III:

Captain Olivia Benson was unimpressed with her IV and the fact that it kept occluding and setting off an alarm that would shock her back to wakefulness, which would set off another set of alarms as her blood pressure and heart rate escalated. A nurse finally got the bright idea to move the IV from her elbow to the top of her hand, decreasing the needle size one would assume, and then no more alarms.

She vaguely remembered Rafa being at her bedside when she first woke up in recovery, and then when she was moved into her room, but after that, it had only been Fin in her room – much to her disappointment. The man snored; and not just a little bit of air. Big, giant rafter-shaking snores.

He startled awake when the nurse came back in to check her vitals and make sure the IV hadn't occluded again (even though the alarms hadn't gone off), and mumbled, "Hey, Liv."

"Hey yourself," she replied. "Where's Rafa?"

"I sent him home. He'll be back in the morning." Fin shuffled his weight in the chair and rubbed at his eyes, then yawned. "I won't ask how you're feeling: you look like you fell off a building."

She smiled, just a little. "I feel like a fell off a building: did you catch the plates of the truck that ran me down?" she teased, wincing. "How's Noah?"

"Livin' it up with Barba's mom," he replied. "Kid's got a good racket goin' there."

Liv nodded slowly and closed her eyes; Lucia Barba adored her son and she had no qualms about Rafael leaving Noah with her during the uncertainty of running to and from the hospital. "I want to call him –"

"Your phone's all smashed up," Fin commented. "And anyway, no can do – it's almost four in the morning, Liv. Don't wake the kid up. It can wait till later. He's fine: you're gonna be fine. I know it seems like an emergency, but let him sleep."

Liv took a deep breath and murmured, "Will you let me call Elliot?"

"He's coming in the morning."

"Fin –"

"You need to let those drugs work and get some rest," he advised.

"Fucking alarms keep going off," she muttered in disgust. "At least till like half an hour ago. And you snore."

He chuckled. "You want some water?"

"Please," she sighed. He got up and stretched; she could hear his joints clicking and popping as he moved, but he didn't complain or flinch, just walked the few steps to her bedside and helped hold her cup so she could sip from the straw.

"Need to get more ice for that," he complained. "It's been a couplea hours: it's all melted now."

"It's fine," she dismissed. "I'm fine. You don't need to baby-sit me."

"Like hell I don't – you took a fucking swan dive off a balcony and you think I'm not gonna tie your ass to that bed and keep my gun on my hip till you stay your ass put?" Fin shot back fiercely. "Don't even think about it, Liv: I know you. They wanna keep you here at least three full days."

"Absolutely not," Liv declared, attempting to sit up. She fell back as soon as he pinned her with a glare. "All right, all right – FINE."

He sat back down in the chair and said, "Hey, so… you haven't told Stabler about Noah yet?"

She frowned. "It hasn't come up."

"He assumed Barba was his dad."

She paused, picked at the edge of the sheet. "Yeah, well… if I died, he would have been, so that assumption wasn't too far off the mark, was it?" When Fin didn't say anything, she scoffed. "What am I supposed to tell him, Fin? My son's adopted. His biological parents are dead. One was a criminal, one was a victim of human trafficking."

"Yeah, you start with that," Fin acknowledged with a wry smirk. "So the guy doesn't jump to the wrong conclusion and try to punch your BFF's lights out in front of witnesses. I wasn't looking to arrest anybody in a hospital waiting room, Liv."

She sighed. "I… El – you know Elliot."

"Yeah, I do. I also know you, Liv," he added pointedly. "You not telling him important things means something."

She frowned and continued to pick at the sheet. She sighed and muttered, "We have a good thing going. He loves Noah, he loves me – hell, Fin, he asked us to move in with him and Eli."

"But you're not sure?"

"It's too soon."

"Like it's too soon to be changing your legal stuff," he added. She jerked her head up and stared at him. "Barba told me," he said, shrugging.

"Was Elliot angry?"

"He wasn't exactly dancing a jig," Fin replied. "And, like I said, he almost assaulted Barba."

"No wonder you sent them both home," she said, rubbing her eyes tiredly with the hand that had the IV in the top of it. Her other arm was immobilized in a sling, useless, and she was annoyed with herself for not having been observant enough to have seen the desperate attack coming in the first place.

