It was so cold that Saturday, two days before the full moon.
The snow began to fall at six.
By eight it was gathering in the dark hollows of his eyes.
She couldn't remember what it was like to be truly warm. Every moment was a concentrated, evil struggle. It was like swimming when you're battling to keep your head above water.
Elliot was in bad shape. Blood was smeared across his tattered clothes in frigid lines and freezing to the cold plastic dashboard. He drew breath with a whistling sound that became weaker as the hours wore on. So she did her best to make him comfortable in what was left of the car, which wasn't much.
"Don't leave me here," he stuttered, spitting blood.
Just sitting up made Olivia cry out. She desperately tried to move her feet.
A shudder swept Elliot's body. She grasped his hand, brushing her fingers over the knuckles. "I won't. I promise," she said, noticing the odd angle of his back to the passenger door.
The cell phones had no signal and three bullets were all they had left. She'd shot a few into the cloudy sky, hoping to attract attention in the cold silence. The crows stirred in the snowy trees and cast dark shadows as they coasted overhead. But no one came. They never came.
He stopped moving at five. The pale froth of blood froze on his lips. Elliot was the strongest person she'd ever known. Elliot Stabler would never die. He was her father, lover, teacher, brother. So much of him pumped through her lifeblood. They never made love, kissed or could form the words that defined their relationship. The sad ties could never be severed. Olivia's feelings were pushed somewhere down deep and it took every bit of control to keep them below the surface. It was her big secret. It hurt all the time.
Olivia felt the tiredness grow behind her eyes and fought its lull. There was nothing to do but wait for some sort of ending. The muzzle of the gun felt icy in her hands. Time might come to use it again. She looked at Elliot, who was so pale - but smiling. He knew the secret. Maybe now he knew life's too short for all the words you don't say.
They had been stupid people whose badges were bigger than their hearts. She'd spent all those years loving and hating him, crying at night against the frosted windowpanes, wondering when things would change. Back at the precinct, the lockers still bore his fist-marks and blood. They were still in present tense.
But maybe they'd self-destruct.
That's what happens. They were wrong - all those writers and poets. True love dies. There was one point where she thought he loved her. It was in that hospital waiting room. She ran from him. And the blood trickled down the cold metal lockers just like it was running down the side of the passenger door, leaving dark crimson puddles in the new-fallen snow.
"Why?" she said softly as the summer sun lit the windows behind them. Olivia's breathing was hard and raspy. "Why could you...after what you said to me in the hospital..."
She was shaking her head slightly, not bothering to wipe away the tears. Elliot put his hands on her shoulders.
"Because what you and I are...what we have...is different. You know that," he said, regretting it almost as soon as it came out of his mouth.
She laid her head on the steering wheel, feeling the darkness start to creep in. Olivia watched Elliot for a long time, remembering who they were and who they used to be once upon a time. It seemed like a dream now. Things that were once sharp-focused and bright faded to pastel smears in her mind. We don't just end, she thought. In a righteous world, they'd die as they lived, under a hail of bullets and after a valiant struggle while their blood leaked away on the steamy midsummer pavement. This was different. This was silence and Olivia couldn't remember the last time things had been so quiet around her.
She loved him. Every little thing, animosity and annoyance that passed between them was gone. Here they were just what was left of Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler. The angry words they exchanged before the car left the road were gone. The voices from the precinct were fading. Her mother's voice loomed and fell off. The blood finally stopped flowing.
Soon the shadows surrounding them began to deepen. Olivia brushed the snow from Elliot's face and sat back, keeping watch. High overhead, an airplane twinkled against the clouds.
She took off her black jacket and laid it over him. There so many things that didn't happen between them. It didn't seem to matter now, because she had known love and knew that was really the only important thing in life.
"I kept my promise," she whimpered in a thin voice, barely audible over the howling wind. "I said I'd never leave you."
Ten o'clock came and went and eventually the snow stopped.
Back in New York City, Casey frantically called a phone that would never ring. Munch stopped and stared at Elliot's locker, noticing the dried blood for the first time. Cragen stared out the window at the ominous clouds, like an old farmer watching the blizzard steal his crop.
A shaft of moonlight spilled on the field, glinting off the twisted metal. Things were covered in a smothered silence, save for the tick-tick of a piece of plastic that waved in the infrequent wind. There was no explanation for the destruction or the life that once dwelled within.
They just were, and never would be again.