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It is Saturday morning. Saturday morning, the day after his sixteenth birthday. The apartment is quiet, but he expected it would be; they were up later than usual the night before, celebrating, and mom likes to sleep in when she can. She says she's catching up; she spent decades short on sleep. Noah says she's getting old, and she laughs, but something tightens at the corners of Elliot's eyes when he hears Noah say that, and Noah tries not to think about what fear put that expression on his face.
It is the day after his sixteenth birthday, and for a few minutes he just lays there, looking up at the ceiling. Everybody talks about turning sixteen like it's some big fucking deal. Yeah, he's old enough to get his driver's license - mom booked the appointment for next week but he's still not sure she's actually gonna let him go through with it - but come Monday morning he'll be sitting in the same classes where he sat on Friday. His friends are the same, his clothes, his bedroom, his heart feels the same. Sixteen is supposed to be a rite of passage, moving from one phase of life to the next, but he doesn't feel any different. Nothing's changed.
Or maybe, he thinks, it just hasn't changed yet. He's not a man but he's old enough to shave, and he's old enough to drive, and he's old enough to say shit at the dinner table and not have his mother scold him for it. Elliot says shit at the dinner table, too, and so does she, and she's given up that particular fight. Maybe things are changing too subtly for him to notice. Maybe it's one of those things he won't be able to see until he's older. Maybe when he's mom's age he'll look back on his sixteenth birthday and think then. That's the moment when everything changed.
Maybe change only happens when you let it.
He rolls out of bed and into the bathroom, brushes his teeth, slips out of the pajamas he slept in and into a clean pair of sweats. It's not even 8:00 a.m., and maybe he could just go back to bed, sleep until mom wakes up, but he doesn't want to. He wants to know if anything is different today. He wants to know what's changed.
When he reaches the kitchen he can smell the coffee, and he knows that means Elliot is awake.
It's been about nine years since he met Elliot. If he tries hard he can almost remember it, being seven years old and staring up into the face of a man who looked, to him, like a giant. A giant whose smile was not as warm and friendly as Uncle Peter's, whose face was more lined than Uncle Sonny's, whose eyes lacked Uncle Fin's world-weary humor. This is my friend Elliot, mom had said, in her on-the-verge-of-tears voice, and Noah hadn't understood it at all, why she sounded so sad when she looked at her friend. He still doesn't understand, not really. But Elliot had held out his hand for a shake, treated Noah like a man, and Noah had loved it.
That was nine years ago. Seven years ago they moved into this three bedroom apartment, mom and Noah and Elliot and Eli. Five years ago Eli left the apartment to go to college, somewhere far away. He keeps talking about going back to Rome, but he never does. In his heart, Noah hopes he won't; he looks forward to the holiday weekends and the birthdays and the random summer Saturday mornings when Eli turns up, and they can hang out again. Eli is the closest thing Noah has ever had to a brother.
And Elliot is the closest thing he has ever had, will ever have, to a father.
What convinced Elliot that this apartment was the one for them, back when they were looking for a place big enough for the four of them but close enough to the 1-6, was the tiny little balcony. It is just wide enough for two spindly chairs, and it is Elliot's favorite place to be on Saturday mornings. He takes his stupid expensive coffee and his actual physical newspaper and he sits out there, and pretends to read while the sun rises slowly over him. That is where Noah finds him, on this remarkably ordinary Saturday morning; he is wearing lounge pants and no shirt, and he has his bare feet propped up against the railing, the paper spread across his knees, and a coffee cup is cradled in his hands.
It is hardly the first time Noah has seen Elliot without a shirt. They've been on vacations, gone swimming, gone fishing. It is a familiar sight, but it always makes Noah curious, because in addition to the heavy black ink of his tattoos Elliot sports several terrifying looking scars, and he has not explained to Noah how he got a single one of them. There is so much, Noah thinks, that he doesn't know.
"Hey," he says, plopping down in the vacant chair to Elliot's left.
"Hey," Elliot says. "You want some coffee?"
"Nah."
But maybe, Noah thinks, maybe he should say yes. Maybe he should start drinking coffee. He's sixteen now. Everything is changing.
"Mom awake?" Elliot asks him.
"Not yet."
There had been no sound of her, when Noah walked past her bedroom door. Their bedroom door; it is the room where mom and Elliot sleep, together, where they have slept, together, for seven years, but the room where his mother lays her head will always be her room, to Noah, no matter who else resides there. For the first nine years of his life, it was just the two of them, Noah and mom, and some days it is still hard for him to remember that they aren't alone any more. They were on their own for longer than they've lived with Elliot. In a few years that will change; if Elliot sticks around, pretty soon Noah will have lived more of his life with him than without him. Maybe one day he won't feel like the child of a single parent any more. Maybe one day he won't feel like something's missing.
"Can I ask you something?" Noah says then.
