Are We Good?

Chapter 3 – 2001

Things were ever-changing in the Special Victims Unit. It was a hard gig, regarded among the hardest in the entire force. It was grueling work: long hours, live – often inconsolable – victims, brutal crime scenes, hard to get convictions – it would be a lot for anyone to handle.

In the past couple years, things had changed pretty drastically. Brian Cassidy was the first detective to leave, unable to handle the cases due to past trauma. He transferred to Narcotics. Next to go was Detective Jeffries, who managed to get into some shit before leaving on her own volition and then suing the department. Her replacement, an Odafin 'Fin' Tutola was transferred in while Jeffries was still on active duty, not helping the whole situation.

Fin was a real OG of a man. Having spent 8 years in Narcotics, he had dealt with some pretty big douchebags. Within a few weeks of Fin's arrival, Cragen had made the decision to partner Olivia with Fin and put Munch with Elliot. The decision came easily when he noticed that Fin and Olivia seemed to have bonded quickly, Fin having a protective bond over the only female detective…a bond which only grew stronger when Olivia became the subject of a killer's attention in her third year.


In early 2001, three unaccounted bodies were found at a federally funded body farm nearly an hour and a half outside of the city. Elliot, being the senior most detective in the unit, responded to a call from their federal liaison and made the trek out to Poughkeepsie, NY to look at the scene.

All three murder victims seemed to be unrelated to each other, but they did all have one thing in common: they were all involved in some way to previous cases that Olivia Benson had worked on before she became a detective. Elliot knew he should have told Olivia about the body farm… probably should have took her with him to investigate the scene, but he made the call that it would be a waste of time to get her up to speed and wait for her.

He regretted that decision almost instantly… Olivia was angry, he could tell from all the way down the hall as he watched her approach.

"Elliot, what the fuck! All three victims were my cases, why wasn't I called to the body farm?"

The two detectives hadn't had the best rapport over the last couple of years, especially since Elliot had decided to include himself in places he didn't belong. To this day, he tells himself that he was right to warn Olivia about sleeping with Cassidy. He could see right through that guy; knew he wasn't going to last… knew he wasn't as tough as she was.

His response to the confrontation about the case was hurried, though he can admit that he should have at least warned her before he made it back. "Olivia, I'm the Feds ViCAP partner, and there wasn't enough time. Look, the bodies were dumped at a federal facility, but Huang thinks they were killed in this city, so it's our case."

"No, no, it's not our case. It's my case. I'm the lead detective on this case." Elliot didn't respond, instead just followed her into the case meeting with the team.


Olivia was indeed angry about the whole situation but more than that, she had a very ominous feeling it. She knew all three cases well, remembered almost every detail about them as she looked at the old case file photos that were now strung up on the situation board.

She couldn't figure out what they all had to do with each other - they were unrelated cases, innocent people who had already been through so much. Why would some want to hurt these people and their families even more?

They team tossed around countless ideas before deciding it best to rehash the cases one-by-one, see if they were missing any key details. The more the meeting dragged on, the more it felt like an interrogation to Olivia. The further they delved, the more she felt backed into a corner, answering for actions she made years ago.

"Foster mother said you supervised meetings between the child and his father, why?" Munch's voice cut through the small group of detectives spouting out seemingly random questions about the cases. The rest of the group went quiet.

"Because the man's a drunk, I thought if I stuck around, that he'd get some help. I know what It's like to live through that." Her mother's story was almost common knowledge to the inner circle of detectives now… the result of her mother finding herself at the bottom of a couple flight of stairs, too intoxicated to do something as simple as getting safely into her own apartment.

"You maintained a personal relationship with Carmilla Barrantes?" Elliot was the next one to inquire. Did his voice always sound so belittling?

Olivia is defensive now, "She needed help, my day doesn't end when we get catch a perp or get conviction."

"No one's blaming you, Detective Benson." George Huang chimes in, his voice low and calm.

"You think I led him to these people, that I have a stalker!" She disregards what Huang says, her brain is readying for a fight, but it doesn't come. Instead, the other detectives drop the interrogation when the shrink steps in.

The meeting ends with Cragen firing off orders to each team of detectives: who they should go talk to, his interpretation of the person they were to find. "We're looking for an ex-con with a serious hatred for Olivia." He states casually – too casually for Olivia to process, her mind still racing. Olivia feels a shiver run up her spine at Cragen's final words, but she does her best to control any outward physical reaction.


It all goes in a whirl, or maybe it's just Olivia's head that's in a whirl. Before she really knows what's happening, she's being told to stand down from the case, that the feds, shit, her team even, think it best for her to lay low.

