A/N: Muse still isn't too good at writing post-eps right after the episode actually airs. I suppose this one could count for Undercover, but there you have it. I don't own SVU.
He can still remember the last time he was almost too late to save someone.
Back in the late 1990's, in the days of the city's second drug war, he and his former partner had been the lead detectives of the Narcotics squad, and everything was upside down. No one knew which side was going to strike first. No one knew which side anyone was really standing on. It was, in short, a glorified game of intrigue. Both sides wanted the other to fall. Only the NYPD actually cared how they went about it.
That was the problem. In all honesty, it might still be.
The undercover thing was supposed to last for a minimum of a week.
It was long enough for Olivia to get in, find out what the hell was going on, and get back out again so that they could do what they needed to do. Long enough for things to go so incredibly wrong that if he'd been even two seconds later in showing up when he did, things would have been so incredibly screwed that he doubts they'd have been able to bounce back. But he hadn't been, and even now, he found himself wide awake and standing on the rooftop of the 16th Precinct, even though he'd been ordered home a while ago. He'd gone home, but hadn't been able to stay.
So he was here, again, and no matter how hard he tried, the thoughts wouldn't go away.
It's not like the last time.
Last time, there had been blood, and plenty of it. This time, there had been none. And last time, there had been the shouting matches afterwards, if you'd done this, none of it would have happened, if you'd been paying attention, they wouldn't have gotten shot, so on and so forth. This time, there is quiet, and the entire unit is being made to face the fact that one of their own very nearly became a victim herself. The biggest difference between this time and the last is that last time, it was physical, and this time…This time, it is emotional. And emotion is something he'd never been too good at dealing with.
It's why he left Narcotics in the first place.
He thinks on this for a moment, and suddenly feels like he can't breathe.
Undercover is where you are made to do those things which you would not do otherwise. It is where you have to lose yourself in someone else that's really you, but at the same time, it can't be you. It is where you forget who you are for a while and play like you are someone else, because if you do, you'll get hurt. He has played many roles over the years, but this last one is definitely one that he does not care to repeat. In the back of his mind is the image of himself in that room, hitting Olivia across the back with that nightstick, saying things to her that he wouldn't have dared say inside the squad room or even outside on the streets. He'd half expected her to turn around and kick his ass for it (and he knows that she could), but she, too, knows the rules of undercover.
And so she had said nothing, but even now, he still feels guilty.
All of the detectives had been ordered home, but Fin knows for a fact that none of them went.
The night after an assignment like this back in the Narcotics squad was usually when they sat around in the squad room doing nothing, putting off paperwork in such blatantly obvious ways that after a while, Captain Deakins, before he'd left for Major Case, would tell them to go home. So they'd leave, but after a few hours, they'd all drift back into the squad room, including him, and there they'd sit, until they'd finally managed to calm their nerves (though, admittedly, squad room coffee didn't exactly help). It's the same here in SVU. Captain Cragen told them to leave; they did, but slowly, they'd all drifted back.
It was almost funny, in a twisted sort of way, how they couldn't manage to stay away.
When he feels a hand on his shoulder, he jumps, hand going automatically to his gun.
The voice behind him is familiar. "It's just me, Fin. No need to draw down."
He turns, and there is Olivia, a faint smile crossing her face as she continues. "Mind if I stand out here with you?"
"Nah, you're good," he replies. "At least it ain't raining this time."
They'd come up to the precinct rooftop to talk when it had been decided that they'd be going undercover in the prison together. It had been raining then.
Olivia laughs. "Yeah. At least it isn't raining."
Silence falls, and lingers between the two of them for a long time.
"You know, I didn't tell Elliot what happened in there," she remarks. "I get the feeling it wouldn't have gone on too well."
"Probably not." Fin turns again, so that he is looking back out at the city. "Last thing we need is any more trouble in this squad."
"We're always in one form of trouble or another," says Olivia, lightly enough that he knows she's trying to hide something. "Haven't you figured that out yet?"
