A/N: I mean to say this upfront, but this story is a sort of follow up to my other fic, Stubborn Love. It isn't strictly necessary to read that one first, but it would help.
It had been nearly two hours since the brawl with Cassidy, and Stabler had yet to show his face. He wasn't answering his phone, either, and Ayanna was quietly furious. It was bad enough that he'd completely lost his head in interview, bad enough that he'd left a DA's investigator bloody and bruised, bad enough that he'd just disappeared, but not answering his phone was the final straw; the next time she saw his face, she decided, he was going to get the ass chewing of his life, nevermind who was around to witness it. He might have been a cowboy but this wasn't the fucking wild west, and he couldn't expect to come and go as he pleased, and he damn sure couldn't be allowed to go incommunicado whenever he felt like it, not while she still had reservations about his fitness to do the job.
But Ayanna wasn't all ball-buster; a part of her understood it, why he'd vanished. The news Cassidy had delivered - and the way he'd delivered it, angrily, accusatorily, his voice full of resentment and his eyes burning with hatred - could not have been easy for Stabler to hear, and like most of the cops she'd worked with over the years he preferred to process emotional turmoil far from prying eyes. Bottle it up, don't let anybody see, find a deserted alley to puke or have a cry, whichever would work best, move on. The wheels of change moved slowly, and most guys on the job were still allergic to discussing their feelings, and Stabler was no different.
The team was all in house, for the moment - minus Stabler - and the clack of keyboards and the gentle hum of conversation buzzed along behind her as Ayanna stood staring up at her board, mulling Wheatley's connections and where they ought to go next. Or well, she would have been thinking about Wheatley, only she could still hear Cassidy's voice echoing in her mind. The horrible things he'd said, about what had become of Stabler's Liv. His final accusation, that Stabler had never fucked her but she'd have let him if only he'd asked. The way that had been the last straw, for Stabler, that the man had endured countless taunts and curses but could not abide listening to Cassidy say such things about his wife, about Liv.
Who the fuck is she? Ayanna wondered. Again. She didn't have Stabler's jacket handy, but she could make some phone calls, find out what had become of his former partner, where Liv was now. Something stayed her hand; maybe it was professional courtesy. She wanted to speak to the woman, but she'd just learned a good many deeply intimate details about Liv's life - by eavesdropping on a conversation that never should have happened in the first place - and it felt like a violation, of sorts, tracking Liv down and confronting her about things she'd probably rather forget. Then again, if Stabler didn't turn up soon, Ayanna might have no other choice; chances were good that he'd gone after her, his Liv. It's what Ayanna would have done, if she were in his shoes. If she'd found out a woman she cared for, a woman she'd wanted once, a woman she'd trusted, loved, even, maybe, had been through such pain, she wouldn't have been able to stay away.
The heavy bang of the front door slamming echoed loudly through their cavernous offices, and Ayanna spun on her heel, expecting - hoping - to see Stabler. It wasn't him, though; it was a woman, marching towards her with a grim sort of determination. A woman Ayanna had never seen before. That didn't bode well; even on the job most folks didn't know this office existed, and she certainly wasn't expecting company. Ayanna moved quickly, then, descended the stairs and strode out to waylay the stranger before she could get too deep into their headquarters.
The newcomer was pretty enough; older than Ayanna, probably, but pretty. She had a wealth of soft, dark hair, and big, dark eyes that seemed to crackle with warmth, though her face was lined with exhaustion. She was still dressed for the cold, wearing a heavy black coat over smart black trousers, the heels of her boots clicking authoritatively on the floor as she went. When she caught sight of Ayanna she parted the folds of her coat, let her hand rest on her hip, casually showing off the gold shield clipped there. It was a professional move, designed to identify herself as a fellow cop without making a production out of it, and Ayanna respected her for it at once.
"Help you?" Ayanna asked as they drew level with one another.
"You Bell?" the stranger asked. She had a warm, throaty voice that Ayanna liked right away.
"Yes. And you are?"
"Captain Benson, Manhattan SVU."
The Captain lifted her hand as if to offer it for a shake, but then seemed to think better of it halfway through. The vaccines were rolling out and in some places life felt almost normal again, but some of the old courtesy had left the world, and had yet to return.
"Pleasure to meet you, Captain," Ayanna told her honestly. "I had hoped we'd run into each other at the NYPD Women in Law Enforcement dinner, but you never showed."
It was the truth, that Ayanna had wanted to meet her, that Ayanna, like everyone else in the room, had been surprised when Benson's Sergeant took to the podium and explained that the woman herself would not be coming. There weren't many female Captains on the force, and even fewer women who'd advanced further. The old boys club might have shut out Ayanna - and other women like her - but that only made her more determined to form a club of her own, and she had been, for years, steadily making progress in networking with every high ranking woman in the NYPD. If they won't watch our backs, we'll watch our own, that's what she told herself. Benson was something of an unknown quantity, to her; their paths had never crossed, and Ayanna didn't know anyone who knew her well, but she was a rising star on the job, and the award she was meant to receive - the award she'd never turned up to accept - was likely another stepping stone on the way to advancement. Garland held the reins at SVU for now, but he wouldn't want to linger there forever, and rumor had it that Benson was his unofficial successor. In short, Benson was someone Ayanna very much wanted in her corner, and Ayanna was eager to learn more about her.
