A/N: A huge thank you to everyone reading this and especially to those of you who so generously review, it makes my day. Thank you to Brynn, Jess, Tam and Ashley. You know why. Also, on my Twitter (at Lyricara) I have a link to a storyboard Brynn so incredibly made to go along with this story, chapter by chapter, song by song. Amazing images and video clips in order that bring this to life. Also, the insanely beautiful video made by at eogotmelike is there. Things pick up after this chapter, but some things between them needed to be said. All episodes referenced are at the end of this chapter, and this song kills me. Check out the video at alrightabigail made to to that song, I fell for it. And Tam, hope I didn't butcher the reality of the firearms too badly. Love you all.

Song: Someone To Die For, Hurts

It's all glass and mirrors, a rectangular behemoth that holds more power and intrigue than almost any other building in the city.

South of Canal Street and west of Tribeca, the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building rises forty-one stories into the Manhattan skyline, the tallest of any federal building in the United States. In the years since he'd formally completed Quantico and been given his badge, Elliot has never become used to the formalities and impersonal nature of the federal government. The occupants of the building are a broad tangle of security and bureaucracy – the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, Immigration, and the New York Field Office of the FBI.

They had parked her car in the visitor lot and used his credentials to get through the first line of security. He'd authorized her weapon at the second point and marveled at the fact that she hadn't asked where they were going. He'd asked her to trust him, and miraculously following whatever truce they'd found at Chauncey's, Olivia has.

She expects him to punch in the twenty-third floor, and perhaps she has been amenable because he'd told her in the car to head for Fed Plaza, but he has something else he wants to show her.

Despite her time on loan to the Bureau, he doesn't believe she's seen what he's about to show her.

He hits the button for B3 and feels her eyes on him.

When they step off the elevator, he leads her down a maze of hallways. He uses his thumbprint twice to open doors, and then finally leads her through the last one. It's a heavily barricaded black steel door that opens with a flush of air and a green light that illuminates above the doorframe.

The FBI's fairly new, state of the art Firing Range and Tactical Bunker.

One of the perks of being a fed.

He glances at Olivia over his shoulder as he makes his way through the entry and toward the main desk. Staffed by half a dozen personnel, the desk sits in front of the secure hallways of ammunition lockers. Not every agent has one, but those undercover, on hostage response or otherwise necessary tactical duty have one of the nearly two hundred on site.

Her eyes are glimmering, and no longer with tears. She doesn't smile, but he can feel the shift in her mood.

He badges in and makes a few requests as she heads to her left. Through the soundproof tinted glass, she watches the rows of agents line up and fire a myriad of weapons at the various available targets. Twice she silently glances back at him, and he can visibly see her standing a little bit straighter.

For the first time since this morning, Elliot exhales.

They both need this. Porter had called them after lunch and said they'd tracked a single private jet from Treasure Coast Airport - just inland from Port St. Lucie - to Teterboro, with an arrival a few hours before Haden's murder. The jet had been registered to LW Holdings, and they were awaiting security footage from the tarmac at takeoff and landing.

He takes the few steps to her as he waits for his things to be brought out. He ends up standing shoulder to shoulder with her.

"What's it like working full-time for the FBI?" she asks, never looking at him.

The sound of the range doesn't permeate, but he can feel the vibration of the discharging ammunition beneath his feet. The loaded question, the semi-charged air. The slight hint of their reflection in the darkened glass.

Soundproof and bulletproof, it's fragile just the same.

He doesn't know where to start. There aren't ways to explain both the loneliness and his contradictory need for isolation and independence. He has a million toys and resources at his disposal, yet he prefers the undercovers where human intelligence and interaction get the job done. He prefers the grittiness of spending his days on the street, yet also needs the still unfamiliar sterility of the building they stand in.

He only survived because this place doesn't remind him of her.

Except it's because of her that he's here in the first place.