From the moment they met, Elliot has always, always taken Noah seriously. He always listens, listens like he actually wants to hear what Noah has to say. In this moment he folds up his paper and sets it to the side, plants his feet on the floor, and then turns to Noah, gives him his full attention. Elliot's eyes are blue, just like Noah's, and they watch him unblinking now.
"Of course," he says.
"Do you know what happened to my dad? My real dad?"
One day, when you're old enough, I'll tell you everything. Mom has said that to him so many times, about so many different things. But surely, he thinks, he's old enough now. He's sixteen. How much longer is he supposed to wait? Just how old is old enough?
"Yeah," Elliot says. He is a cop; he answers the question he has been asked, and offers no more information. In fact, he is such a cop that he responds to that question with one of his own.
"What has your mom told you?"
For all the time that they have spent living together, for all the milestones they have celebrated as a quasi-family, Elliot knows that Noah belongs to mom, and not to him, and he respects that. Whatever direction this conversation takes, Elliot will want to respect mom's wishes, will try not to overstep her boundaries. Elliot is a strong man, and Noah knows he has a temper, but in this apartment, under this roof, with mom, Elliot always, always lets her take the lead. Just this once, though, Noah wishes he wouldn't, because mom is keeping secrets, and Noah is tired of it.
"Just that he's dead," Noah says. "She never told me his name, or how they met, or anything. I've never even seen a picture of him."
Elliot's shoulders slump, and he runs his hand over his face, suddenly weary.
When Noah was in first grade his class had a substitute teacher one day, and she was standing with him when mom came to pick him up from school - which she almost never did - and the substitute asked if mom was his grandmother. That was the first time he ever really noticed that his mother was older than the other kids' moms. Like, a lot older. It was a few more years before he finally did the math, and realized that his mother was forty-five when he was born. She is sixty-one, now, and mandatory retirement is creeping up on her. He only knows that because he's heard mom and Elliot arguing about it. Mom doesn't want to quit. Elliot knows pretty soon she won't have a choice. Round and round they go. He doesn't think of mom and Elliot as old, but they aren't young. This morning, under the weak rays of the sun, Elliot looks old, to him.
"You should talk to your mom about it," Elliot says.
I've tried! Noah wants to protest, but that's not true. He hasn't asked about his father since he was a child. Mom didn't want to talk about it, and that was that, and he never brought it up again, because it made her sad, and she was sad so often already, and Noah didn't want to make it worse. Things have changed, though, and maybe Elliot's right. Maybe it's time.
"But he is dead, right?" Noah asks.
"Yeah," Elliot says, and his voice is heavy, and sad. Shit, there is so much sadness in the world, in this apartment. There is happiness, too; there is spaghetti night, and evenings spent watching movies, and Sunday mornings in Central Park, and smiles. It's not like they're miserable. They're not. The three of them, they're happy, but mom and Elliot, they've been through a lot - Noah doesn't know what that means, not really, but he knows it's true - and the sadness lingers, sometimes. This is one of those times, because Noah's father, whoever he was, whatever he meant to mom, is dead. It's not a convenient lie she told him when he was small; it's true, and he knows this, because Elliot has told him so.
"Did you know him?"
Their relationship is broken up into three parts, mom and Elliot. There is the before, where they were partners and best friends for over a decade. There is the middle, when they were separated, and everything changed. And there is the now, everything that followed after Elliot's return to New York. There are parts of that story Noah does not know, may not ever know. But he does know that Elliot holds the keys to every single one of mom's secrets.
"No," Elliot says, shaking his head. "I'd been gone a few years before you came along."
There is something Noah wants to say to him now, but the words catch in his throat. It feels awkward and vulnerable and childish, this confession he is about to make. But he is sixteen, and he wants to grow up, and part of that, he knows, means admitting the truth, even when it's uncomfortable. Elliot has taught him that, that a man doesn't hide from himself.
"When I was little, I used to think maybe you were my dad," he says in a small voice. Something that looks like physical pain lances through Elliot at those words, but Noah keeps right on going. "I thought maybe she'd lied about my dad being dead, because you were married. I wanted it to be you."
"I wish like hell I could have been, kid," Elliot tells him, and his voice is low and rough with sincerity.
How different might things have been, Noah wonders, if only he had been? If mom and Elliot had found their way together sooner, if Elliot really was his dad, and not a man who was a stranger to him for the first seven years of his life? He loves Elliot, now, in the way he supposes another kid might love his father. Wants his approval, and his attention, and his affection, wants him to stay, because mom is happier with him than she ever was without him. He wants to be a man in the way that Elliot is a man. But Elliot is not his father, and it is not Elliot's eyes he sees looking back from the mirror, and sometimes he wonders if he would love his real father more.
