Detective Riley Nyle didn't exactly have Olivia's warm approachable spirit nor did she appear as such an angel of mercy. Her short, dark hair was slicked back out of her narrow, green eyes and long, angular face, and when she spoke her voice was raspy from years of cigarette smoking. Though she ground a piece of Nicorette between her teeth, the damage had already been done, and it only added to her tall, broad shouldered appearance. She meant business, and her severe demeanor both terrified and reassured Amanda's trembling heart. Nyle was the kind of cop that she trusted to get the job done, but not exactly the type to spare to judgment either.
She'd already lied once, and the car ride here had been a walk of shame in and of itself. Olivia's silence had spoken for itself, and it seemed there was no escaping though Nyle seemed eager to hear her story.
She'd met her, Olivia, and Fin in the squad room of the NJPD with a terrifyingly intense gaze.
"I just got handed the case this morning." She'd clarified when Olivia had asked where the officer from last night was. "I've been looking at DeFranco for over a year now."
Turning her gaze towards Amanda, she'd barely cracked a smile as she stated, ominously, "I've been waiting for you."
She'd insisted on speaking with Amanda alone, a turn of events which she had not been prepared for. Despite the rift broadening painfully between her and Olivia, she'd tossed Olivia a pleading glance. Olivia, however, had squeezed hand with a short smile, and assured her she'd be there when Amanda returned.
Now, following Nyle down the stark, white halls of the NJPD's second floor offices and cubicles, she gazed back and forth at the photos of decorated detectives staring grimly at the camera, and a part of her felt suddenly intimidated and out of her depth. Glancing back at Nyle, she noted the sergeant's bars attached to the shoulders of her dress blue jacket. Though most officers only wore it for special occasions, Nyle wore it as part of her outfit, on top of worn jeans and a grey button up. If she'd been a man, Amanda might have judged her as pretentious and insecure, but on Nyle it only felt like a reinforcement of her position, and Amanda felt incredibly unworthy. She was perhaps the worst witness to walk into the NJPD, and she wanted to pull Nyle around and tell her that she wasn't the crack in the case that she so desperately needed. She was just a woman on the verge of breaking completely beneath the weight of her own vices and bad decisions.
Nyle reached an office door, and Amanda swallowed hard as she read Nyle's name and rank affixed to the opaque glass. She hadn't expected to be examined and questioned by someone so obviously important to the NJPD, and she hesitated as Nyle stepped inside and held the door open for her.
"Can I get you something?" Nyle asked, canting her head towards the inside of her office, as if her hospitality would settle Amanda's racing heart.
"I'm good." Amanda forced out as she uprooted her feet from the floor.
There was no use in hesitating any further. She was here, and she'd sworn to herself to make things right, if not for herself, then for Olivia.
Stepping into the room, Amanda gingerly sat in the chair facing Nyle's desk. She noticed the thick file enclosed in a worn manila envelope lying beyond the gold engraved nameplate and haphazardly organized clutter, and DeFranco's name written in Sharpie at the top seized her throat with cold dread. Although she'd never even laid eyes on the man, the thought of him sent a chill down her body and wound her stomach into knots. He'd discovered Nadine's unfaithfulness in a few, scarce hours and with the second perpetrator's escape, Amanda could only imagine that he was already planning some way to escape the law.
"Sure you don't want something?" Nyle asked, her emerald eyes narrowing as she sat down in the chair, shattering Amanda's frozen gaze.
"Y-yeah…" She stuttered, blinking quickly as she dragged her eyes from the file.
Nyle studied her for another unnerving second before she flipped open the file.
"I have the report that you gave the responding officer last night-"
"About that." Amanda interrupted, haltingly, her throat dry, her stomach turning at the thought of her evasive words to the cops last night.
Nyle's brow lifted, and she sat back in the chair, an expression of inquiry on her face as thought she'd been waiting for Amanda to tell the truth, as though she'd known all along the report was full of lies.
