June 13, 2014

Who's Noah?

"Where did you hear that name?" she asked him sharply, her eyes narrowing at him in the darkness, her body gone suddenly tight and rigid with tension. He'd been right to ask, then, right to think that whoever Noah was he mattered to her, a lot, was someone worth asking about.

"I heard you asking one of the girls to check on him," he said with a shrug.

Elliot had of course also heard Brian telling her to go upstairs, go see Noah on that very same night, but she didn't need to know that he'd followed her, that he'd been listening on that private conversation. Words he'd overheard in the parlor were fair game, though.

"So, who is he?"

"My dog," she said, too quickly and too humorlessly for him to believe her.

Secrets upon secrets, that seemed to be the way of things in this place. The quiet machinations of the city's power players, and Olivia's own story, and the story of the girls under her care, and the story of the blood and bones that had built this house, all of it was secret, and Olivia herself the keeper of the keys, the warden who kept those secrets locked away behind impenetrable walls, and herself with them.

"You're a hard nut to crack, aren't you," Elliot mused ruefully. "You don't give anything away."

"Neither do you, Eddie," she said pointedly.

He had to give it to her; she was right on that score. Elliot hadn't told her anything about his own life, wasn't in the habit of talking about himself to anyone. He'd worked with Ayanna for years before she ever found out his children's names, and she'd still never heard him speak Kathy's name out loud. Where he'd come from, where he'd been, where he intended to go, all these things he kept to himself, even from those people closest to him, those people he'd call friends.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours?" he asked, offering her a crooked little. He didn't expect her to accept the offer, not for one second.

"That's the second time you've said that," she grumbled. "What do you think this is, quid pro quo? You been watching Silence of the Lambs?"

"Hey, that's a good movie."

"When's the last time you saw a movie?"

"When's the last time you did?"

She raised her hands in a gesture of defeat, but she was smiling, again. It was just a moment, a single beat in time when they'd been teasing one another, but it was enough to make her smile, however briefly, and he treasured that smile. That smile was the prettiest goddamn thing he'd ever seen.

"Ran into a friend of yours not too long ago," he told her then. It was a gamble; maybe she didn't want to play a game of quid pro quo but he did, and maybe if he disguised his intentions she'd give him something without even realizing it.

"Oh, yeah?" she asked, arching an eyebrow at him curiously.

"Sister Peg."

"Oh." She smiled again, a different sort of smile, soft and sad, vulnerable, almost. "Saint Peg."

"She is that."

"What made you look her up?"

"Unrelated case," Elliot lied easily. "I've known her a long time, I used to be SVU."

"So I've heard."

One of these days he was gonna dig into that. Was gonna find out where her bodyguard got his information, how he'd found out Elliot's name, how he'd known the color of the day system, how he'd known what the color even was, when it changed every morning at roll call. There was a leak, somewhere in the NYPD, and if the madam could get that intel, anybody could.

"I did ask her about you, though. She didn't have much to say. But what she did say was kind."

She's a survivor, Sister Peg had said, and that was still bothering Elliot, still scratching at the back of his brain like the spindly branch of a tree against a window pane in the dead of night. What exactly had Olivia survived, and how had she done it? Peg had told him to dig up her file, and he had her full name, now, could go back through the records with a fine toothed comb, but Peg had told him Olivia had been attacked, and somehow he couldn't bring himself to find out what that meant. How she had been attacked, and why, and by who, and how much she had suffered; he felt as if he needed to know, but he couldn't stomach the thought of seeing Olivia's pretty face battered in evidence photos. The Olivia he was coming to know was strong, untouchable, and he wanted to keep her that way, at least a little while longer.

"I wish Peg had been around when I was coming up," Olivia confessed. "Things might have been different."

"You think you'd have left the life, if you had a chance?"

"Who says I didn't have a chance?" There was a note of warning in her tone and Elliot heeded it, kept his mouth closed and gave her the opportunity to keep talking. "Things were different here when I was young. It's not that way any more. But in the old days…yeah, maybe I would've run, if I'd had somewhere to run to."

"Couldn't go home?"

"You're like a dog with a bone, you know that?" she grumbled.

"Yeah, I've heard that before you."

"What about you, huh? Where'd you come from, Detective Stabler?"

It had to mean something, he thought, that she was even entertaining this conversation. That she hadn't walked away already, that she was still standing out on the white pavers with him in the glow of the lights strung through the lattice overhead. It had to means something that she'd made it sound like she wasn't interested in going tit for tat with him, but the first chance she got she asked about his own story. Maybe it was just a deflection, intended to draw his attention away from her past. Maybe it was for her own purposes, her own way of gathering intel, finding out who she was dealing with. Maybe she actually cared. He didn't know, and Sister Peg had told him not to trust her, but part of him wanted to. He found himself drawn to her as a moth to a flame, but he did not want to burn alone.

"Queens," he said, grinning.