"When I started at SVU, it was a job. Something I thought I'd do a few years. The kids got to me, sure. Reminded me of my own." He can't shake the image of Olivia as she'd been that first year. Dark hair and black eyes, quick to feel too much, laugh too much, absorb too much. He'd been entrusted with her, but he'd been wholly unprepared for her trust in him. "At some point I could have left and still didn't."

The words are coming out wrong, and he's not quick enough to correct himself, so she turns to him defensively, and he can feel the way her breath quickens.

"You wanted to leave?"

It's been less than twenty-four hours since she's been back in his life, and he hasn't really taken a moment to absorb her. The changes in her, the impossible reality that she is right in front of him. He loves the tangle of waves in her hair and hates the haunt in her eyes. He loves the way she straightens with recognition when someone calls her Captain and hates the way she flinches when he calls her Olivia.

He gives her a half-smile. "I couldn't leave as long as you were there."

She stiffens just a little bit. "You could have left, Elliot. If you hated it that much, you knew where the door was, and you could have used it at any time." What she's just said hits her then, and even the in darkened cavern of the range, he can see her pale. "You did leave."

Fuck, he is explaining everything wrong.

He steps closer to her, and his height makes her lift her chin to look at him. He can't let her walk away without understanding. He lowers his voice, and he will find whatever words he's got in him. "I didn't have a choice about leaving in the end. But in all the years before that? I stayed because the job was having your back. Keeping you safe. And fuck if that wasn't the only job I understood. That was the job I knew. The job I wanted. And when you were taken from me-"

Her gaze flies to his, her eyes wide and startled. "I wasn't-"

"You were." His throat hurts like hell, and he's not sure what he's doing. He just knows that she's been decimated by the losses of people she's cared for deeply and she needs to know that every one of them had been lucky to be in her life, despite the end. He doesn't know how to make her understand who she is to him.

His actions have said the opposite for years.

"You're the one who disappeared, not me. Don't act like you didn't have a choice," she hisses under her breath.

"What the hell were you going to do with me without the job between us, Olivia? What the hell was I going to do with us? Tell my wife I still needed to see you every day?" He steps back for a minute, wiping his hand down his face, shaking his head. "Because that's the truth."

The way the rules had suffocated him make the dread slip down his back even now.

There had been no world in which he could have had it all without the free pass of the badge. His marriage had been broken and he'd been too aware of his need. The fucking desire had been a simmering undercurrent in him for years. Without the boundaries of their titles, everything would have imploded.

He would have imploded.

"I was your friend outside of the job -" she starts softly.

"We both know it was more than that. And when I couldn't…" He lets his head fall backwards on his neck. His explanations are a mess. "I took this job because it was the only way I could still have your back. The job you loved - that you were risking your life for? I could do that job from here, too. They gave me a chance to go after the same kind of bastards here."

He knows she isn't looking at him. Out of the corner of his eye he can see her turn and refocus on the agents firing at static targets on the other side of the tinted glass.

"Porter said child trafficking." Another hard breath. Of course her mind would immediately work to piece it all together. "Said he found you in my place and…you went UC."

"Porter talks too damned much," Elliot exhales harshly. He wishes to God his bags and the ammo boxes would show up, but he knows there is no more walking away from her questions. Olivia has more than every right to refuse every moment of his proximity until he lets the past shake out, the detonations be damned. "He found me there and convinced me to take a UC. Just like Dana had done with you, Olivia. No different."

She spins to face him again. "Except I had a badge. So what was so important that they needed you and only you? They couldn't even deputize you if-"

"On a technicality I still had my NYPD badge."

She recoils and steps back, as if something struck her. "What? Two years later? You put your papers in. I thought you were done. Cragen said-" her voice trails off.

He shakes his head. "Medical leave. Disability. Cragen and my union rep set it up. I had thirty-six months to make a choice."

Olivia stiffens and turns back to the glass as an excuse. "I didn't know."

"Because you would have spent that time trying to convince me to come back."

