"Should we be doing this, Fin?"
Shock was written all over Amanda's face as she stared at Olivia's empty office, the contents of her desk neatly packed into three cardboard boxes, while a couple of unis carted piles of old case files and paperwork out of the cramped space on trolleys.
"It's not like I want to do this either, but our new CO is arriving today and we need to make sure they have space to work."
New CO. They'd only just celebrated Olivia's promotion a few months back, and now her things were in boxes on the floor.
"Any clue who it's going to be?" Amanda asked as she bent down to inspect the contents of the boxes - Olivia's snowglobe, now covered in a thick layer of dust, her Ruth Bader Ginsburg figurine, a paperweight decorated with the name Calvin Arliss in a childish scrawl…
"1PP didn't tell me much over the phone," Fin explained as he gathered the last of Olivia's things. Would the marshals want them eventually? He made a mental note to put them somewhere where janitorial services rarely ventured - perhaps one of the unused meeting rooms or the cribs, where their new captain would be unlikely to look and ask why they still had a shrine to Olivia Benson in the precinct.
Nick got up from his seat to help them. "It's not the same without Liv," he grumbled. "1PP can't possibly expect the three of us to handle our usual caseload."
"Until we get assigned a new detective, we'll just have to deal with it," Fin shrugged. They'd been flailing for a couple of weeks without a new detective or commanding officer, and the cracks in their resolve were starting to show, even with some of their cases reassigned to Bronx and Brooklyn SVUs. Nick had taken to sleeping in the cribs instead of making the trek back to Queens after pulling double shifts; Amanda pulled all-nighters, sometimes on consecutive days, stumbling home to Queens only after a full 24 hours on the job.
Next to them, Fin rubbed his tired eyes but refused to let a single complaint slip out of his mouth - no matter how uncharacteristic of him that seemed. Amanda and Nick were mourning the loss of their friends; he wasn't.
He and Munch used to theorise over a drink that SVU would fall apart if Olivia did as much as take an extended vacation. They'd come close to that a handful of times over the years, but only now did it feel like an actual possibility.
"I should've appreciated Liv more when she was around," Nick admitted candidly with a note of wistfulness, which took them both by surprise. "I know we're going to need a new detective eventually, but the thought of getting a new partner…" Partners were replaceable - but somehow, Olivia wasn't.
All Amanda and Fin could do was exchange sympathetic looks, Fin once again biting the urge to spill what he really knew. It seemed almost unfair to them; hiding this seismic secret that'd probably halve everyone's pain, but he couldn't put Olivia and Barba's safety at risk just to free this from his conscience - and so he remained silent.
Olivia's office now as barren and characterless as it'd been the day Cragen had retired and left it to her, Fin could see Amanda and Nick conspicuously turn their chairs away from the closed door, the final scraps of their denial as clear as day. But no one had left instructions for what to do with Olivia's things and he needed to think about where to safely stow them on the off-chance she came back; maybe even talk to the marshals about getting her mementoes to wherever she was living now. Texas? California? Oklahoma? Montana?
(He hoped, for her and Barba's sake, that it was half as exciting as New York.)
And maybe it was time he dropped Rita Calhoun a text to check on her - find out how Mrs. Barba and Barba's abuelita were coping with the shock of his "untimely passing". Fin was quickly learning that the fierce defence attorney's steely exterior concealed a wealth of emotion, and he certainly wasn't going to let her single-handedly shoulder the emotional burden, especially after he'd seen the way the colour drained from her face when he dropped the bomb on her in her apartment.
He reached for his cell phone in his pocket, only to be interrupted by a commanding - and eerily familiar - voice.
"Hello, detectives."
Heads whipped around in search of the source, their answer the imposing - and very familiar - figure standing in the doorway.
"Captain… Cragen?" Amanda muttered with mouth agape.
"Aren't you retired?" That was the only question Nick could manage.
"In light of the… circumstances, 1PP called me out of retirement and back to this post until at least one of you," he looked directly at Fin and Nick, "passes the sergeant's exam."