At the mention of the dinner, though, the Captain frowned.
"Yeah, something came up," she said evasively.
The Captain hadn't revealed the purpose that brought her here, to this outpost for a task force most people had never heard of, and the fact that she was already avoiding Ayanna's questions made the whole thing suspect. There was no crossover between Ayanna's investigation and sex crimes, no professional reason Ayanna could think of for Benson to just turn up, so whatever this was, it must have been both important, and off the books. They were on Ayanna's patch, now, and Captain or not, Benson was the one who'd come looking for something, and that meant she was now reliant on Ayanna's good humor. So Ayanna pressed her, just a little.
"Oh?" she asked, easily, casually.
Benson's eyes narrowed, and Ayanna fought a sudden urge to grin. Here, she thought, was a woman much accustomed to command, a woman who had earned that command with grit and strength. The way she stood, the way she spoke; she carried herself with an elegant sort of power. At her age, in her department, she'd been fighting the same old boys Ayanna hated for decades, and it was clear that the fight had toughened her. She wouldn't be easy to crack. For a moment she seemed to be sizing Ayanna up, trying to decide what to make of her and how to handle her, but then she made up her mind.
"Yeah, Kathy Stabler got blown up," she said. Her voice was hard, and daring Ayanna to make the connection. There was a message in those words, an easy familiarity to the way she said Kathy's name, like Ayanna should have known, before now, that her new detective and the Captain standing in front of her had history.
"He here?" she added before Ayanna could ask about her connection to Stabler.
I'll be damned, she thought. Maybe word of Stabler's scuffle with Cassidy had already made it back to his old friends at SVU. Maybe Benson was one of those old friends, and maybe she'd come to chew him out for being such a dumbass. If she had, Ayanna wanted a front row seat.
But then Benson's eyes flickered over Ayanna's shoulder, and she frowned.
"Never mind," she said, as if she'd found what she was looking for, and Ayanna's assistance was no longer needed. "Elliot!"
The sound of his name coming from her mouth was loud, and full of fury, and she was moving, then, leaving Ayanna behind, a woman on a mission. Ayanna spun on her heel and watched, caught off guard by the realization that Stabler had finally turned up, and Benson was gonna get to him before she did. He was just walking in from the back of the office - likely he'd slunk in the side door, hoping no one had taken note of his absence - and he froze in the process of unbuttoning his coat, staring open-mouthed at Benson.
"Captain," he said, confused and alarmed, his eyes almost comically wide, flickering between Benson and Ayanna like a child who'd been called into the principal's office only to discover his parents were already there.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Every member of their squad turned as one, then, their heads on swivels and their eyes gone wide at the vitriol - and the volume - of Benson's tone. She was bearing down on Stabler, but he made no move to step out of her path. Instead he finished unbuttoning his coat and flung it aside while he waited for her to reach him, a boxer gearing up for the fight of his life.
"Don't tell me Cassidy went running straight to you," he said, as angry as Benson was, now. The few punches Cassidy had managed to land had turned Stabler's right eye and cheek a nasty shade of purple, and there was a cut above his brow and another at his lip that had both cracked and begun to bleed again, just a little. Between the blood and the bruises and the hard expression on his face, the man looked half-crazy and alarm bells began to ring in Ayanna's mind. If she'd been only slightly less curious, or slightly less angry, she might have stepped in to stop it, but instead she crossed her arms over her chest, and watched.
"No, you ass," Benson fired back, coming to a stop right in front of him, mad as a hornet. "I ran into him at the courthouse with a pack of frozen peas slapped over his face trying to tell anybody who'd listen that he fell down some stairs. The ADA was having fits because her star witness looked like he'd just lost a bar fight. Jesus, Elliot."
It was kind of impressive, Ayanna thought, watching two different people tear into Stabler in the same day. The squad seemed shocked by it; so far, he had been the big man on campus. Going toe-to-toe with Wheatley, the brawl he'd gotten into in front of his building, giving out orders and guiding the younger members of the crew, so far he had been a bulldog, and they hadn't seen anyone challenge him, yet. They hadn't seen it, and they hadn't been expecting it to come from a pretty woman with a mouth like a sailor. Ayanna hadn't really, either; Stabler had worked terrorism, had been NYPD's man in Rome, and while the brass kept warning her that he was reckless he seemed to have most people's respect. Benson didn't seem to care where he'd been or what he'd done, though; however they knew each other, she had no qualms about calling him an ass in public.
"I thought you had a few days off." Leave it to Stabler, Ayanna thought, to be a smartass in a moment like this. She couldn't see Benson's face, but she could almost feel the woman rolling her eyes. But how did Stabler know Benson's schedule? And how did she know the pair of them, Stabler and Cassidy? Word was she'd been at SVU since the dawn of time, maybe she'd worked with them both, back in the day. Maybe they were still friends, now. Did Stabler even have friends?
"I had a witness testifying today," Benson explained through clenched teeth, "and I wanted to be there for her. Cassidy tried to blow me off but I made him tell me what happened."
"Yeah, I bet he couldn't wait to tell you," Stabler grumbled under his breath, petulant as a child.
