Grasping at straws here…

Olivia fought the phone. Its intermittent rings and vibrations failed to completely rouse her from sleep at first, but eventually she gave up and answered with a raspy, "Benson." Fin was calling. He and Rollins were already on scene and Olivia listened as Fin gave her the details. An intoxicated young man, half-dressed, was wielding a gun and threatening suicide at Belvedere Castle in Central Park.

Olivia sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Fin, why is this ours?" So far, his description did not fit Special Victims Unit criteria, and she hoped she would not have to scramble out in the middle of the night and, once again, inconvenience Lucy. However, he relayed one final detail which obliterated all hope for a return to slumber.

"I'll be there as soon as I can."

…..

Not much had changed in the short time it took for Lieutenant Benson to arrive at the castle. Eric Hendricks, drunk and nearly naked, was now perched precariously on the ledge of the platform below the structure's only turret, simultaneously threatening to jump and shoot himself. A negotiator was en route and ESU swarmed the area, although the rocky landscape and adjacent pond posed challenges for a coordinated, organized approach. To their knowledge, Eric was alone, but Fin and Rollins were poised to enter and check for any hostages, just in case. Eric warned them that any approach would result in him pulling the trigger. Making matters more complicated was the presence of Eric's father who he apparently had called earlier that night after he'd worked himself into a confused, angry, and drunken stupor in his imprisoned grandfather's apartment.

Eric was mostly shouting incoherently, but occasionally he would mention the name "Sarah" which alarmed everyone especially since Benson had tried to no avail to contact the young woman.

"Liv," Fin said, "She could be in there."

Benson knew what he was suggesting. "ESU will want us to wait for the negotiator."

"How long's that gonna be?" Fin retorted, wanting to move in, "We've been here over two hours already. ERIC!" He shouted, apparently done talking and maybe a bit emboldened by the new Sergeant's shield hanging around his neck, "You have anyone up there with you?"

Eric didn't respond. He stared despondently at the increasing police presence down below. Then he disappeared from sight.

"What the hell?"

The operators were unable to adjust the portable floodlights in time to track Eric's movements. They waited. Finally, the ESU captain sent his team inside, but they emerged several minutes later reporting that the castle was unoccupied. Somehow, Eric had managed to slip undetected back into the park's winding pathways.

"Aw, hell," Fin muttered as he took off in the only direction the young man could've easily run. Rollins and Benson both followed but veered in opposite directions. Their flashlight beams zigzagged against the park's dark, tree-filled, cavernous spaces. Shouts pierced the midnight air.

"Eric Hendricks!"

"Step out with your hands up!"

"Eric, drop your weapon and show yourself!"

"We're not gonna hurt you!"

Their commands along with heavy, booted footsteps, mixed together in a familiar cacophony that interrupted the previously serene spring night. SVU, ESU, and patrol officers all instinctively went into chase mode, ready to protect the public from this dangerous and reckless young man.

"Eric, PUT THE GUN DOWN!"

Someone fired a shot.

Then another.

More followed. One, two, three, four, five…in rapid succession. Olivia remembered Fin once telling Captain Cragen that, if he had to fire his weapon, he was emptying "the whole gat." She shouted into her radio as she ran. Had she had time to pause and think, she would have been terrified, for the voice urging Eric to drop the gun was Fin's, but that was the last she heard of his voice. Had he dropped his radio?

Rollins got there first. She and a very-much-alive Fin were soon joined by the dozens of other officers. Everyone's eyes focused on the bullet-riddled body of Eric Hendricks. Blood had already began soaking the grassy area where he had fallen, face down, a silver-plated pistol at his side.

The ESU Captain ushered Fin from the scene. Olivia joined them, about twenty feet away, on a path that, in just a few short hours when it reopened, would be heavily populated with walkers and joggers eagerly enjoying the warm late-April day.

A crime scene tech bagged Fin's weapon. Two uniformed officers escorted him away from the park and into the sedan he and Rollins had driven to the scene. All was silent as they rode to the hospital. They knew the routine. Say nothing. Wait for your delegate. See the psychologist. Answer IAB's questions honestly but directly. Don't offer any more information than what was necessary. It was a clean shoot, and the evidence would prove it. Until then, Fin was on leave.

….

Didi Denzler dictated her spiel to Fin in the exam room. The new Sergeant issued a few perfunctory nods and hardly showed any emotion, even when his blood was drawn for the toxicology screening. He had the expression of a confident cop who was willing to wait patiently for his inevitable exoneration, so Olivia thought it was odd when she saw him frown and mutter, "Aw, damn."

