Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He knows, almost instantly, that he’s fucked up.

He’s not entirely sure how he’s fucked up, but he knows enough to know that the incredulous are you out of your fucking mind look she’s giving him means that he has, once again, fucked up.

He tries to remember exactly what it was he said before her whole demeanor shifted. Before her eyebrows drew together and her jaw set and her normally soft, wide eyes narrowed.

Something about fate. Something about this finally being their time. About how there was something beautiful in them coming together again after all this time.

“You disagree?” he asks, measuring his words carefully. “You don’t think there’s something beautiful here?”

She snorts indelicately then, and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat because a derisive Benson snort never precedes anything good.

“Oh, of course,” she says dryly, each word laced with languid sarcasm. “It’s so beautiful. You know, ever since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamt of being someone’s plan B.”

He gapes at her, nonplussed at the awful sentiment that’s fallen so easily from her lips.

“You’ve never been a plan B,” he protests. “You’re - you’re everything, Liv. You’re the whole plan.”

She tips her head back and laughs at that, but there’s no humor in it. If a Benson snort is a red flag, then a Benson laugh-that’s-not-really-laugh is a warning shot, fired over his head.

(Or maybe over his kneecaps, judging by the way she’s looking at him.)

“You understand that words mean things, right?” she asks, leaning back in her chair and picking up her glass, her eyes glinting with dark, bitter amusement. “You don’t get to say I’m not a plan B when the only reason we’re even here having this conversation is because your plan A isn’t an option anymore.”

Jesus Christ.

“I know that words mean things,” he says, voice calmer than he’s feeling. He slides his hands off the table and onto his lap, knowing she’ll clock the anxious twitching of his fingers, that she’ll know that he’s in no way as calm as his voice suggests.

She swirls the contents of her glass, takes a sip. Her head is tipped to the side and he knows - knows - that she’s minutes (maybe seconds) away from going in for the kill.

“Did you know that when you sent me a note saying ‘always faithful’ and then didn’t give a fuck if I lived or died for a decade?” she asks, voice saccharine sweet.

He swallows hard.

Olivia has spent the better part of five years avoiding serious conversations with him. She’s been a master at deflecting, distracting and delaying. But for some reason - here, in a cozy bar on a cold Friday night where they’re supposed to just be drinking negronis and eating truffle fries and chatting about their kids - she’s decided now is the time to lay it all out on the table.

And he can tell she wants it to hurt.

“Of course I cared if you lived or died. Jesus, Liv. I never stopped thinking about you.”

“So what?” she scoffs, waving a dismissive hand in the air. “You say that like it means something.”

“It does mean something,” he argues, because he believes it. It has to mean something. Being unable to get her out of his head for ten years must mean something. It might mean everything.

She eyes him, seemingly unimpressed.

“So that’s why you’ve pushed me away since I got back?” he demands, an eyebrow arched. “Because you feel like a plan B?”

“I don’t feel like a plan B. I am a plan B,” she counters, and her voice is steel. “Like I said - you wouldn’t even be here if your plan A was still an option.”

She leans in here, palms pressed into the table - the exact posture she adopts when she’s about to drop a bomb on a perp and he feels the back of his neck prickle.

“You would have blindsided me at my stupid awards thing, given me that fucked up letter - maybe just before I got on stage, you know, to really twist the knife - then jetted back off to your perfect life in perfect Italy, patting yourself on the back the whole time for doing the right thing.”

And there it is.

The thing that she’s managed to avoid saying for almost five years now. The thing, he knows now, that’s made her keep him at arms length, that’s made her unable to trust him.

He came back. But he never intended to stay.

It hits him like a blow to the gut. Because this whole time, he’s thought that coming back and staying meant something. Yes, I left. But I’m here now. Isn’t that something?

He’s only just realizing that to Olivia, it’s nothing. It’s less than nothing. Because he never intended to stay. If Kathy hadn’t died, he’d be back in Italy and the final, fragile strand connecting Olivia and Elliott would have finally, finally been permanently severed, unceremoniously chopped by a cruel letter he never should have put his name to.

And it’s fucking ridiculous, isn’t it? He spends his life inhabiting other identities, learning what makes people tick, putting himself in other people's shoes.

But he’s never really thought about what all this must look like, feel like to Olivia.

He gets it now, why she’s so angry with him. Because he looked at all the ways in which he never chose her, all the ways in which he sought to cut her off like a diseased branch and dared to say ‘isn’t there beauty in this?’

There’s no beauty in this for Olivia. How could there be?

He sinks back in his chair, his breath escaping him as he feels the dull ache of shame creep up his spine, through his veins.

“Ok, wow.”

She can tell, he knows, that he gets it for the first time. She can tell that the realisation has hit him square in the gut, hard enough to leave him breathless.

He also knows that she doesn’t care. Because her lip is curled ever so slightly in distaste and her eyes are cold, and she wants to make him hurt.

“Yeah, wow is right,” she mutters grimly. “Wow at the absolute audacity of you to disappear for a decade, come back without warning armed with that bullshit letter, and then try to convince me that actually you love me, and we’d be so good together. You don’t love me. This is just about you not knowing how to be alone after 40 years of marriage and being too scared to find someone new.”

He stares at her, a little desperately, because surely she can’t believe that? Despite the mess, the pain, the mistakes he’s made - the fact that Elliot Stabler has been in love with Olivia Benson since the Bush administration is an indisputable fact.

Everyone knows this. His own wife knew this. Richard Fucking Wheatley knew this. Ayanna knew it the first time she saw them together. He’s 90% sure Noah picked it up on it the first time they met.

Everyone in Elliot’s life seems to know that he is in love with Olivia - except for Olivia herself.

“Can I say something?” he asks carefully, because he can see the way she’s settling into her anger, swaddling herself in self-righteous rage, and there’ll be no getting through to her once she's safely blanketed herself in it.

“No,” she snaps. “Because you’re just going to try and convince me that I’m more than a goddamn convenience to you. I was your sounding board when you were married and your emotional crutch when you were separated and since you’ve been back, I’ve let you lean on me no matter how much it costs me. You’re lonely and you want stability and thanks to my terrible self esteem, I am almost constantly available to you. That’s what you want. Not me. It’s never been about me.”

Jesus, he’d fucked this up. How did they get to this place, where the woman that he’d loved for most of his adult life thought she was just a convenience to him?

He wants to be sick.

“That’s not fair,” he protests weakly.

“No,” she spits back, stabbing a finger at him. “What’s not fair is that you ghosted me for ten years and when you did finally come back, it wasn’t to make amends. It was to sink the boot in one last time at an awards ceremony in my honour. What’s not fair is that your wife died and you immediately started pulling me in when you needed something and pushing me away when my presence wasn’t convenient. What’s not fucking fair is that you’ve been back for years now and the only thing you’ve wanted to know about my life is how many men I’ve fucked. What’s really, really not fair is you didn’t give me a single thought for a decade and now you want me to just upend my whole life for you like that never happened. Like fuck off. If this is your version of love I don’t want it.”

That fucking letter, he thinks sourly. Born of weakness and cowardice, like most of his problems. He wonders if Kathy is watching, quietly delighted that her words continue to wound Olivia so many years later.

“You keep saying I didn’t think about you while I was gone. That’s not fucking true. I thought about you every goddamn day.”

She plucks a truffle fry from the basket between them and the action stills something in him. As long as she’s eating, she’s here. And as long as she’s here, they’re talking. And okay, yeah, the things she’s saying are tearing him apart, but at least she’s saying them instead of tucking them away. Getting it out has to be better. It has to be.

She chews slowly, eyeing him coolly the whole time.

“Do you hear yourself?” she asks finally.

“What?”

“Every day? You thought about me every day?”

“That’s what I said,” he says, nodding firmly.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You were gone for ten years. What’s that, 3600 days or so? You thought about me 3600 times? That’s absurd.”

“I fucking did.”

And he knows it sounds absurd but if he’s honest, 3600 probably doesn’t even come close. If he catalogued each individual thought he had about her - each time he saw something he thought would make her smile, smelled burnt coffee or fries or honeysuckle, heard Fleetwood Mac or Bill Callahan, saw a beautiful woman with long legs and big brown eyes, got stuck on a case and knew she’d help him tease the answer out, fought with his wife and didn’t feel his blood coursing hot like it did when he fought with her, or looked at the Rome skyline and thought this will never be home, he feels confident he probably thought of her 10,000 times while he was gone.

He’s happy to round down to 3600 for now though, so he sounds less insane.

“Right,” she drawls sarcastically. “You thought about me 3600 times but somehow, that never translated into an actual attempt at contact. Not an email. Or a text. Or an Instagram DM. You didn’t even Google me.”

He blinks.

“How could you possibly know if I Googled you?”

“Because if you did, you’d know certain things,” she spits. “And I would know if you knew those things.”

Oh. He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that at all.

He knows, of course he knows, that Something Bad happened to her in his absence. It’s something that the people around her while he was gone - Fin, Don, Amanda, Melinda - have all alluded to in one way or another.

She’s been through a lot. She’s not the same person she was. Don’t hurt her. She deserves peace. God knows she’s dealt with enough.

The warnings were subtle, but clear. (Less subtle, when coming from Fin, who had told him on three separate occasions that he would cheerfully shoot him in the head if he hurt Olivia because Olivia was his sister, his girl and she had been through enough.)

And he knows now that whatever happened to her was big enough not only to make the news, but big enough to make her the news. Big enough to be one of the first things that popped up when searching for her.

“It made the news?” he asks quietly, dismay evident in his eyes.

“I couldn’t turn on the TV or walk past a newsstand for weeks without seeing my face,” she tells him flatly, and his stomach lurches. “Weird that not a single person in your family watched the news or read a paper at that time but hey, what do I know. Maybe Stablers are uniquely ill-informed.”

“I’m sure they just didn’t hear about it,” he tries, but it falls flat.

“Right,” she says dryly. “Everyone in your family somehow missed national news coverage in May 2013, then again in December that year and then again in April the following year. I got emails from old sorority sisters living in Australia and the UK, I got a handwritten card from someone who lives on a boat near Fiji and a very weird collage from a bunch of schoolgirls in Kuala Lumpur but sure - the Stablers of Queens, New York somehow missed the whole thing.”

She really did have a way of highlighting the absurdity of things.

“So what are you saying?” he asks cautiously because he’s beginning to form his own, fairly ugly theory about how no one in his family seemed to hear about what happened to Olivia.

“I’m saying the most logical answer is that they knew - they just didn’t care. Because if their dad didn’t give a fuck about me, then why should they? You’d already demonstrated to everyone that I was completely disposable.”

Another gut punch.

The words she uses to describe herself, the way she believes he sees her breaks his heart.

Disposable. A convenience. A backup plan.

“I don’t know how to convince you that you’re wrong,” he implores, trying his hardest to stare into her eyes, praying she’ll see the truth in his. “I did think of you. I do love you. And you were never disposable, or just a backup plan.”

“You can’t convince me. There’s no magic combination of words that will make me forget that all the evidence points to you simply not giving a fuck about me.”

Her voice is flat, her eyes sad.

“You know I care about you,” he says quietly, feeling that burning in the back of his eyes.

“No. You care about what I can do for you.”

“Olivia -“

But she’s finally had enough. He watches helplessly as she slings her purse over her shoulder, tosses her coat over her arm.

“Look, I’m going to go. I can’t keep having this conversation with you. I can look past all of the ways you’ve hurt me if you’re just looking for friendship. Coffee dates and the odd text? That’s low stakes and I can deal. But you keep pushing for more and I can’t, Elliot. I just fucking can’t.”

He watches her leave, and feels regret and shame and sadness and grief heavy in his stomach.

Chapter Text

Elliot is a detective, has been for what feels like a hundred years, and he knows that the first step in solving a Very Big Problem is getting the facts on the page.

And at present, dealing with the fact that the woman he loves does not trust him feels like a Very Big Problem. One that is devastatingly insurmountable. An impossible mountain to climb.

After Olivia leaves the bar, pausing only to pull her coat on and toss her hair over her shoulders (and not giving him so much as a backwards glance as she walks away), he does just that - tries to break down this Very Big Problem into a series of facts. He sits at the table, picking at cold fries, carefully going over every heartbreaking word she had thrown in his face and trying to tease out what he can learn from it.

There are, he thinks, a few key things that he’ll need to address if he wants to have Olivia Benson in his life in any capacity.

He needs to show her that he really does love her. That maybe he always has.

He needs to show her that she is more than just a convenience, a backup plan, a plan B.

(And God, his stomach churns even thinking of the way she tossed those terms out so casually.)

He needs her to understand that even if the plan was to give her the letter then disappear back to Italy, he doesn’t think he could have ever gone through with it once he saw her face.

(Because seeing her face for the first time in ten years, beautiful and anguished and devastated, felt like sucking in a lungful of air after being underwater for too long.)

He needs to find out what happened to her, and how it’s possible that he never knew.

He needs to earn her forgiveness, even if he doesn’t deserve it.

He has to fix this mess that he’s created.

He has to believe that he can fix this. The alternative is too unbearable to even consider.

He makes it all the way from the bar to home, turning what he needs to fix over and over in his mind. He knows in his heart she will never let him in if he cannot fix these things, cannot prove to her how important she has always been.

But how the fuck is he going to prove it to her when his words don’t count for shit with her anymore?

“You’re home already? I honestly didn’t expect to see you til the morning.”

He jumps, so caught up in trying to remember every single word Olivia said (hissed) at him that night that he’d failed to notice Kathleen curled up on his sofa, reading. He’d forgotten she’d be there - she was staying at his place while the floors in her apartment were being refinished.