"Look…" Amanda began, her voice on the verge of a tremble as she glanced down at her lap. "I'm a cop too. A sex crimes cop. I know I should know better. I just -"
"Amanda." Nyle cut her off, startling her with the intimate use of her first name.
Amanda glanced up into Nyle's intense eyes, relieved to find the smallest hints of compassion resting there in.
"I understand." Nyle said, firmly. "I've dealt with scumbags like this for a long time. I know the fear they can employ. We'll draw up a new report, and let the DA deal with the initial one later. What matters to me right now is that you're here. You have names and faces, and the courage to bring them to light."
Amanda swallowed hard as tears rose sharply in her eyes. She didn't feel courageous, only guilty.
"I'm not -" She began in a husky tone, but Nyle was already pulling out her notebook and swiftly clicking the pen open.
"Just start at the beginning." Nyle urged. "Don't worry about anything else but telling me what happened. Exactly."
Her voice was kind enough, but Amanda could hear the edge of determination cutting through.
What does it really matter anyways? She asked herself, staring down at Nyle's poised pen. Olivia's already gone…
Clearing her throat, she shifted in the chair. "I guess it started with Nadine."
"Nadine." Nyle echoed in a murmur, her pen scratching the page as she etched out the letters.
Then there they lay, too tangible now to take back, inked into existence in a few mere seconds. Amanda swallowed hard, clenching her hands into fists.
She almost wanted to rasp out that it had begun long before, that the final conclusion of this damned trip to Atlantic City had started weeks ago in a cold, stark hospital room beside a woman who'd seen more than any human ever should.
Olivia should be written there instead because it was always going to be her and it always had been. No matter who she slept with, no matter the distance between them nor the trauma that separated them.
Nyle wanted the whole truth, but she was never going to get the full story, no matter how many questions she asked. She'd get the bare bones, the minimum amount of words that it took to enclose those horrific minutes inside the alleyway. Anything beyond that would be far too deep, far beyond the understanding of a simple onlooker.
Glancing up at Nyle's expectant gaze, Amanda drew a heavy breath. Then she opened her mouth to make her second confession of the day, and prayed absolution wouldn't be far behind.
xxxxxx
"I made a mistake, Fin."
Olivia's husky tone sounded like skittering nails on a chalkboard to her own aching ears in the silence of the NJPD atrium. She'd felt the need to escape the strange sense of de ja vu that had filled her when they were inside. If she had pretended, she might have been able to fool herself into thinking they'd never even left, that the hours in between had never happened.
But she couldn't.
She couldn't make herself forget, and even through the agonizing, slow shattering of her fragile hopes and warm dreams, she couldn't make herself believe that she wanted to.
She felt Fin's eyes upon her though he didn't say a word. They hadn't acknowledged the hotel or what had occurred behind the closed door of her and Amanda's room, but she knew that he had guessed it. Perhaps, he'd known before they even set foot inside. In her desperation to find Amanda, she hadn't tried to so hard to hide the emotion seeping from her heart.
"I just need to get back to work." She whispered, staring across the room at the bulletin board full of missing persons photos as tears burned in her eyes.
If she stared long enough maybe she'd see herself there amongst the sad and desolate gazes of the vanished. She could imagine the poster in her mind, her own face covered in his blood.
Olivia Benson, detective of the NYPD, was last seen May 20, 2014 in her apartment with serial killer William Lewis -
"Liv?" Fin's voice finally interrupted the morbid train of thought.
She felt him touch her arm, and sucked a sharp breath through her teeth as the unexpected contact.
"I'm sorry." Fin said, quietly, withdrawing his hand though his eyes stayed heavy upon her.
She clutched her arm where her flesh burned from human contact, but she didn't have enough fingers to massage away the ache that Amanda had left across her whole body. She stared harder at the faces on the wall, her jaw clenching as tears rose in a blurry tide to overwhelm their haunted features.
She'd held herself together through Amanda's whispered confession, through their ride here, through the conversation with Sergeant Nyle, but she couldn't grasp the tethers of composure any longer.
"God." She suddenly uttered the curse, or, perhaps, the prayer.
