All she could see was white. White walls, white ceiling, white floor...
Am I dead?
A dull pain ripped through her left leg and abdomen. She wasn't dead.
Fuck, what happened?
Olivia forced her heavy eyelids open to the slow, monotonous beep of the IV and harsh antiseptic smell in the air and realised that she was in a hospital.
Bang.
She couldn't get that sound to stop ringing in her ears.
Oh my God, I was shot.
The events of the night flashed through her head almost instantaneously. Where had she been? Chelsea. She'd been in Chelsea. She'd been wearing her brand new emerald silk dress; she'd been eating pasta, drinking Cabernet. She'd almost kissed-
Oh my God, Rafael.
Her limbs were iron-heavy and movements sluggish, but the panic that suddenly shot through her gave her the ounce of strength she needed to lift her head and scan the rest of the room. She had to look for him; she had to.
And there, in the bed next to hers, was a sedated, but otherwise healthy-looking Rafael Barba, the small cuts on his head bandaged and a sling over his left arm.
He's alive.
Whoever was behind this hadn't put the nails in their coffins - and she was going to nail those bastards the instant she hopped out of this hospital bed. She wanted to stare them down in her interrogation room and watch them shake with sheer terror.
More pain rippled through her leg and abruptly halted that train of thought.
Breathe.
The rest of the room came into clarity with every passing second. White plaster ceiling. White concrete walls. White linoleum floor. The IV needle embedded in her left palm. The splint around her left thigh. The hallways outside were dead silent - far too silent, even for a hospital. There were no windows, no identifying information; the door looked like it could withstand a bomb. Whether it was 2am or 2pm, she had no clue. She scanned the room for a nightstand or shelf that held her cell phone, but found nothing. God, Fin and Amaro were probably out of their minds with worry...
Nothing about this room was registering, and anxiety was starting to pool in her stomach.
She'd been to practically every single hospital in Manhattan at least once before, but this didn't look like Mercy or Bellevue.
And the unfamiliar-looking, well-dressed man and woman seated in the corner of the room certainly didn't look like medical staff.
Olivia's panicked squinting caught the attention of the woman, who promptly alerted her companion and made her way to her bedside.
"Who are you?" Olivia wanted to ask, but no sound emerged from her parched throat. She couldn't speak - why couldn't she speak?
"Sergeant Benson, take it easy. You've just come out of sedation."
All Olivia could do was nod feebly and cast an anxious glance at Rafael.
"Mr Barba is alright. He was shot in the left arm and suffered a concussion, but his most recent head CT looks fine. You were shot in the thigh and lost quite a lot of blood, but on the way to making a full recovery," the man explained.
They pulled badges from the pocket of her coat. "That brings us to the next topic. I'm Deputy Marshal Michelle Nguyen and this is Deputy Marshal Edward Blake."
Deputy Marshals? Olivia instantly straightened in her bed, ignoring the fresh wave of pain that coursed through her as she did. The federal government was involved now?
"You're in a high-security hospital wing. There were serious and credible threats to you and Mr. Barba's lives due to your involvement in the Ivan Lavery case. He has links to an international sex trafficking ring that's on the watchlists of the FBI and Interpol, and our undercover officers picked up on hits ordered against you both."
International sex trafficking ring. FBI. Interpol. Hits ordered against you both. This was getting worse by the second.
Her gaze instinctively darted to Rafael, whose eyes had fluttered open to the sound of conversation. She watched as an unease crept into his expression, his free hand now nervously clutching the blanket in his palm.
"Deputy Marshal Blake and I work with WITSEC."
WITSEC.
No, it couldn't be.
"What does this mean?" Olivia mumbled through her morphine-induced haze, although she had a sinking feeling about the answer to that question. Rafael anxiously looked to the marshals, the languid sluggishness of a few seconds ago completely overtaken by a look of sheer disbelief, and Olivia knew instantly that the six-letter abbreviation had struck an identical fear in him.
This was reserved for the most extreme of threats; the most calculated of criminals.
An uneasy silence hung over the room as they awaited the sentence that would determine their fates.
"The decision has been made to put you both in the federal Witness Protection Program, effective immediately."
