Title: I'd Take It All Back Just To Have You
Pairing: Olivia Benson/Alex Cabot
Summary: Thanks to the technological miracle of artiforgs, you can now live virtually forever. Nearly indestructible artificial organs, these wonders of metal and plastic are far more reliable and efficient than the cancer-prone lungs and fallible kidneys you were born with – and Keaton Medical will be delighted to work out an equitable payment plan. But, of course, if you fall delinquent, one of their dedicated professionals will be dispatched to track you down and take their product back.
Until they fall in love with you, of course.
The first time Olivia Benson held a heart in her hands, she was 17. The mass of tissue and metal was warm against her fingers, warmer than she expected it to be, and smooth. She ran her fingertips over the valves and ventricles, traced the aorta down to the right auricle, and stopped at the small barcode and logo there – a black circle with a lightning bolt running through it.
The trainee beside her cleared his throat and Olivia passed the heart on to let him examine the clacking valves of the unit, and she knew then that as immoral and downright disgusting this job is there is nothing she would rather do.
On the morning of her 18th birthday, Olivia's boss went down to the Records Department where she had spent the last year sorting files and sent her up to Accounts Receivable on the third floor of Keaton Medical's brick and mortar building in the heart of downtown Manhattan. Truth be told, Olivia had never been above the basement of the building, not even when she had first applied to work there. There was a separate entrance in the rear of the building that led directly into Records and Olivia had never felt the need to travel above that.
A security guard directed her through the maze of cubicles and copiers and shredders to a room at the back. The door was didn't have a handle, at least not one that Olivia could see, but it did have fingerprint and retina scanners.
"Fingerprints first," the security guard said, gesturing to the pad beside the door, "then your eye. If they called you up here, it's ready for you."
Olivia nodded, swallowing hard. She placed her hand on the scanner and the affirmative beep came faster than she expected it to. The she looked into the retina scanner and waited while it affirmed her identity, which only took a few seconds but felt like a lifetime to Olivia.
The inside of the Repossession Unit was underwhelming, to say the least. An island in the center of the room with two id badge and fingerprint scanners on either side and a printer/scanner in the center of it, a shredder built into the island, four metal folding chairs against the wall.
There was no one else in the room. Olivia picked the chair closest to the door and sunk into it; if there was anything she learned from working at Keaton Medical for the past year it was to keep her hands off anything she wasn't expressly told to touch – luckily she hadn't been the one to learn that lesson the hard way, though she suspected Bryan Cassidy didn't feel so lucky after one of the security guards broke his hand.
The door slid open and a man probably eight years older than Olivia walked in. He was tall and muscular and wearing a navy-blue t-shirt with several small bloodstains on it. There was blood on his chin and he was grinning.
"Sorry I'm late," the man said, scanning his id card and fingerprints. "My last appointment ran late." He set a pink sheet of paper in the scanner and leaned back against the island while the scanner did its thing. "Are you Olivia Benson?" – Olivia nodded – "I'm Elliot Stabler. Cragen said you're my new partner."
"So I'm being promoted then?" Olivia asked. "I was just told to wait here."
Elliot shrugged – "Looks like it" – and turned around to see what pink slip the printer gave him. He read the information on the sheet and then handed it over to Olivia. "We gotta stop off at Supply on our way out, get you suited up. Keep up or get out now."
Olivia followed Elliot out of the room, easily matching his long stride. She was finally able to take a minute to read the pink slip in her hand once they were in the elevator. She let out a low whistle. "Says this guy lives around here," she said. "Are they sure this is right?"
"Don't question the intel," Elliot said. "Accounts Receivable knows what they're doing."
"It's a pricey area is all," Olivia said. "I'm just making sure we didn't miss a payment in the mail."
"Look," Elliot sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's your first day in Repo, I get it, but they do their jobs and we do our jobs and they pay us nicely to keep our questions to ourselves. I got five kids, Benson, I need this job, so just don't question it. If they say he didn't pay, then he didn't pay."
