A/N: This came after a long discussion with multiple people about love being used too easily these days.
Dedicated to Owen Jeffery Theodore, welcome to the world baby cousin!
These days people toss love around like it's a meaningless word. Love is simply a place holder, an argument pacifier, a vow taken in the heat of the moment. When Kathy Stabler had vowed to love her husband almost three decades ago, she took her vow to the very core. She had promised before God and her family that she would love Elliot for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. She still kept those vows to this very day.
Though a ring no longer weighed down her left hand and a slip of paper declared them divorced, Kathy still loved Elliot. There can be no past tense in love; either you love someone always or you never truly loved them in the first place. To Kathy he would always be the seventeen year old football star that she had fallen in love with, the man who gave her five beautiful children, and many happy memories. A piece of paper can't just wipe that away.
The divorce had come as a mutual decision when the realization that they hardly saw one another and when they did all they did was fight dawned on them. It was a decision that they made for their children; they wanted their children to go after true love and know that marriage didn't only consist of nonstop screaming matches and slamming doors. She would always love Elliot Stabler but she was no longer in love with Elliot Stabler and there was a big difference.
And that's how she found herself sitting in a packed church on a Saturday afternoon in mid July. That's why when the wedding march began, she stood with the numerous NYPD officers and watched the processional with tears of joy instead of sadness. How she managed to watch the man that she loves marry the woman he had been in love with for so long. She applauded genuinely with the rest as Olivia Benson became Mrs. Elliot Stabler. There wasn't one ounce of animosity when she congratulated them both.
If there were two people more deserving of happiness, Kathy didn't know their names. She had watched Elliot and Olivia evolve, she knew how hard they had fought it, and how much you couldn't control who you fall in love with. There was no one else Kathy would trust with Elliot's happiness. Elliot and Olivia deserved their happy ever after. As for Kathy, she was already happy – enjoying the search for her ever after.