Title: Just for Now
Disclaimer: I don't own SVU, I just like playing with them!
a/n: I'd just like to take this time to thank sour-skittle13 for her continued to support for all my fics. She's an amazing writer, so go and check someof her stuff out sometime!
"Benson, Stabler, I need you to go over to Central Park. They they've found Thomas Madison, but be careful, he has a gun," Cragen orders me and my partner, Olivia Benson.
We both grab our guns out of our lockers as quickly as possible. We both know that we were heading into a dangerous situation. We have been searching for this guy for three days. We know everything about him, where he works, where he livs, where he does his laundry, for Christ's sake, but somehow, he just keeps on slipping right through our fingers.
As we climb into the sedan, I see the determination on Liv's face. She seems frustrated, hopeful, and maybe even a little frightened. The crime Thomas had committed had been horrific. He had kidnapped a girl, tortured her, then killed her and then minced her into little pieces. Our ME had quite a time putting her back together. He had kept the heart of the girl, Britney Lasgoth. Huang said that he kept it because he wants to feel that he loves her, and the heart represents love, but I could have told you that.
"You ready?" I ask Liv as we pull up to the area in front of Central Park.
"Let's go get him," she says.
"She loved me!" we hear a voice yell. We both assume its Thomas's. He keeps shouting, most of it nonsense.
Liv and I creep up behind him.
"Drop you weapon!" she yells at him, stopping him in mid-sentence.
"Who said that?" he screams, whirling around. The uniforms at the scene have their weapons pointed right at him, as do we.
"Sir, you need to drop you weapon NOW!" she repeats. I can see the anger growing in his eyes with each of her words.
"Why? So you can lock me up? Well, let me tell you something, you're never going to get the chance," he says. He points his gun directly at me and shoots.
I feel the pain surge up through my leg and I immediately fall to the ground. I struggle to get up, but my strength is starting to leave me, along with my blood. Liv starts to move towards me, but Thomas has other plans for her.
"Liv! Look out!" I warn her, but it's too late. I hear a gunshot, and she falls to the ground beside me. It looks like he hit her in the chest. I try to gather all the strength I have left to try and help her, but everything around me starts to fade. The last thing I clearly remember is our blood mixing on the cool grass, staining it a deep red.
I catch glimpses of conversation before I completely black out. There are people saying something about critical condition, but I'm not sure who they're talking about.
When I wake up, I'm in a clean, white room and I'm hooked up to all sorts of monitors. I can't really recall what exactly happened. There are so many images flashing through my mind, but I can't pin them down in the order they're supposed to go.
"Dear God, Elliot," I hear someone say, and soon, Captain Cragen comes into clear focus, "What the hell happened? I send my two best detectives out to pick up a suspect, and they both end up in the hospital with GSWs."
I suddenly remember what happened. I see it all unfolding before my eyes: Thomas Madison, the gunshots, the blood, the feeling of my life slipping away.
"Liv!" is the only word I can get out, "How is Olivia?"
"Why don't you take care of yourself first, and then you can worry about her," he says, but he seems upset, and that can't be a good sign.
"No, I want to know how Olivia is!" I say sternly, feeling my energy coming back to me.
Cragen sighs and says, "Well, Olivia was hurt much worse than you were in the accident. She is currently in a coma, brain dead." His breath is shaky as he tells me this and I feel a cool rush of air go through my body.
"Can I see her?" I choke out.
"I'll have to see what the doctors say first," he tells me, with a small glisten in his eye, "Hold on, let me go find one of them."
He comes back later with a nurse who is going to take me to her. As I walk into her room, I see her motionless body lying on the sterile white sheets. There are a few doctors huddled over in one corner.
"Is she going to be okay?" I ask them quietly. There faces are grim, and I can sense that bad news is the only thing that will follow. "I'm her partner, Elliot Stabler."
"Can I please talk to you outside?" one of the doctors asks me.
"Sure," I reply, and follow her slowly out the door and into the bright hallway.
"I'm Dr. Amy Rumbo," she says, extending her hand and I shake it. "I was the doctor who first treated Olivia when she came to the ER. She's a fighter, I tell you." I smile at these words. "She had a GSW to the chest, and she was unable to breath for a considerable amount of time, so he brain did not receive much oxygen. Some people can recover from this type of injury, but…"
"Oh, God, no," I whisper, interrupting her. I take a few seconds to recollect my self, and then ask, "But what?"
