author's note; this is just a quick little something inspired by the song, Atlantic City - Bruce Springsteen. The few scattered lines in italics are from the song. Enjoy.
Atlantic City.
She didn't like driving at night. Alone. On the Turnpike. When the air was a blanket of fog. When she was driving down a road that would take her back 8 years.
Time machines were still not invented, aside from the futuristic tales that had predicted them, and she realized at this moment, her hands gripping the wheel to stop them from shaking, as she drove this car down the New Jersey Turnpike in the direction of her past, that they were not built because of lack of technology, but rather because of fear.
You live and you move on, and if you're lucky you forget. You don't go back. You don't turn around and you don't pass go and you do not collect 200 dollars and you do not pretend that you are strong enough to go back.
She glanced in the rearview mirror, but no one was behind her. No one was beside her. No on was infront of her. This was Olivia Benson traveling the dark road, alone, to that which she had lost 8 years ago.
She removed one hand from the steering wheel and reached for the controls on the door, pressing the tiny black button to open the windows, and she took a deep breath as the windows went down slowly, allowing the Jersey air into her car.
In the next moment she reached for the necklace around her neck, the gold chain short and strong, resting below the base of her neck and holding a cross with all it's might. It was more of a symbol of what she wanted to believe than what she actually did, and in one quick moment she ripped the chain from her neck, breaking the metal, it coming apart like the pieces of her life, and she held the cross before her for a quick moment.
If this really was time travel, she was going back to a different kind of faith than the tangible one that could be made into gold or silver or diamonds. She was going back to feeling and to an Olivia that had died 8 years ago when everything else in her life did.
When she did.
She threw the cross out the window and turned the radio up as pieces of the universe flew into the car, cold and harsh against her cheeks, tearing her apart.
Again she looked in the rearview mirror, taking in a quick glimpse at what was behind her.
Everything.
The carseat caught her eye and she closed her eyes for a moment, the curtain closing over the brown uncertainty that this had become since receiving that call.
Her fingers crossed over the turn signal and she took a deep breath as she changed lanes and headed off of the exit for the Garden State Parkway.
Meet me tonite in Atlantic City.
Tonite was time travel at it's greatest.
----
She didn't know why she called her. Maybe it was because when they handed her a phone and her fingers went to dial, that was the only number, the only part of her old life that she remembered. Maybe she did it because she wanted to believe that 8 years was not that long and that life did not really go on.
The clouds cried for her, soft tears that came upon her as unrelenting as the memories of who she was not about to meet.
She sat on a bench upon the wooden boardwalk, thick with splinters and stories and Alex Cabot watched couples and lovers and friends, but she did not feel jealous and she did not feel mad and she did not feel resentful because she had taught herself not to.
They said she could come back, and for all intents and purposes, she was never dead, but she remembered with an absent smile that no one was next to her, that no one knew that, that no one ever had, and she wondered how anyone could tell her that she was alive.
From the lights and the extravagance of one of Donald Trump's casino's she came walking towards her.
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.
Her hair was the same, brown and brilliant against the dark of her skin. But her face was laced with new lines, new adventures and scars of life and she did not smile and she did not run and she did not hug her and she did not touch her and she looked her over like one would a ghost. She looked her over like one did a memory that they were trying desperately to recover. She could feel that she was pulling her from the darkest corner of her mind, and she could feel the ocean to her back and the past at her front, and she said nothing.
"Your hair is brown." Olivia said it with observation. Olivia said it like detective Benson, like she was taking this in and taking clues and building a profile for some case.
She was taking in the profile of a victim.
Olivia Benson had been around enough victims to know that everything that dies does not come back, this being no exception.
"I-" Alex shook her head and shrugged her shoulders before crossing her arms across her front, pulling herself together to keep the pieces of who she had become from falling apart before the one piece of life she had ever had.
The lights on the boardwalk cast them in the shadows, their tall figures dark pieces of the night, and Olivia turned away from the blue in Alex's eyes because she was not allowed to do this.
"Why here? This cheap place with pricey hotels in the middle of poverty. Filled with senior citizens and young kids. You live here now, or something?" Olivia's voice was hard.
Everything dies baby, that's a fact.
Her eyes looked into the windows of Olivia's mind, back through the walls that she had built and she tried to pull the memory from Olivia, but she could feel the resistance. She could feel where their life, her life, ended, and she felt like a fool for ever thinking that Olivia had stopped when she had. The ring on Olivia's finger called her pathetic, and she turned around to the ocean, pounding relentlessly upon the soft yellow sand, and she let her head fall in time with her heart.
"It's raining and cloudy and I don't think you could catch any stars tonite." Alex let out a hard breath of defeat that she had been holding for eight years.
"People come here and they gamble and they lose what they don't even have." Olivia turned around to face the strip of casino's spread across the opposite side of the boardwalk from the ocean.
She lost something she didn't even have.
In the dark Alex turned back to the single piece of herself, the one thing she still had after returning back to a world where she was allowed to be herself again, now that Velez had been handled.
