Torre Canne, Puglia, Italy

7:44 A.M.

1/16

"You look like hell."

The words slipped out of her mouth without warning. Though, they weren't a lie. His lips were paler than the rest of his skin, and the darkness under his eyes replicated that of a cave. She immediately saw the beads of sweat on his forehead and how his body was still shaking slightly under the stillness of shock.

"Well, I did just wake up, but you didn't come all the way here to tell me that." he rasped. God, even his voice sounded just as sick as he looked. She tried searching for some sort of familiarity but the once vibrant colors that made him who he was had turned to a dull grey.

It clicked for her. Why his handlers couldn't pull him out, why Kathy was probably the last person they'd call.

"We both know that's not why I'm here," she whispered, allowing herself to look him up and down once more. Her heart hurt looking at him, realizing that he was in pain beyond an intensity that he had ever experienced. "So... are you gonna invite me in?"

He shuffled a step backward, opening the door for her to drag her bag in behind her. As soon as the door shut, she stopped and looked around the small little villa. Quintessentially Elliot, she noted. Like a motel room but with sparse details indicating it was his. Limited photos of his kids, but mostly bare walls and default furniture. Yet, something about it felt a little bit like home.

"You want a beer or something?" he asked, walking past her.

She rolled her eyes. "It's barely eight in the morning, El."

"Yeah, well." he winced as he tried to stretch his arms. "It's not every day that your old partner shows up in a different country to pop by for a visit. I've got coffee if that's what you're aiming for."

She rushed over to his side, carefully helping him sit down in the nearest chair. "I can get it myself, you're in no shape to be working with scorching hot liquids." she grimaced at the sight. Elliot Stabler trying to hide the fact that he was dying on the inside. She could always read him like a book, but at this point it seemed as if even a blind person could read what he was feeling.

She touched the back of her hand to his forehead, recoiling at the heat against her skin. "Oh, you're burning up." she shrugged off her jacket, folding it on top of her suitcase before sitting down on the couch beside the chair he was in. "So, I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and assume it's not the flu?"

He gave her his signature side eye with a smirk. "I'm 36 hours into this, Liv. Fever is normal, so is the shakes and the sweats. You didn't have to come all this way just for that."

He was detoxing. At home... like the thick-skulled man she knew he was. Though, she wasn't sure what it was that he was withdrawing from. At this point, she wasn't sure she wanted to know either. She felt herself launch into protective mode, grabbing a thin blanket from off the back of the couch and laying it over his legs.

"How long have you been using?" she asked quietly, tucking in the blanket underneath of his legs like a swaddle. She couldn't make eye-contact with him, fearing it would only further break her heart.

"C'mon, Liv. You know me, you know I didn't just wake up one day and think 'Oh, you know what would be fun? Heroin.'" he grumbled.

She glared at the grey eyes that were once blue. "Good to see your sarcasm hasn't been sweat out yet."

"Give it a few hours, it'll be gone when my bones begin to feel broken again." he shivered as he leaned carefully back against the chair. "They made me test the product, once was enough to get me to where I am now." the words came accompanied with the sound of his teeth chattering.

"And going to the hospital didn't cross your mind? Or did you sweat your brain out too?" she quipped, pushing herself off the couch to venture off to find the kitchen. Judging by the fact that his sink was bone dry and his fridge was empty, she had to assume he hadn't eaten anything in God knows how long.

"Can't." he called out, seemingly out of breath. "My guy has half of the town in on the ring. One nurse recognizes me, tells her husband, and suddenly I'm a buoy floating out in that crystal blue sea. It's this way or the highway."

"I'll bet you wished you picked the highway." she chuckled under her breath. She grabbed the one carton of juice in the fridge that wasn't beyond expired and a loaf of bread that didn't appear moldy. She remembered that in his old place, he always kept the toaster in a top cabinet because Eli liked to try to plug it in to see the orange lights on the inside. When she opened the cabinet above the sink, she realized that some old habits die hard.

