somewhere… I later learned that it was his lawyer, who he’d been dating,” she gives Elliot a look. “Then he drove again. That time… that time when the car stopped and he got out, it wasn’t long before he came back for me.”

Chapter Text

Elliot inhales sharply, and Olivia glances up at him briefly, a flash of concern in her eyes as she hesitates, her mouth half open, the words frozen in her throat. “Don’t stop,” he whispers. “Keep talking to me.” He squeezes her hand, hoping that it’ll reassure her.

She eyes him nervously, but continues, watching him the whole time she speaks. “He got me out of the trunk,” she tells him. “There was this pretty big house, but it was dark, I couldn’t see it very well other than it was… well. Big.” She pulls a face. “He carried me inside,” she continues. “I was so numb from lying in one position for so long I’m not sure I could’ve walked even if he’d tried to make me.”

Elliot nods, forcing his face to stay as neutral as possible, acutely aware of her watching him intently.

“There was a man on the floor in the kitchen,” she tells him next. “I remember wondering if he was alive. He wasn’t… I found that out later. I didn’t…” She sighs, angry but Elliot doesn’t know why. “I didn’t think about it for long,” she admits quietly. “The feeling was starting to come back in my legs and it… it hurt.” She takes one hand from his, starts rubbing at her thigh.

Elliot isn’t sure if she’s even realised she’s doing it.

“I sort of got lost in my own head, the pain, the pins and needles for a few minutes,” she tells him. “The next thing I know I’m being shoved into a chair and he’s untying me, then tying my legs and my wrists to the chair itself… and I look up… and there she is.”

Who? “Who?” He asks, tilting his head.

“It was his lawyer’s parents house,” she tells him, her eyes starting to lose focus, starting to glaze over once again. “I was told that later. His lawyer’s father was the man on the kitchen floor, and her mother was the one… she was the one tied to the bed in her underwear.”

“Jesus Christ.” Elliot whispers, squeezing his eyes shut. “Sorry,” he murmurs when he feels Liv flinch. “Keep going,” he tells her. “Don’t worry about me.”

“But…”

“Liv.” He opens his eyes, shaking his head. “This is hard to hear, all of it is, okay?” He tells her, holding her gaze. “But that doesn’t mean that you have to stop, it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to hear it, okay?” He grabs her hand, the one still rubbing at her thigh, with his free one and squeezes both. “If you want to stop, then you stop but don’t do that for me, okay?”

She looks at him, unsure.

“Tell me.” He whispers the insistence, not forceful, simply a gentle nudge of encouragement. “You survived this, Olivia. You lived through it. I can definitely survive hearing about it.” I hope.

She frowns, biting her lip as she thinks about it, before seeming to make a choice. “Okay,” she whispers. “So… she was on the bed, and I was tied to the chair and Lewis, he…” She closes her eyes, squeezes them shut so tightly. “He made me watch,” she says, her voice taking on a strange pitch, high and strangled. “Told me that I wasn’t allowed to look away, that I had to pay attention, keep my eyes open or he’d hurt her more… told me that it was a… a preview. Like a trailer at the movies, letting me know what I was in for when my time came.”

She’s shaking, and all Elliot wants to do is pull her into his arms, but he isn’t sure how she’d react if he did. He also wants to beg her to stop, to stop reliving this torture, to stop torturing herself in the process but he’d just told her to keep going, to only stop if she wants to stop, and who is he to try and tell her otherwise, to try and tell her how she’s feeling?

He doesn’t have the right to do that; not with her, not with anyone. She needs to, wants to tell him and he owes it to her to listen.

No matter how much pain it causes him.

“It went on for… hours,” she murmurs. “I remember he stopped once, got off her and he told me he’d have to give her a break. She was… she was old, he said. He’d have to go easy on her, didn’t want to risk breaking her too fast. Then…” She makes a noise deep in her throat. “He said he wouldn’t have that problem with me.”

Her shaking has increased; so bad now the entire couch feels like it’s vibrating and he has to take the chance. Pulling on her hands, she falls into his arms and he wraps them around her, her hands pressed against his belly, curled into fists, her knuckles digging into his abdomen. “You’re alright,” he murmurs into her hair as she loses control, breaking down into sobs against his chest. “I’m here, you’re safe, he’s dead.” He rocks them slightly, back and forth, back and forth.

“I was… I was so scared,” she chokes out between sobs. “I was trying to keep my eyes open but he took the gag off, made me take pills and I… I couldn’t.” She buries her head into his chest. “I remember her screaming as everything went dark, and next thing I knew I was lying in the footwell of a car, my wrist chained to the door handle.” She pauses, taking deep breaths as Elliot rubs her back, trying to gather herself. “I didn’t know what he’d done to her,” she tells him. “I couldn’t ask, I didn’t know how long it had been, I just…” She shrugs, awkward in his hold but she manages it somehow. “I didn’t know. I found out later that she survived, that my squad found her and got her to the hospital but… the things he did to her…” She shakes her head. “He killed her husband…” She trails off.

Elliot doesn’t know what to say.

“That was the Wednesday night into Thursday,” she tells him a moment later, her voice a little stronger. “He’d grabbed me on the Tuesday night when I got home from work… at that point my squad still didn’t know I was missing. Not that I knew that for sure, but… I had a pretty good idea that no-one had missed me yet. I’d…” She pauses. “I’d hoped that maybe Brian would’ve gone looking for me at the precinct when I didn’t get back to him, and he did eventually… just not as soon as I’d hoped.”

She seems so resigned that it makes Elliot’s blood boil. Must ask Fin for Cassidy’s contact details, he silently vows. So I can greet him with a punch to the mouth.

“We drove… I swam in and out of consciousness… he stopped repeatedly to force more alcohol, more pills down my throat,” she tells him. “I remember wondering what was taking him so long, why we were driving so much, wondering when we were gonna just stop, then wondering why the hell I was so eager for that to happen, because I knew, I’d witnessed what was going to happen when he did.”

I’m gonna have words with Fin about just why it took so damn long to realise she was missing, Elliot tells himself.

“My squad realised I was missing on Thursday morning,” she tells him. It’s not much of a relief; knowing how much she’d been forced to endure - torture, imprisoned in a car trunk, forced to witness more torture - before they’d even realised she was missing, but they’re on day three now - he thinks, he hopes that she’s counting Tuesday as day one - so while he knows she had to endure another night in this bastard’s company, they’re nearing the end.

Nearing the point where she got the chance, however she managed it, to fight back.

“He started to let me sober up a bit as it got dark,” she recounts, shifting herself so she’s lying sideways on his chest, unwilling to withdraw from his embrace. “Not a whole lot, but some. I guess he was less worried about someone seeing me then, if I started to fight back. He got supplies from a hardware store, and we kept driving… then we got pulled over.”

Elliot frowns at that; unseen by Olivia, her position in his arms preventing her from seeing his face, either by accident or design he doesn’t know.

“Lewis had ran a red light,” she murmurs. “This… young cop, a rookie. By himself… pulled us over. I was in the back, under a tarp. Lewis told me to be quiet, if I made any sound then…” She trails off, but Elliot knows what she means. “I froze,” she continues, staring at the back of her couch. “I just wanted him to live,” she whispers, and Elliot’s heart breaks. Of course you did, he wants to tell her, but he knows that interrupting her now wouldn’t be a good idea. “But he got suspicious, and Lewis shot him in the head with my gun.”

Elliot closes his eyes; holds her closer as he feels her start to sob once more.

“Everything that happened after that is a bit… fuzzy,” she tells him. “He moved me into another car, I wasn’t sure how he’d got it, turns out he’d stolen it from a young mother. Forced her with her baby into the trunk of the rookie’s squad car.” She shakes her head. “At least he didn’t kill them too,” she says quietly. “He drove us away, kept driving until dawn, stopping time and time again, getting out, getting back in. I didn’t know why. It was daylight when he stopped for the last time, disappeared out of the car, then came back and dragged me out and I realised.” She pauses for a second, and Elliot opens his mouth to ask, but she speaks. “He’d been looking for somewhere to go,” she tells him. “Somewhere… he’d said this to me earlier… somewhere special.”

Elliot feels his stomach churn.

“It was a beach house,” she tells him. “I didn’t get a good look at it, but I could smell the ocean, hear the seagulls… that was the place he’d chosen for me to die.”

Don’t throw up, Elliot tells himself firmly. Don’t throw up. 

The thought of it; the thought of her dying, of being murdered by a lunatic, being alone, of no-one looking for her, realising that she was gone for two days makes him want to scream, to shout, to tear the whole world apart because she deserved better. Everyone deserves to have someone who would notice, and he knows, he knows that people slip through the cracks, and it never failed to crush him each and every time they’d catch a case like that back when he worked SVU but this is Olivia. She had a job, friends, a boyfriend yet…

I never, ever should have left you. He’s told himself this too many times in the last two days and every time he says it his resolve strengthens. Never again.

He’d said it to her yesterday, when she was lost in her own head. He doesn’t think she remembers it at all, but he’d said it. I’ll tell her again, he vows. I’ll keep telling her every damn day if that’s what it takes. I’ll never leave her again.

“He took me inside,” she tells him. “Threw me on the bed… I needed to use the bathroom,” she adds in a whisper. “I was so desperate but he made me beg him. Then… then when he took me in there…” She trails off, a whine escaping her throat and Elliot knows, he knows something happened in there.

“What?” He prompts gently.

“He… he… he used his fingers,” she forces the words out, turning her head and hiding her face in his chest. “I’ve never told anyone that before,” she tells him, her voice muffled by his shirt. “Not even my therapist,” she adds as the rage builds, coursing through every bone in Elliot’s body.

