A/N: I usually save the author's note for the end, but I just wanted to say a couple of things before hand. First of all, the majority of this story was written to "So Cold" by Nikisha Reyes Pile/Ben Cocks, and I would love for you to listen to it as you read the story, because I think it makes so much of a difference. Also, I just want to say that the name "Ada" in this story is pronouced "Aid-ah" just so nobody gets confused. I don't really know how or why this oneshot happened, because it was totally supposed to be the second installment of my other story, Gravity, but who even knows. I think I'm losing my mind, but please enjoy anyway! x-PS
XXXX
She's sleeping, and all you can think is that she's so, so little.
She's flat on her back and her right hand is curled into a halfway fist. Her chest is rising and falling and rising and falling, and it makes you smile a little because her mother had never slept this way. She had always been on her side or her stomach, and although you know very little about Olivia's sleep habits, you imagine that it was because she felt more protected that way. But not this little one. She is all open doors, all sleepy grins that are meaningless until she's a few months older.
Her eyes are closed, but they're blue. You know enough from raising five children that that sort of thing just happens with infants, but despite the insignificance there is value because it makes you feel like she's yours, just a little bit. And in that type of way, she is. This is your baby now. For some reason, this little thing belongs to you. You stopped believing in God the second he took Olivia away from you, but watching the baby sleeping brings the fragments of your faith back to the surface.
This little girl will never know her mother. She will never see the way Olivia looked in the morning, rumpled and cranky until she'd had her tea. She will never get to see the way that tears would gather in her eyes, refusing to spill onto her cheeks. She will never see that smile so huge it's almost a frown—the one you've only seen a handful of times yourself. She will never hear the way that Olivia's voice had lisped, so slightly that you'd have to know to listen for it, when she was nervous. She'll never get to have her mother wrapped in her arms. She'll never get that feeling of security, of safety, of trust that had come with her presence.
This little girl will never get any of that.
But you will make sure that she knows. She will know all that Olivia was, she'll know everyone that her mother had touched. Had saved. Yourself included, you think, especially in this. It's terrifying to imagine that maybe this had been part of the plan all along, but it's strangely comforting, and for the first time in two months, you stop asking questions. And you watch. And maybe soon, you'll be able to breathe again.
XXXX
You had originally expected to be alone in this.
A divorce had followed Eli's fifth birthday. The two of you had split custody, and Kathy had only cried a little as she helped you move out. "We've had a good run," she'd said, her words a whisper and her eyes glassy and only partially defeated looking, because in all the things that you'd done together, really done, you had done them well. You'd nodded and put a duffel bag in your trunk and kissed her on the cheek. And then you'd driven away. And you remember thinking about how you should call her, how you should find her again. About how much you needed to. About how much you missed her, every day, still, after more than a year without seeing her.
Olivia had always had you like that, and you had always been hers, whether you liked it or not. But then, as you'd driven back to the city, as Castleside Street fell behind you, as the summer slipped away into fall, you had chosen to be done fighting this thing, whatever it had been.
You hate yourself for leaving the job when you did, but you had been done and tired and finished, and so had Olivia, but she wasn't strong enough to see it by herself. You used to look at it as failing, as giving up, but now you try to see it as making peace. With yourself, with your wife, with your children. Maybe with God, too, because shooting a little girl isn't a hand that you'd ever imagined yourself being dealt. You had felt out of control then, because in that precinct, during that shooting, it hadn't been you. You'd had to make a decision—any decision—to be in control again and the one you had made ended up feeling a little bit like a sacrifice. You can't decide if you had been cowardly or brave in leaving behind all that you were.
But you had been planning on finding her as you'd left the place that used to be your home, and that is what was important. Because in a way, you had. You can't decide if it was Olivia who had found you or you who had located her again, but in this twisted way, you will now be always tied together, tethered more tightly than you had been as partners, as friends, as lovers who were not. Her daughter is yours now.
And you aren't as alone as you thought you would be.
Most days, you miss her so much that it's hard to think about her for too long. You see her everywhere. You see her in the way her child laughs and coos at you, and you see her in the way the baby's eyes are slowly beginning to darken. She looks like Olivia. She will sound like Olivia and act like Olivia and talk like Olivia, and this, you imagine, is your absolution. You will never forgive yourself for messing up like you had with her mother. But this child, this baby—she is another chance. You will do it all this time. You will love her, and protect her like you should, and you'll make sure that now, with this Benson girl, you get things right. Because she'll probably grow up to beat the shit out of you if you don't.