As soon as the bread was growing brown, she dug around one of the drawers for a medicine bottle. Despite the italian written on the container, she recognized the aspirin bottle from the design. She knew it likely wouldn't touch the pain he was feeling, but trying wouldn't kill him.

"Here, eat and take these." she said setting down the juice and plate before dropping the aspirin tablets beside them.

She watched as he gulped and cringed at the sight of food. "No buono," he said, turning his head away from it. "Don't think I could keep it down even if I tried."

"Well, you haven't tried, so you don't know. At least take a bite. Half of the pain you're feeling right now is hunger and your body just doesn't know it. Noah does the same thing when he doesn't feel good and yet, toast always helps."

He paused, furrowing his brows as he looked at her. "Who's Noah?"

She hadn't meant to let that slip so soon, and she froze as soon as she realized it. A wave of sadness washed over her when she was struck with the reality that he really didn't know. Nobody had mentioned it to him, he hadn't snooped her facebook page or heard anything through the grapevine. She smiled sadly, staring down into her lap. "Um... just eat. I promise, it'll help."

He was staring a hole into her, refusing to look away as he grabbed a piece of toast and took a bite. "There, now tell me who Noah is. Your husband?"

She tried not to chuckle at that. "No, definitely not." a small laugh broke free. Her hands braced her knees as she shook her head. It was a slap in the face to have one more reminder of how much time had passed. "He's uh... Noah is my son."

Elliot's stare didn't waver, but rather turned into an expression of both shock and happiness. He was at a loss for words. There wasn't exactly a way to congratulate her on a child several years after he had come into her life. Or at least there wasn't a way that wouldn't feel incredibly awkward.

Her head bowed, sorrow flooding her senses in an almost uncontrollable manner. The moment she walked in the door, denial had taken over; the sight of him so sickly causing her to jump back into protective partner mode as if a decade hadn't passed. A decade and now she was a mother and he was an addict.

Her eyes caught on his left ring finger, and more importantly, the absence of the silver band. No tan line, no history indicating that he was who he used to be. Still, jumping to conclusions wouldn't help anyone. It was more than likely that his undercover persona was single meanwhile the real Elliot Stabler could still be married... living in Italy... alone.

Well, the odds weren't perfect.

"I'm really happy for you, Liv." he whispered, the hoarseness in his voice coming from both the physical pain and the choked back tears. When she glanced back up at him, she caught the same emotions in his eyes that were in her own. Confusion, guilt, curiosity. Maybe even the same disbelief that two people had gone so long without each other and this is where they were now.

She found it harder to read him now that his eyes had come with dark bags and hidden agony, but not impossible. She always had the ability to read Elliot Stabler like a book, even when he could be the most stubborn and closed off person in the world. She could tell that he had a million questions about her and Noah, but felt no right to answer them. She could feel the guilt radiating off of him for abandoning her.

Maybe now wasn't the time to explain all that he missed in 10 years.

She watched the shift in his face as his body tensed up. His brows furrowed as he tried to suppress a groan and the hidden tears of pain in his eyes. She leapt up from the couch, running to help him out of the chair. "C'mon, you need to get back to bed. I gotcha," she said, throwing his arm over her shoulder so he could lean on her. "Easy, easy." she guided him to the bedroom that was just off of the living room, helping his sweat-stricken body ease into the mattress.

She quickly ran off to grab her carry-on, or better yet, a bottle of pills from her carry-on. As she darted back towards his room, she caught the bathroom from the corner of her eye. She grabbed the washcloth from off the sink, soaking it in cool water before returning to him. "Here, take these." she said, dropping the pink and white capsules in his hand. "I wasn't sure if you had any benadryl here so I picked some up at the train station. It'll help you sleep."

He weakly grabbed for the glass of water on his nightstand, downing the pills as fast as he could. "Wait, don't go." he reached out for her, out of breath from the small trek to the bedroom. "Tell me about Noah. Gimme something else to think about while writhing. Please."

She wanted to cry at the urgency on his face. He was clinging to her with an iron force grip on her arm, readying for his ride on yet another wave of withdrawal pains. Were his kids not enough to think about? Or maybe the last 36 hours had already consumed every thought about them until it was something that only became negative.