"Grow up, Elliot!" Oh, Ayanna was really starting to like this Captain. "Yes, I was with Cassidy! Yes, we're still friends! Yes, he tells me things! Like how you lost your fucking mind-"
A terrible suspicion was starting to grow, deep in Ayanna's belly. If this woman had been with Cassidy, if she'd known them both back when they were working together, if she was still with SVU, then maybe….
Surely not, Ayanna thought.
"Cassidy needs to learn when to shut his fucking mouth," Stabler grumbled.
"Yeah, he does. That doesn't mean you need to kick his ass. You got a problem, Elliot, you come to me. You wanna know something, you fucking ask me, don't go behind my back-"
"He came to me!" Stabler cut her off, roaring so loud people passing on the sidewalk outside probably could have heard him. He was furious now, too, at least as angry as she was, stepping up close to her, pointing his finger in her face. It was starting to look to Ayanna like she was going to have to break up yet another fight. What a fucking day. "And don't tell me to come to you, Liv, because I asked you what happened and you wouldn't tell me a goddamn thing. I'm the one who had to hear it from Cassidy, for fuck's sake."
Oh, holy shit.
This was Liv. Captain Benson, darling of the NYPD brass, the most senior officer at Manhattan SVU, in her sensible black boots and her heavy black coat, with her pretty eyes and her pretty hair and her warm voice, was Liv. The Liv. Stabler's Liv. The woman who'd been attacked. The woman who'd been involved with Cassidy, and Tucker. The woman who had been Stabler's partner, the one he'd walked out on. The woman with the fatherless son, the woman Cassidy said had woken in the night screaming Stabler's name. This was her. All morning Ayanna had been wondering about her, trying to get a picture of the woman in her mind, thinking less than kind thoughts about the sort of woman who could end up in bed with a guy like Cassidy, and now she'd stared the woman in the face, heard her voice, and that made it all real, somehow, in the most terrible way.
They stood frozen, Stabler and Benson, neither of them breathing, just staring at each other, like they'd only just realized what it was they were fighting about. Like it had only just hit them in the chest, what Liv had been through, what Stabler knew now, what he'd learned, not from her, but secondhand from someone else. What she hadn't wanted to tell him, and what he'd never forget now.
I gotta get them out of here, Ayanna thought. Whatever was coming between them, they didn't need witnesses.
"Stabler!" she called, sharply. Benson and Stabler both turned to look at her, as synchronized as a pair of dancers, their expressions agonized as it dawned on them that they weren't alone, that they had just revealed something precious and grimy about themselves. "Take it somewhere else."
"Will do, Sarge," Stabler said sharply, and then he turned away, headed for the back of the building. For the interview room, Ayanna hoped. Benson fell into step with him, walking heavily beside him, but her head was unbowed. Her back was straight, her gaze fixed dead ahead. That woman knew what was coming - a reckoning with her own pain, a chance to lay into the man who'd abandoned her when she needed him most - and she was not backing down from it. Neither was Stabler; he looked like a soldier marching to his doom, but he went anyway, as any good soldier would.
"Get back to work," Ayanna barked at her squad, and then she counted to ten, and took off after the retreating former partners. If he took Benson to interview - and Ayanna was fairly sure he would, no one ever went back there and he had no reason to suspect anyone would follow him now - she could keep an eye on them. Oh, she figured Stabler probably wasn't about to punch his former partner, probably was the kinda guy who still had hangups about hitting women, but if he was gonna fall to pieces, she needed to know it. It wasn't the most ethical thing, eavesdropping on them deliberately, without their knowledge, but Stabler was one of Ayanna's people, and she needed to know where his head was at. She needed to know if this was going to break him.
And, of course, she wanted answers.
She slowed down as she approached the interview room; no one was standing around outside, and as she drew level with the two-way mirror she saw Benson and Stabler already inside, facing off with one another. Stabler was pacing by the back wall, where Cassidy had been during their confrontation, and Benson was leaning in the front corner where Stabler had stood before. She'd tossed her coat and her black bag on the table, and Ayanna could see more of her now, her tasteful white blouse, the curve of her hip where her gun rested. Ayanna flipped on the com, and waited.
"You got something to say, Elliot, just say it," Benson's voice, low and heated, filled the corridor.
He kept pacing, ignoring Benson for the moment, running his hand over the back of his head. There in the corner Benson sighed, and ran her own hand through her hair, shaking it back on her shoulders. She looked tired, and sad, but commanding, still, at home in the interview room, even when it wasn't the one she was used to. Benson knew how to take control of a room, how to lead a confrontation, and when Stabler didn't respond she didn't let him off the hook.
"Brian had no business-"
"Jesus, Liv, don't call him Brian." He said it like it made him sick, hearing the man's given name.
"Don't be a child," she fired back.
Liv kick your ass yet? That's what Cassidy had asked him, and at the time Ayanna had wondered about the sort of woman his Liv must have been, to go head-to-head with Stabler. The answer was standing on the other side of the glass; Benson was an immovable object, completely unaffected by Stabler's anger, his physicality. Like she knew whatever sort of outburst was coming, she could handle it. Like she'd seen it all before.
"I'm gonna kill him," Stabler muttered, low and terrible, like he meant it.
"For what? For being there when you weren't? Or for telling you about it?" Each word she spoke was sharp as a knife, and if the expression on her face was anything to go by, it looked to Ayanna like Benson knew that, and had aimed each of them with precision.