Olivia followed his gaze through the glass and into the emergency room entryway where Captain Tucker, dressed casually in dark jeans and a long-sleeved black polo, stood flanked by two uniformed officers.

"Wait here," Olivia said. While she made her way from Fin's side to the waiting room, she tried to figure out why Ed would be here. Was there a miscommunication on the radio? Did word come through that she was the shooter or that it was her who had been shot?

For the first time since "take care of yourself, Olivia Benson," their eyes met. Olivia figured she would run into Ed again at some point, but she also assumed he would follow through with his plans to retire and the chances of them meeting on the job, especially since he was no longer with IAB, were very slim.

"Lieutenant."

He uttered the word flatly and without emotion. However, neither his tone nor his steely, skeptical, accusatory countenance did anything to hide the glint in his eyes. He fought hard to suppress the burgeoning smirk which threatened to supplant his IAB face. Though their breakup had been abrupt and, in his opinion, devoid of adequate closure, he was glad to see her.

Olivia immediately abandoned formalities. "Ed." She nervously ran her fingers through her hair.

"I didn't realize this involved one of your detectives," he said, avoiding her unspoken question and pretending to disregard the curiosity plastered across her features. "Call came through from ESU."

Following Ed's professional and practiced tenor, Olivia became protective of Sergeant Tutuola and positioned her body so Ed would have to look around her to see Fin. "He has forty-eight hours to give his statement," Olivia said even though she felt a little silly dictating procedure to the man who could probably cite NYPD's policies and procedures manual verbatim. "We'll be there tomorrow."

"Alright," Ed sniffed, "Might wanna take him out another entrance. Press is everywhere."

"Thanks."

Her reply ended up hitting Ed's back, for he had already begun making his way back through the automatic doors and into the night.

….

Leaving the hospital proved to be difficult. Olivia and Fin tried two exits before they finally escaped, unmolested, into another sedan driven by Carisi. Fin wasted no time asking about Tucker.

"He's back with IAB?"

"Apparently."

Carisi screwed up his face, "Wait a minute. Captain Tucker was there?"

"He was."

"He prolly thought it was you, Liv."

"That's what I thought, but he…didn't know it was one of us," Olivia stared out into the black Manhattan night. She gripped her phone, expecting a text from Tucker, but the device was silent. Also silent was Carisi who had been shut down one too many times to bother inquiring about the Lieutenant's personal life. Fin had trouble holding his tongue.

"How's this gonna go down?"

"I assume he'll have to recuse himself."

"It was a good shoot. Kid fired two shots at me."

"It's a good thing he did," Carisi remarked, "He'll have GSR all over his hands. Better than if he just pointed it at ya. No cams in that area. Coulda been messy."

Uninterested in further discussing the open-and-shut case, Fin shifted subjects back to Tucker. "How long has it been since you've seen him, Liv?"

Carisi stifled a grin. He was glad to be privy to this conversation even if he wasn't an active participant.

"January."

"Clean split, just like that?"

"Just like that."

Fin gave up, not wanting to irritate his longtime friend and colleague.

Olivia pretended to conscientiously flip through items on her phone for the rest of the ride successfully conveying the message that she was in no mood for talking.

….

It never failed. Sitting at the IAB interrogation table would always be intimidating even for the most innocent cop. Fin breathed a sigh of relief when a completely unfamiliar investigator entered the room to conduct the interview; he was secretly worried Tucker, his pride wounded, would come down on him more savagely than the case required regardless of the reality that the evidence weighed glaringly Fin's favor. Eric's blood alcohol level was off the charts and the preliminary bloodwork suggested his toxicology report would come back clouded with a cocktail of drugs. Crime scene techs and the medical examiner both found evidence of the gun shot residue on his hands. Sergeant Tutuola was all but cleared then and there.

Olivia and Rollins cycled in and out of another room. Draper questioned Amanda and Fin's investigator fired a few obligatory questions at Lieutenant Benson. She noticed his body language indicate this was all done merely to maintain propriety to appease a volatile public and a high-profile family. After merely fifteen minutes, Benson squinted under the too-bright fluorescent lights, bade the Sergeant farewell, and met her squad members in front of the elevator doors.

"You know what guys," Olivia said, "Go ahead on without me."

Fin smirked at Rollins. Olivia saw it, but let it go.

"We'll see ya back at the precinct, Liv." Fin said as the doors parted.

Olivia inquired about Ed's office, not sure that he would have been able to reclaim his old digs after an almost year-long absence, but she was directed to the same location and found him sitting at his desk behind a mound of accordion files and a few take-out containers. The door was slightly ajar and she knocked lightly. He mumbled a "come in" without checking his visitor's identity.

"You look busy."

