A/N: This story comes with a trigger warning for suicide - sorry, folks, I'm just working with what canon gave us.

They're in the park on a warm day in early spring. It's Sunday, and there are bright green buds on the tree branches, and children everywhere, and her phone hasn't rung, not even once.

Tucker is kneeling by the jungle gym, talking seriously to Noah. It makes her smile, watching them, how sweet her lover is with her son, how much Noah seems to like him. Noah calls him Tucker in his thick little baby voice and every time he does it tugs at Liv's heartstrings, because Noah doesn't know anyone else's name. He knows mama, and he knows Lucy, and that's it, because his short life has been lonesome and tumultuous and no one else has stuck around long enough for him to learn their names. He knows Tucker, though.

"Take it to mama," she hears Tucker say, watches him wrap Noah's pudgy little hands around something, though she can't quite tell what. Her son is grinning from ear to ear as he turns her way, lumbers towards her on chubby little legs that are growing steadier by the day. Not too steady, though, and Tucker is hot on his heels, his eyes on her boy, his hands ready to catch Noah if he stumbles, and that makes her smile, too, knowing that she isn't the only one watching out for her son, now, that there is someone else who loves him, and will guard his steps.

When they draw close she squats down and holds out her arms, and Noah goes tumbling into them, laughing, and Tucker kneels beside them, and his eyes are so blue, and so warm, and so kind, and she wants to kiss him but Noah's little head keeps getting in the way.

"Show her, kiddo," Tucker urges him gently, and Noah remembers then the burden that he carries.

"For you," he tells her excitedly, holding out an -

Oh.

He is holding a small, black-velvet covered box in his hands, and all the breath has vanished from her lungs, and Tucker is watching her intently, and just for a second the world stops turning. She knows what this is - or what she thinks it is, at least. She knows what it looks like, and she didn't expect it, and now it's here, and everything, everything is about to change.

"Open it," he says, very quietly.

So she does. With trembling fingers she opens the box, and nestled inside there is a ring. There is a ring, set with a square-cut diamond, big enough so she knows he spent a lot - maybe too much - money on it but not so big she couldn't wear it to work, flanked by two smaller stones. It's a beautiful ring, but it is not just a ring, and she knows this, and she can hardly breathe. She's got one arm wrapped around Noah, keeping him close against her, and Tucker is kneeling by her other side, watching her.

"I know what I want," he tells her. "What do you want, Olivia?"

He wants to marry her. He wants her to wear this ring, and he wants them to live together, and be Noah's parents. He wants to come home to her every day, and fight with her about whose turn it is to do the dishes. He wants to be her plus-one to every event she'll go to for the rest of their lives. He wants a bed that is theirs. He wants forever.

What do you want, Olivia?

She looks at him, this man she adores, who is handsome and kind, who is her favorite kind of smartass, who would move heaven and earth for her. She thinks about the day they met, fifteen years before. She thinks about the times she cursed him, and she thinks about the day she realized they had somehow become friends, and she thinks about the first time she ever kissed him, thinks about the taste of bourbon in his mouth. She thinks about the way it feels when she wakes up with his arms around her. She thinks about forever, about all the things she's always wanted and all the things she thought she never could have.

"I want this," she says, because she does. She wants his strength, holding her up when she stumbles. She wants his laugh. She wants to see him playing with Noah, and she wants to never have to wonder, ever again, if someone loves her. She wants to know what it would feel like to belong somewhere.

He reaches out slowly, takes the ring from the box and slides it on her finger, and he never technically asked the question but she has answered him anyway, and the little box goes tumbling from her grip when she reaches for his neck and pulls him to her for a kiss. Noah laughs, delighted, and she does, too, and when she pulls back Ed brushes the tears from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

"I love you," he tells her, and she believes him.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" Amanda asks her anxiously.

They are standing together beside a pine tree in early autumn, and the wedding planner is hovering nearby, waiting for the music to begin. When it does Amanda and Jessie and Noah will walk down the makeshift aisle together, and Jessie will spread flower petals as she goes, and when they reach the awning where Tucker is waiting Noah will go to him, and Amanda and Jessie will step to the side, and everyone will turn to watch as Liv comes walking in alone.

