A mournful hush had fallen over the squad room by the time Fin showed up for work the next morning. He'd gotten barely a wink of sleep after that midnight meeting, the only evidence it'd ever happened the call log on his cell phone that proved that he hadn't made it up entirely.

Olivia and Barba are gone.

Except that they weren't dead, and he was the only person in this room - in the city, probably - to know that.

Amanda barely concealed her blood-shot eyes with the rim of her coffee cup and wordlessly slid a copy of that morning's New York Ledger onto Fin's desk.

Manhattan Special Victims Unit Sergeant and Assistant District Attorney slain in Chelsea drive-by shooting.

She'd dog-eared a spread on the third page and Fin gingerly flipped to it, a lump in his throat immediately forming when he caught a glimpse of a photograph of Olivia in uniform, taken right after the Sergeant's promotion ceremony - perhaps the last time he'd seen her smile that brilliantly.

Slain SVU detective gave her life to advocating for sexual assault survivors.

Now he wished they'd taken more photos with her that day.

He wished that he'd taken more photos with her in the fifteen years they'd worked together.

Nick trudged into the room an hour later, no one caring that he was late. His gaze immediately wandered to the "In Memoriam - Sergeant Olivia Benson" poster that 1PP had printed for them that morning, and Fin could have sworn that he saw tears well up in Nick's eyes, although he quickly wiped them with his sleeve and turned his attention to the paperwork on his desk.

The whole room felt like it'd slowed. Unis and clerks trod carefully as they went about their daily business; rowdy morning coffee requests were replaced with silent note-passing and break room foosball games ceased entirely. They'd lost their commanding officer and ADA in one fell swoop, but no one dared to ask about a replacement. Flowers were delivered and cards and gifts received, and they rapidly accumulated in a pile on a table in the centre of the break room - a pile that quickly became the most tangible emblem of their grief.

Olivia's office lay untouched like a shrine, a thin film of dust now settling over the phone and Ruth Bader Ginsburg figurine, and her pencils still hastily strewn over the half-used legal pad she'd been using to scrawl notes on the Lavery case. The cleaning staff had unlocked the door before the detectives arrived, but no one even dared step foot near the room, as though someone had ring-fenced everything within a 5-foot radius.

That was until they returned from a call and found a lone, despondent figure sitting in her chair, hunched over Olivia's belongings and eyes full of unshed tears.

"Cassidy," Fin greeted with a gentle knock on the door, careful not to startle him.

"Hey, Fin," Brian mumbled as he stared forlornly at the photo frame in his hands.

Fin felt his hair stand on end as he stopped in front of Olivia's desk and finally took stock of just how much she'd left behind - including the photo of her and Brian that he now was holding. It wasn't one he'd seen before, but their radiant smiles and affectionate body language instantly transported him back to a happier time, now cruelly robbed from them all. "How are you holding up?"

Brian opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. "I… can't believe it," he finally choked out after a long pause. "Liv's gone."

The room, once alive and teeming with energy, now felt frozen in time, its vitality draining from it by the second.

It felt dead.

"Liv's gone," he echoed in disbelief.

Fin felt sick to his stomach. All he could do was helplessly watch Brian fall apart in a melancholic silence, while his brain was itching to put him out of his misery and tell him that Olivia wasn't actually gone. But the truth would be a far more cruel blow. Exiled to some place far from New York, all connections with her former life now forbidden…

She was as good as dead.

"I don't even know what flowers she wanted for the funeral. What music she wants played. What to say," he lamented with his head buried in his hands. "Some boyfriend I was."

Fin's face fell when he realised that he didn't know the answers to those questions either. The risk of getting killed in the line of duty was omnipresent, but never had Olivia made plans for a scenario like this - at least to his knowledge. She'd never even been grazed by a bullet in the line of duty before, and now a gunshot wound was her cause of "death".

Oh God, Fin cursed to himself as the enormity of that brief exchange hit him like a freight truck. He was going to have to organise and attend funerals for Olivia and Barba. Knowing perfectly well that they weren't dead.

But even that couldn't compare to the visceral pain of watching Brian grip that photo frame in disbelief, paralysed by his grief.

"You don't have to figure this out alone, Brian. We're all here to help," Fin touched his shoulder reassuringly.

"You know what the last thing I said to Liv was? I asked her to drop off the clothes I'd left in her apartment at my door. I couldn't even be fucked to drive there myself and see her one last time… I didn't even text to thank her." He shook his head in disbelief. "Now… she's gone."

