Disc. You know the drill.
A/N: so, in case you've been living under a rock, taylor swift came out with a new album which is about 85% about elliot and olivia. my homeslice, rachel pointed out to me that this entire story is pretty much summed up in the song 'epiphany' on the new album. hence, this chapter being dedicated to that song.
Chapter Sixteen - Epiphany
"Stabler, my office," Cragen called out through the bullpen. Elliot rose up from his chair, exchanging looks with Munch and Fin who tried to hide their smirks. Assholes. They always laughed, like a kid being pulled out of class to go to the principal's office. He wanted to splash his coffee on both of them. The coffee he barely had time to drink since he had just arrived.
On his way towards Cragen's office, he stuck his middle finger up behind himself at his co-workers.
He shut the door behind himself, crossing his arms over his chest. Cragen wordlessly motioned for him to take a seat. Just what he wanted at the ass-crack of dawn, to be reamed out by his boss.
He hadn't fucked up a case, at least not consciously. He had walked away from Fin when they'd gone to check an alibi, but he was certain that it had been swept under the rug already.
"How's Olivia?" Cragen asked simply.
Elliot's shoulders sunk. He wasn't an idiot. He knew Cragen had gone to see her. It was a mind game. He was so sick and fucking tired of the mind games. He gulped down the lump that seemed to be stuck in his throat. "You tell me." he bit back.
Cragen let the retort wash away. He knew Elliot wasn't just angry at Olivia, he was angry at the world. It wasn't the first time, it probably wouldn't be the last either. Anyone who knew Elliot also knew that when he was angry, everyone had to know about it. It wasn't a trait he was exactly proud of.
"She's been in the hospital for three days, Elliot. You've seen her once."
"Yeah, well, I'm not exactly welcome there anymore." his voice became only more snide as he rolled his eyes. His arms went back to being crossed over his chest. He always liked to cover up the very place that the knives dug the deepest.
'My boy plays it pretty close to the vest'
He didn't like it when people saw his hurt. It was in his job description to protect people, he didn't want to be protected by anyone other than himself. And he certainly never liked showing his wounds in case anyone ever wanted to poke at them. They were his bruises to dig at, nobody else's.
"And why might that be?" Cragen asked, leaning back in the leather chair behind his desk.
"Can we just cut the crap, please?" Elliot sighed, rolling his eyes tiredly. "I get it, you're pissed off that I argued with her. I was an ass for it, and I'm sorry. But right now, I know that we're gonna argue again if I even go near her, so I'm staying away. I just wanna give us some time."
Cragen stared at him for a moment, his brows raised with something other than surprise, he just couldn't put his finger on what it was. All-knowingness maybe? It was a look as old as time, like he had some answer that Elliot just couldn't find. "That's it?"
"I guess?"
"Elliot, you don't have time." the Captain gave him a weak smile. If it even qualified as a smile. Maybe he was just laughing at how goddamn naïve the man in front of him was. "The clock started ticking a few weeks ago, it isn't going to stop ticking either. You're not giving anything time, you're wasting it."
The atmosphere was thick with silence. He didn't have whatever answer Cragen wanted, or even the answers he wanted for himself. He closed his eyes, squeezing them as tightly as possible until he saw sparks of light behind his lids. "I know..." he whispered.
"So, why are you wasting that time if you know it's valuable?"
"Because she's only giving up more time! If..." he swallowed hard, choking the words out. "If she waits, God only knows how much time she's giving up for no reason. I don't want to lose her!"
"Has it dawned on you that she has nothing? She doesn't have a family waiting at home for her. The only relative she has left is her brother and we all know he's not around. Right now, she's walking around with nothing but a small sliver of hope that if she makes it out alive on the other side, she'll have something to look forward to."
"There are other ways!" he interjected. "There are other ways to grow a family!"
"But who are you to decide that for her, Elliot? Can you just imagine what it would be like for you if you had never had Kathy? If you had never had your children? For God's sake, you have so many people in your life, even ones you could dispose of, or already have." Elliot felt the jab; he was referring to his mother. His heart sank to his stomach, restricting his breathing. "Right now, this job is all she has — and she won't have that forever."
He gulped, looking down in his lap with guilt written all over his face. "She has me..." he whispered.
"But for how long?" Cragen looked at him with a deep sadness haunting his dark brown eyes. "You won't be here forever either."