Bending over suddenly on her knees, she pressed her fists into her eyes.
"I've got to get Lindstrom to release me back to duty." She whispered, her voice barely rising above a guttural moan.
Her head was pounding, and the coffee she'd consumed at the hotel had barely eased the throbbing. Her thoughts had been going in circles for hours now, and she felt exhausted with the churning. She wished desperately for an escape, but she had no place to hide any longer. Brian's apartment would not be safe, nor would Amanda's or her own. The only safety net she could think of was the NYPD, her desk, her service weapon, her badge. She could bury herself there in the familiar patterns and objects, put distance between herself and the woman she was suddenly so entangled with. She could forget herself, and eventually this agony.
They could not be together. Amanda had been right that stormy afternoon inside her truck where they'd idled at the crossroads of their life. She'd been right, and as painful as that was to accept, she had to; and she had to do it now now before Amanda returned.
It wasn't so much the fact that Amanda had slept with someone else that made her feel so as much as what both her and Amanda's attempts at intimacy with Nadine and Brian forced her to realize. The trauma that they each carried was far too heavy to shoulder between them, and they had made the fatal error of falling in love with the romanticised concept of saving each other from this madness. It had all been an illusion, a comforting one, but an illusion nonetheless. Salvation would never find itself in soft flesh and warm bed sheets, in pleasure or in love. Salvation was a harsh and horrifyingly long road, a rough, narrow pathway that hinged on an inner strength that she had yet to harness. Attempting to clutch onto someone else's, especially someone who so badly needed it for themself, had been foolish, and most of all, selfish. They'd been doomed from the start.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Fin was asking gently.
"I don't have another choice, Fin." She insisted, a note of desperation lacing her tone.
"There's always a choice." Fin replied, and though no condemnation marked his voice, she felt it all the same.
"What do I do then?" She demanded. "Spend the rest of my life thinking about what he did to me? What those men did to Amanda?"
Tearing her hands away from her face, she shot a glimmering glare over her shoulder at Fin's drawn expression.
"That's not what I said."
Olivia breathed out a low tone of frustration, and sank back in the chair. Leaning her head against the wall, she pressed her eyes shut over hot tears.
"You gotta work this shit out, Liv." Fin said at last, concern winding through his sharp words. "You can't come back to work all messed up. You and I both know that's the quickest way to lose your badge for good."
She knew he was right, and that he only meant well with the brash reality of his words, but just as Brian had warned her about the possible fatality of alcoholism, she could hardly stand the truth.
"I don't have anything else." She murmured, her chest dully throbbing as a slow tear slipped from beneath her trembling lid.
"Sure you do " Fin argued, quietly.
"Come on." Olivia whispered, roughly, tilting her head towards him as she opened her watery eyes. "You know what I mean."
A frown pinched his brow, his mouth forming a strained line. He didn't say anything this time because he did know. His own personal history was marked with loneliness, grief, and betrayal, perhaps, more than she even knew.
"You'll get back to work." Fin replied at last, skirting her acknowledgment of their shared attachment to SVU. "Just give it some time."
Olivia didn't resist his caution this time, instead allowing her gaze to drift back towards the missing persons board. For the next hour she memorized their names and faces, filing away into her mind each wisp of hair or solemn eye until she could forget that thought in the back of her mind.
They're never coming home.
xxxxxx
She'd found his face amongst the dozens of photos. All of them had pictured some associate or another of DeFranco's, and at first, she'd been afraid she wouldn't be able to pick him out from the jumble of people in front of her.
But then there he was, in full color, glaring at the camera. The mug shot was nearly ten years old, but Amanda had recognized him immediately.
"Thomas Carlyle." Nyle had echoed softly as Amanda had picked up the photo was trembling fingers, her wide eyes latched on to his dark expression.
Thomas Carlyle. Thomas Carlyle. Thomas Carlyle.
She thought of him as the New Jersey skyline faded behind Fin's car, and landscape between Atlantic City and NYC rose to fill the windows. It was a clear, June day, but clouds seemed to fill every crevice of Amanda's mind. Clouds of grief, guilt, and that same, familiar hopelessness.