Now Fin was especially relieved that the Ledger article hadn't mentioned that Olivia had been on what looked like a very romantic date with Barba right before the incident. Brian didn't need more salt in his wound.

"I know you two loved each other very much. You'll always have that."

It seemed woefully inadequate, but all Fin could hope for was that Brian would find a way to manage somehow.

"Sorry for barging in here like that," Brian said apologetically. "I won't get in your way."

"Stay as long as you'd like. Take whatever you want," Fin offered kindly, and quietly shut the door behind him to allow him to grieve in privacy.

He would be lying if he said that he, Amanda and Nick hadn't subtly made digs at Olivia and Brian's relationship over the past year, Nick taking an especially long time to warm up to the officer-turned-IAB detective after a tumultuous start, but there was no question that Brian's heart was breaking in the worst possible way right in front of him - and Fin had no way of alleviating that pain.

The air in the room suddenly felt even heavier as he made his way back to his desk. Fin caught another glimpse of the Ledger issue he'd tossed next to his laptop and immediately flipped it over, banishing the headline from his sight. He'd always been good at keeping things under wraps - that was probably why Olivia had called him in the first place - but this was one secret that he already knew was going to be particularly hard to keep buried, especially in the thick of everyone's mourning.

Amanda and Nick were bent over their coffee cups and laptops, chairs angled away from the physical reminder of their grief that was Olivia's office, and listlessly typed away at their paperwork without exchanging a word all afternoon, although the desolate mood that hung over them made it almost impossible for anyone to get any work done. Fin collapsed into his chair and ran over the events of the night before for the umpteenth time that day - the last time he'd laid eyes on his friends, the ache that they'd poured into those goodbye hugs - with a pang to his heart.

This week's going to be hell, he lamented quietly.

There were two funerals to plan, and probably an interim captain while they struggled to get by without a commanding officer and shortage of detectives. He and Amaro had already gotten calls from the vultures at 1PP about the next sitting of the Sergeant's exam, although the look they'd exchanged as they got off the phone made it clear that neither was ready to let Olivia become history - not that easy.

It definitely wasn't like Fin to be easily overwhelmed, but he now regretted not taking a sick day to get his head straight before returning to work.

Just then, another delivery man walked through the precinct doors with a large bouquet, accompanied by a card on Calhoun & Berkeley stationery, and left it next to the many bouquets in the break room, where the mound of gifts had now taken on an especially threatening character.

There was one thing he could do right now. He grabbed his cell phone and retreated to the privacy of the cribs.

A jarringly cheerful young woman's voice filled his ear. Not today, he cursed. "Good afternoon, you've reached the office of Calhoun and Berkeley. May I know who's calling and the purpose of your call?"

"I'm Detective Odafin Tutuola, calling from NYPD's Special Victims Unit. I need to speak with Rita Calhoun urgently."

"Miss Calhoun's taken the rest of the week off, unfortunately. Can I take a message?"

That was to be expected. Fin hadn't had many interactions with her, but it was well-known in the law enforcement circles that Rita and Barba had been close friends since their freshman year at Harvard. Now he was going to have to add another twist to what was very likely an already gut-wrenching emotional rollercoaster and find a way to tell her that her friend was, in fact, alive.

"Is there a way I can get in contact with her today? It's a very urgent police matter."

It was technically true, but saying it out loud still made him uncomfortable.

Ten minutes later, armed with an Upper East Side address and cell phone number, he grabbed his car keys and headed towards the doors of the precinct with a renewed sense of purpose in his step.


"Are you pulling my leg, Detective?"

A red-eyed and visibly exhausted Rita Calhoun sat cross-legged on her sofa, surrounded by a mountain of used tissues and photo albums labelled "Harvard", and stared at Fin as though she'd just seen a ghost. Without her typically immaculate courtroom attire and perfectly coiffed brunette hair, there was a vulnerability to her he'd never quite seen before.

He replied with grave seriousness. "No, I'm not pulling your leg. Barba isn't dead. Both of them are alive."

Fin almost couldn't believe the words that were coming out of his own mouth. Both of them are alive.

Rita Calhoun must think that I'm crazy.

He furtively scanned the windows and doors for the umpteenth time to make sure they were completely shut before continuing, and suddenly felt grateful that they hadn't had this discussion in her office. "The US Marshals moved them out of the city last night."

She raised an eyebrow sceptically. "And you know this… how?"