"You said to take a gamble on you." Alex pulled a silver quarter out of her pocket, the piece of this life that she had taken with her to her other life, where she was Kady Breller of Little Rock, Arkansas. The coin had the date on it, 2002, and it was worn in the middle from where she would rub it.
"Oh Jesus." Olivia fell back a few steps, her mind unlocked to this whole thing, to the night years ago in Atlantic City where she handed Alex the quarter, where she promised her the universe, where she asked her to trust her.
"I've. Missed. You." Each word was hard and Alex leaped back into this life, because when you're dead, you cannot feel. Alex took slow steps towards Olivia, who took larger steps away from her.
This was an interruption of life as she knew it and this was not going to happen because she had worked too damn hard to get a piece of normality in her life, she had paid so much and lost so much and gained so much and this piece of yesterday was not going to take her back down to the past.
Alex grabbed her before she could back farther away, and she pushed herself into her.
"He has his father's smile." Olivia breathed the words against Alex's lips, and the hands that held her past let her go, it was now Alex's turn to fall back.
Her body was torn apart in anger, and she looked Olivia over slowly.
His name was William and he was the reason that Olivia could not go down this road to Alex. He was the reason that the past was where it was and that was where it had to stay.
And our love may be cold.
Alex wished she had words, but in the absence of life there is death and she was gone again, lost against the sea that Olivia was, drowning in everything that had once given her life.
She felt herself lose the memories, and she stopped breathing.
Olivia noticed this, and while she couldn't feel she did, she felt her heart and she felt it as she reached for Alex, but when she touched her she pulled her hand back quickly.
You cannot go back.
"Alex," she started, but then she gave her a sad smile instead of words, caught the blue in her eyes one last time, and turned away quickly.
---
"I know you love her." His words danced against her ear, and she stayed with her back to him. She would not let him see this, even though she knew that he let her love her, and she let him do that for her, because she needed that memory to love in order to have this.
"I love you." She felt the words, and his arms as they fell around her, and she settled into him, back into this life in which she had to abandon the one thing she had promised she never would. "You know I love you." She closed her eyes when she spoke, and he knew it because she always did. He knew she thought of the both of them and she loved the both of them and he had to be okay with that because at the end of each day the sun would set and regardless of whom she loved more she would still be with him.
"Liv, I don't want to make you choose, I know,"
"Stop." She cut him off and rolled over, her center realigning when she remembered that their son had his smile and his warmth and part of his life. "It just threw me," she started, reached for his face, and he kissed her hand gently because he loved her regardless of the doubt that hang in her eyes, low and heavy like the stars that looked ready to abandon the universe.
"You mourned for her for years, baby, and I don't want you to go through that again." His words were soft and she knew that she had lived with him instead of died with him, like she had Alex, and she knew that the blue in his eyes would not drown her and she knew that the life in his touch would sustain her and she knew that she would never have to gamble with him.
There was a knock on their door that interrupted their ascent back into life and Olivia watched him roll from the bed, grabbing a t-shirt from the end of the bed as he went towards the door, and Olivia pushed herself up slowly and made her way out of their room and down the hall to her son's room.
She leaned against the doorway, holding it up as she let herself fall into a smile, watching her toddler dream in color about the innocent world he lived in.
"This time I have to say goodbye. I have to say I love you." The words came from behind her, through tears, and Olivia did not turn around and she did not breath and for one moment she did not live.
"This is Will." Olivia did not turn around, but she walked into her son's room and Alex followed her cautiously. "My Will."
Alex looked out into the hallway where Elliot Stabler stood casting a protective glare upon his wife and son, and she knew that she had interrupted their dream.
"I can't do this again without goodbye. I'm sorry to come here and I'm sorry to interrupt and I know -" Olivia looked to her, and Alex's words stopped as Olivia leaned down and kissed her son softly before getting up and walking out of his room, once in the hallway she took Elliot's hand, putting each of his fingers between hers to remind herself that this was what life was.
A ghost was not life.
She knew that she had followed her because this time, on the road home, lights came from behind her, lights followed her up the highway and back into her life.
Alex came home with her.
"Welcome back, Alex." Olivia said once the three were in the living room, looking back and forth from the past to the present and Olivia knew that she could not do this. With Elliot's hand and Alex's eyes she remained standing.
"He's beautiful." Alex was looking at the pictures of William throughout the room, and Elliot pulled away from Olivia to leave them together, but Olivia pulled him back.
"He, uh," Elliot cleared his throat and ran his hand over Olivia's hand, "has his mother's eyes."
Alex looked to Olivia, but Olivia cowered back into Elliot, into now and not then, into this and not that, and Alex felt each part of her newly reinstated life crack, what had survived was not doing so any longer. She was completely gone.
"Goodbye." This time the word carried everything that it had to and nothing that it had to and Olivia said nothing as her past turned slowly and walked out of her present.
"Liv, I'm sorry, she just came in and she said -" Elliot apologized once she was gone, and Olivia silenced him with a hard kiss.
She needed to taste this and not that.
"I love you." She said with her eyes closed, and Elliot knew that she meant her too.
---
finished.