The Supply Depository was up on the sixth floor of the Keaton Medical building. The elevator door slid open to reveal two reception desks staffed by two armed guards each and rows upon rows of metal shelving stacked with weapons and tools and uniforms. Olivia handed her id card over to one of the guards and he led her down through the rows of supplies. She was assigned a black duffel bag, three black t-shirts, three pairs of black pants, a pair of boots, a jacket, a Taser, a set of scalpels, a bone saw, a rib spreader, and an assortment of other tools and gear.
Once they were finished and Olivia was changed into her new uniform, she followed Elliot down to his car and they headed on over to Number One Central Park South Unit 2011 – the Penthouse.
The Plaza Hotel, twenty stories tall, and their client, Henry Richard Smith, lived on the top floor.
"The first step to any repo job," Elliot said, "is to map out the area. You've got to know where the client is, and you've got to know what else is nearby. How big is the house/office/hut in which he's staying? Any other people inside? Are they on the phone? Are they armed? Are they on the phone with someone who is armed? That sort of thing." He pulled his tablet out of his duffel bag and opened up a set of plans. He handed the tablet to Olivia. "These are the building plans: ducts, units, etcetera. This last page is the plan for Smith's unit. Study these, figure out a way to take our client."
And so Olivia did.
For three days they sat in front of the Plaza, waiting and watching, memorizing their client's comings and goings.
And then Olivia said, "We just walk right in the front door."
Elliot grinned. "We walk right in the front door."
So that's what they did.
The doorman didn't move to stop Olivia and Elliot when they strolled into the building in their Keaton Medical uniforms at noon on the fourth day of their stakeout. He didn't move to stop them when they boarded the elevator bound for the 20th floor. And he definitely didn't move to stop them when they bypassed Henry Richard Smith's security and walked right in his front door.
Not that he would be expected to – most buildings had a policy of allowing the bio-repo men to do their jobs. It was just easier on everyone.
The door opened into a small foyer with a closet and door to a powder room to the left and a stairwell to the right, and the foyer opened into the living room. High end furniture, abstract art, floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Central Park. Olivia let out a low whistle.
Elliot dropped his bag on the middle cushion of the couch and settled down beside it, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. "Might as well get comfortable, Benson," he said. "We're still a couple hours out."
Olivia nodded absently, barely listening to what he was saying. She wandered around the living room looking over the pictures on the walls. The photographs told the story – they usually do. She could check out everything she needed to know on the sheet – date of birth, marital status, kids, etc. – but the pictures gave the most complete profile. What a person chooses to frame says a lot about them.
There was Smith – middle-age, hair receding, great teeth – next to a woman half his age, both in scuba gear down in Fiji. Another of the two of them on a ski slope somewhere in the Alps. Mixed throughout, photos of Smith and a little girl, aging randomly. In one picture, she's in pigtails and they're at the circus; in another she's dealing with her first bout of acne and the look in her eyes says hurry up and take the picture already. These, combined with the obvious bachelor pad, made it clear: A divorcé with disposable income, choosing to spend his newfound single lifestyle traveling the world and making a general fool of himself with women way too young for him.
After she looked at all the pictures in the living room, Olivia decided to give herself a tour of the rest of the apartment. Off the living room was a kitchen, which was barely large enough to stand in comfortably, but had all brand new, high-tech, unused appliances. The fridge was mostly empty, save for some Chinese take-out and a few bottles of water, and the cabinets had mostly cans of soup and boxes of cereal. Beside the kitchen was the washer/dryer closet, and across from that was a bedroom with an attached bathroom. From there, Olivia went upstairs where there was a bathroom in the hall, another bedroom with an attached bathroom, and the master bedroom with yet another attached bathroom.
How could one person need so many bathrooms?
"Benson," Elliot yelled up the stairs, "it's time."
Olivia hurried down the stairs, taking two at a time. She stood beside the door where Elliot directed her to so she would be concealed when it opened but blocking it after it closed, while he took his place just beside the living room entrance. Olivia switched the lights off just as the sound of inebriated laughter floated through the door.
They came in half undressed. His shirt unbuttoned, her skirt hiked to the waist. Hands roaming everywhere. They stumbled down the hall and into the living room, landing on the couch.