No church, that was the only request Ed made with regard to the wedding, and so they are to be married outside, surrounded by flowers, in a public garden that hosts these events every weekend for nine months out of the year. Carisi is officiating, and he is, Liv thinks, more nervous than the bride and groom to be. Their friends are waiting, and Olivia is wearing a beautiful white dress, and her hair is perfect, and Noah is so precious in his little black suit that every time she looks at him she feels like she's about to burst into tears.

"I'm sure," Liv tells her.

And she is. She is sure, now. She is more sure than she was in the spring; Tucker has been living with her and Noah for two months now, and it is good. It is better than good; it is perfect. She doesn't have to call Lucy half as much as she used to, because Tucker is there, to look after their boy. When the job is hard and it feels like too much for her to carry there is someone there to look after her, to take the burden from her shoulders, to hold her. She has traded isolation for family, and it turns out that family is more beautiful than she ever imagined.

And she has this, now. She has all her friends, waiting for her. She has the white dress, and the diamond ring on her finger, and a bouquet held in steady hands. She will have framed photos of her family on this day, photos she will display in her home, in her office. She has love; she has so much love she doesn't know where to put it all.

"Showtime!" the wedding planner barks, and Amanda hugs Olivia once, quickly, and her eyes are a little wet when she pulls away.

"I'm so happy for you," Amanda whispers. And Olivia knows it's true; her team has never cared much for her fiance, but they care for her, and they want to see her happy, and she is, now, and so her happiness has become their own and that is love, she thinks. That is what it means to be a family.

Amanda leads the children away, and Olivia takes a deep breath. There will be no one to walk her down the aisle; she is too old and too stubborn and too proud to be given away. This is not a giving, a taking; she will not become her husband's property. She will not take his name, and he never even asked her whether she would because he knew the answer already, and approved of it. She was Benson, when they met, and she still calls him Tucker, sometimes, and they have lived in those names too long to trade them away for something new. This is not a giving, but is instead a joining. It is the moment of truth, when their affection for one another, their care for one another, their devotion to one another will be made public, and real, and lasting. This is the last time in her life she will ever be alone.

The wedding planner gestures to her, and she lifts her chin, and walks slowly down the aisle toward her future, smiling.

Ed is waiting for her, and his is the only face she sees, and this, she thinks, is love.

She dances with Ed first, her head on his shoulder, his arms around her, beneath a white tent in the gathering dusk, and it feels so right she very nearly cries.

"Don't go soft on me, Benson," he teases her gently, and when she laughs he leans in to kiss her, and she lets him.

After that she dances with Don Cragen, whose eyes are a little misty, who kisses her cheek and tells her I'm so proud of you, Olivia. Then it's Munch, who says mazel tov like he means it, and he kisses her cheek, too, and tears gather in the corner of her eyes. Then it's Fin, who is the best dancer of the three of them, who tells her you know, if you change your mind, I'll make sure no one ever finds the body, and she laughs, because only Fin would offer to kill her husband on her wedding day and make it sound like a gift. He means it, she knows. He would kill for her, and she for him. A wedding ring is a solemn vow, but it is a tie more easily broken than the chains that bind her to this man.

She twirls Noah around the dancefloor, her dress swirling around her. She laughs with her friends, and drinks more than she should, and Ed winds his arm around her waist and kisses her temple and they look out at a sea - well, a lake, perhaps - of smiling faces, and this is love, she thinks. The smile she can't shake, the way her heart feels like it's about to burst, his hand at her hip, this is love, and it is good.

Four months after the wedding they are in the park together, and Ed is pushing Noah on the swings, and they are talking about work, when suddenly her son looks over his shoulder and cries, higher, daddy, higher! And both of them, Ed and Olivia, they freeze, just for a second. They haven't talked about this, about whether her son - and he has always been her son, and Ed has never pushed her on that, not, she knows, because he doesn't want to be the boy's father but because he respects the journey that brought Noah to her arms - should call him dad, and now Noah has gone and done it on his own. He watches cartoons, sees other children playing in the park with their fathers, sees the children in his daycare being picked up by their fathers, sometimes, and he has worked it out, all by himself.

Ed looks at her, and his eyes are full of wonder, and Olivia lays her hand on his shoulder, squeezes once reassuringly.

"You heard him, daddy," she tells him, very quietly. For the second time in their acquaintance Ed Tucker looks like he's about to cry; the first time was the moment he saw her walking towards him in a white satin dress, and it's perfect, she thinks, that this is the second. This is love, she thinks.