The room was spinning.
"No, this can't be possible." The sheer panic the news had induced spontaneously brought Olivia's voice back to life. "Witness protection?"
"Is this really necessary?" Rafael echoed in disbelief. "We're not dead."
"That's the point," Blake replied. "You're not dead, but we need to get you into protection to make sure that this sex trafficking ring doesn't attempt another hit - or multiple - on you."
"With all due respect, Marshals… threats are part of the job for us. I've been targeted countless times. And I'm sure Rafael has seen his fair share of threats too. It's a risk we're willing to take." Olivia was relieved when Rafael nodded emphatically in agreement.
But the look that Blake and Nguyen exchanged made it apparent that there was more to the story, and Olivia instantaneously felt that momentary burst of strength fizzle out.
"It wasn't just the attack on you in Chelsea that was of concern. Explosives were planted in the mailboxes of your apartments, approximately an hour before you were shot."
The matter-of-fact way the sentence slipped out of Blake's mouth almost concealed just how horrifying the reality was, and Olivia suppressed a gasp. Explosives? She bristled recalling the day one had almost taken out Alex Cabot - and the time someone had hidden one in a pizza box sent to the precinct, which almost cost Chester Lake an ear.
"Sergeant Benson, your apartment lobby was destroyed in the explosion. No fatalities, only a few minor injuries, thank goodness…"
She heaved a sigh of relief.
"But Mr Barba… your building doorman, Stanley Kowalski - he triggered the explosive when he opened your mailbox to deposit a parcel. He didn't make it."
Rafael's heart rate shot up and blood rushed through his ears.
Fuck.
They'd escaped with their lives - but an innocent man with nothing to do with this sex trafficking ring hadn't been that lucky. Guilt washed over him like a tsunami obliterating everything in its path, and he felt his hands go cold.
"So… you can see that the threats against you were serious and credible," Nguyen continued. The FBI and Interpol's investigation into the ring has been going on for some time, but with hotspots all over the world - much of the European continent, Indonesia, Brazil, Canada, not to mention a few major US cities… their resources are virtually unlimited and their reach is unfettered. Lavery was linked to an especially prolific sub-network that's evaded detection and capture for years. With all of that considered, it was decided that both of you need to be placed into protection immediately."
Logically, it made sense. Olivia had seen how underhandedly and brutally the Colombian drug cartel had come for Alex Cabot; she'd been right there to witness the car bomb and drive-by shooting. She knew the horrors that necessitated protection - especially now, with a splint around her thigh and apartment bomb she hadn't even had the slightest clue about.
Shit - she must've missed that when they had their phones off at dinner. They'd let their guard down for one night with nary a clue that it'd end in catastrophe.
But she still couldn't believe this. She couldn't even begin to accept the reality that she was going to be placed in witness protection.
"What happens now?" Rafael finally broke the tense silence.
"We need to get you out of the city as soon as possible - preferably in the next three hours. You'll be driven to the clearinghouse in Washington D.C., where you'll remain while we assign you new identities and conduct a comprehensive orientation programme to prepare you for relocation."
Two sentences. Two sentences were all Nguyen needed to summarise a future so profoundly disorientating that Rafael's head spun.
"What about our things? Our work? Our families?
They suddenly seemed like trivial concerns in the face of what was to come, but Rafael eagerly grasped at the last ounce of control he had over his life - a life that would soon be little more than a memory.
"You two have been presumed dead."
They exchanged a horrified look.
Dead. Wiped off the face of the earth without a goodbye. Sergeant Olivia Benson and Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba had ceased to exist.
What was the last thing she'd said to Rollins? To Amaro? To Fin? To Brian? To Simon?
What was the last thing he'd said to Rita Calhoun? Eddie Garcia? His mother?
"We've sent marshals to your apartments to gather a few essentials for your stay in the clearinghouse, but the rest of your belongings will be screened closely before being shipped to your new homes, to ensure that nothing bearing traces of your old identities ends up in your new homes…"
Rafael felt his stomach clench. Even his own belongings didn't feel like his own anymore, every single one now a potential threat to a manufactured identity he was being forced to assume.