"I wish he hadn't died," Noah says suddenly, and Elliot looks away. Something has made him uncomfortable, and Noah doesn't know if it's the sudden emotional turn of the conversation, or if it's some dark truth that Elliot carries in his heart that makes him so unwilling to make eye contact.
"When I was little, I just wanted to have a family," he continues. "Everybody else had mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and grandparents and all I had was mom. And I love her, I do, I swear, I know how hard she worked to make a good life for us, but we were alone. I only knew Grandma Sheila for a little while. I used to think she was mom's mom, but she isn't, is she? She wasn't old enough. Was she even my grandmother at all?"
Elliot just looks at him, helplessly. Like he knows the answer but he doesn't feel like he can say it. Elliot loves Noah, in his way, but he loves mom, and he won't betray her, not even for Noah.
"What happened to mom's parents?"
He doesn't know who Grandma Sheila is. Or was. He's pretty sure she's dead now, but mom hasn't said. He doesn't know where mom's parents are, or what sort of people they were. He doesn't know about Elliot's parents, either. He doesn't know anything.
"She didn't tell you?"
Obviously, Noah thinks grumpily.
"She has literally never said one single thing to me about her family. Our family," the words come out with more heat than he intends, but he doesn't stop. "Never. Not once. I don't know their names. I've never even seen pictures. I mean...that's not normal, is it, Elliot? Should I be scared?"
Nothing about his life with mom has ever been normal, not really. And it's not just their isolation; it's mom's job, and the dark look in her eyes, and the way all his aunts and uncles are cops. He loves them, he really does, but they're all so used to dealing with bad guys that sometimes he wonders if they've forgotten that there are good people in the world.
"No," Elliot answers at once. "Look, your mom's family...it's complicated. I…" he looks away, for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. Trying to decide how much he can tell Noah before he gets himself in trouble with mom. In the end, he decides to take a gamble, and tell him the truth.
"Her mother's name was Serena."
It is the smallest of details, but it means everything to Noah. He has a grandmother, and her name is Serena. She's probably dead, he thinks, but she existed, once. Serena.
"Serena raised Olivia all by herself. Just the two of them, same as it was for you and your mom."
No one calls mom Olivia. She's either Liv or Chief. Elliot, though, Elliot uses her full name, like he's the only one in the world who has a right to it. Maybe he is. And maybe he's the only one who knows about Serena, who knows that mom learned how to raise a child all by herself from watching her mother do the very same thing. It is a strange and not altogether welcome coincidence, Noah thinks. He wonders if it made mom sad, having a baby all by herself, just like her mother.
"But Serena...she had her problems." The phrasing is just vague enough to be alarming. Elliot knows what those problems were, that's clear, but he's not telling Noah. "Things weren't easy for your mom, growing up. She's just...she's just trying to protect you. All she ever wanted was to keep you safe."
Safe. Something cold and heavy settles in Noah's belly. If mom is keeping him safe by not telling him about her childhood, that means that her childhood was decidedly unsafe. It's a terrible thing to think about; his mother is a titan, to his mind, a fucking superhero, powerful and brave and strong and fierce and respected, but now he knows that when she was small, and vulnerable, she was not safe. There was no one to protect her when she needed it most. Maybe that's why she is so fiercely protective of other people now; maybe she is giving them the care she never received. Elliot has just answered a question that Noah didn't even know how to ask; now he knows, he thinks, why mom has given so much of herself to such a terrible profession. She had to.
"She used to have bad dreams, when I was little," Noah says. "I never knew what they were about. Sometimes she'd wake up screaming."
And he was about thirteen before it ever occurred to him that that was weird as hell. That other kids didn't wake up to the sound of their mothers screaming in the night. It scared him shitless, when he was really little, but he thought it was something all grown ups did. Over time it started happening less and less, and mom never wanted to talk about it, anyway, and it just became something else Noah didn't know.
"Sometimes I'd wake up and she'd be asleep on the floor in my room with her back against the door. Like she was trying to protect me from something."
"She was," Elliot says heavily. He doesn't elaborate. It's eerie to think about, though. That mom worried about him so much, and that maybe she had a reason to, that maybe there was something dark and horrifying waiting for him out there in the night, and she had to protect him from it. Elliot wasn't even there but he knows what that something was. Noah doesn't.
"Do you know what the bad dreams were about?"
Elliot nods, slowly, like it hurts him.
"It wasn't your dad," he says, and Noah wonders for a moment if Elliot can read his mind.
Elliot's wife, Kathy, Noah knows all about her. Eli kept her picture in his bedroom, and mom and Elliot talk about her, every now and then. Eli had gone off to college before Noah found out what really happened to her, found out that Kathy was killed right in front of Elliot's eyes. Something like that must haunt a person, he thinks, and his father is dead the same as Kathy is dead, and he's been wondering for a while, now, if that's what mom sees when she closes her eyes. Her man, the father of her child, dying right in front of her. Elliot says that's not what the dreams are about though, and Noah believes him.
