A/N: hi, sorry it's been a month... I can't come up with a plausible excuse lmao. there's a set of song lyrics included in the fic from the song 're:stacks' by Bon Iver and the song really fits the chapter, so I really hope you'll give it a listen! I'm not exactly in love with this chapter but I hope you like it!


Chapter Twenty Four — Desolation V

Between the cinder block walls, she is safe. The scent of betadine in the air might say otherwise. She knows its cement behind the drywall that's been painted a calming sage green. She knows that if her world were to combust at that very moment, she was in her own little bunker. This had been her bunker from the start, the pause she'd put on a never ending whirlwind that had become her life.

She is safe.

She had savored the last injection that would be coming at her own volition. Though, she had forced herself to do it alone. Thirteen days of Elliot pushing the plunger of medication into her body was just enough. She wanted the last day to herself. She needed it.

Instead of relying on him, she had done what she had planned to do alone since day one, the thing she had been scared of doing from the moment she'd picked up the supplies at the pharmacy. She'd squeezed the least bruised and tender spot on her stomach and forced herself to feel the pain of the injection. Like the lighting of the last sacramental torch before barreling into the unknown.

If she couldn't give herself one tiny needle, she was afraid she couldn't do any of it.

The flesh colored band-aid blended with her skin, hiding her last self-inflicted wound that was given in the name of hope. In the name of a new life that was to come after her this chapter was closed… if the chapter closed.

The clock had started and all that was left between the barrier of now and then was 36 hours.

The last voluntary stab into her skin. This was hope, she told herself. Her eyes remained glued to the blank wall in front of her. This is hope. This had to be hope…

How the hell is this hope?

Staring at a blank office wall while waiting for a fertility specialist to come in and inject her with the last step, how was that hope? Cotton balls and bandaids turning into IVs and bags of chemotherapy drugs. If this was hope, why did it feel like venturing into a dark and unfamiliar hallway?

She needed to be alone for this one. If not to prove it to herself, then to prove it to the universe. No hand to hold, no shoulder to cry on. If she were to have hope, it would need to be solely reliant on herself. To bear the uncomfortable alone meant to brave it alone, and some part of her wondered if she was leaning too heavily on Elliot's shoulder. She had to stand by herself in the rain of her own hurricane at least once.

She needed to feel this pain. It needed to sear into her skin like the branding of her fate, she needed to feel whatever it had to give. Relying on him as novocaine was dangerous and she had started to grow comfortable with his presence again. The way he'd pop the cap off of the needle with his teeth, barely losing his grin in the process. He'd crack a joke, anything that would make her smile. He'd sing into the capped syringe some horridly out of tune song and slide his feet against the linoleum. He'd swab her skin with alcohol, sometimes spelling out his name as if he were dragging his finger against a misty window's condensation.

More times than most, she'd smile instead of wince.

He would always be delicate with the bandaids, his thumb pressing the adhesive into her skin with care and consideration. Never on the wound directly, only on the perimeter. There was a science to how meticulous he could be.

He made things okay, but they weren't supposed to be okay. So, it felt wrong.

Being alone felt safer. The cinder block walls with the sage green paint and no sounds other than her shallow breathing, it was so much safer. Nothing would ever hurt worse than the chance of losing her comfort, and she didn't like surprises. Inducing the pain was safer.

She stayed quiet as her fertility specialist came in with the sterile injection kit. Her eyes remained glued to the floor as the doctor quietly explained what she already knew. What she had known for a while now. To her own surprise, she winced when the needle slid into her arm. It was always different with Elliot. As if he already knew where the nerves beneath her skin lied, avoiding them with dutiful care. There were no baby-making jokes or smiley faces that he had already drawn onto the bandaids. It was cold and lonely, forcing her to feel just how lonely it truly was without him.

But this was hope, and sometimes hope needed to be cold and lonely. She wasn't sure why, or if she would ever know. In her world, hope felt as if it needed to be lonely. It wouldn't have felt earned or deserved had she not spent at least a majority of her time in the darkness, in the pits of despair. If hope came as easily as the offer of a hand being held, her universe rejected it. Things like hope were never just handed to her.

