Author's Note: On the AO3 version of this, I've changed the warnings to include "graphic depictions of violence." I'd also include a warning for major character injury. This is only for this chapter.
I'm not a medical expert, nor do I play one on TV, but I did try to do my research. (Which is part of why this chapter took longer than I anticipated.) The song that inspired a lot of this chapter is "The Last Place God Made" by Peter Cetera.
Olivia isn't the kind of person to put stock in premonitions or omens, but as she watches the rain pour down the window of her office that same afternoon, the ankle she injured in the car accident twinges with pain. She looks down at her stack of paperwork and grimaces. The worst of her pain has long since gone away, but every now and then, it flares up with a vengeance.
She pops two ibuprofens from the bottle she keeps in her drawer and downs it with a swig of water, and then goes back to looking over Velasco's DD5s before she submits them to Chief McGrath. They're almost eerily perfect in their execution.
The squad room is quiet today. Fin's testifying in court all day, Rollins and Velasco are out at a scene in Tribeca, and the other officers and detectives in the precinct blessedly don't need her for a single thing. She eases her aching foot out of her shoe and flexes it cautiously.
A distant, unfamiliar chiming sound comes from inside her bag. What's that noise? Her personal phone is always within reach, in case Noah or Lucy need to get ahold of her for any reason. She pulls out her bag, rifles through it, and finds the source of the chime: the burner phone, the one she'd bought before her visit to Eddie, or Elliot, or whatever he's calling himself these days.
The one only he has the number to. The one who belongs to a woman named Maggie.
She inhales quickly, almost too fast; she coughs as she answers. "Howdy," she says, her tone light and airy, belying all the tension and apprehension she felt. Which persona is on the other end of this call? What's going on?
"Maggie? Is that you?" His voice sounds almost petrified, it's so meek and faint, but it's unmistakably Elliot. "It's Eddie."
She deflates slightly; she's tired of the undercover shenanigans, exhausted from the agony it's put them all through, least of all, him. "I thought I told you not to call me anymore."
"I know, I know. Listen. You gotta listen to me, Mags, okay?"
Where the hell did he get Mags from?
"I'm listening, but you better make this quick." She doesn't know when someone might come in; she's a busy woman, always needed by someone.
"I don't have long anyway. The boys are coming to pick me up any minute."
"So –"
He cuts her off, and his voice turns slightly more somber and serious. "Things are going to go down tonight. Bad things. I know it. And, I just –"
"Don't go dying on me." She tries to laugh, to say it with a light heart, but she feels tears threatening to spill down her cheeks, and she squeezes her eyes shut.
"Live. I want to live," he says, his voice hoarse, and for the first time, the significance of his nickname for her hits her squarely in the gut. It's not only short for Olivia, it's a mantra reminding him to live. "I couldn't – not knowing – if this is the last chance I had to hear your voice –"
"Don't say it." If he makes it through this, oh, they're going to have a talk about that, because there was once a time where she would have given anything to hear his voice one more time and couldn't. They're going to have plenty of talks. But she can't. Not now. "Please don't say it."
"I remember, okay? I remember everything. And I love you, and I needed you to hear that from me, okay?" He barely croaks out those last words; his voice is choked with emotion.
She gnaws on the corner of her lip. "I know. I know." She's willing those tears not to come, to hold off just a few moments longer. Long enough for their call to end – though she never wants it to, especially not if the end of their call is the possible end of them. Twenty-three years of knowing him, almost all of that spent loving him in some form or fashion, and it could all end here and now – knowing it's reciprocated, not being able to do anything with that knowledge. "I'm glad you remember, I really am."
"You made me remember. You made me want to remember." She hears raised voices in the background, some shouting in what she assumes is Albanian. "Look, I gotta go. They're here. I'll call you later."
"You better." She clears her throat. "El, I –"
And she realizes that he's ended the call before she could finish her thought.
She turns off the light in her office, locks the door, closes the blinds, and lays back on the couch. To anyone who tries to look in, it would look like the captain has taken an early day, or had to run out on business.
Not that she's laying on her couch, in the dark, arm slung over her forehead, and alternately muttering prayers and curses to a God she knows he looks to for guidance.