He has, but he doesn't think about it, and he doubts she does, either.
After another moment, she speaks again. "I know you didn't mean it."
"If looks could kill, I'd be a dead man, Liv," Fin replies, almost amused by this. "But you're right."
"Thanks, I think," says Olivia, and then, "You know, it could have been worse."
And it could have been, but they are both grateful that it wasn't. They are both grateful that they made it out of there without either one of them being hurt so badly that they wouldn't be able to return to where they are.
So they stand there, on their precinct rooftop, and look at the city before them, neither of them saying anything, until, finally, Fin says something.
"You know, back in Narcotics, stuff like this…we didn't ever sit around and talk about it. We'd just sit there and drink coffee and do nothing until everything was all right again."
Olivia casts him a sideways look at this, and nods, because before SVU, she was in Vice, and their paths have crossed before, numerous times.
"Don't I know it," she says, and then, "It's different here. You think you'll get used to it, but you never do."
"Time to leave when you get used to it," Fin replies. "When you're so numb that you can't feel anything…."
"Guess that's what makes us such good detectives," says Olivia. "We're still able to feel."
But what exactly it is that the two of them feel, neither of them are particularly sure of, and so they fall silent again.
It is enough, he thinks, to know that she still trusts him, but at the same time, it's not.
"You remember that last shootout…the one right before I finally left Narcotics?" he asks, and Olivia nods.
"Yeah," she says, "I remember. Eames called me, told me what went down. Next thing I know, everyone's packed into that waiting room, just…waiting."
Fin looks away from her. "I was almost too late, then," he says, an admission he has made to no one besides his former commander, who knew anyway, because he'd been there. But that is beside the point. "One minute later, and it all would've been shot to hell."
"But you weren't too late," says Olivia. "That's the point. You made it on time and it wasn't."
"But it could have been."
She bites back the desire to roll her eyes. "Why are you thinking about this?" she asks, and he shrugs.
"Don't know," he replies. "I came up here to get away from it."
"I think that's why all of us come up here." Olivia trails off and sighs. "Elliot wants to know what went down in there, but I don't think I can tell him."
He knows what she means. Some things are better left unsaid, and those last, heart-stopping moments inside that prison are among them.
"We're gonna nail him, Liv," he says, finally. "Sooner or later, we're gonna nail him."
Olivia turns and leans back against the railing that keeps both of them from falling. "Why does it feel like it's never soon enough?"
Her question is a legitimate one. Most of the time, it does feel like it isn't soon enough. And a lot of the time, it feels like they're too late, because by the time something comes along, by the time something is mentioned, it's already over and done with.
He thinks, then, of sheet-covered bodies on sidewalks in the rain, and of faceless people sitting huddled in the squad room, holding onto the coats they've put on, as if it's the only thing holding them together. He thinks, then, of all the times they've ever taken cases personally, of all the nights that the four of them combined have spent wide awake, staring at their respective ceilings, of nights when they've been ordered home, only to drift back to the squad room.
"We do all we can, but it doesn't ever feel like enough," he tells her. "That's why it feels like it's not soon enough."
And it also feels like it's too late, as usual, like there's nothing they could have done, when there's something….Fin thinks, then, of the relieved look that had crossed Olivia's face when he'd finally shown up, and quickly pushes the thought away.
But somehow, she knows exactly what he's thinking about.
"You know, it was never a question of whether or not you'd show," she remarks, off-handedly. "I knew you would."
"How do you deal with it?" Fin asks, suddenly. "How the hell are you supposed to deal with it?"
She knows what he means, and so, she shrugs. "I don't know," she says. "I guess you're just supposed to try and forget, but it's not easy, even if some things are better left forgotten."
Fin sighs, and turns, so that he, too, is leaning back against the railing. "It's not that you forget on purpose," he says, quietly. "It's just that after a while, when you look back, you find out that you don't remember anymore."
Olivia nods. "It all fades over time," she says.
"Yeah, but it never really fades enough."