"Does she still have them?"
It has been years since Noah woke to the sound of his mother screaming, but it has been years since she's fallen asleep alone. Maybe with Elliot beside her she doesn't dream. Then again, maybe he just wakes her up before it gets that far.
"Sometimes," Elliot tells him honestly. "It's not about your dad. It's just...sometimes you see something so...bad, it just settles itself somewhere in the back of your brain and it never really goes away. And your mom has seen more bad shit than most."
Noah knows that's true, because he's the only kid he knows who's ever been picked up from school by uniformed officers in a squad car, and it's happened so many times now that he no longer even gets excited when they turn the lights on for him. SVU, it's mom's whole life. Mom's whole life is sex crimes, pedophiles and wife-beaters and rapists and murderers, and it is a dark and terrible world that she tries to hide from him. She can't hide from the dreams, though.
"Did anybody ever hurt her?" Noah asks him then.
There is a mark on one of Elliot's shoulders, roundish and jagged, that must have come from a bullet. Noah's eyes gravitate there now, wondering. Somebody shot Elliot. At least once. And somebody probably stabbed him. More than once. And mom was probably there for most of it. Elliot's body is hard and covered in scars, but the sight of them is familiar to him. Noah can't remember the last time he saw mom's bare shoulders. He wonders what else she's hiding, tucked away inside her heart along with the story of her parents and her childhood and Noah's dead father.
"Yeah," Elliot says, very quietly. "But I'm begging you, kid. Don't ask her about it."
The other questions - who is my father and what the fuck is wrong with our family - Elliot has encouraged Noah to bring to his mother. This one though - who hurt you - this one Elliot wants him to keep to himself. There is very little in the world that scares Elliot Stabler, but he is afraid of this question, and the answer.
"I won't," Noah promises. And he won't, because he really, really doesn't want to know the answer.
The morning is moving on, and mom will be awake soon, but while he's got Elliot all to himself, Noah has one more question. It is a very grown-up question, but it's been on his mind for a while, and he's sixteen now. There's not gonna be a better time to ask, he thinks.
"Are you guys ever gonna get married?"
Elliot considers the question for a long time before he answers. Drinks his fancy coffee, and furrows his brow. There is something wary but appreciative in Elliot's eyes, like he is seeing Noah grow up right in front of him, and he is proud and sad at the same time.
"I don't know," Elliot says honestly. "To tell you the truth, I've asked her."
Noah didn't know that. He always assumed if Elliot ever got around to asking mom would say yes. She loves him; any idiot with two functioning eyes can see that. They've been living together comfortably for years now. They are important to one another. They share everything. Why wouldn't she say yes?
"Grown ups are complicated," Elliot tells him then. "And the answers aren't always easy. Marriage...for me and her, it's about a lot more than just some rings and a piece of paper."
It's about Kathy. That's what he's not saying. It's about the fact that Elliot was married to someone else for a long, long time. That he was with that someone else when he wasn't with mom. Noah tries hard not to think about that too much. About how Elliot had a wife and five kids and this whole other life that had nothing to do with Noah and mom, until Kathy died and suddenly it had everything to do with Noah and mom. Elliot's got secrets of his own, and Noah won't ask him to reveal them. Not now. Not yet.
"There's my guys," mom's voice comes floating through the doorway behind them; Noah had been so focused on Elliot he hadn't even heard the door slide open. He turns to look, and there she is, wrapped up in a robe with her hair in her face. It's gone grey at the temples but she still wears it long. She's still pretty, Noah thinks. And Elliot thinks so, too.
"Hey, baby," Elliot says. "You want pancakes?"
Mom is looking at the pair of them speculatively. Like she knows they weren't just talking about breakfast when she came out here. Like she wants to know what they were talking about, but at the last second she decides against it.
"Yeah," she says. "Pancakes'd be good."
So they go inside, and Elliot makes pancakes. It is Saturday morning. The world is changing.
All day long Noah keeps trying and failing to work up the nerve to ask his mother all the questions Elliot wouldn't answer for him. They clean the apartment, and mom and Noah haul a week's worth of dirty clothes back and forth from the building's laundry room. She works on her tablet and he tries to do some homework while Elliot is at the grocery store. Mom falls asleep on the couch, and Noah plays video games in his room with his friends. Elliot is gone a long time, longer than usual; Noah suspects he is giving them space to talk, but he doesn't take the opportunity he's been given. He just...can't. He's a little afraid, still, of the answers to his questions. Elliot comes back, they eat dinner. Noah goes back to his video games. Mom and Elliot do...whatever it is that they do when they're unsupervised. Night falls. It's time for bed, again, and he still hasn't asked. But tomorrow is Sunday, and maybe then he'll find his voice.