Damn you, don't kill him, please. His family needs him. I need him too, damnit. Please bring him home safely. For us.
It isn't as though Elliot hasn't looked death in the face before. He has, in many forms, but there's something maniacal about the look on Kosta's face that seems different. "Eddie Ashes," Kosta says in a low voice, circling him. Out of the corner of the eye that isn't swollen shut, he can see a couple of Kosta's nameless thugs lurking in the background. "Or whatever it is you're calling yourself these days. Kosta flicks a lighter, watching intently as the tip illuminates with a flame. "You know what they say about boys who play with fire, don't you?"
"What's that?" He manages to grit out, feeling phlegm and bile building up in the back of his throat.
At Kosta's signal, one of the thugs sprints out from somewhere in his blind spot and kicks him squarely in the stomach with a well-aimed steel-toed boot, sending him sprawling to the ground with a pained grunt. A spurt of something copper-tasting – blood – courses upward, and he spits it out.
"They get burned." The reflection of the flame as it flickers and dances glints menacingly in Kosta's eyes.
He watches, helplessly, as another of the thugs – Elliot seems to remember hearing him referred to as Luan, The Lion – pours gasoline in a loose series of circles around him, before spitting on him once. Every time he manages to get the leverage to raise himself up, begin to fight back, he gets kicked back down. If he makes it through this, he's going to have indentations and bruises on his stomach.
"Tsk, such a shame, Eddie," Kosta says, as Elliot hears the last scattered droplets of gasoline hit the puddles. "If you'd only been on our side this whole time. Such a waste."
He knows he's in one of the back rooms of the boxing gym. If they're willing to chance the whole place going up like a tinderbox, then they've either cleared out all the incriminating evidence – or they want it to turn to a pile of ashes, like him. The balance of not only his own life, but their entire case – this entire operation – hangs in what happens now.
There's a final blow to his stomach, forcing him on his side, and he smells the acrid stench of gasoline before Kosta drops the lighter and walks out of the room without a final word.
If they truly want him to be a faceless victim of theirs – they have their ways of doing that. He knows. Pull his teeth, scorch away his fingerprints, remove all identifying information. The fact they haven't means that him spending his last moments in full agony and torture – fully aware – means more to them than that.
The flames begin to grow in size, and the smoke begins to clog his senses.
He's praying every prayer he's ever been taught, hoping against hope for a miracle he doesn't remotely deserve.
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…Hail Mary, full of Grace...pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death…oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell…as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be…
As he mutters the prayers against the increasingly warm floor, he sees some of his favorite memories. Maureen, as a toddler, giggling as he gives her a piggyback ride around their old living room. Kathleen, shyly giving him a hand-drawn Father's Day card that called him the "bestest dad in the whole wide entire world," with a drawing of a tall brown-haired man and a tiny blonde girl holding hands, giant smiles on their faces. Somewhere, he still has that card; he's never thrown it out. Looking at the two little babies in his arms and realizing they'd been doubly blessed with Elizabeth and Richard – Liz and Rich, now. Seeing Kathy and his namesake, Elliot, Jr., Eli – alive – after the car accident, and realizing his world didn't crumble that day.
Seeing Olivia alive after the car accident. Holding her against him in the maternity ward hallway. That sense of relief, that they were all alright. Every time he's held Olivia – always because of a trauma or tragedy – never to simply show the woman he loves how much he cares. The last time he'd touched her, in her apartment, drugged out of his mind, daring to reach for the hallowed ground of her face. The last time he'd seen her, her rightfully pissed at him, before she ran away. The last time they'd spoken, the echo of her plaintive voice saying you'd better, before she started to say something else – before Kosta's thug ended the call for him.
If Olivia's face in his memory is the last thing he sees, as the smoke begins to curl and thicken around him, he thinks that's alright by him.
Amen.
"Where is he?" Olivia asks Bell, as she runs into the hospital waiting room, coming out of the downpour that has been drenching a good part of the city. Bell looks at her with a grimace. "Ayanna, where is he? You can't call me down here saying he's in critical condition and not expect me to ask a million questions."
"They had to take him into emergency surgery," Bell says. "Something about internal injuries."