She hesitantly sat on the edge of the bed beside him, dabbing the sweat away from his forehead with the cloth. "Well, he's eight going on eighteen," she chuckled softly. "He was a case kid, I'll spare you the hard details but he was about 9 months old when he was placed with me. He's a handful to say the least but he uh — he saved me before I even knew him."

Elliot was out before she even finished her sentence, and quite frankly, she was thankful. His grip released from his arm, and though he was still shaking, he was asleep. She dabbed more sweat from his brow with the cloth, careful to only barely brush his skin. He'd never been one who looked peaceful when he slept. Even back in the cribs, his face while sleeping only ever seemed like a pause from the world. All of its terrors still haunting his dreams, never quite shutting off even when his body was dead to the world.

"He came along shortly after you left. So many horrible things did, but Noah was the one good thing that came." she whispered, her voice barely falling on his unconscious ears. "I had to learn to get through those things without you. But you were wrong... that day when Ryan Clifford died. You said that you needed to constantly be looking over your shoulder to make sure I was still okay. I learned to look over my own shoulder after you left."

She stared as he didn't even flinch. She knew in the back of her head that she wasn't talking to the Elliot sleeping in front of her, she was talking to the ghost of him that she had cursed for years after he had left. The Elliot she had screamed and damned the name of when the reflection in the mirror felt so damaged. She had asked that reflection so many times where Elliot had been, why didn't he come save her? One day, the switch had flipped. It dawned on her that if he had seen her like that, it wouldn't be her who needed to be saved.

"I don't think you would've been able to survive what SVU turned into when you left. Or maybe what I turned into after you left. You would've screamed until your lungs burned out and God, I don't even know how far you would've gone." her hand gently swept through the buzz cut hair on the back of his head. "You would've killed him."

When he started to stir, she pulled her hand away, slowly backing off the edge of the bed. His body calmed as she carefully shut the door, leaving him to rest before the restlessness would soon begin.

Elliot Stabler's Villa

10:45 A.M.

1/16

She was staring out of the window that overlooked the ocean. On her toes over the kitchen sink, she watched the push and pull of the ice blue waves. She had done her best to tidy up the small living space where strewn blankets and various items littered the surfaces. It was the home of someone whose skin was clearly crawling, something she was once familiar with. The deadly silence that came when a person in detox finally settled down. The horrible feeling that at any moment the ball would drop and the situation would become uncontrollable.

God, she felt like she was 12 years old again.

Seagulls flew over the beachy waters, filling the silence with calls to one another. She couldn't shake the image of the photograph she had found flipped over on the table beside the living room chair. His family, faces against the surface as if they had been watching him with all too much disappointment. She had debated on turning it upright, wondering if it would only flood back worse memories. He had never wanted to disappoint them, she knew that much. The rest was history to her, and she could only imagine how much had changed since then. In the end, she had turned the photo right side up, hoping to send a message to him that he wasn't disappointing the loving eyes that stared through the photograph.

The sun beamed in her eyes, heating her cheeks through the glass window. It had been cold in New York, and the warmth here was a pleasant change amongst not so pleasant circumstances.

She had checked her phone time and time again, craving a hug from her little boy back home. Something to remind her that she wasn't that same 12 year old, dragging her mother off to bed to struggle through the DTs alone. She was with Elliot now, and that reality was far behind her.

She grabbed her phone once more, but this time to call in to Huang. She figured that she may only have a small window of time before Elliot would be awake and the contact she would need to make would be impossible.

"Olivia?" George's calm voice answered after the first few rings.

"I'm in his house right now," she said, refusing to take her eyes off of the waves that were her only provided sanity at the moment. "He's sick and he's going to be for a long time. Tell your people that he's in no shape to be moved right now."

"Copy that. How sick is he?"

"I gave him something to help him sleep a few hours ago. I don't think he's at the worst of it yet, but he's not going to the hospital either. He's afraid he'll be recognized and it'll blow the operation. I don't think he understands that the operation is done and that he's being extracted. In his mind, once this is over, he'll be back in the field." she sighed, fighting off the tears that stung her eyes. He was deep under and she knew it. She knew the feeling from back in Oregon, when her mind began to actually work and think like the person she was supposed to be.