She had to earn it.

"New York state requires for a patient to have a friend or family member drive them home after the procedure. Do you have arrangements made for the retrieval procedure?" the doctor asked, interrupting the endless chatter in her mind.

"Uh— yeah," she paused to think. Casey, she had asked Casey. Just another self-sabotaging plan in denying herself of any real comfort. She had reliability, that was the maximum of what she needed. "Yeah, my friend Casey is driving me to and from the appointment."

"I know you've probably been walked through the procedure a hundred times by me and probably even the internet," the doctor chuckled softly, pulling up a seat in front of Olivia. "Do you have any questions? About the procedure or the process?"

Olivia's head dropped forward. She didn't want to know, not really. She'd learned all that she could stomach but left the rest in the hands of the benefit of the doubt. She knew she'd be sedated, the procedure would take anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes, and she would be sore for a few days. "Um, no. No, I think I'm all set." she answered hoarsely.


By the time the day had faded into night, she was gone from her bunker of cement walls painted sage green and in the true comfort of her own bed. Though, there wasn't much else to do other than to thrash between the cold covers as the hymns of never ending traffic filled her ears.

Sometimes, not always, but sometimes she liked to think about what color she would paint her child's nursery. Even that iota of hope was painful enough, but sometimes it was what she needed. Her hand ran softly over the white duvet on her bed. She'd go with yellow, most likely. It was soft and it reminded her of the sunshine and hell hath no fury if her child didn't know what pure sunshine would feel like.

This painful world of hers, it couldn't crash into her child's life. It just couldn't.

She'd pick yellow either way. Accented with flowers for a girl and animals for a boy. Not overly decorated, of course. Subtle and sweet. On the occasion that she had seen a fully decorated nursery, her heart never fluttered as much as it did when she saw something simple, something tailor made with every perfect detail in the right place. Most nurseries were designed directly out of a catalogue, as if a theme was picked and that was that. She wanted something different. She wanted the personal, not the designer.

Beside her in the silence of her bed, the screen of her phone illuminates the darkness. She sees his name written across the caller ID and her heart begins to beat a little faster. The smooth glass feels cold against her flushed cheek. "Hello?"

"Hey," she hears his calm greeting on the other end of the line. "Did your appointment go well?" he asked.

She paused, wondering if she had the energy to dive into the logistics. He'd want to know, he's doing better with this stuff. She's noticed it — his willingness to learn and repair his previous ignorances. "It was okay."

"Good," he replies simply. "How are you?"

She paused again, longer this time. She wants nothing more than to sink into the cold bed and allow it to envelop her. She wants the force of gravity to push her down just a little harder into the comfort, but the inertia doesn't budge. She can hear his breathing, his apprehension from her silence. Her eyes closed, shutting the already dark world out of her vision.

"Liv?"

"What was Eli's nursery theme?" she asked, her voice quiet and gravelly from the established exhaustion. She can already picture the confusion on his face, mainly in his eyes. He always spoke from the eyes. He's probably glancing around, furrowing his brows as he wracks his brain for any logical reason as to why she's wondering such a thing.

He sputtered as he took a moment to reply. "Uh— sports, I think. Why do you ask?" he sounded concerned, she could hear it but her curiosity travels further than her willingness to answer him.

"Tell me about it," she whispered into the phone.

"We uh— well, we didn't know what we were having. Kathy was set on the baby being a girl but we still didn't want to take the risk. That, and he wouldn't need his own room for at least a few months. So, we did his nursery neutral at first. Painted it white, I think. Mainly white furniture. Then, Maureen went off to college so Dickie moved out of Lizzie's room and into Maureen's old room and we re-did his bedroom. I saved the old stuff just in case. So, when Eli was a few months old, I fished out some of Dickie's old stuff from the garage and it was all sports themed."

Olivia felt herself smiling as she listened to him talk. Her body was still cold but there was a warmth radiating within her chest. He always softened when he spoke about his children, the intensity that was Elliot Stabler calmed and his words became like music to her.

