A/N: When I tell you I don't know where this came from... I really have no clue. It's AU and an outsider perspective, which I've wanted to try for a while. The lyrics don't really have anything to do with the story, and they're there purely for you to understand what parts of the song inspired each scene. The song is Carousel by Miranda Lambert.


Pretty Elaina, my fair lady

She walked the high wire back in the '80s

Feathers and sequins, she shined like a chandelier

Hanging from the top tent rafters

'Til the spotlight disappeared


It must be something about this time of year in New York. It starts with the changing of the weather. They used to have Spring when she was a child, but that's all been blown away now. The temperature changes from freezing to 80 overnight and back again. It might snow in the morning and rain by the afternoon, and hell if the weathermen even know what they're saying half the time.

And with the changing of the seasons comes the changing of the atmosphere in the city. People cooped up indoors too long finally find their ways back into the subway and the streets. And with that comes more rapes, more sexual assaults, more kidnappings, and their caseload gets busy.

Elaina's been with Manhattan's Special Victims Unit at the 16th precinct for six years now, and every year, there's been that one case. It seems unsolvable, they're stuck in a rut for days, sometimes weeks. Somebody dies, somebody lives with regret.

That's when the whispers start. The ones about the woman who would be able to close the uncrackable case.

Something about the whispers, the stories told at the coffee pot, in hushed tones in the cribs, were almost like Elaina's favorite fairy tales as a child. They featured a heroine so daring, so magnificent, she couldn't have possibly been real. But Elaina knows she was, if only because her Captain worked with the woman back in the day. She'd been her partner briefly, her superior officer for a while.

Lieutenant Olivia Benson.

She had been the heart and soul of the Special Victims Unit. She'd been a shining gem in the NYPD's crown.

They'd talk of her daring takedowns, the way she could charm information out of perps in interrogation with a silver-tongue quality.

There was always the undercurrent of the story about how she met the Beast, and won.

But after a few days, after someone (usually Elaina and her junior partner Joe Velasco) did eventually solve the case, the other whispers would creep up. The ones about Lieutenant Benson when she was just a Detective. How she was part of one of the NYPD's most ferocious and fearsom partnerships. Her name was never mentioned without another.

Benson and Stabler.

And that's when the real rumors always began to fly.


Harlan Giovanni, what a sight to see

The way he earned her trust was on a 20 foot trapeze

She fell so hard because he always let her fly

'Til he left her heart suspended in a cotton candy sky

She still don't know why


Elaina had missed Lieutenant Benson by just as year. She was actually the one to fill Benson's space in SVU. Everyone had been cool, okay if she was being honest downright cold, with her since the minute she walked in the door. The other members of the team sent her sidelong glances as she laid her things out at her new desk, which she found out later used to be Benson's.

Detective Rollins was the worst with her, followed by Fin. They both treated her as if she personally kicked Detective Benson off the squad herself, just to take her place. It wasn't until she finally had to spend a night stuck in a car on a stakeout with her partner, Nick Amaro, that she learned what the real deal was.

"We don't hate you," Amaro told her that night. "You're just not Liv."

"It's not like I'm the one who made her leave," Elaina said.

"Yeah, and I wasn't the one who made Stabler leave," he said. "Neither was Rollins. But she sure came at us all hell on wheels like we were."

"Who the hell is Stabler?" Elaina asked.

"Her old partner," Amaro said. "Before me. She loved him, and we loved her. But the good news is she warmed up to us eventually and we'll warm up to you. You just gotta give us time."

"She fell in love with her partner?" Elaina asked.

"Hey, don't be getting any ideas," Amaro said. "I'm a good 10 years older than you."

"Not at all where I was going with that," Elaina said. "She just sounds so badass the way you all describe her. She doesn't sound anything like the type to fall for a partner. To bring that kind of mess to the job."

"People are complicated," Amaro said.

"We've got time," Elaina said. "Tell me about him."

"Wish I could, but I never met the guy," Amaro said. "Gotta ask Fin or Munch. They lived it."

So the next morning she sucked up her pride and sprung for the good coffee and donuts and took her bribes to the old men.

"Uh uh," she told them as Fin reached for a donut and Munch's eyes lit up at the sight of coffee that he didn't have to make himself. "First you gotta give me something."

"I don't do bribe donuts," Fin said. "Even if they're jelly-filled."