"No, he's done after this. They can't risk keeping him under. Just do what you can to keep him comfortable. You don't have to tell him right away that he's being pulled, he just has to get through this first. That's the most important thing and if believing that he'll be going back will get him through this, it's worth it." George sighed on the other end, his mind bouncing from who he was as an agent to who he was as a doctor.

"Lying to him? Is that really the best option?" she contemplated, hoisting herself up to sit on the countertop. She had a clearer view of the water from that angle and it eased her nerves. "I don't want to feed him false hope."

"If it keeps him fighting, it's not false hope. I know I'm asking a lot of you, Liv—"

She cut him off. "You're right. It's fine, he'll be fine. As soon as he's out of the woods, I'll explain it to him. I just don't know how long it's gonna be until he's okay again."

"It'll be a matter of days. Try to keep him hydrated and make sure he eats because his body is going to forget what hunger feels like and perceive it as pain instead. Then he won't want to eat at all and that will just prolong the sickness. I'll see if I can get someone there to call in a script for the nausea and have Vincent drop it off."

"Thanks, George." she whispered, hanging up the phone before he had time to add another request to the list. As far as she was concerned, they were on lockdown in the little place he had made his home.

Her eyes averted to the people in the distance that were walking along the beach. How could a place of paradise feel like Hell to her? Bad things weren't supposed to exist in places of getaway. Yet, here they were.

Despite his questionable behavior over the years, there was one truth that stuck out to her. He did not deserve this. He wasn't the stereotypical junkie who they used to see tons of every day on the job. He was a man who was fighting the people who created those scenarios of life. He was a man who dedicated more to the job than his personal life and a man who would literally go as far as sticking a needle into his arm to fall deeper under.

The strong sound of a horrible cough pulled her attention and she quickly hopped off from her seat on the countertop. She raced to the bathroom, calling his name with urgency. "Elliot?" she yelled, her voice echoing off of the walls. She heard the toilet flush from the ensuite off of his bedroom and mentally deduced what had happened.

When she found him, he was on the floor, leaning back against the sink vanity. His skin was as white as a sheet and the sweat had only intensified on his face. "I hate this." he gasped. "I fucking hate this."

"I know," she replied, swiftly grabbing a towel from the rack and splashing it with cold water. She knelt down on the floor beside him, pressing the coldness to his burning skin. "Deep breaths," she reminded him, waiting for the feel of his pulse to slow and his breathing to steady.

"I just wanna sit here for a minute," he rasped, allowing his body to ease down further against the cold tile floor. She could see the dread and embarrassment on his face along with the hollowness of his cheeks.

"Okay," she nodded, sinking down to sit across from him. "Stay down here as long as you need to." She lifted his legs and rested them over her own outstretched legs, patting her hand on his shins. "This won't last forever, you know. I know it feels like it will, but I promise that it won't."

"If this is forever then please kill me now," he chuckled softly before wincing from the pain. Every bone in his body felt like it had been turned to sponge and every drop of blood was somehow both ice and fire.

Her head ducked down. "I think you're forgetting I'm a veteran of witnessing someone going through withdrawal." she slowly whispered, almost hoping he wouldn't hear.

A beat passed and she was almost certain he hadn't heard until she could hear the soft clearing of his throat "Your mom?" he asked, staring at her through barely open lids. His head was still against the uncomfortable ridges of the sink vanity's drawers.

She nodded slowly, refusing to look him in the eye. "If there's one thing I can say for certain, it's that this won't last forever. Believe it or not, there was a few months where I remember my mom being sober."

"How old were you?" his brows knit together despite the pain, he was genuinely interested. He didn't remember ever hearing of a time when Serena was off the bottle, only ever the opposite.