"I managed to see them before they left."

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "So you're not pulling my leg."

"I promise that I'm not, Counselor. We are the only two people in the city who know. We're the only two people in the city who can know."

Now she seemed slightly more convinced. "And you're telling me because…"

"Barba - Rafael - asked me to pass a message to you. He asked me to tell you to check in on his mother and grandmother while he's gone."

Rita let out a dry, hollow chuckle. "While he's gone. You make it sound like he's going to come back."

"I don't know if that's possible, but we aren't going to stop pursuing this case until we figure out who the hell came for Ivan Lavery, Olivia, and Rafael," he declared with more confidence than he actually possessed. "And I guess… we have to hold the fort until that day."

Something finally stirred in her as he said that. "... Okay. I'll check in with Mrs. Barba as soon as I can."

"Thanks, Counselor."

That hadn't gone as badly as he'd expected, until...

"Oh my God, I'm going to have to lie to Mrs Barba's face, don't I? How am I supposed to comfort her through this ordeal when I know that Rafael's not actually dead?" she blurted out panickedly.

It was like she'd read his mind. "Believe me, that was exactly what went through my head when Brian Cassidy came to Olivia's office today," he lamented quietly. "It's been one hell of a day…"

Rita and Fin's eyes met, now united in their shared, crushing burden - and found a modicum of solace in the other. Relief that their friends were alive and well - but it wasn't particularly comforting when they thought about how this was the new reality they were going to have to face for the next few weeks, months, years, even; and it was information they both knew could never leave this room.

And they both had no clue what the hell to do with it.

"How are we going to get through this, Fin?"

The ease with which his first name slipped out of her mouth took them both by surprise. Just like that, they were no longer mere acquaintances who crossed paths at the courthouse occasionally.

Tragedy has an awful way of bringing people closer, they realised.

"I don't know, Rita, but we will, somehow."

They sat in silence for a minute, each grateful for a new ally, although it didn't stop the profound loneliness of the secret from casting a heavy cloud over them.

Olivia and Barba are gone.

Except that they weren't dead, and Fin and Rita now were the only people in the city who knew that.


It was past noon when Rafael's eyes fluttered open to an unfamiliar grey ceiling and the graze of rough sheets under him. Neither could remember when or how or finally drifted into slumber, but their blotchy, swollen eyes were enough of a reminder of the tears they'd shed before they did.

The room was eerily silent - no New York City traffic, no neighbours shouting at their children to get ready for school - but peace was elusive. Rafael absent-mindedly reached for the light switch on his nightstand, only to find dust bunnies and a digital clock on what certainly was not his nightstand. A feverish anxiety consumed him as he replayed the events that had led him to his room, and he abruptly sat up in the bed, rousing a startled Olivia from slumber. Green eyes met brown and the enormity of the situation began to settle over them as the rest of the room came into clarity.

There was no escaping from the clearinghouse and what lay ahead of them. Today was the day that Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba were going to die.

Olivia hobbled to the door of the tiny apartment, her bandaged left thigh still sending waves of pain through her system, and picked up the memo that the marshals had slid under the door as they were asleep.

Good afternoon, Olivia and Rafael.

Today is the first official day at the clearinghouse, so you'll be given a full briefing on what to expect during your stay before we guide you through the relocation process. Ordinarily, we would have spoken to you about this in person, but wanted to make sure you were well-rested after the journey.

We'll escort you to the interview rooms at 2pm. The pantry has been stocked with groceries, and other essentials will be provided. If you require assistance, you can use the intercom by the door. Please do not attempt to leave the room without an escort.

Deputy Marshals Nguyen and Blake

During your stay. She couldn't suppress a dry chuckle. If not for the decidedly dystopian setting, this could almost be an all-expenses-paid vacation - emphasis on "almost".

How she wished this actually was a vacation - one with a definite end date and more importantly, a return ticket to LaGuardia.

"Are you kidding me?" Rafael aggressively squeezed the door handle, only to find that it wouldn't budge. "They locked us in this room?"

She sighed as another wave of pain tore through her leg. Now was not the time to defuse an angry Rafael Barba. "I'm sure it's just a security precaution. We can ask the marshals about it lat-"

"I know we're in witness protection, but we aren't prisoners, Liv," he replied testily, and dismissively flung the memo onto the linoleum floor.

"Can you cut it out?" she snapped. "It's not like I want to be a prisoner either, but I don't know how long we're going to be here and I'd rather we not kill each other before we get out."