"What about Kathleen's?" she asked. Now she could hear his smile on the other end of the line, or at least she thought she could. She could sense it.

"Ballerinas." he chuckled. "We found out her gender instead of waiting like we did with Maureen. I still remember the smell of the pink paint. Maureen was still little, and she really wanted to help me paint so I got a little brush for her and a little paper plate with some paint on it. Not even fifteen minutes in and she turns and looks at me and the tip of her little nose is suddenly bubblegum pink."

His laugh, his quiet and nostalgic laugh made her heart clench. The vision of him in her head was beginning to become more clear. She could see the smile, and the way his eyes looked as if they were a million miles away. He always seemed to have that haze in his vision when looking back, as if just like that he was suddenly right in that moment once again.

The line stayed silent, filled with only the soft sound of their mutual breathing. It isn't her place to imagine herself in that moment either. That was all him. She had the future, that was what belonged to her. Her own memories to be made, her own chemical scent of yellow paint becoming ingrained into her mind.

She hadn't realized that tears had formed in her eyes until the moments before they fell. Her breath involuntarily hitched with a sharp inhale. "Good night, Elliot." she whispered, disconnecting the call before he had a chance to respond.

Her head lolled to the side, falling back against the pillow. Her hot tears dripped down over the bridge of her nose, the heat of them dissolving with the coolness of the pillowcase.

Her entire life revolved around a different level of survival than an average civilian. This was different. For the next — 30 hours, she had to survive differently. She had to float through it, feel nothing, just survive it. The transitioning phase of one chapter of her life to the next. Or maybe that was just a short interlude. The real chapter began in 30 hours. The one where the scent of survival would shift into something different. Something that actually carried life and death on its shoulders, not just the death of her spirit.

For the next 30 hours, survival was mental. Just as the last four weeks had been. 30 hours before the switch would flip and survival would consist of the beeping of monitors and the force of a breath in her lungs, this denial, this current state of her so-called survival was trivial. A joke. All she was surviving until now was her own damn mind.

The tears burned hotter, angrier against her skin. Survival was ducking from a thrown vodka bottle at twelve years old. Survival was a knife to her neck in the filthy bus terminal as a serial killer ran with two children in his arms. Survival was the dirty floor of the Sealview basement as her eyes clamped shut and the touch of metal froze her skin.

She felt like a fool for thinking that this, these 30 hours, were any sort of survival.


Casey's foot impatiently tapped against the carpeted floor of the surgical center. Olivia was lying in the bed, waiting a fair bit more patiently than her friend who was clearly just nervous. Her fingers played with the admission bracelets on her wrist, flicking at the plastic band. She couldn't help but scoff at the damn thing. Her entire life came down to the words on the bracelet. Benson, Olivia Margaret. Date of birth: 12/13/1967. MSK Ambulatory Center. Allergies: Penicillin.

That was her life summed up in the only important details. That bracelet was her life, her entire timeline. Had it fallen on the ground and a stranger would pick it up, that was all they would know about her. That she was a Sagittarius who couldn't breathe if she came in contact with amoxicillin.

"is Elliot coming?" Casey asked simply.

There it was, the exact sentence she was waiting for. She didn't know. The answer didn't really seem fitting for the moment. She didn't know if he'd be there, and she didn't want to think of how it made her feel because if she did, she'd probably shamefully fall apart.

She couldn't think about the possibility of spending every day of the last two weeks bringing this plan into the light with his help, and to have the end result — or the partial-end result turning out like this. Every injection, band-aid, dumb joke, cotton ball, and ice pack was coming to fruition. Every reason why his fingerprints existed on the skin of her torso, and he wasn't here to see it come to light.

No, she couldn't think about that.

"I don't know." she responded, pretending to be groggier than she actually was. They had given her something to relax before going under, a valium or something. Truth be told, she didn't need it. She had done what she always did when she felt stress like this — she had retreated. Quiet and reserved and practically living on a different mental level than the people around her.