Thomas Carlyle, you should've killed me when you had a chance, Thomas Carlyle.
She released a low sigh, and leaned her head back against the seat, pressing her eyes shut. She hated what she saw in the barren solace of her own head, but she didn't want to open them and see Olivia's vacant, red-rimmed expression. She sat only a foot away, her gaze pinned unflinchingly upon the view beyond the window.
She'd been silent since they'd entered the car. The distance between them seemed to have grown by miles in the time that Amanda had been with Nyle, and what warmth that remained from last night had gone to cold ash. She could only wonder at the thoughts that passed behind Olivia's tired, bloodshot gaze, and a part of her wished to be ignorant to it forever.
Tilting her head back towards her window, Amanda wrapped her arms around her stomach, and swallowed slow and deliberate around the knot in her throat.
Beneath her, the tires raced over yards upon yards of pavement, and she felt as though they were rushing towards a steep precipice. Their lives before lay at the end of this road - where they were only co-workers, barely friends, where Olivia loved Brian and Amanda refused to believe in love - and she knew that they could no longer pretend that those things could stay the same. They could not go on as they had before, blinding themselves to the truth. She'd only hoped that when this day arrived that she would be content and happy with the outcome. What a foolish hope it had been.
By the time New York City cut itself out against the sky, Amanda had begun to drift fitfully in and out of sleep. She dreamed half consciously of Olivia, of Burke and Carlyle, of Nadine and DeFranco, of things much darker than she dared to dwell on. Then Olivia's fingers would reach over to squeeze her own, awakening her to her own distraught moaning, and she'd cling to the warmth of Olivia's comfort for as long as she could make it last.
She was both relieved and apprehensive as they reached the loud, bustling streets of New York City. The bouts of nightmares became impossible with the sound of taxis, street musicians, and sirens beyond the window, but her dread mounted the closer they drew to her apartment. She could barely stop herself now from glancing over at Olivia, and the strained expression of conflict on her face deepened the racing of Amanda's heart until she could feel it pounding relentlessly against her ribs.
The sight of her apartment building, the symbol that their road had ended, seized her with a near inescapable sorrow. She felt frozen in a shell of heartache as Fin parked next to a meter. The silence seemed louder than before as Amanda stared up at the edifice of the old building, her vision blurring, her throat choked by the tears that so desperately wanted to fall.
"I'll take you up." Olivia whispered at last, her husky tone breaking the spell of paralyzed quiet inside the car.
"You want me to wait?" Fin asked, and Amanda could feel him watching them in the rearview mirror.
"Yeah." Olivia replied in a strained tone, abruptly unbuckling her seat belt and shouldering the door open. "I'll only be a minute."
Amanda clenched her eyes shut as the sound of the door slamming jarred her senses. She could scarcely breathe as Olivia rounded the back of the car, and then the warm, summer air spread over Amanda's shivering body as she pulled her door open. She couldn't bring herself to open her eyes as Olivia's presence hovered over her, waiting for her to walk herself to her own demise.
"Amanda." Olivia murmured at last, and the shadow of her sank down beside her.
She barely opened her eyes as Olivia crouched in the doorway, taking her hands, and rubbing the backs of them slowly. Taking halting breaths, Amanda glanced over at her wrinkled brow and shimmering, dark gaze.
"It's okay." Olivia whispered, but Amanda could only hear the reassurance as a warning.
She wanted to slump down into her arms, and beg her not to leave her, promise her anything if only she'd kiss her one more time. She'd pay whatever penance she had to be as they had been last night…
But instead, she slowly nodded, and reached for her seatbelt. Olivia rose slowly, and stepped aside as Amanda slid out of the car. She swayed on the sidewalk for a moment while the gentle breeze dried the tears in tracks upon her cheeks, then she felt Olivia's fingers at her elbow.
"Come on." Olivia murmured, a soft glimmer of sadness scintillating in her eyes. "I've got you."
And even here, at what Amanda was sure was the end, her heart didn't fail to believe her.