He scoffs a little, retrieves a beer from the fridge then sinks down next to his daughter.

“Things didn’t go exactly as I hoped,” he tells her, trying - and failing - to keep his voice light.

Katie sighs, closes her book and places it next to her. She taps him on the knee, forcing him to meet her eyes.

“You and Liv have a fight?” she asks shrewdly.

He groans, letting his head fall against the back of the couch, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

“I don’t even know if you could call it a fight. I think I’d have preferred a fight. Like I know how to fight with Olivia. We’ve always been good at fighting. But this? I don’t know how to do this.”

“Define ‘this’.”

“She didn’t yell. Didn’t raise her voice. Just looked me in the eye and calmly listed all the ways in which I’d let her down. All the reasons why she can’t trust me. And I just … never saw it from her side before, you know? I thought intent mattered. I never meant to hurt her, she was just …”

“Collateral damage in your and mom’s marriage?” Katie suggests, a hint of acid in her tone.

He winces at that. It’s funny, really - while Katie physically favors her mother, mentally she’s so much like Liv. Smart, insightful, and capable of cutting to the quick. Wholly unafraid of telling it like it is.

“Sorry. That was maybe a little -“

“No, you’re right,” he interrupts softly, before she can backtrack. “So many of the choices I made were to keep our family intact and do right by your mom and I keep telling myself that makes it okay.”

Katie regards him thoughtfully, and he watches as she picks at the cuticle on her index finger.

“I think,” she says slowly, “at some stage, you decided that protecting your family meant accommodating mom’s insecurities and I don’t think that was fair. Nothing you did was gonna address what she was feeling inside, so the goalposts were always shifting. In the end, the only choice you were left with was cutting Liv out of your life completely. And like, it didn’t even work, right? You lost your closest friend during a time when you probably needed her, Liv was left alone to wonder what she did wrong and Mom still didn’t believe that nothing was going on. No one really got what they wanted in the end, did they?”

Her voice is steely, but her eyes sad and he wonders if that sadness is for him, or for Kathy, or for Olivia. He wonders, briefly, if it’s because she knows what happened to Olivia during his self-imposed exile.

“I know how much you care about her. But I also get why she doesn’t want to get too close to you again. Leaving the way you did was pretty fucked up. And it’s not like you’ve been a particularly steady presence since you came back.”

Katie inhales and exhales slowly, as if deciding whether she wants to say the next part - like maybe it’s something she’s thought, but never wanted to say out loud.

“I always thought making such a life-changing decision while you were balls-deep in PTSD after that shooting was … ill-advised.”

“First of all, not sure if I love the phrase ‘balls-deep’. Second of all, which life-changing decision do you mean?” he asks wryly. “Do you mean retiring? Or moving to Europe? Or cutting Liv off?”

Kathleen lifts a shoulder in a delicate shrug.

“All of the above? Like I get why you retired. The job was rough on you, we could all see that. But I always thought cutting off your entire support network - not just Liv but everyone at SVU - and disappearing overseas was a trauma response that no one should have entertained.”

He rubs a hand over his face, feeling his stubble scrape his palm.

“It was more complicated than that.”

“Maybe,” she says blithely. “But maybe it wasn’t that complicated and you were too deep in your trauma to see that. Or maybe it was that complicated and you should have been able to process things with the support of your friends and family. Either way, I don’t think there’s a therapist in the world who would tell you that cutting your loved ones off and disappearing abroad is a functional way to deal with trauma.”

And maybe it’s just the power of hindsight, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s a dedicated therapy attendee now, but he thinks Kathleen is right. Has thought, for awhile now, that Kathy encouraging him to retire, to cut ties with everyone at SVU and to move to Europe while he was still waking up screaming and sweating from flashbacks was a little too self-serving to be kind.

“Liv said she’s not interested in being my plan B.”

The words fall from him in an anguished tumble and Kathleen inhales sharply.

“She said that?” she breathes, face ashen.

The back of his eyes are burning again, unshed tears of guilt and shame and sadness building, and he digs his nails into his palm to stave them off.

“She thinks she’s a convenience,” he murmurs. “Said I only want her because I don’t know how to be on my own. Because she’s useful.”

He swallows thickly, the next part sticking in his throat, dry like cotton.

“She thinks I only came back to finish things. That I was going to … make sure she understood there was nothing there between us, and then go back to Italy and never see her again.”

Katie plucks the beer from his hand, takes a long swig and fixes him with an unblinking stare.

“Is she wrong?”

He buries his face in his hands, and wonders - not for the first time - if it’s inappropriate to be dumping this all on his daughter. He should have saved it for therapy.

“I had no plans to stay,” he admits slowly, painfully. “But the second I saw her face again, my whole world turned upside down. I didn’t plan to stay, but I don’t think I could have left again once I saw her.”

Katie drains the rest of his beer, slides the empty bottle onto the coffee table. He watches as she rises from the couch, pulls a bottle of Nero d’Avola from the wine rack and fills a glass. She flicks a questioning eye at him and he nods, watching as she fills a second glass. She brings both back to the couch, handing him one before dropping back next to him.

“She doesn’t see it, does she?” she asks, before taking a sip. “Doesn’t see how much you care about her. The effect she has on you.”

“I feel like she’s the only one who doesn’t see it. And she’s so angry, so hurt, and I don’t know how to make her see what she means to me.”

“Have you told her? Like, have you explicitly told her? And I don’t mean blurting it out in the middle of an intervention.”

He scoffs around a mouthful of wine, ignoring the jab.

“Of course I have. She just doesn’t believe me. Thinks my actions speak louder than words.”

“You get why she feels that way, right? You cut her off like a dead limb, dad. You disappeared completely. You didn’t attempt to contact her one time over that entire decade.”

“I tried,” he protests, even though he knows it’s a weak defense. “Really. I must have written her hundreds of emails over the years. I just never hit Send. Always chickened out. Figured she was better off not hearing from me. Better off without me.”

She tilts her head to the side at that, regarding him with wide, unreadable eyes. Her face is carefully neutral, but she reaches out to curl her fingers around his forearm.

“Emails? You wrote her emails?”

“Yeah,” he admits. “Probably a few times a week. Maybe more. It was kind of therapeutic, I guess. Sometimes made me feel like I was still talking to her, you know?”

Katie’s face shifts from neutral to something more urgent, and he cannot understand why him being too much of a fucking coward to send any of the hundreds of emails he wrote to Olivia would cause her to look so … excited? Hopeful?

“Are they still in your Drafts folder?” she presses, and she’s gripping his arm so hard that he thinks she might leave a bruise.

“In my what?”

“Your Drafts folder,” she repeats, insistently.

At his blank stare, she slaps a hand to her forehead and gives him a withering look, like she thinks that he might be the biggest idiot she’s ever known.

“Oh my god, Dad. Everything you send goes to your Sent folder and everything you write but don’t send goes to Drafts. I’ll show you. Give me your phone.”

“What?”

“Give me your phone!” she demands again, shoving his shoulder impatiently.

“Wouldn’t I have had to save the stuff I wrote?” he asks with confusion, fishing his phone from his pocket. A Drafts folder? Has that always been a thing? There’s probably been hundreds of instances where he’s accidentally closed an email window and he’s had to rewrite the damn thing from scratch. Is Katie telling him that those emails have been saving this whole damn time?

“‘No, they just autosave,” Katie says vaguely, dismissively waving a hand at him before tapping open his Gmail app. When she finds what she’s looking for, her mouth falls open.

“Holy shit. You weren’t kidding. Dad, there’s gotta be hundreds of emails in here,” she says with wide eyes, her finger flicking on the screen as she scrolls through apparently hundreds of unsent emails.

He thinks of what ten years of unsent emails to Olivia might say and feels his face flush. He tries to snatch his phone back, but Katie holds it out of his grasp, wagging a scolding finger at him.

“Don’t - don’t read them, okay? I don’t remember what they all say but they get pretty personal, from memory,” he says a little desperately because he doesn’t remember exactly what they said but they’re hardly likely to be about the weather.

“I’m obviously not going to read them,” Katie informs him with a roll of her eyes, still holding the phone out of reach. “But Olivia should.”

“What?” he demands, still trying for the phone.

“Send them to her.”

“What?”

“You just said she thinks you only want her because you’re here now. She thinks you left and never gave her a second thought. But ten years of unsent emails kind of challenges that, doesn’t it?”

“She’ll think I’m insane,” he protests weakly.

“I fear that ship has sailed.”

“That’s cute.”

“Like, your behaviour hasn’t exactly screamed ‘sane and normal’ since you got back.”

“Okay thank you, I get it, I’m a crazy person. How would I even send these?” he asks, finally snatching the phone from her grasp and peering down at the screen.

She looks at him over her glass reproachfully, as if she cannot believe he’d ask something so stupid.

“Like exactly how you send a normal email? Jesus, how do you have a job?”

“Why do you think I’m still a lowly detective?” he grumbles, scrolling through his Drafts folder and marvelling at the sheer number of emails sitting there. “Too many fucking emails the further you rise up the ranks.”

“Oh for sure. That’s why,” Katie snorts.

He makes a face at her and she grins back at him and he feels a small flicker of hope in his chest.

Because Katie has just handed him a Hail Mary. A way, possibly, to fix this, to finally convince Olivia that what he feels for her - has felt for her for years - is real.

That the issue was never that he didn’t care.

It was that he cared too much.

Chapter Text

“Mom, your phone is really popping off over here.”

Olivia glances over her shoulder from her position at the stove, where she’s stirring Carisi’s homemade pesto into a pot of fusilli. She can just see her phone on the coffee table in front of Noah, buzzing gently.

“Oh, God,” she sighs, wiping her hands in a dish towel. “That’s never a good sign. Bring it here, would you?”

Noah, pleased to have any excuse to take a break from his math homework, tosses a pencil down and trots over, phone in hand.

“It looks like you’ve received … twenty emails. And a text,” he informs her, peering at the screen and hauling himself up onto a bar stool at the island.

“Twenty?” Olivia echoes, eyebrows shooting up. While the NYPD wasn’t exactly known for restraint when it came to emails, 20 in rapid succession on a Saturday night was a bit out of the ordinary.

“They’re all from Elliot,” Noah says as he hands her the phone.

“What?”

She takes the phone from his hand, sure he’s joking. But her screen shows that he’s right - in the space of twenty minutes, Elliot has sent twenty emails to her Gmail account.

Her phone buzzes in her hand. Make that twenty one.

“Yeah. You think he’s finally lost his mind?” Noah asks cheerfully, swinging his legs.

“Bold of you to assume that didn’t happen a long time ago, kiddo,” she responds dryly, tapping into her Gmail app and wondering if Elliot had been hacked. It didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility.

(She knows there’s no way he’s ever done any of the phishing training the NYPD runs and the only thing that’s saved him from being scammed online is that he never actually reads his email.)

Or maybe he’s had enough time to process all the anger she threw in his face last night, and is ready to sling some back. Maybe he’s ready to take a match to the gasoline she poured over them last night, and burn this whatever it is to the ground, once and for all.

“Oh, she’s got jokes,” Noah quips, craning his neck to try and see the phone screen. “Wait. Did your phone just buzz again?”

Twenty-two.

“Uh, looks like it,” Olivia says vaguely, scrolling through her inbox and trying to make sense of it all, trying to hide her growing unease from her son. “Listen, can you start making a salad? I need to deal with this.”

She needs to figure out what the fuck is going on before the speculation sends her into a full spiral.

“If by ‘make a salad’ you mean ‘throw a bagged salad in a bowl’ then yes.”

“So heartwarming to see you inherit my culinary skills. I’ll be right back.”

She stands in her bedroom, pulse fluttering anxiously, staring down at the lone text message from Elliot - she’d opened it, hoping to get some context for the beating her email inbox is currently taking.

They haven’t spoken since she left the bar last night.

She’d assumed that this fight (could you call it a fight?) would be like the others they’d had since he came back - they’d ignore each other for a few weeks, add it to the growing pile of Things We Don’t Talk About, let the dust settle then try again to reach a tentative place of friendship.

She’d hoped that this would play out differently. That throwing her anger and disappointment in his face instead of biting her tongue the way she has for nearly five years now would do something. Shake something loose. Blow things up finally, so she didn’t have to live in this suffocating, liminal space any longer.

And it looks like maybe, maybe it worked.

Hey Liv. Just learned about the existence of something called a Drafts folder. You heard of this thing? Could have saved me a lot of time over the years.

Turns out every email I wrote to you over the past ten years and never had the balls to send has been sitting in that folder all this time.

I’m going to send them all to you. It’ll take awhile - I’m not sure how many there are, but looks like a few hundred.

I know it doesn’t change what I did. What I missed. But maybe it’ll convince you that I really was thinking of you the whole time. At least 3600 times. Probably more.

Semper fi, El.

Her breath sticks in her throat and she presses a hand to her chest, feeling her heart beat wildly.

He can’t be serious.

He can’t have written her emails over that decade of absence.

He can’t have written her hundreds of emails over that decade.

He can’t seriously have not known that he had a Drafts folder.

(Okay - that one she can believe.)

He wrote her hundreds of emails, never sent them, and didn’t even know they still existed until now.

He wrote her hundreds of emails over ten years and he didn’t send them but he’s sending them now.

She sits heavily on the edge of the bed, hovers a finger over the first one.

Maybe she should delete it. Delete them all. Set up a filter to send them all straight to Trash so she never has to see them. Pretend they don’t exist and slip back into the status quo of uneven, uneasy friendship.

But she won’t. She can’t. She knows that.

With a shaking finger, she opens the first one.