He'd held her hand last time. Something unspoken, a promise maybe. There wasn't any obligation though, not from where she saw it.

But there was still the wanting of his presence. A want that she chastised herself for even having. He wouldn't always be there to hold her hand, and she knew that better than anyone. His hand in hers was a luxury, not a right. If she couldn't do this without him, she shouldn't be doing it at all.

Right?

Olivia Margaret Benson who was a sagittarius with a penicillin allergy could do this without him. Nowhere on her bracelet was his name stamped with the same ink as her own name. She had to believe that or else the walls would come crumbling down and the floor would give out from beneath her.

She wasn't allowed to have a crutch. Never. The universe simply did not permit that. Not for her. Everything in her life came with the preparation of doing it alone in some way or another. This couldn't be different. It could not be different.

So why was the panic beginning to rise in her chest? Whatever they had given her, valium, ativan, any of them, her body was burning through it faster than she could calm herself. Her palms started to sweat as she gripped the metal railings on the sides of the bed.

She was failing herself. At least, that's what the devil on her shoulder was telling her. There was no angel on the other shoulder telling her to relax because she deserved to cut herself some slack. It was just the devil and the curse of her own thoughts.

"Olivia? We're ready to take you back." A nurse smiled upon entering the room. Though, her smile dropped when she saw the panic-stricken face of her patient.

"No," she choked out. Casey started to rise from her chair. "No, no I can't. He's not here, I can't." the tears, how many times had they fallen by now? How many times had they burned the cold skin of her cheeks? "Casey, I can't do this without him here."

"Liv, I—" Casey sputtered, nervously looking at the nurse. "I can try to get him on the phone. Is that okay?"

"I need him here, Casey," she began to sob, reaching her hands out to grip her friend's arm. "I ca— I can't do this, not unless he's here!" her breathing sped up, her eyes darting around the room at their own volition.

She needed air.

Wait, no, she needed him.

Her mind flashed with the images of him holding her hand, walking around her apartment as if he owned the place, his smile and the fall of the orange leaves. All of it. Closing her eyes didn't help, it only made the images appear with more clarity. Keeping her eyes open meant immersing herself in the image of herself without him.

She could shame herself another day for feeling weak. Right now, she needed him. There would be no fighting that truth, no denying it. Seeing this through without him was impossible.

Casey was at a loss for words. "I, I don't know wha—"

"I'm here!" he shouted, the hallway filling with the familiar sound of his shoes on the ground as he ran.

Olivia shot up from the bed craning her neck to see from beyond the curtain. The tears fell harder down her cheeks when she saw him pull back the curtain, out of breath from the rush.

"You never told me that you wanted me to come so I assumed you didn't, but it felt wrong." he spoke rapidly, rushing over to her bedside to relieve her firm grip on the guard rails. "I'm sorry. I'm here now." his eyes brushed up and down the sight of her, seeing a different shade of Olivia Benson that he wasn't familiar with. She didn't panic. Her default during stress was automatically shutting down, but the panic was foreign to both of them. His free hand brushed through her hair, coaxing her to lie back down on the bed.

"Elliot," she whispered, her lip quivering as she stared up at him with glassy eyes. "What if I ca—"

"No," he interrupted, kneeling down to be face-height with her. His hand gripped hers tighter, white-knuckling through his own emotional turmoil "No 'what ifs' today. The Olivia that I know doesn't do 'what ifs' and you are still that Olivia. You've handled the last two weeks of IVF like a freaking hero, so whatever 'what if' you've got sitting on you, it's wrong. Do you understand me? It's wrong."

With her lower lip still wobbling, she slowly nodded. "Promise?"

"I promise that I promise." he smiled, exhaling the tension in his chest with a puff. "It's something I used to say to the kids when they were little. Everything is going to be perfectly fine. I'll be right here the entire time. If anyone can do this, Liv, it's you."

With apprehension still incredibly visible in her eyes, she nodded once more. Her head fell back against the pillow as she released a shaky breath. "Okay," she whispered, glancing over at the nurse before her vision returned to Elliot.