Stabler froze in his pacing, turned to look at her with a face full of grief. The anger that had filled him seconds before seemed to have vanished as quickly as it had come on; he was wounded, now, desperate, now. The last few weeks his moods had been changeable, but it was still shocking to see how quickly his heart seemed to shift, and how plainly it showed on his face.
"I didn't know, Liv," he said, almost desperately.
"I know." It wasn't absolution, coming from her lips. There was no forgiveness in her, no understanding for him; it was acceptance, and resignation, but it was hard, too. He'd done her wrong, and she had never forgotten it, and he would find no clemency, not from her.
"If I had known-"
"Please don't say it." She sounded like it hurt her, just the thought of what might have been, if only he'd come for her. How much grief she might have been spared, how much pain she might never have felt, if only he'd been there when she needed him. But he hadn't come, and no amount of wishing would change that. Ayanna knew how that felt; she'd never been in a hole as deep as the one Benson had found herself in, but she knew the pain of hoping, and the taste of disappointment.
"Where is he now? The guy."
There's something wrong with this man, Ayanna thought. After everything he learned that day, after the hurt it had caused him and plainly caused Benson as well, the first thing he asked her was whether they'd caught her attacker. It was a cop's response, though, and Benson didn't seem angry that he'd asked. She seemed, Ayanna thought, to have expected it.
"Lewis," she said. Like it mattered to her that the man who hurt her had a name, like it mattered to her that she could say it aloud and not shatter at the sound of it. "He's in an unmarked grave at Rikers."
Stabler nodded, not satisfied, exactly, but like it helped him, in some way, knowing that the man who'd hurt his girl was dead and buried. Like if Lewis hadn't already been in the ground, Stabler would have put him there himself, and was acknowledging that now he wouldn't have to. Would he have, though? Ayanna wondered. Maybe he would have wanted to, would have wanted to look the guy up and seek vengeance, but would he go that far, kill a man for this woman's sake? She thought about the way Stabler went after Wheatley, how determined he was to get justice for the murder of his wife. For his wife's sake, yeah, Ayanna thought he might kill. But for Benson? Just how deep did their bond run, all these years after their partnership ended, after Stabler walked out on her?
"Did he…" Stabler started to ask the question but his breath caught in his throat, and he looked away from her, his eyes vacant and unseeing.
Oh no, Ayanna thought, I know this son of a bitch isn't asking -
"Did he what, Elliot?" Benson's tone was all challenge, a gauntlet thrown down between them, daring him to finish his thought, daring him to ask her something so personal, daring him to confess he thought he had a right to know. Cassidy had told him that Lewis was a rapist, told him he liked to burn his girls, torture them, told him that Lewis had Benson four days. It must have been eating him up inside, wondering. How far it had gone, just how much she'd suffered. And if he was half as possessive of her as Cassidy seemed to think, it must have been killing him wondering whether a man had put his hands on Stabler's girl.
"You wanna know, then ask me. Did he what, Elliot? Did he rape me?"
A lifetime in sex crimes meant she didn't balk at the word; she was all hard, uncompromising anger.
"I shouldn't have asked," he said. As far as Ayanna was concerned it was the smartest thing he'd said so far. "You never told me what happened at Sealview-"
Maybe it wasn't smart at all; Benson pushed up off the wall, eyes blazing. Sealview was a women's prison that had shut down years before, Ayanna remembered that, but she had no idea why it mattered to the two of them. It must have mattered, though, because Benson was cutting him off with a curse, everything about her body language communicating her desire to cross that room and slap him in the face.
"Oh, fuck you-"
"So I don't know why I thought you'd want to talk about this now," he finished his thought, not letting her shut him down, or stop him from saying exactly what was on his mind. He seemed determined to upset her, and he seemed to be doing an admirable job. As far as Ayanna was concerned Stabler accusing someone else of being closed off, keeping secrets, was a textbook case of pot and kettle. Benson seemed to agree.
"Since when do you wanna talk?" she spat at him.
"We talked last night, didn't we? I thought we were ok-"
"Oh, last night! You mean last night, when you showed up at my door out of the blue and scared the shit out of both of our kids? When you woke up in the middle of the night screaming? You wanna talk about that, Elliot?'
"Fuck you, Liv."
The words were cold, and soft, and somehow that was harder to hear than screaming. Ayanna leaned against the glass, spellbound. She had so many questions - why had he gone to Benson's? Why were both their kids there? And how did she know he'd woken up in the night? Had he stayed? Shit, his wife had only just died, surely they hadn't...had they? Just how fucked up was this woman? - but she didn't feel like she had a right to the answers. She'd crossed a line, coming here, listening to them, and she knew it, but she was worried about him, now. Watching him push away someone who cared for him, someone he cared for, watching him so close to shattering. There was no way to tell how far this conversation might go, or how bad it might get, and she felt a responsibility, now, to keep an eye on him, to be ready to step in if fists started flying, again. If Stabler hit that woman, his time at OC would be over. His time with the NYPD would be over. If she hit him, that would be a different story, but they were in Ayanna's house, and whatever disaster took place in that room would be on her head. Someone would have to step in to defuse that grenade, and she knew it would have to be her.