August 11 2011

I put my papers in today, Liv.

I asked Cragen to tell you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so disappointed in me, and you know that’s saying something.

He’s right, of course. Not telling you myself is cowardice, nothing more. So is not answering your calls or responding to your texts since the shooting.

But I’ve realized that I’m not a good man, Liv. I’m weak. A coward. And now, of course, a child killer.

You always saw the best in me, more than anyone else. You’ve been my biggest cheerleader, my greatest supporter. I know that if I wanted to come back to work, you’d go to the mat for me. You’d take on IAB, every single person at 1PP, and the goddamn mayor's office if you thought it meant we’d be side by side again.

You’d do it, and you wouldn’t give a damn about how many bridges you burnt in the process, or what it did to your own career, your own reputation.

The thing is, I’m a liability. An albatross around your neck. If I came back, I’d only be holding you back. If I’m honest, I’ve been holding you back for years.

I’ve always been a selfish son of a bitch when it comes to you - always desperately holding onto the parts of you I was allowed to have, regardless of the cost to you. But I’m finally going to do the right thing. I’m going to let you go so I can’t ruin you. I’m going to let you go so you can become the person I know you can be.

I’m sorry I didn’t say this to your face. I couldn’t. Because you would have asked me to stay. Maybe not out loud, but I’d have known all the same. And I’d do anything you asked. Even if it means destroying both of us.

I’m not sure what happens to me now. Lord knows Kathy is sick of my shit - she has been for years, but especially now. And I don’t know how to be anything else but a cop. But I’ll figure it out.

But you, Liv? The things you’ll do. You’ll achieve so much without me. I just wish I could be there to see it.

Semper fi
El

It is testament to Olivia Benson’s ability to compartmentalize that she doesn’t disappear into her inbox the second that the first flood of emails from Elliot comes through.

In a display of what she considers to be admirable restraint, she reads only the first one and lets the weight of it settle in her chest before standing up, placing her phone on her bed and returning to the kitchen where Noah is merrily tossing what could only be described as an ungodly amount of crumbled feta into the salad bowl.

She is going to have dinner with her son like she’d planned. She is not going to so much as look at her phone until he is in bed.

Olivia’s eyes narrow slightly as she watches Noah.

“I thought you were just throwing a salad bag into a bowl,” she comments lightly, resting her hip against the counter.

“I felt inspired,” Noah informs her, cracking pepper on top of the bowl with a flourish. “Also you were taking ages and I got bored.”

“Fair,” she concedes, sliding past her son to grab plates from the cupboard and dish up the - now lukewarm - pasta she’d cooked earlier. They sit at the table, Noah’s mostly-feta salad between them and she picks at her dinner, focusing on her son’s chatter about dance and school and some recipe from TikTok he wants to try out.

She makes it through dinner and some spirited moaning about homework and screentime and when Noah is tucked away in his room, playing on his Switch and the apartment is finally quiet, the kitchen clean, leftovers packed away, she sits cross-legged on her bed. Phone in one hand, glass of wine in the other.

She takes a breath, trying to steady herself. She wants to believe that these emails will answer her questions, allay her fears, make it so she never has to question how Elliot feels about her.

But she also knows that there might be ugly truths within. Maybe he really was happier without her. Maybe his emails are full of sunshine, anecdotes about his perfect life and even though she knows it makes her small and mean and petty, she doesn’t think she can bear hearing about how wonderful everything in his life became once he left.

Olivia sighs, rolling her head and hearing her neck pop. She takes a fortifying sip of wine and is about to open her Gmail app when her phone buzzes again - a text this time.

It probably goes without saying, but you don’t need to read them. That’s your call. I just wanted you to have them.

Tell me if you want me to stop sending them.

She doesn’t respond. She’ll read a few, then decide if she wants him to stop.

Squaring her shoulders, she swipes his text away and opens her email.

Aug 15 2011

I knew this guy in the Marines who lost his leg during Desert Storm. He told me once how the weirdest part of losing a limb wasn’t that it was gone, but that sometimes it felt like it was still there.

Like he’d be sitting there, watching TV, feeling normal and then he’d look down and be like “oh that’s right. I don’t have that leg anymore.”

It's a bit what missing you feels like.

I’m so used to you being there. Sitting opposite me, chewing on a pen. Next to me in the sedan, arguing over the radio station. Walking alongside me down the street, swiping my fries at the diner, leaning against the wall in interrogation.

I keep expecting to see you. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve turned to say something to you in the last few weeks. I’ll open my mouth and turn my head and then I remember.

I don’t have that leg anymore.

I don’t know how to keep doing this.

Aug 20 2011

Almost called you last night.

I was drinking.

I’ve been doing that a lot lately.

Halfway down a bottle of whiskey, I came so close to calling you.

Then I thought about your mother. How she used to call you sometimes when we were on stakeouts, drunk and crying. How she’d call you Livvy and tell you she was sorry. How your jaw would tense and you’d blink a little too fast.

You deserve better than a drunk dial from someone too weak to love you properly.

You always did.

Aug 25 2011

Saw a dog with three legs today.

Made me think of you.

Made me think of that time we’d been up all night at the precinct. Over-caffeinated. Under slept. Vibrating with anxiety because a kid had been missing for twenty hours already and things weren’t looking good.

I remember us sitting outside, taking five minutes to get some sun and shove a hot dog in our mouths.

I remember someone walking a three legged dog past us. This tiny little thing, hopping along, with a big smile on its face.

I remember the way your eyes filled with tears at the sight and the way I teased you about it and the way you threatened to shoot me if I told anyone. And I knew, of course I knew, that you were overly emotional because you were exhausted and wrung out but teasing you was always the best part of my day, so I did it anyway.

Bleeding Heart Benson, I called you and you punched me in the arm.

That was always the best part of teasing you. You were never scared to hit back.

Aug 30 2011

I don’t sleep so well these days. A lot of nightmares. A lot of flashbacks. I still wake up screaming. Maybe less so than I did immediately after the shooting, but still.

I wake up screaming your name more often than not.

I know it bothers Kathy. How could it not? But she doesn’t understand. Doesn’t understand the abject, choking fear I felt when Jenna was shooting. How terrified I was that you’d be hit.

I have dreams that you were hit. Dreams that it’s your blood, not Sister Peg’s, staining the floor. Dreams that I’m watching the life drain from your eyes, your blood on my hands.

I wash my hands a lot when I wake up. Scrubbing off blood that was never there. Scrubbing off guilt that will never leave.

It’s been three months since the shooting. It feels like yesterday. It feels like a lifetime ago. I’ve been untethered ever since and I don’t know how to find solid ground.

I don’t know how to find solid ground without you.

Sep 7 2011

It’s not fall quite yet but I swear you can feel it in the air already.

Munch would probably say it’s because of climate change.

The store already has that seasonal pumpkin spice creamer that you used to pretend to hate. You’d always grimace at it but someone was stocking the fridge at the precinct with it during fall and it sure as hell wasn’t me or Fin.

I bought some the other day. Kathy looked at me like I was crazy. I said something vague about wanting to try something new.

Sometimes I get up early, before everyone and sit outside and drink a cup of horrifying pumpkin spiced coffee and imagine that you’re doing the same. I can pretend we’re both drinking the same terrible coffee at the same time, and maybe that’s almost like we’re drinking coffee together, just like we did thousands of times before.

I know it’s not the same. But I can pretend, at least for a bit.

(It still tastes fucking awful though, Jesus Christ Liv.)

Olivia laughs wetly, wiping tears away with her sleeve. He’d hated that goddamn creamer, its cloying sweetness and the weird film it left on his tongue. Each year he’d grit his teeth through it, complaining loudly and each year she’d pretend to not know where it had come from.

The idea that he’d bought some himself, just to feel closer to her was so stupid, so endearing, so goddamn Elliott that it makes her heart ache.

She pictures him sitting in that perpetually unmanicured garden in Queens, suffering through a cup of pumpkin spice coffee and she laughs again, pressing her hand to her chest.

She swallows the last of her wine, sets the glass down on her bedside table then swipes to her Messages app.

I’m reading them. Please keep sending them.

Chapter Text

He tries not to read each email too thoroughly before sending them to her.

His Drafts folder is, he’s learned, an uncomfortable time capsule of everything he felt during that lost decade of his life.

Even just skimming through each message - checking that the draft is one intended for Liv - has been uncomfortably eye-opening. If anyone had asked him before now, he’d say that he’d been happy after leaving the NYPD, after leaving New York.

Sure, maybe not right away and maybe not all the time but on the balance of it, he thought things had been okay.

But self awareness has never been his strong suit, and skimming through dozens and dozens of heartfelt messages has forced him to accept that he spent ten years lying to himself, spent ten years burying the darkness and over-focusing on the light.

He played his role so well, for so many years. Kept his anguish and grief inside, tucked safely away from the prying eyes of his wife and his kids and his priest and his therapists.

For ten years, he only let himself spill his truth in unsent emails to the woman he callously abandoned.

It’s been a few days now, since she asked him to please keep sending them. He’d obliged, sending her twenty or so a day, trying to space them out a little. He thinks he’s up to a hundred or more.

He's lost count.

He hasn’t heard from her since that last text telling him she was reading them, hasn’t seen her, has no way of knowing if these emails are making things better or worse.

He wants to know. He wants to let her take her time. He wants to push. He wants to give her space.

Mostly he just wants to know if she’s okay.

But he knows instinctively that he needs to wait for her to come to him.

So he does the only thing he can, and texts Fin.

“What kind of bullshit are you putting my captain through this time?” Fin asks wearily by way of greeting, sliding into the booth opposite Elliott and gesturing for a waitress.

“What makes you think I’m putting Olivia through some bullshit?”

“Because you’re you,” Fin replies with a roll of his eyes. “And putting Liv through it seems to be your favorite pastime.”

Elliot grimaces. He’s not right but he’s also not wrong.

“We got into it the other night,” he finally admits, staring down at the table, only looking up when a waitress slides a cup of coffee and a slice of cherry pie in front of Fin.

He quirks an eyebrow at him, and Fin shrugs.

“I come here a lot. Maura here knows what’s up.”

The waitress - Maura, he assumes - gives Fin a wink before trotting back to the counter and Elliot can’t stop himself from shaking his head, amused.

“So go on,” Fin says, gesturing with his fork. “Tell me what happened.”

Elliot sighs, stirs his coffee idly.

“The short version is that we were hanging out, I said something stupid, she got mad and left, I went home to sulk, my daughter taught me about the Drafts folder in Gmail and since then I’ve been sending Liv all the hundreds of emails I wrote her but never sent while I was gone.”

Fin hoots with laughter.

“The fuck you mean you had to be taught what a Drafts folder was?”

Elliot scowls, and Fin laughs harder.

“And you had hundreds of emails you never sent to her sitting in there? Man, I could get you put on a 72 hour psych hold based on that alone.”

He takes it on the chin because he knows it’s insane. Knows that Olivia Benson has made him insane for a quarter of a century.

“I’m trying to give her space to process but I also just want to make sure that all these emails aren’t … messing with her head.”

Fin chews, narrows his eyes.

“How likely is it? What’s in these emails? Better not be anything like that fuckass letter you gave her.”

Elliot winces.

“You know about the letter?”

“I know all kinds of things.”

He doesn’t doubt it. Fin has eyes everywhere, contacts at every level of the NYPD and the unfailing loyalty of Olivia Benson. If there’s something worth knowing, there’s no doubt Fin knows it.

“They’re not like the letter,” Elliot is hasty to assure him. “Less … uh, hurtful bullshit. More yearning and grief. With a touch of undiagnosed PTSD.”

Fin appraises him silently, thoughtfully.

“You write any of these emails in May 2013?”

May 2013 again. May 2013 when Something Bad happened to Olivia. Something that Fin was there for and he wasn’t.

“I did. I haven’t sent them to her yet.”

Fin looks at him silently, face unreadable.

“Tell me when you do,” he says finally, not leaving any room for argument. “That’s gonna be hard for her. Especially if it’s just you talking about how fucking great Rome is or some shit.”

Elliot opens his mouth, wants desperately to ask Fin about May 2013, then promptly closes it.

Fin nods, as if approving of Elliot’s decision to keep his mouth shut.

“You ain’t gonna hear about it from me,” Fin says, pushing his empty plate away. “If she hasn’t told you yet, there’s a reason. And you won’t hear about it from Amanda or Don or anyone else who was here. It’s Liv’s story to tell or to not tell.”

“But it’s bad,” he states, not letting the words curl into a question. He already knows it’s bad.

“The worst,” Fin confirms gravely.

He exhales shakily, pressing his fingertips into his temples.

“I don’t feel like I’ll ever deserve her forgiveness,” he mumbles, eyes cast downwards so Fin can’t see the tears blooming.

“Probably not,” Fin agrees, draining the last of his coffee. “But she wants to forgive you. So the least you can do is help her get there and accept it when she does. None of this Catholic guilt bullshit.”

“You’re right.”

“I’m always right. You’ve just always been too much of a jackass to accept it.”

“I’m glad, you know,” Elliot says hesitantly, lifting his eyes. “Glad she has you. Glad she’s had you all the years I was gone.”

Fin shrugs, but his eyes look pained for a second.

“I couldn’t protect her from everything. But I sure as fuck tried. I’m still fucking trying.” A pause. “Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I could share the load with someone else, though.”

December 1 2011

I don’t think I ever thanked you for working Christmas every year.

I’m not sure why. I guess I always got the feeling that you didn’t want me to make a big deal about it. I figured that’s why you never discussed it with me - just quietly went to Cragen each year and put your hand up.