"Thanks for the pressure," Fin retorted sarcastically, although he couldn't wipe the relieved smile from his face. At least they weren't going to be grappling with an unfamiliar CO while they all figured out how to recover from Olivia's conspicuous absence from the squad room - and for him, resist the urge to blurt out his big secret every single time someone mentioned her name.
It was the first bright spot in two seemingly endless weeks. Cragen knew them - and more importantly, he knew Olivia.
"I know it's been hard on everyone, but crime hasn't stopped and we need to get back to business as usual as soon as possible."
Everyone put on a strong front as Cragen carried his boxes into Olivia's now-empty office, although Fin could have sworn that he paused for just a second outside the door, the residual hurt and pain he'd seen at the funeral leaking into the stoic captain's expression. It was a position no one envied. He'd spent over a decade mentoring her, only to take her place in a cruel twist of fate.
There really was no such thing as business as usual - not when Olivia's spirit still lingered in every corner of the room.
At least it was one step closer to normalcy… whatever normal could possibly look like without her.
"Should we be doing this, Liv?"
Rafael had faced many trials in his life, and not just the criminal kind - he'd graduated from Harvard with honours. He'd scored a coveted position at the DA's office fresh out of law school. He'd put away many of the city's most notorious criminals; so many that his mother had a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings mentioning his name.
He'd never shy away from a challenge, no matter how formidable. It was all he knew.
But this challenge felt especially daunting; especially insurmountable.
Olivia couldn't help but notice his sweat-beaded forehead and nervously clasped hands. He was a serial fidgeter, and just him being frozen in his seat, the colour drained from his face, was enough to set off alarm bells. "Are you alright?"
"I don't feel so good," he sighed as he rubbed his temples. Car sickness AND anxiety - a lethal combination, indeed. If he did leave this car, it was to empty the contents of his stomach on the asphalt.
"We're going to be fine," Olivia assured him gently. "The marshals are going to be with us the whole time." On cue, Nguyen and Blake, both dressed in distinctly civilian attire, nodded at them from the front seat.
"Still… I'm worried. I have a bad feeling about this." He kept his eyes peeled out the window, as though scanning for imminent threats.
(As if he knew what an imminent threat looked like in the first place. He didn't have Olivia's keen, NYPD-trained eye for danger.)
"Rafael, it's just the mall."
A sign for Westfield Montgomery came into view, and Rafael couldn't help but think that it looked especially imposing - but not nearly as imposing as the massive white building behind it, flanked by a parking lot that held far too many cars, especially for a weekday morning in April. Including a black SUV that looked uncharacteristically like the one that'd barrelled towards him and Olivia two weeks ago on a quiet Chelsea street.
Of course it wasn't the same vehicle, but he couldn't shake the anxiety that crept up his spine, as alive and potent as it'd felt in the heat of the moment; the resonant, piercing bangs that filled his ears once more.
Bang.
He felt the searing pain that'd shot through his arm as his head met the concrete, and his hand instinctively moved to the tender spot on his left shoulder, which was still slightly sore even without the bandage cloaking it.
Bang.
A lump formed in his throat as he watched families and shoppers file through the main entrance, as unguarded and carefree as he'd been wandering down Park Avenue just a fortnight ago.
It's just the mall, he told himself. A god damn mall. It couldn't possibly be nearly as crowded as 5th Avenue on a regular New York day. But the mall meant people. Too many people. He couldn't be around p-
"Rafael?"
The car had pulled to a stop by the entrance, but Olivia's hand lingered tentatively on the door handle, concern written all over her expression.
"Sorry," he muttered, still frozen to his seat. "It's… a lot."
(Clearly, he'd lost both his courage and vocabulary while in confinement.)
"We'll have eyes on you both at all times, Rafael," Nguyen assured him confidently. "I visit this mall often, and know its layout like the back of my hand."
Olivia gently rested her hand on his shoulder. "We'll be in and out as quickly as possible." She eyed the list of places they needed to visit that she'd scrawled on a Post-It that morning - Verizon, Nordstrom, Macy's Home… it wasn't especially long, but certainly demanded at least an hour. "But if you don't want to do this now…"
"We can always come back tomorrow or later this week," Blake added.