"You wanna go higher, champ?" he says to Noah. "I can do that."

And he does.

"Dad, did you see, did you see me?" Noah asks breathlessly. The helmet is too big for him, and it's falling down over his eyes, but Ed just laughs, pushes it back a little until he can see their son's face.

"You did great, champ," Ed says.

This is the first time all season Olivia has managed to come to one of Noah's baseball games, but Ed hasn't missed a single one.

He's pretty good, you know, Ed had told her the night before, and he's right, because Noah has just hit his first home run. He was aided by the cartoonish incompetence of the opposing team's outfielders, but it was still a good hit, and he ran all the way around the diamond, beaming, little arms pumping, with his parents cheering for him so loudly that some of the other spectators turned to stare in disapproval.

"We're so proud of you, baby," Olivia tells him.

And they are, Jesus, they are both so proud of their boy. There's a pizza party after, a bunch of kids buzzing on soda and greasy slices of cheese, and Ed has his arm around her shoulders, and he's talking amiably to one of the other dads about the Mets' chances this season, and Olivia just leans against him, and soaks it all in.

This is your life, she tells herself, looking at her son, her man, looking at the faces of these people who treat her kindly, who might even qualify as her friends, who are not police officers and have no idea the kind of horror Liv spends her days wading through. There is no bloodshed, here.

This is love, she thinks. And it is good.

"I been thinking," Ed tells her late one night. They have just made love, as quietly as they could manage - Noah is old enough, now, that if he hears them it might turn into a conversation, and it is a conversation she desperately does not want to have. Ed's been thinking, so she hums, asks him without words to tell her what about. This is something she knows about him now, something she did not know about him twenty years ago. He is a thoughtful man. When confronted with a problem he sits with it, examines it from all angles, and comes up with a solution. He doesn't use his fists.

Well, most of the time he doesn't. She still hasn't forgotten that whole fucking mess with his cousin, and the church, hasn't forgotten his anger and the way it nearly cost them both everything. But he wouldn't be the man she loves if he wasn't just a little bit angry; there is a coil of rage low in her belly that appears less often these days but will never really go away, and they understand that about one another.

"I think the time is coming," he says. "Olivia...I think I wanna retire."

Retirement is a four letter word, to Olivia. It is anathema. She thinks of retirement as something akin to death.

But her husband is older than she is, and he has more years on the job than she does, and they have a home, and a son. If Ed retires he will have more time to spend with his family, ferrying Noah back and forth to school and baseball games. They will only have to call Lucy when they want a date night. Their home will be a little calmer, a little quieter.

He's not talking about you, she reminds herself sternly. He's only talking about himself.

This is something she has known about her husband from the moment they met; he always says just what he's thinking. Ed has never tried to manipulate her, or play games, and he does not have a passive aggressive bone in his body. He has said I think I want to retire, and that's all this conversation will be, a discussion about him and his job. Her job is another matter, to be discussed another time, and she knows this, and swallows back her distress.

"What will you do all day?" she asks him, half in jest. She can barely entertain herself long enough to take a three day weekend, and cannot imagine spending the rest of her life in idleness. Maybe when she's Ed's age she'll feel differently. Maybe he's just tired.

"I don't know," he confesses. "I can take Noah to school, take him to his games. For the rest of it...I don't know. But I'd like to find out."

That's the thing about Ed. He's not afraid of anything. He's not afraid of change, of the future, of the unknown. Ed doesn't know what the future might hold but he wants to barrel into it. He wants to know if he'd be bored, and if he is bored he'll find some way to keep himself occupied, of that she has no doubt. He's involved with some charities that raise money for the 9/11 first responders, of which he was one; maybe, she thinks, he could spend more time on that. There are plenty of ways for a man to stay busy in retirement.

"Whatever you want to do, baby," she tells him, and places a kiss against his chest, just above his beating heart.

"I want to get out before they carry me out in a body bag," Ed tells her bluntly. "My family is more important than the job."

This, she thinks, is love.

"Hey, it's me," Ed says into the phone, and he sounds tired. He's been tired a lot, lately. He's been tired, and he's been repeating himself, and Olivia tried to talk to him about it once but he just got testy with her, and work has been manic, and she hasn't had time to find out what's wrong with him. It's been weighing on her, though. He is her husband, as much a part of her as her own right hand. It's been four years since they got married, and in that time he has become the rock at the center of her world. It is disorienting, to feel that rock begin to crack beneath her feet.