He opens his mouth to say something, to offer the platitudes that are ingrained in his very being after so long working that job, unable to think of anything else to say other than I’m so sorry, Olivia, when she speaks again, cutting him off before his mouth even opens.

“I can still feel his arm across my throat where he held me against the wall sometimes,” she whispers. “In the really bad nightmares… I wake up and I can’t breathe.” She pauses, breathing deeply as if to prove that she can, that he wasn’t choking her. “I think… I think he would have gone further, but he had to get rid of the car, so he cuffed me to the headboard of the bed, taped my legs together and left.” She sniffs, lays her cheek against his chest. “He came back… told me what he was going to do to me. I tried to…” She snorts. “I tried to appeal to him,” she says wryly. “Thought I’d at least buy myself some time, buy my squad some time. I figured it was Friday, and I was supposed to be at work so surely they had to have realised by then that something was wrong, so all I had to do was hold on.”

“Did it work?” Elliot finds himself asking.

“Not really,” she shakes her head. “He put my gun in my mouth… after that I was willing to do anything if it meant he’d let me live.”

Jesus. Elliot clenches his jaw.

“He was on top of me, starting to take my clothes off when there was a knock at the door,” she tells him, and Elliot feels a flash of relief. Is this how she escaped? He wonders. “A maid and her five-year-old daughter,” she tells him, and Elliot’s relief turns to ice cold fear. Please don’t tell me he- “I screamed, but he put his hand over my mouth,” she cuts off his very thought. “But he left the room to answer the door. I… it was an iron framed bed,” she tells him. “And it was rusting. I thought… if I could kick it, maybe I could break it. So I had a few minutes, my legs were free and I kicked and kicked and kicked, and when my wrist snapped-” So that’s how you did it, Elliot thinks - “I just ignored it, kept going until I thought it was loosened. He came back in, talking about what he was going to do to them, and I… I couldn’t let him hurt anyone else, not without trying to stop him if I had the chance so… I distracted him,” she tells him. “And I broke free.”

“Is that when you beat him?” Elliot asks.

“No,” she shakes her head. “The iron bar was from the headboard, and I did hit him then, I knocked him out. Got the handcuff key ‘cause my hands were still cuffed together and I fastened him to the bed, then I went to check on the maid and her daughter.” She pauses then. “They were fine,” she says after a minute. “I’m ashamed to say that I threatened them with ICE so they’d leave,” she adds. “I don’t really… I wanted them out of Lewis’s reach,” she says. “I should’ve been more gentle about it,” she berates herself.

“You were traumatised,” Elliot reminds her gently. “I doubt you were thinking straight.”

“Mmm,” she answers, clearly unconvinced. “I thought he was unconscious when I went back into the bedroom,” she continues. “So I was talking to myself, wondering what to do with him. Something was telling me to just call for help, but something else, something else wanted me to wait.” She shakes her head. “I told him what you’d do,” she adds, moving her head, looking up at him for the first time in a while. “Told him you’d break every bone in his body.”

Elliot raises his eyebrows. “More than that,” he replies darkly. “There wouldn’t have been anything left by the time I was done with him.”

There’s no lie in what he says, and a silent understanding passes between them as Olivia nods once. “I always knew that you, more than anyone, wouldn’t judge me for what I did next.” She tells him.

“What was that?” He asks, tilting his head.

“I beat him,” she tells him, meeting his eyes, holding his gaze. “I beat him until I thought he was dead, and he was cuffed. I beat the shit out of him Elliot, and at the time… at the time he was no threat to me.”

Chapter Text

Elliot pulls her a little closer. It’s not much; there was barely any space between the two of them to begin with but he tries. She’s silent in his arms, tension in her muscles and he traces his fingers over her back. “If you’re waiting for me to say you shouldn’t have done it, then you’ll be waiting for a long time.” He tells her.

“But I… I used excessive force.”

“You weren’t a cop in that moment Olivia,” Elliot tells her, shaking his head. “You weren’t acting as a cop from the moment he grabbed you in your apartment. You were his victim, and anything you did to protect yourself, out of fear, because of trauma… did they try to pin excessive force on you?” He asks, trying and failing to quell the anger rising in his voice. “Is that what they did?”

“At the trial,” she murmurs. “It was his main defence. The injuries I’d left him with didn’t exactly help the jury to see my side.”

“What did you do?”

She blows out a breath. “He uh… he hadn’t fed me for days,” she tells him. “Barely any water. I was running on Vodka, Vicodin and Valium and I somehow managed to crush his skull, leaving him deaf in one ear and partially blind… smashed his knee to pieces and did a lot of damage to his ribs.”

Elliot blinks. “Wow,” he mouths, impressed, though he knows she won't want to hear him say it. “He deserved all of it, and more.” He tells her instead.

“He was cuffed,” Liv shakes her head. “I… I told everyone he’d managed to break free… when I came to my senses after I’d done it, when I realised what I’d done I broke the bed frame to make it look like that’s what had happened…” She looks up at him, a grimace on her lips. “I never told anyone that either,” she admits. “Not that it would’ve been a good idea, given that I literally staged it.” She sighs angrily. “I shouldn’t have let him get to me,” she mutters angrily.

Elliot frowns. “What do you mean?” He asks. “Let him get to you?”

“We talked,” she tells him, settling herself back against his chest. “Before I… you know. After I’d had my little monologue moment, wondering what to do with him… turns out he was awake the whole time. Heard every word,” she says with a resigned snort. “Should’ve known, really. He… taunted me,” she tells him. “Trying to get me to shoot him. I had my gun in my hand… had it pressed to his head at one point but I couldn’t pull the trigger. Don’t know why… it felt… too easy, I guess. Then he’s telling me about this experience he had as a kid and I’m wondering what the fuck… is he trying to get me to feel sorry for him?” She looks up at Elliot again, but he’s as in the dark as she clearly was. “And he’s taunting me about you,” she adds. “I told him to shut up, but he just… he just keeps going and then… then he says that I don’t have the balls to do anything.” A pause. “That was when I snapped. I don’t know what came over me… I just… I wanted him to die, Elliot. So I hit him and I hit him and I hit him until I thought he was.”

“He provoked you,” he tells her, trying to appeal to some part of her that might be able to rationalise what she did, since it’s clearly, nine years later, still bothering her. Him? He wouldn’t give a damn, would’ve beaten the bastard to a pulp then walked away after what he’d done to Olivia but that’s him. Olivia… she can’t do it. Never could. If Lewis really had broken free then she wouldn’t be second-guessing herself, but he hadn’t. It’s the lie that gets her; she’s never liked lies. “He wanted you to snap Liv, and he wouldn’t have stopped until you did.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Well, you know I’m not gonna agree with you on that one.” Elliot tells her.

She sighs. “I never thought you would,” she whispers. “I don’t want you to judge me,” she adds. “I’ve judged myself enough over the years. I just hate that he managed to wheedle his way in.” A beat. “The trial would’ve been so different had I not done what I did.”

“What happened at the trial?” Elliot asks. He wants to push Liv a little more, try and help her see what she did to Lewis in a different way but she wants to move past it, and there’s no point trying to hold her back.

“Like I said, he used what I’d done as his main defence,” she tells him. “That, and this little fantasy of his that I’d wanted it all, that I was the driving force, that I’d wanted to feel what it was like.” She sighs. “It was ridiculous, but he had the jury, the forewoman especially, eating out of the palm of his hand. Barba threw everything he had at it, but Lewis… I mean, he decided to represent himself, which was…” She groans. “Brilliant,” she says sarcastically. “It had Mrs. Mayer, the lady from the house… it had her refusing to testify. I felt like doing the same, but it wasn’t really an option for me.”

You’re a cop, if you’d refused to testify your career would’ve been in jeopardy, Elliot realises. “That’s ridiculous,” he murmurs. “You were sexually assaulted, it should’ve been your choice.”

She sighs. “Tell that to the brass who kept passing messages of support to me via Cragen, telling me how they were going to be there in court to watch me testify, stand up for myself…” She shakes her head. “I got pushed into a corner and then I had to recount the whole thing in front of what felt like half the NYPD, cause you know, there was no closed court.”

Elliot closes his eyes.

“Then he’s questioning me, making me doubt the results of the rape kit,” she adds, making Elliot’s eyes fly open. “I mean… it was over 72 hours, pushing towards the 96 after he first grabbed me before they did one on me right?” She keeps talking, the words pouring out in a tsunami now. “You know the longer it takes, the less likely they’ll get viable samples… and they said it was clear before honestly, I didn’t know… and then he’s there in court and before all of this, before the trial he offered Elliot, he offered to take a plea, to plead guilty to multiple counts of rape one and he wanted to allocute, and I refused because he didn’t, all he used was his fingers El, and then he’s doing that and he’s up in my face and the stuff he’s saying… there are time gaps, Elliot. Gaps in my memory when he was drugging me unconscious and I don’t know how big those gaps are, and I don’t know what he was doing to me while I wasn’t aware and I…”

Her breathing is getting faster, heaving breaths and Elliot knows she’s spiralling, winding herself up into a panic attack and he’s got to stop this now. “Liv,” he says. “Liv.” He rubs her back; her breathing so laboured now that she can’t even speak. “Shh, shh,” he tells her. “Breathe baby,” he murmurs, turning her so she’s facing him, grabbing her hand, pressing it into his chest. “Breathe with me, calm down,” he keeps his tone low, rhythmic and soft, soothing. “Breathe,” he tells her. “Breathe,” he repeats. “That’s it,” he praises as her breathing slows, steadying. “That’s it, just breathe.”

There are tears in her eyes, close to spilling over to join the drying tracks on her face but she’s calming down, and Elliot holds her close. “Shh,” he murmurs, rocking her gently. “You’re alright.”

