Rating: T
Category: Angst
Spoilers: Kind of tiny ones for 7x19 Fault and 11x06 Spooked.
Warnings: Character Death
Summary: Never had he, in his many nightmares, imagined this. This ending. This sudden and complete stop of both their lives.
Author's Note: My first finished SVU fic. So not first first...if you know what I mean. Plenty of works in progress back on the fine hard drive of mine as well. Reviews, comments, pointing out spelling, grammar and other mistakes, constructive criticisms on characterization, plot, anything, I will love you for it.
On to the story...
He always thought they would have time.
He always thought that if either of them went down they would have time.
Time to clear the air.
Air that would be filled with clarity. Clarity filled with released emotions and simultaneous destruction, burning pain. Painful minutes and seconds, where one of them would confess all of that they couldn't do when both of them would remain alive. Could not for whatever made-up reasons.
Then naturally, the other one would follow with his or her own admissions. Then both would die, only in two different ways, one literally and the other more figuratively.
Never had he, in his many nightmares, imagined this. This ending. This sudden and complete stop of both their lives.
He had always thought that if one of them fell down, there would minutes or just seconds in which they could realize what was happening. They would have time to overcome shock, anger, guilt and every other emotion standing in their way. They would have time to let their tears fall. They would cry together for the very first time and experience the joy that is sharing.
They would cry even more after that because it was also going to be their last time together, crying or otherwise.
One of them would joke about it because that was what they did; they relieved tension with inappropriate humor and the other would smile down at their too late found soul mate. They would try to find those forbidden words, stuck in suspension for so long and now finally freed. They would speak through a thick throat, desperately trying to swallow their hearts back down.
Never could he have imagined this scene. A scene that would keep playing over and over again before his eyes, forever. Never had he in his many nightmares imagined this.
They were walking, talking and laughing. It had been and was going to continue being a good day, he had thought. They had not woken up with the terrifying and paralyzing realization that today was going to be it. They knew nothing. They knew nothing until he knew everything and she knew nothing at all.
Things just came to a sudden and obliterating stop. She just fell. She fell down. Fell over backwards with no stopping her. Down onto the sidewalk.
For a blissfully unaware moment he thought she had tripped and with words already forming in his head for another joke about her high heels, he turned back. He turned back to look at her, intent to offer her a hand to help her up. A hand she would refuse but still the intent was there.
He turned to look at her but she wasn't there.
She was already gone.
She was still lying there but she was gone. Her eyes were staring up at the heaven, not seeing the cloud-filled one but the heaven he had believed in and she had not.
You would think that he would have heard the shot. Heard, felt, tasted, seen or smelled it. Something. Anything. He hadn't. Maybe because he had already shut down once the sound reached his ears. Shut down by the unbelievable picture that had just been painted right in front of him.
Less than a second passed in real life but for him it felt like several minutes as he continued starring back down at her. Down at her, lying on asphalt. He was looking down at her and she was gone and he always thought that they would have time.
Time had slowed down but the second people started to assemble around him, he reacted and his training kicked in. He was yelling, at bystanders to stand back and barely realizing that he was pointing his weapon at them but knowing that he could not trust anyone right now.
He was yelling into his radio, literally screaming out words like "Officer down!" and "Shots fired!" but not quite feeling the severity of them. It was like he already knew that it was all futile but it still needed to be done. Somewhere in between those words he must have hollered out where they were as well or the sirens he soon saw in the corner of his eye joining them would never have come so fast.
He was leaning over her, on his knees before her and he knew she was gone but he didn't cry. He did not cry. He didn't even tell her that he loved her and couldn't live without her (because the last part was quite obviously a lie no matter how much he wished it wasn't). Breaths weighed heavily on him indeed and he was shaking from the adrenaline coursing through his veins.
He was looking down at her through a very long and very dark tunnel and the end was so far away it did not seem real.
It wasn't real to him at that moment and yet he had never felt more alive. The contrast made his heart constrict in such a way he thought it quite possible that he might just die anyway. Die from complications. The kind of complications you have after surviving dangerous heart surgery.
He had never thought of this.
He always thought that if either of them went down they would have time.
Not a long time because that would obviously contradict the situation. Just enough time to cry together for the first time and for the last time. Enough time to admit, confess and declare all the things they never had time or courage for before.
I love you, Liv, he would have whispered.
I love you too, El, she would have whispered back.
In his nightmares, those words were the only ones spoken and that would have been enough. Plentiful even. Enough to last forever.
Sometimes he had imagined longer conversations, heartbreaking and yet at the same time heart-filling, words exchanged before the finality of the moment hit them.
Even in reality, they had managed to say all of it just with their eyes. With guns to their heads, in a warehouse with Gitano and at some airport with Rojas and Porter. They had cheated fate both times and they had learned nothing from it he realized.
They had learned nothing.
How could they have? You didn't learn from such things. You moved on and tried to forgot. At least that was what they did.
He always thought they would have time anyway.
He always imagined them having time to say things to each other that they actually meant and felt.
He always thought they would have time. Time to erase their past and be honest for once and then, in that moment, that time would become the purpose of all their struggles.
Now he realized. Now he finally learned.
He knew the truth as he looked down at her. In his heart he had never thought that she would actually die.
He never thought she would die and that he would have to live with his regrets. He never thought time would end.
He always thought they would have time.