She goes to object the order Cragen has given but instead only sees the concern in his eye. It doesn't make her any less angry that she's being thrown off the case, but it does make her bravado dwindle to the point that she simply turns around and tells Munch and Fin to meet her at the bar.

Fin appears first while Munch is huddled around the bar, trying to get the bartender's attention. When he takes his seat across from her, she sees the concern in his eye... the same fucking look Cragen had given her.

"I'm fine."

It comes out more bitter than she had intended but Fin is cool and calm, his voice always gentle when he speaks to her alone. "I'm not. Some low-life's out to get you." He always seems to be able to stay calm when she's pretending not to be.

"If he wanted to take me out, he would've tried it already." She gives a light laugh, almost wishing the guy would have come after her already so she could be doing something. Fin drops the subject as soon as Munch appears with a pitcher and three glasses.

A couple of drinks later, the detectives are talking about the case again. She would have thought the alcohol in her system would have calmed her, as it usually did, but it only served to spur her on this time.

"This guy was an innocent man and I put him away. I made the people's case against him with weak evidence... That jury believed me!" She's mentally punching herself in the goddamn face now.

"All the terrible people we do put away, one minor mistake isn't a big deal, Olivia." Munch tries to console her but, even when he was her partner, he never really knew the right things to say to her.

"One wrongfully imprisoned man is too many." She says matter-of-factly, daring him to challenge.

"You sound like a legal aid lawyer. They'd lose their lunch if they had to stomach what we deal with every day." Fin takes a turn. He tries to tell her that, no matter what happened in a previous case, this guy still became a murderer.

"We blame all kinds of people for creating monsters… why not ourselves?"

Olivia finishes her beer before taking her leave. Munch offers her a ride that she doesn't even acknowledge before making her way out of the bar.

Her head is swimming, sinking even, but not from the alcohol. It's all affecting her so much that her body is physically reacting, something she is typically able to control. Her mind is racing, as is her heartbeat. Her hands are shaking and she's paranoid, taking in her surroundings quickly and repeatedly.

That's when she sees him, Mr. Plummer. He's across the street from her, walking in the opposite direction. It's too much. She feels her body pull her in the direction of the guy before her brain even processes to question if what she's seeing is real. She's scared, flailing… all she can think is that she needs to stop this guy before he hurts someone else, hurts her again.

But then she's caught suddenly, literally. Her eye had been so trained on Plummer that she missed the men approaching her. As she feels strong arms snake around her, her cop instincts kick in and she tries to kick the stranger off her. He's yelling at her but in the moment, she doesn't hear, she's thrashing, looking for Plummer where she had last seen him… she needs to get to him. She needs to stop him.

But, he's gone, the spot where he was standing now empty. She frantically looks in all directions before the man with the arms around her is telling her to calm down. When she finally does, he explains that he and the other man a few feet from them are a part of her protective detail.

"I refused. I told Cragen I didn't want a detail." The leftover fear is subsiding to irritation now.

"It wasn't Cragen who called us in. It was a Detective Elliot Stabler."


She sees red.

The whole drive to Queens is a blur… a rageful, nasty blur.

She arrives on Elliot Stabler's front porch a little after eleven. She doesn't even think about his wife… or kids… or neighbors… as she starts to ring the doorbell and pound angrily on the screen door.

Elliot's taking his good ass time. So much time passes that she's turned around and almost makes it back to her car. She's opening the driver's side door when she hears her name called out into the night.

She doesn't expect Elliot to be standing in front of her in a house robe and dad slippers. The whole picture makes the man seem human, undeserving of the verbal lashing she had planned to give him.

He speaks before she's able to say a word. "I didn't tell you about the detail because I knew you'd refuse."

Her anger is back in full force as soon as the words come out of his mouth. She walks straight back up to the porch, stopping short of the small flight of stairs that would have put her face to face with Elliot. "Only the rat-squad puts cops on other cops, Elliot, without telling them. I deserve better than that."

"You've been under a lot of stress lately..."

"I don't even like you and I've always backed your play." She spits back.

"And I did what I had to do. The guy's murdered four people, what's to stop him from coming after you, Olivia?"

"If you can't trust the people you work with, Elliot, who can you trust? Aren't we supposed to all be in this together?"

"And you going after that guy with no backup, no plan, is us all being in this together?" Her face is confused, how had he already heard about that. "Yeah, they already called me about that, I asked to be kept informed."

"Why the fuck do you even care?" She spits bitterly back at him. "I can handle myself."

He scoffs before continuing. "Please, Olivia, stop being so naïve … what did you think you were going to do, go up to the guy and politely ask him to confess? This guy has killed innocent people, what do you think he would do to someone he hates?"