Thankfully, that was enough to bring him to his senses. "Right. Sorry," he replied apologetically. "This is… a lot."

"It's fine." She managed a weak but forgiving smile. "Should we cook something?"

"Honestly, I'm not in the mood," he grumbled. He flung open the pantry door and took stock of the groceries the marshals had left for them, but only a ripple of nausea greeted him. "But you really shouldn't be standing, Liv. I'll make you something. What do you want to eat?"

She shot him an amused grin and some of the earlier tension dissipated. "Your left arm's in a sling, Rafael."

"Shit, I forgot about that."

The sheer absurdity of that moment hit them in full force, and soon peals of laughter were echoing through the small space. They'd take any levity they could.

Bread being the only thing that both of them could manage with their limited physical capabilities and small appetites, they sat facing each other at the tiny dining table, content just to fill their stomachs before god knows what happened at 2pm. Rafael watched carefully as Olivia pecked at her sandwich, a faraway look on her face. It was a cruel, twisted parallel to the upmarket Chelsea restaurant they'd just been in - from two people having the time of their lives on a first real date, to two people who'd just been shot, eating plain bread alone in a fortress so impenetrable that they couldn't even see the birds in the sky…

And it was far too quiet.

Silence was a luxury in a city as densely populated as New York. They'd spent all their lives falling asleep with car horns, sirens, and drunken screams from passers-by as their soundtracks, and feeling the thunderous roar of subway cars under the sidewalk grates as they traversed the crowded streets. Rafael's ears instinctively perked up with every scrape of the legs of the chair against the floor; every creak of the kitchen sink as he turned it on. He pressed his ear against the front door and heard nothing - only the soft whir of the air-conditioning and Olivia's quiet footsteps behind him as she limped to her room to get dressed.

Naturally, their cell phones had been confiscated and destroyed by the marshals, and Rafael turned the television to CNN, desperate for any white noise he could find to fill the void. There was nothing for him to do with his hands; no pressing intellectual task that he could throw himself into as a distraction.

It was just him and Olivia - two people trapped in the maze that was this federal compound.

He stared at himself in the mirror as he rifled through his bag of clothes, wondering if the laundromat he'd frequented for the last few years knew that they'd cleaned their final batch of clothes for him. The simple decision of choosing an outfit to wear suddenly felt daunting, and he didn't know why. How he missed the marble floors of his Park Avenue condo, and the bottle of Terre D'Hermes he never left the house without spritzing… but those now were luxuries from what felt like a bygone era. Rafael's feet sank into the cold tiled floor beneath him, his body in this room but mind a million miles away, and he splashed ice-cold water on his face, letting the chill scald his skin. He gritted his teeth as a dull ache settled in his bandaged left arm, but forced a carefree smile as he approached Olivia in the living room.

"You know, it feels like I've only ever seen you in two kinds of outfits: designer suits or butt-naked. This is new," she quipped as she eyed his jeans and polo shirt.

He chortled at her remark, but it was devastatingly true. That was all their relationship had ever been - colleagues prosecuting sex crimes, turned friends with benefits, now turned… something else he couldn't put a finger on. The fireworks and exuberant high of the dinner date were smoke and mirrors to the sobering reality that he didn't know how well he actually knew Olivia Benson - or how much she actually knew about him.

And now they were in witness protection together. That was a bigger leap than most couples would ever face.

"I already miss my suits," he confessed. They'd been his armour for the last decade, a uniform and second skin that never failed to embolden him when he stared down a jury, and the realisation that the rest of his wardrobe was probably languishing in his closet, waiting to be cleared by the marshals, made him uneasy. Were they going to survive the trip to wherever it was he was being relocated to?

Was he even going to have a use for them?

A firm knock interrupted his reverie. Nguyen and Blake flung the door open, their cold, business-like manners jarringly unpleasant. "Hope you two got some sleep. We have quite a packed afternoon ahead of us. Ready to go?"

They definitely wasted no time. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was being dragged head-on into a hurricane.

Rafael helped Olivia up from the couch and they trailed the marshals down an endless series of hallways and electronic sliding doors that felt as foreign and alienating as the lives they now were living. He instinctively looked to Olivia for strength, but she kept her eyes peeled to the carpeted floor beneath her, at a seeming loss for words, and it was only then that a true sense of dread settled in him.


Fin was uncomfortable.

