A/N: So I can't see any of your comments on this. I've tried clicking on them. They don't need approval or anything. I just can't see them. But thanks for the love anyway! Don't stop, because maybe I'll be able to see them someday. In the meantime, if you'd like to come spiral in the comments where I can actually reply to you, head over to AO3! Guest comments are open so you don't even need an account: /users/ClassicTVJunkie/pseuds/ClassicTVJunkie
Elliot drummed his fingers against the armrest of his window seat on the 10-hour flight from Italy to New York City. This 747 would never be able to go fast enough to get home, to get to her after what he'd heard on the phone call from Tucker.
It'd been hours since he'd been left with no other option than to call the head of the Rat Squad to look in on Olivia. Call it a partner's intuition, call it a gut feeling, call it a soulmate connection. It just wasn't like Olivia not to answer him for a whole day when they weren't in the middle of a fight. And they weren't. Not to Elliot's knowledge anyway.
He'd tried to tell himself everything was fine. Her phone died. She'd turned the ringer off. But there was just this thing, this voice in the back of his head (that sounded weirdly like his mother, but he didn't want to dig too deep into that right now) that kept saying "you need to do something."
So he'd called Cragen three times and got voicemail. He called Fin, Munch, Rollins, Amaro, Melinda, and Barba. He called them all twice. Nobody picked up. Tucker was the last person in the NYPD he thought he'd ever call in a pinch, but the idea that maybe he'd arrested Liv again crossed Elliot's mind and he figured it was worth a shot. He didn't even know if Tucker would go through the time of getting in touch with Liv or the squad, but it was worth a shot.
The minutes ticked by agonizingly slow at the autograph signing. It was all young girls and that ego-headed punk lapping up their attention and making crude comments about which ones he wanted to take home with him. Most of the girls were barely legal, a lot of them weren't legal at all. It made Elliot sick.
The call came in around midnight in Italy, and it wasn't the news Elliot wanted or expected.
"Stabler," Tucker's voice came gritty through the line. "Can you talk?"
"Yeah, I'm off the clock," Elliot said.
"You alone?" Tucker asked, and Elliot's stomach sank.
"I'm at my hotel," Elliot said. "Did you find Liv?"
Tucker let out a deep sigh.
"I did," he said.
Elliot could practically hear the thin line of his mouth and the crunch of his eyebrows as he talked.
"Tucker is she…" Elliot couldn't say the words. He didn't think he could hear Olivia was dead, much less while he was half a world away and had only been gone a few days.
"She's alive," Tucker said, and Elliot let out a huge breath. "But there was an… incident."
"What kind of incident?" Elliot asked.
"I don't know if this is something we should talk about over the phone," Tucker said. "I don't know what she'll want you to know."
Elliot felt his blood boil.
"That's my partner, Tucker," Elliot said. "You're going to tell me everything."
"You're not on the job anymore, Stabler," Tucker said, throwing it right back at him. "I technically shouldn't be telling you anything at all. But you're still her emergency contact so I told the hospital I'd inform you that she'd been admitted."
"She's in the hospital?" Elliot asked. "Is she awake? Is she breathing?"
"Nothing is life-threatening," Tucker said. "I'm sure the hospital will fill you in when you get back after your rotation or whatever you're doing overseas."
"Like hell I'm staying here," Elliot said. "I'll be on the next flight back. Which hospital?"
"Mercy," Tucker said. "But as I said, it's nothing life-threatening. You don't need to rush back."
"Olivia is in the hospital and I'm her emergency contact," Elliot said. "I know you have an icebox instead of a heart but I don't and I'm not leaving her there alone any longer than I have to."
"She's not alone," Tucker said cooly. "Her squad is here. I'm here."
"Yeah, and I'll be there too in give or take 12 hours," Elliot said. "If she asks, let her know I'm coming. I'll see you as soon as I can."
Elliot didn't wait for Tucker to respond before he ended the call and started shoving all his belongings back into his duffle. He called his supervisor, Dave, on the way out of the hotel and told him he had a family emergency and if he didn't like it to consider the call Elliot's resignation. Then he hailed a cab and called the airport on the ride to track down the first available seat on any flight bound for New York City. He didn't care if he had to ride in the cargo hold.
And that's how he found himself somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, staring at a screen frozen in the middle of the first Spider-Man movie, praying they'd hit some sort of time loop portal that would get him home faster.
"Something bothering you, son?" a voice from the end of the row asked.
Nobody was in the middle seat right next to Elliot, but there was an older man, maybe in his late 60s, or early 70s, on the aisle. It wasn't until then Elliot realized he'd been drumming his fingers rather loudly.
"I'm sorry about the noise," Elliot said. "I'll stop."
For show, Elliot slid his hands under his thighs, sitting on them. But then he started jiggling his knee. If it wouldn't have made him look like a crazy person, he'd have gotten up and started pacing the aisle.
"Oh that drumming didn't bother me much," the old man said. "I'm a little hard of hearing anyway. You just look troubled. I'm Charles, by the way."
"Elliot," he said, removing his right hand from under his thigh and reaching out to shake with Charles.
"We've got a few hours left," Charles said. "What's sending you to New York?"
"My partner, ex-partner… I guess we're friends now, she uh, something happened to her and she's in the hospital," Elliot said.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Charles said. "Partner? What do you do for a living?"