"I just wanna know who Stabler was," Elaina said, leaning back against the corner of her desk. "Amaro brought him up on the stakeout last night but said you two were the ones who knew all about Benson and Stabler."

Both Fin and Munch looked around, like she'd uttered the Beetlejuice or Bloody Mary curse and some horrible creature was about to descend on them from the rafters at any moment.

"You want Cragen to hear you?" Fin hissed.

"He never had kids of his own," Munch said. "Those two were the closest he got. He's never going to be over losing them both."

"Then meet me in the cribs in 10," Elaina said. "I'll bring the snacks."

She knew the extra time it took to go out of her way to Fin's favorite donut shop and spring for the top shelf coffee was enough to do the trick, because the old men followed her up and locked the door.

"We're here," Fin said. "And I'm not talking until my stomach's full."

She passed him the box and Munch the to-go cup and waited. Munch spoke first.

"So my child, you want to know the fabled tale of the SVU heroes," he said.

"Yeah," Elaina said. "If everyone is going to keep treating me like I shot their puppy here I at least want to know why."

"Listen Bianchi, you may be good, great someday even, but ain't nobody ever gonna be Liv," Fin said.

"And there will never be another partnership like Benson and Stabler, though Fin and I do make a close second," Munch said.

"Would you two stop beating around the bush and just tell me about them?" Elaina asked, exasperated.

"I got to see it from the beginning," Munch said. "Fin didn't come on the scene until year three."

"Thank God for that," Fin said. "They were bad enough by then, I can only imagine the beginning."

"Elliot had blown through four partners in two years," Munch said. "Some couldn't take the job, some couldn't take him. He was smart, good attention to detail. But he was a bull in a China shop. He wasn't a bad cop but his methods weren't always the most ethical. The 90s were a different time. He was actually great with kids and victims, but his bedside manner with partners and other co-workers sometimes left a little to be desired."

"I can vouch for that," Fin said. "He and I used to really get into it. But we came to an understanding eventually."

"So anyhow, one day, Cap storms out of his office with this pretty brunette in tow, we all assume she's a victim," Munch said. "I mean cops didn't really look like her. She was young and gorgeous."

Fin started to chuckle, clearly knowing what came next despite not being there.

"And Elliot was good with victims, so he walked right up to her, stuck out his hand and said 'Detective Elliot Stabler. Why don't you come over to my desk, honey, and I'll take your statement.'"

Fin is full-blown laughing by this point.

"And Liv takes his hand, jerks it behind his back and says 'Thanks, sweetheart, but I'm your new partner, and if you ever talk to me like that again I'll put your balls in a blender."

"She didn't," Elaina said.

"She did," Munch said. "And Elliot felt like an idiot. But after that first misstep, they were a force to be reckoned with, even in the beginning. It was like they could read each other's minds. He was the senior partner and was showing her the ropes, but she taught him a few things too. He was still a bull in a China shop, but she mellowed him somehow. Enough that his outbursts came fewer and farther between."

"Amaro said she was in love with him," Elaina said.

"Amaro has a big mouth," Fin said. "Especially big for someone who never even worked with them together."

"Well, was she?" Elaina asked. "She doesn't sound like the type to mix love with her job."

"She couldn't help it," Fin said. "They had something that you'd have to see to believe. Even us explaining it doesn't do it justice."

"He loved her too," Munch said. "If that's any consolation."

"So what, they ran off together?" Elaina asked. "Left Cragen here to replaced his two best detectives?"

"Not even close," Fin said. "Stabler was married the majority of their partnership."

"Then how do you know he loved her?" Elaina asked. "Didn't he love his wife."

"I'm sure he did," Munch said. "But he loved Olivia too. I think maybe we all did, just a little. But nothing like Elliot. He was her best friend, her protector, dare I say her soul mate. They trusted each other like you wouldn't believe."

"Yeah, until he bumped her up so high and then left her to splat when she hit the ground," Fin said.

"What do you mean?" Elaina asked.

Munch sighed and Fin cracked his knuckles, leaning back against the bunk before he continued.


Every show must end, every circus leaves town

You don't know the magic's gone until the lights go down

Now she's back in Nacogdoches

And I hear she's doing well

She only misses Harlan when she hears a carousel


"We had a case back in 2011," Fin said. "Lady got raped, her daughter was a victim. Whole thing was a mess. The mom died, the girl walked into the precinct with a gun. She shot her mother's killer and an innocent bystander, a nun, right in the squad room."