I should have said thank you. I should have said thank you so many times.

I tried to show you that I was grateful. I hope you knew. I hope you knew that all the little treats I’d place on your desk during December - the cookies and the ornaments and the weird peppermint lattes - were because I was so thankful for you, for everything you did for me.

But I should have said it.

I should have said a lot of things.

Dec 9 2011

I keep hearing Last Christmas by Wham everywhere I go at the moment.

It’s in stores. In the car. On the TV.

It makes me think of you.

I don’t know if you even remember. I think it was the first year we were partnered. It came on in the diner where we stopped for lunch, and you were humming along while we waited for our sandwiches.

I teased you a little about it - asked if you were a secret George Michael superfan.

But you just smiled and told me that it came out the year you had the only good Christmas of your life, so you have a soft spot for it.

I looked it up today. Last Christmas came out in 1984. You would have been 16.

I assumed for a long time that maybe that one good Christmas was a good year for Serena. Maybe she didn’t drink as much. Maybe she gave you something meaningful and made you feel loved.

I didn’t put it together until today that it probably wasn’t Serena who made sure you had a good Christmas because you once told me that 16 was a bad year for you and your mom. That the two of you fought a lot because you were dating an older man. And maybe that older man was the reason you had a good Christmas for the first time in your life.

And God help me, I hate thinking that. Hate thinking about 16 year old Olivia and how she deserved so much more.

You deserve everything. I wish I could be the one to give it to you.

Dec 14 2011

Kathy’s trying really hard to make Christmas this year something special.

I know it’s because I’ve spent the last six months rotting away on the couch or in the basement. Drinking too much, not sleeping enough, waking up drenched in sweat and screaming.

I think she thinks that if she crams enough Christmas magic into the house, it’ll shake me loose from this state I’ve been in.

So the house is full of so many decorations it looks like one of those pop up Christmas stores and every room has some insane Christmas scented candle so everything smells like fake pine and cinnamon and each night we all have to sit there and watch some kind of Christmas movie and drink hot chocolate and eat cookies.

I’m good at playing along. I light the candles and I help Eli frost the cookies and I weigh in on which terrible Hallmark holiday movie we’ll watch.

And it’s the weirdest feeling because I know my body is doing all these things - I know it’s my head that nods at the right times and my hands that squeeze the piping bag and my breath that blows on the hot chocolate to cool it down for Eli.

But it doesn’t feel like it’s me doing those things. I feel completely removed from my own body, like I’m watching someone who looks just like me doing all the things I should be doing.

I think maybe I’ve felt like that for a long time.

Dec 23 2011

Tonight was a bad night.

Whiskey-in-the-hot-chocolate bad.

I could see Kathy watching me, that way she looks at me when she’s equal parts disappointed and frustrated.

It’s the Friday before Christmas, and I know that usually means everyone from the precinct trying to squeeze into some shitty bar, knocking back shots and hoping no one catches a case. Loud laughter and games of pool and Fin complaining about the Christmas music.

Maybe you in a dress. Maybe that red one you wore one year.

Munch told you that you looked beautiful, and you rolled your eyes but you were smiling a little, blushing a little.

That’s what I remember. Picklebacks and silk dresses and a little sliver of time where, for a moment, the horrors of the job were held at bay.

I burrowed into that memory tonight. Waited until everyone was in bed and poured myself a drink (and another and another) and sat in the dark and burrowed into the warmth of it.

Dec 25 2011

Merry Christmas, Liv.

I hope you’re not alone today.

She had been alone that Christmas.

Cragen made her take the day, despite her protests. She was better off at work, she knew. Better off with the distraction, better off at least being surrounded by colleagues than alone in her apartment.

What am I meant to do? she’d wanted to scream at him, pushing her nails into her palms so she didn’t. I don’t have anyone to be with. I don’t have anywhere to go.

He was telling her to sit in her loneliness, in her abject patheticness and it felt cruel.

But she was still trying to make up for her piss-poor behavior in the months after Elliot’s departure, so she’d simply nodded stiffly and said, “Understood.”

And so she sat, alone in her apartment, drunk and weepy and trying her hardest to avoid the cheesy Christmas movies on every goddamn channel. She ordered Chinese food she barely ate, and she drank her way through almost two bottles of red wine, and she hovered her thumb over Elliot’s contact in her phone, wondering what would happen if she tried to call him.

She thought about her mother and she thought about Elliot and she thought about the fact that no matter how hard she tried to correct the cosmic balance of her own existence, the universe insisted on telling her she would never be loved the way she wanted.

She thought about Elliot, cozy and warm with his beautiful family in Queens. Sharing a meal and passing out gifts and laughing happily, no longer dragged down by the weight of a partner who should never have existed.

She passed out early, too much wine on a mostly-empty stomach.

She went to work the next day, and Nick smiled brightly at her, asked her how her Christmas was.

“Good,” she’d lied, dropping her bag onto her desk. “Quiet. Just what I needed.”

There’s something vindicating about it now, learning that while she drunkenly wept herself to sleep on Christmas night 2011, he was thinking of her, white-knuckling his way through a holiday that should have brought him joy but didn’t.

She shouldn’t feel good about it, she knows. Shouldn’t feel good that someone she cared (cares) about was struggling as much as she was.

But it does feel good. Or at least it scratches something, eases that fear that she was the only one who felt the distance between them so deeply.

And maybe she should feel guilty about that, but fuck, she’s felt guilty for a quarter of a century and where has that gotten her?

She hasn’t said anything to him since he started sending her the emails, nothing beyond a request to keep sending them and she thinks maybe it’s time.

I know this is fucked up, she writes, because he’s been laying his soul out there with these emails and maybe she can try and return the favor just a little. But there’s something in me that’s glad you weren’t okay after you left. I hated that leaving me behind was so easy for you.

He writes back quickly, and if he’s judging her for what she said, he doesn’t say so.

I get it. I never really wanted you to move on either.

Chapter Text

May 15 2012

It’s been almost a year.

A year since I pulled that trigger.

A year since I saw you for the last time.

I have a feeling Kathy has set some kind of deadline for herself. She’s been on edge as the anniversary of the shooting gets closer. She’s more or less ignored my downward spiral over the past year but in the last few days, she’s been tense. Anxious. Looks like she wants to say something.

I expect it’s an ultimatum.

And look, I get it. Whatever I’m doing can’t go on. I can’t go on this way.

I’ve spent the last twelve months, trapped in memories of you. I know I can’t move forward with my life until I let you go, and letting you go terrifies me.

But the longer I go without letting you go, the closer I get to throwing the towel in. The closer I get to turning up at your door, begging for forgiveness, blowing up what’s left of my life and yours.

I know I can’t do that to you. I’m a fucking mess, Liv. I’m a trainwreck of a man who has never deserved you, and will only drag you down.

So I gotta try. Try to let you go. Not for me, but for you.

I don’t really give a shit what happens to me, to tell the truth. But you? There’s never been anything I wouldn’t do for you.

May 20 2012

She gave me the ultimatum I knew was coming.

We leave New York together or she and Eli leave without me.

She says I retired for a reason. Says my head and my heart are still over in Manhattan and I won’t be able to move past it if my old life is only a short drive away.

I didn’t bother pointing out that I retired after she’d pushed me to do it for three months. Didn’t bother pointing out that she was the one who’d screened my calls and kept everyone from the 1-6 at bay after the shooting. Didn’t bother pointing out that she was the one who’d told me I owed it to you to leave.

She frames it like it was my decision and I guess it was but I had a lot of help getting there.

No point in bringing that up, though. What’s done is done.

So I guess we’re leaving. And I don’t like it, because part of me thinks that as long as I’m nearby, I’ll still be able to have your back if you really need me.

That’s stupid of course. Arrogant. You’ve never really needed me. It was always me who needed you.

Kathy Stabler, Olivia realizes as she reads this latest batch of emails, must have fucking hated her.

Between The Letter (that fucking letter) and the fact that Kathy was the one to convince a grief-stricken, PTSD-ridden Elliot that leaving her behind was for the best, it seems safe to assume that Kathy Stabler had hated her.

Olivia snorts a little, picks up her wine glass from the bedside table. It was pretty galling, really.

For years, Olivia had worked extra hours so Elliot could be home for birthdays and dance recitals and parent-teacher interviews. She’d religiously reminded him of anniversaries, used his credit card to buy gifts and flowers, used her own credit card to buy gifts and flowers.

She’d fucking helped the woman give birth.

And it didn’t count for shit. Because Kathy was presented with an opportunity to excise Olivia like a tumor and she seized it with both hands.

It’s been almost two weeks since the emails began and they still haven’t seen each other. There’s been a few texts (and more than a few curious, probing glances from Fin which makes her pretty sure he knows - because of course he does, he’s Fin) but they have not spoken, have not laid eyes on each other.

Not for the first time, her fingers itch to call him.

Ultimately she stops herself because what would she even say?

Hey just wondering - on a scale from 1 to 10 how much did your wife fucking hate me?

Or maybe:

Do you think your wife hated me enough to keep my being kidnapped and tortured from you?

Probably not the second one.

Not yet, anyway.

She thinks they’ll probably get there, though.

Because she’s turned this thing over and over in her head - how is it possible that not a single Stabler saw any of the extensive news coverage about her ordeal (ordeals) with William Lewis?

It doesn’t seem possible. Not with the level of media coverage - while she was missing, during the trial, during the second kidnapping. Not with the sheer number of Stablers.

So if at least one of them knew, then the fact that Elliot doesn’t know must mean it was deliberately kept from him.

There was a time when Olivia would never have believed that Kathy would do that to her.

She’s less sure now.

And because she’s had two glasses of wine and because she’s been indulging in some of her … less than charitable thoughts since the emails began, she can’t stop a snort of laughter escaping.

Because Kathy might have been instrumental in making sure Elliot stayed away from her, and that might have broken Olivia’s heart, but there’s something very funny about the fact that despite all of her efforts to remove Olivia from their lives, Olivia still lived rent-free in her mind even after a decade.

The Letter proves that.

She presses her lips together because she knows she absolutely should not find any of this funny, but Jesus. She spent a decade and change trying her best to not get between her partner and his wife, and even with an ocean between them, she somehow still managed to.

She calls him the next night - in part because she feels maybe a tiny, tiny little bit guilty for finding Kathy’s fixation on her after ten whole years funny.

(It is, though. Kind of funny.)

She calls partly because she feels guilty but mostly because she’s aching to hear his voice.

She doesn’t love that fact, but it’s true.

He answers after the second ring.

“Hey,” he says, a little breathless. “Liv, hey.”

“Hey yourself,” she responds easily, stretching her legs out on the couch and tucking her feet under a cushion.

She can feel him relax at her breezy tone, can practically hear his shoulders dropping in relief at the knowledge that she hasn’t called to fight.

“How are you doing?” he asks, matching her casual tone. “Been busy?”

“Oh you know. I’m the captain of a sex crimes unit and a single mom … so life is pretty cool and relaxing.”

He snorts with amusement.

“Oh, I bet. I’m sure you get eight hours of sleep every night.”

“Oh, at least,” she agrees. “And I eat three really balanced meals every single day.”

He laughs at that, and the sound causes warmth to flood her chest.

“You’re good, though? For real?”

“Yeah, El,” she breathes, tucking her phone between her shoulder and ear so she can warm her hands on the mug of tea resting on her lap. “I’m good. It’s been … it’s been good.”

She means the emails. He knows that’s what she means.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I made a lot of assumptions about where your head was at back then. Turns out I was plenty wrong. And normally I hate being wrong, but it’s good this time. I’m glad I was wrong.”

“Wait, what? You hate being wrong?”

“Oh fuck off,” she laughs, placing her mug of tea down on the coffee table so she can draw her knees to her chest. She hears his own laugh in response and she likes it.

It feels good. Every conversation they’ve had since he came back has felt so heavy, so loaded, so bloated with things unsaid.

“What was the biggest … I don’t know, misconception you had?” he asks hesitantly, as if worried he’s overstepping.

It’s shockingly forward for Elliot, who has been careful to give her space since the emails began. Since before that, really - since sugar and her kitchen and I want to but I can’t.

“I thought,” she begins haltingly, “that it was easy for you. I thought you walked away because you didn’t care enough to say goodbye. For ten years I thought I’d made it all up, you know?”

“Made what up?”

“Us,” she whispers, swiping at her eyes, embarrassed at tears that no one can see. “I thought maybe I’d spent 12 years reading into things too much, putting too much importance on our partnership. I thought that it meant more to me than it did to you. I thought maybe none of it was real.”

She hears a shuddering exhale on the other end of the line.

“It was real, Liv,” he says quietly. “It was the realest thing I’ve ever felt.”

May 30 2012

While I’ve been drinking and rotting away in the basement, Kathy’s been making moves to get us out of New York.

I kind of thought her ultimatum didn’t have a whole lot of teeth. Lord knows it’s not the first time she’s made demands.

But this time, she’s had enough - time? energy? resentment? - to start setting things in motion. There’s passports. Realtors. Storage units. Removalists.

It’s been ten days since she laid down her terms and my house has a For Sale sign at the front and everything’s in boxes I didn’t pack and I don’t even know where we’re going.

I just know it’s going to be far away from you.

I have this image in my head of a strand of thread, tying us together when we’re apart. Long enough to keep us connected to each other when you left for Computer Crimes, when you left for Oregon.

I wonder if it’s long enough to stretch across the ocean.

June 10 2012

Kathleen asked about you today.

We had a final dinner at the house - for us to say goodbye to the older kids, and for the older kids to say goodbye to the home they grew up in.

