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“Hey, Sergeant,” Fin calls, as he notices Phoebe at the front desk getting her temp checked.
“Hey, Sergeant,” she calls back. Her face is still covered by her mask as she speaks, casually strolling towards him, but he can feel the flirt. His fiancée has solid game.
“You’re a little early for dinner.”
“Yeah. I know. Was gonna see if you were free for lunch. I don’t think I’ll be free for dinner.”
Fin watches her for a second as she tugs her mask down. Phoebe’s tense, but not unhappy. Maybe even excited, which has been hard to come by for the last year. She’s covered it mostly, but a little grin slips out at him. “What’s going on?” he asks.
She steps closer to him, lowers her voice. “I’m not telling you this yet, but it looks like I – and some of my squad, still working on how many – might be getting reassigned.”
“Yeah? To what?”
“They’re setting up a new organized crime JTF with the FBI. Seems a few of the latest busts – Vice, Narcotics, even Major Case – might be linked. That’s why I’ll be missing dinner.”
“Huh. Guess that sounds more important. I’ll deal.”
Phoebe rolls her eyes at him. “Liv in?” she starts to ask, before realising Liv’s already at the office door having heard most of the story. “Just as a heads up, Li– Captain. I think you might be getting a call later too. Seems this group has a whole lotta fingers in a whole lotta pies.”
Liv nods. “Good to know. Who’s running the task force?”
“Don’t know the FBI. PD is some Sergeant out of Nassau, I think ex-NYPD. My captain said there’s talk of remaking him NYPD, pushing him to Lieu. He’s been tracking these guys for a while.”
“Give you a name?”
“God, briefly. I was caught up with the rest of it. Maybe… something to do with horses?”
Fin frowns. “Ryder?” Liv suggests.
“Nah,” Phoebe says, squinting at the floor as her brain ticks over. “Maybe Stabler?” she says, looking up at Fin. She frowns suddenly. “Didn’t you work with a Stabler?”
“Yeah,” Fin says, his appetite disappearing. No dinner date and apparently that asshole was about to be reappearing in their lives. Wasn’t this year supposed to be going better than the last? He looks at Liv, who has frozen solid. “We did.”
*
Garland gives Olivia the official heads up by phone, later that evening. He doesn’t know their history, hers and Elliot’s, the depths of it, but he’s been around long enough to hear some level of rumour about how strong their partnership – and their close rate – had been, and she figures he’d have heard the story about how it was left. Garland did know how things often worked, and a tinge of professional concern shades his voice.
“Just wanted you to know, Captain. I’ll give you an update tomorrow.”
*
The following evening, Elliot walks through the squad room doors.
Fin and Amanda have gone home, Kat’s out getting a quick bite to eat before she finishes a report that Olivia needs redone tonight, and the only person who blocks his way is Sergeant Jones for the temp check.
She leans back in her desk chair, crosses her right leg over her left, and observes Elliot as he waits for the wand to clear him and flash the green over his forehead. He looks older, greyer, but his posture is still strong. He’s wearing a crisp uniform: stark white shirt, shiny lieutenant badge pinned, so apparently Phoebe’s rumour had been right. With his peaked cap in hand and steady face, he looks every inch the starch professional police officer, the returning prodigal son.
So if he’s the prodigal son, Olivia wonders, does that now make her the older brother?
After Jones nods his okay, Elliot starts to enter, but then pauses for a second, looking out over the squad room. A lot has changed in ten years, she knows, and the spot where Jenna Fox had died is now the entrance to the waiting room. She can see the second when this registers, and he shakes his head briefly as though sweeping the memory away, then turns to face her office.
Their eyes meet through her window and he slowly steps towards her door, tucking his mask away as he walks. He reaches the door, knocks twice, and quietly examines her, the old detective still in there. His naked left hand lowers to dangle at his side. Well, that answers one question.
Elliot clears his throat. “Ol–"
She raises an eyebrow, links her fingers together over her stomach, rests her elbows on the arms of her chair.
“–Captain,” he greets.
She checks his badge, deliberately casual, glancing briefly down at it and then back up. “Lieutenant.”
They stare at each other for a long moment. He blinks, then steps into her office, takes the chair on the other side of her desk. She watches him sit on the edge of the chair, he looks at her again, and the moment lingers longer. Olivia lets it get prickly, uncomfortable; she wants to see if he’ll break it first.
“Been a while,” Elliot eventually says.
“You don’t say.”
More silence.
“You look good,” he says. “Well.”
She doesn’t reply, and can see his small-talk tolerance waning as the seconds pass. It’s a countdown in the increasing creases on his forehead, the bristle across his shoulders.
