It's been a minute since I dipped back into SVU, but my recent rewatch and Elliot coming home led to a bout of EO inspiration that I couldn't deny.
(Speaking of Elliot's return, I can never have enough fandom mutuals to spiral with, so feel free to come say hi on Twitter - oliviajrowe.)
An aching pressure settles deep in Olivia's chest as she steps out onto the street behind Rollins, gritting her teeth as the rain pelts her cheek before she has a chance to open her umbrella. Of course it would rain today, just another element of misery to add to the angry maelstrom of emotions she's been grappling with the last three months since her brother died.
She tugs her coat tighter around her, blocking out the bite of the February wind. The long, thick jacket is bulky and unflattering — like so many of her clothes these days, to be honest — but it swallows her whole, keeps her warm, gives her another place to hide away and keep her grief in her clutches. The pain is gut-wrenching, to be sure, but it's become so commonplace that she finds it to be a twisted sort of comfort now.
"You want me to drive, Liv?" the blonde-haired detective asks her, hazel eyes too soft on her for Olivia's liking. She loves her squad — her family — but after Simon, after Tucker, every pitying glance makes her want to step into traffic.
Olivia shakes her head, digging her keys from the pocket of her coat. The cheap pocket lining ripped a few weeks ago so it takes her too long now to fish them out. "Can you just check in with the others and make sure they're on their way?"
"Yeah. I'll call Kat, too. Just make sure she doesn't need anything."
Olivia grimaces as she opens the driver's side back door, tossing her umbrella inside. Leaving Kat at the precinct by herself for an hour or two wasn't her best idea, but Rollins and Fin insisted they join her at the funeral and she wasn't in the mood to argue with them.
And she knows none of them have ever been big fans of Ed Tucker's, so she appreciates the support, even if it's simultaneously irritating as hell that they won't leave her alone to do what she does best — coping alone.
"You want me to call Barba, too?"
Olivia shoves a key into the ignition, turning the car over. "He texted me when we were inside with the kids. Said he was ten minutes out." She hadn't wanted to subject Noah to a funeral for a man he would barely remember, if he remembered him at all, so she'd dropped him off to spend the afternoon with Jesse, Billie, and Rollins' sitter.
"Have you heard from Munch or Cragen?" Amanda asks once Olivia pulls onto the street.
Olivia nods shortly. "They'll be there." See? You didn't have to come babysit me, she wants to say. But she bites her tongue.
It's only a 15-minute drive to the cemetery, but if she has to tap into whatever energy she has left today to make conversation, she will lose it. So Olivia flicks the radio on — just loud enough to drown out the squeak of the windshield wipers that definitely needed replaced 2 months ago — and hopes Rollins gets the message that they're done talking for now.
She does.
"Liv," Munch peers at her over his glasses, his knowing gaze stripping away a layer of her protective armor. She swallows hard, fiddling with her coat as she fastens another button.
"John," she greets him with a broken smile, wrapping his thin frame in a one-armed hug. She swears that every time she sees him, he's shrunk more.
"The Captain sends his condolences. Something about Eileen and a minor family emergency, but he'll meet us at the bar after the service."
After the service. Right. The reception that happens after the service where everyone mills around each other, exchanging empty words and cold handshakes armed with plates of food they'll never touch (or maybe in this case, tumblers of whiskey — Tucker's favorite).
She'd forgotten. Somehow, she'd forgotten.
Shit. At least there'd be alcohol.
"Liv?"
Olivia's gaze snaps to her older friend, whose brown eyes brim with concern. "You okay?"
She mashes her lips together in a half-smile, tilting her head. "I'm fine." She flinches after the brittle words leave her mouth, wonders if they sound as hollow to him as they do to her.
He's quiet for a moment, too knowing as he lets her answer hang in the air between them. He seems to let it go, though, nudging his head off to the right. "In that case, I'm gonna go track down Fin." He claps her on the shoulder. "He owes me money."
Olivia expels a watery laugh, dismissing him with the wave of her hand. She stands alone then for a minute, closes her eyes and tilts her face up to the dreary sky. Drowning out the murmured voices of grief that surround her on all sides. Steeling herself for it. All of it.
At least the rain has stopped.
She quickly calculates that she probably only has another 30 seconds of this before someone else from her squad carefully sidles up to her to ask her if she's okay and she really can't leave Noah behind while his mother goes to prison for murder, so she opens her eyes as she relaxes her neck to return to the Earth.
Though she feels anything but grounded.
There's only 5 minutes until the service is set to start. She hopes it's quick so she can get the hell out of there. Maybe she can ditch the reception and -
"Liv," a warm, familiar voice greets her as a gentle hand wraps around her elbow.