Just before they started their business, Olivia flicked on the lights and Elliot stepped out into the middle of the room. "Hello, Henry," Elliot said, and the girl jumped so badly she fell on the floor. Henry scrambled to cover himself with any clothing he could get his hands on, leaving his companion to fend for herself.
"Now that's not very chivalrous, Henry," Olivia said, picking up some of the clothes and handing them to the girl. She smiled gratefully and moved to cover herself.
Elliot cocked his head toward the door. "You're free to go, miss," he said. "You won't want to see this." The girl scrambled to her feet and hurried, half-dressed, out of the apartment. Smart girl. "Mr. Smith, we're from the Credit Union."
"Fuck. Holy fuck–" Smith stammered, getting to his feet. He grabbed up his pants and rummaged through his pockets, presumably looking for his wallet. "Wait, I can pay."
"Sorry," Elliot said. "That's not our department." He raised his Taser and took steady aim. "I'm legally bound to ask you if you'd like an ambulance on standby, though you will be unable to secure another artiforg from Keaton Medical in replacement."
"Wait," he said again, "don't–"
That was as far as he got before Elliot's Taser darts slammed into his chest and released their electricity. He went down twitching, and Elliot stayed clear until he was down for the count.
Elliot nodded and set his Taser down on the coffee table. "Gimme a hand with this?" he said, gesturing toward the couch. He grabbed one edge and Olivia grabbed the other and they moved it back several feet from where Smith was lying motionless on the floor.
It didn't take long for Elliot to pull out the extractors and scalpels he needed for the job, and he had barely made the first incision when Olivia felt the roiling in her stomach. She swallowed hard and tried to will the feeling away.
"The first one is the worst," Elliot said, pushing his hand into the viscera of Smith's abdomen.
The sound was unlike anything Olivia has ever heard before – wet and unnatural – and she jumped to her feet and rushed into the bathroom. She heaved into the toilet for just a minute before standing and staring at herself in the mirror. She needed to get herself together. She signed up for this job. This was her choice. She cupped her hands under the running water and rinsed out her mouth and then splashed some cold water on her face. When she was finished, she rejoined Elliot in the living room.
Knelt down beside Elliot, Olivia watched as he carefully extracted Henry Richard Smith's artificial liver and then dropped it into her gloved hands. "We're cutting it close," he said, placing a surgical covering over Smith's abdomen. He stood and peeled the gloves off his hands. "The goal is to get it done before the effects of the Taser wear off. Blood is hell on a good shirt. Clean that up and let's get out of here. I'm gonna call an ambulance."
Olivia dropped the Keaton LS-400 liver they came for into the stainless-steel sink in the kitchen. The high-pressure faucet nozzle did just the trick washing off the blood and attached tissue, and before long the metallic organ was gleaming in the glow from the overhead lights.
When Olivia entered the living room, Elliot was filling out a yellow receipt. He signed it in triplicate and left a copy on Smith's body. If his next of kin has any issues with the repo or the aftermath, there were numbers they could call. No one ever did, but they were available.
Olivia was silent on their ride back to the Keaton Medical building and all through the artiforg return process and while Elliot closed up their job in the Repo office.
"You get used to it," Elliot said, picking up his gear to head home for the day. "The jobs start getting easier after the first one. Soon enough you'll be able to do it without a problem."
"And if it doesn't?" Olivia asked.
Elliot sighed. "Then you're one of the lucky ones."
Much to her dismay, Olivia learned quickly that Elliot was right – it did become easier to get the job done. It wasn't that she developed a disregard for human life, she just grew a thicker skin and learned to separate her feelings from her work. There were still cases that got to her, of course, like the first time they had to take a set of lungs from a child and the woman who asked to stay awake as they took her heart and Olivia held her hand as she died, but she never let herself break, never let herself show any kind of emotion.
Before she knew it, her probationary year was over, and she was able to pick up her own cases. After that, time started to blur together. She regularly pulled doubles, occasionally pulled triples. She typically cleared three cases a night, some nights she cleared up to five. She was on top of the world.
And then it was all ripped away.