It had to be his outfit. He'd dug out his police uniform from the recesses of his closet the night before, and now his freshly-starched collar was scraping against his collarbone as he lingered by the back of the cavernous chapel, where hordes of uniformed officers were filing in in a mournful silence. The department videographer was busy adjusting his camera for a perfect view of the podium, where Donald Cragen was soon to deliver a eulogy without a clue that the casket that lay behind him was empty.

Right. Fin was uncomfortable because he was attending the funeral of a friend who wasn't dead.

Olivia and Barba definitely were at the clearinghouse in D.C. by now, and he wondered if pictures - or God forbid, a live stream of the event - were going to reach them somehow. The flowers, cards and online tributes hadn't stopped pouring in, and Nick, Amanda and Fin had been forced to finally confront the pile that had accumulated in the break room, every card a fresh reminder of the loss they still hadn't quite fully accepted.

Fin's eyes shifted nervously between the blown-up portrait of a uniformed Olivia hanging by the podium and Nick and Amanda's solemn expressions in the pews. As he took his seat in the first row next to a visibly distressed John Munch and Cragen, he spotted Rita Calhoun sliding into a bench at the back of the chapel. They exchanged a brief but knowing look - at least there was one other person in here who knew the truth - but Fin's eyes shot open when he caught sight of the man behind Rita.

It was Simon Marsden, with a toddler in tow. Fin immediately realised she was Olivia's niece - the daughter Simon had named after her.

Shit.

Simon and Olivia had gotten off to a rocky start, but his tortured sobs over the phone when Fin called with the bad news had made it one of the most difficult phone calls he had ever made in his career. Especially when he'd had to lie to Olivia's only surviving family member.

It didn't matter that these lies were out of necessity for Olivia and Barba's safety. They still were lies, and he'd been telling far too many of them lately.

The final bars of Amazing Grace gave way to a sorrowful silence as Cragen stepped up to the podium.

"Olivia Benson was one of the finest detectives that the Manhattan Special Victims Unit has ever seen…"

Cragen stared at Olivia's portrait with the proud, fatherly look he'd always given her, and there was nothing more that Fin wanted to do than pull him aside and correct his speech to the present tense. Next to him, the usually stoic Munch dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief, silently muttering that he couldn't believe she was gone. And he could have sworn that Amanda reached out to grip Nick's hand for support, that quiet comfort much-needed in the face of a loss so devastating and sudden.

It felt like the squad was unravelling before his eyes, and Fin wondered how on earth he was going to do this a second time at Barba's memorial service.

But no one broke everyone's hearts more than Brian, whose voice was so choked with emotion that he could barely get through his speech.

"Olivia was… is the love of my life," he declared, the wistful smile he'd willed himself to put on so soul-crushing that it almost physically hurt to look at him.

The broken way Brian collapsed to his knees in front of her casket with a painful wail encapsulated the despair in the chapel that afternoon - a despair from a loss so profoundly wounding that they weren't sure how they'd ever come back from this. Cragen wordlessly offered Brian his handkerchief, and the two men lingered in front of Olivia's portrait as the last of Brian's heartbreaking sobs haunted the air.

Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba were dead, and there was a long road of healing ahead of them.


Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba are dead.

The image on Marshal Nguyen's iPad was grainy and unfocused, but unmistakable - Olivia was looking at her own funeral.

They'd spent most of the first afternoon in the clearinghouse going over the nuts and bolts of witness protection - no leaving their temporary apartment without an escort, no communication with anyone back in New York or people connected to their old identities, no disclosure of their enrollment in the programme. Rafael had been right - this was feeling more and more like a prison they had no way of escaping from.

"What if my mother or grandmother falls sick? Is there some way I can get back to New York to visit them?" he'd asked anxiously after being read the rules.

Nguyen and Blake looked at him sympathetically, but their answer was unequivocal. "We can't allow that, Rafael. We will not be parties to your suicide."

The mere mention of "suicide" caused the room to fall into an uncomfortable silence.

Then there was the battery of tests and interviews they were told they'd have to go through over the next week - health checks, psychological assessments, detailed vocational inventories and interviews. They were laying out every milestone in graphic detail and then forcibly ripping them to pieces, writing completely new - and false - existences along the way. All Olivia could muster was a blank, vacant stare at the marshals, hearing every detail but refusing to let them sink in - her mind's last line of defence against the uncertainty that lay ahead of her.