Olivia forced herself upright with gritted teeth and stared Nguyen and Blake in the eye. "If we're going to leave New York tonight and never come back… there is one call I need to make. Someone I need to see before we go."
"Sergeant, you know that we can't disclose your participation in WITSEC to anyone outside the few individuals in the US Marshals' Office with clearance…"
"No," she interrupted firmly, refusing to back down on this one request that would bring them both a modicum of closure. "He's law enforcement. I've worked with him almost my entire professional career. He can be trusted."
Rafael and Olivia waited for a response with bated breath.
When Fin received the call from an unknown number instructing him to meet the US Marshals at a desolate parking lot in Harlem, a part of him wondered if he was being set up.
He abandoned the Chinese take-out he'd been picking at, his appetite decimated after losing two of his friends on the same day, and raced to his car with an unshakable gut feeling that this meeting was more than just an exchange of pleasantries. The ominous crash of thunder in the distance as he awaited the marshals had an eerie quality to it that made him shiver in a way he never did at work - a sign of something to come.
And when he was ushered into the heavily guarded hospital wing and pushed his way through the blast-proof door, a part of him wondered if he was dreaming.
"... Liv?" he choked out. He'd encountered many a shocking scene in his two decades on the force, to the extent that almost nothing could faze him - but this nearly brought him to his knees.
Is this a sick joke?
There was no way this was possible - Olivia Benson was lying in a hospital bed, thigh covered with a splint but very much alive and breathing, and next to her, Rafael Barba, now sporting a sling, but also very much alive and breathing.
Was he hallucinating?
"Hey, Fin," Olivia managed a feeble, but relieved smile. Rafael gritted his teeth and forced himself to sit up in his bed, knowing that this could very well be the last time he was seeing anyone from his life in New York in the flesh. A stunned silence fell over the room while Fin drank in the sight before him, and Olivia watched the wheels in his head turn as he put two and two together.
US Marshals. False deaths. A top-secret meeting.
It hit him like a freight truck. He was going to have to say farewell to Olivia and Barba - likely forever - within the next few minutes.
"I can't believe you're alive," Fin muttered incredulously. "We got the news that you two were dead and…" He grimaced recalling the moment they'd received that fateful call, the squad room instantly falling into a mournful hush.
For hours he'd refused to believe that they were dead; that they could be robbed from the squad just like that. But never did he expect that he could actually be right.
Olivia had told herself not to cry, but tears already were pooling in her eyes as she spoke what could be her final words to him. "I couldn't leave without at least letting you know what really happened. Had to twist the marshals' arms and they relented only because you're law enforcement… but oh my God, I'm so glad that you're here, Fin."
"What's going to happen now?" He was almost afraid of the answer - afraid of hearing it being spoken into reality.
"We're leaving the city tonight," Rafael sighed in disbelief. "Right after you leave."
Tonight. There were no last walks along the Hudson River or glimpses of the neon lights of the Empire State Building. There were no final looks at their offices or the apartments they'd made home. There were no final, tearful goodbyes to the rest of the people who mattered most - who'd soon mourn them at a funeral in some imposing chapel uptown.
We're leaving the city tonight.
It still didn't feel real - and they both had the distinct feeling that nothing would make it feel real.
"We're going to the federal clearinghouse in D.C. to get our new identities - and God knows where we'll go after that," Olivia added with a dry, mournful chuckle.
Montana? Oklahoma? Texas? California? She'd always longed to travel out of New York more often, and the irony of the moment wasn't lost on her.
"I can't believe this," Fin shook his head. "Two days ago we were sitting in the squad room together, and now… this."
"I'm going to miss you so much, Fin," Olivia choked out, her voice cracking with every word. "You've had my back since the beginning, and I'm always going to be grateful for all the years we had."
Rafael looked on quietly, feeling the strength of over a decade of friendship in full force, and he realised that he was tearing up too.
"Oh, Liv…" Fin clutched her hands sadly, his voice as soothing and affectionate as it could be in these circumstances. "You're the reason that SVU is the way it is. You've made a huge difference in this city. I'm proud of you. Always will be."