I was good. Said all the right things. Didn’t drink anything heavier than Diet Coke.

It was my finest performance to date. I know that because for once Kathy seemed happy instead of disappointed or frustrated.

I could hear my mom’s voice in my head, the advice she gave me before some stupid Thanksgiving pageant I was in when I was maybe eight.

“Acting’s easy, honey. All you need to do is hit your mark and remember your lines.”

After dinner, Kathy was putting Eli to bed, Maureen and the twins were playing Uno and Katie was helping me clean up the kitchen.

She asked me if I’d said goodbye to you.

I nearly broke a wine glass when she asked. It’s been so long since anyone has asked me about you.

I told her I hadn’t. Told her I hadn’t seen you or spoken to you for over a year.

It’s not the first time Katie’s looked disappointed in me but it’s the first time it’s made me feel the way it did. Raw and exposed.

I told her it was for the best. For all of us. That we’d all be happier and better off.

I said all the right things. I hit my mark, remembered my lines.

I don’t think she believed me though.

I don’t really believe me, either.

June 14 2012

We’re at the airport.

Jesus Christ. This doesn’t feel real.

I feel like I’m floating outside my body again.

Please be okay without me in New York.

Please be okay.

June 20 2012

We’re in London.

The sky feels too close here somehow.

It feels suffocating.

June 24 2012

I don’t like being here, but I do like being a little more free than I have been.

For the past year Kathy’s been on me every time I leave the house for longer than an hour or so. Texting. Calling. Wanting to know where I am.

Now we’re not in New York, she doesn’t seem to care where I am or what I’m doing.

Can’t believe it took me so long to realize that she was keeping tabs on me because she was worried I was with you.

Olivia presses her lips together, knowing another inappropriate laugh is about to spring forth.

Because Jesus Christ. Kathy Stabler really had fucking hated her.

Chapter Text

Feb 7 2013

Happy birthday, Liv.

I woke up thinking of this time we were sitting in the sedan, way back when. Maybe early 2000s.

This song came on the radio that I’d never heard before. And I turned to look at you and you were gazing out the window, softly singing along. Like you knew all the words. Like it was a song that meant something.

I almost asked you about it but you looked so deep in this moment, in this song that meant something to you that I didn’t want to interrupt so I didn’t ask.

I never asked and I never heard it again.

Sometimes when I’ve been thinking about you a lot, I can see you, forehead pressed against the glass, softly singing along to a song I don’t know.

I wish I’d asked what it was, what it meant to you. I should have asked.

I guess I always thought we’d have more time.

Feb 12 2013

I can’t stop thinking about that song.

I feel like if I could just hear the song, it’d help me feel connected to you. Because goddammit, you feel so fucking far away right now.

Feb 17 2013

I know Brooklyn thinks that it’s got a monopoly on hipsters but Jesus, London’s something else. Never seen so many skinny jeans and ironic moustaches in my life.

I’ve mostly ignored the hipsters since we got here but they finally came in handy today.

I found this little record store and told the guy there I was trying to find a song I’d heard a long time ago.

The way this guy looked at me, you’d think I asked him for a kidney.

But lucky for me, he indulged me. Let me awkwardly hum what I could remember, cut me off after ten seconds then gave me a look like I was the dumbest motherfucker he’d ever met.

It’s Bill Callahan, he told me. Or Smog. He used to go by Smog but he’s Bill Callahan now.

Sure, I said, like I knew what he was talking about.

He sold me a couple of CDs (and rolled his eyes when I said I didn’t have a record player like I’m the weird one for not having a fucking record player in 2013?) and I took them back to the flat and waited until I was alone to listen.

Finally hearing that song that’s been tickling the edge of my brain for years was something else. It took my breath away.

If I close my eyes, I can still hear you singing quietly about the type of memories that turn your bones to glass.

The emails from May 2013 are approaching, and he’s nervous.

Nervous because he still doesn’t know what the Something Bad that happened to Olivia in that month is.

He knows it was bad enough to make her headline news, to make her loved ones fiercely protective of her, to make her brittle and defensive whenever he even skirts near the subject.

He knows Ayanna knows.

“You were on the force back in 2013, right?” he’d asked carefully, trying to keep his voice casual.

“Baby narcotics detective, trying way too hard to prove myself,” she’d confirmed, rolling her eyes at the memory of her overeager, green self.

“Do you remember something happening to Captain Benson in May that year?”

He watched as Ayanna froze. As the hand that was pouring coffee into her mug shook slightly, enough to make her place the pot back even though her cup was only half full.

“Why would you ask that?” she'd asked, eyes narrowed. “Everyone who was on the force back then remembers that. It was a bad fucking time.”

He’d sighed, rubbed his hand over his head.

“Because I don’t know what happened. No one told me at the time and she still won’t tell me and -“

“If you don’t know, that’s no accident,” Ayanna had told him bluntly, crossing her arms over her chest. “All your kids except for Eli were still here in 2013 right?”

He’d nodded, feeling his heart sink. He’d hoped that maybe Olivia’s perspective of how big a story it had been was a little skewed, colored by her own trauma.

“Zero chance none of them knew,” she’d said, leaning her hip against the counter and fixing him with an unblinking stare. “So have fun unpacking that.”

He’d opened his mouth to respond but she had cut him off, poking her finger right into his chest.

“And don’t even think about dragging her into whatever drama this starts with your kids.”

“Copy that, Sarge,” he’d mumbled, rubbing at the spot her finger had poked.

And that’s why he’s here now, sitting opposite his two oldest children, both of whom are staring at him across his dining table with apprehension clear in their eyes.

“I need to ask you two something,” he begins haltingly, folding his hands in front of him. “I want to know if either of you knew about something that happened to Olivia in May 2013.”

He watches them carefully as he speaks, because after several decades of interrogations, he knows that body language often says more than words will. Knows that if his daughters are keeping something from him, he’ll be able to tell. He watches as Katie’s eyebrows shoot upwards, as she casts a sideways glance at her sister. He watches as Maureen’s eyes narrow, her jaw sets insolently and her arms fold tightly over her chest.

Katie looks wary, but Maureen? Maureen looks pissed.

“Really, dad?” she asks, words dripping with disdain. “This is what it’s come to? Let me guess, you want to convince Olivia you didn’t know, and it’ll be more convincing if you can gaslight us too?”

He stares at his oldest daughter, shocked at both her words and her tone.

“I didn’t know,” he tells her firmly. “I still don’t. All I know is that something happened. But I’m guessing you’ve known this whole time, so let’s talk about that.”

Maureen stares back at him, eyes murderous in a way he hasn’t seen since she was a teen.

“Stop lying,” she snaps. “You know. You knew. I know you know because I tried to call you and you wouldn’t answer, so I called mom. And then she managed to get through to you, and she told me everything you said. Everything.”

Kathleen, who has so far been silent, is darting her eyes between her sister and her father. He can see her brain ticking, see her piecing things together. She’s chewing her lip anxiously, and he can’t remember seeing her look so worried in a very long time.

“Mo,” she says hesitantly, laying a hand on her shoulder. “What if he’s not lying?”

Maureen turns wild, disbelieving eyes to her sister, shaking her head vehemently.

“No, he knows!” she insists, voice rising. “I can’t believe you’re buying this, Katie! You know how it happened. You were there. ”

“Yeah, I was,” Kathleen agrees quietly. “And that’s why I know that you never spoke to him about it directly. None of us did. We just trusted what mom told us.”

He watches as the words hit Maureen, as her anger falters.

“It was always kind of weird, right?” Kathleen asks, voice soft. “He didn’t react the way we thought he would, did he?”

Maureen turns glassy eyes to her father, and he can see her struggling to reconcile what Kathleen is saying with what she’s been so sure of for over ten years.

“Babe, you know it never made sense,” Kathleen presses gently, and he watches as Maureen’s face crumples.

“I didn’t know,” he tells her quietly, tears springing to his own eyes. “I swear to you. Your mom never told me. I still - I still don’t know. No one will tell me what happened.”

A sob tears from Maureen’s throat and she presses the heel of her palm to her eyes, trying in vain to stop the tears before turning to look at her sister accusingly.

“Why aren’t you more surprised? Did you know? Did you know about this?”

Kathleen exhales a shaky breath, pushes her hair back with trembling hands.

“No,” she whispers, but there is shame and guilt painted heavily across her features and Elliot steels himself for what she’s about to say, digging his fingers into his thigh. “No, I didn’t know. But I always … suspected. It never sat right with me, but I never said anything.”

“Why?” he asks, voice catching in his throat. “Why didn’t you just ask me if I knew?”

A tear escapes Katie’s eye, and she brushes it away.

“I didn’t know how. Most of me didn’t believe that you’d be capable of ignoring something like that happening to Olivia, but there was still a part of me that thought maybe it was true. Because if you could walk away from her the way you did, without even saying goodbye, maybe you really didn’t give a fuck.”

His cheeks are burning hot with regret, because he knows Katie is right. It would have been so goddamn easy for everyone to believe he didn’t give a damn about what happened to Olivia, because he’d already shown in myriad ways that he didn’t give a damn about her.

It makes him feel ill, to know that his own behavior made it easier to believe that he had known and not cared than it was to believe that he didn’t know at all.

“I think I was scared to ask,” Katie admits, eyes bright with tears. “I was scared to find out you did know and you really were that person. And I was scared to find out you didn’t know, and that mom was capable of lying to us. Nothing good was going to come from talking about it, so I just didn’t.”

“At least you questioned it,” Maureen mumbles, staring down at her hands. “I just believed it. Mom told me what you said, and I didn’t even question it once. Just believed with my whole heart that you were a fucking monster.”

He winces at that, because the idea that his daughter, his first-born, the baby girl for whom he’d sacrificed so much could so readily believe that he was that cold, that callous fucking hurts.

“What did she tell you? What did she say I said?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.

“She said you said you’d left for a reason and there was no point in dredging up the past. Said you didn’t see the point. That you thought Olivia was better off without you and you were better off without her.”

Elliot feels the beginnings of anger lick at the base of his spine, but it’s quickly extinguished when Katie gives him a sad, knowing smile.

“You’d said the same thing to me before,” she reminds him. “Before you left. It’s part of what made me think maybe she was telling the truth. You’d already walked away without saying goodbye, you hadn’t tried to reach out to her at all since the shooting … it wasn’t a huge reach to think that maybe you really were okay with leaving her in the past.”

And Elliot once again feels that familiar prickle of shame and guilt coursing through his veins, making his skin burn. He’d been prepared to be angry when he finally uncovered the truth - angry at his wife, his kids for keeping what had happened to Olivia from him. He’d wanted to be angry - angry at someone, anyone for littering the distance between him and Olivia with broken glass and shattered trust.

But once again the blame lies with him, and the choices he made.

Because his wife wouldn’t have felt the need to lie if she thought she could trust him - trust him to not spiral, to not disappear to New York and throw their family into another season of turmoil. And his kids wouldn’t have so easily believed the lie if he hadn’t unceremoniously tossed Olivia aside after the shooting.

Kathy may have been the one who lied, but he’d spent years laying the foundation.

“Daddy, I’m so sorry,” Maureen breathes, reaching across the table to grab his hand.

“Oh honey,” he sighs, gripping her hand tightly, tears burning in his eyes. “This isn’t your fault. I’m not upset with any of you. I’m not even really upset with your mom. This is on me. This is my fault.”

At that Katie snorts a little, rolling her eyes.

“Dad. Two things can be true. Your behavior might have led her to that place, but mom still did something pretty fucked up.”

And maybe she’s right - it wasn’t fair for Kathy to lie, but had he really left her much choice?

He wants so desperately to heal his relationship with Olivia, with his children, with himself - and he knows he cannot do that if he doesn’t take ownership of what happened. This mess is one he made, and like always, Kathy and Olivia were left to try and salvage what they could.

“I hate that your mom lied,” he says slowly, because he’s starting to understand that lies and half-truths are what got them here, and he wants his girls to understand that too. “But my partnership with Olivia, our friendship had become … unsustainable even before the shooting.”

“We were too close. Too enmeshed. It had been hard for a really long time to be that close with Olivia and not have it interfere in my relationship with your mom. When we were on the job together I could justify how close we were, but without the job, there wasn’t a way to do that. I walked away without saying goodbye to Olivia because I thought that’s what I had to do to keep our family together. And I’m sure your mom lied for the same reason.”

Maureen stares at him, mouth open.

“You really didn’t say goodbye to her?”

He shakes his head, ashamed and Maureen huffs out in disbelief.

“Fucking hell,” she mutters, shaking her head. “I can’t believe she’s even willing to give you the time of day after that, let alone do as much as she’s done for us all since you got back.”

“Yeah well that’s Liv,” he says ruefully. “She’d set herself on fire if she thought it’d keep someone else warm.”

Kathleen snorts derisively and he shoots her a glance.

“This is bullshit,” she declares flatly.

“Katie,” he warns.

She shrugs, unaffected by his tone, because Katie has never cared about saying the truth, even when it’s ugly, and she’s not about to start now.

“You and mom were both as bad as one another,” she tells him bluntly. “You both decided that hurting Olivia was just the price of keeping your marriage together. You can tell yourself that you both just did what you had to do, but I’m not going to sit here and pretend that it’s not fucked up.”

“Katie.”

“What?” she exclaims, throwing her hands in the air. “I mean it would be one thing if Olivia was some kind of … I don’t know, seductress intent on destroying your marriage. But she wasn’t! She kept you alive for years, she kept me alive, she saved mom’s life and Eli’s life. Her biggest crime was being loyal to you and your family and in the end you and mom just decided to throw her away. You both used her up and spit her out and then you left and she walked through hell and somehow survived and none of us were there for her!”