"No - it's fine." Rafael unbuckled his seat belt and pushed the door open more assertively than he'd expected. It was just the mall - why was he hesitating? What reason did he have to be this pathetic? "Let's go, Liv."
She was slightly taken aback by his sudden change of heart, but quickly trailed him into the mall, Nguyen lingering a few feet behind them as Blake sped off to park the SUV.
Olivia didn't spend much time in malls. They were scarce in New York City, and in any case, she'd come to make all her purchases in the most efficient way possible: online. But she certainly wasn't a stranger to them, either, and she took another glance at the Post-It in her palm - Verizon, Nordstrom, Macy's Home... It'd be a quick trip: fast enough to get Rafael out of there as soon as they finished running their errands. She could keep his worries at bay.
Then she stepped into the building and realised why he was so worried in the first place.
The air-conditioning, a few degrees too cold even for the warm spring air, gave her goosebumps - as did the harsh fluorescent lighting that flooded her field of vision. People. She'd been in complete isolation for the last fortnight, the only faces she ever saw Rafael and the marshals', and now she was staring into a small weekday morning crowd of retirees and mothers with strollers, but nonetheless, people.
She didn't know where the anxiety that flooded her was coming from - any street in Manhattan was ten times more bustling than this suburban mall, with its polished tiled floors and cheery, trite brand of Sears/The Body Shop/Build-A-Bear capitalism. The last time she'd taken the subway home from the precinct, she'd almost walked right into a puddle of urine in the centre of the 1 train car - here there was nary a dust bunny to be found on the ground. Where was the layer of grime that seemed to coat every surface; every sidewalk?
And was she actually missing that almost nauseating grittiness?
"Welcome to suburbia," Rafael muttered with a dry chuckle as they headed in the direction of Verizon, his footsteps much more tentative than the assertive and purposeful strides he'd been well-known for back in New York.
Olivia laughed to conceal the lump that was quickly forming in her throat.
A group of retirees clutching Bath & Body Works bags sauntered past them, and she could have sworn that they gave her and Rafael a second look, as did the sundress-clad young mother who pushed her stroller out of Abercrombie Kids. Olivia instinctively looked down at her own outfit - jeans, Keds, one of the few casual blouses she owned; no holster or badge in sight. There was no way that complete strangers would make out that she was a cop - or once was one. Rafael was momentarily distracted by a display in the Kiehl's window (why was it so like him to wander in the direction of the luxury skincare products?); Nguyen was doing a textbook-perfect job of shadowing them, her watchful eye concealed by her feigned interest in the Ann Taylor storefront.
So why did she still feel so uncomfortable - like someone was going to see through her at any moment?
It's just the mall.
She tried to remind herself of that as they made their way down the list of stores with an almost clinical efficiency, but even the luxurious towel display at Macy's didn't stop her from furtively glancing over her shoulder every few seconds, perhaps to check that Rafael and the marshals were within her line of sight. Or maybe to check that someone else wasn't watching her every move as she rifled through a bin at Nordstrom or asked the Verizon store attendant about cable and wifi plans.
Welcome to suburbia, indeed, she thought as the cheery sales attendant bagged her brand-new towels with more pep in her step than Olivia could fathom.
She cast one last glance over her shoulder as they left the mall and slid back into the SUV, the handles of her shopping bags digging uncomfortably into her palms. Rafael contentedly rummaged through his shopping bags next to her, his earlier worries obviously placated by some good old retail therapy, while she let hers fall into a messy heap around her feet.
Olivia Benson, enervated by a shopping trip. How the mighty have fallen.
What happened to all of Liv's stuff?
This had to be a mistake.
Brian Cassidy was standing in Olivia's completely empty apartment - her closets emptied, sofa disappeared, shelves barren. Even the magnets on her fridge were gone.
