Mikey Andino had been in uniform for just over a year now, and he had seen his fair share of shit - car accidents, od's, street fights, dead bodies, you name it - but he had never seen anything quite like this.

It hadn't been chaotic when it started. When it started, two pretty women from sex crimes with grim expressions and their hands resting on their guns had marched into an ordinary looking apartment building with Mikey and his partner Davis right behind them. You boys hang back, the dark haired Captain had told them. Keep your eyes open, but let us take the lead on this. Mikey and Davis had been all too happy to let them, because barging into an apartment and keeping some wife-beating prick trapped in a corner while his wife and his kids ran the fuck away from him didn't sound like too much fun and if the sex police wanted to handle it they were welcome to it. The guy who opened the door looked harmless, at first blush. White, youngish, barely taller than the Captain, skinny. How hard could it be? Mikey remembered thinking.

Pretty fucking hard, apparently, because they'd no sooner walked into the apartment than all hell broke loose. Bang! The guy took a shot at Davis, and Davis went down, and the guy ducked behind his wife, using her as a shield, and the kids were tied up in the corner, and the Captain pushed Mikey out the door right before it slammed closed. He was, suddenly, alone in the hallway. He knew why she'd done it; someone needed to call for reinforcements, and she'd had a split second to decide which one of them should run, and she'd picked him. He did his damnedest to prove to her she'd made the right choice.

ESU showed up, and hostage negotiation, and the standoff lasted all fucking day, and into the night, until finally the sound of gunfire rent the air, and everybody got real, real quiet. Mikey was standing on the sidewalk staring up at the hulking behemoth of the building with the spotlights sparkling on it like a Christmas tree; the street was cordoned off and there were two ambulances and a host of cruisers and a mobile command center and a veritable army of cops milling around, not doing fuck all as far as Mikey could tell, and shit, he'd never been involved in anything like this before. He didn't know what to do and no one was telling him anything and he just stood there, waiting.

Waiting, until the front door of the building swung open, and the Captain yelled coming out! Inwardly Mikey breathed a sigh of relief; he liked the pretty Captain. She'd seemed tough, and experienced, and she'd smiled when she shook his hand, and she'd saved his fucking life. He watched with everybody else as she came walking out; she was holding one of the kids, and there was blood smeared across the side of her face, and she looked, he thought, like something out of a fucking movie. Bloody and battered and still standing. The wife was right behind her, carrying the other kid; somehow, the Captain had gotten the family out of there alive. She'd done what no one else could. She'd saved the fucking day.

"Suspect's down!" The Captain called to the assembled masses. "But we got an officer injured. Get a medic up there, now!"

The EMTs stepped to it, running into the building, and the Captain led the wife and her kids over to one of the buses, left them to get looked over while she talked to the scene commander. They were standing pretty close to Mikey, and he couldn't help but overhear their conversation. The Captain spoke in short, clipped phrases as she detailed the horror she'd witnessed in the apartment, but she cut herself off mid-sentence when the EMTs came back, carrying her detective on a stretcher.

She raced over to them, and walked beside the stretcher all the way to the bus, holding her detective's limp hand.

"She's got kids," she told one of the medics. "Call ADA Carisi. He'll know what to do with them."

Jesus, Mikey thought. He didn't know how bad the injury was, but apparently the detective couldn't speak for herself, and she had kids, and no one to look after them but an ADA. Not for the first time he found himself wondering if this job was really worth it; that detective, she'd gotten shot saving someone else's kids, but what about her own?

"Cap!" a voice called out sharply behind them, and Benson whirled away from the bus to face the newcomer. He was in plain clothes, his badge on a chain around his neck. About the same age as her, Mikey thought. His expression was as grim as hers.

"Rollins?" he asked her urgently. That must have been the blonde detective's name.

"She got hit. I think he just winged her but they're taking her in now."

"The family?"