Elliot stayed silent, letting the Captain's words run through him.
He wanted to be...
"I mean... what's the point of fighting if you don't have anything to fight for? You've almost flatlined with a bullet in your skin a handful of times, why did you choose to fight?" he paused, giving Elliot a moment to think. He knew the answer already. Every single time, it was the image of his children in his mind, pleading for him to just keep breathing. "Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, this might actually save her life?"
Playing it close to the vest wasn't always an option. It took strength, so much fucking strength to do so. A type of strength he didn't feel even existed within himself right now. A little more of her was gone, he could see it in her eyes. Where there was once a capacity for him to feel broken over that, he instead felt exhausted. Maybe they were the same thing.
"Captain..." he paused, drawing in a shaky breath. "Am I bad person?" He felt a solitary tear roll down his cheek as the words escaped in a whisper.
"Just be who she needs you to be, Elliot."
Olivia stood at the foot of her hospital bed, carefully packing up the bag that Casey had brought her after her surgery. She had every reason to be miserable; a PICC line remaining in her arm as well as the sling that supported her wound. Yet, she was surprised to still feel some happiness within her. After staring at her apartment walls for three weeks, she didn't expect to be so happy to return to them. She hated the silence at home, but her hatred towards the hospital would always be greater.
In normal Olivia style, she had bargained her way out of staying an extra three days. Her labs were coming back better each time, the remainder of the infection was finally responding to the antibiotics, and she'd made the promise of a week's worth of bed rest. She was still physically and mentally exhausted, leaving her fairly confident that she would actually survive bed rest.
Well, bed rest adjacent.
"Bed rest, huh?" Doctor Keller caught her attention from the door. She rolled her eyes with a curt laugh, moving to sit on the edge of the bed and resume her packing.
"Someone's gotta get me the hell out of here, figured I should do it myself." she retorted, folding and tucking a shirt into the duffle bag.
"I got some pathology reports back," he said, smacking the file against his palm. "Thought you might be in the mood for some good news, yes?" he pulled out the rolling chair from the desk next to her bed and sat down.
Her heart started racing as he thumbed through the pages. Her knuckles slowly gripped at the thin blanket on the bed. "G-good news?" she could hear the tremble in her own voice, bringing on a thick cloak of vulnerability.
"Yeah," he shut the file and crossed his hands over his lap. "You are extremely lucky. The type of cancer you have is often fueled by natural hormones in your body. In most cases, we do hormone suppressant therapy which obviously would make IVF impossible since we would need to load you up with those same hormones to do an egg retrieval."
Her lip quivered as the anticipation set in. "But?" she leaned forward, her eyes growing wider with anticipation every second that passed.
"But..." he smiled. "You, my dear, are both ER and PR negative. The cancer isn't feeding off of those hormones, neither estrogen or progesterone. I spoke to my colleagues and your team," his smile grew wider with another pause. "You've got the green light to do the egg retrieval."
Immediately, a sob tore through her, causing her body to buck forward as she gasped. She buried her head in her hands, crying pure joy for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. "Really?" she choked out in between her sobs.
"Mhm," he chuckled, handing her a box of tissues off of the desk. "In fact, you have a consultation scheduled with an embryologist in our network next week. It may be a little longer until you can start the hormones, we still need to give your body some time to heal. But, they've looked over your case, and they agreed that it's okay as long as we proceed with caution."
She sobbed harder into the crumpled tissues in her hand, struggling to catch her breath with each cry. If it weren't for the healing wound on her arm, she would've raised her hands up as high as could be.
The idea that she ever understood catharsis before that moment was a lie. She had never experienced such a raw emotion before in her entire life.
"One round, Liv. That's it." he said sternly. "We can't take any more risks after this. I mean, this in itself is a massive risk. We can't push our luck any further. Got it?" he raised his brows, making eye contact with her as soon as she managed to look up. Even with his own fears of the situation, it warmed his heart to finally see her in the pure form of joy.
She nodded, wiping away her tears as soon as she was somewhat coherent again. "Yeah, I got it." she beamed. "I'll do whatever I have to do."
"I'm glad to hear that," he said, standing up from the chair. "Because that means that you will go home and rest because the sooner you heal, the sooner we can get started on this.