“My therapist thinks that he was just trying to wind me up, lying to get a rise out of me,” she whispers, seemingly determined to finish telling him this. “But… I’ve never been able to shake the thought of what if he wasn’t.” She sniffs, tears spilling over. “I don’t know, I’m never gonna know but…” She trails off with a shrug. 

“I’m so sorry Olivia,” Elliot tells her, rubbing her back. 

“I mean… Lindstrom is probably right,” she tells him. “Lewis probably wouldn’t have done anything while I was knocked out. He liked the fight so…” She shrugs. “I’m never gonna know, but… I just can’t shake it.” She pulls a face. “Maybe I just need to learn to live with it.”

Elliot thinks for a long moment how to answer that. “I think… maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” he says carefully. “Like you said… you’re never gonna know. He’s dead, and he’s the only one who did. So… maybe take your therapists advice. Don’t… don’t let Lewis win?” He suggests gently, holding his breath in the hope that he hasn’t said the wrong thing, knowing that he’s teetering on a knife edge.

She looks at him, before a smile catches the corners of her lips. “How do you always know just what to say?” She asks. “You’re right,” she continues. “I’m never gonna know. I’m gonna talk to Lindstrom about that when I go and talk to him about… about yesterday,” she says with a sigh. “I think I’m single-handedly funding his retirement at this point,” she quips. “The amount of shit he’s counselled me through.”

“I’m sure that’s not quite true,” Elliot replies.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Liv shakes her head. “I was seeing him three times a week at one point.”

“Ouch,” Elliot lets out a low whistle. “Maybe you’re right after all.”

She snorts, shakes her head at him. “You know what the worst part is?” She asks, sobering.

“What?”

“I put myself through the trial, determined not to let him have any say in the narrative… and the jury didn’t even believe me,” she tells him. “Barba tried for attempted murder, and attempted rape. They didn’t believe either. Cemented it in my mind that I was right to not say anything about the bathroom,” she says. “They didn’t believe an attempt so why would they… believe more?” She shakes her head. “They did agree that he kidnapped me, which was… something, I guess, and that he assaulted me. So… two out of four, which is more than he usually got convicted on.” She rolls her eyes. “Everyone was so happy after, congratulating me and saying how fantastic it was… I think I must have shook hands with half of the brass before I managed to escape. Ended up crying in the stairwell… they… the jury basically branded me a liar, said that I lied, that he wasn’t trying to rape and murder me, and the brass are all there saying it’s great like…” She looks at him, wide-eyed. “I…” She shakes her head. 

“That’s the brass for you,” Elliot says, unsure what else to say. “They only see the result, they don’t see what it did to you to get it.”

“I did lie though,” she argues. “Just… not about that.” A beat. “Maybe I deserved what came after.”

Elliot’s heart freezes in his chest. “What do you mean?” He asks. “What came after?”

“He was in prison for a few months,” she tells him. “Then he escaped.”

Of course he did, the voice in Elliot’s head helpfully tells him. Because why the hell wouldn’t he just leave her alone. “What happened?” He asks, needing to know yet terrified to know.

“The forewoman from his trial,” she says. “He charmed her, had her visiting him… eventually he used her to facilitate his escape. He got out… killed four people, raped and tortured a teenage girl after murdering her mother, then kidnapped her twelve-year-old sister to force my hand.”

“Force your hand how?” Elliot asks. There are far too many things that that could cover.

“First he wanted me to admit to excessive force,” she tells him. “On the six-o’clock news. So I uh… I did that,” she says like it was nothing, like she hadn’t been backed into a corner, forced to jeopardise her career at the whim of a madman. Well, he was holding a twelve-year-old girl, Elliot says to himself. There’s no force on this earth that would’ve stopped Olivia from trying to save her. “Then… then he wanted me to go meet him.”

Somehow, Elliot knew that was coming. “What happened when you met up with him?” He asks.

“You just knew, huh?” She says wryly.

“I know you,” is his answer.

She snorts. “That you do,” she replies. “He uh… he made me go with him,” she says. “Took me to Amelia. Um… he made me choose,” she continues. “Rape me or rape her.”

“Did he rape you then?” Elliot asks, knowing without her even saying the words that she’d chosen herself, because she’d never, not ever, choose for anyone else to be hurt if she was in any way able to prevent it.

“No,” she shakes her head. “I refused to fight him, and he uh… he couldn’t keep it up.”

Elliot snorts despite himself. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m glad,” he adds.

“You and me both,” she says darkly. “But then he got a new plan,” she continues. “Russian roulette…” She shakes her head as Elliot goes to speak, his eyes wide and panicked. “Yeah, I pulled the trigger on myself,” she tells him. “Twice… I don’t wanna talk about it.” She gives him a firm look. “I did it, and I did it to save Amelia, and that’s all there is to say.”

Elliot nods, biting his lip. “Okay,” he acquiesces, not happy about it but respectful of her wishes. “Okay… I’m gonna guess that he shot himself then?” He asks.

“Yeah,” she nods. “That’s how he died. Last bullet… it was meant for me, but he uh…” She chuckles. “He tried and failed to frame me for his murder. One last fuck you, I guess. One last attempt to ruin my life when all of his previous attempts failed miserably. I think he was pissed that I’d been promoted to Sergeant since his trial.”

“He seems like the type,” Elliot agrees.

“Yeah,” she nods. “He got sent down for life and I got a promotion, and we both knew that I lied? Oh, I’m sure that really pissed him off. It didn’t work… grand jury wouldn’t indict, I got to keep my job, and…” She shrugs. “That was it.” She blows out a breath. “I’m exhausted,” she mutters.

“Come here.” Determined to let her rest, to offer her comfort in any way he can after that marathon she’d just endured, telling him, Elliot shifts them, sliding himself down on the couch so he’s lying on his back, bending his knees up, moving Olivia from her position in his lap until she’s curled in a foetal position on his chest, her knees pressed into the back of the couch, her head tucked under his chin. There’s a throw blanket draped on the back of the couch and he tugs it down, pulling it over them both.

It’s awkward, and the blanket doesn’t end up quite covering them both but she sighs contentedly nevertheless, and he presses his lips to the top of her head, the only part of her his mouth can reach. “Sleep Olivia,” he murmurs as she relaxes. “Just sleep.”

Chapter Text

It takes her a while to drift off as they lie there; Elliot stroking her back through the blanket as she dozes and slowly, oh so slowly she grows heavier, her muscles relaxing as she slides into sleep.

His mind racing, he keeps up the rhythmic stroking of his fingers along her spine. She needs to rest, he tells himself even as his brain demands answers that only she can provide.

How far did he get, that second time? He wonders. She said that she refused to fight him but what the hell did she mean by that?

The Russian roulette… he closes his eyes, shuddering at the thought. The woman lying in his arms right now had held a gun to her own head, had pulled the trigger on herself. Twice.

Switching his grip, he ceases his stroking of her spine, holding her close to him instead, pressing his cheek to the top of her head as tears fill his eyes. I came so close to losing you, losing you forever and I… he swallows thickly, squeezing his eyes shut as the tears spill over, eyelashes sticking together as he opens them to stare at the ceiling. I can’t believe I left you, he thinks. Worst mistake I ever made, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the years. I should’ve been here. Should’ve protected you. If I’d been here… then I would have driven you home that night, probably walked you up to your apartment. Or at least sat outside, waited for you to blink your lights like I always told you to do and you always did. Begrudgingly, I’ll admit, but you still did it.

Things could have been so damn different, he thinks. I could’ve stopped it, stopped him before he laid a finger on you, and… even if I hadn’t, even if he’d somehow got hold of you anyway then I know for damn sure that it wouldn’t have taken two days for someone to realise you were missing. Two hours maybe, but never, not in a million years would it have taken two days.

She shifts slightly in his arms, and he’s torn from his thoughts, his attention solely on her as she stirs. “Shh,” he murmurs as she makes a noise in her throat, turning her head slightly. “Shh.”

His fingers trace lightly over her arm, and she buries her nose into the crook of his neck, inhaling deeply before a deep sigh escapes her and she settles. 

Despite everything, he finds himself stifling a grin at her actions. Must make sure I never change aftershave, he makes a mental note. Since she clearly likes it so much. 

She keeps her nose buried in his neck, relaxing more as she sinks into a deeper sleep and Elliot relaxes himself, tracing his fingers over her shoulder and upper arm on autopilot, hoping to keep her asleep. She needs it.

How the hell did I not know about this? He thinks suddenly. Me Kathy and Eli were in Italy sure, but it’s not like we don’t hear about big events in the US over in Europe. Something like that would have been huge, headline news especially when she was missing for so long but even so… four of my kids were living here. In the city. I need to find out exactly when, and find out how the hell my kids never knew, or if they did, why the hell they never thought to tell me.

They must’ve known, he thinks. Three times this would’ve been top of the news broadcasts. When she was grabbed, the trial which would’ve been a goddamn circus, and then the escape… I don’t know dates, I don’t know how much time passed but… surely at least one of my kids have to have been here for at least one time. Surely. 

He frowns, his brow furrowing as he thinks hard. 2013… going into 2014 too since sometimes trials can take time, especially considering the damage Liv did. He’d have been in hospital for a good while, so… any time in either year. What were the kids doing… what was I doing?

2013 he knows he never set foot on American soil, but 2014 he’d finally plucked up the courage to try and reconnect with his Mom. He’d come over for Thanksgiving, and then she’d come out to Italy with the kids for Christmas. He’s pretty sure he’d have noticed if there was something rolling around on the news in late November, so that rules out one short period of time.

Only twenty-three and a half months left to rule out then, he thinks.

The kids came out to Italy in Summer 2013, he remembers. July, unless he’s mistaken. Pulling a face, he thinks hard. Kathy had been strange, he recalls. At first. On edge, almost. Kept looking at the kids, some weird glances. I thought it was just nervousness, it was the first time that all of the kids had been out there with us together, we’d finally settled on Italy as the place to stay, or rather Kathy had… but what if it wasn’t?