"Can you pick Noah up from dance class today?" he asks her.

It's the last thing she needs, having to duck out of work early to pick up their son when Ed is retired and has plenty of time to do it himself, but she doesn't want to fight with him.

"Yeah," she says. "No problem. Is everything ok?"

"I'm fine, baby," he says. Later she will think about this moment, and realize that it is the first time since they became friends that he lied to her.

"Listen," he adds quickly. "I love you, you know that, don't you?"

"Of course I do," she says, alarmed, now. Those three little words, I love you, have become a constant refrain in her life, and they have always brought her joy, but there is an urgency to them now that she does not understand, and it frightens her.

"I love you like crazy. You've made me the happiest son of a bitch alive."

It sounds too much like a good-bye; she is sitting alone in her office with her phone pressed against her ear, and it is a sunny day and her heart is suddenly heavy, full of dread.

"Ed-"

"I love you," he tells her again. "I'll see you later, baby."

And then he ends the call. She has her finger poised to call him back, but then Amanda bursts through her door with some emergency, and she has to set aside her personal problems to focus on the professional ones.

I'll talk to him tonight, she promises herself. I'll find out what's going on.

When she and Noah pull up to their building there are several black-and-whites and an ambulance sitting outside, and her heart sinks in her chest.

She knows. Somehow, she knows. She knows it the way she can feel the onset of winter, when she wakes one morning and there is a bite to the air that wasn't there before. She feels it like an ache in her bones, like a shiver across her skin; something that once was with her is now gone.

"Stay here," she tells Noah, leaves him buckled in his seat and locks the car doors behind her, and then she races towards the unis, tugging her badge out of her belt as she goes. There are cops everywhere, and Noah is safer in the car than he is by her side, just now. Something is waiting, inside the building they call home, something dark and terrible, and she cannot let him see it.

"Captain Benson, SVU!" she calls with an air of authority she has become accustomed to. One of the unis turns towards her, and pales.

He knows, too, she thinks wildly.

"I live here," she says. "What's going on?"

"Neighbors called in, reports of a gunshot," the uni tells her. "Ma'am, I really think you ought to-"

He's about to tell her to talk to the scene commander, but she ignores him. Ignores him, and runs for the front door, with the uni calling out behind her ma'am! Ma'am! Ma'am, please don't go up there!

It takes forever, but she finds them right where she thought she would. In the corridor outside her apartment medics are talking to crime scene techs and more unis are loitering around, and she flashes her badge.

"Captain Benson, SVU," she says, but her authority is gone; her voice is trembling.

"Ma'am, this isn't an SVU matter," a Sergeant tells her, blocking the doorway. It is the doorway to her apartment, and there are people inside it, people she doesn't know walking through the home she shares with her son and her husband, and there is a gurney, but no body on it, and no one is in a hurry, and that is what breaks her. They only move slow when there's no reason to rush. They only move slow when it's too damn late.

"This my home," she manages to choke out.

This is my home. This is my family. This is love. This suffocating horror, this rising tide of grief, this ripping sensation like she is being torn in half, this is love.

"Olivia," a familiar voice calls, and Melinda is there, and her face is grave. Melinda wore blue, at the wedding. A pretty pale blue dress with flowers on it. There is a picture of Melinda in her blue dress holding on to Olivia in her white one framed and sitting on one of the bookshelves inside her apartment.

"I'm so sorry," she says.

"Let me in," Olivia says to the Sergeant who is still barring her path. "My husband's in there, my husband-"

"Olivia," Melinda says, as gently as she can. She slips by the Sergeant, reaches for Olivia's shoulder. "You don't need to see this."

They have seen horror together, Melinda and Olivia. They have seen bodies mangled in every conceivable way, some ways that aren't conceivable and still give Olivia nightmares. Melinda knows, intimately, that Olivia can look in the face of death and not flinch, and Melinda is telling her no, now, because she knows that the sight that waits on the other side of that door is more than even Olivia can bear.

You've made me the happiest son of a bitch alive, Ed had told her only a few hours before, and now he is no longer alive, and she will never hear his voice again.

Olivia falters, her knees giving way beneath her, and Melinda catches her, holds her tight as she sobs, and the unis watch, ashen-faced, and helpless.

This is love. And this is where it ends.