Mom doesn't know it, but when Noah leaves his bedroom window open, and she and Elliot sit on the balcony sipping their wine, he can hear every goddamn word she says. He can hear them now; he is lying in bed, and he can hear the door to the balcony sliding open and then closed again. He can hear the chairs creaking, can hear them both sigh as they settle down, can hear the little clink as they knock their glasses together. And then, he can hear them talking.
"Kid had some questions for me today," Elliot says, and mom hums in reply. It's not that late, maybe just after 10:00, and the city is still bustling far below, but they're not paying attention to anything but each other. They're just talking, at the end of a long day, and Elliot is confessing the details of the morning's private conversation. It's not like Noah can blame him, though; he knows the deal. Elliot won't lie to mom, and he won't reveal the more personal aspects of the conversation - the part where Noah confessed he wished Elliot was his dad - but he wants her to know what might be coming. Wants to prepare her. And maybe he knows that no matter how much Noah's curiosity is eating him alive he won't just come out and ask, and he's giving mom the chance to start the conversation for him. Elliot is a good man.
"He wants to know what happened to his dad."
There is a moment of heavy silence, and then mom swears.
"Jesus," she says, like someone's just punched her in the gut. Like she couldn't imagine anything worse. Noah's heart begins to race, just a little. They know, mom and Elliot, what happened to his father. And from the sound of her voice, what happened to him is bad, but maybe if they talk about it now, maybe if he hears it this way, maybe he'll learn more than he ever would if he just asked mom straight out. He is eager, now, eager to hear what they have say to one another, eager to learn his mother's secrets, to learn his own story. He wants to know how his parents met, if his mother loved his father as much as she loves Elliot. He wants to know if his father was a good man, if he was a superhero, just like mom. Noah's imagined it, a few times. What happened to his father, why. Tried to come up with some story to satisfy his own curiosity. If mom had boyfriends when he was little she kept them well away from Noah, but everyone she knows is either a cop or a lawyer. It would make sense, he thinks, if his father was a cop. If his father was like her, and he died protecting someone else. Maybe it's just wishful thinking; maybe he just doesn't want to believe that something as mundane as cancer or a car wreck took his father away. Maybe he just wants to believe in superheroes a little while longer. Outside, Elliot is talking again.
"Liv, did you really...have you really never told him he's adopted?"
Noah recoils in his own bed. Horror floods through him; it is thick, visceral, choking. It is every child's nightmare, he thinks, to wake up one day and discover he doesn't belong to his own family. Adopted. The word bounces around in his head like a tennis ball, richotecing off the walls of his skull. Adopted adopted adopted. He is not hers and she is not his and he is suddenly uprooted, free falling, tumbling, lost. The entire world has turned upside down and he feels like he's about to puke. She's his mother, but she isn't. She isn't...she isn't anything. That woman, she's the center of his whole life, and she means everything to him, and she was all he had for so long, and she's a liar. Liar liar liar -
"I didn't mean to," mom says weakly. Noah clutches his blankets in trembling hands and closes his eyes, and tries to listen. His whole life seems to hang in the balance, his fate determined by whatever she says next.
"I wanted to wait until he was old enough to understand, but then the time got away from me. And then I felt like I'd waited too long. I...Jesus, El. I was way too young when I found out about my dad and you know how bad that fucked me up."
"I know," Elliot says, heavily. There are tears stinging at the corners of Noah's eyes but he holds his breath, listening, because he doesn't know a goddamn thing. He doesn't know what it is about mom's father that fucked her up, and he doesn't know why it scares him so much, since it's not like she's his real mom, anyway. She's just...she's just the one who took him. No one wanted him and she took him because she's always been so goddamn selfless. Or did someone want him? Has he spent all this time alone, with only her, when he could have been somewhere else, with his real family? What even is he? And how could she possibly have kept this from him? How could she have lied?
"I wanted to give him a chance," mom continues, miserably. "To just be a normal, happy kid."
The tears are falling down his cheeks, and he feels like he's having a panic attack. He can't breathe, and his heart is racing, and his whole body feels tight and trembling. Her voice cuts through some of the noise in his head, though; he can hear how much she loves him in that voice. She says she just wants him to be happy, and he wants to believe her, but she's a liar.
"With a dead father?" Elliot points out.
"His father is dead," mom retorts. "Rotting in hell right next to mine. And yours, too, probably." So she didn't lie about that; it brings him scant comfort. He has another family out there, a family that is not mom and Elliot and Eli, but his father is still dead, just the same. And, apparently, that father was not a superhero; apparently he was a monster. And her father was a monster, and so was Elliot's, and Noah doesn't know a goddamn thing about any of it. He feels like he's going to scream.
"You couldn't expect to keep this a secret forever, Liv."