He knew that voice anywhere.

She stopped by.

It was the first thing he thought about when he woke up that morning. Would she stop by? And, she did.

"Not really," he replied dryly. "Lookin' for something from a few years back and I can't seem to find it."

"You know, they have these computer files," she teased.

He squinted back at her, but made sure to convey he took the joke good-naturedly. "So I hear."

"Nice of them to give you your office back."

"Yeah it was."

Olivia took a few steps closer to him. "You, ah, left so quickly last night. I didn't get a chance to ask about," she waved her hands around, "this."

"Apparently I'm irreplaceable," Ed explained sardonically, still keeping his eyes mostly on his work.

A multitude of questions lined up in Olivia's mind, but Ed wasn't exactly projecting a sit down and talk to me vibe.

She couldn't see it, but he was fidgeting slightly in her presence, trying to keep himself from asking his own questions which would, undoubtedly, reveal his heartbreak. He felt blood rush to his face and neck, probably darkening his naturally ruddy complexion. He fantasized about jumping up, locking the door, and kissing her passionately. Those lips. That face. Those deep brown eyes which now, upon closer inspection, were glossy…exactly how they'd appeared a few months ago when she allowed him to walk out of her life.

Olivia shifted from foot to foot and stared down at her boots. "Well, it's…good to see you. Looks like Fin'll be cleared pretty easily. So…one less headache for you."

"And for you," he retorted, "They send you another detective yet?"

Olivia couldn't tell if he was making small talk or being mean. "No…we're…we're good. I'm not sure I want to take on someone else at this point."

Ed forced a brief chuckle. "Yeah, I get that."

His tone indicated he'd had enough of this exchange. Olivia turned to leave, but not before asking about his apparently-delayed retirement. "So…holding off on smelling the flowers?" She asked, trying to sound as friendly as possible.

"Yeah." Ed cast a fleeting glance in the direction of the credenza lining the opposite wall. On it was a framed photograph of the Seine with the Paris cityscape in the background. Olivia owned the same photo, except, in hers, the three of them were smiling for the camera as a fellow tourist snapped away. Feeling the familiar burn of tears, she squeezed her eyes shut.

"I should go," she managed to croak.

"Have a good day, Lieutenant."

"You too."

…..

If there was one of her duties Lieutenant Benson would gladly pawn off on someone else, it was press conferences. She preferred to be working in the field or at the precinct, unraveling complicated cases, and working tirelessly to achieve some sense of justice for victims. Answering questions from hawkish reporters never interested her, and no matter how well she answered the question, she always second-guessed herself later as she replayed the exchanges in her mind.

As Sergeant Tutuola's commanding officer, her presence was required and she stood dutifully at the police commissioner's side as he explained how the evidence absolved Fin of all wrongdoing. Fortunately, Olivia only made a brief statement praising her Sergeant's bravery and publicly thanking him for risking his life to protect civilians who could have been in Eric's line of fire had he escaped the park. The whole time she spoke, she felt Ed's eyes on the back of her neck. As the highest ranking member at IAB, he, too, was present.

After the commissioner took final questions, the NYPD legion shuffled through a back corridor before exiting onto the street and dispersing in different directions without goodbyes, as if they were total strangers. Back to business as usual.

Regretting their last exchange in his office, Ed made it a point to catch up with Olivia before she made it to the car, knowing he didn't have a mountain of available opportunities to coincidentally run into her again.

"Ya did a good job up there, Lieutenant."

The compliment was obviously meant to spark a deeper conversation. Olivia's statement was as boilerplate as they come. Nevertheless, she thanked him.

"I, uh, I know you're busy, but, um," Ed stammered and flashed back to one of their final moments together, in her office, when she was in the middle of locating a kidnapped six-year-old boy.

"I can't leave now."

Little did he know, she was thinking about the same moment and wishing she could have been more patient and more accommodating. In the heat of the investigation, she'd been cold and appalled that Ed would have the gall to suggest coffee, but now the only image that came to mind was the one of him leaving her office with that crestfallen look on his face.

Perhaps out of obligation, Olivia extended the tiniest of olive branches. "Do you want to get a coffee?"

Responding to the hope glistening in her eyes, Ed opted against making things difficult and his lips curled into a hint of a smile as he accepted her invitation.

At the café, their conversation revolved around work, the shooting, the insatiable media…everything but them until Ed grew weary of the awkwardness of dancing around what they both really wanted to talk about. He eased into more personal waters.

"So…it's been almost a year…you doin' okay with that?"

"I am," Olivia replied, her voice dripping with sincerity, "It was the worst time in my career, but, with time…" she trailed off.