Her voice breaks at the last part and he sees then, the weight Kathleen has been carrying all these years. Knowing - or at least suspecting - the truth, while being aware that if she brought it all into the open, she would take the blame for breaking the family apart. Knowing what had happened to Olivia but feeling unable to reach out, because her parents had tacitly demanded that the kids cut her off, too.

He watches Maureen reach out to clasp her sister's hand and he tries to focus on the sweetness of it, of two sisters seeking comfort from each other. But Kathleen’s words are ringing in his ears, and he can feel that he is about to break.

Because this is too much. Liv. Kathy. His kids. The way he has failed them all.

It’s too much.

Kathleen’s words. Too much.

She kept me alive.

You used her up and spit her out.

She walked through hell.

He sways slightly in his seat, and sees the girls exchange nervous glances.

“Daddy?” Maureen asks meekly. “Are you okay?”

“I need a minute,” he mumbles, feeling his vision splinter into little shards of fractured light, cold sweat prickling on his skin.

He can hear them whispering to each other, voices hushed and panicked.

“Is he reacting to something I said?”

“The fuck do you think? Did you even hear the words that came out of your mouth?”

“It was fucked. Am I meant to pretend it wasn’t fucked?”

“Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up Katie. I don’t think this is helping.”

“I gotta talk to Liv,” he rasps, blinking to try and clear his vision. He can feel his pulse hammering, feel the sweat prickling on the back of his neck. This is too much. This is too goddamn much.

“No way,” Katie says sharply, leaning across the table to grab his phone and slide it out of his reach. “There is no way on Earth I am letting you dump your trauma all over Olivia right now. Okay? She’s the one who went through hell, she’s the one who was thrown out like trash by you and mom. You don’t get to be comforted by her because you feel bad about it now.”

Maureen peers at him with concern before turning to look at her sister.

“Katie - maybe he should talk to her.”

“Why? So she can clean up his mess again?”

“No. Because he looks like he’s about to lose it.”

He feels Katie staring at him, watches as she chews her lip.

“Okay,” she relents. “Fuck. Fuck. But I’ll call her. And she can decide if she wants to listen to him.”

Chapter Text

Fin clocks the way her shoulders slump when her phone buzzes, and he shoots her a curious look across her desk.

“Stabler?” he asks knowingly.

She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose as if that might stave off what she knows is about to be a headache.

“One of them,” she mutters, staring apprehensively at the buzzing phone before her, at the big white letters that scream KATHLEEN STABLER.

“You could just not answer,” Fin suggests with a shrug.

She snorts at that because she knows and Fin knows and her therapist knows that she’s never going to ignore a Stabler even when she damn well should.

She picks up the phone, swipes to answer. Fin moves to leave, to give her privacy but she waves a hand at him, gesturing for him to sit down.

She’s not sure why but she’s pretty sure she wants Fin here for this.

“Hey Kathleen - everything ok?”

“Hey Liv,” Katie replies but her voice is unnaturally bright, and Olivia knows that her instinct was right, that Kathleen is calling because something is wrong.

“What’s wrong?”

She can hear muffled whispering and it sounds a lot like Kathleen arguing with either Lizzie or Maureen.

“So … uh, we kind of unpacked some stuff tonight and Dad’s kind of freaking out and he wants to talk to you but I didn’t want to like, unleash him on you like this so I just thought I’d talk to you first if that’s okay?”

Olivia’s eyebrows are drawn together with a mix of apprehension and confusion. Feeling a little guilty, she switches her phone to speaker and glances at Fin before pressing her index finger to her lips.

He mimes zipping his lips and she rolls her eyes.

“What do you mean your Dad is freaking out?”

“I think he’s having a panic attack,” Katie says, words falling out in a rush. “He found out some stuff tonight and like … it wasn’t good Liv and he’s worried about you and I think he needs to talk to you or see you or something but I’m also very aware that this is not your responsibility and I -”

“Hey, slow down, okay?” Olivia interrupts gently, her voice taking on the soothing, soft quality Fin has heard her take with victims and witnesses thousands of times. “Just tell me what happened.”

Fin shifts forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. His forehead is furrowed slightly, like he’s waiting for some kind of axe to fall.

There’s more muffled whispering - she’s pretty sure it’s Maureen - and the cadence of both their voices sounds urgent, anxious, a little combative.

“Dad … uh, he asked us if we knew about what happened to you,” Katie finally says in a hushed voice, sounding hesitant, maybe a little ashamed. “Back in 2013. And we did. And this whole time we thought he did too but -”

Fin’s face clouds immediately, because he knows exactly what Katie is saying. She shoots him a warning glance, reminding him to stay quiet, even as she’s gripping the edge of her desk to try and still the anger threatening to course through her veins.

“Okay, okay, I understand,” she interjects because she knows, knows, what Katie means but she’s not ready to hear the words yet.

“Fuck, Liv. I’m so sorry,” Katie breathes, voice thick with tears. “I didn’t know.”

She feels tears prick her own eyes and she blinks them away, because she doesn’t want to cry. She wants to rage. She wants to burn something down. She wants to kick a hole in the fucking sky.

“Does he know?” she asks, and she cringes a little at the way her words come out - short and a little sharp - because she’s angry and she’s anxious that maybe Elliot knows everything now and she can feel that familiar lick of fear and panic in her veins. “Did you tell him what happened?”

“No. No. God, Liv. Of course not,” Kathleen says, firmly. “We would never. That’s your story to tell - if you ever want to tell it.”

Fin nods in agreement, settles back in his chair a little as if he’s no longer spoiling for a fight.

“Let me talk to him, Katie.”

She hears Katie gently speaking to her father, hears the phone moving from one hand to another. Fin stands to give her privacy again, but this time she doesn’t stop him. She gives him a weak smile of gratitude (because thank God for Fin Tutuola always just being there when she needs him) and he nods once before closing the door behind him.

“Liv,” Elliot says quietly, heavily.

“Hey partner,” she replies softly.

“She knew.”

“I know.”

“She knew and she kept it from me and she lied to the kids -”

“Elliot, I know.”

She hears him crying softly on the other end of the line, and she feels her heart squeeze painfully. Unconsciously, she digs a fingertip into one of her scars - the one that sits right at the curve of her breast, the one that’s always been the hardest to hide - the way she does sometimes when the memories of what she lived through hurt just a little too much.

“Wanna come over and listen to Bill Callahan?” she asks because she can’t bear to listen to him crying and she’s hoping a little in-joke, a little reference to his emails will shake him from this dark place he seems to be settling into.

She’s rewarded with a wet laugh in response and it makes tears well in her own eyes.

Jesus, we’re a fucking mess.

“Yeah?” he asks hopefully.

“Yeah. But I get to pick which albums.”

He laughs again, and it makes warmth bloom in her veins.

“I’ll be home in about an hour. You gonna be okay to drive?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Okay. Do me a favor first?”

“Anything.”

“Send me the emails for May 2013. Before we talk about any of it … I just need to know where your head was at that time.”

“Yeah of course,” he breathes and she feels, for a moment, that she could ask him to do anything right now and he’d do it without question. “I’ll see you soon, Liv.”

As soon as she ends the call, he breathes a sigh of relief. Everything about Olivia has always felt like a balm for his wretched soul, and he wonders, not for the first time, how he managed to stay away from her for ten whole years.

“Everything okay?” Maureen asks hesitantly, fiddling anxiously with the chain around her neck.

He draws his oldest child to him, presses a kiss to her temple, because he doesn’t want her to blame herself for any of this.

“Yeah,” he assures her, feeling his heart sing as she loops an arm around his waist and tucks herself into his side in a way she hasn’t done in years. “I’m gonna head over to Olivia’s. Talk some of this out.”

“I’ll drive you,” Kathleen tells him and he doesn’t bother arguing. Speaking to Olivia has calmed him somewhat but he still feels the jittery nausea he associates with the aftermath of a panic attack.

“Thanks baby,” he says softly. “She won’t be home for about an hour so I’ve got some time. I’m gonna have a shower and she uh … she wants me to send her the emails from May 2013.”

“You read them yet?”

“Yeah. It was rough. I didn’t realize how bad my headspace was at that time.”

Katie smiles softly, rests her head on his shoulder.

“Maybe part of you knew she wasn’t okay. You always were weirdly connected.”

May 2 2013

I’m gonna tell you something that is going to make me sound like the absolute epitome of the ugly American.

After awhile, every fucking city feels the same.

There might not be a more ungrateful bastard than me because we’ve been travelling all over Europe for the last few months and I barely remember any of it.

You could put a gun to my head and ask me to tell you something significant I noticed in each city we’ve visited and it’d be all over for me.

But I can order a sandwich in like four different languages now, so at least that’s something.

I think the problem is that I don’t feel like I deserve this.

Like is this the reward for killing a young girl? A lengthy European vacation?

You’re the one who deserves this. You’re the one who deserves for those travel brochures to become a reality.

But instead I’m here and you’re probably working late and once again I’m reminded there’s no fucking justice in this world.

May 6 2013

Sometimes I think I should have listened to all the people who told me to go to therapy after the shooting.

I didn’t, of course. You know how I am about therapists.

But every now and then I have little moments where I think maybe I really did lose my mind two years ago.

Sometimes I have these full conversations with you. I can feel you next to me and I can smell your perfume and we’re talking for hours and it feels so fucking real. Then I blink and I’m sitting at a cafe or on a park bench by myself and no time has passed. The sun is still out. The coffee is still hot.

Sometimes I’ll be doing something - something mundane like walking or talking or prepping dinner - and I have this sudden feeling like I’m a marionette. Like I’m not real and someone’s operating me, pulling strings so I look and act like a real boy.

Sometimes I see ghosts. Sometimes I see bodies. Sometimes I smell death. None of it’s real.

Maybe I should go to therapy. Or maybe this is God’s way of showing me what I deserve.

May 14 2013

I can’t believe it’s been almost two years.

I thought it’d get easier the more time passed.

I think it’s just getting harder.

May 15 2013

We’re heading to Greece.

An old friend of mine got in touch, heard I’d retired. Wanted to know if I was looking for some work.

I told him I thought he seemed confused about what retirement was.

But he says the money in private security is good, the work can be as easy as I want it to be and it’ll keep my brain and body from atrophying. Said he’s seen too many guys deteriorate, lose the plot after retiring.

Kathy wants me to do it, partly because she’s sick of me wandering around short-stay apartments like a ghost and partly because all the stuff she wants to do while we’re here costs money.

So we’re off to Greece, so I can work private security on yachts for rich assholes for the summer because Kathy loves being here and being here costs money and at least that’s something I can give her.

Feeling like a walking paycheck isn’t new, but at least at SVU I felt like I had a purpose, like earning that paycheck meant something. But this? Struggling to think of a more meaningless, hollow existence, to be honest.

May 24 2013

It’s beautiful here. But I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin for some reason.

May 28 2013

I heard you whisper my name tonight.

I wasn’t asleep.

I wasn’t drinking.

But I heard you say my name so clearly I stopped breathing.

I think I’ve finally lost it.

She makes Fin read them first, tells him she doesn’t know what it is that she’s afraid of reading, but she’s sure that Fin will know it if he sees it.

It’s testament to the level of trust and understanding between them that Fin takes this task on without so much as a hint of protest.

She sits opposite him, facing him across her desk as he reads. She avoids looking at him too closely, not wanting to read too much into his expressions. Instead she folds her hands in front of her and casts her eyes downwards. After five anxiety-inducing minutes, he places her phone back on her desk and pushes it towards her.

“So?” she presses, resting her fingertips next to her phone, unable to bring herself to reach for it just yet.

“It’s safe,” he assures her. “Weird. But safe.”

Her nose wrinkles.

“Weird how?”

“You’ll see,” is all he says.

She huffs a little at his unwillingness to give her more information and he laughs.

“Read them, Liv. Then go home, put on one of those bougie-ass lounge sets you keep buying and have the conversation you and Stabler need to have.”

She scowls.

“They’re not bougie,” she argues.

He snorts with amusement, heads for her door.

“Liv, I know cashmere when I see it. Don’t make me drag you for those Diptyque candles and that Loewe puzzle tote too.”

Her mouth drops open, in indignation (and partly because his pronunciation of Loewe was spot-on) and he laughs all the way back to his desk.

She soon finds out what Fin means when he says Elliot’s emails were weird.

The first few were more concerning than anything else - it was clear that he was experiencing dissociative episodes even two years after the shooting, and her heart ached at the fact that no one in his life had helped him get the help he clearly needed.

But the next two floored her.

His skin crawling while Lewis had her.

Him hearing her voice when she was finally free, but so hollow, so empty, so utterly broken. While she sat alone in a hospital room, feeling like her soul had been torn asunder.

She’d been sitting in that bed, exhausted but unable to sleep, beating herself up - for freezing when she realized Lewis was in her apartment, for letting him get under her skin, for stupidly looking for Elliot as Nick helped her out of that wretched beach house, for still wanting him there despite everything - and somehow, he’d heard her.

It didn’t make sense. But in a way it also made perfect sense.

Always so in sync.

She presses her fingers to her lips to stifle a laugh or a sob or maybe both.

Fin’s head appears around her door, and he lifts his eyebrows.

“See what I mean? Fucking weird, right?”

Chapter Text

“It’s okay to be mad, you know.”

Kathleen’s voice is soft, her hands gripping the steering wheel tightly as she drives to the Upper West Side. Her eyes are staring straight ahead, and her words sit like a heavy fog between them.