“I’ve missed you,” he offers, awkwardly shifting, and it pummels her in the belly.
He doesn’t know her anymore. She no longer knows the you he is thinking of.
“You’ve missed a lot.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” she says, acid in her voice, and a darkness floods his face.
“Ask what you want, Olivia.”
Olivia tilts her chin and stretches her neck. She swings her legs around to tuck them under the desk, sits upright and straightens herself, pulls out her commander posture. Apparently they were doing this now; she hadn’t actually thought they would get there. “IAB cleared you. You gonna tell me what happened?”
“IAB cleared me with a lot of conditions.”
Olivia bites her tongue. She’s had conditions too. More than once. She’d sucked it up and dealt with them, but that's not the real issue here anyway, is it.
“And I didn’t want – couldn’t – face...” he trails off, then continues, stronger. “I started making arrangements to leave the NYPD. Before anything could go through, the FBI tagged me. They needed a former marine, were willing to overlook… things, and I dove straight into a UC op with them. One month.” He gazes out the window behind her, shakes his head. “I wasn’t ready.” A swallow. “I fucked it up, Liv.”
For the first time in her life, Olivia feels nauseous hearing her nickname emerge from his mouth. Fucking nauseous. A level of sick she’s never experienced with Elliot, barring bullets and head injuries and he put in his papers.
A voice that sounds a lot like Lindstrom offers an alternative suggestion.
Maybe it’s not sick that she’s feeling. Maybe it’s latent grief.
“So I left. Papers went through, I took some time out. Coached Eli’s football team, ended up coaching the high school, picked up security work here and there. Kathy and I divorced but I guess you figured that.” He looks at his hands. “Ended up in therapy. After I got my head on straight, mostly, I joined Nassau County. Better pay. Less stress. Just worked a quieter precinct.”
“Community policing,” she says, dryly.
“Yeah. Who’d a thought. Anyway, turns out organised crime loves commuting from Long Island. I put it together, got caught up in it–” he breaks off for a second and there's something else there, an added weight to his face, but he clears his throat again and it passes. “And here I am,” he finishes. A small hopeful smile – his puppy dog look, well-practiced, long disused – is flashed at her.
“Here you are,” she echoes, level, just a statement. She doesn’t return the smile.
Elliot shifts, and looks around the office, eyes landing on her name plate, before he reaches out to the picture of Noah on her desk and picks it up, staring at it for a long moment. “So. You gonna tell me what happened?”
She slowly stands and walks round her desk. She takes the photo frame from him, tucking it away from view as she folds her arms. She leans her hips on the edge of her desk, in front of him. “No.”
He moves forward in his seat, hands brushing close to her knees. “Liv, I told you… every–”
You were never gonna bare your soul.
“No. You didn’t. You told me where you’ve been. You didn’t tell me why,” you left me is in her half-second inhale, but she refuses to say it, “or why not, and – to be perfectly frank – I don’t want to hear it at the moment. At the moment, Lieutenant? We just have to agree to do our jobs and work together.”
“What about our friendship?” he breathes, then closes his eyes as though he hadn’t meant to say it.
“That’s a bridge you set on fire, Elliot, and I don’t know if I want it rebuilt yet.”
The puppy dog look is back. “Yet?”
She kicks the dog. Metaphorically. “Or at all. And pushing will not help.”
He takes a moment, and seems to actually hear her words. His gaze again slips out the window behind her. “There’s a meeting tomorrow, for certain squad and precinct commanders.”
“I’m aware. Deputy Chief Garland informed me.” She chokes slightly on the last two words, and looks out the door.
His gaze jumps back to her, his ears pricking up at the stumble that she hadn’t meant to show. She watches him in her peripheral vision.
He stands slowly, and his hand jerks, palm open, as if to hold it out for an impartial handshake, but then he seems to think the better of it and he quickly pulls it back. “I’ll see you there. Captain.” A brief proud smile flits over his lips as, this time, he savours her rank.
She ignores it. “Lieutenant.”
Elliot nods, then backs out, and turns to leave. He suddenly stops, just past the doorway. He starts to speak, a slight shake to his strident voice. “I was ashamed, Liv. About… everything.”
He stands still for a second, exhaling heavily, as if expecting a response. As if expecting the reassurance that she used to breathe to him like instinct. Benson’s benediction.
After thirteen years of partnership, then ten years of nothing except a tiny medallion in an envelope, plus complete and utter radio silence after the worst experience of her life had been broadcast across the country, those two fucking sentences aren’t enough to deserve one.
When she doesn’t respond, he nods once, and steadily walks out the squad room.
Olivia returns to her side of her desk. As she hears the elevator doors close, she sinks slowly back into her chair and takes a deep breath.
Fuck.