The Captain pointed towards the other ambulance. "Kids are fine, but the mom hit her head, they'll probably take her for testing. Stick to them like glue, Fin. If they take 'em to the hospital, I want you to ride along, and find out what's going on with Rollins while you're there."

"On it, Cap."

He rushed away, and for a moment the Captain was alone, an island in a sea of furious activity. She sighed, ran her fingers through her tangled hair, dark eyes scanning the faces around her until at last she settled on Mikey. She didn't smile, this time.

"You all right, kid?" she asked, walking over to him. She was limping just a little. Maybe the medics ought to look her over, too, but the first bus had already left with Rollins, and they were loading the family into the second. Pretty soon they'd be gone, too, and there'd be no one left to take care of the Captain.

"Yes, ma'am," he told her.

"What's your name again?"

"Mike," he told her, and it was weird, he thought, but she blanched like he'd struck her. A shudder seemed to pass through her, and her shoulders went limp, and he didn't know why, didn't understand what he'd done, or how he could fix it. Her gaze drifted over the scene again, and she reached up to run her thumb across her brow, but when she touched her face her hand came away bloody. She stared at it, unspeaking, and as the seconds passed unease began to grow deep in Mikey's gut; he didn't like the silence, or the vacant look in her eyes.

No one else was looking at her. Everybody was busy, packing up the mobile command center, taking down the road blocks. Uniforms were interviewing witnesses, and the crime scene guys would have the apartment in lockdown for hours, and there were a few reporters shouting questions from behind the cordon, and the pole cams and spotlights were still up; the scene was still in chaos, and no one was paying any attention to her. No one but Mikey. She'd saved his life earlier in the day, and he wasn't about to leave her behind now.

"Hey, you all right?" he asked her urgently.

She didn't answer him; she just drifted vaguely away from the bustle of bodies, found a quiet spot and sat herself down on the edge of the sidewalk. Propped her forearms on her knees and stared out into the night, her eyes glassy, and unseeing. Mikey followed her, and the worry that had started to build low in his gut morphed slowly into a deep, unbearable sort of fear. He'd heard about this. About how sometimes it got to be too much. How sometimes when the adrenaline washed away all that was left behind was a great, towering exhaustion. How some cops burnt out, and never rose from the ashes. He'd hate to see that happen to her; the Captain had seemed unbreakable, earlier in the day, and people needed heroes. Someone had to keep the darkness at bay, and if she went down, who would be left to take her place?

"Hey," Mikey said, squatting down right in front of her. She didn't even look at him. "Is there someone I can call for you?"

The Captain didn't answer. She just sat there quietly, staring. Time was passing, slowly, painfully, but passing nonetheless; if he didn't get her talking soon he'd have to call for another bus. Maybe he should have done that already. Maybe he should ask someone else for help. He looked around, but all those people seemed to have jobs to do, and they passed right by Mikey and the Captain like they couldn't even see them. He might as well have been alone on that street. Something had to be done.

Think, Mikey, think, he told himself. She won't talk to you. Who would she talk to? Maybe one of her people, he figured. One of 'em was shot and one of 'em was riding in the ambulance with the family, but there had to be more of 'em. There had to be somebody. Somebody who cared about her. Somebody who'd want to see her.

"Hand me your phone, Captain," he said very slowly. "We can call somebody to come look after you, all right?"

She didn't answer, but she did reach into her pocket, pulled out her phone and handed it over. Mikey swiped his finger across the screen, and it pulled the lockscreen, a picture of a cute little boy with curly hair, dark just like hers.

"This your son?" he asked, showing her the picture. The Captain nodded, but didn't speak.

"Can you unlock it for me?"

She did; he held the phone while she dragged her fingers across the screen. The silence was unnerving. She could hear him, she could understand him, seemed willing to follow simple commands, but it felt to him almost as if she wasn't there at all. Her body was sitting there on the sidewalk, going through the motions, but her soul was far away, banished to some dark and distant place he didn't even want to think about.