"When I was thirteen, there was a big storm that winter. The roads were all blocked off from the blizzard and we barely even had power in the apartment." she felt herself smiling sadly at the memory. "As for my mother, her stash was completely gone and there were no ways of getting to the liquor store. School had been cancelled that Wednesday through Friday, and by then, the weekend was there. Five whole days of just the two of us. She detoxed the entire time and as soon as the roads cleared, she had decided that there was no point in going through the agony again."

The dark bags under his eyes were staring at her more than the icey blue irises. "How long did that last?"

"Until I told her about the mysterious man who had called trying to speak to me. Three months of sobriety gone in a moment's notice." she felt the unwelcome wave of emotions begin to hit her and she fought them off with as much power as possible. "She made it to sobriety at least once in her life, so I know at least some part of her deep down wanted that life for herself. It was just... too good to be true."

Elliot's head hung low, staring down into his lap in the silence. "It's been so damn long since I've been face to face with my kids, I think that hurts worse than the pain I'm feeling right now."

The photo turned face down. They couldn't see him like this.

She stared at him, watching as he drowned in his own shame. "How long has it been?"

The tear that dropped down his cheek was not lost on her. The guilt grew, the shame swallowed him, she saw it as clear as a crystal. Too long... obviously. He didn't answer for a minute, and she could only imagine it was classic Elliot not wanting to come off as a deadbeat.

"Five years in person." he replied, his voice husky and quiet. She watched as he played with his ring finger where his wedding band no longer existed. "We FaceTime all the time but Eli is growing up without a dad and not a day goes by where I don't hate myself for it."

She knew she was treading dangerous waters too soon, but the questions were building up with an immeasurable pressure in her head. She wanted to cry with him, for him, for all of the lost memories and chances with his children.

"And Kathy?" she asked, finally. As soon as the words slipped from her mouth she wanted desperately to reach into the air and grab them.

He laughed. A shameful, pitiful laugh. "When I left SVU, I tried, Liv. I really tried." she saw the plea in his eyes, the beg for her to believe him. "The first five years were the worst. I think it was the nightmares that started it. The image of Jenna Fox falling to the floor woke me up every hour on the dot. I started sleeping on the couch so I wouldn't wake her up. I tried to make life go back to some sort of normalcy. Transferred to Queens to some crap-ass unit where it was all just traffic tickets and petit larceny."

She watched the emotional pain consume him as he relived the past through his words. "I tried and tried but I was so lost at that point, neither of us could take it anymore. I wasn't healing, I was distracting myself and pretended it was healing. By then, four out of five kids were out of the house. Dickie was in the Air Force and Lizzie was off at Columbia. Kathleen was living with her fiance and Maureen was married. I just didn't think I could last long enough in that marriage to see Eli go off on his own."

"Sometimes... " she sighed. "Sometimes there's more honor to be found in doing what's actually right for your kids and not what everyone tells you is right for your kids." Her mind drifted to Sheila and how badly she regretted not following her instincts.

"When Kathy and I split, I decided to bury myself in my job. Instead of working some mediocre badge tasks I decided to go all in. I went to Spain for a little bit, did some liaison work the FBI. Huang got me into the program I'm in now. Five years later, here I am."

"On the floor, vomiting?" she asked, smiling sadly.

"Yeah," He gave the best attempt of a tired laugh. "I just... I thought maybe I could find myself here. All it did was build regret but if I pull out now, it'll have all been for nothing. I feel like I owe it to my kid to finish the job. At least that way he won't look at me like I bailed just to have a five year vacation on the beach."

"Five years here, it can't all be for nothing, El. You infiltrated, you got information that the bureau would've never gotten without you. Even if you pull out now, you've made a hell of a difference." she found her hand continuing to rest softly on his shin, hoping it brought some comfort that he wasn't alone on the bathroom floor.

"Eli was six years old when I started travelling. The year after I left was the year at the desk, but after that I was all over the place. I came home for a few holidays, every birthday I could. As soon as I got here, I knew it would be a while until I could go back to being 'dad'. He's fourteen and I don't think he's ever gonna be able to forgive me for not being who he needed."

She watched the paleness in his face only worsen at the realization. It was probably the first time he had even said it out loud.