But nothing brought as much visceral pain as the third afternoon, when she finally laid eyes on the people she'd left behind on a screen that never seemed big enough to capture the emotion that was rapidly spilling out. Fin was the only person in her squad without red, tear-stained eyes, and for good reason, but his distressed frown made it clear that being the squad's pillar of strength had completely exhausted him.

"Stop - I can't watch this," she finally interjected, and allowed the marshals to skip ahead to the video of Rafael's funeral.

The crowd that'd gathered was far bigger than he'd expected, but only one person on the screen that his eyes immediately darted to - his mother, clad in the black dress she'd worn to all the funerals of his extended family members.

Including his.

He absolutely detested that he hadn't had a chance to say goodbye - that his mother was going to live thinking that his bullet-ridden body was lying in that casket. Right next to her, his abuelita was sobbing hysterically and clutching her crucifix with an agonising moan as Jack McCoy delivered a stirring eulogy, and Rafael felt like he was going to throw up. The only consolation was Rita's quiet, stoic presence next to his mother, her reassuring hand on Lucia's back all through the service.

Thank you, Fin, he mouthed silently. The message had gotten to her. He could trust Rita; he always had.

Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba were dead, and that realisation hit them even harder when the marshals handed them a sheet of paper printed with neat rows of suggested last names on the top.

"The redocumentation process starts with creating new names for yourselves."

Olivia clutched the sheet of paper and scanned the list of names, all of them inoffensive and common. Brown. Smith. Miller. Davis. Jackson…

"So… we choose new last names? Just like that?" Rafael asked hesitantly. It was far too simplistic; too impersonal.

"You're allowed to keep your first names - even your initials - but have to decide on your new last names by tomorrow so we can legally change your name and issue new documentation. Social Security cards, birth certificates, drivers' licences…"

New names, from a pre-generated list, on a deadline. It was as though they'd been asked to create video game avatars - modelled on themselves, of course, but still fundamentally, achingly different from the people they actually were. Olivia had never been particularly attached to her last name, especially with the kind of the person Serena Benson was, but even this made her profoundly uncomfortable.

She almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

"We'll begin the vocational inventories and personal history interviews tomorrow morning, but we'll call it a day for now. Any questions?"

One question instantly came to mind - the elephant in the room that even she and Rafael hadn't been able to discuss behind closed doors. "When will we find out where we're being relocated to?" Olivia asked.

"It'll all depend on the information you provide us this week. We can't send you to any city or state where there may be strong ties to your old identities," Nguyen said calmly. "That includes cities where your family members or close friends live, or where you attended college…"

Olivia mentally eliminated a few states from her list, but that left many more options, a good number of them thoroughly unappealing for a new home. The New York superiority complex, a construct she'd previously dismissed, now felt extremely real.

Next to her, Rafael nervously drummed his fingers against the table, wondering whether or not to ask his question, but caved when his anxiety hit a fever pitch.

He couldn't stop his voice, uncertain and hesitant, from catching in his throat. "Just to check… we are being relocated together, right?"

He almost feared Olivia's reaction to that question. "Real" relationship or not… surely neither of them wanted to be relocated to a foreign city alone?

Or was that a potential disagreement he hadn't even seen coming?

Blake looked at him quizzically. "Of course we were planning to relocate you together. Aren't you two… involved? We deduced from your attire - and the eye-witness accounts from that night - that you were. We don't separate dating couples in WITSEC. A romantic partner can be a great stabilising force in the early-"

"Oh - we're seeing each other, but not, you know, dating seriously…" Olivia interjected almost too emphatically, to which Rafael couldn't help but wince.

Not dating seriously? It was technically true, but the way that Olivia had jumped in to provide that information didn't sit well with him.

Not dating seriously. Those three deceptively simple words were a lethal blow.

What even are we, anyway?

(On the bright side, at least, it now looked like they had plenty of time together to figure that out - whether or not by choice.)

"But you two want to be relocated together, right?" Nguyen asked when she felt the air in the room grow awkward.

"Yes, please," Rafael blurted out before he could contemplate how vulnerable he sounded. No matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, he couldn't imagine being relocated to an alien city without her.

She was his last connection to New York. He needed her.

"I'd like that very much," Olivia echoed quickly and confidently, although a tinge of embarrassment crept into her voice as she said it.

Fuck, why did I say that just now? she berated herself. Rafael's shoulders relaxed visibly with that reply, but Olivia sensed that they were in for a long - and potentially awkward - discussion about this. Not dating seriously? It was far more dismissive than she'd intended, and her cheeks flushed a beet red.