But besides the missing Olivia days, there are the good days. On good days Eli plays with his little sister, and Lizzie babysits, and Maureen and Kathleen bring her little presents when they visit. On the good days, you stop by the precinct with the baby around lunchtime, and you watch your old captain look at this child like she is the only thing on the planet. You see how Fin tickles her stomach and calls her "baby girl" because this is Olivia, too. And you laugh because this child is getting so big and Munch has yet to hold her because he's so afraid she'll break.
You are not alone, really. Not anymore. And on the good days, the days that aren't too quiet, too vapid, you're confident that this, somehow, happened for a reason.
XXXX
You remember the phone call like it was yesterday, and then everything else becomes blurry.
Your new apartment hadn't quite been home yet. You had been living there for two weeks and two days and there were still boxes everywhere. It was two bedrooms, one for you and one for your kids when they stayed over. The kitchen was tiny and there was an exposed brick wall that had reminded you of Olivia the second you'd seen it. It was a good buy.
You remember opening the refrigerator and pulling out a beer, you remember uncapping it with the bottle underneath your shirt, you remember your cell phone ringing and the momentary contemplation of letting it go to voicemail. That is the part that hurts you the most to remember, because it had been too long then, and you were too late, and you couldn't feel your connection anymore. When that phone rang, you'd never expected it to have anything to do with Olivia, with the woman you'd found yourself tied to again and again. That was when you should have known, should have seen it coming. Something that been broken then, but you had felt nothing, and that alone was worse than the original fracture.
"Hello?"
"Hi, this is Maria from St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, is this Elliot Stabler speaking?" The words are punctuated and practiced and you had felt it then, somewhere deep in the middle of your bones. You'd told her yes as your stomach fell ten floors, because you know that St. Luke's is all the way on the Upper West side and that, you know, is where Olivia is. That's where Olivia is. You do not remember leaving your apartment, you can only hear the words on the other end of the phone line.
"Yeah, yeah, this is him," you had said, and you can't think of how your voice had sounded but you imagine that it'd been breathless, been stunned.
"Are you aware that you're the emergency contact for Ms. Olivia Benson?" she'd asked, and that's when you had really fallen apart, because in truth you had forgotten. You'd forgotten that aside from you, there was really no one else, not for Olivia. You were it, you were all there was for her, and that was when it had hit you that there was nothing more to be done.
The battle had been lost already, months ago, when a little girl had crumpled to the floor only feet from your desk, crimson blooming across her blouse.
Enough, that's it, put the gun down...
"Yeah, I, um—" you had felt yourself falter, searching for words and searching for your footing and searching through the questions you, at that point, should have had no right to ask. "What's wrong? Is she okay? What happened to Olivia?"
You had been frozen then.
"You should come as fast as you can, sir. We'll tell you more when you get here."
XXXX
Childbirth. It was a high-risk pregnancy. Lost too much blood. Nothing they could have done.
The words had hit you, shocked you, torn you apart. You hadn't seen her in a year and you hadn't spoken to her or heard from her and all the while, she had needed you. You hadn't processed those thoughts and feelings then, and it had taken you a while just to breathe, because as soon as you'd gotten her back, they had told you that Olivia was gone. She had been gone before—to Oregon, to Computer Crimes, to an apartment where she had brought countless men but had always remained alone.
It should have come as no surprise to you that she was gone again this time, but this was nothing like any of the other times before. This time, Olivia wasn't coming back. Not to you, not to the precinct, not anyone.
Sometimes death feels heavy, feels slow, feels like a tugging sensation that doesn't let go. And it's gripping you, and pulling you, and then the hand unclenches and there is nothing more to do besides watch it fall away. Sometimes it is quick, it is a rip or a bite or a shove, and then you're empty, and then you're alone.
It hadn't been like that with Olivia. There had been no feeling, no sensation, no warning. Because if you're being honest with yourself, you had already lost her, long before the rest of the world. You wouldn't have known but for the phone call, and that's the part that kills you the most.
You've seen children die before, you have looked at their bodies, cold and lifeless and a little bit blue, but forty-five still seems far too young to be fair, to be excusable.
And Olivia's eyes meet yours across the precinct, because her hands are still pressed to Sister Peg's chest and you're still kneeling over Jenna, and all either of you can hear is the silence, the death, the weight of it.
XXXX
There was a will.
And then you had been a father again.
For some reason, Olivia had given you her child. The lawyer had come and handed you documents and made you sign things, and you think even now that if you have to talk to another lawyer again in your lifetime, you'll jump off a bridge. It was a fuzzy process as you'd scribbled your initials here and there, and then the woman had given you a moment alone and set a white envelope on your lap. It was dated to five months ago, and you had known that this was the only explanation you would get.