He can tell she can't bear to look at him. "So you wouldn't come back to NYPD, but Porter asks and you jump."

"It wasn't like that, Olivia. He found me in your fucking apartment!" He pivots to face her, trying to keep his voice down. "My head was so screwed up-" He stops, realizing how this sounds. He's got no right to claim anguish or agony, because nothing he experienced is even on the same playing field as the brutality she'd endured.

The tension in his shoulders and neck starts to sting. The exhaustion hits him hard, because even before yesterday, he hadn't been sleeping. He hasn't properly slept in years and years. He'd always assumed that if their lives intersected again – if it ever happened – it would have been preceded by time to get his words right.

No such luck. He's here, and he's screwing it all up.

"How is it possible," she finally whispers, "that you've been doing this job for years in this city and we have never crossed paths on a case, Elliot?"

He closes his eyes. There's no way they should be doing this now. Not here, not in the middle of a place he had hoped would help them. The truth is screaming within him, and he knows it's another tightrope they will have to walk. He prays to God she will understand, because he's not sure that he does. Their lives are twisted electrified wires, sparking and burning them at every turn.

The admission sits low in his throat. "We did. Once."

She lets out a pained, disbelieving laugh and shakes her head in disgust, starting to walk away from him. He can't stop her, so he just waits and prays that her curiosity will win the battle.

It does.

She turns and stalks back to him, getting in his face even as she keeps her voice down. "When?"

If only he'd made different choices. If only he'd been able to bury the self-destruction back then and he'd been able to face her.

But he hadn't, and they'd lost years and years.

He can think of a thousand other ways he could make her understand and none of them have ever been an option. He doesn't want to talk; he wants to touch her. To make her still. To breathe into her long and deep until she understands.

His voice is thick. "My UC. Porter told me there were websites set up to trade kids, like trading cards. They called it rehoming. It was the one thing that made sense, that I could do. I could get these bastards. You were still on leave, and it was my job, my job to pick up when you couldn't. That's what you and I did. We went after the kids. If you couldn't, if you needed time…then I knew I had to."

He sees it. The realization dawning on her face. He sees it as her eyes widen, as color comes back to her cheeks, in the way her eyes glisten with a sheen reserved for disbelief. "Sonofabitch..."

He knows. The timing is clicking in her head.

He'd gone under in early August of 2013. She'd come back to the job in September. By the following January, their cases had collided.

She lets out a hard breath, and her hand comes to her neck as she turns again, nearly pacing as she absorbs the damning information. He's grateful the waiting area is almost empty because they don't need an audience for what is about to unfold, for this dance that they are doing.

He comes up behind her. "It was a network, Liv. Over thirty sites on the dark web. I went under to sell. It was the only way to track who was buying. Then we set it up so local PD's across the tri-state would pick up the kids so nothing could come back on me and blow me in. Staged the grabs as drug busts, thefts, P.O. checks. We made sure local was on point to grab the kids soon after I had placed them, but we sat surveillance until they did. I was under for almost seven months. We shut them all down."

Her face drops to her hands. He wants to touch her back or feel her hair in his palms, but he can't reach out just yet. He isn't sure what is coming next. Her accusations, her anger, her rage.

He deserves all of it.

"Olivia," he wants her to just turn and face him. He has to look her in the eyes when he tells her, despite the fact that she has already pieced it together.

She is talking it out with herself as she stops in front of the wall. "Kaitlyn. Madison. Stella…Nicky. All 'rehomed'. Those websites, they told Cap they were fully shut down a month later." That's when she whirls. Olivia's face is wet, and she angrily brushes away the evidence of her emotion. "You knew who his mother was all along, didn't you? Were you there? When Tino sold Noah to Pearson, were you there?"