"No, I know that," she says, and she sounds exhausted. "I always meant to tell him. I just…" Her voice trails off and Noah can almost see her. Running her fingers through her hair, smoothing her thumb over her brow the way she does when she's frustrated. He knows her, knows the expressions on her face and the tone of her voice and what her favorite kind of ice cream is. He knows how she sings along, badly, when Bon Jovi comes on the radio and he knows she'd do anything for him but he doesn't know how she could have done this, how she could have, for the last sixteen years, kept this terrible secret from him.
"You know," mom says then, and her voice is heavy and just a little desperate, "when Sheila took him, when she tried to steal him from me, she kept saying that a piece of paper doesn't make a family. That no matter what the judge said, he was never gonna be mine, not the way he was hers. And I just wanted to scream at her. It wasn't the judge that made us family. It was every night I woke up, and fed him, and sang him to sleep. It was every fucking diaper change, every bottle, every band aid, every...everything. It was time that made us family. It was my bed he crawled into when he had a bad dream. It was my hands that held him. I gave him all of me. And at the time I thought, how could she say he wasn't mine? How could she not see? But then I think about telling him now and I'm just...it scares the shit out of me, El, because I'm so worried that he's gonna find out the truth and he's gonna decide he's not mine after all. I can't lose him. He's my son."
It's a lot to take in. Noah remembers, vaguely, going to the woods with Grandma Sheila, and mom coming to get him with squad cars and guns and ambulances. He didn't really put it together, before now, that he'd been fucking kidnapped. That word is dark and bleak and he can't get it out of his head. He was kidnapped, stolen from his mother, by someone who never wanted to bring him back. His whole life could have been different, if she'd succeeded; what if she had taken him, and mom never found him, and he lived the rest of his life wondering why mom abandoned him? Would he even remember her? He was so little when he was taken. When he was taken, by someone who was, apparently, his family, in the way that mom never will be. His family, and she fucking kidnapped him; no wonder mom never wanted to talk about her. They visited Shelia a few times, in the hospital, but those visits were always painfully brief, and after a year or two they never went back, and Noah stopped asking. She really was his grandmother. His actual, flesh and blood grandmother tried to take him away from the only mother he has ever known. And mom's voice shakes with emotion, with fear, and regret, and love, and as much as Noah wants to hate her - does hate her - for lying to him, he loves her, too. Because she's right. It's always been her. Just her. She's done everything for him, and she loves him, and she doesn't want to lose him, and shit, he doesn't want to lose her either.
"He is," Elliot affirms for her quietly. "He is your son. And he loves you. He may be confused for a little while, but when you tell him the truth-"
"When I tell him his mother was a prostitute and I found her burned up body under a bridge and his father was a piece of shit rapist just like mine and oh, yeah, by the way, Uncle Nick is the one who killed your dad, you really think he's gonna love me for it?"
Holy shit. It is simply too much. It is too much to take, and he is crying in earnest, now, and if he could find the strength he would go and slam the window closed just so he doesn't have to hear any more of this. The story of his parents is more terrible than he could ever have imagined, and it cuts through him like knives, leaves him bleeding and broken lying there in his bed. In his bed that mom bought for him, in the room she decorated for him, in the apartment she shares with him. He's always been so proud of his mom. How tough she is, how brave she is. He's always wanted to be brave, like her. But she isn't his mom; his mom is dead, dead through unspeakable violence, and, he thinks, maybe she wasn't that brave, and maybe he isn't, either, because it's not Olivia Benson's blood that flows through his veins, but hers. That nameless woman, dead under a bridge. Hers, and his.
A piece of shit rapist, mom said, and just like mine, and those two pieces of information make Noah feel sick to his stomach. He can't take any more, but Elliot and mom don't know he can hear them, and they just keep right on talking.
"Liv-"
"That boy…" she takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I was in the black when I found him. I mean it. It wasn't that long after...everything." Everything. Noah doesn't know what that means, but apparently Elliot does. Apparently, it's something so bad mom can't even say the words. It makes Noah feel cold all over. "My hands were still shaking. That's when I found him. I walked into that room and here was this sweet little baby, all alone, and he needed somebody. And I picked him up and when I held him, I just...he saved me, El."
So his parents were not good people, and they are both dead, and maybe they wanted him and maybe they didn't, but mom was the one who found him, who picked him up, who kept him safe. Who chose to take him, when there was no one else. Well, no one but a psychotic grandmother who apparently thought kidnapping was no big deal. She saved him, even if he doesn't know how, but she says he saved her, too. Saved from what, he doesn't know, but he thinks it has something to do with the question Elliot made him promise not to ask. Maybe they were both alone, mom and Noah, and maybe they both needed somebody, and they found each other. Maybe that's ok. He takes a long, slow breath while Elliot keeps talking.
"I know, baby."
"All I ever wanted was a family." She says it heavily, and her voice is so fucking sad. That's all Noah ever wanted, too. He can understand that.