"Who we calling, Cap?" he asked her, scrolling through her phone. She had two people listed under "emergency contacts"; Amanda, and Fin. Those were two detectives already on their way to the hospital, and that meant they weren't any good to him.

For a long moment she was silent, and he was just beginning to think she wasn't going to answer him at all when she finally spoke, her voice thin, and ragged.

"Elliot," she said.

The sharp sound of his phone ringing jerked him out of dreams at once; it was barely 11:00, but he'd had a hell of a week, and he'd fallen into bed about an hour before. He'd been asleep before his head hit the pillow and Christ that felt good, but now the fucking phone was ringing. His hand scrambled for it across the bedside table, caught it before it fell, and then he drew it close to his face to see who was calling.

Olivia.

He answered at once.

"Liv?" he croaked. "You all right?"

"Sir, this is Officer Mike Andino, NYPD. I'm here with your wife."

Oh, what the fuck? Elliot vaulted to his feet, already searching for his pants, his heart pounding in his chest. The calm, controlled way the officer spoke, the way he'd identified himself, the fact that he was calling from Olivia's phone; Elliot knew what that meant. It meant something was very, very wrong.

Not her, he thought. Please, God, not her. He couldn't lose Olivia. Not now, not after everything. There was so much left for them to say to one another, so many wounds they'd yet to heal, so much distance still between them when all he wanted was to be close to her, like he had been in the old days, and they'd been drifting towards something, the pair of them, dancing on the edge of a reconciliation that felt like coming home, and now a uni was calling him from her phone in the middle of the night. He was so fucking scared it didn't even occur to him wonder why the kid using her phone thought she was his wife. It didn't fucking matter. The only thing that mattered was her.

"She's ok," the kid told him, and Elliot's fears abated. Marginally. "But I think you should talk to her."

"Give her the phone," Elliot barked. He'd shuffled into his pants, and now he was moving to the closet, reaching for a t-shirt. There was a rustling sound on the other end of the phone, like the officer had handed the phone over to her, and then he could almost hear the faint sound of her breathing, but she wasn't speaking. Whatever had happened out there tonight, it must have been bad. Real fucking bad, if she wasn't talking, if some uni was babysitting her, making calls from her phone. It was late, and she should have been home safe with Noah, but Liv had been out there, somewhere in the world, risking her life because she thought she had to, and Elliot's mind was working a mile a minute, one disastrous scenario after another swirling through his thoughts, each worse than the last.

"Olivia," he said sharply. He had to hear her voice, had to hear for himself that she really was ok, needed her to speak, to prove to him that he hadn't lost her.

No response. He waited a beat, and then tried again. "Olivia," he said. "Olivia, you gotta talk to me. Say something for me." Please, Jesus, just say something.

"I'm here," she finally managed, and relief washed over him. Just the sound of her voice was nearly enough to knock him over, and he perched on the end of the bed for a second, closing his eyes like that might help him hear her better.

"Good," he said. "That's good. You ok?"

Silence, again. The uni had told him that she was all right, but the kid sounded like he was fresh out of the academy and Elliot knew Olivia. He knew she'd swallow her pain, hide her own injuries and distress to make sure that everyone else got taken care of first, knew she'd insist that she was fine even if she'd been broken clean in half. The kid didn't know shit, and Elliot wasn't about to take his word for it.

"I'm going to come get you, Olivia," he told her. He was already dressed, and his shoes and his keys were waiting for him by the door, and there was no way in hell he was gonna leave her alone with a stranger, not when she was hurting, not when she needed him. "I'm coming for you, ok? But I need to know where you are. Can you give the phone back to Mike for a second?"

A few heartbeats passed, and then the uni was back.

"Sir?"

"Listen," Elliot said. "Where are you?"