"We were both NYPD detectives," Elliot said. "I retired about two years ago, I work security now."
"I see," Charles said. "And your partner, what's her name."
"Olivia," Elliot said. It came out more like a whisper, almost like a prayer.
"That's a lovely name," Charles said. "I knew a girl named Olivia once. Did her job put her in the hospital?"
"I don't know," Elliot said. "One of her colleagues called to tell me she was there but wouldn't tell me why. So I'm on the first flight back."
"That's an awful lot of dedication for a friend," Charles said. "Even for an ex-partner."
"She doesn't have anyone," Elliot said. "She was an only child. Only had a mother and she died years ago. No kids, no boyfriend at the moment. I just can't leave her alone."
"Then obviously she's not alone if she has you," Charles said. "I don't have anyone in my life who would drop what they were doing to fly halfway across the world just to be at my bedside."
It stung a little, hearing that come from a man he didn't know. A man who didn't know him or Olivia, to be able to read Elliot's intentions so easily. He knew he'd been in love with Olivia for many years, but he wasn't sure if she felt the same. Sometimes he thought she did, when they were having their takeout and TV nights, or bantering over something silly on the phone. But there were other times when he seemed to be the last person on her mind, and the last man she'd ever consider dating, much less willing to pledge "'til death do us part."
"She deserves someone to drop everything for her," Elliot said. "All the cases she works on are children, assault victims, people who really deserve justice. And she gives her all to them every day. She deserves even just a fraction of that in return."
"Son, you're in love with her, aren't you?" Charles asked.
Elliot inhaled sharply.
"We're friends," Elliot sputtered.
"One doesn't have anything to do with the other," Charles said. "Care to take some unsolicited advice from an old man?"
Elliot didn't really want any advice, but what choice did he have at this point? So he nodded.
"Don't wait to tell her what she means to you," Charles said. "You may think you're showing her, but she'll never know for sure unless you say it outright. Even if you think it could scare her to hear it. I'm speaking from experience. I had a wonderful woman in my life for nearly 50 years. We met in elementary school and we skated and skirted around one another, pretending there was nothing there, dating other people, always finding our way back to one another somehow. And then she died, unexpectedly in an accident. We were supposed to go away together the weekend it happened, but that weekend never came. She never found out how I felt about her. And I've regretted it ever since. I always wanted to take her to Italy. She wanted to see the sights. But we never made it there either. Last week would have been her 67th birthday, so I decided to finally go in her honor."
Elliot swallowed thickly, thinking how because he didn't know what happened to Olivia, it could turn fatal before he even made it back to New York.
"I didn't tell you this to scare you," Charles said. "I just… something made me feel like you needed to know. It's Serena's voice in my head saying 'Chuckie, give that boy a push.' Oh, she was such a pistol. She had her problems but I loved her dearly. Sometimes it seemed like I was the only person she ever really opened up to."
Elliot had to shake his head a few times because of the name Charles just said. Serena. It wasn't a very common name. Couple that with the age and… well, it couldn't be, could it?
"If you don't mind my asking," Elliot said. "What was Serena's last name."
"Benson. Serena Benson," Charles said. "She was a literature professor at Columbia. You're not one of her students, are you? I've run into them time and time again over the years. They always like to talk about Professor Benson sparking their love for the classics."
"No," Elliot said, not sure how much he should really admit to this man he didn't know. "She, um, Olivia is her daughter. My Olivia. The one I'm on my way to see."
Charles's mouth dropped open wide.
"Little Olivia?" Charles asked, shocked. "I haven't seen her since she was about seven years old. That was when Serena's drinking started to take off and we drifted apart for a bit. By the time I came back into Serena's life again, Olivia was a teenager, apparently running around with one of Serena's grad students. I wanted so much to be a part of their lives, and give both of those girls a stable home, but I was too much of a coward, and Serena was too headstrong. We just never made it work."
"I can't believe this," Elliot said, leaning back in his seat and shaking his head. "All the flights on all the days. All the rows on this plane."
"Are you a man of faith, son?" Charles asked.
"I am," Elliot said.
"Then you know, this is no coincidence," Charles said.
"It's not," Elliot said. "It's not at all."
"Don't be like me, Elliot," Charles said. "Don't let Olivia be like Serena. Give her love. Give her a home and a family and something solid."
Elliot bit his lip.
"I couldn't think of anything better," Elliot said.
"She might fight you," Charles said. "She might drift away. She might run scared and look for comfort elsewhere. But don't let her go. Let your love be stronger than her fear."
Elliot nodded again. This was likely as close as he was going to get to advice straight from God himself. No doubt this meeting was divine intervention.
"You better get some rest, son," Charles said. "Be nice and refreshed when you see her again. She'll appreciate it. So will you."
"Thank you," Elliot said. "For the talk. For your advice."
"No, thank you," Charles said. "I didn't know what I thought I was going to find in Italy. Turns out all I needed was the plane ride, and to know that Olivia and the man who loves her are going to learn from my and her mother's mistakes."
Elliot smiled, leaned his head back against the seat, and closed his eyes. In his head, he prayed a few prayers of thanksgiving for providing exactly what he needed to make it through the rest of the flight.