"Mighta been the best of us, though," Ed suggested boldly.

Olivia hung her head and stared into the steaming brown liquid. "You think?" she mumbled in response.

"I dunno. Maybe."

"It seemed," she sighed, "so wrong to be that happy…for my whole world to be coming together when someone else's was falling apart." The memories and her still-tense relationship with Chief Dodds caused her to get more emotional than she'd intended.

Ed saw her struggling to compose herself. "You never told me you felt that way," he said softly. It was part accusation, part disheartening realization that she hadn't been completely honest with him.

"You knew I was happy."

"But that was only part of the story, Liv."

"How would…the whole truth…have changed anything?" She challenged.

For the first time, Olivia Benson made him angry. Sure, she and her former partners had annoyed him at various points in the past two decades, but he'd never experienced outright rage at something she'd said or did. Essentially, she'd lied to him. She'd been holding back, deflecting, and playing defense against an inner demon while pretending everything was fine. Her refusal to completely open up to him was devastating, and the only saving grace was that she was now attempting to remedy that betrayal with an explanation.

"I knew…even in Paris…you were holding something back." She barely managed an "I'm sorry" before he continued. "I just have one question, Liv. Well, I have a lot of them, but I need to know the answer to this one."

Olivia bit her lip and raised an eyebrow, silently giving him the green light.

"I trusted you," he began in his raspiest voice, thick with melancholy, "I still trust you. Why…why couldn't you bring yourself to trust me?"

His anger turned to anguish as he spoke, and the resulting despair clouding this face broke her heart. "It's not that I didn't trust you." She traced the rim of her mug, "Because I do. It's just that…I thought I could work through it by myself. I didn't want to bother you with it, but I couldn't shake that I was only loving you halfway, or…part-time…and then when we got on the subject of retirement, I think…I felt like I couldn't give you what you deserve…what you want. You want more."

"Yeah I do," he admitted without reservation, "I'm not gonna deny that. But I love you, Olivia Margaret Benson. I've loved you for a long time now and I haven't stopped. This time last year? I thought we'd start thinking about the future, whatever that was, but the future just got farther and farther away. You got farther away." Ed stopped when he felt himself maybe revealing a little too much of his sadness. His cards were on the table and they had been since the winter. The next move was a complete mystery to him; he wasn't even sure there was room on the board for another play.

"I don't know what to say," Olivia murmured.

"I'm not pressuring you into anything. You don't have to say anything. I…" Ed daringly reached both hands across the table and breathed a sigh of relief when she didn't pull away. "I just want to be with ya, Liv. That good thing we had? The three of us? Remember? We can have that again. Indefinitely. We can be in different places with our jobs and be on the same page in this relationship. And, I'm sorry. I think I got desperate there, with the retirement talk, I wanted to let you know that I was ready to give everything to you and to Noah. I'd never ask you to walk away before you're ready."

"I got overwhelmed, Ed." Olivia's phone vibrated against the table, but she made no attempt to free herself from Ed's grasp.

"That was my fault. I'm sorry about that."

Olivia focused intently on his eyes. "Why did you go back to IAB?"

"They never got anyone else to take my spot," Ed replied with a shrug, "And I left for us. When there was no more us…there really was no reason for me to say no when they called."

Her phone rang again.

"I probably have to go."

"Yeah."

"Any chance," Olivia drew little circles on the top of Ed's hands, "You want to come over tonight? Dinner?"

"I'd like that."

"Seven?"

"Sounds good."

"I'll tell Lucy you're coming. In case…in case I'm a little late, do you mind staying with Noah until I get home?"

"Not at all." Ed sat back in his chair, "I'll getcha a to-go cup." Neither one of them had touched their drinks.

"Thank you."

When Ed returned, Olivia was putting on her lightweight trench. Ed helped her into the second sleeve, transferred the coffee into the Styrofoam container, and handed it to her. Emboldened by her apparent reluctance to leave but not wanting to come on too strong, he slowly moved in for an innocent kiss, targeting her cheek.

To his delight, she jerked her head at the last minute so he caught her lips instead. They both grinned shyly in the wake of the clumsy yet tender moment. Ed added a kiss to her forehead as if to undo all that the last forehead kiss represented.

"See ya later."

"Yes," she played a little with his tie and cocked an eyebrow. "See ya later."

….

So many of you read and reviewed Truce last year. I had so much fun filling in the #Tuckson blanks, and I obviously won't be able to do that after this season unless some miracle happens and the powers come to some sort of epiphany and change their minds (I still hold on to a shred of hope that something like that will happen, btw). Anyway, this was probably the last close-to-canon fic of my "career." Hope you enjoyed it!