Everyone was silent for a moment. Elaina wasn't sure anymore if she wanted to hear the rest.

"Elliot had to shoot the girl," Munch said. "She was just a teenager, nearly the same age as his twins at home. She died on the bullpen floor. And as far as we know, he never really recovered from it."

"What do you mean as far as you know?" Elaina asked.

"He walked out the squad that day and never came back," Fin said.

"He just left you all?" Elaina asked. "No explanation?"

"None," Fin said. "He didn't even tell Liv. Made Cragen do it. And I know that man well enough to know that while he acted tough, made her eventually clean off Stabler's desk and take down what he called 'the shrine,' it killed him inside. Lost his boy, and had to watch his girl stick around and pick up the pieces."

"She loved him and he left her," Elaina said, her heart breaking just a little for the woman who, about fifteen minutes ago, she hated just a little bit if she was being completely honest.

"She must've called him hundreds of times," Fin said. "In that month we all thought he was on leave her phone was glued to her hand just waiting, wishing, hoping he'd answer her."

"Isn't that a little too close for partners?" Elaina asked.

"Yeah," Fin said. "But you never saw them together. They might have been too close but what they had it was…"

Fin trailed off but Munch picked up where he left off.

"Magic," Munch said. "What they had was magic."

"Liv was still a badass, even if she had a bad attitude for a while after he was gone," Fin said. "But it was never the same. That magic Munch mentioned, it was gone from the squad."

"Did she ever get over it?" Elaina asked.

"She got over it," Munch said. "His leaving, I mean. But did she get over him? I'm not completely sure."

"Where is she now?" Elaina asked.

Thankfully, this question brought a smile to their faces.


Pretty Elaina made herself a nest

Her sequins and her secrets buried in the cedar chest

No one around here knows about her other life

Johnny Davis went and made her a mama and a wife

And maybe that's alright


"Nobody told you why a spot opened up in SVU?" Munch asked. "It's a volunteer unit. You didn't question the opening?"

"I didn't really care," Elaina said. "I just always wanted to be here. My oldest sister, she…"

Elaina had to pause. This was always the hardest thing to tell people, and she hadn't told any of her new co-workers yet, except Captain Cragen.

"She was 11 years older than me," Elaina said. "She got raped the night of her senior prom and she hid it from our parents. She was ashamed of what happened. Then she found out she was pregnant. She couldn't take the thought of having her rapist's child but she was already too far along to get an abortion. So she killed herself in the bathroom at our house, and I was the one who found her."

Both men sucked in a deep breath.

"From that day I knew I wanted to help people like my sister," Elaina said. "Give them choices, give them options, give them support so they didn't end up like her, leaving a suicide note and leaving their little sisters to find them dead in the bathroom when they came in to brush their teeth before school."

Like most people, even the two seasoned detectives didn't have much to say to her story. Munch cleared his throat and continued to tell her Benson's, Olivia's, instead.

"A few years after Stabler left, Olivia ended up at the middle of a very difficult case," Munch said. "The perp was a sociopath and a sadist. He burned his fingerprints off for fun, enjoyed the hunt and the case and the capture. And he fixated on Olivia."

"The bastard kidnapped her for four days, assaulted her, branded her," Fin said. "And she was never quite the same after that."

Elaina wondered who would be.

"She became close with our old IAB Captain, Ed Tucker," Munch said. "And they started seeing one another. Then she found a little boy, Noah, on one of our cases and got the chance to adopt him."

"Tucker convinced her to retire with him," Fin said. "Adopted Noah with her, proposed, the whole bit. They moved out to Ridgewood, New Jersey. Heard they adopted a little girl too."

"So she just… stopped being a cop?" Elaina asked, wondering how a woman who sounded like she had the job in her blood, like Elaina herself, could just up and walk away.

"That was a different lifetime for her," Munch said. "Her badge is probably buried in a cedar chest at the foot of her bed now, under thick blankets and children's toys."

"You guys don't see her anymore?" Elaina asked. "She never comes back to visit."

"We talk on the phone couple times a year," Fin said. "But this ain't her life anymore. She and Tucker, they don't want the kids growing up around the violence and all that."

"Is she happy?" Elaina asked.

"She loves her kids," Fin said. "Seems to like Tucker too, though I personally don't get it."