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Fin didn't care about sounding like a sap. He couldn't care anymore - not when this was probably his last chance to say those words to her face.
"And Barba," Fin made his way to his bedside, realising that he'd never seen the ADA look quite this vulnerable or shaken. "You've been a great ADA. Probably the best we've ever had. You changed the game for us."
There were so many more words that they wished they could exchange, but the gravity of the moment cast a mournful, anxious silence over the room. They'd been greeted by the familiar sight of Fin at his desk whenever they strolled into the precinct - and now that familiar sight was going to be little more than a figment of their memory.
Fin caught sight of the marshals outside the door checking their watches, and dread filled the air as he suddenly became conscious of how little time they had left. "Is there anything you need me to do for you?"
Only one name crossed Rafael's mind, and his heart ached realising that he might never have the chance to see her again - to tell her that he was alright; that he was alive.
"I need you to talk to Rita Calhoun," he said urgently, tears now falling down his cheeks. "Ask her to help me take care of my mother. She and my abuelita are getting on in years and I know this is going to break their hearts. Tell Rita to tell them that I love them so much, and that they need to be strong."
Olivia's stomach lurched. Lucia. Catalina. She'd never met either woman, but knew how much Rafael adored her and his grandmother, and her heart sank as they forced themselves to accept the fact that he was going to have to leave without a goodbye.
Fin nodded with all the confidence he could muster and gripped Rafael's hands reassuringly, the visceral pain in the (now former) ADA's voice a sting to his heart.
"Don't let the squad room burn down, Fin. I know you'll hold the fort," Olivia added with a bittersweet, proud smile. "Keep doing what you've always been doing."
"We're not going to stop investigating. We're going to pull Lavery's secret wide open and make sure that the scumbags behind this are brought to justice," he stated emphatically. "Especially if that means that you two can come back to New York someday… but in the meantime, take care of yourselves, alright?"
His voice was choked with emotion. It was the first time Olivia and Rafael had seen tears well up in the eyes of the normally stoic detective, and she knew that this moment would be indelibly etched in her memory - her last memory of her life in New York.
"Take care of yourself too, Fin."
The marshals stood by the door, ready to escort Fin back to his car, and Olivia felt like her heart was going to be ripped out of her chest as the seconds ticked by relentlessly. No amount of time was ever going to be enough, but there was no choice now. Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba were going to be dead in a matter of hours, and there was no turning back.
Neither cared about the pain any longer when they forced themselves out of their hospital beds and wordlessly hugged Fin goodbye. And with one last, melancholic smile, the final remnant of their lives in New York disappeared down the endless hallway outside.
"We need to get moving soon," Nguyen announced emotionlessly as Olivia dried the last of her tears with her palm. "Aim is to get to D.C. by sunrise."
"I guess we have to go," Rafael muttered defeatedly.
Her body language was strong; determined, but her eyes told a different story. "You ready?"
He knew he was never going to be, but forced a nod and resolute "yes" before he could fall apart completely.
They realised that the windows of the SUV were completely blacked out when they clambered into the car, armed marshals hovering around them and the throbbing pain from their wounds overtaken by a crushing, unspeakable sadness as they pulled away from the city they'd called home all their lives. Olivia shut her eyes and forced herself to think of the contours of the city streets - streets she'd spent her life memorising and protecting - and imagined what was on the other side of the blacked-out windows. The dollar pizza joints, the speakeasy bars, the Midtown lights, the tenement buildings, the verdant green of Central Park… they were nothing more than hazy visions of a life soon to be extinguished.
The pendant she always wore - the one emblazoned with "fearlessness", the one representing the very fibre of what she did - was nothing more than a hollow reminder of the life she was leaving behind.
All the people she'd come to love as family - nothing more than fragmented memories and cursory snapshots.
Except for Rafael Barba.
His eyes were shut tight and arms folded in his lap, the calm expression on his face concealing the tidal wave of emotion pouring through him. Devastation and confusion silently crushed him, but no tears fell; he was frustrated enough to scream, but his throat made no sound - he was a prisoner being whisked away to a new life he wanted no part of.