The scene was clearing out. The reporters got their soundbites and went home. IAB was circling, but they'd caught most of the incident on the pole cams, and neither the Captain nor her detective had fired a shot. The official debriefs would come later. Mikey's Lieu had called him, wanting to know where the fuck he was, but when Mikey explained he was keeping an eye on the Captain until someone came to pick her up the Lieu went uncharacteristically soft, and told him not to let that woman out of his sight until he knew that she was safe. Those were orders MIkey could follow, and happily.

She hadn't spoken again, not since she'd talked to her husband. Of course, she hadn't said a hell of a lot to him, either, but Mikey had told the guy where to find them, and he'd said I'm on my way, and that was all Mikey really needed to know. Someone was coming for her. Someone was gonna take care of her. That was as it should be.

Maybe half an hour after the phone call a big black SUV came screeching up, and the second it came to a stop a tall man vaulted out of the driver's seat, looking around urgently. The guy was older, maybe the Captain's age, his hair buzzed close to hide the fact that he'd lost most of it, his face worn from time, and worry. He was wearing a heavy black coat and blue jeans, and he looked like he'd just rolled out of bed.

"Where is she?" The guy called out, not really addressing anyone in particular, and Mikey raised his hand, because he had a pretty good idea who this man was, and who he was looking for. In a minute, his suspicions were proved right. The man jogged over towards him, and the unis lining the street parted before him like the fucking red sea.

Mikey stepped up to meet him.

"Where is she?" the guy asked again when he got close.

"Your wife's right here," Mikey told him, and then he stepped to the side, pointed to the Captain, still sitting on the sidewalk with her arms resting on her knees.

"Jesus, Liv," the guy - Elliot - said when he saw her. That's what he'd called her when he picked up the phone, too. Liv. She didn't raise her head when he called her name, just sat there staring, and he rushed to her side. He reached for her face, let his fingertips trail over the blood that had dried crusty across her forehead, like he was checking her for wounds.

"You're freezing," he said, very quietly, and then he slipped out of his own coat, and draped it around her shoulders, the gesture intimate, and protective, and kind. That coat, it just about swallowed her whole; she looked small underneath it, but she looked warm, too.

Mikey looked away, a lump forming in the back of his throat. Her man had come for her, and he was going to take care of her, now, and she was going to be ok, and that meant that Mikey could finally release the breath he'd been holding since Davis got shot. Shit, Davis. He didn't know what had happened to his partner. How could he not know? How could he have missed that? Maybe he'd been too distracted by the Captain. She was in good hands, now, and so he left her to her husband's care, and rushed off in search of answers.

She wasn't looking at him. She wasn't looking at anything. She was just sitting there, silent, unmoving. Like she was dead already, and her body just hadn't gotten the memo.

"Olivia," Elliot breathed her name, and then he knelt down in front of her, trying to get her to look at him, because if he could just see her eyes, could just see the warm black of them, could just see her blink, then he'd know she was still alive, and with him.

"Olivia, you gotta look at me, ok? Look at me," he urged her, desperation rising within his chest. He didn't know what had happened to her, what horror she had witnessed that could have left her so distressed, but he did know that she was alone, she was fucking alone, with no one to watch her back, no one to keep her safe. Whatever had gone down tonight, he hadn't been there to look out for her, and his heart was shredding itself to pieces in his chest at the thought of it. She was his, and it was his job to keep her safe and he'd let her down. He hadn't been there when she needed him. These last few months, losing Kathy, going after Wheatley, coming unglued and then sticking himself back together, she'd been with him every step of the way, and she needed him now. He wasn't about to let her down. Not again.

"This is a dream," Olivia said faintly. "You're not really here."

Something small and terrified in him wanted to scream, then. Wanted to vent his grief and his guilt and his rage, wanted to turn his face up towards the heavens and demand to know why. Why us? Why this? What the fuck did we ever do to you, that we should suffer so much? That's what he wanted to know. They were just two people, trying their best, trying to help, and every time the ground settled beneath their feet they just got hit again. How many times, he wondered; how many times had she been hurt, and scared, and wishing he was there, only to open her eyes and find him still gone? How much had it wounded her, looking for him and yet not finding him? In a lifetime of regrets, leaving her was at the top of the list. It probably always would be; there was no penance he could pay that would wipe out the stain of that sin.