"Yeah, fuck me," Benson said, her voice low but tired, lacking the heat that had filled her minutes before. "We've been here before, Elliot. You wanna blame somebody, you look in the goddamn mirror. I'm not the one you hate."
Ayanna would have given anything, in that moment, to know what the fuck Benson was referring to. Where they'd been before that could possibly look anything like this. Where they'd been that Stabler had blamed her for something that was his own damn fault. Why Benson looked so damn tired, now. Partners kept secrets; it was the nature of the job. The longer a pair worked together, the more secrets they'd carry, and secrets turned into a shorthand all their own, dates and cases and memories that could be brought back to the light with a single word. She didn't know how long these two had been together, didn't know how much they'd seen, but she could hear it now, the way they knew just how to get to one another, the way they could with a look, a gesture, recall the road they'd traveled down years before, and the lessons they'd learned along the way. What Benson said didn't mean anything to Ayanna, but it meant something to Stabler; his shoulders sagged, like he'd just been hit in the chest by a ton of bricks. His eyes darted to Benson's face, searching for something. Whatever it was, he didn't find it.
"You think I hate you?" His voice was softer, now. Confused, hurt, maybe. Like that was what drew him up short, what always would, her thinking he didn't care about her. Like her losing faith in him was the one hit he couldn't take without breaking.
"You know what your mother said to me?"
God, these two, Ayanna thought. They were so tangled up in each other, in memories, bound together by so many experiences. Over the course of her career Ayanna'd had her fair share of partners. Some had been assholes and some had been friends and some had been family, but she'd never met any of their parents. Never. Benson had not only met Stabler's mother, she remembered it well enough to bring it up again a decade later, and their kids had been - for however short a time, for whatever reason - beneath the same roof and she had heard him screaming in the night, and Jesus, whatever this was felt too heavy to carry, and Ayanna wasn't even involved.
"She said if you really hated someone you'd just walk out of their life and never look back and that is exactly what you did to her and that is exactly what you did to me."
Ayanna could feel a headache beginning to form behind her eyes. What those two needed, she thought, was a fucking marriage counselor. Arguing about the fucking in-laws, dredging up old hurts for maximum devastation. For ten years they'd been walking around with all this pain and all these memories and without each other, and they were both hurting, for so many different reasons, but they were locked in that room together, neither of them willing to leave until every old wound had been reopened and poured over at length. Maybe it was what they needed.
But while all this had been going on, the long years of their partnership, Cassidy, whatever had happened with Stabler's mother, whatever had made him leave Benson behind, Stabler had been married. To that woman who was the mother of his children, that woman who was now no more than a pretty face in a picture frame on his desk. It was hard to reconcile that pretty woman's devoted husband with the man in the interview room now, so focused on someone else. Someone else who was, it seemed to Ayanna, the antithesis of his pretty wife. Dark where Kathy had been light, hard where Kathy had been soft, jagged round the edges from a lifetime of wading through horror while Kathy was smooth from civilian life. And he loved them both; Ayanna could see that love in him now, tearing him in half.
"It's not the same," he told her, and his voice was ragged. What had his mother done, Ayanna wondered, to push her own son out the door? What had made him walk away from Benson, if it wasn't the same?
"I had to leave, Olivia." It was the first time Ayanna had ever heard the woman's full name. After hearing Liv so many times, Olivia felt somehow even more familiar, more intimate. Liv was brash and unafraid; Olivia, she thought, was someone else. "If I hadn't left it would have been the end of both our careers. Our lives would have been ruined. You know that."
"I don't know that," she said with all the petulance of a woman who had been nursing a broken heart for ten years. A decade she'd been waiting to tell him not to go, and she finally had her chance. How different everything might have been for them, Ayanna thought, if that chance hadn't come too late.
"You could have fought, Elliot. You could have tried. For my sake, you could have-"
It was a low blow, for my sake, and Stabler had his back up in a minute, desperate to defend himself.
"There wasn't shit I could do, Liv. Your boyfriend Tucker was determined to make an example out of me."
Benson flinched when he spoke Tucker's name, and Ayanna couldn't blame her. Did she ever feel guilty about that? Fucking a man who'd been determined to end her partner's career? Maybe she did.
"And if I'd stayed too much longer I would have..."
His voice trailed off and he backed away, into the corner farthest away from her, pressed his palms against his eyes and rubbed, hard, like he wished he could erase his own thoughts with the touch of his hand.
"What would you have done Elliot? What?"
Yeah, Ayanna wondered, what would you have done? It must haunt him, she thought, must haunt them both. What could have been.
"I don't know what I would have done, Liv, but I know I couldn't have kept going on like that with you forever. Kathy was unhappy and I didn't want to be at home and you and me, the way things were going..."
Benson raised her hands in defeat, and turned away. Like she knew. Like she understood what he was saying. Like she remembered, whatever had been between them, the way things were going, like he didn't have to spell it out for her, what might have happened and what the consequences might have been. Kathy was unhappy and I didn't want to be at home...was that why he really left? Ayanna wondered. To save a marriage that would last for ten more years, and end in a ball of flame on Center Street? Had he sacrificed one love for another, and in the process lost them both?