She slowly started to resume packing her bags as he made it towards the door. She quietly thanked God that he had turned around because she didn't have to feel so conscious about the expression on her face. Staying detached and keeping her emotions to herself for so many years was starting to take a toll.
"Doctor Keller?" she said, pulling his attention right before he was ready to leave.
He turned on his heel to look at her in all of her emotional glory, viewing every vulnerability she had tried so hard to hide.
"Thank you," she whispered, her voice as genuine as could be. He smiled at her and she smiled back, her eyes still flooded with unfallen tears.
When he walked into his apartment late that night, the walls spoke to him in a different way than usual. For so long, he had become familiar with the feeling of stepping into his empty home. He had come to terms with it.
No longer were his nights met with the sound of children bustling around, ready to be rallied into bed to end the day. No more bedtime stories, no more braiding hair, no more tucking them in and checking under the bed for monsters.
It wasn't just that they had grown up, but that they had grown apart.
He was alone.
He didn't get to walk into his home of teenagers at the end of a long duty. The inevitable sigh of relief that came with knowing his children were safe and sound under his roof. Even if they weren't little, even if they were fully grown and thriving, he was still missing something.
He had their pictures scattered around the apartment. A half-assed reminder that it wasn't all a dream. It wasn't just an imaginary past. He clung to them, any morsel those photos could give to remind him that once upon a time, he was someone different.
Maureen was busy doing what she was best at. She'd walked across the stage, welcoming her well-deserved diploma to finally work in the medical field. Kathleen was probably spending her evening catching up on paperwork, sitting in her cubical at the rape crisis center whilst chugging coffee to keep her eyes open. A job she never expected to love so damn much. Dickie was undeniably sitting in bed, an Xbox controller in his hands while he dreamed of the life he desperately wanted in the military, while simultaneously ignoring the loads of homework in his backpack. Lizzie, she was likely nose-burried in a book that she had already read a million times. Eli was probably already asleep, just another young Stabler child who didn't yet have a grasp on the world around him.
They existed. They were still on the same Earth as him, even if they were however many miles away.
And the apartment was dark and cold, a home to only himself.
If it even qualified as a home.
He'd see his kids soon; the mantra that got him through every tough day. If only for a few hours, maybe an entire night if he were lucky enough.
Some days, the thought of seeing them again was just enough to push through the sadness. This was not one of those nights. It was another night he dreaded, a night that taunted him with the idea that the silence would swallow him whole.
His thoughts would burn a hole in his head and scorch the leather couch on their way out. Yet, somehow, even in the throes of self-pity, his heartache expanded for someone else. Someone who didn't have the same mantra to repeat in order to keep them from imploding in the loneliness.
Someone who was stumbling through a much darker tunnel than he was, unsure if there was even a way out.
The darkness of the paint on the walls didn't bring him the shelter and security he felt he needed. An everest green backdrop with a mounted television on mute mocking him. Laughing at him. How dare you think that you're any better? How dare you think you've got it all sorted out just enough to judge.
The Captain's words reverberated in his head, even hours after they had been said. "Why did you choose to fight?"
There had been no need for the pause he had taken. The answer was as clear as crystal. The answer would always be the same. His children. His family. His reason to carry on, a reason so strong that it knew no earthly bounds.
It left him questioning; a question so dark and deep within him that it hurt just to think about it. What if he didn't have his reasons? Would he have chosen to fight? Had he never had the experience to grow a legacy and a family would the thought of Olivia be enough to keep him from drowning in his own tragedy? Would his heart have continued to beat while a bullet was lodged into his body?
He hated the answer because it was more than just an answer to his own question, it was an answer to hers.
He wasn't enough.
Not right now, maybe not ever.
He wanted to be.
He understood it now. With the silence screaming at him in the center of an empty home, he could see it all so clearly now. No noise, no laughter, no purpose to keep fighting. Nothing to come home to. Nothing to live for.
She was creating her reasons to live. Maybe he'd be the additional help she needed. A supporting beam in a bigger picture. She knew well enough than to go into a fight without any back up. No guns, no ammunition, then there was no fight. Only loss. She knew how to win a fight, so was preparing.
He understood it now.
The mere thought of his children, wherever they be, was powerful enough to keep him going. Not even their faces or their voices, but just the knowledge that they still walked along side him in this life, their existence.
Something she never had.
He understood it now.