"No," he said. "No, you're not dreaming. I'm right here, Olivia. I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere."

Not ever again.

He reached for her, wrapped his hand around the nape of her neck and drew her towards him until her forehead was resting against his. Just that touch soothed him; he could feel the softness of her skin under his palm, could feel the weight of her head pressed to his own, could feel her body rise and fall with each of her ragged breaths, could feel her, real and alive and with him, where she always should have been, and his knees were giving him hell, kneeling on the pavement like that, but he had no intention of moving, not unless she did. There were people all around them, and maybe in the harsh light of day he might have cared - or she might have cared - if someone else saw them touching, saw them close, saw what they meant to one another, but darkness was closing in around them and the spotlights had been taken down and he couldn't find it in his heart to worry about what other people might say. Yeah, they were too close. Yeah, they always had been. But she was his, god damn it, and she was hurting, and he would not, could not, leave her to suffer alone for the sake of something as trivial as reputation. Let 'em look, he thought. They'd only see the truth.

"I don't want to open my eyes," she whispered into the stillness between them, and the sound of her voice broke his heart into a thousand razor sharp pieces, slicing him to ribbons as they drifted down and settled low in his gut.

"Olivia-"

"I don't wanna wake up, because then you'll be gone."

He'd dreamed about her, in Rome. Not a lot, not all the time, but sometimes. The dreams were ephemeral, as impossible to grasp as a wisp of smoke, but they were there, just the same. Sometimes just her smile, sometimes her scream. Sometimes he saw her with blood dripping from her fingertips, and woke up wondering where she was, whether something had happened to her. Sometimes he lay in the hazy awareness of his bed before dawn and wondered if the dreams were trying to tell him something. If her heart was reaching for his, across time and space. Maybe she had been, calling out to him. Maybe he should have answered. He'd always been too afraid, in the light of day, to admit he'd even entertained thoughts like that. He'd always been afraid that she hated him. Now he was wondering if maybe he was wrong. Now he was wondering if she'd dreamed about him, too.

"I'm right here," he said, and tightened the grip of his hand against her neck. "Look at me, Olivia."

She drew in a slow, ragged breath, and he felt her shoulders tense. Maybe she was coming back to herself. Maybe she knew, dream or not, that this moment had to end. He just waited, and then she finally raised her head, and those big dark eyes were staring right back at him.

"You're here," she said.

"I'm here."

He wanted to press his lips to her forehead, wanted to draw her into his lap like he would a child, wanted to hold her close, and rock her gently, and let her drift off to sleep in his arms, but his knee was killing him, and he wasn't sure she'd let him hold her, anyway. Instead he rose, very slowly, and settled himself on the sidewalk close beside her, their bodies touching from shoulders to knees. She leaned against him, and the weight of her was a reassurance to him.

"You wanna tell me what happened up there?" he asked her.

"No," she said. No, but she was gonna, he knew. She didn't want to, but she had to. She had to get it out, or she'd never draw an easy breath again, and so he stayed right where he was, steady and silent, and waited for her to come to him.

"We were doing a clothes job," she said, and his heart dropped. Removing a family from the home of their abuser was one of the most dangerous jobs a cop could undertake. Guys like that, they saw their families as their possessions, and they fought tooth and nail when someone else tried to take away what was theirs. They could be unpredictable, when backed into a corner; they'd rather kill their wives, their children, than see them escape. "Guy shot a uni. Shot Rollins. It was...it was ugly. It was...goddamn it it's the same way we lost Mike."