El,
the letter said,
My mother would roll over in her grave if she ever read this, because I have no idea what to say. I haven't seen you since last June, and losing you made me think about my life, and how I really have nothing else in it that's worth losing. It's embarrassing to admit that, but it's the truth. And if you're reading this right now, I guess that it's just about my last opportunity to be completely honest with you. I don't have a good track record with that, and I'm sorry. I think I have a lot of things to apologize for, but you do too.
I'm sorry that I'm making you a father again, but you're the only other person that I can imagine raising my child. My child. It's weird to write down, or think about, or say out loud, because it seems like so long ago that I decided to give up on being a mother. Not prime parent material, remember? I remember that you didn't like that, that you thought I should keep trying, and I'd thought that that conversation was one better off unsaid. Some things aren't meant to be, and I had figured that this—parenthood—was one of them. But this summer, I realized that I had to stop living my life like it was already over. We were good, El. We were really good. But I couldn't let myself begin and end with you, and I know you'll understand that.
I'll start my explanation by saying that sperm is fucking expensive. But now I'm going to be a mother, and I'm going to have a little girl, and I can't tell you how worth it that is. You're probably shaking your head and thinking about how I hate doing things the traditional way, which most of the time happens to be your way. But this... I don't know. This little girl is special, Elliot. And I already love her more than anything else in this world. I didn't think it was possible to love another human being as much as I already love this baby, and she's not even real yet.
I'm planning on naming her Ada. It means "joyful." You're not allowed to laugh at the fact that it sounds like some random celebrity's attempt to be creative or modern or something. At least I'm not naming her Apple.
I've learned a lot from Ada already. I've learned that smelling bananas makes me vomit, that Italian food is better than I remembered, and that I'm not a terrible person. The fact that I haven't met my daughter yet but still manage to love her more than my own life tells me that maybe you were right, maybe I did turn out okay, maybe I never really did anything wrong. My mother couldn't love me because of her. Not because of me. And this little girl is going to be the most loved child on the planet.
I know that you'll love her. I'm trusting you to love her, Elliot, and I know that you will. I know because even though I haven't seen you in so long, you're an extension of myself. We operate the same way. We hate to admit the cheesy shit like this too, but it's true, so I might as well say it. You're the closest thing to me that this baby will ever get. You don't know how strong you are, how amazing you are, how special you are. And when you aren't being an ass, those things are some of the only things I understand in this world. So congratulations on your daughter, El.
Liv
P.S. I should probably mention that I love you, but I won't.
You have her back, you think, one last time. And that makes everything a little easier.
XXXX
You'd forgotten how fast babies grow.
When Ada is four months old, she's already rolling over in her crib. She knows your face now, and blows bubble kisses at you. She wiggles and wiggles when you pick her up, and you find yourself saying her name over and over again. "Ada Ada Ada," you whisper, "you're my dancing bean, okay? But you have to go to sleep."
Her lack of interest in sleeping stems from her mother, and this alone is more sentimental than it should be.
You've never talked to any of your other children like this, the way you talk to her, and it's not because you love any of them more or less, it's because you love them differently. With Ada, things don't feel unconditional quite yet. It feels like sometimes, she might disappear. And most of the time, she is still Olivia's baby girl instead of yours. So you find yourself rambling to her constantly—about the weather, about her siblings, about how pretty she is, and how funny her mother was. Anything to keep her close. Her lips mimic yours sometimes, and she'll babble to you, Da da da da.
You don't think it's her calling you Dada, you imagine that it's just her way of telling her how silly you've become. When she gets older, you think that she'll be as sarcastic as her mother was.
On the day after she turns seven months old, Ada begins to crawl. She's not a fast little thing, not yet, but she is determined to get from one location to the next. She struggles to understand that her hands can't propel her forward and carry her toys at the same time, and her frustration is amusing. You like to hold her when she gets fussy like this and bounce her on your knees, and in a minute, she's laughing again. When she smiles you miss Olivia more than ever, and it hurts you to think that she'll never see how beautiful her little girl is.
At nine months old, she's talking. It's almost shocking to see a baby so small saying so many things, but you've known for a long time now that she's smart. "Touch it," she'll say, her words stringing together, touchit!, and you carry her around and let her point at the plates sitting in the kitchen cabinet and the people buzzing across the TV screen.
"Love you, Ada Grace," you tell her, you whisper it in her ears, and ruffle her curly hair. It's brown like Olivia's, and their similarities strike you daily.