"But, unfortunately, Olivia is not one of them," she finishes.
Her words make me feel like I'm being shot at all over again, except for this time, it's with cold, hard, bullets of ice. I feel numb and I have no idea what to say, so I ask, "So what do we do now?"
"Well, since she doesn't have any family, she put you down as her next of kin," she tells me, looking directly into my eyes, "It's your call."
I stare through the window at my brain dead partner; she looks so angelic on the soft white hospital sheets. She seems so peaceful. I look at her for a long while, and I remember how alive she was just this morning. She had been arguing with Munch, fooling around in the bullpen. But now, it seemed that life had already left her. I realized that keeping her on life support wouldn't keep her alive. She died when she was shot, and I needed to be able to accept that. Keeping her on all those machines, with people watching over her every hour of every day wouldn't make a difference. She wasn't my Liv anymore; she was just a vegetable with a heartbeat, no movement or action. She can't move on with her life, so she is already dead. I know what my decision has to be; I have to release her from this sterile environment. I don't want her to spend the rest of her short, meaningless life with tubes and wires connected to her, and I know she doesn't want that either. She died when she was shot, and that was that. I know that I'll miss her dearly, but this is the right decision.
"Please," I say, holding back my tears that are about to escape from my eyes, "just turn those things off. She's dead already."
Dr. Rumbo just nods and asks, "Would you like to say good-bye?"
"Sure," I whisper. I go back into the room and kneel down beside her bed. "Liv, I have to let you go. I can't stand to see you with all these people huddled around you with all these machines beeping. I just want you to know that I really do love you, and that's why I'm doing this. Please, understand that, please. I would hate for you to have to spend the rest of you life like this, even if it means that I can never be with you, so just please understand that I love you. I love you, Liv, and I always will, but I know that I have to let go of you, but I promise that it's just for now. We'll see each other again, I swear. I'm letting you go just for now."
I turn to Dr. Rumbo and nod. She reaches for the switch of the machine and switches it off. The other machine, the one monitoring her heart, still beeps for a few seconds, but then a flat line appears endlessly across it. All that is heard in the room in the constant beep announcing her death.
I can't hold back my tears that I've kept inside of me for so long. The floodgates burst open and I collapse into the chair next to her bed. I don't know how long I sat there and wept, but it must have been for some time because I eventually fell asleep before I was quietly ushered back to my room.
Today, I have to go back to work to meet my new partner. I think they're giving me a guy this time, which is probably a good idea on Cragen's part. He knows that no one will be able to replace Liv.
I pull myself slowly out of bed to take a shower. I stand in the stall until the water becomes icy droplets that pierce my back, but I don't notice it. I eventually shut off the water, grab my towel, and go back to my bedroom. I look at the face that stares back at me from the top of my dresser. It is a picture of Liv, taken a long time ago. Her silky brown hair frames her face. She smiles at me and her eyes pierce my soul. The photo is probably the best one I have of her. They actually blew it up and used it at her funeral, which I couldn't bring myself to attend. Again, I couldn't stand to look at her just lying there, doing absolutely nothing. That's not how I want to remember her, because that's not who she was. She was such a lively person, and I have my memories of countless nights at the bar with her to remember. I don't need to see her being put into the cold, hard ground to understand that she's gone.
I glance at the clock and realize how late it is. I pull on my clothes and grab a breakfast bar. I hop into my car and head towards the station house. When I arrive, a strange sort of emptiness fills me. There is something missing from my day, and I know exactly what it is. I make my way up the steps towards my locker. As I open it, I think of the days that Liv would come in and open hers, which is, I mean, was, right next to mine. The locker that used to say "Benson," now says "Byrnes."
I walk into the squad room, and Munch and Fin quickly look down. But as I make my way towards my desk, I see them sneaking looks at me as they pretend to be reading over old, unsolved cases. I just ignore them; I'm too tired to fight with anyone anymore.
"Elliot," Cragen says, "I'd like you to meet your new partner."
I step into his office, and I see a tall, skinny, brown-haired man standing in the corner.
"Hi," he says confidently, "I'm Sam Byrnes. Look, I'm really sorry about what happened to your partner."
"Hi," I say, reaching out to shake his hand.
I can tell that I'm in for a big change. Part of me is sad, but the other part is hopeful.
"This is just for now," I tell myself, and I know that I'm right, that eventually, I'll see her again.
The End