disc. I don't own these babies, but I sure wish I did.

a/n: so, this was HEAVILY requested after an edit I posted to twitter of Olivia catching Elliot re-watching the news footage after she escaped Lewis. Of course, I must deliver. If you want to see the photo, check out my twitter /alrightabigail. also, a big thank you to WriterKC1 on twitter who convinced me to write this, lol! and to everyone who sent me their love on the edit, it warms my heart. one more thing, make sure to check out the mockup trailer I made for Elliot's return on my youtube! It's pinned on my twitter!

Five O'Clock Shadow of Shame

He watches it when he's alone, or when he thinks he is. It's never his intention to play it if he knows she's within earshot. Except, she's silent when she makes her way into their home. A learned trait from the experience of making her presence known too easily. When he's lucky, he can hear her come in and shut it off before she sees it. He'd never want to make her relive the experience. Sometimes, he isn't as lucky and she sees it from across the room.

He wants himself to relive it. The pain, the helplessness. He needs to feel it and continuously feel it to make up for what he missed. The guilt of not feeling it as it happened, it weighs down too heavy.

"After four days held in captivity, Detective Olivia Benson has escaped her captor and the manhunt for William Lewis has ended. More news at six."

Rewind. Repeat. Rewind. Repeat.

He doesn't watch it to remind himself that she's safe. He watches it to remind himself of how he did her wrong.

She knows he watches the footage. She knows it stays hidden on a tiny red flash drive he keeps in his desk drawer. It's no secret to her. She's come home many times, her feet aching from the heels and her back sore from the metal chairs of the interrogation room. It's the last thing she wants to see, but she knows he needs it. She understands him better than anybody in the world.

He doesn't like the pain, but he thrives on it. Forcing himself to submit to the powerless position they were all once in makes him feel like he's somehow renewed the vow he made to her, to always be her partner. He failed her, he thinks. But he didn't, not in her eyes. She knows the truth.

She knows that if his phone had rang that day, mere minutes of threatening to Lewis to call him, he would've picked up. He would've dropped everything and run across the world for her. He would've done exactly what she said he would; he would've killed Lewis. He was watching, waiting somewhere out there. Somewhere other than beside her.

But she didn't call, it was all for naught. An empty threat amongst other not-so-empty threats. She'd done the deed herself. She'd embodied who they once were as a team and made herself whole again with it. The rise of her fists clasping the bar, that was all Elliot. The anger of him leaving, the sadness of his silence, the missing piece he'd left behind. All of it thrummed through the rod as it broke Lewis' skull within an inch of his life. The splashes of his blood against hers, baptizing the monumental moment as a new and unfamiliar. She saved herself.

Then, she'd moved on. Slowly, surely, she moved on. Without him there. She didn't need him in order to move on.

Elliot refused to move on. It was his moral duty to relive it as a punishment. Over and over, her bloody face until it was seared into his mind. Until it became the driving force for his faithfulness. He wanted the nightmares to remind him every single day. He should've moved mountains to come to her, hell or high water as he had once made that promise to her. It was on every station, every radio, every alert. He hadn't moved; he froze. He never froze. When he did, she was always the one who would wake him up.

She wasn't there. She was bleeding down where her tears should've been, clutching a broken arm in the middle of some dirty cabin.

The blame, the survivor's guilt, he wears it like it's his job.

He recognizes the faces now, the ones that the press had managed to sneak into frame. He sees Fin and the man he now knows as Amaro. He owes them his life and he'll never fail to admit it. They did the job he was supposed to do. They saved her, but only after she saved herself.

It's the fifth time she's caught him crying quietly over the news report. He always balled up his fists at his side, refusing to blink until the video reached its end. Then, he'd watch it again. He'd relive the amount of times he thought about eating his gun that day. He'd watch it until he could recite every word, memorize everybody's location, notice the details that he missed the times previously.

She knows one thing for sure, he has watched the video more than five times. It's his ritual, whether she's around or not.

She stands by the door, adjacent to the living room while she allows him the last few moments of solitude with his shame. She isn't angry, she never is. It doesn't hurt her or bother her in the ways everyone would think. It hurts her soul to see him breaking himself over it, over and over again.