"L' you," she'll tell you, and the innocence and truth of it shows so clearly in her eyes sometimes that you wonder what wonderful thing you'd done to deserve her looking at you that way. You're not used to adoration like that, not from anyone. And you're glad in those moments that Ada is yours, because you're going to make sure that she always knows that you feel the exact same way.
XXXX
When Ada turns one, she gets cake everywhere.
On her arms, on her face, on her sleeves, and across her dress. You help her blow out the candles on her Winnie the Pooh cake that is much too big for her. Kathy is taking pictures, and Eli is clapping, and Alex is laughing and cheering a little, and Cragen looks like he's about to cry, and Fin whispers something to Munch from the other end of the dining room table. It's perfect for a minute and it's one of those times where you momentarily stop feeling like one of your limbs or vital organs is missing. You all wish she was here with you, and you all need her to be here with you in a million different ways, but the sight of Ada covered in frosting and grinning from ear to ear almost outweighs the compilation of your losses. You want Olivia to see this. You want to tell her that her baby is perfect, but you imagine that this is something she already knows.
You know that after Ada was born, Olivia held her for twelve minutes. For twelve minutes, that little girl had been pressed to Olivia's chest, had gotten to hear her mother's voice. You find yourself counting in increments of twelve now, and then stopping, and thinking to yourself, The time it took me to make this macaroni is the amount of time Olivia had had with Ada. The time it took this shirt to come out of the dryer was the amount of time it took for Ada and Olivia to meet and say goodbye.
You read once that even though babies know their mothers immediately, they don't know how to miss them until they're five months old.
You're glad about that.
You're glad that only one of you has had to suffer.
XXXX
By the time Ada is three, she has decided that she is a princess.
You agree, one hundred percent, but that doesn't necessarily mean you enjoy being Prince Charming, or the king, or the dragon, or the knight, or even the castle on the days when your daughter is feeling extra creative. Your daughter. You think this and say this to yourself all the time now, because she's getting older, and you haven't been anything other than "Daddy" since before she could speak in full sentences.
Your family is big, and this she knows. She has her brother Eli, who is almost nine now, and her Aunt Kathy, who knows how to get a ketchup stain out of a tutu and bubblegum out of curly brown hair. Your ex-wife is a lifesaver, and she knows you're grateful.
She has her Alex, Awex, who takes her shopping and plays Barbies on the rare occasion that she's free to babysit. You think that seeing Ada is bittersweet for Alex too, because unlike you, she had been there. She had been the one who helped Olivia pick her way through books about baby names and put Post-It flags in What To Expect When You're Expecting and to stupid Lamaze classes that ended up doing absolutely nothing. She had been the one to hold Olivia's hand in the delivery room, and she had been the one that they had shuttled out of the room immediately after the baby was born, after the twelve minutes had evaporated, after the heart monitor had beeped and rang and Ada had been whisked away before the sound of the flatline had shattered her only experience with her mother.
Alex still feels guilty that she hadn't been the one to call you, but you tell her with your eyes that it's alright, because you wouldn't have known what to say to you either.
Ada calls Cragen "Grampa," and you think that the old man melts every single time he hears it. You haven't worked at the precinct in years and your pension is more than enough to support the two of you, but you bring her to the station house whenever you get the chance. She likes the outings and the hustle-bustle and the fact that Munch has those little green army men in the top drawer of his desk. She's got them all wrapped around her finger, just like Olivia had, and that's another similarity you're grateful for.
When she's older, you'll embarrass her with stories about the day she got Fin to wear her princess crown around the bullpen or the time she spilled Cragen's entire economy-sized box of Twizzlers all over the floor.
"Daddy?" she asks you one night, as you're kissing her forehead after her bedtime story. She's groggy and half-asleep, only stirring when she feels your weight leave the bed. Ada is always asleep two minutes into Oh, the Places You'll Go!, and always, you read until it's finished.
"Yeah baby?" you ask, and you run your fingers through her hair. It's curlier than you ever remember Liv's hair being, and her eyebrows are furrowed in a way that reminds you of the late nights spent at your desk, hunched over too much paperwork and too much coffee. You can see her pausing, thinking of the right words. She's adorable, when she's rumpled and sleepy like this.
I have read the same paragraph five times and I still have no idea what it says.
"Does I..." she corrects herself, "Do I have a mommy?"
It hits you like a punch in the gut, and you think you're crying, you must be, but you can never tell these days. You're halfway out the door when she asks you, but a second later finds you back on that little girl's bed, pulling back her covers, telling her to sit up. She does, propping herself back on her hands. Yours take her arms, your thumbs skimming over her tiny shoulders, the silence between the two of you too serious for a person so little to understand.
