After three days, the individual claps of thunder had blended into a low background rumble. The racket had become almost as familiar as the classic sounds of the steadily busy city, no longer bothering any of the residents much more than any other noise. Car horn. Barking dog. Thunder. New York was adaptable. Which was why Olivia hardly noticed that her apartment had lost power, again. It was already an aged building, but the owners were even older and never saw the need for a back-up generator, meaning that when the main electricity was down, the occupants were left to fend for themselves.

The detective kept a careful eye on the white, pillar candles that she'd placed on every available surface, knowing how quickly they could spark a bigger fire. She didn't get many nights off, and she almost wished that this wasn't one of them. There were many better ways to spend her rare free time than huddled in her apartment avoiding the rain. A book lay in her lap, its pages being idly creased and turned, but not read. Olivia didn't keep many in her home, choosing instead to reread the ones she had until they no longer gripped her interest.

It seemed that even the criminals were taking refuge from the rain, as the SVU squad hadn't had a new case for almost a week. While they were glad of it, they were also quickly tiring of going over old cases, after the leads had gone cold and witnesses disappeared. Each case that they reopened stabbed savagely at an old wound, leaving the detectives feeling dejected. The regret of not having solved the case the first time around was wearing at them, until their grasp on their emotions was thin and liable to snap.

The detectives were all beginning to show signs of the strain. Stabler was spending more time on the roof than at his desk. He might have been reprimanded if Cragen had left his office in the past few days. Munch and Fin had thought that they were doing well, until Olivia had pointedly asked why she hadn't been invited to the wedding before telling them that they were bickering like a long married couple. They'd laughed for the first time in days. But no one was suffering as much as Detective Olivia Benson.

Her empathetic tendencies were already making things tough on her, add in a few cold cases and what must be the beginnings of a flu bug, and you had a recipe for disaster. For reasons beyond her, Olivia's body seemed to staging a full fledged rebellion, leaving her in an uncomfortable haze. She'd considered going to the hospital, but the idea didn't get very far. The feeling that she was having was difficult to describe, and she could imagine the irritated expression on a doctor's face when she told him that her only symptom was that she didn't feel good. Besides, it wasn't really anything severe.

When it rains, it pours, she told herself, smirking out the window at her unintended pun. The cityscape was barely visible through rain, fog, and dusky shadows. Heaving a sigh at the view, Olivia lifted herself out of her chair and laid the book down in her place. The thunder was softer now, allowing the sounds from her neighbors to permeate the thin walls. The elderly couple next door was arguing over what to have for dinner again. Distantly, she could hear Chloe, the little girl that occasionally spent the night in Olivia's guest room while her mother worked her second job and her brother worked his first, begging her older brother to let her attend some slumber party that surely everyone else in her whole school was going to attend.

Smiling faintly at the innocent exaggeration, Olivia had a sudden craving for some hot tea and turned to go to the kitchen. She was stopped dead in her tracks as a sharp pain tore through her abdomen, folding her at the middle without her consent. Her breath fled from her body as she clutched at her stomach and bit her bottom lip. Eventually, the pain began to ebb away, far from being completely gone, but reduced to a dull ache. Her body cautiously unfolded itself, then relaxed when it didn't feel any immediate ramifications.

What the hell?

Definitely the flu, she decided, resolving to stop at the drug store later. The kettle had just started warming over the flame from her gas stove top, when a rough knocking sounded at her door. A glance through the peep hole revealed a dripping and likely cranky Elliot Stabler. She repressed a chuckle and swung the door open, one hand over her face, hopefully covering her slight smile.

Blue eyes stared back at her, seeming significantly less amused than she was.

"Yeah, laugh it up," he complained as she stepped aside to let him enter, confirming her suspicions that he was indeed cranky, "You'll be just as soaked as I am in an hour."

"We have a case?"

Nodding, he shrugged out of his coat and threw it over the back of one of her kitchen chairs. "You aren't answering your phone," he accused, spinning to face her.

"The battery's dead, and I can't charge it. The electricity's out." Her hand waved towards the candles that were still burning around the apartment, before coming to rest at her side. Her stomach was hurting again, and she attempted to rub it without being noticed.

Elliot shrugged. "Thought you were holding a séance. Go get dressed."

He dodged the swat that she directed towards his shoulder as she went past.

"Take the water off the stove," she called over her shoulder, before slamming the bedroom door. After she'd undressed and shimmied into her work pants, she paused to examine her right side. The skin was clear, without any visible injury, but her hand skated over the olive skin just to make sure. Perplexed, she pulled her shirt on and grabbed her hairbrush, intending to run it through her hair on the way to the crime scene.

Her eyes rolled of their own volition when she left the room to spot Elliot snooping through her cabinets. It wasn't unexpected, and she'd learned to live with his prying nature. It was his way of showing concern.

She didn't have time to dwell on it because as soon as he saw her, Stabler shoved a pushed a mug of tea in her grasp and grabbed onto her elbow, guiding her out of the apartment, pausing only blow out the candles. Her tea was splashed against the side of the mug as she attempted to shrug into the light jacket that Elliot was shoving in her direction. Not that her coat would be all that useful against this full blown storm.

The two detectives used Stabler's phone to light the stairway as they attempted to scramble down the steps without slipping in the water that had been tracked in over the last few days. Olivia's shoe slipped on the ceramic and she threw her hand off her stomach and onto the railing. A slight hiss escaped her lips as the soothing pressure disappeared, and Stabler's neck snapped towards her.

"You alright?" he asked, holding the phone so it illuminated her face.

"Yeah," she answered, her voice trying to sound casual, but coming across as breathless instead, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just slipped."

She felt his gaze on her face and his hand on her back as she continued down the stairs, even so he seemed to let it go. By the time Olivia slid into the passenger seat, he'd started to discuss the case and her incident was forgotten. At least, it was for the time being. But if Olivia knew her partner at all, she knew it wouldn't be the last she heard of it that night.

And by the way the rain hammered the windshield, and her partner kept one eye on the road and one on her, she cold tell it was going to be a long one.