He is drowning in absolute self-loathing.

It was worse in the beginning, right after he showed up in her squad room. He wouldn't look her in the eyes, and she knew it had nothing to do with the fact that he left, and everything to do with the fact that he hadn't come back sooner. To her own surprise, she had forgiven him. She didn't want to, not really. She wanted to be angry with him. But the feelings of his return outweighed the feelings of his departure.

"There's no point in torturing yourself, El. You gotta stop watching it." she finally interjects the silence. The sound of her bag falling and her keys being dropped onto the credenza. Her voice holds no threat, it never does. Only exhaustion on his behalf. She's numb to the video now, but she'll never be numb to the tears that fall down his cheeks.

Time had passed, things had changed. Missing pieces of a twenty-year-long puzzle had finally reached their reunion. Everyone in the world had expected it except them, but that was how they had worked; it was them against the world.

She wasn't walking into her empty apartment and dropping her detective's badge to the table. She was coming home shared with her partner-turned-lover, where they raised her son, and her Captain's hat sat on her dresser. It was her life that started anew.

But he held onto a sliver of the past. A rewinding moment in time during his lowest of the low. No matter how much had changed, no matter how many nights in the moonlight had been shared with lazy kisses and her forehead pressed to his, there was a part of him that had to be dedicated to honoring the past.

Times had changed, the wind blew in different directions, New York had seen the seasons pass, but Elliot Stabler still had his foot stuck in the last door he had walked in.

"I can't, Liv." his voice breaks, it always does. She expects nothing less but hopes for so much more. He shakes his head, so slowly that if she wasn't paying attention, she would never notice. But it's her job to notice. His fists grip tighter, knuckles turning white from the pressure of his bones.

His words escape with an exhale. "I should've been there."

She can hear the Queens accent becoming apparent in his voice. No matter the poker-face, his voice would always be the giveaway. He's breaking inside, cracking with each passing moment as the TV replays and rewinds the video on an endless loop. He won't look at her. Not now, not when the blood is no longer stained on her face and subtle new lines of aging have appeared. He owes a debt to the Olivia that once existed. He always will.

She walks over, slow and steady steps against the floor that had never been stained with her blood. A home, unknown from trauma. A home they built from love and only love. As she kneels at the foot of his chair, the gentle touch of her hands against his allow him to release his grip.

She stares at him for a moment, allowing herself to bask in the glory of knowing his deep blue eyes belonged to her now. The time she had spent waiting for something that could never happen had paid off.

Finally, his eyes lift to hers as she stays set in front of his legs. A soft, almost indistinguishable smile appears on her face. "You can spend the rest of time beating yourself to hell over this. You weren't there, you wanted to be, and it hurts you because it hurt me. I know that. But the more time you spend watching this, reliving this and killing yourself in the process, is time that could be spent doing what actually needs to be done in order to heal. I know you feel guilty, but if anybody is the one to tell you that you don't need to be, it's me, Elliot. It's me. All of us came out on the other side of this with one wound or another. But you don't have to reopen yours just to prove it's there. I forgive you."

The deep blue met the dark brown, a connection made hundreds of times, a stronger connection each time. He stayed silent, the new streaming set of tears that spoke of a different pain were loud enough.

"I'm here. You're here with me. The only thing our life is missing right now is the rest of you. That woman on the screen isn't the one who needs you. The one who needs you is right here in front of you." she whispered, her thumb stroking the top of his hand.

He stared down for a moment, letting her words wash over him. His hands slowly moved to cup her cheeks while she intertwined her fingers with his. Under his calloused skin was warmth and softness, a reminder of her survival. He leaned forward, pressing a kiss to her lips before bringing his forehead to rest against hers. She was the one on her knees in front of him, but he was the one truly at her mercy.

"I'm so glad you're safe." his voice a cracked and broken disruption to the silence. It was more than an affirmation that he was in the moment with her, but a plea to any God that would listen that it would stay that way.

The television fell dead, the door that his foot had been stuck in was closing, and the guilt was washing away with the flowing tide that was her.

They made it out alive.