There's a part of her that knows he's right, that she didn't have any idea what she was going to do if she had actually reached Plummer. He could have easily had a weapon and then what would she have done?


There's a tiny moment she regrets not having listened to Stabler… She threatened Plummer's last known address out of his boss and now she's found herself, gun drawn and shaking, outside the given address.

Upon hearing gun shots coming from within the apartment, she called in the address, the situation - she did what she was supposed to - minus the fact that she was here, alone. She knows she shouldn't even be in this situation, that she should have listened to all the people telling her to stand down. Suddenly, the door opens, and woman appears - gun to her head - telling her to come inside.

Olivia only had one thought before she rushed into the open apartment: No one else can die because of me.

She tried to reason with Plummer, tried to tell him that he could walk away from this, alive. But how could he, how could he walk out of here; he's killed four people, on the verge of killing another. He's a monster now… and it's all her fault.

Her gun is shaking. She vaguely sees the barrel of her handgun outside of the tunnel her eyes have created around Eric Plummer. He's sweating, still holding the woman to his chest, hostage style. Before he pushes the woman down and takes stance to shoot her, he gives her one final phrase, one she knows will end up haunting her.

"It's not loaded."

It all goes so quickly but Olivia reacts first, sending two bullets into the man's chest. Seconds later, her backup enters from behind her… always too fucking late. She's in shock, she can't move… her gun is still drawn and pointing at the presumably dead suspect. She doesn't see anything, only feels someone come up on her side and lower her gun.

She only really comes-to when the officer, who has obligatorily checked for a pulse, then checks the gun.

"It wasn't loaded."

There's a moment of silence in the room and all eyes are on her. She can only hear the ringing in her ears before Detective Stabler speaks. He apparently had been the one to lower her gun and is currently standing beside her, invading the person space this job doesn't allow anyone to have. "Let's go."

"I have to give my statement." She's still in shock, still looking at Eric Plummer.

"I'll take it." He says quietly, trying to push her to the exit.

The mildness in his voice and the feeling of his hand on her sparks her again. "You leave me alone."


Olivia gives her statement and heads back to the station to file the necessary paperwork for firing her weapon. The paper makes her sick, a black and white reminder that she fucked up; that she took someone's life.

Even though she's exhausted, she knows by the time she steps foot into her apartment that she won't be sleeping tonight. She takes a shower, scrubs her hands raw because it seems like a better reason for them to still be shaking.

She doesn't even register the knock at her door over the sound of the rain and her own brain's gibbering. It isn't until her phone rings that she's shaken from her daze. She lets it go to voicemail, whomever is trying to reach her can shove it for all she really cares.

When the second call comes in, she lets out an irritated groan before answering, "What?"

"Olivia, open the door."

"Fuck you." She hangs up, not wanting to deal with Elliot-fucking-Stabler right now. He really couldn't just leave well enough alone, could he?

Not 30 seconds later, the loud pounding on the door begins again and she hears her name muffled from the other side. There's a part of her that knows he will do this all night if she doesn't open the door, the stubborn ass. There's another part of her that wants to let him, see which one of them can out stubborn the other.

"What?" She says with as much outward frustration she can muster when she opens the door.

"Fin wanted me to make sure you were ok."

"Fin should have come himself… I'm fine. Leave."

He stands stoically in front of her doorframe, arms crossed and staring at her. "You're a shit liar, Benson, and you didn't response to anyone's calls in the last few hours, not even Fin's."

"Hmm, kind of sounds like I wanted to be left alone." This is the only way she knows how to respond to him: sarcastically.

"Right. Well then, seems like you're handling yourself well." His eyes scan behind her before looking over her appearance and she knows he's mocking her, using what she had said before against her.

"I am handling it!"

"Oh, you think you're handling it. Please, Olivia, you're drowning in it." He's finished searching her and he's now focused directly on her eyes.

"Excuse me?"

"This is your problem, Benson. You need to learn how to separate yourself from people, from the cases. That guy was a murderer… even though you were being stupid and reckless by going after him alone, again, he deserved…"

"Don't you dare tell me he deserved to die!"

"This is what we do, Olivia!" His volume has risen to match hers. "We take down the bad guys... would you have preferred he kill more people before we finally got him? It was always going to end this way, that's what he wanted, he wanted you to feel shitty about it."

"And I do!... Jesus Christ, Stabler, I don't need to blame everything else for my anger, my fear. I can take responsibility for what I did!"

"I take respons…"

"Oh, spare me." She holds up a hand to stop whatever retort was going to come out of him. "You've got your problems too, Stabler."