"Yeah," you choke, finally, and the answer is watery and clogged at best.
"Why're you cryin', Daddy?"
You run your knuckles beneath your eyes and teach yourself to inhale, exhale. Ada has never questioned your family before. "M'not," you mumble, "I'm fine, honey." There are beats of silence between the two of you, and you stop before the seconds add up to twelve because you don't want to think of loss again.
"You have a Mommy, Ada. You've got the best in the world."
You'd made a great mom.
She cocks her head. "Where is she?" your daughter asks, seriously, because for some reason she can sense when you aren't kidding around or talking about fairytales.
Oh my God, I am not having this conversation.
"She's in Heaven," you answer. And you don't know what to expect.
"Well that stinks," Ada says thoughtfully, and you laugh because in that second she is Olivia, and she is all the reasons you have ever loved Olivia, and she is perfect and funny and beautiful and yours. You get to keep this one, this time.
They didn't see me as prime parent material.
Your eyes are still watery when you tell her how beautiful her mother was, and how she is just like her.
They're wrong.
"Like a princess?" she asks you, curious.
"A little bit," you say, and you think of how much Olivia had overcome, your relationship included, when you add, "But she was more like a knight."
You're trying honesty these days.
XXXX
Second grade is a royal bitch.
You're terrible at grammar lessons and Ada is terrible at her multiplication tables, and between the two of you, there is a lot of frustration during homework time.
"I hate numbers! Fuck numbers!" your seven-year-old will yell, and Eli will roll his eyes from across the table because he is a teenager and therefore he is perfect, and you will collect yourself before enlightening your child that that type of language isn't appropriate. She's too much like her mother these days, in everything she does.
"A, sit down. Take a deep breath."
"I have a test tomorrow," she says, "I'm gonna do it bad."
"No you're not."
"Am too," she tells you, "and John says that if I'm bad at school I can't be a 'tective."
You remind yourself to punch Munch in the face sometime. "You're not allowed to be a detective, baby," you tell her, "Too scary. That's not princess business."
Ada rolls her eyes as if you were born yesterday. "Good thing I'm a knight then, Daddy," she mutters before turning back to her paper. "Eli, what's twelve timesed four?"
You remind yourself to tell Olivia sometime that your daughter is much too stubborn. But then again, she is yours, the both of yours, together. And you shouldn't have expected anything less.
XXXX
The day Ada turns thirteen, she asks you the hard questions.
"Dad?" she asks, because it is just the two of you today. It's a Thursday morning and you're sitting at the diner that you used to take Olivia to for breakfast. The two of you had made it a tradition, in recent years, to get breakfast here on A's birthday, when it's so early that the sun is barely up. Saturday night is when you'll actually celebrate.
"Yeah?" your mouth is full of ham and peppers and omelet.
"Do you... like..." she pauses, "Do you hate my birthday?"
For a moment you're confused. "No," you ask, "why?" And then you feel stupid, because you've gotten it. You realize. And you're immediately overcome with guilt that you haven't had this conversation sooner.
Her eyes widen, her mouth falls open a little. "Dad. Are you honestly that obtuse? My birthday is the day she died."
"I..." he's quiet, because sometimes it strikes him that Olivia can still render him silent like this. I'm in trouble with you, woman, he thinks as he sighs. "...baby, I know that, of course I know that. But it's also the day she gave me you."
Ada smiles sadly over her French toast. She's been a vegetarian for three months now, and she slides the side of sausage that the waitress forgot to replace across the table in your direction. She nods, and admits, "I can't imagine what that would be like. To lose her and then have to be my dad. You... you didn't even know me. You didn't even know I existed until the day she died."
Ada knows the story. She knows your story, the long one, the one about the two of you. She knows about all the silly little things between you, like how her mother would keep two Snickers bars in her desk drawer for the long days when they world seemed too gloomy to be real and how you mocked Olivia for four years about her tea drinking habits that she'd finally switched back to coffee.
You kick her foot under the table. "'Course I knew you. You were hers."
She smiles, and you finish your home fries, and she picks at a piece of cantaloupe on the corner of her plate. You're in the car and almost to her school when she hits you with it again.
"Do you ever wish it were me instead of her?" she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. Your daughter is rarely insecure, but you hear the note of uncertainty in her voice now, and for a moment you're somewhere else.
What about me?