"I felt like I had to leave but if I'd just fucking stayed Kathy would have left me and she'd still be alive and you never would have gotten hurt and maybe that goddamn kid of yours would have a father."
The words landed heavy, like a bomb, and a terrible silence fell in their wake. On the other side of the glass Ayanna could hardly breathe; she couldn't imagine what the two of them must have been feeling. What he'd just confessed - not only that he loved her, not only that he regretted leaving her, not only that he blamed himself for his wife's death and for Benson's trauma, but that he imagined, even for a moment, being the father of her child - was horrifying enough to witness as a bystander. She thought, for a moment, about her own child, that little one who had not yet come to be, thought about the woman she loved, thought about a world without her in it, raising her son on her own, the way Benson had done, and then she thought it was a miracle, really, that Benson hadn't punched him in the face for saying such a thing to her. Offering her a glimpse, however brief, of what might have been, what would not ever be.
"Say something, would you?" Stabler begged her after a moment. She wasn't look at him; she rubbed her thumb across her brow, shifted her stance like she was getting ready to bolt.
"I can't do this, Elliot," she told him in a heavy voice that was just so sad it hurt Ayanna to hear it.
"You keep saying that. You can't do this. Can't do what?" Stabler demanded, desperate and coming unglued. "You wanted to talk and now I'm fucking talking, and you just-"
Something seemed to snap inside Benson, then. Up to that point she'd been plenty angry, plenty upset, but she'd been in control of herself, measuring her words. But it had all gone too far, now, and all the grief and all the rage came pouring out of her in a deadly diatribe as she began to pace in front of the window, so close Ayanna could have reached out and touched her, if not for the glass. So close Ayanna could see the color in her cheeks, and the tears sparkling in her eyes.
"You think this isn't killing me? You show up after all this time and you say shit like that to me, what do you expect me to say? You know what? Yeah. Yeah maybe if you hadn't left Kathy wouldn't be dead and I wouldn't have the scars from cigarette burns across my chest and Noah would have two parents like he deserves."
On the other side of the room Stabler was frozen, listening. When she mentioned her scars, he flinched like she'd struck him. Ayanna did, too; the very thought of it, what must have happened to her, was horrifying, but all she and Stabler could do was imagine what had taken place during those four days. Benson didn't have to imagine; she remembered, and she carried the evidence of that horror everywhere she went, tattooed on her skin, inescapable, no matter how she might try to hide from it. And throwing her regret back in his teeth, that must have stung just as much, but oh, she wasn't finished yet.
"You think I don't want that? You think it doesn't break my heart every time I think about everything you missed while you were gone? But you left. It happened. It's real. And I can't waste time worrying about what might have been. And I can't have you eating yourself up with guilt about things you can't change. You're here now, Elliot. And I need you now. And I need to know you're never gonna walk away from me again and I can't trust-"
"You can trust me."
The implication that she couldn't appeared to have shattered him; he moved quickly, suddenly then, crossed the room and reached for her, took both of her hands in his own. Benson's back was to the glass, now, but Ayanna could see her shoulders shaking. The coms were clear, and they were close, and Ayanna could hear the hitch in Benson's breath as she cried, and tried like hell not to, as Stabler ducked his head so he could stare into her eyes, beseeching. It looked to Ayanna like he was shaking, too, like it had only just now gotten through to him, how much damage he'd caused, how much he had to atone for.
"I haven't been right and I know it. But I'm right here, and I'm not walking away again."
And she has absolutely no reason to believe you when you say that, Ayanna thought. What cause had he given her to trust him? Whatever had bound them once he had been gone for ten years; she knew, very well, how much a decade could change a person, and it was difficult to imagine the kind of bond that could survive, not just that long a separation, but this much grief, without unraveling completely.
They were quiet, for a minute, standing together by the glass, Stabler holding her hands, Benson trying not to cry. Maybe this was it, Ayanna told herself. Maybe they'd said what they needed to say, and they could go out from that place without further bloodshed, a little steadier than they'd been when they went in.
"You're bleeding," Benson said, very quietly.
Or maybe they weren't quite done yet, after all.
"Come here."
She used the hold on his hands to guide him to the table, pushed him to sit down on the edge of it, and to Ayanna's surprise he did, compliant for once. He just sat, watching Benson's every move while she rummaged in her bag until she came up with a small, rectangular box that looked suspiciously like a -
"You carry a first aid kid in your purse?" Stabler asked. There was a soft note in his voice, almost teasing. Almost, but not quite, not while they were both too raw for good humor, but like he was trying.
"I've got a seven year old at home," she said. "What do you think?"
"Fair enough."
They went quiet again, for a minute, while Benson fished out some kind of wipe, turned her attention to gently cleaning his face. There was something tender in her touch, the careful precision of a mother tending to her child, of a lover looking after her man. How many times, Ayanna wondered, had she done this for him before? How many times had he done it for her?
"I got hurt, Elliot," Benson said after a moment. "And Kathy died. We can't know what might have happened if we'd made different choices. We can only deal with what's right in front of us."
She didn't mean it literally, Ayanna was pretty sure of that, but still. There was something about her saying it, saying what's right in front of us, when she was tending to his wounds and he was looking up at her like she was something holy, that made it feel like Benson's words had two meanings. Maybe they did.
"I know."
