A/N: Hi again! Been working on this one for about a month and a half. I hope you all enjoy! Pairing is E/O. Feedback is always welcome - and actually encouraged with this one. Do you think it should remain as a one-shot? Or continue into a two-shot? Let me know! Set in the 18th season, right after Conversion and before American Dream.

Spoilers: Smoked, Scorched Earth, Her Negotiation, Surrender Benson, Girls Disappeared, Next Chapter, Chasing Theo

Rating: T

Talisman

A lot of things could change in six years. But then again, a lot of things could also stay the same.

Like the nightmares. He still had them. They would visit every now and then with the familiarity of an unwelcome relative. It had been three years before he had mastered how to swallow the sob that the nightmare always ended on. It kept him from waking Kathy, which was a relief, as those six years had failed to finally teach him how to talk to her about those things.

The landscape had changed. He and Kathy had sold the house and gotten something smaller after Dickie left home. All his children, save for Eli, were finding their way in life. The irony was, Elliot had thought he would be doing the same by now.

Instead, he found himself leaning over the upstairs balcony, gazing into the warm Summer darkness and wondering how many years he would have to be away from SVU before he would start sleeping a solid eight hours at night. Too many years snatching cat naps in the crib of the one-six, and working thirty, forty hours straight, had left him in a permanent state of rolling insomnia.

Nobody from his old unit could have ever guessed the things he would long for, on these nights so many years later. Not even he could have known that he would yearn for the most ridiculous things – awful squad coffee, the long, quiet stretches on overnight stakeouts. Sometimes even Munch's conspiracy theories.

Elliot shifted his weight from foot to foot, moving his arms that were imprinted with the balcony railing, and tipped his face to the half-moon's light. The Summer breeze caressed the hair on his forearms, raising goosebumps of pleasure. He took a deep breath, and on the exhale, came her name:

"Liv."

His talisman.

Six years. Changing, but not changing. At first, her number appearing on his cell, her voicemails were like fire. His throat and fingertips were scorched with betrayal. Mornings were filled with over-long showers – his fingertips raking the tile as he swallowed his grief. And when her calls stopped coming, he accepted it as punishment. He deserved to be given up on, he decided, he'd fucked up a couple dozen times too many. Elliot swore he would teach himself to forget.

He learned never to lie to the universe, as it will delight in mocking you. It seemed he could do everything but forget. When he did sleep, Olivia lurked in his dreams. She came with him when they had moved, and materialized when his mind was the farthest from his former life. She was the smell of the flowers when he mowed the lawn, reminding him of 12 years of perfumes he could never altogether name. Olivia was his first thought whenever Kathy failed to laugh at jokes that smacked of his years in SVU, and she was the ghost that raised hairs on his arm when he could barely keep his temper in check.

"El," her calm ghost-voice would come softly. Nobody called him that anymore.

ii.

Elliot finally had to concede that he had failed at the commonly understood meaning of retirement. He did what a lot of retired cops did, and got a P. I. license. He found it darkly amusing, to find himself working alone after years of One-PP warning Cragen it was the only way he should be allowed to work – if at all.

But the hours seemed so much longer, alone. The work had no real victims to save, just dishonest husbands, wives, employees and greedy employers to mollify, meaning that Elliot had to leave his Hero complex packed away with his life from before. When the middle of the night slowed to a crawl, and he dozed with his eyes open, he often lost track of where – and when - he was. He'd find himself turning his head to an Olivia that wasn't in the passenger seat, ready to crack a joke that died on his lips. The sun on his face illuminated memories of her, bending down to the open window with a tray of coffee.

"Morning, Sunshine."

It was how he knew he would never forget.

His marriage to Kathy remained unchanged: it was predictable, convenient, familiar. They slept beside each other as they had for decades, they lived among each other, sharing space and parenting Eli like they had his brother and three sisters before him. Elliot was a Catholic man mired in the most Catholic of all midlife crises. More and more often, he found himself in the Sunday confessional confessing every and all sin, save for the one that plagued him most.

He and Kathy still had sex, but their reaching for each other was driven by expectation, or the sheer need to be reminded of touch. It was mechanical, an orchestration of muscle-memory. He would have been hard-pressed, if forced, to truthfully swear he was sure Kathy's mind wasn't on someone else when they fucked. In that, they were uniformly guilty, as Elliot's long nights spent on the upstairs balcony often resulted in memories that stirred more than his heart.

Her smile always came to him first. Everyone who worked amidst society's darkest evils should have been so lucky to have a partner with a smile like Liv's. Her voice, her eyes, each dark and warm if she was concerned for you, or equally as sharp and dangerous if you pissed her off. The thought of her body shaking with rage compelled his chest entirely into stars and pinwheels.