He braces himself, keeps his voice low. It's obvious to the few people in the waiting area that they are arguing, but he doesn't want anyone privy to their conversation. It's too personal. Too raw. "Tino told me the baby's mother was dead and that I had to move him, fast. The alternatives – Olivia, he wouldn't have lasted a month. Alexa Pearson wanted a baby. She wanted to play mom. A baby doll she could coddle. Everyone knew Roger was looking for one for her. It was the safest option out of a dozen shittier, deadlier options."

"So you just let him go and what, Elliot? You prayed for the best?"

He grits his teeth. There's no way she will ever understand. Not when it involves a baby that became her son. Despite the job, she shouldn't understand. "After I handed him to Roger, we stayed on those kids. Then the Pearsons grabbed Nicky. We weren't expecting that. So we watched you track that case, ready to intervene. But you didn't need us." He half-smiles, remembering how he'd been so proud of his old unit. "You guys followed the trail fast, and you made that motel room in the Rockaways." He doesn't know if he's trying to convince her or himself. "I didn't have a choice, Liv. There were too many kids we had to recover, and at the time I had no idea how it would end up. How he would end up your son…Jesus. You have to believe that."

It's an impossible request. He doesn't even know what he believes. Being justified and being clear of conscience are two different things. He knows that all too well.

Jenna's shooting had taught him that.

The way she's looking at him makes him think she's going to vomit. "You left kids with a couple on the sex registry for even one minute longer than they had to be? You gave them a baby? He was with them for nearly a month! What kind of job do you do, Elliot? Because it's not the one I do!"

He leans into her, drops his voice. "There were over three dozen minors I had to find before we could shut down those sites, or the kids would have been lost for good. What did you want me to do?"

She shakes her head and puts her hand up. "No. No, just…nothing else." She looks around as if looking for air, and then seems to realize where they are again. She's on edge, so she heads for the corner of the room to get some space, just past a row of low unoccupied club chairs. Her back is to him, her hands in her face and he stands there, trying to figure out what the hell to do.

It's at that moment that the desk attendant finally approaches him. "Agent Stabler? Your equipment is ready, and we have the ammunition you requested at the desk. We have lanes fourteen and fifteen open for you."

He can barely acknowledge the woman. "Thanks," he manages, still focused on Olivia's back nearly ten feet away as the woman retreats.

When he's alone again, he lets out a hard breath. She's blaming him for the risk. For the chance that it all could have been horribly different.

She's justifiably blaming him for leaving her son in danger.

But Olivia has to know he had weighed every option. She has to know that he nearly died inside while handing the baby over, and that he only managed to do it because the lives of dozens of other children hung in the balance.

He made sure he knew where the baby was going. The Pearsons were sick, but the baby – Noah –Elliot's gut told him he wasn't in physical danger. The baby would stay in the tri-state area with the couple. He would be somewhere Elliot was able to watch out for him. He knew the other potential buyers, and with them, the baby – Noah – he would have been lost forever. It had come so close.

He can't leave it alone.

Elliot takes the few steps until he's behind her. "If you think," he grits. His lips will barely form the words. He has to make her understand, or she will never forgive him. "If you think I woulda left Noah with someone who I thought would hurt him, you're outta your mind. The other options Tino was considering? He wouldn't have made it out alive. I had orders and a responsibility to stay under, Olivia. I couldn't trash months of work. You know how it works and you have to believe-"

His stomach clenches violently, even now. He's watched her in the years since, watched Noah. He'd left both of them in danger at one point or another and no matter what he tells her, that weight will never subside.

"Agent Stabler? I'm sorry to interrupt. But we have a few agents waiting on lanes, so just wondering if you definitely want them?"

They both turn to face the interruption. The face of the returning young woman is apologetic.

Elliot closes his eyes to stop the burning.

It's Olivia who recovers first. "We're ready," she exhales, clearing her throat. "We're ready."

"Excellent," the woman says. "Right this way."

And with half of their conversation unfinished, Olivia walks away.

-o0o-

The gun anchors her.

There is a balanced weight to the Glock-19 that is innately comforting. Her right hand is wrapped around the handle, her finger is curled on the trigger. Her other hand cups the weight and steadies her aim.

