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I'm holding onto every moment
God knows I've missed a few
A month.
A year.
Five.
Ten years.
She looked just as he remembered, every moment replaying in a flash when their eyes met. The shooting, signing his retirement paperwork. Text after unanswered text from Olivia until, nearly a year after the shooting, she only sent the occasional text for important moments.
Or moments that were important to her.
Cragen's retirement.
Her promotions.
Each of his kids' birthdays.
His birthday.
Christmas.
He saved every single text, every missed call that he couldn't summon the strength to answer. He was a goddamn coward and he knew it. From New York to LA to Italy, he moved from job to job, case to case. His divorce was amicable enough with Kathy retaining primary custody of Eli, who was already about to finish high school. When he signed the divorce agreement, it was the closest he came to calling her. A moment of weakness, of desperation and loneliness. His phone sat there, practically taunting him until he finally flung it across the room.
If he tried to call and she didn't answer, it would kill him and he knew it.
So why even try?
Then he was back in New York, and there she was. Ten years older, a few more lines around her eyes from what he prayed was happiness.
Still beautiful.
Still Olivia Benson.
He called her name, and his own fell from her lips like a broken prayer.
"Elliot."
Her fist connecting with his jaw caught him by surprise, but by the time her arms came around him in a tight hug, it was like no time had passed at all. They walked back to the station, where she helped him clean up and he pressed an ice pack to his jaw.
There in the office where they had grown as partners and friends, they spent most of the night catching up and rediscovering each other all over again. He barely hid his surprise when she showed him pictures of Noah, the child she had always wanted and had been raising by herself for his entire life.
The New York skyline was just becoming visible in the early morning sunlight when he leaned over and caught her lips in a chaste kiss. There was still so much they needed to talk about, so much he ached to know. But he was determined to go at her pace. From now on it was her, and only her.
Funny how time really had not changed that at all.
He met Noah the next afternoon, and without a single word he knew he had a lot of catching up to do.
With both of them.
The day we met
I knew I had some catching up to do
Finis.