Disclaimer: Nothing about Law and Order: SVU belongs to me. It just inspires me!

Author's note: I am not Catholic, but I can see how the sacrament of confession would be comforting to those who are. I think anyone with a conscience has a deep psychological need to be told they can make everything all right again after they have done something wrong. When Elliot went to confession in "Fat" they made it clear that he wasn't interested in atoning for his sins so much as he desperately wanted to fix everything that was so screwed up in his life, but he didn't know where to begin. So, he returned to the rituals of his faith, the rites that had helped him through his trials all his life. I think the priest hit the mark perfectly when he assigned the penance that he did, and this is where I would like to imagine it going.

I don't write EO stories, but hey, you can imagine it going wherever you want at the end.

PENANCE

Part One: The Call

Brrrr. Brrrr.

He sat at the table and took a deep breath to steady his nerves as he waited for someone to pick up.

Brrrr. Brrrr.

There were six people living there now. Someone had to be home.

Brrrr. Brrrr.

He couldn't believe he had butterflies. Calling her hadn't given him butterflies since the sixth grade when he'd started to notice her smile and her sparkling eyes and the way she tossed her hair when he made her laugh.

Brrrr. Brrrr.

He'd invited her to the school carnival that year and promised to win her a goldfish at the ping-pong ball toss, but Richie Sullivan had already asked her and she didn't have an aquarium.

Brrrr. Brrrr.

But she'd much rather go with him, she had said, so she turned Richie down.

Brrrr. Brr . . .

WE ARE SORRY. NO ONE IS AVAILABLE TO TAKE YOUR CALL. PLEASE LEAVE A MESS . . .

The mechanical masculine voice cut off and was replaced by his mother-in-law's flustered gabbling.

"Oh, goodness . . . Um . . . How do I turn this thing off? . . . Just a moment, please . . . Huh! It doesn't have a tape! Why doesn't it have a tape? . . . I used to be able to stop the old one by ejecting the tape."

Elliot smiled. His brother-in-law, Danny, was making good money in advertising and delighted in providing his family with the latest electronic gadgets on the market. He'd even bought Dickie an X-Box when they had first hit the market, making Elliot feel like a heel because he had told his son he would only pay for half and the other half would come out of Dickie's allowance.

Dickie had loved the X-Box, but Elliot suspected his wife had talked it over with her brother after the fact because Danny had later apologized to him, promised to consult him in the future about buying expensive gifts for the kids, and said something about never having considered the need to teach children to save up for what they wanted because he'd never had any of his own.

Elliot didn't have a problem with his brother-in-law giving his children extravagant gifts, as long as he got some advance notice, but the digital answering machine was obviously a flop. Helen O'Hara was without a doubt the most technologically incompetent person on the planet, and Elliot already knew she would never learn to program the machine or turn it off when she answered the phone.

There was a beep and a grunt and a clatter followed by an ear-splitting squeal of feedback. Then he heard Helen yelling, "Oh, drat! Drat, drat, drat this blasted machine!"

There were a few more indistinguishable noises, then she was yelling into the receiver, "Hello! Hello? Are you still there?"

"Helen, it's Elliot."

"Oh." It sounded as if everything had stopped.

He almost laughed as he pictured her face, eyes wide open, mouth in a little round "O", cheeks still ruddy from her rush to answer the phone.

"Hello, Dear, what do you want?"

She didn't sound the least bit suspicious or angry with him, just perplexed, and without knowing it or meaning to, she eased his mind a little.

"I'd like to talk to Kathy if she's there, please."

He was always perfectly polite with his mother-in-law. She was the one person in the world who had never hurt him or pissed him off. When his mom would sit in the recliner watching soap operas and drinking gin and tonic all afternoon after his dad had beat him, he would go to her house and she would give him a bag of frozen peas for his black eye and spray the cuts that the belt had made with Bactine. Then she'd send him off to play with Kathy and Danny and ask him if he wanted to stay for dinner. Around bedtime, she'd have her husband walk him home, and a couple of times Mr. O'Hara had opted to go in and get his pajamas and a change of clothes instead of leaving him there. She had been his salvation when he was a kid, and it felt good to know that she didn't hold his failure as a husband to her daughter against him.

"What if she doesn't want to talk to you, Dear?" she asked gently.

He had to think about that for a moment. He knew Father McKay expected him to do more than pick up the phone and dial, but if she refused . . .

"Try to convince her for me, would you?"

"Ok, I'll see what I can do." The voice was as kind and compassionate as ever. It was like she understood how much he had been hurt.

First there was silence, then he heard a labored thumping as Helen made her way up the stairs. He did a little math in his head and realized she would be seventy-eight this fall. She'd been suffering with arthritis in her hips and back for thirty years or more. Maybe he should call Danny and suggest that if he wanted to buy her a gadget that she'd really appreciate, he should have one of those lift chairs installed so she didn't have to climb the stairs any more. With nothing more than an on button, an off button, an up button, and a down button, even Helen should be able to operate it.

"Elliot. What do you want?"

Suddenly, he had the feeling that this was a very bad idea and wondered what the penance would be for cursing out a priest in church.

"Elliot?"

"Kathy, hi."

"Hi. Um . . . Why are you calling? Is everything all right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm ok, how are you?"

He had the distinct impression that Helen had shoved the phone into her hand and walked away without giving her a choice in the matter.

"I'm doing all right," she replied uneasily.

"How are the kids?"

"They're fine. Elliot, what do you want?"

He squirmed in his seat, grateful that she couldn't see him, but he wasn't able to shift the ball of lead that had formed in his stomach when she came on the line.

"I um . . . I want to confession the other day," he told her, wondering what the hell he was doing. "This is my penance."

"Gee, thanks a lot!" she said sarcastically. "I'm glad to know you're so eager to talk to me."

"Kathy, no! Please, don't hang up!" Suddenly he realized how desperate he was just to hear her voice, to know she was still there for him.

"Elliot, relax," he soothing words came down the line. "I was just teasing you. I know you, El. It doesn't matted what Father McKay says, you wouldn't have called unless you wanted to speak to me."

He smiled into the phone, relieved that she wasn't going anywhere, and got up from the table to move into the darkened living room.

"I can be stubborn like that," he admitted.

"So I've noticed," she laughed, then, "Elliot, what's wrong?"

He looked around his home, so clean and tidy . . . and empty, sighed softly and said, "I miss you Kath. You're not here and that makes everything wrong."

"Oh, Elliot, I miss you to, Baby."

She was telling the truth, he could hear it in her voice. With another sigh, he slumped into his easy chair.

"Then why'd you leave?"

He knew it was the wrong thing to ask, and they had argued over it many times. He didn't want to provoke another disagreement, but he still didn't understand why she had left him. All he wanted was to understand.

"Kathy?" he called into the silence. "Kathy, I'm not trying to piss you off. I just need you to explain it to me. Maybe if I knew what I was doing wrong, I could fix it."

"Elliot, we've both signed the divorce papers," she gently reminded him.

"I know that," he said, "but that doesn't mean that we have to stop caring. It doesn't mean that I can't be a better person, and it doesn't mean . . . "

He stopped and swallowed his words. He had wanted to say 'It doesn't mean that we can't try again,' but there was no point to that until he figured out what had gone wrong the first time.

"Oh, God, Kath, how did I screw things up so bad?" He cringed at the whine in his voice, felt the sudden sting of tears in his eyes, their burn in his throat.

"If we'd been angry, if we'd had an argument, it would have made sense, but I thought we were doing better. Then I came home one night and you were gone, and I still don't know why, Kathy. Please, just tell me why. Why did you leave me?"