She blinks behind the shooting glasses, weapon raised, and fires.

Her body stays relaxed, and she lets the recoil slide through her instead of fighting it. This gun is smoother than her old Sig, lighter than her old Glock 17.

Two inches to the right of where she wanted to be. Not good enough.

She exhales. Lifts the gun. Moves it a millimeter to the left. Her gaze is locked in on the heart of her target. Focus. Breathe. Blink.

Fire.

One inch closer to her goal, a hole punches through the paper.

She's closing in.

Not good enough.

Again.

She can't be this broken person anymore. Grief, shock. It all has to wait. She has a job to do.

I had orders and a responsibility to stay under, Olivia.

Elliot's words echo in the hollow chamber within her. The job has always loomed above them, a black hole that threatened to suck them into its crux. Neither one of them has ever had perspective. In an effort to save others, they continually danced on the edge of becoming a casualty.

She's holding her gun, and she's back in upstate NY, in her father's cabin a dozen years ago. I know this is my fault, and if I would've believed you, none of this would have happened. Simon. She's standing around the doorway from him and they've got the same genes, but she had never trusted him because of them. Now he's gone and it's her fault.

She fires.

Closer.

The feeling of Eddie Sandow's gun in her hand as she tossed it away, and there was David as soon as she had emerged from the apartment, asking her why she'd put her life on the line. They had a clear shot, you stepped into the line of fire. She'd been so relieved to see him. She wasn't going to be alone in the hours after, and that had meant more than he knew. He didn't have to die, she had said, without acknowledging that she easily could have. Then David's serene, assured expression. He didn't, thanks to you. Only now David is gone, too.

The heart of the target begins to disappear.

Who at the NYPD do you trust? Is there someone at the NYPD who cares if you live, or if you die? Locked in a townhouse with two kids, Joe Utley had asked her the questions. Ed had hostage negotiation experience, and something had shifted between them over the years. His voice had been unexpectedly comforting over the line that day. I got a gun to your cop, Joe had threatened. You lie again, and your pretty little girlfriend dies. He'd still been Tucker to her back then, but he'd been solid. Calm. He'd stayed with her that afternoon, and the trust had blossomed. Working with him that day had reminded her of a rhythm she had still craved with the one person she had needed to be there most.

She doesn't know how he'd ultimately been forced to pull the trigger on himself, but she knows he wouldn't have chosen it. She knows what it takes for someone to pull the trigger on themselves too well.

She fires again.

Then again.

Nearly where she wants to be. To any other cop, she would be dead on, but it's not good enough.

Not for her.

Pull the trigger, don't even think about it!

The memory suddenly slams into her and she lowers her weapon for a second, trying to catch her breath. Her eyes sting, and her temples throb. You've only got one chance, you have to take it. Shoot him! Olivia exhales hard, pacing her breaths as Elliot's voice ricochets in her head. Olivia, there's no reason to keep this piece of crap alive. Pull the trigger. Pull it! She sees Gitano's face, one of the bastards she will never forget. He'd held her life in the balance as surely as if the gun had been held to her own head.

She lifts her gun now, fast, firing another round. It's right on target. Another.

Olivia, pull that trigger. Shoot him. Shoot him!

Elliot's eyes had distracted her that day. She kept catching them and everything inside of her had crumbled. They had both been taunting her. One of the men in front of her had wanted to live and the other didn't care if he died.

Knowing which was which had rocked her irrevocably.

You better make sure you take me out with one shot. One, perfect shot.

She narrows her eyes as she hones in on her target now. It has a face. A voice. She's precise, and she takes him out straight to his head. Again. Again. Again.

Again.

Just like that, Elliot lives. He's safe. He's still with her. She looks to her right and he's there, firing his Glock-22. She watches him fire, his stance more familiar to her than her own. I know you would have taken the shot.