He needs to know. Reaching over slowly, his fingers brush his phone where it lies on Liv’s coffee table, and he snags it, bringing it up and unlocking the screen.

He’s never been the fastest texter, and one-handed he’s even slower but he eventually taps out the message. Did you know what happened to Olivia back in 2013? Short, maybe a little abrupt but he hasn’t got time for pleasantries. He sends it to Kathleen, figuring that out of the four child options he has (Eli being far too young), she’s the one that he’s the most likely to get an honest answer from. If Kathy had hidden this from him, had made the kids hide this from him as he’s strongly starting to suspect, then Katie is his best chance of getting to the truth.

Maureen, as much as he loves her, is too much like Kathy, and would likely feel as though she was betraying her mother’s wishes if she were to tell him. Dickie, if he’d known at the time would’ve likely gone to one of his sisters to ask how to tell their father, thus putting the onus on someone else, and Lizzie? She’s his quiet child. He’s pretty sure she’d tell him, but he doesn’t want to put it on her. 

So Katie it is.

Staring at his phone, watching the numbers at the top of the screen count through six minutes, he sighs when the response doesn’t come. Either she’s at work, or she’s trying to figure out how to tell me, he thinks, tapping out another message. I’m not angry, he puts. I just want to know what happened. I didn’t know and I can’t figure out how I never heard.

This time, he only has to wait two minutes before his daughter’s response pops up on screen. We all heard, it says. I told Mom. She said she’d tell you and not to mention it to your face because she didn’t think you’d take it well and she didn’t want you to get upset more than once. When we came to Italy to visit in July she pulled us all aside, told us you’d gotten so upset you’d almost had a breakdown and on no uncertain terms were we to mention Olivia. I thought she’d told you Dad… we all did.

Elliot blows out a breath, sighing heavily and shaking his head at the phone. Were you really that scared Kathy? He asks her silently. Really so scared that I’d just run out the door as soon as I heard, jump on a plane and never come back?

To be fair… he would’ve done exactly that. Ran out the door, hopped on the first flight to New York (or as close as he could get as fast as he could get it) and gone straight to Olivia. As for not coming back… well. He shakes his head at himself. I never wanted to leave in the first place, did I? I guess she was right to worry but… anger curls in his stomach. You should’ve told me Kathy, he says to her, to the ghost of her that lives in his head. You had no right to keep that from me. After everything Olivia did… she saved your life Kathy. Yours and Eli’s both and what? You denied her the chance of our support when she needed it the most? I thought I knew you, but… sometimes I wonder. I never thought you’d do that, not after what she’d been through.

Blinking, he remembers that Katie is waiting for an answer, likely worried at the time it’s taking for him to send one. Not your fault, he taps out as quickly as he can manage one-handed. Your mother would’ve had her reasons. That’s not on you, your brother or your sisters.

Not waiting for a response, he tosses the phone back onto the coffee table, rubbing his hand down his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. How the hell am I supposed to fix this? He asks himself. How the hell am I supposed to tell Liv that the chance was there for me to know, for me to be here like she wanted me to be… but it was Kathy who put a stop to it?

Shaking his head, he wraps his arm around Olivia’s back, keeping her secure in her curled up position on top of him. He briefly considers moving her to her bed, but he doesn’t want to leave her, and climbing into her bed with her feels too much like overstepping. No, he decides. My back will just have to deal with it.

Along with everything else, he thinks quietly as he stares at the ceiling. Because we’ve got a tough conversation ahead of us.

Chapter Text

Her elbow, her incredibly sharp, pointy elbow digging into his ribs is what wakes him. “Ow!” He exclaims with a yelp, his eyes opening to see her guilty face less than a foot from his own as she tries (and fails) to get off of him gently. “Jesus, Olivia.”

“Sorry,” she winces, an apologetic grin on her face as she manoeuvres herself, rolling off him and to her feet. She sways alarmingly, her hand flying out to grab something, anything to balance herself and Elliot flings his own arm out, catching her hand in his. “Thanks,” she says, gripping his fingers firmly. “Stood up too fast.”

“You okay?” Elliot asks, frowning. “The doctors did check your head at the hospital right?” He asks, already pushing himself up, ignoring his aching spine as he mentally maps the fastest route from Liv’s apartment to Mercy General.

“Yes Elliot,” she turns her head, rolling her eyes at him. “They did. I never got knocked out, I don’t have a concussion, I just got up too fast!” She shakes her head at him, letting go of his hand and walking away into her kitchen, perfectly normally, and starts getting cups out of a cupboard. “Coffee?” She asks.

“Uh, sure,” he replies, getting to his feet. His head swims and he ends up having to do what Liv did only moments earlier, reaching for and grabbing onto the couch. “Whoa,” he mutters.

“You okay?” Liv is by his side in moments, her hand on his shoulder, gripping lightly. “El?”

“Yeah,” he says, his vision clearing. “Concussions are a bitch,” he mutters, giving her a wry glance.

“Mmm,” she agrees. “I had one of those, after,” she tells him, her hand staying on his shoulder as he walks around the couch towards the barstools. He wants to tell her he doesn’t need the help, but he likes the feeling of her hand on his shoulder, so he lets her walk him. “That, and the wrist, and broken ribs… and the rest.”

The burns, his mind fills in the blank. “Are the scars just on your side?” He asks. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to,” he adds, wincing at his own tactlessness as he slides onto the barstool, Liv giving him an appraising look before walking around to the other side, back to the coffee maker.

“Which side did you say you saw?” She asks.

“Your left,” he tells her, the image burned into his brain forever. 

She nods. “That’s the worst side,” she tells him. “But I have them all over my abdomen, my breasts, my thighs… not that I remember him ever taking my pants off.” She pulls a face. “Like I told you, there are gaps.” She shakes her head as if to clear it. “Some of them were through my clothes,” she continues, staring at the coffee machine. “Those ones, most of them healed. They scarred, but it’s harder to see. I still use scar cream to this day. Not sure if it actually helps, but…” She turns to him with a shrug.

“Can’t hurt.” Elliot shrugs.

“Exactly what I tell my doctor every time she asks me,” Liv grins. “I don’t know,” she sobers. “Part of me thinks it’s making a difference, part of me wonders if that’s just wishful thinking.”

Elliot doesn’t know what to say. “It doesn’t matter you know,” he tries, hoping it isn’t the wrong choice. “Your scars. Anyone worth the bother wouldn’t care.” I know I don’t.

“I know,” she tells him. “Lindstrom has had the conversation with me about that. They show that I survived, all that,” she shrugs. “I can look in the mirror and not feel repulsed,” she tells him. “Which is good… but…” She sighs, a sad, dejected look in her eyes. “I just, sometimes I just want my old body back, you know?”

“Don’t we all.” Elliot quips, grinning wide, determined not to let her get upset.

Her jaw dropping, she scoffs. “Like you can talk,” she retorts, eyeing him. “Those muscles.”

“Have you been looking, Captain Benson?” He teases, flexing his arms for good measure. She swallows visibly, and he suppresses a grin. “Ogling me?” He gasps in mock offence.

She chokes on her laughter. “You’re ridiculous,” she tells him. “Yeah, I’ve looked,” she tells him, nodding. A spark of pleasure forms in his gut, soon quelled by the mischievous look in her eye. “I’ve been trying to figure out when you have time to sleep, since you clearly spent every hour when you’re not at work in the gym.”

The coffee is ready then, preventing his response to that as she turns away, pouring two cups. Sliding one across the counter to him, she leaves the other in front of herself, resting one hand either side of it, palms flat. “So?” She asks, tilting her head expectantly.

“So… what?” He asks, confused.

Olivia rolls her eyes at him. “You have questions,” she says.

He does, but he doesn’t want to push her. “Do I?” He responds instead.

The wrong thing to do, he soon discovers as she huffs, rolling her eyes and turning her head to look through the window instead. “I know you Elliot,” she reminds him, giving him a look. “You’ve got questions, so just ask them.”

He sucks air through his teeth before taking a sip of the (too hot) coffee to buy himself a few seconds. He’d thought, in the time he’d spent staring at the ceiling before he’d fallen asleep himself, that he’d have to wait, at least a little while before he’d get answers to the questions that niggle at him. “I didn’t want to push you,” he admits quietly. “I know it was hard for you before, everything you told me… I didn’t want to assume.”

She smiles at him. “Thank you,” she tells him. “But I’m okay. The sleep helped,” her smile grows, a soft, shy look crossing her face. “You make a really comfy pillow,” she adds.

He chuckles. “Glad I’m good for something,” he grins. “I texted Katie while you were asleep,” he tells her, deciding to start there. “I realised that it made no sense that I’d never heard what happened to you, and I started thinking and I…” He pulls a face. “I wanted to see if I was right.”

There’s an odd look on Olivia’s face as he says it, and it makes him frown. “Were you?” She asks, almost tentative.

“Yeah,” he nods. “Turns out the kids knew,” he tells her. “Kathleen called Kathy, told her and she… she told them she’d tell me but never to mention it to me again.”

“But she never told you.” Liv states. She doesn’t need to guess; they both know this as fact.

“No,” Elliot confirms anyway. “No she didn’t.” A beat. “It was May, right?” He asks her.

She nods. “Yeah. Late May.”

He nods. “I know how I never heard myself,” he can tell her now. “I did private security for a little while in 2013,” he tells her. “All through May and half of June I was trailing after this rich kid, watching his every move on behalf of his parents who… well, let’s just say that they were right to be concerned. Kid had no common sense. If I wasn’t trailing him, I was asleep. Barely had time to call Kathy let alone watch the news.”