She bit at her lower lip, her eyes falling away from him and towards the floor. "Sometimes I think Noah feels that way too. I'll catch a case and be gone for days. He lashes out and I think it's just the loneliness. One parent and she's absent most of the time." When she had gotten on the plane, she certainly hadn't expected it all to amount to using the dirty bathroom floor as a confessional. "It got a little easier when I became a captain and I could have better control over my hours. Still... I don't wanna do to him what my mother did to me."

"We do what we think is best for our kids and hold on until they're old enough to acknowledge that we made mistakes." he huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I realized long ago that's pretty much what parenting is."

"I mean, look at Fin." she sighed. "He went under and never got to see Ken. I'm not saying that FaceTime is gonna fill the void but Eli knows he can call and tell you about his day and you'll be there to listen. That has to count for something."

When he looked back up at her, she knew he was searching for some part of her to remind him of the past. He was looking for some remnant of her that hadn't changed — something that didn't make him feel as if he had soared through the past ten years without notice. Though, the person he was trying to see wasn't there anymore. She had done her fair share of evolving through time. New scars on top of old scars, old scars faded.

"When did it all change?" he whispered.

She didn't have the answer. The truth was, it had all changed so many times. One life developed into the next over and over, change exposing the fact that the lives they lived were no longer sound, no longer untouchable.

Elliot Stabler's Villa

5:28 P.M.

1/16

It had since been uneventful when she finally helped him off of the bathroom floor. Sleep had claimed him for a few more hours after that, mostly disrupted by nausea episodes and fits of pain. Now, he was lying on the couch, covered by heavy blankets in an attempt to stop the shaking.

"Here," Olivia said, cradling a mug as she walked towards him. "It's soup, I put it in a mug so you wouldn't spill it." she placed it on the coffee table beside him before sitting in the adjacent chair.

"I can't eat it," he shook his head, out of breath for no apparent reason. She could see the pain in his eyes and how the dark bags beneath them had only grown more alarming in color. "I won't be able to keep it down."

"El, I know your appetite is non-existent right now but your body is hungry and after a while, it'll only think of hunger as pain. Please, just a few sips now and then and you might feel better." she urged, pressing her hand against his forehead to feel if his fever was still lingering.

He carefully reached out for the mug, and she quickly assisted him so it wouldn't spill. "For some reason this takes me back to the days when I was a kid and I would stay home from school with the flu." he chuckled before coughing into his sleeve. "My mom would turn on cartoons for me and she always used my grandmother's chicken noodle soup recipe."

Olivia smiled sadly. "I hate to break it to you but this is just whatever brand you had in the back of your cabinet. I don't think I can compete with Bernadette."

He painstakingly lifted the spoon that was in the mug, trying to suppress the shaking in his arms long enough to feed himself. Watching it happen felt like a jab in the chest to her. He had been shot and thrown through glass and just about everything under the sun, but she had never seen him this low. "I'd bet you do the same for your little guy," he croaked.

Her head lulled against her shoulder. "When it's happening in the moment, you feel like it'll never end. Runny noses and beeping thermometers. Then it passes and it's like it never happened. God, I remember when he had the measles. I thought that was as bad as it could get."

When she opened her eyes, she saw him stare at her with confusion. "And... it wasn't?"

She knew seeing Elliot again would stir up emotions, but she hadn't exactly expected it to force her to revisit the parts of her life when she had wished he was there. The terrifying moments where all she wanted was to reach out and feel him behind her, steadying her.

But he wasn't.

"No," she muttered, her head hanging low. "No, that was... that was nothing. It paled in comparison."

She heard the heavy gulp that came from his throat.

"I mean, don't get me wrong. It was terrifying." She finds herself laughing for some reason, almost an automatic response to assure him that she was okay. But the laughter died when she was acquainted with the memory that was pure terror and fear. "But not nearly as terrifying as when your child goes missing and you can no longer trust the one person on this earth who still has some sort of blood relation to him."