Because of her, he missed the job.

iii.

Being a P. I. allowed Elliot access to an underbelly of a world of information that he wouldn't have had access to otherwise.

William Lewis?

Yeah. He knew. After the fact, of course. He had spent another quiet night on the balcony, and hadn't realized he was weeping until his palms had begun to burn. His fingernails had drawn blood.

"I was in love with her," he had whispered, to only himself and the starlight. And then, after a hollow laugh, "I still am."

Elliot had waited for the Heavens to yawn open and for a host of Catholic saints to come and curse him over this new-old failure. When he was sure none were arriving, he spent the rest of the early morning hours in the gym room in the house's basement, punishing himself. But it hadn't worked, entirely, and while on assignment later that same day, his fist punished a concrete wall. It was a poor stand-in for William Lewis' face, resulting in three stitches. He lied to Kathy, and on the very next Sunday, he finally managed to utter Impure thoughts to his priest.

Not that it made any difference. After Lewis, he thought constantly about Liv. He would catch himself dialing her cell number, unable to remember if he made the conscious decision to do so. His dreams and reminiscences were filled with images of Olivia, standing next to his hospital bed whenever he had been hurt on the job, tormenting him and his shame for not being there for her in return.

Despite having been partners for more than a decade, there are disloyalties and passages of time that make going back too hard. How could he ever defend more than two years of being absent? Or apologize tactfully enough for not answering her calls, her texts for the first of those years?

He couldn't.

So, time trooped on. And William Lewis eventually became just another demon in a long list of the same that plagued Elliot's nightmares from time to time.

iv.

Elliot was on assignment one warm Saturday the first time he saw Olivia with her child. He'd been in traffic, waiting for a light to change, all his windows down because of the weather. Daydreaming, eyes unfocused, Liv's voice had come wafting in on the warm breeze.

He had turned his head only to prove to himself it was just another fantasy, like the others that were becoming a daily fixture for him. Seeing her, obviously in her civvies, and with a baby, had almost resulted in him driving his car right up onto the busy sidewalk.

El had circled the block to slow down and look again. He relied on his detective's gaze, quickly filing away as much as he could: she looked healthy, but tired. The baby looked like her – dark hair and eyes, a sweet smile. Something in his chest lurched, making him unsure if he needed to laugh or lose his meager breakfast. It was a feeling that encompassed every light, joyful thing at once; it was sunlight and his children being born, it was his favorite food, it was making love.

He had made a concerted effort as time went on, to stay soberly and strictly on the line between maintaining his sanity and stalking. There was a rule he had never broken, that he followed her professional life but never her personal. He looked in on her cases every now and then. He knew she moved after William Lewis but didn't know to where, or with whom.

When he found out she was a Lieutenant, he had attended the ceremony from a safe distance, dressed simply in jeans, t shirt and, and the grey hoodie they had once shared. Afterward, he'd sent her a single red rose with a one-word card – Congratulations. But he purposely never, ever dug into her personal life – both out of respect, and the want to avoid compounding his own pain. Now he was compelled to wonder – had she gotten married? He hadn't thought to look for a ring on his loop around the block, being too focused on the baby. Had she finally been approved to adopt? Elliot's heart pounded with the force of so many unanswerable questions.

After a string of restless nights, in which his thoughts ran wild and tortured him with visions of husbands, he managed to keep his singular rule unbroken. That May, he had sent a bouquet of enormous sunflowers to SVU that said, simply, Happy Mother's Day.

If Olivia had known it was him, she never let on.

v.

Established marital routines, and the fact that Elliot Stabler rarely slept through a full night in an actual bed, were the only things keeping he and Kathy from sleeping in separate bedrooms by 2017. Eli was a bright, curly-headed and unpredictable blonde, due to turn 10 years old. While they put on a very believable show for their youngest child, it was obvious to anyone else that he and Kathy were now just two roommates who sometimes shared a bed. Without saying it aloud, it seemed they had come to the shared conclusion that once Eli was old enough to sense their discord as well, their marriage would finally be put to rest.

In the meantime, they plodded along as kindly as they could. They were both long past the point of taking any pleasure in making it difficult for the other, and their sex life had ended years ago. Whatever time Elliot didn't spend on assignments for his P. I. work was spent in the basement or on the balcony of the house, thinking of Olivia. Sometimes outright fantasizing.

Each year, he sent a bouquet of those same sunflowers to her office, and the same simple card. He imagined her married, happy, and with more children. He imagined, and wished her, the life he wished he was living – or would be living, if he had never walked away.

Six years had somehow come and gone. Over half a decade.