“I know you’re probably feeling really conflicted like you can’t be mad because mom’s not here to defend herself or because you think it’s your fault … but I just want you to know that there’s nothing wrong with being angry about this. I’m angry about it. I’m angry at mom and I’m angry at myself for being too scared to do anything about it. But you’re allowed to be angry. Even good people do shitty things sometimes. And this was … pretty shitty.”

He exhales heavily, presses his fingertips into his temples, quietly marveling at how insightful his chaotic, wild second-born has become. When she was in the grips of unmanaged bipolar, he had despaired, thought her destined for a lifetime of bad choices and worse consequences. But here she is now - grown up and smart and clever and disarmingly astute.

“What did you mean?” he asks. “When you said Olivia saved your life?”

She glances sideways at him, before flicking her eyes back to the road. Her fingers flex on the steering wheel.

“Back when I was really sick,” she tells him. “When I got arrested. I was so ready to go to prison, ready to just tank the fuck out of my life. Then Olivia brought Grandma to come see me when I was locked up. I don’t even know how she pulled that off. But Grandma convinced me to take the plea deal and get help instead. That conversation saved my life, dad. It scares me, sometimes, to think about where I’d have ended up if Liv hadn’t gotten Grandma to talk to me that day.”

What the fuck.

It’s been over 15 years since that horrifying week, since his blood had run cold with the fear that he was going to lose Kathleen for good. He’d never known why she’d changed her mind at the last minute, had always assumed some little sliver of clarity had managed to get through to her, through the dense cloud of her illness.

But it was Liv.

Of course it was Liv.

“I had no idea,” he tells her, voice cracking. “She never said anything.”

“Grandma asked her not to.”

The car is silent, except for the ticking of the indicator as they wait at the lights.

“What are you thinking?” she asks finally, as the lights change and she turns, tapping her fingers on the wheel.

“That maybe if your mom knew, she wouldn’t have been so quick to cut Olivia out of our lives.”

Kathleen snorts, as if amused by his naivety.

“I think if you think that, you really don’t understand how threatened mom felt by Olivia. Everything she did for us just made it worse. Because she knew Liv did those things because she loved you.”

His head falls back against the seat, and he wonders how many more gut punches he can take today.

“I’m never going to deserve her, am I?”

“Probably not,” Kathleen agrees, flicking her indicator on to pull over in front of Olivia’s building. “But you can sure as hell try.”

She’d arrived home with enough time to shower, put on one of her bougie-ass lounge sets, and pour a glass of wine.

Noah, thankfully, is already at a friend’s house for a sleepover - something that’s become common on Friday nights, since his Saturday dance classes shifted to an 8am start and his friend Liam lives on the same block as the studio.

It’s been bittersweet, this new routine. She’s glad (sometimes, but definitely now) to have Friday nights and Saturday mornings to herself, but the knowledge that Noah’s independence is growing by the day makes her heart ache a little.

So she sits in her empty apartment - lounge set on, candle burning, sipping Nebbiolo - and waits for the knock at her door.

She feels oddly calm. Knows that this conversation has been a long time coming.

Her glass of wine is halfway finished when she hears him knock. She takes a deep breath, rolls her shoulders back, then stands to open it.

There he is.

Henley and jeans. Red eyes and shaking hands.

“Hey partner,” she says softly, leaning against the door. “You look terrible.”

“I also feel terrible,” he tells her wryly. “So that sounds about right.”

Then he steps closer, an apprehensive look on his face. He gestures at the distance between them, murmurs, “Can I?”

She nods; he folds her in his arms, exhales a shuddering breath into her hair.

He smells like clean laundry and pine and a little like sweat.

“You okay?” she asks, words falling, muffled, into his neck.

“No,” he grumbles, burying his face into her hair. She thinks she feels him inhaling deeply and it causes her to flush. “I’m all kinds of fucked up about this.”

She lets him hold her for a few seconds longer before pulling back and drawing him into the apartment, closing and locking the door behind them.

“You want a drink?”

“I want eight to ten drinks. But I’ll start with one, yeah.”

She pours him a glass of wine, hands it to him then moves to the couch, him at her heels. She knows that there’s difficult conversations ahead of them and she wants them to be comfortable.

(She’s not sure how comfortable he can be in those jeans because they look painted on but that is not a problem to address right now.)

She sits, tucks her legs under her and positions herself so she can see his face.

“I don’t know where to start,” she tells him simply.

He laughs darkly, swallows a large mouthful of wine.

“I know the feeling.”

He drains the last of his glass, gets up to retrieve the bottle (because this is not going to be a single-glass kind of conversation) then sinks back down next to her. His hand reaches out to gently stroke the side of her face before he begins.

She leans into it a little, lets herself enjoy the feeling of his rough fingertips against the skin of her cheek.

“Maybe start there,” she suggests, placing her hand over his. “About what you’re feeling right now.”

The mechanics of this - what Kathy did and didn’t say, what the kids did and didn’t know - is less important, she thinks, than how it’s making him feel.

“I’m … angry,” he admits, leaning over to refill their glasses, and she feels the loss of the warmth of his hand keenly. “Angry for you. And the kids. Angry that people seem to always take choices out of my hands. Angry at myself for being the kind of man that made it easy for my own kids to believe the worst of me.”

She inhales a soft, sharp breath, feeling her heart twist at his pain.

“What else?”

“Scared. Because I still don’t know what happened but I can tell it was bad from the way people speak about it. And I’m terrified of knowing. But I don’t think I can handle not knowing.” He barks out a short, bitter laugh. “Especially since I seem to be the only person who doesn’t know.”

She exhales a shaky breath, closes her eyes.

“I can tell you,” she says quietly. “But you need to understand that once you know you can’t unknow it. You’ll have to live with those images in your head.” She shakes her head a little. “I don’t know if Ed ever got over what he heard when he took my statement afterwards.”

As soon as she says it, she realizes her mistake. She schools her face into a blank expression, hoping (a little guiltily) that Elliot is still too distraught to pick up on what she just said.

But luck has never been on Olivia’s side because she watches as he absorbs her words, as his eyes narrow a little.

“Ed,” he repeats.

She shifts a little, trying to not look as nervous as she feels.

“Ed took your statement.”

She knows now that it’s only a matter of minutes before he gets there, so she says nothing and sips her wine.

“Your Ed took your statement?”

She regards him silently, eyeing him over the rim of her wine glass.

“Olivia, if you tell me that Ed Tucker is the man you thought about marrying, I’m gonna take Fin up on his offer of an involuntary 72-hour psych hold.”

“I don’t think it’s involuntary if you agree to it,” she murmurs, because she’s never known when to stop needling him.

“Olivia.”

She rolls her eyes and huffs in exasperation.

“You’re getting sidetracked here,” she points out. “What I did or did not do with Ed Tucker is not what we’re discussing here, and before you even think of running your mouth, please remember that I loved him dearly, and also that he’s dead.”

He looks appropriately chagrined, and takes a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself.

“He was good to you?” he asks finally, gruffly.

She smiles a little sadly, feeling the sting of loss and regret in her bones.

“He was,” she assures him. “He was kind and steady and patient and he looked after me.” She pauses. “And he had a huge -”

“Olivia, I swear to God -”

“Heart,” she finishes impishly. “I was going to say he had a huge heart.”

“Jesus Christ,” Elliot mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”

She tilts her head back and laughs and he scowls a little but it’s mostly for show.

“So he took your statement?”

“Yeah,” she says, tone sobering because for just a second she’d forgotten why they were here. “Nothing happened between us until a few years after that - I was still with Brian then - but it was definitely the beginning of a shift in the way he saw me, and the way I saw him. He was kind in a way I didn’t anticipate, and I know that what I shared with him affected him deeply.”

She sighs heavily, stares down at her lap.

“It affected everyone. Fin, Nick, Amanda, Munch. Cragen. There was a lot of guilt, a lot of secondary trauma to go around. A lot of people blamed themselves and I’m going to tell you what I have told all of them at some point - only one person was to blame.”

She watches him swallow heavily and place his glass on the coffee table. He reaches out to grip her hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.

“His name was William Lewis. And in all my time at SVU, I’ve never come across someone as terrifying as him. Not before, not since.”

Not before, not since.

That statement alone is chilling - he knows the kind of things they saw when they worked together, the darkness and evil they came up against.

And none of it, apparently, even compares to the depravity of William Lewis.

She clutches his hand as she begins to tell him - of Amanda’s gut feeling that had brought him to their attention to begin with, of the way he kept slipping through the net, the fixation on Olivia that began in an interrogation room, with Nick at her side.

I wouldn’t have let her push things so far.

He feels his stomach churn as she tells him how Lewis was waiting for her in her apartment, and his eyes well in anger, in grief, in frustration when she tells him how no one even noticed for two whole days.

I would have known something was wrong.

He sobs when she pushes her cashmere sweater up to show him some of her scars.

I wouldn’t have let this happen to her.

“There are more,” she tells him gravely, tugging her sweater back down. “And some of them are much worse.”

He feels palpable, physical relief when she recounts her eventual escape, the way she’d beaten Lewis within an inch of his life. But his relief is visible on his face and she tips her head to the side sympathetically.

“It doesn’t end there.”

His stomach rolls and his blood boils as she tells him about the trial - the media circus, how he’d represented himself to torture her further, about how he’d painted her as a sad, desperate, lonely woman to the jury.

They both cry when she tells him about the verdict - how devastating it had been that the attempted rape charges didn’t stick, how it felt like the jury believed that she wanted it, how she’d never truly understood what she was asking of victims when she pushed them to testify.

She wipes tears from her cheeks and his, cups his face gently for a moment before standing. She disappears for a moment and reappears with a bottle of bourbon.

He looks at her questioningly and she smiles tightly.

May 2013. December 2013. April 2014.

Those were the dates she’d mentioned at the bar all those weeks ago, when she’d accused him of only seeing her as a convenience.

The abduction. The trial. A third thing.

“There’s more,” she admits, pressing a glass into his hand.

How can there be more?

He clings to his glass of bourbon like a lifeline as she tells him about the escape from prison, the spree Lewis went on as soon as he was free, the forced confession of perjury. He feels his hands shake as she describes slipping away from her security detail (who she describes scornfully as a ‘pair of dipshits’) and agreeing to meet Lewis in order to save the girl.

He feels a familiar spark of anger at Olivia’s typically cavalier attitude to her own safety, and she eyes him knowingly, as if she expected this reaction.

“You’d have done the same thing,” she points out and he knows she’s right, but it doesn’t make it easier to hear.

When she gets to the part about playing Russian roulette, he jumps to his feet, unable to contain the thrumming, anxious energy coursing through him.

“El,” she says softly, her gentle voice cutting through the noise in his head.

She could have died. She could have died and I wouldn’t have known. Would anyone have told me? Would they have kept that from me too?

“I didn’t die,” she says, echoing his thoughts in a way that should be unsettling but isn’t because she’s always been in his head this way. “I’m here, okay? I’m alive. I’m here.”

A sob chokes in his throat and he presses his hand to his mouth in a futile attempt to stifle it.

She tugs gently at the hem of his shirt, guiding him back to the couch. She threads her fingers through his as she tells him how it finally, finally came to an end. Lewis dead. The assumption that she had killed him. And how Tucker (fucking Tucker was there and he wasn't) and someone named Murphy had done their best to save her from the fallout.

God, this is too much. Why is everything so fucking much?

“I survived, El,” she reminds him, gripping his hand tightly. “It was terrible and I will never be the person I was before it … but I survived.”

She hesitates for a moment, as if she’s unsure about saying what she’s about to say.

“And it helped me move on. When I didn’t hear from you afterwards, I knew you weren’t coming back. I let you go, and I started building my own life for the first time. And it’s a good life, Elliot. I know it might not seem like much to someone like you but my son and my friends and my squad mean everything to me.”

He stares at her, aghast.

“What do you mean, it might not seem like much to someone like me? Olivia … I am in awe of what you built while I was gone. I left and I stagnated and you soared.”

And he knows it’s true. Ten years apart and he is still a detective. Ten years apart and he spent the entire time in a marriage that only worked because they kept so many things hidden from each other. Ten years apart and he is no better at being a father or a son or a brother than he was before.

Ten years apart and she became a sergeant, then a lieutenant and now a captain. Ten years apart and she has a son who she adores as much as he adores her. Ten years apart and she has built an unconventional family of people who would die for each other.

“You didn’t need me to build that life. You never needed me.”

“No,” she says quietly, firmly. “I didn’t need you. But I wanted you.”

July 14th 2013

These rich kids are assholes, Liv.

Part of me thinks you’d hate them but then part of me thinks maybe you’d fit right in with them.

Not that you’re an asshole (that was always my role) but because you were always a little more refined than most cops.

A lot more, if we’re being honest.

Kathy and I took Maureen shopping for a homecoming dress once and she pointed out this dress that Kathy immediately vetoed - too grown up, too sexy and way too expensive.

I (very stupidly) said, “Olivia has that dress.”

Maureen sighed and said something along the lines of, “She’s so cool.”

And Kathy pressed her lips together and didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.

My point is, you’d probably fit right in with these assholes.

But I’m pretty sure you’d hate them as much as I do.

I always liked that about us. That we hated all the same things.

July 21st 2013

It’s crazy, probably, to miss you so much still after two years.

But I’m starting to realize I don’t think I can be whole without you. And maybe I’ll just walk around with this gaping wound for the rest of my life.

I hope it’s not the same for you. I hope you’ve moved on and that you’re happy.

But there’s a selfish, ugly part of me that hopes you never do.

July 25th 2013

I’m just assuming, of course, that you even needed to move on.