Ever since the night he found out about her passing, now a murky, convoluted haze, he'd driven by her apartment complex once per day, its lobby still in tatters in the aftermath of the devastating explosion, the visceral pain that came over him still raw and stinging. And so he watched and waited silently until the crime scene tape fell, repair crews left and the other residents carted their belongings back into the building - and finally plucked up the courage to grab the spare key he'd never had the chance to return to her and walk right into the belly of the beast. The tenant list hadn't yet been replaced, and he ran a finger over the O. Benson label she'd fashioned out of duct tape - the one that she'd made to replace the O. Benson & B. Cassidy that had come before it.
When he shut his eyes he still could picture her lying on their couch, flipping through an old copy of The Atlantic while he tinkered with the coffee machine in the kitchen - a moment he wished he could freeze in time and burn into his memory. Even after the relationship had ended and he'd left the apartment behind, he could still hear the echo of Olivia's footsteps in the hallway outside the run-down studio he'd found on Craigslist. He still felt the caress of her skin against his back where the other half of his bed now lay empty; her arms around his waist as he brushed his teeth. She was gone, but she still haunted him like a fevered dream, memories of her voice enough to make his hair stand on end.
Brian turned the key in the lock, expecting to be assaulted by nostalgia and regret when he stepped through the door and drank in the sight before him: the cream-coloured couch they'd picked out on Wayfair, the carpet he'd brought over from his old Astoria apartment, the remnants of the lavender diffuser they'd bought to help her sleep after the William Lewis incident (a crushing guilt he knew he would carry with him for the rest of his life).
Then he pushed the door open and found nothing.
It was the bland, impersonal space they'd toured right before moving in; where they'd signed the lease and spent the afternoon imagining what they'd do to make the place home - their home. The well-worn wooden floors now felt cold and rough under his feet, every step a silent imperative to get out, because this isn't your home anymore.
It wasn't his home. He could live with that knowledge. But it was still supposed to be Olivia's, and an invisible thief had cleared out all her things without leaving a trace behind, and along with that had robbed the last of her soul from the space. Brian left the apartment building almost as quickly as he entered, as though his entire body was on fire, not even pausing to glance at the ruins of Olivia's letterbox.
Maybe it was his utter confusion about the situation - had Olivia left instructions on what to do with her things when she passed? Perhaps Fin or someone at the precinct knew what had happened? There had to be a logical explanation for all of this, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right.
Was it a gut feeling he wanted to follow?
Why did he still feel entitled to a piece of her, three months after they'd parted ways, when he deserved nothing?
Why was he still losing sleep over something they'd both chosen to leave in the past?
He hated crying - crying wasn't in his nature - but this time, he couldn't stop hot tears from welling in his eyes.
"What happened to all of my stuff?"
This had to be a mistake.
Olivia was standing right in front of what she'd been told were her belongings from her apartment, but she was sure that they occupied more than six medium-sized boxes that looked exceptionally small on the floor of the surprisingly spacious one-bedroom apartment.
"I checked and I'm quite sure that this is all that you have," Nguyen said as she climbed out of the front seat of the U-Haul.
Olivia briefly sifted through the contents of the boxes - clothes, kitchenware, books, nondescript home decor. They were hers, of course, but not unmistakably so; someone could have bought them all at Goodwill that morning and she wouldn't have batted an eyelid. The photo frames on her dresser, her collection of NYPD sweatshirts that doubled as pyjamas, the drawings and cards she'd hung on her fridge and living room mantle: all gone.
"My colleagues sorted through your things after we picked them up from your apartment and had to put anything that bore traces of your old identity into storage," Nguyen clarified, as though she'd read her mind. "Unfortunately, you own quite a lot of NYPD and job-related memorabilia. Better safe than sorry."
That explained it. Of course the marshals had thought of that - she couldn't have photos of her squad or Simon hanging around her new apartment. Or souvenirs and cards bearing her old last name and drawings of her in uniform. Or anything bearing even the slightest trace of the person she once was - the Olivia Benson she'd left in New York.