"You're still here, and your kids are here. And when this is done, when the man who hurt Kathy is in the ground just like Lewis is, you're still gonna be here."
That sent a chill racing down Ayanna's spine. She wasn't on this task force to kill Wheatley; it was a legitimate operation, meant to bring down a criminal enterprise legally. But Benson spoke as if Stabler killing the man was a foregone conclusion, the only possible outcome of his continued investigation. As if she knew Stabler meant to kill him, and she wasn't planning to stop him, but supported him instead. As if she herself believed that was the right thing to do. And shit, maybe she did. Maybe the decorated Captain, Garland's golden girl, was as bloodthirsty as the bruised detective sitting in front of her.
"You need to make sure you have something to come back to when this is done."
"I don't know how to do that," Stabler confessed, defeated. "Kathy's dead, Olivia. I don't know what comes next and I don't know if I'm ready to face it."
Maybe that was what he'd been afraid of for so long, Ayanna thought. That if he stopped running, if he took too deep a breath, if gave his grief the chance to catch up with him, he'd be shattered by it.
"There were moments, after Lewis, when I thought I'd never get my life back," she told him softly, her hand still trailing over his face. "I thought they'd never give me my gun back, that I'd never be able to do my job again. I was living with Cassidy, and I looked around that apartment and I thought it's gonna be like this forever. No job, no future, just me, and Brian, and he was only there because I took care of him after he got shot and he wasn't enough of a son of a bitch to walk out on me when I needed him."
"I don't think that's true."
Privately, Ayanna didn't either; Cassidy said her name like it - like she - was something righteous, and he had been too eager to defend her not to love her, in his own messy way.
"You're defending him now?" she asked wryly. She'd finished cleaning up his face, tucked the dirty wipes and the first aid kit back into her purse. The task that had put him on the table and her in front of him was done, now, but neither of them moved. They just stayed like that; she was a tall woman, in heels, and the table was low, and their position left her just an inch or two taller than him, for once, and him looking up at her like a supplicant before an altar.
"The point is, I thought, for a while, there wasn't anything worth coming back to. Me and Brian, that was never gonna be forever. And if I couldn't do this job...what the fuck else am I gonna do, Elliot? You know me. You know-"
"You're called," he said, knowingly. Called, like the voice of God himself had spoken from the heavens and told Olivia Benson she had to be a sex crimes detective. If that was a calling, Ayanna damn sure didn't want to hear it herself.
"And I found my way," she told him. "I took some time to work on myself. It was hard, and I was scared. But I started sleeping again. I got back on the job. And a few months after that, I found Noah."
Noah. That was her kid's name, Ayanna remembered her saying it before. But how had she found her child?
"I'd given up on that dream. The first time I held him I didn't know he was gonna be my son. I just knew I had to keep him safe. He is the best thing that ever happened to me, and he didn't come along until after the worst thing that ever happened to me. You just gotta hold on, Elliot."
It was perhaps the most profound thing Ayanna had ever heard, that woman talking about grace following in the footsteps of horror. Would it get through to him? Would he listen, finally? Was that what he'd needed all along, just to hear those words from this woman, just a chance to be alone with her, to be forced to listen to the only voice he'd ever really heard? What sort of woman could have that kind of power over a man like him?
A warrior, she thought.
In the room Stabler was looking up at Benson, his blue eyes shining. He wasn't crying - a man like that didn't cry without a fight - but there was an expression of such longing on his face, like he wanted, with everything he had, to believe her. Like he needed to. Like this woman, and her words, were the only thing that was gonna save his life.
Very slowly she reached for him, brushed her thumb over the purpling bruise that marred his cheek, but as she did he looked down, following the movement of her hand, and seemed to catch sight of something else. He froze, staring; it looked to Ayanna like he was staring right at her tits, but surely, she thought, surely even a son of a bitch like Stabler wouldn't be crass enough to leer at a moment like this. Benson seemed to notice the intensity of his gaze, and she ducked her head, looking to see what caught his attention, and then she seemed to understand. She gasped, softly, and her hand moved at once to adjust her blouse, but Stabler intercepted her, caught her wrist and pulled her hand away.
The realization dawned on Ayanna then; I wouldn't have the scars from cigarette burns across my chest, Benson had said. God almighty, Ayanna thought. Could he see those scars at close range, now, the neckline of her blouse shifting with her movements, revealing the ugly marks of horror that bloomed across her skin?
"Please," Benson started to say raggedly, trying to pull away from him, but Stabler wouldn't let her.
"You don't have to hide from me, Liv," he said hoarsely. "Please, don't hide from me."
So she didn't. She squared her shoulders, and let her hand fall away, let him look. The way they were situated, Stabler sitting on the table, Benson standing between his knees, Ayanna couldn't see what he saw, and for that, she supposed, she ought to be grateful. Whatever was happening between them in this moment, this moment when he was having to confront the bare evidence of the pain this woman had suffered in his absence - perhaps because of his absence, Lord only knew he blamed himself for it - was something that no one else should ever have witnessed. Her presence there, hidden from them, made her feel like a thief, stealing something precious from them both.