"Liv —"

"I could hear you, Elliot." she spoke almost in hysterics, interrupting him before he could finish. "I could hear you whispering in my ear that love and family have nothing to do with DNA, the same thing you told me time and time again. But I never learn. I thought that I was being selfish for keeping him away but in all truthfulness, you were right all along. I was the one who chose to ignore it until it came back to bite me in the ass."

'And look how great you turned out.'

She didn't believe it for herself, and she hadn't believed it for Noah. All those years of Elliot telling her in subliminal messages that she wasn't who her genetic code told her to be, that none of it had to mean anything, and she hadn't accepted it.

"Like I said before. We do what we think is best for our kids and hold on until they're old enough to acknowledge that we made mistakes." he was staring at her through his own clouded eyes. Jaded with sickness and yet his worries were primarily on her. As soon as she realized it, she only felt worse. How was she supposed to fight off the urge to spill her guts on what the last ten years had entailed.

This wasn't her therapy session. This was her old partner lying in agony who she was here to help.

"So uh, you staying here tonight?" he asked, trying to break the tension that filled the air like lightning bolts.

She looked back up at him through the bangs that covered her eyes. "Only if you'll have me... I'm not too sure it's a good idea to leave you here like this." she breathed, trying to hide the embarrassment of her previous outburst.

He mustered up what energy he could to smile. "It's ironic, isn't it?"

Her brows knit together in confusion. "How do you mean?"

"Look at me," he gestured towards himself. "This isn't even rock bottom for me. I'm watching my body chew itself up and spit itself out to try to work a load of drugs out of my system and as sick as I feel, this isn't the lowest I've been. You'd think it would be, and I assume it would be for most people." he shook his head. "Nah, rock bottom for me was on the precinct floor with a teenager's blood on my hands. Maybe even in Jersey when Gitano had a 20 gauge to my temple."

Her eyes drifted away from him, her lungs puffing out a pathetic laugh. "Ironic is one way to look at it. Maybe it's because you know you'll be okay in a matter of time. Back then... well that was the end of the world or as damn close as it would come." Now, those moments seemed relatively small in comparison.

She watched him fight to take another spoonful from the mug, forcing it down his own throat in agony. Every time he lifted it to his mouth, she saw the tired collapse in his muscles. She knew deep down that he was worse than he was letting on. That maybe it was just a show for her, something to make it seem like he wasn't hanging on by a thread.

Her worst fear was the idea that the only reason he was hanging on was the idea that he would soon be back in the field. All she could really do was hope that as soon as his body was recovered, he would come to his senses. Though, she knew Elliot and she knew that him leaving any other way than the hard way was damn near impossible.

Elliot Stabler's Villa

1:03 A.M.

1/17

Both of them had eventually passed out in the living room. Olivia slept with one eye open in the recliner bundled under a knit blanket while Elliot took the couch. The flashing lights on the TV were all that left the room lit. Some italian game show rerun that she didn't understand was playing with the volume on low, and her younger self would probably be dumbstruck at the image.

Every once in a while, he'd crash on her couch during his separation from Kathy. He'd be watching a game that went into overtime after a long shift and he'd be out cold with a beer in his hand before they even called the score. Sometimes it would be her, sound asleep after watching Cops with him or sometimes even The Sopranos. Each time, they had both woken up with a blanket over themselves and the other one sound asleep.

They were younger back then, maybe even a little naive. As the light of the TV reflected off of his face, she noted the changes that came from time and not detox. He had new scars and new lines, new sides of his story to be told. His hair was gray in small spots, but his eyes told the story of age more than anything else about him.

She wondered if he noticed it in her too. She knew that time had touched her, she knew it every time she saw an old photo of the two of them. They weren't those people anymore, the smiling friends behind the glass in the frame. What hurt was the fact that every new line on both of their faces had grown without each other. They were practically children in the first few years of their partnership, twelve years accounting the stories they shared. Just like that came the gap in their history. The road parted ways, the stories changed, and now neither of them understood the other with the same intensity as they once did. Too many secrets, too many changes.