You remember Olivia's voice so clearly on that day, the day with Gitano, and you think that that's one of those cases that you'll always carry with you. You think that maybe one day you'll tell Ada that story, the story of the day you realized Olivia loved you with as much fervor as you loved her. As you had been trying to love her, just as you were pushing her away. It's that same insecurity you hear in your daughter now, and you decide not to walk away this time, because as her question hangs in the air you can feel your chest cracking with it's dead weight.
"Ada..." you say, "Sweetheart, you can't—"
"It's okay if you do," she tells you, and you know she's being honest. "It's okay. There would have been other babies, Dad. You would have found me anyway. It's okay if you wish it was me who died instead of Olivia. Instead of Mom."
You and this job are about the only things that I've got left anymore.
You're a broken man then, your eyes are stinging and full and you think that you embarrass yourself in front of your daughter this way more than any other living person on Earth. "Honey, no," you breathe, and the car is pulled over, and you're reaching across the center console to pull her into your arms. You need your daughter now, and you need her to know. "I... Ada," you tell her, pulling back, "I wouldn't be me without you, honey. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me, okay? And your mother was too. She... she knew who I was, what I needed. She knew. And even though I miss her, and wish that she was here every second of every day, I—fuck, Ada. You know I'm not good at this."
Her head is leaning against the seat, and she looks so little. Her eyes are wide and forgiving and sad, and her mouth is a knowing smirk. "At words? Yeah. I'm aware. Keep talking."
And that is your answer. Right there. Olivia will always be your answer, because she is so clearly present in everything your daughter will say.
"A... you are your mother. In every way. And as much as I loved her, as much as we... loved each other—tried to love each other—it was hard. I don't know how it would have worked out. And I wouldn't trade you, or this, or... or our family for anything." There is conviction to your words now. "Your mom always thought it was bullshit that everything happens for a reason, but it does. It does. And I can't wish that away. I wouldn't wish that away."
"Ever?"
"Ever, Ada Grace."
She kisses you on the cheek, and you can see that this is how she's composing herself, and drawing her strength from you. You love this.
"Jesus, Dad," she says, finally. "There's no need to be so freaking emotional." And then she's gone, out the passenger side door, into the school, another year older.
You're not good with this shit, with words, but you think that this time, maybe you're getting it right.
XXXX
"WHO THE FUCK IS HE?!"
"The hell, Dad!? I'm not telling you shit!"
"Ada Grace, you tell me who this shithead is and where he lives and how long it will take me to get there so I can kick his goddamn door down!" You cannot remember the last time that you had been this angry, this irate.
I can't do this anymore, I can't be... looking over my shoulder making sure you're okay!
She's seventeen. Seventeen. It's old and it's young at the same time and God, you are so mad. Your thoughts are a jumble and you can't think straight long enough to find your car keys. She's yelling something back at you but you don't hear the words, all you hear is the blood gushing into your ears. You smack your fist down on the counter top and oh, oh there are the keys, and you find yourself tearing your way to the door just as Ada steps in front of it, arms spreading to cover the hinges.
You Sonofabitch, you know that's not true!
You're embarrassed for half of a second as you realize how hard you're breathing and what an ogre you've turned into, but then your eyes fall on the bruise on her arm in the shape of a handprint and you're ready to tear some punk a new asshole all over again.
"Dad," she breathes, her voice tentative, and she isn't scared of you. Fuck you, Olivia, you think, for leaving me with your goddamn clone. "I need you to take a deep breath, and go sit on the couch for a minute."
"No." Your answer is calm, but you're angry, you're furious, your face is red and you think you're going to explode within the next five minutes. You move to push past her, but she catches your arm and tugs you around so you're facing the living room.
"Dad," she tells you, "we're going to talk. And we're going to do it calmly."
"Ada Stabler," you bark, "Are you honestly going to sit me down and look me in the eyes and tell me that you're comfortable with some... some random asshole treating you this way? Walking all over you? What kind of fucker does that and what kind of idiot do you have to be to—"
"Jesus, Dad!" she yells, "Who the hell do you think I am?" her eyes are fuzzy with tears now she looks sort of tired, and you see her hand running along her opposite arm, her fingers brushing by the goddamn bruise, the purplish skin marring her complexion, resting just over the muscle. The bruise you'd spotted in the bathroom twenty minutes ago when she'd been brushing her teeth and not bothering to cover her it with a sweatshirt. Again, for the millionth time, she becomes Olivia.
