Chapter Text
“Elliot? It’s Cragen. Can you talk, son?”
Elliot closes his eyes and shakes his head just once, a new tick of sorts that he’s developed over the past day, ridding himself of the echo of Cragen’s hollow, broken voice in his ear. He’s perched on the hood of a local police cruiser, knuckles white with the exertion of keeping himself still. His leg is bouncing furiously because he has to move something. His eyes are gritty and burning but he’s incapable of taking them off the busted, freshly kicked-in door of this god-foresaken beach house for even a moment.
Muttering fervent and frantic prayers under his breath, he strains to see any sign of movement in the darkened house. Elliot gets it, he gets it, he does. He knows he can’t cowboy up and run in there. Hell, he doesn’t even have a service weapon on him. He’s here as a “consultant” as Cragen put it. This has to be by the books for her sake but fuck if it doesn’t feel like he’s dying right now.
He’s silent as he throws an unintentionally random assortment of clothes into a duffle. He’s not going to bother checking luggage, doesn’t have time to waste standing at the baggage carousel. Kathy, exhausted from screaming at him about family, priorities, and eventually divorce, is now presumably asleep in Eli’s room. He can’t find the energy to care. As he sprints down the steps of their little Roman apartment, he can’t help but feel an immense sense of relief flood his chest. Elliot turns once he’s settled in the back seat of the cab and finds Eli’s bedroom window growing smaller as the car pulls off into the darkness. He sends a silent prayer up into the Italian night sky that his family can forgive him for going home.
Elliot steps off the plane and the 50 pound kettle ball that had settled on his chest during the flight moves unceremoniously to his stomach. Dread fills him because now that he’s here, he has no idea what to do or where to start. Cragen couldn’t spare the manpower to send a uni to collect him from the airport so Elliot pulls up his Lyft app and heads directly to the 16th precinct. He gives no thought to the trauma that pushed him out of the job he loved so much. No thought to the toll it might take on him to step into the bullpen again. Olivia has been missing for too many hours and if this man, this William Lewis, is anything close to the sadistic psychopath Cragen described over the phone, she’s running out of time. He needs to be here.
He’s relieved, in a way. Cragen had called him within an hour of finding Olivia’s apartment trashed and empty. He’s relieved because after nearly 3 years of complete silence, Cragen knows that he has a place in this investigation, knows that Elliot’s need to help would be second only to his need to breathe. He’s finding that task, breathing that is, more and more difficult as the car swiftly maneuvers through New York traffic and draws closer to the 1-6.
He sees Fin first and then Cragen steps around the whiteboard holding a case file that is far too thick. Elliot is frozen in place but Fin and Cragen quickly sweep him up and usher him into the Captain’s office. He’s briefed on the case and only vomits into the Captain’s trashcan twice before they finish. The silence is too loud but there’s nothing more to say. A sadistic, raging psychopath has Olivia and no one knows where he took her. Elliot can hear the blood rushing in his ears and his vision starts to blur as Fin hands him a bottle of water. “Stabler, she needs you man. No one knows her better than you. Are you up for this?” Fin’s words are all it takes for him to break through the panic and calm his breathing again. A miraculous feat considering he’s been suffering from near weekly panic attacks since the shooting that took him away from the NYPD. His therapist would be proud, he inanely thinks in the recesses of his mind before a cacophony of noise pulls the three men back to their feet and into the chaos of the bullpen and the investigation again.
In the end, Olivia had saved herself. Of course she had. Cragen had answered his cell phone while in the cruiser with Fin and Elliot, following the trail of carnage and heartbreak Lewis left in his wake and just like that it was over. The panic stayed with Elliot though, like a snake coiled viciously around his lungs. He knew it wouldn’t ease until he saw her, touched her, looked into her eyes, and prostrated himself at her feet in repentence.
It’s unseasonably cool for May and the wind coming off the ocean is forceful but Elliot is sweating under the weight of the kevlar vest. The rage churning and humming steadily inside him is only adding to the beads of sweat rolling down his back. His chest feels oh so heavy and he just can’t get his breathing to even out.
The sun is too bright for a day like today.
Nick Amaro, a man that he’s come to respect over the past 24 hours, has been inside for far too long. Under Cragen’s direction, only Fin and Amaro were to go inside to retrieve Olivia but ever-steadfast, ever-knowing Fin is standing at attention to his right; a sentry of stability, effectively keeping Elliot in place without lifting a finger. Fin’s breathing is shallow and his eyes are fixed on blackness just passed the broken door. Elliot knows that this man is just as anxious to run into that house and tear it apart as he is.
The whole house is surrounded by local PD and NYPD officers, guns trained and ready in the event that Lewis really isn’t subdued as Olivia had reported him to be. Elliot can’t help but think of them as intruders on this moment. He knows Olivia. He knows she will shrink under their weighed, appraising gazes when she emerges and he hates that for her.
And then he sees movement in the doorway.