"Let's see." Olivia started to pace in a slow circle around him. "Stabler. That's Irish, right? And that tattoo, you're Catholic? And a Marine? How about this. Working class boy from a big family, parents had too many mouths to feed, smart but not book smart, no money for college and grades weren't good enough so you enlisted to make some money, maybe start a family, but by the time the kids come along the thought of dying in the desert doesn't sound too appealing so you muster out, and now you're just a grunt with a gun and no degree, gotta find some way to keep food on the table, and cop's the next best thing to a soldier, isn't it? How am I doing?"

"Could use someone like you on the job," he said, rubbing his hand uncomfortably across the back of his neck. She'd read him well, too well. Had she seen his file already, or had she really just put all that together from two tattoos and a last name?

"How many kids?"

"Four."

"Jesus."

Everybody always seemed to react like that, when they found out how many children he had, and most of the time he took it with good grace, and some of the time he grieved, because the answer should have been five.

"They're all grown now, though. We got started early."

"You really are Catholic. What's your wife's name?"

"Kathy. She died seven years ago."

Olivia stopped in her pacing, just beside him, and while he looked straight ahead, sucking on the inside of his cheek to keep any emotion from showing on his face, she reached out and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. She wasn't looking at him anymore than he was looking at her, was instead staring at the fence behind him, but her hand was warm, and soft, and somehow reassuring, like she really did grieve for him, like she really did want to offer him solace. Condolences from a madam, who'd have thought?

"I'm sorry, Elliot."

There was no response to I'm sorry that ever felt appropriate. It's ok was a lie, because it wasn't, it wasn't ok that his wife was dead, it was never gonna be. It's not your fault was hollow because they both knew it wasn't that kind of sorry. It is what it is lacked any kind of emotional honesty.

"Me, too," he said. "Now, what about you?"

"You gonna tell me my life story?" she asked, beginning to pace again, her hand drifting slowly, regretfully away from him.

"You said you came here young," he started, taking a wild shot in the dark. "And you couldn't go home. You ran away. You were what, sixteen, seventeen? Young enough that if you'd gone somewhere legit you might have been picked up by social services and sent back. But you didn't want to go back. Daddy was abusive. The madam took you in, made you feel safe, but by the time you figured out you weren't safe it was too late. There was nowhere else for you to go. But you're pretty, and you're smart, and you know how to keep yourself alive, and you became her favorite. She passed the place down to you when she was ready to go. How'd I do?"

"I never knew my father," was all she said. That was the only piece of the story she corrected, and he figured the rest of it had to be true, or close enough to true that the differences didn't matter.

What a pair we make, he thought. Growing up too fast, too tough, making the hard choices, the big choices, that changed the trajectory of their whole lives, sent them down such wildly different paths, and yet ultimately led them both to the same place, to this glittering white house so full of secrets, so full of pain.

"We're not so different, you and me," she mused, like she'd read his fucking mind.

"No," he agreed.

"But you're the cop, and I'm the outlaw. This story only ends one way, Elliot."

There was a note of sorrow in her voice, as if she were mourning for what could have been, what they could have been, if only things were different. Maybe in another life, some parallel universe, they could've been friends. Maybe they could have been more. Maybe he was just lonesome, and maybe she was, too. It had to be lonely, he thought, in that big house, behind all those locked doors, because whatever Sister Peg no way any of those girls stayed on more than a few years, a revolving door of faces, people Olivia maybe got close to and then lost, again and again, and all of them working for her, anyway, so no matter how much they liked her they always saw her as a boss, and no matter how much she liked them she could only keep them in her life as long as they were willing to trade their bodies for cash. Her whole life was a wisp of smoke, a piece of art she sold to the highest bidder, and how many people ever knew her well enough to see through to the heart of her? Would he ever be allowed such grace?

"Maybe not," he said. Maybe it didn't have to end with him back in Elliot Stabler's shoes and her behind bars. Maybe they could make something here, build some trust. Maybe he could get her to turn evidence against her clients, get her immunity in exchange for some testimony. If he did that, though, maybe she'd end up in Witsec, and he'd never see her again. Jesus, maybe she was right. Maybe this was only ever gonna end with the two of them walking away from each other.

"I don't know how the story ends," he said then. "Honest to God, Olivia, I don't. But I don't think either of us is gonna walk away, are we?"

It wasn't really a question. He had a job to do, and he was gonna do it if it killed him, and this house was her home, her fucking kingdom, and no way was she gonna wash her hands of it. They were like two trains on a track, locked in place, barreling towards each other, and no one to pull the brakes.

"No," she said.

She was in front of him, again, facing him, the pair of them locked in a standoff like a Texas Ranger and an outlaw in an old western, each of them wondering who was gonna draw first.

"But it's nice to meet you, Elliot Stabler."

In the darkness she held out her hand, and he took it.

"It's nice to meet you, Olivia Benson."

He'd known her for over a month now but that moment, standing there shaking her hand in the glittering darkness, that was the first time he saw her, and what he saw made him want to sink to his knees, and weep. For all the lost souls like her, and for him, too, and for the world that had made them both.