Her eyes are almond shaped like her mother's, and equally dark. Her eyebrows are just as defined as Olivia's had been, her nose the same v shape. Ada's hair has become darker over the years, and her skin is paler than her mother's, and she doesn't have that scar lightly zigzagging it's way across the right side of her forehead. She's three inches taller than Liv had been, and she's lankier too. She is less a tomboy than her mother but she is equally as tough, in her own understated ways. She reminds you of Lizzie sometimes in the way that she devours books and languages and words, understanding them far better than you ever will. She corrects your grammar constantly, and it's the sort of thing that Alex and John find hilarious. She is Olivia, but she is also herself, and you feel the innate, visceral need to protect her.
It's the insecurity in her voice that makes you stop, make your fists unclench. Olivia had always known how to undo you, just like this.
"Dad..." she tells you, "Don't worry. I handled it." She says this as if she's the authority figure, as if there is no way she could possibly be wrong. Ada redefines stubborn, but with her genes, this is less than surprising.
And you're all done up again.
"You handled it, Ada?" you bite, your voice dripping in sarcasm. "You handled it? You did? How, exactly, did you handle it? You expect me to sit here and listen to you when I see a man's handprint on my daughter's arm because you tell me 'Oh, it's okay, Dad, because I handled it'?!"
"Ugh!" She runs her fingers through her hair. "If you would control your temper for one fucking second I would tell you! This is why I didn't even tell you that I had a boyfriend in the first place!"
"Why?! Why didn't you tell me?! Because you were afraid of my concern that he was beating the shit out of you?!" You have always been one to overreact, but now you can't stop. "That's reasonable, Ada!"
She sighs, she sits down on the sofa, she is the first of them to surrender. "I'm not fighting with you about this. I told you that I handled it. Clearly..." she inhales, collecting herself, collecting her words, placating you and giving you a few precious seconds to cool down as you see her do the same. "Clearly I don't have a boyfriend anymore."
You swallow. Oh. "Ada, I'm still not taking this lightly. Don't insult what—"
"What?" she asks, "What my mother did for a living? Is that what you were going to say? Because I don't want to hear it. I was dating this kid, this random fucking kid, and we fought. Once. And he grabbed my arm really hard because he was angry and then he apologized and then I broke up with him. The end. I'm not an idiot, Dad. And I'm not some victim you pulled off the street twenty years ago, either."
You let this soak in, this part. Because even though you're still ready to murder someone, she doesn't need you to fight her battles for her anymore. She isn't a child anymore, and you remember back to seventeen years ago when some nurse whose name you can't remember had passed you this little lumpy bundle in a pink blanket and called it—called her, this stranger—your daughter. And you had stood there and felt all your bitterness and confusion melt away for a minute, because this baby, this was what salvation felt like. This was what forgiveness felt like. Reconciliation.
Ada had saved you. But she doesn't need saving anymore, and maybe she never has, and it's hard to acknowledge but it is only present for acknowledgment at all because you've done your job right in the first place. You've been a good father this time. You've watched her, you've protected her. You've done all the little things like making her school lunches and ironing her ballet costumes, and now you're almost finished. In a year, she'll go to college.
"Ada..." you don't know what to say. It's dry and scratchy from yelling and she gets up from her spot on the sofa as you sit down.
"Stay," she tells you, "I'll go get you some water."
When she returns a moment later, you finish the glass she hands you and sit down next to her. You're facing forward and you don't want to look at her, because you're partially embarrassed and partially helpless and mostly still angry at the bastard that messed with her arm. "I'm sorry I lost it," you grumble, imagining that she is Olivia, and that you have to apologize because she'll book a plane ticket to China or Africa or Budapest if you don't.
When love warps into hate, there's nothing you won't do.
You bet that she nods as she says, "Nothing I haven't handled before."
So are we okay?
"I know."
"I know you're still angry."
"Not at you."
She elbows you. "You know, I can fight my own battles now and again."
Well like you said, you're the longest relationship I've ever had with a man.
You swallow. "I know."
Who else would put up with me?
"But I'll keep you on standby, okay?"
"Mmhmm."
XXXX
When she graduates college, you feel old as shit.
You know she's still raw from Cragen's death last month when she accepts her diploma, but if you hadn't been aware of the loss beforehand, you wouldn't have been able to see through her smile. She's like Olivia that way, in that she's good at hiding things.
You think that maybe, with the Benson girls, you're just good at finding them.
She chopped her chair to her chin the middle of the year, and she looks just like her mother now, the way she'd been in the beginning, with her dark hair just brushing her shoulders and the proud smile gracing her face. All she really needs now is one of those stupid, baggy man suits that had always been much too big for the woman inside them.
Alex snaps a picture of the two of you, and Ada is tipping her graduation cap in your direction and you have a smug grin on the corner of your lips, because with an academic scholarship to Columbia University and graduation with honors, it's impossible to believe that this child is yours.