Elliot was starting to feel his frustration at having nothing to really show for it. He hadn't saved his marriage. He hadn't gone to therapy – not for his anger issues, not for his marriage, or for what had caused him to retire. He had five kids that he was infinitely proud of, he had a pension and his P. I. work. But he wasn't happy. Jenna Fox was still dead. And Olivia was still gone from his life.

Something had changed, after all, it seemed: his acceptance of so many unchanged things. Blissful ignorance had run its course, and he could feel something stirring in him that wouldn't be sated by dawns spent on the balcony.

There was a place he'd found, to go when he needed coffee that reminded him of what they used to drink in the squad room. It was in Manhattan, but tucked away, and it wasn't a cop bar – which made it even more appealing. Not having to listen to any 'good ole boys' reminisce about their glory days meant that Elliot could drink his shitty coffee and ruminate on his memories of Liv in peace.

Even the way the sunlight slanted through the windows there was calming for him. He could almost imagine he was back at his desk in the 1-6, the room full of warm chatter, except there were no ringing phones, no constant clacking of keystrokes. Still, it was as close to happy as he got those days, so he made it work.

Drinking shitty coffee in that out-of-the-way café was where he found himself on a warm June day. He was about to find the bottom on his second cup, having been there for more than 90 minutes. His mind was typically too busy to take note of the other people in the café – which is probably why it took a collision around mid-thigh to make him aware of his surroundings.

It was Liv's child. A boy.

He knew it, even though he hadn't seen him since he was a baby. He knew it in his bones, the way you know it's raining without having to look out the window, just by the sound passing cars make on the wet asphalt. The boy had been dashing from the garbage can near the order counter, excited he'd put his own trash in by himself – making the collision really Elliot's fault. They were both frozen, as though bumping each other had somehow stopped time altogether. The little boy, with dark eyes so very like his mother's, gazed up at Elliot's face, curious maybe, if he was about to be in trouble.

But Elliot knew that he was the one who was in trouble. He was facing the counter, meaning Olivia was behind him, and had not seen that it was him. Yet.

"Noah," her voice came from over Elliot's shoulder, and finally hearing the boy's name raised goosebumps. "What do you say when you run into someone?"

"S'cuse me," Noah said sheepishly, his finger worrying his lip as if trying to decide if he wanted to chew on the tip.

"That's - " El cleared his throat, annoyed that it had come out croaking, "that's okay. It was my fault."

Noah leaned until he could see his mother behind the tall man's legs, then grinned and hurried back to her.

"Elliot?"

vi.

It seemed an eternity before he could bring himself to turn around. Had he ever been this nervous? he wondered. His palms were sweating, his heartbeat painful. Finally, he met her eyes.

Christ. Six years had warmed her as fine wine. She had sharpened around the edges, but the shine in her eyes was the same as he remembered. It was warm, gorgeous. It rocked him.

She had picked Noah up and was holding him, now, on her hip. Her gaze never left Elliot's, anticipating a response. At last, he got his tongue working again. "Hello, Liv." He prayed his tone was soft enough.

He wasn't sure how, but a smile pricked the corners of her eyes. "This is Noah," she told him proudly. "Noah, can you say hello? This is Elliot."

"Hi, El," the boy said, and an aftershock he couldn't feel moved through both adults.

"Nice to meet you, Noah," Elliot replied with honest amazement. He looked at Olivia again. "He looks like you." She blushed and a heat Elliot recognized all too well bloomed in his belly and groin. He waited for her to brush it off - or say how the child really looked like his father, but nothing came. Clearing his throat again, he told her, "I was about to get another cup of coffee . . . if you have a few more minutes to sit?"

"Yeah. That – " He watched her take a deep breath, weighing the moment - maybe against memories. She nodded, letting Noah slide down her leg to the floor again. "I would like that."

He returned to her table with his coffee, and a cookie for Noah, who beamed and went back to scribbling on the paper his mother had given him to keep him occupied. They sipped their coffee and took turns sneaking glances at Noah, each for their own reasons. Truthfully, Elliot was curious as to why Liv hadn't been more hesitant, more uncooperative, given the multitude of reasons she had to be incensed.

She should hate him. The Catholic in him needed it - her punishment - to come full circle with his guilt. He wasn't entirely convinced that she wasn't baiting him as buildup for her eventual full-force rage. Just as he noticed she wasn't wearing a wedding ring, she spoke.

"How have you been, Elliot?"

It was the most loaded of casual questions. He wanted desperately to be collected and cool. His heart was still pounding. "Turns out I'm not so good at retirement." He chuckled, not sure how interested he was in trying to defend himself. "There's only so many times you can mow the lawn before you go crazy, I guess."