I'm sorry, Rafael, she mouthed, as they walked back down the endless corridor to their living quarters.

It's fine. He waved her apology off casually, but it didn't take a genius to deduce that the conversation was weighing on his mind. Another issue in their rapidly growing pile to take care of before it imploded on themselves.


"Where do you think we'll be relocated to?"

He almost didn't hear her over the cacophonous hum of boiling water on the stove - a welcome distraction after the earlier tension. "I don't know," he shrugged. "Too many possibilities."

"I'll rephrase - where do you want to be relocated to?"

Her assertive tone instantly gave him flashbacks to 60 Centre Street, and he resisted the urge to point out just how much she sounded like a lawyer. "I'm trying not to be fussy. Hopefully somewhere where the weather isn't crazy, we can get jobs, and the coffee is good."

"That doesn't narrow the list significantly," she retorted. "And I wouldn't worry about job-hunting if I were you. You attended seven years of university. You're going to be more than fine."

"You heard what the marshals warned me about yesterday. I can't practice law anymore. Too easy to blow my cover with the license and certification issues. And even so, I don't think I have the scholastic ability to sit for a bar exam in another state."

"I guess I'm in the same boat. Don't think I'll pass the background check if I go for another job in law enforcement. Too many gaps. It's like college job-hunting all over again, except that I don't have a clue what else I want to do."

"Actually, where did you go to college?" He racked his brains for information - maybe a college diploma on the wall of her bedroom or office, but came up short.

"Siena College, upstate. Majored in Psych and minored in Criminal Justice. What did you major in at Harvard?"

Psychology and Criminal Justice. He grinned - they were such quintessentially Olivia majors. "Guess?" he threw out with a coy smile.

"A smart-ass loud-mouth like you must have majored in English or Philosophy. Or Theatre, since you have quite the flair for the dramatic."

He laughed off her insult. "I'll take that as a compliment. You hit the nail on the head, though. English."

"I guess this means we're not being relocated to Massachusetts," she noted. "Any other places where you have family? Pennsylvania's definitely out - my brother lives there. Anyway, it's too close to New York."

"I've got lots of family in Florida, some in Hawaii and a couple of close cousins in Texas. Wait - you have a brother?" he asked incredulously. "This is the first I'm hearing of it."

He racked his brains again, but was sure that Olivia hadn't previously mentioned this to him, and he wondered why.

"Oh - I haven't told you? My brother - half-brother, I mean - Simon. I learned of him only a few years ago when I ran my DNA through the system. We share a father…"

Now he knew why Olivia hadn't previously mentioned him.

Her voice trailed off and Rafael didn't press for details. Now wasn't the time to excavate memories of her traumatic growing-up years.

"Anyway." She turned her attention back to the pot on the stove. "I guess that rules Florida, Texas and Hawaii out too. Damn, I was almost hoping that we'd get to move to Hawaii," she joked. "How do you feel about a place like California?"

"Honestly? I don't hate the idea. Sunshine, beaches, big city… Exciting like New York. Not sure if I'd fit in, though."

"I lived in Portland for a few months about 7 to 8 years ago. It was nice. I could imagine myself moving to the West Coast," she reminisced.

"You've lived in Portland? Wow." Another thing he didn't know about her. He thought that he'd started peeling back the layers to Olivia Benson in the last couple of months, only for it to hit in full force now that he'd barely scraped the surface.

He wasn't sure if he was feeling amused or overwhelmed.

"I was undercover for the Feds. Far more stressful than I expected, but it was pretty nice while it lasted."

His jaw dropped. "And you've gone undercover for the FBI. That's a story I'm going to need to hear soon." And going undercover meant one thing - she probably knew much more about alias-building than he did.

"It'd probably take the whole night. Portland was an adventure."

"Well, it's not like we're short on time here." When was the last time he'd cooked dinner at 5.30pm, with no work to attend to right after he'd wolfed down his meal? That was one part of his life as an ADA that he was happy to leave behind.

"Good point."

"This feels like a crash course in all things Olivia Benson," he admitted candidly. "Except that I'll have to forget all that by the time we get out of here and memorise a whole new life story…"

Something about this felt especially cruel. They'd only just started getting to know each other better, only for everything to wash down the drain of the past when they left this compound.

He desperately wished that they had something to drink - to take the edge off; to forget, even for just a few minutes, where they were right now. They both needed it.