"Do you think she still loves him?" Elaina asked. "Stabler?"

"I think she'll always love Stabler," a voice said from the doorway, which Elaina was positive Fin locked.

Except the person who owned the voice had the keys.

"And I think he'll always love her," Cragen said. "Now all of you, back to work."


'Cause every show must end, every circus leaves town

You don't know the magic's gone until the lights go down

Now she's back in Nacogdoches

And I hear she's doing well

She only misses Harlan when she hears a carousel


Like Amaro said, the squad eventually warmed to Elaina. She herself had a rotating cast of partners in her time, from Amaro to Carisi, Kat, and now Joe. After Rollins had her girls, Elaina became their godmother and they got close, Elaina wanting children of her own but having no prospects. Rollings needing a friendly shoulder, maybe not someone who understood necessarily, but someone who tried.

Elaina had been the one who encouraged Amanda to take the Seargent's exam, and the Lieutenant's one. But she'd chosen to take the Captain's exam all on her own. Elaina had also been the Matron of Honor at her wedding to former Detective current Counselor Carisi.

But when the weather would change and the whispers would start again about Benson and Stabler, Elaina always got a little wistful. She hadn't known them personally, but it seemed sometimes that she'd been the only one to ask what they were really like. Who they really were to each other.

Cragen, Fin, and Munch had all since retired. There was no one left in the 1-6 who had even worked with them together, and Amanda was the only one left who worked with either of them at all. There were whispers sometimes that she was his mistress. Nosy people who knew her right before her son's adoption called it a crock because the kid had "her nose and the telling Stabler blue eyes."

These were the times she'd think of Olivia Benson, the woman from those stories, and wonder where she was. Who she really was, because these people didn't have a clue.

But on one particular day in 2020, right before the pandemic hit, different news spread like wildfire through the squad room. Her husband, former IAB agend Ed Tucker, ate his own gun. He had cancer and he didn't want to be a burden to his wife and children.

They were all expected to attend the funeral in their dress blues.

Elaina was never one for funerals, especially not after her sister's. And she found herself getting choked up not by the service. Not by the fact that former-Captain Ed Tucker died by suicide. None of that did it.

What struck her was the stoic woman, who stood in the front pew of the church staring stone-faced at a casket. She held the hands of their young children, a picture similar to Jackie Kennedy and her two children on the steps of the church, she and Noah saluting the casket and it was loaded into the hearse, while her daughter cried and clung to her leg.

Elaina couldn't believe she'd finally seen Olivia Benson in the flesh. There was a sadness behind the woman's eyes, a longing. But Elaina wondered if it was for her dead husband, or a man who had been as good as dead to her for nearly 10 years.


Smith Country Fair

Mid-September

She walks the midway

And smiles when she remembers


It had been a long night at the precinct. Terroristic threats, protests, and now car bombs. Someone from the 1-6, SVU was called in on a 10-13 in Midtown, and Amanda volunteered to make the run.

What Elaina didn't expect was for her to return with a fairy tale character in the flesh: Elliot Stabler.

Elaina had never seen a picture of him, but she somehow knew. The way he strode into the squad room with authority, fire blazing in his eyes, pain etched on his face. This was the man Fin and Munch had described to her so many years ago. The one who called his new partner "honey" accidentally. The one who shot a teenager and left without a word.

"I told you in the car," Stabler said. "I want to see Olivia."

"And I told you in the car, Detective Stabler," Amanda said. "That Lieutenant Benson doesn't work here anymore."

"She has to," Stabler said. "Liv would never leave SVU."

"She did," Amanada said. "And you shouldn't really be here either, but I couldn't leave you standing in the middle of the road at your wife's crime scene. Now, who can I call to come pick you up and take you to the hospital?"

"I want Olivia," Stabler said, unwavering.

"Fine," Amanda muttered, striding towards her office. "I'll see what I can do."

Stabler stood against a wall in the squad room for what felt like years, but was really only about an hour. He never acknowledged Elaina's presence, despite the fact that she was the only one besides him in the squad. Everyone else had been dispatched to a crime scene this evening, but thanks to some overzealous perp two weeks ago, high on God knows what, and a long ass flight of stairs, her ankle was busted in three places and she was riding a desk.

She wasn't as sorry about it now though, because otherwise she would have missed the show.