They cruised along what must have been the Interstate, exchanging nary a word, until Olivia felt Rafael's hand inch towards hers in search of solace, and she squeezed back, soaking in the only piece of her life she had left.
Rafael had been to Washington D.C. a few times in his life - middle school field trips to the Reflecting Pool and museums, the occasional law conference. He'd soaked in the splendour of the National Mall on his evening jogs and stood under the Capitol rotunda with childlike glee and a disposable camera in hand; he'd stood in front of crowds of respected lawyers and academics and delivered show-stopping speeches.
But this compound had none of the essences of those joyful memories.
The sun had just started peeking over the horizon when they finally left the blacked-out interior of the car behind and stepped into what the marshals claimed was a federal compound but looked far more like a fortress - armed guards surrounding the perimeter, surveillance cameras watching every inch, imposing high walls that obscured their view of civilisation. They'd been ushered into the compound through a windowless garage, never once seeing sunlight - they passed through electronic doors, silent carpeted hallways and an endless series of corridors, their only contact with the warm air outside through the small windows of their rooms and a tiny courtyard with concrete walls so high that they felt boxed in.
Prison. A physical prison - and then the prisons of their own fear.
"We'll let you get some rest and start the orientation programme in the afternoon," Blake informed them as they struggled to make sense of their spartan, clinical surroundings. Bottles of water were stacked in the fridge, and Rafael listlessly gulped from one of them, eager to find something - anything - to take his mind off over this stifling dystopian hellscape they were in. He probably hadn't eaten in hours, but the waves of nausea that rippled up his gullet made the thought of food thoroughly unappealing.
"I'm going to try to get some sleep," Olivia remarked quietly as she emerged in one of the sets of clothes that the marshals had hastily retrieved from her apartment - a T-shirt and yoga pants that didn't quite fit anymore, but still felt somewhat like home.
Rafael managed a feeble smile and quick "see you later" as she disappeared into one of the bedrooms. The feverish anxiety of the night now dissipated, he sat alone at the dining table in the main room, his head buried in his hands and body completely numb.
This isn't a field trip. This isn't a work trip. This isn't a vacation.
He wasn't going home to New York.
This was real, and he was going to have to accept it, one way or another.
He wondered how his mother and grandmother had taken the news of his "passing", and he felt like he couldn't breathe.
Rafael finally forced himself out of the chair and dragged his heavy feet to his bedroom, where he thumbed through the clothes in the drawstring bag and realised that none of his Harvard T-shirts had made the cut. Of course they wouldn't put those in - they were parts of his old identity that he couldn't even muster the emotion to mourn.
Twenty minutes later, the sound of three familiar knocks roused Olivia out of her bed.
"You don't have to knock, you know," she smiled wearily when he opened the door. "We're the only ones here."
"I just wanted to be sure," he replied softly. "Did I wake you?"
"No… I couldn't sleep, actually." She rubbed her temples in frustration - exhaustion had crept into every crevice of her body, but sleep simply eluded her.
"Me neither."
"You want to lie down?"
She didn't have to wait for his answer to know that it was precisely what they needed.
Olivia drew the curtains shut and settled next to Rafael on her bed, exhaling softly as her skin came into contact with his warmth. All she let herself focus on was the gentle rise and fall of his chest; the fingers of his uninjured arm interlaced with hers - her only human connection to the last 45 years of her life. Her only connection to Olivia Benson. She instinctively tightened her grip on his hand and forced her eyes shut, but the mattress under her felt cold and unwelcoming.
"Liv?"
His panicked whisper punctuated the darkness.
"I'm terrified."
It was the most emotion she'd ever heard in two words.
A part of her was telling herself to be strong for the both of them; to fight the fear that was rapidly settling over this room and permeating every fibre of their being. She'd spent her whole life training herself to be stoic and unshakeable in the face of adversity; to stand firm where others fell.
She knew she had the strength to fight her way through whatever came next.
She knew what absolute terror was, and had survived.
But the wet patch of tears gathering on her sleeve and Rafael's petrified sobs shattered her last ounce of resolve, and she realised that she was crying too.