“Ah,” she nods. “Makes sense. Just uh… bad timing, huh?”

“Liv…”

“What?” She looks at him. “Seriously El… it is what it is. I can’t change it. Would I have liked you there?” Her expression is sad. “You know I would. But you weren’t.”

“I should’ve been,” he blurts. “If Kathy hadn’t-”

“What, tried to keep her marriage intact?” Liv cuts him off. “Look, she clearly… felt insecure,” she says tactfully. “And if keeping you away from me helped her feel more settled then…” She shrugs. “I can understand that.”

“Can you?” Elliot asks, incredulous. “Because I can’t.” He shakes his head rapidly. “She… she knew how much you mean to me Olivia,” he tells her. “You’re my best friend, more than that but… she didn’t have the right to keep this from me. She-”

“She sent me flowers,” Liv blurts, stopping him mid-rant, his mouth part open in shock. “Well… I think they were from her.”

“What do you mean?” Elliot asks, snapping his jaw shut. “She couldn’t tell me what was happening but she sent you flowers?” As if that’s supposed to make Liv feel better? Kidnapped and tortured but oh, here’s some flowers…

“I got a lot of flowers sent to me, after,” Liv tells him. “So many I was giving them away, I had nowhere to put them. Um… the kids sent me some. Signed from the four of them. I… I figured they’d seen it on the news. I wanted to reach out to them, thought about it but…” She winces. “I didn’t really know what to say. It had been two years and… honestly? The thought of you coming up in conversation… I didn’t think I could deal with that. Couldn’t face it.”

Elliot blinks. I didn’t know that, he thinks, making a mental note to thank the kids for reaching out back then. “That was good of them,” he murmurs. “So… why do you think Kathy sent some?” He asks, frowning.

“I got some, a really big, very expensive bunch with a blank card,” she tells him. “It didn’t make any sense. I looked at every card on every bunch that got delivered to me, kept them all for a while… I could’ve made a list of everyone I knew and crossed off each person. But not you. I thought for a while that maybe you’d sent them. A little part of me… hoped that maybe you had but I’ll be honest, that thought made me angry too. I would curse you,” she chuckles, shaking her head. “Why can’t you come and see me if you can send me flowers, so eventually I decided that they couldn’t have been from you. I just… figured they were from someone who didn’t know what to say, and maybe… maybe that was Kathy.” She shrugs. “I might be wrong.”

Huh, Elliot thinks. “I guess we’ll never know,” he murmurs.

“Guess not,” Liv says, taking a sip of her coffee. “They were really nice flowers though,” she offers. “I didn’t give those ones away.”

Elliot chuckles. “I’m amazed you gave any away,” he replies. “You love flowers.”

“I do,” she agrees. “But Brian started to complain that he lived in a florist, so I had to make some difficult choices.” A beat. “Shame really,” she adds. “I liked looking at them. Colourful, bright, you know?”

You should’ve been allowed to keep as many flowers as you wanted, Elliot thinks to himself. Dammit Brian, she needed brightness in her life.

“You and Mama need to talk,” he tells her. “She’s exactly the same.”

Liv grins at that. “I’m sure if Bernie had her way, your place would be filled with every kind of flower and plant.”

“Don’t tempt fate,” he says, eyes widening at the thought. “She’d flood the place trying to water them all.”

Liv bursts into laughter then, and he finds himself joining her. “Oh, that is a mental image,” she chuckles. 

He snorts. “At least we all know how to swim.” He quips, which only sets her off again.

Chapter Text

They move back to the couch after a little while, finishing their coffees in companionable silence.

It makes him wistful, watching her; they never needed words, the two of them. It never got awkward, those long nights on stakeouts in utter silence. Sure, they could talk and argue and debate until their hearts content (and they were content) but equally they could sit in silence, the only sound that of each other’s breath, and be just as happy.

He’d never realised just how much he missed it, those little things that he’d taken for granted, until he left her. I took her for granted, he realises, watching her, legs curled up under her as she nurses the coffee cup between her hands. I always just… assumed that she’d be there. My best friend. More than that, not that either of us could admit to it. I always thought she’d be in my life somehow. Never considered that one day she wouldn’t be.

It’s his own fault, he knows that. If he’d really wanted to, he could’ve told Kathy that he didn’t want to leave New York.

He could’ve.

Couldn’t he?

She’d given him that ultimatum after all. The house was going up for sale and she was going, and Eli… little innocent four-year-old Eli who would’ve been taken away with her. She would have taken his son away from him, and not just to another part of the city, or the state… to another continent.

He couldn’t have just let Kathy leave with Eli like that. He couldn’t lose contact with his youngest son, he would never have forgiven himself.

Olivia wouldn’t have either, when he thinks about it. She probably would’ve frogmarched me to the plane at gunpoint if I’d tried to stay for her, he muses, a smile crossing his lips at the mental image.

“What are you smiling at?” Her voice reaches his ears, soft, teasing and he finds his smile growing wider.

“Just thinking,” he tells her, placing his now empty cup on the coffee table and relaxing into the couch.

She shifts, depositing her own cup and Elliot realises that they’re in the exact same positions as they were earlier, before Liv told him everything, before they slept. “About what?” She asks, tilting her head in question.

“You,” he admits, and she furrows her brows. “You,” he explains. “And what you would’ve done had I tried to stay in New York eleven years ago,” he tells her. “If I’d decided to stay here… for you… and let Kathy take Eli to Europe on her own.”

“Oh?” Her head tilts a little more, her interest piqued. “And what would I have done?”

“Frogmarched me to the plane, possibly at gunpoint and strapped me into a seat to make sure I went with them,” he tells her.

She snorts. “Damn right I would’ve,” she nods. “Not that I would have needed to,” she adds. “You’d never be an absent father Elliot, not by choice.”

She says it firmly, with conviction, her unwavering belief and she’s right; of course she is. 

Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to hear it though. “I should’ve tried talking to Kathy more,” he murmurs. “Persuaded her to make it a vacation instead of a permanent thing. Then I would have been here.” When you needed me.

“El…”

“What?” He cuts her off. “It’s the truth,” he blurts. “If I hadn’t have left, if I had just been here then maybe, maybe…”

“Maybe what?” She throws her hands up. “I wouldn’t have gotten hurt?” She suggests, knowing without him even saying it what he’s talking about. “I wouldn’t have been missing for so long? What?”

“I don’t know!” He retorts, almost shouting now, the anger, at himself, at Lewis, at Kathy, burning within him. “Both?” He gets up from the couch, starts to pace. “I just… I’m so angry Olivia,” he admits. “They should’ve noticed. Your squad, your goddamn boyfriend should have realised there was something up. Cragen sent you home for two days and you didn’t even try to go into work?” He tilts his head. “No-one noticed that?”

“He did threaten to arrest me if I showed up at the precinct,” she mutters, but it’s a weak argument and they both know it.

“Since when would that have stopped you?” He puts his hands on his hips, looking at her askance.

She purses her lips, before shrugging. “Fair enough,” she acquiesces. “But we can’t change it now, El.” She sighs. “We can’t keep going over the past and wondering what if,” she tells him. “It happened. We can’t change it.”

“It shouldn’t have.” Elliot mutters, shifting from foot to foot, his body thrumming with energy all of a sudden. 

“No,” she whispers. “No, it shouldn’t have.”

“You beat him,” he says, blurts it really, the thought that had churned over and over in his head since the minute she told him finally spilling from his lips. “You beat the hell out of him Olivia.” It hurts him to think of her in that position, of what she’d done, what lies on her conscience even now.

She takes it the wrong way; her guard snapping up as her eyes narrow, shuttering. “I thought you… I thought you’d understand,” she says, shifting herself, pushing to her feet. The coffee table stands between them, a divider. “I hate myself for what I did, Elliot!” She snaps. “But I did it!”

“And you should never have had to!” Elliot finds himself yelling, almost screaming across her coffee table.

If his outburst shocks her she doesn’t show it; her only reaction to his shout being a blink. “What?” She asks, mouth half open, confusion in her eyes.

“It should have been me,” he tries to explain. “You shouldn’t have that on you, on your conscience.”

“Is that what this is about?” She exclaims. “You’re what, jealous because I beat the bastard half to death and you didn’t get the chance to?” She’s shaking her head, incredulous.

“No!” He snaps. “It should have been me because I’m supposed to protect you Olivia!” He puts his hand over his mouth. “I’m supposed to stop anything from happening to you and I left you and I failed!”

His eyes are wet; he only realises as he blinks, as she pauses, mouth frozen half open before the tears spill over and he blinks again to find her in front of him, her arms wrapping around his waist. “El,” she murmurs as he hugs her back. “You didn’t fail me,” she tells him. “You didn’t know.”

He sniffs, his shirt growing damp with her tears, the two of them locked in an embrace in her living room, crying together. “I should’ve,” he whispers. “I should’ve known something was wrong, should’ve come back, should’ve been here for you.” So many should haves.

She doesn’t answer him - what do you say to something like that? He sure as hell doesn’t know - instead running her hands up his spine, clutching at him a little tighter. “You were,” she whispers a few moments later. “In my head, at least. I heard your voice,” she tells him. “Maybe it was the alcohol, the drugs… I don’t know but I’m sure that I heard you.”

“What did I say?” He asks, curious.

“Don’t stop,” she breathes, her cheek resting against his chest now. She’s so much shorter than him in bare feet, he realises. “Don’t let him get up,” she continues, barely audible. “Don’t let him hurt you any more.”

He nods, his closed mouth resting against the crown of her head. “That’s exactly what I would’ve said,” he tells her.

He feels her smile. “I know.” She murmurs. “Stop blaming yourself,” she continues, her voice a little louder and a whole lot stronger. “What happened happened. You couldn’t have done anything. You didn’t know, and it wasn’t your fault that it was kept from you, okay?”