She could see the pain in his eyes, the sadness and the worry. He stood as strong as stone, trying to cover up the unease that he wasn't aware she could see. She saw the blooming of tears from behind the blue eyes staring back at her.

This was it. She was in the thick of it once again. Another moment that had always been a distant plan come to life. Another moment that never felt real until the very last second.

Suddenly, the breaks on the wheels of the bed were undone and she was rolled away from the triage room. Casey and Elliot remained standing, neither of them quite sure how to process the last few minutes of their life. Neither of them had ever witnessed the side of Olivia that had just been displayed.

Casey was the first to slink back into her seat, rubbing her eyes with her palms. Elliot simply stared at the now empty room where the bed had been. He slowly sunk back down into the seat beside Casey, basking in the hauntingly empty feeling in his chest.

There were no windows around, he noticed. Not like the hospital where ceiling to floor windows filled the waiting rooms. It was a cold and empty cement box. If only he had known that at her last appointment, Olivia had thought the same thing. It felt like a bunker. Though, Olivia's bunker felt safer. To him, this felt like terror.

Between these walls, dreams were fought to be made true. Lives were created in petri dishes and families were completed. He wonders for a moment if a majority of other patients ever felt the fear that grips him. Probably not. Olivia's specialist worked with people like her, people who had one chance left before chemotherapy killed that chance. But this office was also a beacon to other people, people without ticking time bombs in their chests. Just ordinary people who wanted babies.

God, he'd truly pestered her in the past about children. As if it were that easy. These nights, he lives to regret those words. The old fashioned way. That one was a low blow and he knew it.

But somehow this bunker managed to shift his perspective in a complete 180. The entire situation that he had injected himself into, her situation, had changed his perspective. The walls talked to him, told him the tales of truly how difficult creating life could be. Everything he'd ever known about the creation of life had been in black and white, but if this wasn't grey then nothing was.

"Can you believe it, Case?" he whispers, barely glancing at the woman beside him. She's busy, just as lost in her thoughts as he is. He follows her line of vision, landing on a corkboard filled with photos of smiling babies. Lives that were created from this very bunker. "It's always you and me in the waiting rooms."

"How did we get here?" she rasps. He doesn't hear regret in her voice, only dejection. "Do you think someday Liv will have a picture of herself and a baby on that board?"

He mulls over the question but he doesn't know why the answer doesn't come as breasily. He wants to hope so. He wants to believe it will happen. She's made it this far, hasn't she? "She has to," he answers with a shaking exhale. "If she isn't, then what's the point?"

Casey's eyes softly close and Elliot can sense that she's fighting off tears. He wishes there were a chapel in this medical center, just like the one at Sloan Kettering. He worries that if he prays here, in his cement bunker, the walls will be too thick for God to hear him.

He needed God to hear him.

He listens to the soft music floating through the rooms. There isn't much else he can do except listen. He listens to the music but he also listens with a careful ear for trouble or distress, any sign coming from down the hall that Olivia is in need of help.

She's probably sedated, drifting beneath the blanket of anesthesia. It's probably the first time in a while where she felt truly nothing. Even sleep had left her restless, nightmares controlling every moment of rest.

He doesn't sleep much either.

He wants to go outside for fresh air but he doesn't dare to leave her. Logically, he knows it will be at least another half hour before she's back in his presence, but his mind screams that leaving is betrayal. But the panic that wraps itself around his lungs is also a betrayal, and it's one that he simply can't fight.

He barely has time to glance at Casey before he's gunning for the front door.


The clock seems to tick louder with every passing minute. She's been gone for an hour now and eternities have passed. He sent Casey home, he knew she was itching with anxiety. Now, it was just him and the bunker walls.

When he spots a nurse walking in his direction, he automatically rises to his feet. The music on the radio shifts and he hears the gentle strumming of a guitar, a whisper of lyrics following as the nurse guides him.

'Everything that happens is from now on. This is pouring rain. This is paralyzed.'

