He'd said he didn't want a party. Old wounds ran too deep. He just wanted to pack his desk and leave quietly.
He had tried to retire before, five years ago, when he had learned he would need a new partner. The captain had understood, as had the two detectives he had worked with most closely outside the close partnership, even the DA. Even in his own family, where he had most expected to encounter resistance to the idea, he had had their unconditional support. It was the commissioner who had refused—the Chief of Detectives, who hadn't wanted to lose one of New York's finest. Instead he had been handed a rookie to train properly and given, perhaps in a misguided attempt at compensation, a substantial raise.
His new partner was young, the daughter of a former detective who had taken early retirement to care for her mother, but she had a hard edge to her nature that made her very good at this job. He hadn't wanted to get close to her, but part of what made her so good at her job was a dogged perseverance, and she hadn't let him get away with that. She had simply held her tongue for a week where he was concerned, but that Friday she had told him to shut up and listen. She had told him she didn't intend to take his partner's place—that had surprised him, that she had said "your partner" and not "your old partner"—but that she couldn't work with him if he kept ignoring her. She'd been a good partner and he had no doubt she'd be able to handle the work with whoever ended up being her new partner.
For one last time, he sat at the double desk where he'd had so many wonderful years. All the cases, all the memories wrapped up in those years came flooding back to him, including the day his life had changed forever.
He had thought it was a joke at first, but if it was a joke, it was a very bad one, and she wasn't given to tasteless, cruel jokes like that. Besides, it was Halloween, not April Fool's Day.
It was burned into his mind—every detail of the last case they'd worked together, the last night of the case. He hadn't believed she was really going to leave him, that he was really going to look across this desk and not see her grinning at him—or scowling at him, depending on how much of an idiot he was being that day. She'd just smiled a little sadly at him, shaken her head a little, and softly told him that she loved him, then said goodbye. And then…she had left him.
He didn't enjoy Halloween anymore.
He buried his face in his hands slightly. Nothing had been the same since she'd been gone. For two weeks none of the detectives spoke to one another unless absolutely necessary. Even the captain had been unusually reticent. It wasn't like they'd never had detectives leave before, but somehow, she was special. And somehow, all the other times she had been gone, they had known she would be back. This time it was for good.
"Daddy?"
He looked up in surprise. His second daughter stood in the doorway, her two-year-old daughter—his only granddaughter and the pride of his heart—on her hip. "Honey, what are you doing here?"
"I knew you were leaving today, and I knew you wanted to escape before the uniforms try and throw you a party," she answered, hitching her red-haired daughter a little higher up. "Come on. I'll take you out to see Aunt Liv."
His granddaughter wasn't about to be left behind in the car when they got there—if he went, she was going to go too. She'd never been there before, and she gazed around with wide blue eyes. His daughter stopped, waiting for him to talk to his partner first, holding tightly to the toddler's hand. He sat down.
"Hello, Liv," he said softly. "I guess you've heard by now that I took my retirement today. I'm off the force for good." He swallowed against the hard lump in his throat. "It just wasn't the same without you."
His granddaughter's voice came to him clearly. "Mama, who Pop-Pop talkin' to?"
"He's talking to someone very special, Ollie," her mother answered, picking the little girl up and approaching him where he sits. "This is my Aunt Olivia. She's Pop-Pop's very best friend in the whole world." Her voice broke slightly as she said that, and she couldn't look him in the eye.
He opened his mouth to tell the child everything…and burst into tears, racking sobs like he hadn't cried in five years. His daughter covered his hand with hers sympathetically, her own eyes brimming with tears, and his granddaughter started crying too, not knowing why, just knowing that she was upset because her mother and grandfather were upset.
Finally he got his tears under control, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and blew her a kiss. With that he stood, looking down at her, knowing that there was no one he would have rather been with him on a day like this. At the same time, he knew that if she had still been there, he never would have left.
"Come on, honey," he said, his voice hushed and choked with tears. "Let's go home."
Picking up his granddaughter and putting an arm around his daughter's shoulders, Elliot Stabler walked away from his partner's grave.