The uni who'd called him, his name was Mike, too. Maybe that's what set her off, Elliot thought. He didn't know what she was talking about, who her Mike was, but if she'd lost a member of her squad that way, if she'd seen Rollins, who was her fucking friend, shot right in front of her just a little while ago, if she'd spent the whole day stuck in hell, it was no wonder, he thought, that she'd cracked, just a little. Olivia, she was a goddamn superhero, marching through the world with her chin held high, fending off demons and nightmares, giving all of herself, every inch to other people. She'd taken in an orphaned child and given him a home, and she barely slept and god only knew when she'd last taken a vacation. She fought, with every piece of herself, every second of the day, to help people. She marched into hell, and walked back out again, victorious, and the people she helped, her squad and the vics and the fucking brass, they all thought she was unbreakable. Because they needed her to be. They needed to believe in the myth of her, needed to believe there was someone they could call who would right every wrong, someone who would wade into horror and walk out of the rubble with the villain vanquished and the victim cradled in her arms, and she tried so hard, so fucking hard, to be that person.

Elliot knew what the rest of them did not. Elliot knew she was, underneath it all, just a woman. Just a woman, who had been hurt more times than any living person should. Just a woman, who was getting older by the day. Just a woman, who could only carry so much before her knees gave out. Everybody else, they expected her to protect them, but someone needed to protect her, too, goddamn it. Who had been looking out for her, when he wasn't there to do it himself? Who put her back together when she fell apart? Had there been anybody at all?

"I'm so tired, El," she whispered.

"I know," he said. And he did know, because he was tired, too. Tired of running, tired of fighting. Every time he knocked one bad guy down another one popped up to take his place. There was no time to grieve; each day gave way to some new horror, and they stepped out to face it, time and time again.

"It never stops," she said, like she could read his mind. No, he thought after a moment, that wasn't right. She wasn't reading his mind. It was more like they shared the same one. What she felt, he felt. What she knew, he knew. Where she went, he would follow. For all the rest of his days.

"You asked me what the point is once," he said. "You remember that?"

It had been dark then, too, and late, and they'd been sitting together on the steps in front of his house, and her face had been full of grief, and she had asked the question he carried in his own heart. What's the point? He hadn't known the answer, then. He thought he knew it now.

"That was so long ago," she told him softly. "I don't know what happened to that girl."

That girl with her short hair and her quick smile, that girl who used to make him laugh. That girl who used to dance away from him on Friday nights in a slinky black dress. That girl who was all alone, and so desperately wanted not to be. Elliot remembered that girl; he'd never forget her.

"She's right here next to me," he told her, because she was. Because every time he looked at her, he saw that girl. Time had deepened her voice and softened her arms and left wrinkles on her face, given her authority and grief, placed the weight of the world on her shoulders, but she was still that same girl, underneath it all. The one who had stood toe-to-toe with him, the one who always backed his play, the one who was as reckless and damaged as he was, however much she might have refined the image she presented to the world. That girl was still there, living beneath the Captain's skin.

"She's right here, because she knows what the point is. You know why you do what you do, Olivia."

"Because I have to."

It felt that way, sometimes. Like it had to be them, like no one else on earth could do what they did. Like they were the last two warriors left standing, the final defense between the innocents of the world and the beasts who would eat them alive. Elliot knew better, though. The fight hadn't chosen them; they'd chosen the fight.

"Because you want to," he corrected her gently. "Because it matters to you. Because you see someone in pain, and you want to fix it. And you do, Olivia. You've saved the whole goddamn world, you know that?"

It was an exaggeration, and he knew it, but it didn't feel that way. Sitting there on the sidewalk with her, the way he'd done so many times before, looking at the aftermath of another skirmish in the war against depravity, he thought about the sheer number of people she'd helped. The women she'd saved, the children she'd rescued, the families she'd put back together, the monsters she'd taken off the streets. Her more than him, because he'd left her behind and she'd kept right on going, determined, no matter what obstacles life threw in her path. If he could line them all up, Elliot wondered how many people there'd be, people who were alive, and whole, because of her. Because of a little girl who'd been hurt, who'd grown up scared and lonesome, who'd decided that other people deserved better, even if she never got better herself. Because of a woman who never gave up. It was, he thought, a line that would stretch all the way around the city, ringing it like a wall, the last defense of goodness.