She’s trying to comfort him, to reassure him, and it’s so Olivia that he finds himself chuckling. “Only you would be trying to comfort me right now,” he tells her when she looks up at him.

She snorts, shrugging the shoulder that isn’t wedged against his chest. “It’s a talent,” she jokes, the tension in the room gone in an instant.

He rolls his eyes, leading her back to the couch by the hand. He sits, and she goes to break the hold and move to the opposite end but he doesn’t want her to go; some part of him wanting her close. Tugging on her hand, he silently asks her will you sit here and she nods, flopping down next to him, their thighs pressed together, hands still touching, fingers interlocked. “This good?” She asks.

“Perfect.” He wraps his free arm around her shoulder and she nestles into his side, adding her other hand to their linked ones, playing with his fingers absently as she settles.

“Please stop blaming yourself,” she murmurs. “It wasn’t your fault, none of it.”

“It’s a little hard,” he admits quietly. “I just… I hate that this happened to you Olivia.”

“You and me both,” she agrees. “But it did. So… for me?” She asks. “Live in the now, instead of in the what if. For me?”

It’s those two words that clinch it; he knows - she probably knows it too - that he’d do anything for her, and this is no different as he nods. “Okay,” he tells her. “I’ll try.”

He’ll do more than just try, but he’s not stupid; he knows it’s not going to be an easy or a fast road, letting the anger at himself for his failings go. Something for my therapist to unravel, I guess. 

“Thank you,” she murmurs, relaxing her muscles. “Do you need to ask anything else?” She adds moments later.

“No,” he shakes his head. He does, he’s got a whole damn list, but she’s exhausted. “You’re tired,” he says. “You’ve been through hell, both yesterday and reliving it today. I’m not gonna push.”

She nods slowly. “You’re right,” she agrees. “But I don’t really want to keep going through this, don’t really want to drag it out across another day so… can we just keep going? I’m fine, promise.”

It would’ve been more convincing had she not yawned in the middle of saying promise. She looks up at him after her jaw clicks shut. “Oops,” she winces. “Guess I’m more tired than I thought.”

“No kidding,” he raises his eyebrows. Running through the questions in his head, he picks the one that bothers him the most. “One more question,” he compromises, knowing that she won’t let him get away with saying that he’s got nothing to ask. She knows him far too well. “Then you’re gonna get some sleep, since the coffee clearly didn’t work.”

She frowns at that, before closing her eyes with a chuckle. “I think I might’ve used decaf by mistake,” she tells him. “The labels are similar… it’s not the first time I’ve done it.”

Elliot shakes his head, feeling tiredness creeping back over him even as she says it. “Okay, one more question then we’re both gonna sleep some more,” he tells her. Me on this back-breaking couch and you in your bed.

“Okay, deal,” she nods. “What’s your question?”

Elliot takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “How far did he get?” He asks. “The second time.”

He feels her tense, her previously relaxed body now a coiled spring. “His fingers,” she tells him. No hesitation. “Only for a second,” she explains. “Not like… not like the beach house,” she continues. “I don’t know why no-one on my squad questioned that my pants and belt were undone, after.” She muses. “No-one ever asked.”

Elliot adds that to the quickly growing list of questions he has for Odafin Tutuola. Did no-one look out for her after I left?

Gritting his teeth, he realises that she’s waiting for him to say something. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “They should’ve realised,” he shakes his head.

“I was kinda glad when they didn’t,” she admits. “Didn’t want the awkward questions, the weird looks to be directed at me. You know I don’t like it.”

He does know that, he knows that all too well. It’s likely why she never told him until now, fourteen years down the line about what happened in that damn basement, and why he can’t help but wonder…

Did she tell him everything about what happened at Rikers yesterday? Or is she hiding part of the truth there too?

Chapter Text

She’s dozing against his shoulder a short while later, but as tired as he feels, there’s no way he can follow her into slumber.

His mind is racing; thoughts and fears turning over and over in his head as he goes over and over what happened yesterday.

Her clothes were torn, he thinks. Her blazer had disappeared, her shirt was ripped yet… all she said to us was she was dragged into the room and forced down to her knees… so when the hell did her shirt get ripped like that? Where did her blazer go? He tries to think, to remember if it had been found but he doesn’t know.

“I can feel you thinking,” her sleepy voice sounds, a little muffled from where the side of her face is pressed against his ribs.

He blinks, looking down at her. “You can feel me thinking?” He asks, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“Mmhmm,” she nods slowly. “It’s a talent.”

He snorts. “I believe you,” he teases.

He intends to leave it at that; to let her doze, to let her fall asleep. She needs it, he rationalises. Yesterday was… horrific. She needs the rest. 

But she’s got other ideas. “What are you thinking about?” She murmurs, lifting her head to look at him.

Do I tell her? He glances down, meets her expectant gaze. It’s a difficult decision; on the one hand he has a horrible feeling that she’s held something back, yet on the other, she’s already exhausted and she’s put herself through hell to tell him about Lewis. Can she deal with more?

He’s not sure. “Nothing,” he lies. “Just… gone past the point of tired, you know?” He mentally crosses his fingers, hoping she’s sleepy enough that she’ll buy it.

She doesn’t; pushing herself off him, sitting up and staring into his eyes, that sharp, hawk-like stare that pierces his very soul. “Why are you lying to me?” She demands, all traces of sleep gone from her voice.

Should’ve known, he says to himself. She always knows when I’m lying. He purses his lips, winces, then decides to just tell her.

It’ll be easier in the long run, he rationalises. “I keep thinking about yesterday,” he tells her. “That’s what I’m thinking about. I just… I didn’t want to upset you by bringing it up again.” He braces himself, unsure how she’s going to react.

“Oh.”

There’s a long pause, and Elliot eyes her nervously. Is that all I’m going to get? He wonders. Is she thinking, is she going to say something else? She looks like she’s thinking, but that doesn’t mean she’s gonna speak.

“What about yesterday?” She asks a few moments later, answering his unspoken question.

“Did you tell Fin everything?” He decides to just rip off the band-aid, knowing that she wouldn’t appreciate him talking in circles. She never liked that. Always straight to the point. 

She frowns. “What do you mean?” She asks, on edge, nervous. She’s hiding something, he thinks, his suspicions confirmed.

“I…” He stops, starts again. “You had a blazer on,” he says. “Before they dragged you away. When I found you… it was gone. Your shirt was torn… yet all you said to Fin was that they dragged you to that room and forced you down.”

“You think I’m lying.” It’s not a question, it’s a statement and the hurt he sees in her eyes as she says it stabs through his heart.

“No,” he shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re lying. But…” How to phrase this… “You just told me that you’ve held things back, hid things to do with Lewis. I just… I’m just…” He stops, unsure how to word it. Why is this so hard? He asks himself. I used to be able to ask these questions all the damn time.

Because it’s Olivia, his brain informs him. Because she matters more to you than a victim that you’ve never met in your life. Her thoughts, her feelings… it hurts you to see her hurt and the thought that she might have been hurt more and hid it from you…

The voice in his head sounds oddly like Olivia, which is a strange experience when the woman herself is sitting next to him, looking at him with pain and hurt in her eyes, her mouth firmly closed. 

“You think I’ve… omitted something,” she nods, hurt giving way to understanding.

He nods. “I’m just worried that they did something and you hid it,” he says. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide things from me.”

“Because you think you failed me?” She asks, tilting her head.

She’s right, of course she is. “I did fail you.” He responds. It’s the truth; he was right there and she got dragged away screaming and assaulted and had to defend herself again and all of that while he was so damn close. She shouldn’t have had to do that. Not again.

“You didn’t,” she shakes her head, frowning. “You got hit on the head Elliot, knocked unconscious. You’re not superman. You might be trying to look like him, but you can’t fly Elliot, and you aren’t immune to being hit on the damn head.”

“I just remember everything fading and you were just… you were screaming, Olivia and I couldn’t help you.” He shakes his head, angry at himself. Should’ve protected you.

She sighs. “You know what I remember?” She asks him.

“What?”

“I remember you pushing me in front of you as we ran,” she tells him. “I remember being crushed between you and the wall in that storeroom when you were protecting me,” she says, her voice firm, eyes wide, beseeching. “I thought they’d left, Elliot,” she shakes her head. “They ambushed us. You couldn’t have known they were lying in wait, that they’d clearly realised where we were hiding… neither of us could’ve known that.”

“You were attacked, Olivia and I was right there.” I should’ve known. I should’ve. Somehow.

“Yeah, yeah you were,” she nods. “And you know what?”

“What?” He tilts his head, wondering what platitudes she’s going to try on him this time.

“I knew you were coming for me,” she smiles at him, a tiny smile gracing her lips. “Part of me, the part that wasn’t gripped by blinding panic did anyway.” She adds wryly.

“Liv…” What is he supposed to say to that?

“I didn’t,” she cuts him off. “I didn’t tell Fin the whole truth,” she explains. “You’re right… I did… omit something but it’s nothing horrific, okay? I wasn’t raped.”

That’s hardly reassuring. He steels himself. “What happened?” He asks, trying his best to tone it down from a demand, but it’s difficult. What do I need to go and beat these bastards for? Finish the job you started. Protect you since I couldn’t do it nine years ago?