Olivia slides her hand over her face, and she runs up to the nurse's station. "I'm Captain Olivia Benson with the NYPD. If Elliot Stabler needs blood, we have the same blood type." She remembers their long-ago joke about giving each other a kidney if necessary. She'd give anything to smile and laugh about that now, like they had before.
The nurse acknowledges her, and Olivia paces back toward Ayanna. "What happened?"
"We're still gathering evidence, and of course, Detective Stabler's statements will help quite a bit," Bell says, and there's the invisible clause if he makes it, because that's not a guarantee, not yet. "The boxing gym is likely a total loss."
Olivia bites down on her lip, because he has to make it. There's no other option, not in her mind. "Anyone else?"
"They found a couple other bodies, but it looks like they might have been dead before the fire started. We'll work on identifying them, of course."
"Of course, of course." Her voice is distant, a faint echo. "He called me this afternoon. To say goodbye."
"He wasn't supposed to do that," Bell says. "He called me too. Let me know to have patrol units on standby and to listen to the FDNY scanner and channels. Otherwise –"
Otherwise, it might have been too late.
"He's going to make it, Olivia," Bell says, softly, clasping her hand over Olivia's and squeezing gently. Her touch is soft and warm, and though they've often found themselves on opposing ends of everything regarding Elliot's undercover work, right now, they're not here as a sergeant and a captain. They're here as Ayanna and Olivia.
Police work seems so small, so petty and insignificant, when the best man she's ever known – the only man she's ever truly loved – is fighting for his life in a hospital operating room. "I hope so," Olivia says, and she finds herself doing something she loathes doing by herself, let alone in front of anyone else: she sobs, bitter tears that splatter every which way, and even when a nurse mutely hands her an entire box of tissues, it's not remotely enough to soak up all her tears.
His eyelids feel impossibly heavy, as he slowly blinks them open.
He sees layers of bandages and gauze encasing his arms, and there's a dull ache that occasionally stings from somewhere in his abdomen. Tubes and wires extend from him, connecting him to the dual miracles of machinery and modern medicine. I'm alive. Holy shit, I'm alive.
The friendly eyes of a young nurse look at him, and she offers him a smile. She doesn't look too much older than Liz. "It's good to see you awake, Mr. Stabler. You're one lucky duck," she says, writing down something from one of the machines he's hooked up to. "You have two people who have been very anxious to see you. Should I tell them they can come in?"
"Sure." He's too far gone on whatever pain medicine they have pumping through his veins to put up an argument. It's probably two of the kids. Kathleen and someone. Maybe Eli? No. Maureen. Hopefully, someone let Olivia know, at least. The nurse nods, leaves the room.
He sees Bell first, and she sits in the chair further from him. "I should have known, you'd somehow survive a fire," she says, with an amused laugh. "If it's not clear, your undercover is over."
"Eddie?"
"Went up in smoke and ashes, as far as anyone you were involved with is concerned." She looks at him. "You look like hell, Stabler, but when you can give your statements, you'll give us enough so they'll never see the sun again."
He'd nod, except that motion hurts too much to consider right now. "Thanks, really." Though he's never been a man for many words, he's finding it harder than usual to say very much.
A motion by the door catches the corner of his eye, and he sees a tousled brunette head peek around the corner. His heart races, just a little, enough to let him know that his instinct is correct – that even in the midst of everything, Olivia is on the other side of that door. Waiting.
"He's as decent as he's ever going to be," Bell calls out, smirking knowingly at Elliot.
Olivia comes running in the room and gingerly wraps her arms around his bandaged form. "Oh," she says, gasping as he leans against her, the best as he can. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, as though she's been crying, and he wants to wipe away each one of those tears and replace it with a smile or laugh.
She cradles his chin in her hands and presses her forehead against his, and Bell scoots the other chair over so Olivia can sit in it easier, if she chooses to – but she seems to want to touch him right now, feel his skin beneath her own, realize he's alive.
"Liv," he rasps. He feels hoarse, though if it's because of the smoke he had to have inhaled, or the tubes he's connected to, or the sheer emotion of being close to her – he can't tell. "You're here."
"I'm here," she says, and she threads her fingers through his unbandaged hand, holding it inside her own, as if it's the most sacred thing she's ever held. "I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."
Outside the window, the downpour slows to a mere trickle.
-to be continued-