They needed her, needed her to hold them up, needed her to keep going. But she needed them, too, he thought. Because every life she saved, every wrong she righted, was another entry in the ledger, justifying her existence, proving that she had paid penance for the original sin, the one that had brought her into the world in the first place. The price for that sin was steep, but as far as he was concerned she had paid it back in full. He wondered if she felt the same, or if she was gonna keep trying to make up for it, for the rest of her life. Her mother had been dead twenty years; maybe Olivia wasn't haunted by the woman any more. Then again, maybe she always would be.

"I couldn't save Mike," she said in a low, terrible voice. "It was his last fucking day and I let him go in there without a vest. That kid is dead because of me."

It didn't seem right, Elliot thought, that there could be someone who mattered to Olivia he'd never met. The trajectories of their lives had always run in tandem and he had always felt like he knew her, knew her every story, every secret, inside and out, but he'd been gone ten years, and she'd loved and lost more than he'd ever know in that time.

"Olivia-"

"I couldn't save Simon. I couldn't save Ed."

He wasn't sure who Ed was, but he knew what had happened to Simon, knew why Olivia blamed herself for her brother's death, as surely as if she had been the one to put the needle in his arm. Three losses, stacked up against so many victories; the scale was still balanced toward the good, as far as he was concerned, but he knew she wouldn't see it that way. She had to save everybody, or else she'd count herself a failure.

"I couldn't save Kathy," he told her very softly.

For the first time since he'd sat down she looked up at him, and he looked right back, sinking into the familiar warmth of her eyes. She knew. She knew why he'd said it, what he was trying to tell her. She blamed herself for losing the people she loved, and he blamed himself, too. They understood one another, and he would not judge her for what she perceived as her failures. She didn't have to pretend to be a superhero when she was with him. He didn't expect her to be better than what she was, because as far as he was concerned, it didn't get much better than her. Her, just her, a little broken, a little weary, still trying. That was his girl, his Liv, his beating heart made flesh, sitting on the sidewalk next to him in the middle of the night, right where she'd been for the last twenty-three years. A little wrong, a little unsteady, and still fighting for goodness. Still believing in salvation, even if she'd never ask for it herself.

"We do the best we can," he said.

"What if it's not enough?" she looked up at him beseechingly, and for a moment he was back there, sitting on the steps in front of the little house in Queens he'd sold a decade ago, back there when they were young and strong and holy, back in that moment when he saw her reaching for a rope to keep herself afloat, and instead of throwing her one he had taken her hand, and they had drowned, together.

"Tomorrow morning, you go find the family you helped tonight, and you ask them if it's enough."

She nodded, looked away. It had to be enough. It was impossible for one person, even Olivia, to save everyone. There would always be losses, and each one would strip another pound of flesh from her until there was nothing left, but she wouldn't stop, and neither would he. Not now. Maybe not ever. Deep down, he wasn't sure they knew how. She'd saved three lives today, and for today that had to be enough, and they both knew it. There was nothing more to say, not really. She'd come back to herself, and he'd been there to catch her, and she knew, now, that he'd always come when she needed him, even if there had been times in the past when he hadn't, and she knew that there was someone looking out for her, whether she thought she deserved it or not.

"Lemme take you home," he said after a moment. It was late, and he didn't know where her kid was, who was looking after him, but he was a father himself, and he knew her heart must be aching for a glimpse of her child. It would do her good, he thought, to see the boy. To remember one of her victories. To remember that some dreams come true. He half expected her to tell him no, but maybe she was just too tired to fight it any more. She nodded, and he rose slowly to his feet, and they both grimaced when his knees cracked. He held out his hand to her, and she took it, and he laced their fingers together and held on tight as they walked silently into the night. Together.