It only lasted a moment, though, Stabler staring at the marks of hate and pain seared into her tanned skin. A strangled sound escaped him, and he leaned into her, pressed his forehead against her sternum, and her arms rose up, wrapped around his shoulders, one of her hands smoothing gently over his head while he collapsed into her embrace. It was hard to tell whether he was crying; if he was the sound was too soft for the coms to pick it up, and Benson's body hid most of him from view. For a long time they just stayed like that, his head resting against her chest, her cradling him close, silent and unmoving, her hand cradling the back of his head. It looked, Ayanna thought, like a benediction, a penitent come to the feet of a priest in search of absolution. Maybe that's what it was. The guilt he carried, the grief, the self-hatred, the sheer terror of it; maybe there was only one person on earth who could lift that burden from his shoulders, and maybe he'd found his way to her arms at last.
Finally, after so long that Ayanna was actually starting to think about leaving them to their silence alone, Benson reached for Stabler's face, gently raised his head, and pressed her lips to his temple. A final blessing; go and sin no more.
She stepped back from him, perhaps realizing that they had gone as far as they could in that room, but Stabler stopped her short, one last time.
"I'm going to Maureen's for dinner on Friday," he told her. "Sort of like...a trial run. Spend some time with my kids, show them I'm working on myself. You should come."
It was an olive branch he was offering her now, a chance for them both to move forward together, a chance for him to prove himself. Ayanna wanted that for him. So far he'd been working hard on the job, working to prove to Ayanna that he was still a good cop, but he needed to be more than that. He needed to be a good man, and it was clear there was only one person in the world who could hold him accountable on that score, and she was standing in that room with him.
"I don't think that's a good idea, Elliot. You remember what happened the last time I was around you and your kids?"
That was a story Ayanna wanted to hear, sometime. What happened the last time Benson and Stabler had been alone with his kids. What those kids thought about her, this woman who had for so long existed in their father's life, on the periphery of their worlds, beautiful and strong and not their mother.
"It's too confusing-" Benson added, but he wasn't having it.
"Look, Liv, I wanna be part of your life, if you'll let me. And I want you to be part of mine."
He knows what he's doing, Ayanna thought. Having come so close to fracturing their relationship Stabler now seemed eager to mend it; there was something almost desperate about his request, but something earnest, too, like he believed what he was saying. Like he meant it, like he wanted it, the two of them steady, again, friends, again, going out from that place in one piece.
"And the kids are part of that. They're gonna have to get used to it. Besides, I think they'll be happy to see you. They'd rather see you than me."
The words were said wryly, but they carried with them the slightest edge of hurt. Like he knew, deep in his gut, that it was true. Like he knew he'd hurt those damn kids, and knew it would be harder to regain their trust than it had been to regain Olivia's.
"Elliot," she sighed his name, shaking her head, but he wasn't done.
"Please come, Liv. You could bring Noah. Unless you don't want me around your kid."
After all this, Ayanna thought she couldn't blame Benson if the woman said she didn't want Stabler anywhere near her child. Beating up on Cassidy, swearing at Benson, ping-ponging between rage and heartbreak so fast it was hard to keep up with him; was that the kind of man Benson wanted her son to know? Or would she rather protect the boy, insist on waiting until Stabler was a little more...stable?
"You be the man I know you are, Elliot, and I won't have any problem letting you spend time with my son."
Her voice was soft, and warm, and sad, like there was nothing she wanted more than that, than to see Stabler the way he had been, before, to look at him and see the man who had once meant so much to her, to know that she could trust him. Like there was nothing she wanted more, and she doubted whether she'd ever get it, like disappointment had sunk itself into her bones, and she was afraid even to hope.
"I wanna be that man, Liv," he said heavily. "For you and for my kids. Shit, for your kid."
She reached for him then, her hand settling at the juncture where the thick muscle of his neck met his shoulder, a gesture that looked somehow possessive. And it maybe it was; maybe he was hers, as much as she was. Maybe the same need, the same connection, the same care that had him beating the shit out of Cassidy for insulting her had her reaching for him now, reminding him where he belonged.
"I know," she told him. "And I know you can be."
Or maybe she only wants to believe it, Ayanna thought. But still, she hoped it was true, for all their sakes, Benson and Stabler's kids and Benson's kid and Stabler himself. She hoped he could find his way back to himself. Whoever he had been, before the accident, Ayanna had never met that man, but that man had mattered to Benson, to a woman who was brave and uncompromising, a woman with ghosts in her pasts and love in her heart, and a man who mattered to a woman like her was, Ayanna thought, a man worth knowing.
It looked to her like they were getting ready to leave that room; Benson reached for her coat, and Stabler slid off the table, equilibrium returning to them. It was time for Ayanna to make herself scarce; the last thing she wanted was for those two to catch her eavesdropping on them. Instead she booked it back towards the main office, ascended the stairs and took up her post pacing in front of her board. There was work to be getting on with, and now that the day's excitement was over - please, God, let it be over - she needed to focus. They all did; Wheatley knew they were on to him, and that only made him more dangerous. The clock was ticking.
Maybe five minutes after she'd left him Stabler came striding into view. The man wasn't smiling, exactly, but he looked...better. At peace, maybe. Settled. Steady. Ayanna wasn't fool enough to think that one fist fight and one heart-to-heart would be enough to put him to rights, but maybe, she thought, maybe it was a step.
"Hey, boss!" Stabler called up to her. "Where do you need me?"
"Right here," she said.