Maybe I had it wrong all this time. Maybe I never meant as much to you as you did to me.

That would be a hell of a thing, wouldn’t it?

Chapter Text

He knows that being an asshole is basically his brand at this stage, but he fears he might truly be the worst kind of asshole. One beyond redemption.

Because this strong, awe-inspiring, fierce woman has just told him her story of unimaginable trauma and all he can think about is how pretty she is and how badly he wants to kiss her.

He’s thought this probably hundreds of times since he’s known her but he’s not sure if it’s ever felt quite so consuming as it does now.

That might be because he had pulled her into his arms after I didn’t need you but I wanted you and she is still there in his arms, cheek pressed to his heart.

And she’s so pretty and she smells so good and her clearly very expensive sweater is so soft and he wants to kiss her more than he’s ever wanted to do anything in his whole life but he is smart enough to know that this is not the time.

Still, he’s unable to stop himself from skimming his hand up and down her back, and relishing in the way she nestles into his hold when he does.

“Thank you,” he murmurs into her hair. “For telling me. I know it can’t have been easy.”

“I haven’t had to tell anyone in a long time,” she tells him, tipping her face up to look at him. Her cheeks are flushed pink from wine and the warmth of his chest. “Like I said, most people know the story. Or some version of it.”

Here, she rolls her eyes.

“There’s a lot of sensationalized accounts out there. Fucking true crime YouTubers and podcasters.”

She buries her face back into his chest.

“That’s why I didn’t believe that no one in your family knew. It was everywhere.”

He continues to slide his hand up and down her back, and he thinks that whatever she paid for this sweater must be worth it because it’s just so fucking soft.

“That’s pretty much what Ayanna said. Said if I didn’t know, it was no accident.”

Olivia laughs and he feels the vibrations of it ring through his chest.

“Well that’s because she’s smarter than you.”

“Many are,” he says dryly and he grins when she laughs again. He thinks it would be a worthwhile mission to make her laugh every day for the rest of his life.

“You wanna talk about it?” she asks, tipping her face up again to meet his eyes. “The whole … uh, big fat lie of it all?”

He groans, flings an arm over his eyes.

“Not really,” he confesses. “She knew, she lied, the kids believed her because I’d already proven myself an irredeemable asshole, and I can’t change any of that.”

“She told them she’d told you,” she says, and it’s not a question because she’s already figured it out.

“Yeah. Told them that I wanted to leave the past in the past, that I said you were better off without me. And it fucking hurts that the kids believed that I would say that. But why wouldn’t they? They knew I’d walked away without so much as a goodbye.”

She presses her hand against his chest and sits all the way up, staring at him with pure resignation on her face.

“She really hated me, didn’t she? I thought … God, I knew things between us were complicated, but I thought we understood each other.”

He sighs, tucks a lock of hair back behind her ear gently.

“I don’t think she hated you. I think she was threatened by you. And the truth is, she had plenty of reasons to be. At that stage, there was an ocean and years between us, and I still couldn’t let you go. I made this happen. I’m the one who failed everyone.”

He watches as she chews her lower lip, and he knows she’s wrestling with warring emotions - because even while feeling the sting of Kathy’s betrayal, Olivia’s boundless capacity for empathy means she can understand it, in an abstract way. Even before Jenna, the relationship between the three of them had been barreling towards a tipping point.

She presses her lips together tightly, reaches for her forgotten glass of bourbon. He waits for her to take a sip, then plucks the glass from her hand and takes a sip of his own.

“Don’t do that,” she says finally, and he thinks, for a moment, she’s talking about stealing her drink, but quickly realizes she wouldn’t look so pissed about that.

She fixes him with those dime-sized pupils, the ones that have always made him feel equal parts seen and exposed.

“Don’t take on all the blame. You didn’t make her do anything,” she says firmly. “She made a choice to lie and she made a choice to keep lying. Don’t turn this into another way to self-flagellate.”

“Because I made her feel like she had to,” he argues, because there’s something dark and bitter coiled inside of him that wants to make her understand that he’s the reason, he’s the fuck up, he’s the one who failed her, who has failed her consistently.

“Oh, fuck off,” she says with an eye roll. “She was a grown woman with agency. You’re responsible for your choices. Not hers.”

He can see the fire in her eyes, the fire he’s only ever seen when she’s staunchly defending him and he thinks about how she’s the only one who’s ever fought for him like he matters, who’s loved him unconditionally.

Being loved by Olivia Benson (and he knows she does, even if she’ll never say it) has always been both terrifying and exhilarating, and he’s never felt worthy of that love. But maybe it doesn’t matter, as long as she feels he’s worthy of it.

“I think we should table this conversation for now,” he declares, passing back her glass and earning an eye roll. “This might sound crazy, but I don’t know if I want to spend the rest of this night talking about my late wife.”

She snorts a little.

“And what do you propose we do instead?”

He leans back into the couch again and tugs her hand so she falls back into his chest.

“I believe I was promised some Bill Callahan. So maybe we could start there.”

August 17 2013

I’ve really gone all in on Bill Callahan.

I genuinely have no idea if you were actually into him or just that one song, but it’s become this way for me to feel connected to you, so now he’s on heavy rotation.

I stopped discovering new music in approximately 1981 so this has been difficult to explain to Kathy.

(I told her one of my clients introduced me to it, which is laughable because they all just listen to shitty EDM and I hate them for it.)

There’s this song called Riding For The Feeling. It loops in my head a lot and it makes me think of you.

Which is stupid. I don’t even know if you’ve ever heard it.

August 22 2013

We’ve got our last charter this week before the summer season closes.

There’ll be charters in the off-season, but the kind of people who charter yachts in the off-season are not the kind of people who pay for private security.

The scenery is beautiful, the crew are nice (if young), the clients are awful and I’m bored out of my fucking mind.

The good news is that I’ve done such a bang up job of protecting rich assholes that I’m being offered more interesting work after the summer. Private security for important rich assholes.

Almost exactly as meaningless but at least it’s something.

I’ll be travelling more and working in more high-pressure situations.

Maybe it’ll be enough to finally get you out of my head.

“So how did you discover Bill?”

They’re sitting at opposite ends of the couch, legs outstretched and feet intertwined. Olivia’s hair has been pulled back into a messy ponytail, deftly secured with an elastic she had around her wrist. Elliot has swapped his jeans for sweatpants.

“They’re not Tucker’s are they?” he’d asked warily when she’d offered them to him.

She’d laughed, tossed them in his face.

“They’re yours, you fucking dork.”

And he’d realized she was right. They were a pair of his, from back before he left.

He’d changed in her bathroom, feeling a swirl of emotions at the fact that she’d kept them for so long.

Now, they’re tucked away on her couch, facing each other. Bourbon in hand. Bill Callahan singing about how bees only swarm when they’re looking for a home.

“Dated a guy who was really into him,” she tells him with a playful roll of her eyes. “Back in … oh god, I don’t know. Our first year together? The guy didn’t stick but Bill did.”

She grins into her glass.

“Stole a couple of CDs from his apartment when we broke up.”

He mock-gasps, clasping a hand to his chest.

“Captain Benson! Does the NYPD know you’re a common thief?”

She lets her head fall back and she laughs and it's loose and a little loud because they’ve really drunk a prodigious amount of liquor and he thinks she’s never looked more beautiful.

“See, you won’t know this because you were married for 100 years, but when you date a bunch of different people, you pick up all these things. I got Bill Callahan from … I want to say James?”

He snorts at the fact that she doesn’t even remember the guy’s name.

“I still use Brian’s recipe for spaghetti sauce. Ed was super into bourbon and taught me all I’ll ever need to know about that. It’s kind of nice, you know? Even when it doesn’t work out, they stay with you in their own way.”

He wants to ask if there’s anything he taught her that stayed with her but he doesn’t want to bring the vibe back down, so he decides to try and get under her skin instead.

“You learning anything new from anyone else lately?”

Her lips quirk in amusement, and he knows what she’s thinking, about how predictable he is.

“Nothing serious since Ed,” she tells him.

“No one?” he asks, surprised because Jesus, this is Olivia. She’s been beating men off with a stick since he met her and he doubts that’s changed.

“I mean, I have some … ongoing casual arrangements,” she says with a shrug. “But no, nothing serious.”

His eyebrows shoot up.

“Ongoing casual arrangements?”

She grins wickedly and he feels his cheeks flush, his heart skip because it reminds him of the way she used to tease and goad and prod him when they were stuck in the sedan on stakeouts - riling him up for the sport of it.

“I’m emotionally unavailable, not physically unavailable,” she says loftily and he barks out a laugh.

“Anyone I know?”

“Oh yeah,” she grins. “You know most of ‘em.”

And he has no idea if she’s telling the truth or just trying to get under his skin but maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the fact that she’s willing to sit here with him - drinking and laughing and listening to Bill Callahan when only weeks ago she told him she could handle coffee dates and the odd text at best - is what matters.

Still. He does want to know.

Probably Langan. Cabot maybe? Could Dean Fucking Porter still be sniffing around?

She’s watching him with sparkling eyes and he knows she knows exactly where his head is, what he’s thinking.

“You can ask,” she teases.

He thinks about it, really thinks about it.

“Nah,” he says finally. “Who you’re involved with is the least interesting thing about you.”

Her lips curve upward and she eyes him through thick lashes, and he gets the feeling he’s passed some kind of test.

“Thank you. I am very interesting.”

He grins and nudges her calf with his toes, eliciting a giggle from her. A giggle. A fully-fledged giggle from the formidable Captain Benson.

God, he loves seeing her like this.

“What about you?” she asks, a little shyly. “You, uh, have any arrangements with anyone?”

He stares at her, stunned. She stares back, looking equally as stunned, like she can’t believe she had the temerity to ask.

And then he laughs. Throws his head back and laughs so loudly, it startles even him.

“Why is that funny?” she demands, eyes narrowed.

“Olivia,” he wheezes, trying to stop another laugh bubbling up his throat. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Her eyes are still narrowed, waiting for him to explain himself.

“I couldn’t be less interested in anyone who isn’t you. How do you not know that by now?”

She shrugs, casting her eyes downward, a stark blush creeping up her cheeks.

He nudges her calf again, forcing her to look at him.

“I know the last time I said this you told me to fuck off, but I love you. I’ve loved you for longer than I care to admit. I’d rather have whatever I can get with you than have everything with someone else.”

He expects her to roll her eyes, to deflect, to change the subject.

Instead she nods and simply says, “Okay.”

“Okay? Okay like you’re not gonna tell me to fuck off?”

“Okay like maybe I don’t hate hearing that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

“Jesus, I didn’t mean you need to start saying it all the time.”

He snorts with mirth, aware that he shouldn’t find her emotional unavailability and penchant for putting up walls so endearing.

“Look, anything other than fuck off is an improvement. I’ll take it.”

She snickers.

“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other opportunities for me to tell you to fuck off, don’t worry.”

Boldly, he reaches out to squeeze her big toe and grins at the squeak of indignation this action elicits.

“You need a refill?” he asks, gesturing to her empty glass.

“Need? No. Want? Yes.”

He chuckles and reaches for the bottle on the table, tops up both their glasses.

“I haven’t drunk like this in a minute,” she murmurs, taking a sip of bourbon. “I’m gonna be feeling this in the morning.”

“Not as young as you used to be, Benson,” he teases. “Still cute, though.”

He watches her bite back a smile at that.

“You staying?” she asks, tipping her head to the side and regarding him curiously.

“Tonight or forever?” he asks, before shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter. Answer’s the same either way.”

“And that is?”

“I’ll stay as long as you’ll let me.”

Normally, having the Lewis conversation would lead to a night of terror and sweat, which is why she likes to avoid it as much as possible.

Well. It’s part of why she likes to avoid it as much as possible.

Tonight, though, she thinks she’ll be okay.

Because she’s warm. From her cheeks to her toes and everywhere in between. Definitely in her stomach and, she thinks, in that fragile, messy pulp inside her chest she calls a heart.

A few weeks ago, she felt confident - if sad - about where she stood, about how she was prepared to navigate her life with Elliot Stabler back in New York. She was content with having him there - at arms length but there, because it was better than the alternatives. Better than not having him at all, and better than letting him in fully and letting him break her heart again.

But after a hundred or so emails, and a few long-overdue conversations, she’s less sure.

Because she knows now that the things that she had feared the most - that he had forgotten her, that she was easy to walk away from, that his kids had been happy to be rid of her - were not true.

She understands why he did what he did. She even understands why Kathy did what she did, and though Olivia doesn’t think she could ever do something so callous, she gets it. Understands that it was probably easier for Kathy to blame all the problems in her marriage on Olivia and SVU rather than admit that two people who got married at 17 could grow apart. Understands that when Kathy chose to not tell Elliot about William Lewis, she couldn’t have anticipated how out of hand it would get, how many lies she’d have to keep spinning to keep the truth hidden.

In some ways, Olivia almost feels sorry for Kathy.

Almost. Not quite.

She’s not a saint, after all.

But now that cool, logical decision she’d made - to stay on Elliot’s periphery, to maintain a safe distance - feels hasty.

Because sitting here with him right now feels like the closest thing to home she’s felt in years.

Bourbon and Bill Callahan and laughter and legs intertwined. The conversation is easy and they’ve covered enough of the hard stuff that the heaviness that usually hangs between them is no longer present.

It feels good. It feels safe.

She makes a decision then, drains the last of her drink and sets the glass on the table. She stands up, holds her hand out to Elliot who takes it, unquestioning but curious.

“Come on, Stabler,” she says softly, giving his hand a gentle tug. “Let’s go to bed.”