Like hell she would have. Before Noah, there had been no life more valuable to her than his. Maybe it had been wrong, but everyone else had family, he had been hers. Sometimes even she cannot comprehend all of the knots between them.

All these years, and here he is. Still solid. Still him. It's almost painful how quickly he's ripping off the band-aid of her internal isolation. There is a vacuum within her, and she's held that place for him. On the surface she had let people in, but deep down she's held her breath for one person for over nine years.

Right now she can feel the air coming back. It's being sucked back into her, into the hollows.

He is a backdraft in her lungs.

The shaking in her hand begins to subside.

Two bullets left.

Lewis is on the floor then. Her old gun is in her hand. One move, lights out. She can feel the medallion on the bottom of her weapon, and it's burning a hole into her palm. She lets it sink into her skin, lets it strengthen her. She channels it because she has to fight for herself as much as Elliot would have. She uses the gun then, hitting the beast hard with it, and for one second she thinks the metal branded him, and that's as it should be.

But she hadn't killed him. She had every chance to execute him with her weapon, and to this day she doesn't understand why she hadn't done it.

She looks to her right again, and this time Elliot is looking at her.

She had failed when it came to Lewis. She should have killed him. It would have saved lives.

Elliot lowers his weapon now, and despite his safety glasses, she sees the resolution in his expression as he locks in on her.

She can fight; she can be the rage. The rage is okay. Her gun is shaking now, and it's okay because he's been there. It is years ago, and it's Rickett. Go ahead, he tells Elliot.

Only she hadn't let Elliot take the shot. She'd fired first, injuring the bastard but letting him live. She'd watched Elliot's unfired weapon shake in the aftermath. Elliot, she'd called out. It's over. But later, Elliot hadn't understood. Did you think I froze? Is that why you fired first? He'd been sitting at his desk, hands folded on his stomach and lost in the depths of darkness. I fired first because you would have killed him.

He deserves to die. Elliot's voice had been a rasp.

Maybe he does. But he wanted you to kill him. He wanted you to remember that you took his life. Not because you had to, but because you were angry.

Her own voice. Elliot nods once at her, and he's given her back her own absolution and acceptance just like that.

Two bullets.

Through the Plexiglas between them, Elliot's lips lift just a little bit. Over the last twenty years, he has been both the disappearing sand between her fingers and the immovable concrete shelter around her. She trusts who he is as a cop more than she trusts anyone she has ever known. If he'd had to make a choice for Noah all those years ago, then she trusts he made the best choices he could.

He'd made decisions that had given her son a chance to survive. To thrive.

He holds up two fingers. He's got two left in his magazine too. Let's take them out, he mouths.

The relief courses through her. The synchronization. The history. The impossible way he's still in her head, and maybe she is still in his.

She turns back to her target then. Takes aim.

She fires once and Lewis is dead. Head shot.

Then again. Moore is down. Head shot.

She's so unerringly accurate she thinks one bullet has gone through the hole of another. She glances at Elliot's target.

He's done the same.

She releases the magazine, efficiently snaps another one in. Then she leans over, into his lane. She sets her gun down on the small ledge in front of him. He switches out his magazine and hands his weapon to her.

He's brought out four other weapons she could choose to use, but the one she needs to be comfortable with again is his.

-o0o-

Elliot had stopped in the lobby with her to get two coffees from the Starbucks stand, and it gives him a chance to marvel at the difference in her from this morning until now.

What a difference a few hours have made.

The fragility he's been watching in her eyes is dissolving. There is a burgeoning strength in the way she's now holding herself as she takes the steaming coffee out of his hands and peels back the lid.

"You ready to head up?" He opens his own lid and inhales, letting the smell of the coffee seep into his bones. It might be late afternoon, but he knows that what they learn upstairs might mean their day is just starting.

She takes a sip of her drink, and her lips lift just a little against the rim. "You weren't sending me home today."

It's the first conspiratorial moment they've had, and he's missed this dynamic so much it nearly knocks his voice away. "No. I value my life."