He had no idea of her relationship with Tucker, that Tucker had asked her to put down her shield, and so he wondered at the knowing nod she gave him. "How are the kids? And Kathy?"

"The kids are great. Eli is almost ten," he reminded her. "He's constantly up to something. And funny – so funny. Not sure where he gets that from. The girls are all living on their own, getting too close to marriage for my liking. Dickie loves university, I imagine because of the women and not the studying." Elliot chuckled with pride, but the smile slipped off his face slowly as he switched gears: "And Kathy . . . Kathy is ok. The same as she always was."

It wasn't a lie. It was all he would say of his marriage.

"How old is Noah?" he asked her after they eyed each other some more over their coffee mugs.

"Almost four now."

He would not – could not – ask her if she was married. If she refused to volunteer it, then he would move on to more neutral territory: "I hear you're the Lieutenant now. Long overdue, in my opinion. Proud of you, Liv." It came out in a husky, low gruff tone with a smile that showed his teeth. He meant for more than just the promotion.

"Thank you. It's been a lot of work – having to prove myself to One PP and prove myself as a parent at the same time. I . . . " she met his eyes, "I've been through a lot in four years. More, in six."

I know. It almost slipped out before he could catch it. He swallowed hard, feeling the words move to his eyes. He wondered if that was one of the things that had stayed the same – her being able to read the look in them. What did he do to you? he wanted to ask, Tell me everything.

What he asked was: "Is everything okay?"

She chuckled and dipped her head the way he loved. "I'm not sure everything is ever okay, for people who do what we do. But things are definitely better." As she smiled, she reached out to ruffle Noah's hair and Elliot's heart jumped.

When she looked back at him, her eyes were soft. "I've thought of you, Elliot. More than you might think."

He blinked, wanting so much to respond, but his lungs refused to inflate. A hard swallow, a lick of his lips. "I . . . I'm so sorry, Liv. I've missed you." It seemed like a pitiful response – it didn't even begin to express the nights spent on the balcony, or the way his heart had lived in his throat for most of the past six years.

When she asked the question he had feared most, her voice was barely above a murmur:

". . . Why, El?"

vii.

And how do you say, I was afraid that I loved you more than my wife? How could he explain, that it had taken his retirement for his faith and his heart to finally go to war? Where were the words, to tell her how every text, every message she'd left those six years ago had been like scratches he carried upon his skin?

"Olivia," he said quietly, keeping his voice even for the sake of her son, "you can't imagine . . . how hard all of those decisions were. D'you think it was how I imagined my career ending? With all that death and grief? Chri –" he glanced at Noah, "Cripes. I spent all those years, Liv, working so hard to prove to IAB, One PP, that I wasn't the screw-up they all thought I was. And somehow, I managed to follow in my father's footsteps anyway!

"What a nightmare, Liv. I was exhausted, and ashamed . . . so when Tucker offered me the easy way out, I took it, for once. I didn't have enough left in me to try and prove anything anymore." He stopped, sipped his coffee, hoping desperately that she would understand.

"You were a great cop, Elliot," she said softly. "I'm sorry about Jenna – about how everything went down."

He put down his coffee cup with resolve. "I couldn't have you talk me out of it, Liv." At last, his rib cage loosened, letting the words free. "And if I had come back . . . if I had seen your face, if I had answered your messages – I would have. I was done. I needed to be. You weren't. You deserved more than a partner who came back for all the wrong reasons."

The silence settled over them, then. Faintly, they could hear Noah coloring, coloring. Elliot kept his gaze fixed on the table, as though all the words he had spilled just piled up between them like the end of a Jenga game. He reminded himself to breathe.

When her hand closed over his in the middle of the table, he startled in his chair. "El." Her voice so gentle it raised goosebumps on his flesh. "I wish it had gone another way. I forgave you a long time ago. It just would have been . . . easier . . . if we could have avoided hurting each other."

It had taken six years, but absolution had come, at last. He squeezed her hand in his. "I was a jerk."

"Well," she smiled, and for a second he felt the years rewind in a blink, "that much I was used to."

viii.

Kathy wasn't home when he got back. Just as well – his face was plastered with a smile he didn't want to explain. His keys clattered into the dish on the kitchen island as he opened the fridge, looking for a celebratory beer. As he was sucking with pleasure at the cold neck of the bottle he'd found, his cell vibrated in his pocket.

It wasn't the sight of Liv's number that stilled beat of his heart. It was the words of her text message:

THE SUNFLOWERS?

His fingertips hovered a long, long time over the phone's keyboard. They thrummed, and twitched. His throat demanded more beer.

YES.

Elliot hit send and took a deep breath – his deepest in six years.