"Yeah, well, Barba didn't leave till after he sat with you a while," Fin replied. "You were askin' for him when you came out of surgery."

"I don't remember."

"You were pretty doped up. He was upset when he left; made me promise to stay, like that was gonna be a problem," Fin snorted indelicately.

"Why was he upset?"

"Not my circus or my monkeys," he replied, holding up his hands.

She sighed and leaned back, closing her eyes. When she woke up again, Elliot was sitting in the uncomfortable plastic guest chair that he'd dragged from across the way and set up at her bedside. "Hey," he said softly when he realized she was awake. "I was about to leave: I have to go in for a while."

"Hey," she murmured. "Water?"

He held her cup to her lips and said, "You okay?"

She shook her head and sighed softly. "Everything hurts."

"You want me to call someone?"

"No, the meds are on a drip," she muttered. "I just… I fell off a balcony. Everything hurts, El." She squeezed his hand. "I keep thinking there was something I could've done, something I could have said, but I know there wasn't."

"You can't save everyone, Olivia." Elliot's proclamation was soft and grave. "I know you think you can; you… you pull people in like stray puppies and you think you can save everyone. But you can't."

"I can try," she whispered. "It's more than most of them will ever get."

"But at what cost? You almost died –"

"I didn't." Her voice was firm. "You're being dramatic. I'm going to be fine."

"Until the next time when you aren't," he shot back. "How many times, Olivia? How many times does it take for you to realize that enough is enough? That the danger isn't worth it anymore? Does my concern not mean anything?"

"It does, when it's warranted," she countered.

"You fell two stories and my concern isn't warranted?" he clapped back sarcastically.

"I'm going to be fine," she assured him. "El, it's –"

"I'm going to work," he said. "I don't want to talk about this right now. It's obvious that you're not thinking clearly, so we'll have this discussion later." He stormed out of the room while she was beginning to protest, only for Barba to enter it.

Rafael settled into the chair at her bedside, looking exhausted. "Do I want to know?" he asked.

"No," Liv sighed.

"I won't ask how you're feeling. The doctor said they added blood thinners to your IV because you've been throwing clots all night," he said gently. "They're going to do some tests a little later, maybe do a sonogram of your lungs to make sure you're not developing clots there."

She nodded and squeezed his hand. "Fin said you were upset when you left."

"You don't need to worry about me," he replied. "Right now, we need to concentrate on you, Olivia. Have you eaten anything?"

"No, I'm queasy."

"Maybe some juice and toast," he suggested.

"Okay," she agreed. He put in the call (apple juice and wheat toast with light margarine), and she watched him for a long moment as he stuffed his hands in his pockets, rocking on the soles of his feet as he talked to the cafeteria on the phone. He had forgone his suit and tie, instead wearing jeans, Chuck Taylors, and a simple blue-striped oxford shirt with the top two buttons undone. He looked exhausted, beaten down, and his body language did not exude his usual confidence.

"Twenty minutes," he said, settling back into his seat. "Do you need more pain relief? Have they been in to check on you recently?"

"I was asleep," she said, "but I assume they've been in. The painkillers are in my IV."

"Okay," he replied, carefully taking her hand and looking it over. "They moved your IV?"

"It kept setting off the alarms when it was in my elbow," she murmured. "Occluding – little clots."

He nodded and released her hand. "I should have been here –"

"No, Fin took care of me," she said. "It's okay, Rafa. You can't be here all the time." She paused, then said, "How's Noah?"

He smiled and said, "Enjoying breakfast with Mami. I already called and told him that there was an accident and you're going to be okay, but you're in the hospital right now. Do you want to call now or –"

"Oh, now please," Olivia murmured.

A few minutes of soft conversation with Noah made her feel infinitely better, and when her food arrived, she was definitely in a better frame of mind. She only ate half a piece of toast and drank part of the juice, but it was enough to put a tired smile on her friend's face. "Hey," she whispered, yawning as she settled back into her pillows again, "thank you."

"Of course, Liv. Anything for you."

As she drifted off to sleep, she felt the gentlest of kisses, feather-light, on her forehead.