His steps are shallow and when he sees her from around the corner, he feels something within his chest beginning to break. Her auburn hair is splayed across the white pillowcase, her tired eyes still closed. Her chest rises and falls and he can see the stain of her previous tears still on her cheeks.

Something in his soul tells him to fall to his knees, but he fights it. It tells him to grip the safety bars on the bed, hold the cold metal in his palms as he prays. She looks helpless and he wants to pick her up and run. Run as far away from all of this as possible. But he can't because his knees are wobbling with the urge to kneel.

'I keep throwing it down, two hundred at a time. It's hard to find it when you knew it,'

He doesn't fall though. He settles for sitting beside her in another cold chair. His hand reaches through the rail, holding her limp hand within his own. He feels his jaw lock in position, gritting down on his molars as they threaten to turn to dust. She hates looking helpless, and he knows that she'd hate a mirror right now.

This was what it had come down to. The shots, the band-aids, the cotton balls. His hand holding hers in as one of them lies in a hospital bed while the other one fights off the painful sting of tears.

All those bottles of liquid gold and all those stupid jokes.

'On your back with your racks as he stacks your load. In the back with the racks and he stacks

your load. In the back with the racks and you're unstacking your load.'

"Elliot?" she stirs and when he lifts his head to look at her, he sees one of her dark brown eyes staring back at him.

It hits him like a freight train.

But it hits her harder.

He watches as she comes out of the fog, as her emotions twist and turn within her. The more she becomes conscious, the more he can see it written in the lines on her face. Her lower lip wobbles and his heart clenches in his chest, his hand holding tighter.

"Elliot," she says again, but this time with a panic-laced sharp inhale. Her tired eyes widen and her world is collapsing. Before a tear can fall from her eyes, he's out of his seat and rushing to the other side of her.

The dam is breaking. It's hitting her. It's hitting her so fucking hard.

He pushes the railing down and crawls into the bed beside he's throwing any and all caution to the wind. He needs her, she needs him, and nothing else is important. His arm wraps around her chest, his nose pressing into the back of her hair. He feels her chest puff as she cries, her hand gripping the forearm that's thrown over her.

'I've been twisting to the sun, I needed to replace. And the fountain in the front yard is rusted out. All my love was down in a frozen ground.'

The music plays between his soft hushing and her painful cries. "It's over," she mutters between sobs. "It's over, Elliot. It's over." her hand claws at his warm skin, holding on for dear life. He hides his face in her hair, pretending that his own eyes aren't becoming wet from the sound of her cries.

It's over, he thinks. The procrastination. The reasons she had come up with. The excuses. It's over, the barrier is gone, and her problem is now face to face with her. "I know, Liv," he whispers against her scalp.

"It can't be over. Not yet, I'm not ready," she sobs again, her head falling forward from the force of her cry. He feels her body trembling, every pent up emotion that had lay dormant for weeks now bursting at the seams.

No more IVF. No more pretending that life was okay. No more trying to outrun the clock.

His lungs burn but not nearly as bad as hers do. His hold on her becomes tighter, a harsh weight against her ribcage that pushes her into him. He wants to brush the hair from her face and dry her tears with the empty promise that everything will be okay. But now is not the time to lie, or at the very least, feed false hope. So, he does what he can do. He does what is in his power.

He holds her like the world is shattering, because it is.

'Whatever could it be that has brought me to this loss?'

Her cries come almost silently, but with a force that he hasn't witnessed before. His only goal is to hold her as tightly as he can, anything to reassure her that her feet are still on the ground and that she is still alive.

It's over. Even he struggles to realize that. They've already ran as far as they could, but just as they both knew it would, it has caught up to them. Reality has finally caught them in it's cruel chokehold.

But, for now, they have the music. They have the hope, freshly harvested just a few rooms over. They have the moments of him lying against her back in a hospital bed as he holds her tighter than he's ever held his wife.

They have now. Maybe now is all they've ever had. But, they still have to have tomorrow too.

"This is not the sound of a new man, or a crispy realization. It's the sound of me unlocking and you lift away. Your love will be safe with me."