“One of them… I don’t know which one, groped my… my breasts,” she tells him haltingly. “We were in the room and he was… behind me and they pulled my blazer off and he was… he was right up against me and I… I could feel him,” she says, giving him a pointed look. “And he had hold of my breasts and he was groping them and I…” She trails off, squeezing her eyes shut, pained. “Lewis did that,” she explains. “The second time. I was in a similar position and he did that and…” She sighs. “I felt myself starting to slide,” she admits. “The memories started to overtake and then I was thrown to the floor, and it hurt on my knees and they pulled me up by my hair and then I heard the zipper and…” She sucks in a breath, her eyes still firmly closed. “All of a sudden Harris was there… and so was Lewis and…” Her breathing is quickening, but Elliot is reluctant to touch her as she wraps her arms around herself. “It all started to get mixed up in my head,” she tells him. “I vaguely recall seeing the metal bar lying on the floor near me. I reach for it… then nothing.”

“Until you woke up this morning.” Elliot finishes for her.

“Yep,” she nods, opening her eyes, looking at him. “I should’ve said something, I know that,” she tells him. “But I’m gonna have a hard enough time with the whole dissociation mess as it is. The brass are gonna be looking at me and I didn’t want to give them any more ammunition, you know?”

“I get it.” He does; he’s been there himself, more than once in the last year alone never mind in the past.

“They can’t fire me,” she tells him, easing the bubble of worry that had started to rise in his gut. “I’ve been like this for nine years now, it’s hardly new. But this… was bad,” she says. Understatement of the century. “So I just… decided to be a little vague on the details. Fin managed to get my doctor to attribute it to shock, on the proviso that I don’t lie to Lindstrom so… I’ll just have to be careful.”

“You lie to your therapist often?” Elliot asks her, curious.

She snorts. “About as much as you do,” she retorts.

He chuckles. “Every session then.”

“Okay, maybe not quite that bad.”

Her breathing is settling down, slowing back to normal and Elliot himself breathes a sigh of relief. It was bad; being groped is sexual assault, but considering what his brain had been suggesting… no. He won’t go there. “How did your shirt get torn?” He asks suddenly, realising that she hadn’t explained that one.

“I have no idea,” she shakes her head. “I fought them pretty hard when they were taking me away from you,” she tells him. “Probably happened then. I really don’t remember El, it happened so fast.”

“I just wanted to protect you,” he murmurs. “I knew… I knew what they’d do if they got hold of you and…” He trails off. “You got hurt.”

“I’m okay,” she tells him, reaching for his hands, linking them with her own. “I promise. I’m gonna talk to Lindstrom, I’m not gonna lie to him, and I’m gonna be okay. You’re here, and I can talk to you this time which is all I really wanted the last time.”

It’s meant to reassure him, he knows that but it still hurts to hear her say it. “I know,” he tells her. She frowns, and he smiles. “You said as much in the hospital, when you were… you know. Wanted me… you seemed surprised that I was there.”

“Did I?” She winces. “Sorry about that.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “Don’t be. I’m glad I could be there, even though you don’t remember it,” he tells her. “You wrapped yourself around me and fell right to sleep.”

She snorts. “‘Course I did.” She yawns, as if the talk of sleep has triggered it. “Talking of sleep…”

He finds himself yawning too. Always so in sync. “Yes,” he agrees. “Sleep. Which we clearly both need.” He pushes himself to his feet, pulling her up with him. “Come on Benson,” he tells her, leading her through her apartment in the direction he hopes her bedroom is in. “I’m taking you to bed,” he tells her. “Not in the fun way.” He quips.

She laughs. “You’re ridiculous,” she tells him, following him. “Turn left,” she tells him when he reaches the small hallway, unsure which door is hers.

He opens the door on the left and is met with Olivia’s very nice, if rather dark, bedroom. She flips on the light, casting a soft glow over the light bedding and soft pillows, and he drops her hand. “You mind if I grab a shower?” He asks, realising that he’s still wearing yesterdays clothes.

“Sure,” she tells him, heading for the dresser and pulling out some grey sweats. “These should fit,” she tells him, tossing them in his direction.

He catches them easily. “Whose were these?” He asks, eyeing the fabric with suspicion.

She snorts. “Mine,” she tells him. “Noah had a messy art phase,” she tells him. “And it was easier to put these and a huge sweatshirt over my clothes than get changed. Also faster to make myself look presentable if someone came to the door.”

Looking closer, he can see tiny multi-coloured paint splashes over the fabric. “Where’s the sweatshirt?” He asks, curious.

“You’re telling me you want a sweatshirt to sleep in?” She gives him a knowing look, and he grins.

“Technically I didn’t ask for anything to sleep in,” he winks, her jaw dropping as he ducks out of the room.

***

Fifteen minutes later and freshly showered, he sticks his head back around her bedroom door to find her settled in bed, glasses perched on her nose, book in hand. “This is not sleeping,” he notes, grinning.

She looks up at him, taking her glasses off (he’d never realised how sexy someone removing glasses could be, but then, this is Olivia) and raking her gaze over his bare chest. “I was wide awake,” she tells him, finally meeting his eyes. “Decided to read for a little while, hopefully it’ll help me fall asleep.”

He nods. “Well, happy reading,” he tells her. “I’ll be on the couch.”

He goes to step back, but her voice stops him. “Don’t,” she calls out, and his heart skips.

“What?” He asks.

“Don’t… don’t leave,” she tells him, biting her lip. “Will you… will you stay?”

Her voice is so tentative, her nervousness all too obvious and his heart jumps in his chest. “You want me to sleep in there with you?” He asks, needing her to say it, needing her to spell out what she wants.

She nods mutely, and he closes the door behind him, stepping the few steps and climbing onto her mattress. It’s as comfortable as it looks, and he slides under the blankets.

The book is dropped onto the nightstand, and the lamp clicked off, plunging the room into semi-darkness. “Don’t make a big deal out of it,” she tells him as she rolls over, settling herself against him. “You’re just… very comfortable to sleep on.”

He snorts, wrapping one arm around her back. “Sure Liv,” he murmurs as she buries her nose into his neck. “I’ll believe you.”

“Shut up,” she tells him, her breath tickling his neck. “Go to sleep.”

Chapter Text

The bedroom is lit by the early morning sunlight when he wakes.

Olivia is still lying on top of him; her soft dark hair, wavy as all hell from drying naturally, spread across his chest, her nose still firmly buried in the crook of his neck in what seems to be her favourite sleeping position.

Can you have a favourite sleeping position after only two occasions? He asks himself, before deciding that yes, you absolutely can.

Especially if you’re Olivia Benson.

He smiles as she stirs, her arm tightening around his waist as a low moan escapes her lips and he has to force himself to think about everything, anything else as her thigh brushes over his, dangerously close to his twitching cock. Not the time, he tells himself. Very much not the time!

“Morning,” he comments as she lifts her head, long hair tumbling around her face, her shoulders as she looks at him with bleary eyes. “Sleep well?” He asks with a grin.

“I did,” she nods sleepily. “You’re very comfy,” she adds with a lazy smile, and he chuckles.

“I must be,” he replies. “That’s the second time you’ve told me.”

She snorts. “It’s true,” she agrees, pushing herself up awkwardly. Her thigh slides over his legs, narrowly missing his cock as she ends up semi-straddling him, lying flat on his chest. “What time is it?” She asks.

He grits his teeth, his cock becoming more interested by the second. Luckily, Olivia appears to be oblivious, and he turns his head, reaching out and grabbing her phone from the nightstand (his is still in the living room, or at least he hopes that’s where he left it). “Five thirty,” he tells her after lighting up her screen to a photo of her with Noah, heads pressed closely together as they grin at the camera.

“Ugh,” she groans, dropping her head to his chest. “Why am I awake?” She bemoans.

He laughs. “We did go to bed pretty early last night,” he reminds her.

She lifts her head, blinks. “Oh yeah,” she nods, realisation in her eyes. “I’m not used to going to bed before eleven, let alone nine,” she tells him. “And even eleven is early for me.”

He frowns. “McGrath making you work late?” He asks.

She shakes her head. “Nah,” she tells him. “The older Noah gets the later he wants to stay up, and when I bring work home… which is every night pretty much… I have to be careful. Don’t want him to see crime scene photos so I try and leave it until he’s gone to bed, which-”

“Keeps you up later,” Elliot nods. “Yeah, I get it.”

She smiles at him. “I like spending the time with him too,” she confides. “When we get a big case sometimes I don’t see him for a few days, and when I work late or I’m called in early sometimes all I see of him is on FaceTime and I just…”

“You wanna spend the time with him,” Elliot finishes. “You’re a good mom, Liv,” he tells her, her conflicted expression telling him that she needs to hear it. “Don’t ever think that you’re not.”

She chuckles. “You know… when he was younger, whenever I thought I was doing something wrong, or I had those moments when I thought what am I doing why did I think I could do this on my own… your voice would come into my head?” She sits up slightly, straddling him properly now, her ass dangerously close to his hard dick. “Telling me that the adoption agency were wrong, and that I’d be a great mom. It uh… it helped,” she admits, her cheeks reddening. “Reminded me that you always believed in me, even when I didn’t.”

His heart twists, and he brings his arms around her, pulling her down, close to him. “Never doubt yourself,” he tells her. “Never. You’re amazing, Olivia.” A beat. “I love you.”

Her eyes widen, brightening and softening at his words as she hears them, as she processes them. “I love you too,” she whispers, his heart skipping a beat as a grin forms on his lips.

“You know how long I’ve been hoping to hear you say that?” He whispers.

She chuckles. “I can hazard a guess,” she quips. Their eyes lock, a sudden heaviness in the air between them before she leans forward, closing the gap. “Is this okay?” She asks, her lips barely an inch from his.

He nods mutely; unwilling to trust his voice when her lips, her face, everything he’s ever wanted is so close. She closes the gap, her soft lips touching his own for the first time, and he’s in heaven, he has to be.

He won’t lie and say he’s never imagined this moment before; her lips on his, their mouths moving in unison as he kisses her back, as she opens her mouth, yielding to his tongue as he deepens the kiss, a soft moan in her throat as he tangles his tongue with hers, echoed in his own mouth.