"You've got one," Elliot tells her, fiercely. "You've got me. We've got our kids, all six of 'em. We've got Sonny and Amanda and Billie and Jessie and Fin and Phoebe and Ken and Alejandro and Jaden and Kat and -"
And every single one of those people, they belong to Noah, too. It isn't just mom Elliot is reassuring right now; even though he doesn't know it, he is speaking directly to Noah. They have a family; they have Thanksgiving dinners with so many people they can't all sit at one table, and Christmas mornings watching Elliot's grandchildren tear through the wrapping paper on brightly colored presents, and those same grandchildren call mom Nana, and they are, all of them, a family, whether they were born that way or not.
"I get it," she says, her voice thick with tears.
"We are a family," he tells her earnestly. "And you're right. Fuck Shelia Porter."
Noah's middle name is Porter. One of his parents - his mother, he hopes - was a Porter, and mom let him keep that piece of his history for himself. She told Elliot that she always meant to tell Noah the truth, and he thinks his name is evidence of that; she wouldn't have named him Porter if she didn't want him to know, some day, where he came from. It is strangely reassuring. He is furious, and scared, and he wants to hate her, but a part of him knows that she was only waiting for him to be old enough, and that day has come, and maybe, eventually, everything will be all right. Not tonight. But eventually.
"What the fuck would she know about family, huh?" Elliot says. "She's the one who let Ellie go. Who lost her. Who lied to every fucking body and tried to steal your goddamn baby. Lemme ask you something. Who matters more to you, your father or Don Cragen?"
Elliot's tone is combative, but it's not mom he's fighting. Noah knows this. Mom and Elliot, they argue all the time, but right now, in this moment, it is her fears he has chosen to do battle with.
"It's not the-"
"It's exactly the goddamn same. You didn't belong to Joe just because you have his blood. You sure as shit belonged to Cragen though, didn't you? Sometimes families aren't born, Liv, sometimes they're made. And the family you make, and choose, the family you fight for, that's worth a hell of a lot more than blood. Noah will see that, eventually."
"I lied to him, Elliot. I have lied to him his whole life."
The fact that she admits it makes him start crying, again. She knows what she's done. She knows the gravity of her choices, and she knows how this lie will break - has already broken - his heart, and she regrets it. In the end his mother is not a superhero; she is just a woman, trying her best, and even she is capable of making mistakes.
"You're just trying to protect him. I get that, baby, I swear to god I get it. But he's sixteen, now. He's old enough to hear it. The longer you wait, the harder it's gonna get."
She won't have to wait much longer; Noah knows that the next time he sees her face he won't be able to pretend this never happened. There is a reckoning coming. But mom knows it, too.
"How'd you get to be so fucking good at this?" mom asks Elliot wryly.
"You know I'm not. You know I was a shitty fucking dad for a lotta years. I guess I'm just getting old. I don't want our kids to hate us."
It is hard to imagine Elliot not being a good father. Noah's always thought Elliot was the best dad in the whole world. All of his kids, and all of his grandkids, they love him, and he has always been so good to Noah, and Noah has always wanted to be just like him. He still does.
"All six of 'em?" mom asks. The question is heavy, and meaningful; five of those kids are not hers. Five of them belong to someone else. Hell, Noah isn't hers, either. None of them, not Mo or Katie or Rich or Lizzie or Eli or Noah, none of them share her blood. But they all love her. Noah knows that, as surely as he knows the sun is gonna rise tomorrow.
"All six of 'em." Elliot knows it, too.
That night Noah doesn't sleep a wink. He just lays in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about his parents. Thinking about his mother, whose name he thinks must be Ellie Porter. Thinking about a woman who was a prostitute, who had a child, who was brutally murdered when that child was just a baby. He thinks about his father, who was a piece of shit rapist, and he thinks about his Uncle Nick, Uncle Nick who he only sees once or twice a year but who is always smiling, killing his father. He thinks about mom, and Serena, and what it means to be safe. He thinks about Kathy, who is only a smiling face in a photograph to him but who is real to her children, mourned by her children. He wonders if he can mourn his own mother, and still love mom. He feels small, and scared, and alone.
The moment the sun rises he is on his feet; he can't stay in bed a moment longer. He goes to the kitchen, and he makes a pot of coffee. He knows how to do this; on the weekends he helps Elliot with breakfast, and he knows how it works. He pours the coffee into a cup, and he goes out onto the balcony, and he sits in Elliot's chair, with his feet propped up on the railing, and looks out at the city below. He takes a sip of coffee and grimaces; maybe he should have put cream or sugar in it, but he's never drunk coffee before and he doesn't know what he's doing. Not yet. He's learning, though.