Her eyes lift to his. There is a softness in them that makes his stomach twist. He knows her eyes better than he knows anyone's. He knows every shade and every nuance, and this look hits him hard in his gut, in a place where the sheer beauty of her fully lives. "You were just getting me out of there, weren't you?"

He shrugs and tries to keep his voice light. "Did you want to watch everyone else get to work on this case, or did you want to be the one out there?"

Olivia grins a little bit, and she starts walking with him towards the elevators. Even the pace of her stride is so deeply familiar that he wants to grab her. He wants to pull her with him against the wall and push his forehead against hers and tell her things that she will think fuck up her world.

He wants to tell her things about want and need and desperation and penance.

Instead, he just walks.

Upstairs, he's going to change everything up. Since last night he's given her time to process the losses, his presence, the ache of living without her son until this is over. He's been damned protective about making sure she had that space.

But now it's time for her to be back in charge of this case. If she will ever feel closure when this is done, it will be because she was in control of it and had the ability to hunt this monster down herself. As far as he intends, she will get the full capacity of Assistant Special-Agent-In-Charge Jubal Valentine and his brilliant ops team upstairs. Surveillance, databases, facial recognition. As Captain, she would be focused on managing the fine line between her team and the NYPD brass. Here she will have leeway.

The elevator doors open, and it's just the two of them.

They step in, and he feels the energy radiate off her as she stands next to him. "You held my son. Before me."

The doors close. It's not what he'd expected. He had expected her to come at him for what he'd told her earlier. To blame him for risking Noah's life, to blame him for never reaching out to her during that case.

"And you held mine before me," he reminds her quietly.

She expels a loud breath, and as much he wants to touch her, he does his best to give her some space. The day catches up to her again, and she blinks at him, trying to process what he's told her.

Floor eight. Then nine.

"If he'd gone to the wrong person, El. If he had, I wouldn't-"

There's something akin to forgiveness in her voice and he can't process it.

His fingers curl at his sides and he feels so deeply exhausted by what he's held onto for so many years that he isn't able to say a word. The lies. The self-recriminations. The destruction. The systematic failures in his life, one after another after another.

The ways he's failed her. Failed her son.

She faces forward as they ascend. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. "I don't know how to unravel any of this, El," she rasps. "That you had something to do with my son being safe-"

It's the raw break in her voice that makes him shudder.

He can't take credit for that. At the time there had been no way to know the personal significance of the infant he had held so tightly. He remembers the moment, though. He will never forget the way Baby Boy Doe had peacefully slept, his fist pushing into his mouth as Elliot had fought the nausea and handed him over to the lesser of all evils, praying his gut instinct was right.

For some inexplicable reason she's coming back. "Look at me," she commands.

Seventeen.

When he looks over his shoulder at her, there is a fire in her eyes he hasn't seen in years.

He scrapes his teeth over his lower lip, trying to push back the avalanche of guilt. He can't. It's always been the crumble of a mountainside, tumbling and tossing until it suffocates everything in its path.

Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one.

"I've been so hurt by you not being where I needed you to be all of these years. I still don't think I understand. But it was bigger than that. You were where my child needed you to be, and I just want you to know that for that, I'm grateful."

She knocks the wind out of him with her acceptance. He stands there, stunned. In the middle of a nightmare, the grace of her strength is still an extraordinary phenomenon.

Before he can even process the unimaginable olive branch, the doors open and she steps out, the big bold lettering proclaiming this the home of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York Field Office.

He watches her stride into his office like she owns the place, and he knows this is it. Their time to personally readjust would be on the backburner for now.

Now it was time to get Sir Tobias Moore and send him straight into hell.

And by God, he'd make sure the bastard met the devil for a dance before he ever had the chance to hurt Olivia again.

-o0o-

Episode references:

Wednesday's Child (S:15)

Florida (S:8)

Father's Shadow (S:13)

Townhouse Incident (S:17)

Rage (S:6)