Sweet Relief

Thin Ice

Olivia audibly groans as her phone rings on her desk again. It's Elliot, for the third time today and it's not even noon yet. She's been dodging his calls since their run in with Kathy in the park a few days ago and he's beginning to grow impatient with her. She knows his impatience has been well earned, she's not proud of herself for the way she's handled this, but she can't get over the way Kathy looked at her. And how naïve she had felt in that moment for ever thinking that a relationship between her and Elliot would work out. Finding out Elliot cheated on her and had another child as a result was bound to hurt her and there was no getting around it. But finding out that they were together after all that time must have added insult to injury.

She can only imagine how Elliot's kids are going to react. Especially when they'd all made a comment or two about their relationship during their partnership. She thinks specifically about the time she had to have Dickie in interrogation and he'd asked her point blank. "Ever sleep with your partner, Detective?"

"Never.", she had said with a confidence even she had believed. She has no idea what they were thinking, what they were ever thinking.

"I trusted you."

Kathy's words burn in her ears. Because Kathy had trusted her. And she has betrayed that trust in the worst way possible. She remembers vividly the conversation they had had almost sixteen years ago in Central Park when Kathy had begged her to get Elliot to sign divorce papers. She had stood there, stunned, and deeply conflicted. She had always known that she had influence over Elliot in a way that almost no one else seemed to, but she chalked it up to trust and nearly a decade of partnership. But to have it confirmed by his wife made her head spin. She hated thinking that all it would take was a gentle push from her and a promise to be there for him for their marriage to come to an end. It was far too much pressure to place on her.

As she thinks about it now it occurs to her that she could have saved them all a lot of pain if she had given in to Kathy's request so many years ago. But she still lands on the same side she did all those years ago, she never would have forgiven herself if she had gone through with it. She already carried so much guilt for being the person Elliot spent all his time with when he could have been with his family. She couldn't have been with him if she thought she was the reason for his divorce, no matter how much she wanted him.

It crushed her when Elliot went back home. She shouldn't have been surprised, but a part of her felt like that was really going to be the time he left. Things had been tense between them for months and that line, that had once felt so clear, was getting blurrier and blurrier. And then it was all over... He went back to her. They both knew why...He had to, for Eli.

Elliot had put some very purposeful distance between them that year and it seemed to help. It weighed on both of them in a way they to this day have not spoken of.. The pain that it caused Olivia to be cast into the role she always claimed when they were questioned about their relationship. For that year she felt what it was like to be Elliot's partner, without all the other things they had become to each other. Things seemed to get better for Elliot and Kathy while she was pregnant. But the second Eli was born things went back to the way they had always been.

Elliot stopped holding her at an arms length and they fell back into familiar habits.

Something changed in those few months. They fought so much and so much went unsaid as they kept their distance. But one day, a few weeks after Eli was born, Elliot walked back into the bullpen and placed a cup of coffee on her desk and from that moment forward, things were back to normal. They got closer, even closer than they had been. And the year that followed that one was one of the most confusing of Olivia's life. All the feelings she had tried to put to bed when Elliot went back home came rushing back and it made their work harder on her than she would have liked to admit.