It is Sunday morning, the day after the day after his sixteenth birthday. If today is like any other day then Elliot will be up soon, and he will find the coffee Noah made and he will pour himself a cup and he will come and sit out here and they will talk together. That's what Noah is waiting for; he needs to see Elliot before he sees mom. He needs to talk this through with Elliot first, because he's certain that if he takes one look at mom he will start crying again. Elliot will help him sort through his thoughts, and then he'll be able to face her.
Only it isn't Elliot who slides open the door behind him, who comes to sit in the chair to his left. It's mom.
She looks tired. Her hair is caught in a messy ponytail, and the early morning sunlight throws shadows across the heavy grooves of her face. Her robe falls open a little as she sits, and Noah catches sight of a scar on her shoulder before she pulls it closed again.
"Hey, baby," mom says.
He's not her baby. Someone else carried him, held him, loved him, before she ever came along. But he is her baby, because she's the one who saved him, and cared for him after his parents were gone, and he has lived more of his life with her than without her. He thinks mom, and he sees her face. He always will.
"I heard you guys talking last night," he tells her. There's no sense in hiding it; he is vibrating with grief and anger and fear, and he has not slept, and he doesn't think she has, either. She has decided to tell him; he might as well tell her that he already knows.
"Shit," mom says, very softly. "That isn't how I wanted you to find out."
"Did you even want me to find out at all?" he demands petulantly. He knows the answer is yes, but he's only sixteen, and he is wounded, and lashing out.
"I did," she tells him earnestly. "I was always gonna tell you. I just...it's complicated."
"Because you wanted to keep me all for yourself?"
She looks at him then, with big brown eyes that are nothing like his own, and there is grief in her, so much grief it feels like it's choking him.
"Yeah," she says, and it shocks him because he didn't think she was gonna admit it. "I love you," she continues. "From the second I first saw you, I loved you. But I didn't...I didn't just take you, Noah."
He holds his breath, waiting, to hear the story of his life.
"I wasn't...I wanted to have kids but it never worked out for me, and I thought that all I was gonna ever have was the job, and I was good with that."
He tries to imagine it, what mom was like before he was born, before she found him. She works all the time now, he doesn't think it's possible for her to work more, but maybe she did. Maybe she had boyfriends, and hobbies, and a whole life he doesn't know anything about. He didn't know that she wanted kids; he's never really thought about it. He's thinking about it now, though; mom, younger than she is now, wishing for a family, and never getting it. Mom, a woman with hopes and dreams he doesn't know anything about, because he's never asked. What else does she dream about?
"But I found you, and I tried so hard to find your mother. I did, eventually, but she...she had her problems, Noah, and she died."
She had her problems, just like Serena had her problems. Maybe one day Noah will know what those problems were.
"You were in foster care, but we kept having to move you. I went to every single one of those hearings. I just...I wanted to know that you were safe. And the judge got tired of bouncing you around, and she asked me to take you."
"You didn't even want me," Noah says, horrified. It is the worst possible thing he could imagine, that not only is she not his mother, but she only took him because she had to.
"No, that's not it at all," she tells him fiercely. "Noah, I thought I was never gonna have a kid. I thought that was...too much to hope for."
She sounds sad, when she says it. Like she doesn't want to hope for anything. Like she's afraid of it, afraid of wanting things. And Elliot has asked her to marry him, and she hasn't said yes, and Noah wonders, briefly, if she thinks that's too much to hope for, too.
"But that judge gave me a chance. You were everything I ever wanted and I was too scared to ask for you, even though I wanted to. And something - Elliot would say it was God - gave you to me anyway. You are the best gift I've ever been given."
There are tears shining in her eyes, and they are stinging at Noah's, too. She's telling him the truth, he can see it written all over her face. And it hits him, then, that she did choose, that she could have much more easily told that judge no. But she said yes, and took someone else's baby into her home, and loved him with everything she had, and kept him safe.
"I don't wanna be someone else's kid," he tells her thickly. "I wanna be yours."
He is, but he isn't. The connection between them feels frayed; he feels a strange distance between himself and the woman who has been the center of his life for as long as he can remember. He doesn't want to belong to a prostitute and a piece of shit rapist; he wants to belong to her. And he does, but he doesn't, and he doesn't know how he feels about it.
"You are," she tells him fiercely, and then she reaches for him, and pulls him in tight against her, and all that distance just vanishes. Noah clings to her; she is soft, and warm, and she is his mother. Hers are the arms that make him feel safe. Hers are the hands that have sheltered him, all his life. She is the one who has protected him, saved him from a lifetime spent bouncing around foster care and god only knows what other horrors. She gave him a life, and her heart, and he loves her.
Later he will ask her. Later he will ask her to tell him about his parents, who they were, how they died. Later he will ask her what she means when she says she found him, where he was and how she got him out. There have been too many changes lately, though, and he isn't ready to hear all of it. Not now, not yet. Right now, he is only sixteen, and he wants his mother to hold him. And she does.