XXXX
When she gets married, you try not to feel replaced, but you do.
"Daddy," she had told you, almost two years ago. "I met this boy and he's coming to dinner with us and I think I'm going to marry him."
"Yeah?" You'd asked, and scoffed, because she has always been too sure of herself for her own good. "When did you meet this guy?"
Ada had shrugged. "Last week."
And here you are.
"Stop picking at your dress," you tell her, "You look beautiful."
She grins, and you can tell that she's nervous but trying to hide it. "I know," she replies, "I'm just excited."
The music starts inside the church and she jumps, her teeth pinching her bottom lip and her foot tapping incessantly against the floor. You take her arm in yours, and she can tell that you don't want to give her away, but you're trying to hide it. "Yeah," you answer, "Not nervous at all."
"Shut up."
"The last thing you're gonna say to me as my little girl is shut up? S'that how it is?" The words are meant to be humorous but you find yourself choking, and your voice comes out like gravel. You're old. She's grown up. She isn't yours to keep anymore, and she doesn't need you, and in a way, this is her leaving. This is the moment that she will begin belonging to someone else, instead of you, and this is the moment that will forever put you in second place. You think you're going to cry.
Her eyes soften even though her expression is still teasing. You never got the chance to see Olivia in a wedding dress, but this, this is close. She's wearing her mother's necklace, the one you'd told them to take off so many years ago at the hospital, and the one you'd kept in the back of your closet in a cardboard box for the past twenty seven years. Fearlessness, it says, and you remember how Ada had cried when you'd given it to her last week.
A life had been had with this necklace, a life had been lost. It means something, and the word it holds is a command, is Olivia's only request—for today, for all of the days.
"She wore it all the time," you'd told her, "Never took the thing off. She was wearing it when she had you. And she was wearing it the last time I saw her."
Ada had nodded and let you clip it around her neck, and it was one of those moments that should have been caught on camera and could have been part of a movie. She runs her thumb along the engraving now and takes a deep breath.
"Daddy," she whispers, because suddenly you've stepped into a full church, and you feel like every eye is glued to you, pressed against your skin. You feel her arm nestled in yours and you don't want to let go. You don't want to let her grow up, you don't want to be finished. She is Ada in this moment but she is also Olivia, and like so many moments before, you want to hold on. You want to see her laying in her crib again, on her back, and let her fingers curl around your thumb as her chest rises and falls.
You want her to be two months old and laying on her belly and lifting her head, or nine months old and saying your name over and over again, Da da da da, back when you still didn't quite believe it.
You want her to be three years old and sitting on your back as you run around your apartment, a dragon or a horse or a monster, because she'd believed in your shining armor back then, and you want her to be five and covered in finger paints and drawing angels all over her the easel your mother had bought her for her birthday.
You want her to be a second grader yelling at you about math problems, and you want her to be ten and asking Eli what kissing felt like.
You want your daughter to be thirteen and asking you all those questions again, because this time you won't hesitate for a second before you tell her that you wouldn't change a single fucking thing.
You want her to be seventeen and yelling at you about letting her grow up, or twenty two and smiling for a cheesy picture with you, college diploma in hand.
You want it to be a September afternoon twenty-seven years ago, with a beer bottle forgotten on your counter, and the phone in your hand, because you want to do it all over again. Not to change it, just to live it, because Ada is so many pieces of Olivia and so many pieces of herself and she is a puzzle and you want to take all the time in the world to pray to her mother and maybe God and whisper into your baby's ear at three in the morning and explain that sometimes things aren't perfect, and sometimes families are made up of lawyers and detectives and step siblings and ex-wives and angels called Mommy and one man desperate for a forgiveness that he was given as soon as Olivia had put pen to the paper of her will.
Congratulations on your daughter, El.
But instead, you feel Ada's elbow dig into your ribs, and she whispers your name again. "Love you, Daddy," she says, almost silently, and she squeezes your arm and presses a kiss to your cheek. You're at the end of the aisle, and it feels like the end of a long road, and you think that the second she lets go you'll crumble to the floor because you're ashes without her.
You smile at her, and you know she's mentally calling bullshit at your strength because your knees must be clapping together, and was she always this beautiful?
You wanna be the only man in her life?
"Love you too, Princess," you manage, quietly, and you step away.
… No. Sort of.
But her hand is unexpectedly locked in yours, and she laughs, and steps towards you again. "I'm not a princess, remember?"
And you do.
"I'm a knight."
And she is.