Elaina saw Olivia get off the elevator before Stabler did. She paused in the entryway to the squad, her lips turning up into a smile as her eyes swept the room. Like she missed it. Like she was remembering a part of herself she'd kept buried away for too long.

But that look all changed when she stepped further into the room and saw a ghost leaning against the wall.

"Liv," he called to her softly.

"Elliot," she said back, in a disbelieving whisper.


Every show must end, every circus leaves town

I didn't know the magic left 'til all the lights went down

Now I'm back in Nacogdoches

And I swear I'm doing well

I only miss my Harlan when I hear a carousel


Much of the rest of the formalities were a blur. Amanda came out of her office, apologizing to Olivia profusely for calling her in under false pretenses, but Stabler wouldn't go with anyone else, talk to anyone else but her.

Eventually, Olivia waved Amanda off and said she would take care of things, but then Stabler got a phone call and turned away from them to answer. And it took mere seconds for him to crumple to the floor.

"Elliot," Olivia said rushing to his side, neither of them aware of Elaina's presence, watching the scene like some desperate teenage girl watching her favorite TV show on Thursday nights.

"They killed Kathy," he choked out.

She could see Olivia's face, but not Stabler's. Her eyes went wide, her mouth dropped, and there was a pain on her face. One Elaina hadn't seen even at Olivia's own husband's funeral. It was a gutteral, soul-crushing sort of thing, as if Stabler's pain was her own pain.

And my God if those two old farts hadn't been right. She owed them each $50 bucks, a bet she'd taken because she figured none of them would be around to ever see this kind of reunion. But she did owe them money because Olivia Benson was in love with Elliot Stabler.

He reached for her, his iPhone clattering to the linoleum. And she accepted his full weight, the brunt of a man, the bull in the China shop, propelling himself into her arms.

They got turned around and now Elaina could see Stabler's face. The pain was obvious. The man had just lost his wife. But Elaina witnessed the moment Olivia's arms wrapped around him and the way his features softened as she spoke to him.

Well shit. She owed each of the old farts another $50 because Elliot Stabler was in love with Olivia Benson, too.

"I'm here," she heard Olivia say. "I'm right here for you. I'm so sorry."

Elaina couldn't believe that she got to be a witness to this, the only witness, to two hearts, two souls, catching fire once again.

"I'm sorry I left you," Stabler cried into her shoulder. "And then so much time passed and now…"

"None of that matters," Olivia said to him. "You need me now and I'm here. I'm your partner for better or worse."

It seemed like an inside joke, a moment that only they understood because he buried himself deeper into her, and if he was trying to climb inside her body.

"I don't deserve this," Stabler said. "Deserve you."

"No you don't," Olivia said. "And there have been plenty of times over the last 10 years that I needed you to hold me like this and you weren't there. But none of that matters now. We're both here, right now. I've spent enough time missing you, and I'm not leaving when you need me."

"I missed you too," Stabler croaked. "Every time I heard a carousel."

"Our first case," Olivia said. "The dead woman on the carousel at Bryant Park."

"Yeah," he said.

"So that sound," Olivia said. "It wasn't just me. My kids could never figure out why I wouldn't let them go on."

"Eli was the same," Stabler said. "Kids?"

"Two," Olivia said. "A boy and a girl."

"Oh God," Stabler said. "Eli is still in Rome. I've got to get to him. I've gotta call Kathleen and Mo and…"

"I'm here," Olivia said, sliding her hands down his biceps and his arms to take his hands. "I'll help. Lets go out to my car."

Elaina watched as Stabler let Benson lead him to the elevator, their arms clasped around one another in a way she was sure they were never able to do in their previous lives, the ones they spent here in this squad room, or one exactly like it.

As the doors closed on the elevator, Elaina saw Benson press a kiss to Stabler's temple, and she swore she saw a real, live spark. A representation of the magic Munch mentioned years ago.

And as the night dragged on, and her colleagues filed back into the squad room complaining about this crime scene or that perp, things slowly got back to normal. But Elaina held what she saw in her mind. It was real.

And as the rumors started to fly once again, and the whispers started as pseudo-spring flowed into summer, Elaina stopped listening. She knew how the story ended, or how it would end someday. Maybe their old lives had been a parallel universe, but in this life, Benson and Stabler were going to get a happy ending.

Elaina would bet on it.

In fact, after paying up to Munch and Fin, she already did.


I only miss my Harlan when I hear the carousel


A/N: Love it? Hate it? Reviews?