They ate their pasta in a tired silence, the videos they'd watched proven especially devastating, until Olivia abruptly cleared her throat and lifted her head from her plate to look him in the eye. "About what I said in front of Blake and Nguyen just now… I'm sorry, Rafael. I really didn't mean it that way."

He bristled recalling that awkward exchange. Not dating seriously. Those words had quietly taunted him all evening.

The last thing he wanted was for the grave seriousness of the situation at hand to get sidetracked by what now seemed like little more than another petty squabble over semantics, except that the complete absence of any work-related distractions and a city of activity to get lost in made it seem ten times more lethal.

"It's not that I don't want to be relocated with you - believe me, I absolutely do," she explained. "But there's so much going on now and I don't know where we're at… and I don't know if it'd be better for us to get settled in our new city before we figure things out between us."

Rafael considered her words in a contemplative silence. "That makes sense," he finally said after a long pause.

Olivia was technically right. There was so much upheaval and chaos that he didn't even know himself anymore, let alone where they were after that catastrophic interruption to their first date - and he wasn't about to screw up what he'd already built with her for some short-term gratification.

But his response had been half-hearted, even if he spent the rest of the evening convincing himself otherwise. He still couldn't shake the hints of bitter disappointment that now were pooling at the back of his throat. The pasta he was eating suddenly felt limp and tasteless in his mouth. After how far they'd come, this felt like a step backwards.

Get it together, Rafael.

Olivia's way of making sense flee his body hadn't disappeared with their move to the clearinghouse. Why was his logic failing him now? Irrationality had no place in this situation, and now wasn't the time to pine for her when they had so many more pressing things to think about. They weren't in New York anymore; they were no longer just colleagues who'd decided to chase the sparks flying between them.

So he decided to trust her. It made sense. She makes sense.

Olivia was visibly relieved with his response, and that was enough for him - at least, that was what he was hoping.

"Just one thing. We're okay... right?" His eyes anxiously scanned hers for confirmation.

"Of course we're okay," she smiled. "It's not that I want it to be like nothing ever happened between us. I just think now isn't the time to let that be our top priority, if you get what I mean."

He nodded. "You're right. I guess we're just… taking things slowly."

Semantics. Nothing but semantics. But he was going to take any modicum of stability he could find until they were on more solid ground.

"I like that." She looked at him with the same tender affection he'd seen in her eyes over that Italian meal, and Rafael felt some elusive peace wash over him.

As long as we're alright. He could live with that.

"I guess we have a long day ahead tomorrow. We should get to bed soon," Olivia declared with a yawn as he loaded the last of their plates into the dishwasher with his uninjured arm, the feeling of a hot meal in his stomach after so many hours simultaneously comforting and nauseating.

"Of course," he replied as he strolled into his room and collapsed onto the mattress with a resounding thud. The day behind him hadn't even been half as packed as a typical day in the DA's office, but the psychological toll of the ordeal was only just starting to hit him in full force, and he forced his eyes shut to the rattle of the air conditioner.

This time, it was his turn to hear three familiar knocks at his door.

"Rafael?"

The quiet yearning in her voice stirred something in him.

She leaned against the door for support, her eyes silently begging for his company. "Can I come in?"

He cleared a space for her on the bed, cautious of giving her enough space for her left leg to rest comfortably, and wrapped his free arm around her.

"Rafael?" she whispered again just as his eyes fluttered shut.

"Mmm?"

"I'm glad that you're here." She rested her head on his shoulder, and he could almost feel her smile against him.

Warmth crept into his chest. "Me too, Liv."

He gently squeezed her hand and let the darkness envelope them, the remnants of his anxiety about the day ahead replaced with a quiet calm.

He didn't know how long this tranquillity was going to last, but he had a good feeling that he now knew where to look for it.


The lists of last names that the marshals had given them the afternoon before lay untouched on the living room coffee table until the next morning when they settled on the couch with cups of coffee and a renewed sense of purpose.

"They're probably going to want our new last names today," Olivia noted flatly, her clinical detachment a defence mechanism against the absurdity of the task that'd eaten away at her all night.

Rafael grabbed a pencil and scrawled his name in bold print at the top of the sheet.

Rafael Barba.

He took one long, last look at it, and lifted his pencil again only after a long pause.

Rafael ?

Olivia wordlessly followed suit.

Olivia Benson.

Olivia ?

They stared at the lists until the names started blurring into one another, but the gravity of the task at hand made them freeze.

Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba were dead, and it was time to usher in their replacements.