"Rafael," she sighs out as her friend steps into view. God, she's missed him. She steps into his embrace, feels some of the tension drain out of her body. "Thank you for coming," she whispers.
Barba pulls back, eyes scanning her face. Too knowing, as usual. Her Rafa. "I won't insult you by asking you how you're doing."
"Well, thank God there's one of you," she jokes weakly. "How long before you have to go back to Iowa?"
He shrugs. "A few days. Thought maybe you'd like some company and I've missed my honorary nephew."
Olivia hums a little chuckle. "He misses you, too." She really does miss her friend — so much loss lately, she just wants to keep everyone close (when their concern isn't suffocating her, anyway). She lets out a deep sigh. "We both do. Come over tomorrow for takeout?"
"Wouldn't miss it." He squeezes her arm. "Come on."
She hooks her arm through his as they amble over to the rest of the squad — new and former — who have gathered near the officiant along with a dozen or two other cops, a short but respectable distance away to give Tucker's family and close friends some breathing room. Olivia's surprised there aren't more people here, but she knows her ex made a lot of enemies during his time at Internal Affairs.
She finds her spot and sucks in a deep, shuddering breath.
Keep it together, Benson.
Olivia has a firm grip on all of it —
Until they put him in the ground.
The tears slide down her cheeks, slicing her open as they fall away, and she's powerless to stop them. Space is all she craves right now, so she nudges her friends away with a quick flick of her hand and just stays there. Still.
She has no idea how long it's been — seconds, minutes, hours — when she hears a sob nearby that almost takes her off her feet. Her fingers curl into her palms as she digs her nails into the skin, horrified for seconds too long before she realizes the keening sound didn't come from her.
Olivia turns her head to find Tucker's late wife Patty, arms crossed over her chest, hiding behind a curtain of red hair as her body shakes in anguish a few feet away.
Oh. Her heart clenches in her chest. She hadn't forgotten about Ed's wife, not really, but she'd been so caught up in her own pain and deep well of regrets over the way their relationship ended that the red-haired woman hadn't really crossed her mind — not since they'd encountered each other those two times before he died.
Though Patty, Olivia remembers, had apparently heard plenty about her, which brings her an odd sense of comfort.
That knowledge is what propels her toward the other woman, careful not to startle her as Olivia makes her presence known.
"Patty," Olivia murmurs mournfully, closing the short distance between them as she wraps the other woman in a loose hug. Patty trembles under Olivia's embrace and it shatters the last of her resolve. She bites down hard on her lip, tasting copper and drawing blood.
"I'm so sorry," Olivia chokes out. "He was a great man."
Patty nods, sliding out of Olivia's grasp. "Thank you for coming." She takes Olivia's hands in hers, gripping them tightly, and God, it reminds her of the night Dodds was shot and Tucker showed up at the hospital to show up for her and her squad. His calloused, reassuring fingers tight around hers while he promised he wouldn't go anywhere.
I'm not going anywhere.
Fuck, she can't do this. She cannot do this.
"Of course." Olivia squeezes Patty's hands before she relinquishes them to swipe at her eyes. A man she doesn't recognize steps into their space for his turn and it's the only excuse she needs to step away again.
She's shaking now, nausea tumbling around inside her stomach. She clutches her mouth, a choked, wretched sound escaping as she stumbles gracelessly away toward the car, her feet of lead catching on each other, as if she's forgotten how to walk.
Rafael steps into view, eyes light with concern, and she can't, she just can't — she shakes her head furiously at him, thrusting an arm out to stop him from blocking her path.
No, no, no.
"Liv!" Fin calls out from somewhere off to her left, but she ignores him, sucking in fistfuls of crackling winter air as fast as her lungs will allow her. Christ, she feels like such a bitch to everyone today, her people that just want to be there for her —
Finally, finally she reaches her car, slamming a hand down onto the trunk to brace herself, bending over behind it in a dry heave, away from prying eyes. He's gone, he's just gone — she watched them lower his body into the ground, like she watched them lower her brother into the ground, like she watched them lower her mother into the ground, like -
Oh God.
Olivia doubles over, the side of her head colliding with a smack against the handle of the back door. "Fuck," she curses out as the tears continue to stream down her face. She nearly drops to her knees, so exhausted, so done, but she will not. Not here. If she has one shred of dignity left —
And then a pair of legs steps into view and her gut twists because she knows it's been 10 years, but she'd spent 12 looking at them and God, it can't be —
"Liv."
No, no, no. Not today.
She heaves in shock, hoping for once that her instincts are wrong and it's Fin, Barba, Amanda, Carisi — literally anyone else on God's fucking green Earth.
But then — because she can't help herself — she looks skyward and her eyes land on the familiar steely blue gaze of Elliot Stabler.
And then she does throw up.
tbc.