He had finished less than half of his dinner and after that, the heaving had tired him out. She re-ran his apology in her head a thousand times in the darkness. Every time the cold cloth pressed to his forehead with her on the floor behind him, he'd tear up and beg her forgiveness. Each time, she'd assure him that it was okay and he would be okay.

She had seen him in all of his bad ways over the years. She remembered the antiretrovirals that made him sick every five minutes when he had tried to save Gloria Palmera. Even then, he had the tendency to brush it off. But when she had tried to comfort him this time, he silently wept.

She wasn't even sure why he was apologizing so much. It could be because he knew she had seen her mother go through it and his sickness could only be a reminder. Or maybe it was just shame and the fact that he felt weak. He didn't even need to say it, she knew he felt ashamed. She knew he didn't want her to see him like this.

There was something about that which had seemed to catch her off guard. Alone, with her captor handcuffed to the bed frame, she had wanted Elliot to be there. Hell, she had suggested it. But when she thought back to it, she wasn't quite sure if she had wanted Elliot to see her like that. They never saw one another as weak, not once. They had always been equals, and she had hid her face in shame every time she had cried about her brother or her dad. Why was that different than the blood and bruises in the beach house?

She knew the questions would rise within her as soon as she saw him again. There was no hiding it, there would always be the moment when she would have to ask or explain what had happened. So many instances where questions and answers would need to be passed back and forth, but none with the same amount of weight behind them as what he had missed.

The one time she had truly expected him to call.

As he stirred on the couch, she watched the clouds pass over the moon through the patio door that adjoined the living room. He was awake, she could hear it in his breathing.

"Did you say you were still on the force in 2012 when you left SVU?" she asked in a near whisper, part of her praying he would answer and the other half praying he wouldn't.

"Yeah. I transferred closer to home for a short period." he mumbled, still working his way towards a more comfortable position on the couch that didn't make his entire body feel all the more broken.

She kept her eyes glued to the moon in hopes it would keep her from completely breaking down. "What about 2013?"

He paused to think in the quietness for a moment. "That's when I started travelling for the liaison work. I was in and out of New York most of the year."

She bit her lip and swallowed hard. "So, around May in 2013... Do you know where you were?" she heard the rise in octaves in her voice, and the fear in her own words. Afraid of the answer, afraid of the memories, and afraid of the change between them that would come.

"Yeah, I remember I left around the 15th to go back to Quantico for a few weeks. I stayed until mid June. I remember because Lizzie's birthday was the 14th and so we tried to make it special before I left." he replied. "After that I started travelling more often around the country."

A week. Just over a week. He left eight days before she was held hostage. Eight days before every news headline and reporting station was airing the hunt for the missing cop and the rogue criminal.

Eight fucking days to explain why her phone didn't ring or even a simple e-mail. So much could've happened in between that time. His flight could've been pushed back or his entire trip delayed. They could've decided they didn't need him in Virginia just yet and made him wait until June. A million little things could've just been the universe nudging him to stay within earshot of New York news.

"So, you were probably gone in March of 2014 too, right?" she asked, hearing her voice beginning to choke up. She thanked God that he couldn't see the glimmer of tears in her eyes from where he was lying.

"By then I was in Spain working a trafficking ring." he spoke before harshly coughing into his sleeve. He groaned as his head went back down against the pillow. "Why do you ask?"

She bit down harder on her lip, squeezing her eyes shut. She wasn't going to cry, she had promised herself that she wouldn't fucking cry. "I'd always wondered why you hadn't called when that happened." she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear. She couldn't stop the tear that trickled down her cheek no matter how hard she tried. It burned against her skin, but maybe that was just the memories coming back to her.

A lot of stuff had burned her skin that week.

"When what happened?" Before she could answer, a larger coughing fit had swept through his lungs. His body arched upright as he tried to breathe. Every small breath he took in felt as if it had been replaced with sand until he had calmed himself enough to restore the ability to take in a deep breath. Just as she had gotten ready to rush out of the chair and to his side, he tiredly fell back down against the pillow again, groaning with exhaustion.

"It doesn't matter," she murmured, swiping the tear from off of her cheek. "Go back to sleep, El."