He’s imagined it, dreamt of it over and over for… well… twenty four years, since he’s being honest, but this?

This is better than anything he could ever have dreamed of. Anything.

Her hands begin to wander as the kiss deepens, their need for air becoming more apparent but neither of them wants to be the first to break away. Eventually though, the need to breathe becomes a necessity, and Elliot tears his lips from hers, the two of them panting against each others mouths, unwilling to move more than a few inches from each other. “Jesus,” he murmurs, catching his breath. “That was, uh…”

“Better than you ever dreamed?” She whispers, her mouth so close to his her lips brush his with every word.

“Something like that,” he agrees, letting go of her and pushing himself up to sitting. She slides down, winds up straddling his lap and he remembers all too late that he’s rock hard.

Her eyes widen, and she glances down between her legs, to where they can see the hardness through his sweatpants. “You really enjoyed that, huh?” She raises one eyebrow.

“I’m sorry,” he quickly apologises. “I’ll uh, I’ll just-”

He moves to lift her off him, to get up and retreat to the bathroom, to hide, red with embarrassment until he can pluck up the courage to face her again, but she stops him, her hands planted firmly on his shoulders. “Where are you going?” She asks him, a firm note in her tone, the Captain voice sneaking in.

It makes his dick twitch, and she feels it, smirking at him in response.

“I was just…” He swallows thickly. “I didn’t think you’d…” He trails off, shrugging helplessly. God, I want her, he says to himself. But I shouldn’t. Not yet, not right now… it’s too soon.

“I decide,” she tells him, tilting her head. “What I want… and right now…” She licks her lips. “I’d really like this,” she nods down at his lap. “If you uh…” She looks at him. “If you’d like.”

If I’d like? “If I’d like?” He looks at her, incredulous. “Olivia, I’ve been dreaming about this for years,” he tells her. “Trust me, you don’t need to worry about whether I’m up for this.”

She smiles, a little nervous all of a sudden, a little shy and he leans in, kissing the expression right off her face. “You’re so beautiful,” he tells her, whispering into her mouth.

“You haven’t seen me with my shirt off yet,” she murmurs, her muscles tensing under his fingers as he traces his hands down her back, the material of her pyjama top soft under his fingertips.

“So show me,” he tells her, breaking the kiss, locking his gaze with hers.

She inhales shakily, quivering fingers moving to the buttons. She’s so nervous her fingers can’t undo the tiny things, and he covers her hands with his own. “Let me?” He asks, and she nods, her hands dropping away, coming to rest on his hips.

He undoes each button slowly, from the top down, revealing inch after inch of beautiful golden skin, making his mouth water. I just want to lick her all over, he thinks.

He runs out of buttons, but lets the two sides of the shirt drop, gravity holding it closed, covering her. “There you go,” he whispers as she looks at him, as he backs away a little, letting her make the choice, the decision whether or not to show him.

She raises her hands, taking each side of the shirt in a firm grip, fisting the fabric in her hands. Looking at him one more time, she closes her eyes, sliding the shirt from her shoulders and letting it drop to the mattress in one singular movement.

She’s stunning, is the only thought going through his head as her upper body is revealed to him, bare and beautiful, lit golden by the morning sun.

Her breasts, larger, heavier than they had been last time he’d seen them, held in a black lace bra in a dingy bedroom a dozen years ago in the middle of an undercover op, are mouth-watering.

Her skin, soft and supple and just begging to be touched as he raises one hand, his fingers tracing over her belly. She shivers under his touch, and he licks his lips, his other hand joining the first, tracing lines and patterns, travelling up to palm her breasts as she opens her eyes.

“Well?” She whispers, eyes wide, almost fearful.

“You’re… you’re perfect, Olivia,” he whispers, the words hanging in the charged air between them. “Perfect.” Raising his eyes, tearing them from her breasts he meets her gaze, locks them in a stare as his thumbs brush over her nipples, making her shudder.

“What about the scars?” She asks. “They’re…”

“I didn’t even notice them,” he tells her. It’s not a lie; he’d been so distracted by her breasts, by her soft skin he hadn’t even noticed the marks that litter both.

She gives him a look. “Don’t lie,” she whispers. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.”

“I’m not lying,” he tells her. “I uh… your breasts…” He swallows thickly. “They’re…”

“Oh my God,” she mutters, shaking her head with a snort. “You’re such a man.”

Unable to resist, he thrusts up from under her, his now painfully hard cock hitting her dead centre, making her gasp. “I sure am,” he grins lasciviously.

She rolls her eyes at him - rolls her eyes at him! - and leans in, her bare breasts pressed against his chest as she kisses him. “So show me,” she murmurs, intent in her gaze.

He gulps. “You sure?” He asks, needing her to tell him what she wants.

“I’ve had dreams too,” she whispers. “And right now…” She licks her lips, leans in, swipes her tongue over his. “I want you to take charge,” she tells him. “Show me how beautiful you say I am, how much you want me.”

His cock hardening impossibly further, he’s never been so turned on in his life. “You sure?” He double checks.

“Mmhmm,” she nods, kissing him again. “Never been more sure in my life.”

He grins, surging up, covering her mouth with his, swallowing her gasp of surprise. Rolling them both over, her back hits the mattress, his weight landing squarely between her legs, moans sounding from both of their lips as he grinds himself against her. “Copy that Captain,” he grins, his hands reaching for her waistband as she whines into his mouth, eyes blown wide, skin flushed with desire.

The pyjama shorts are tugged down her legs, panties with them, and her bare legs come up, her toes catching on the waistband of his sweats as she wraps her legs around his waist, grinding, rocking against him. Her feet push at the sweats, shoving them down low, past his butt and down his legs. They tangle around his ankles but neither one of them cares, his bare cock now free to come into contact with her, rubbing insistently between her legs. He moves his hand, stroking her down there as she moans, groans into his mouth. “How are you so wet?” He gasps, having expected to need to ask where she keeps her lube but… he’s not so sure she actually needs any.

She moves her own hand, her fingers sinking into herself alongside his. “I don’t know,” she groans at the pressure as his fingers twist inside her, her silky walls enveloping them. “I guess you’re having an effect on me,” she grins up at him, her hair a halo around her head on the pillow.

He grins. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he kisses her.

She snorts. “You would,” she responds. “Now hurry up and get in me,” she tells him, canting her hips, the tip of his dick catching on her folds, almost but not quite sliding home. “I want you.”

“You sure?” He asks, just one more time.

She narrows her eyes. “Elliot, I swear to God if you ask me that again…”

“Yes ma’am,” he guides himself in, his weight dropping on her fully as he slides inside. She’s tight around him, and they groan in unison as he drives in to the hilt, filling her completely. Perfectly.

“Oh my God,” she gasps, her legs tightening around his waist. “Move Elliot,” she begs. “Fuck me.”

And who am I to deny that? He tells himself, pulling back and driving into her hard, her loud groan echoing in the bedroom, her begs and pleas for more sounding in his ear as he drives on, driving them both towards ecstasy.

***

Monday morning rolls around, and a well rested, positively glowing Olivia Benson strides off the elevator and down the hall, taking the well trodden right turn into her squadroom.

Her very empty squadroom, she notes, frowning when she finds only one of her detectives present. “Where’s Fin and Amanda?” She asks Joe, rerouting herself from her office and veering left, standing by the desks.

“They were here,” Joe looks up from his phone, from whatever he’d been smiling at on his screen. “They caught a case about twenty minutes ago Captain,” he tells her. “A victim at Mercy.”

“Okay,” she nods. Normally something this early on a Monday morning, especially when she’d had several days off would cause an immediate dip in her mood, but nothing can bring her down today, she knows.

Almost a full week of Elliot in her apartment, having regular sex with him (otherwise known as every opportunity they could manage, since they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other now they’ve started), watching him bond with Noah and a very productive session with Lindstrom would do that, she surmises.

“What’s so interesting?” She nods at her detective’s phone, which he keeps sneaking glances at and smiling.

“Oh, I uh… I tried a dating app again,” he tells her, a shy smile on his face. “Matched with this… beautiful woman and uh… we’re gonna meet up tonight,” he tells her. “Well, as long as I get out of here on time,” he corrects. “I told her I’m a cop, explained that I hoped I’d be able to meet her and she said her dad is a cop so not to worry if I have to cancel, that she understands…” He pauses. “Which… she’s just perfect, Captain… I think she’s the one and we’ve never even done anything other than text.”

Olivia chuckles. “Let me see?” She asks, nodding at the phone. Joe turns the screen, and she has to stifle a bark of laughter. “You’re right, she’s beautiful,” she tells him, taking a step back, suddenly feeling the need to hide in her office before she bursts out laughing and terrifies the poor guy. “I’ll try and get you out of here on time Joe,” she tells him with a smile. “If I can.”

“Thanks Captain!” She hears him call out as she turns her back, walking towards her office. Do I warn Elliot in advance, or should I just wait so I can watch his facial journey when he finds out Kathleen is dating one of my detectives? She wonders.

Opening her office door, the question flies from her mind as she gasps, her hand to her chest, over her heart as she looks at the scene within.

Flowers.

Flowers, everywhere. On her little coffee table, vase after vase in a row on her filing cabinet, a vase on either end of her desk… roses and peonies and tulips and who knows what else in a rainbow of colours, and, as she steps inside, closing the office door behind her…

A card, sat squarely where her laptop usually resides. Picking it up, she smiles as she reads Elliot’s chicken scratch inside.

Something to brighten your day.

“So that’s why you had to leave so early this morning,” she says to herself, a bright smile on her face as she sinks into her chair, a happy sigh escaping her lips, reaching for her phone to text him.

Thank you Elliot.