I'm alright with it, Olivia reasoned with herself. She'd done all her mental preparation in the clearinghouse. This was a necessary price to pay for her safety. She was far above and beyond getting upset over the contents of her apartment - material possessions. And she still had her memories at the end of the day, didn't she?
But it still didn't stop her from wondering how long those memories would take to lose their lustre without their physical manifestations, in the way a fraction of life drained from a VHS tape every time she played it back. She stared listlessly at the pristine white living room walls and deliberated what she would hang there to fill the space.
"I'll give you some time to get unpacked and take stock of things," Nguyen said quietly as she shut the door behind her.
She'd struck gold with this apartment - it came furnished thanks to the generosity of the previous tenant, overlooked a tree-lined street, and was almost ludicrously affordable by New York standards, especially for the amount of space she was getting. Olivia idly ran a hand across the stone kitchen countertop, breathing in just how new it all felt, not just in its interior but also in the expectant energy hanging in the air. It looked like a hotel in flashes, with its beige leather couch and chic glass coffee table, but this wasn't a suite at the Marriott - she lived here now.
Olivia knew she had absolutely nothing to complain about; not when she was getting so much more space and luxury for a fraction of the price of her Upper West Side 1-bedroom. She tried not to fret about the decor - not when she still had her cable and wifi to set up and at least two car trips' worth of toiletries and kitchen condiments to stock up on. Olivia had never been much of an interior decorator, but she'd find a way to make the space feel like hers, somehow. She'd customise it just enough to feel homely.
But homely and home were two very different words. She struggled to wrap her head around the latter.
Olivia got on her knees and started unpacking the contents of the boxes, biting back the sadness that started to pool in her stomach as she made mental notes of what was missing - the last photo she'd taken with her mother, the drawings Calvin had made for her, the heartfelt farewell card that Cragen had slipped into one of her case files on his last day, and much more.
She chewed on her lower lip, her way of silently admonishing herself for allowing herself to wallow in a past she couldn't get back. Those things were behind her, she told herself. She had to focus on her future now.
It didn't stop tears from welling up in her eyes as she flung open the bedroom closet door to a series of empty shelves, waiting to be filled by the missing possessions of Olivia Davis.
Rafael was facing the opposite problem a few streets away.
Blake loaded the last of the boxes onto the carpeted floor, where they now formed an especially formidable and imposing heap.
"When you told me that you were retrieving things from my apartment, I didn't quite expect the marshals to provide a moving service, Blake," Rafael deadpanned, although the sight of all those boxes - all containing parts of his life; his real life - flooded him with immeasurable relief. Starting over was a slightly less daunting prospect when he had traces of his old self to hang on to.
"You have quite the wardrobe, Rafael," Blake chuckled. "I'll leave you to unpack and get things tidied up."
He decided not to ask what the marshals had done with the rest of his furniture (he couldn't help but think that his oak desk and abuelita's leather armchair would look especially good in this apartment), and ripped off the tape on the first box, taking stock of his things as he sorted through them.
The familiar font of Terre d'Hermes Parfum greeted him first - a welcome sight after feeling almost naked without it in the clearinghouse. He sprayed a generous amount into the air around him and inhaled deeply, pretending for a second that he was back at 1 Hogan Place as he tackled the rest of the boxes before him with the same meticulousness he did his cases. His suits, once immaculately pressed and stowed neatly in garment bags, had been hastily folded and piled into two boxes, a far cry from the way they once hung in his closet. His collection of books had been pared down to less than half its original size, seemingly at random, until it dawned on him that the marshals had gotten rid of anything that bore his name or was even vaguely law-related.
Rafael ran his thumb over his well-worn copy of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, which he thankfully hadn't thought to label with his real last name, and allowed himself to return to long afternoons by his bay window going over the notes he'd squeezed in the margins and lines he'd highlighted in a garish neon yellow.
I am never stagnant; I rise from my worst disasters, I turn, I change.
When Blake had asked him about changing his college major for his new identity, he'd baulked at the idea of majoring in anything but English, and the solace he got just from holding a trace of his old self in his palms proved his instinct right. Maybe he'd finally have time to go over the mellifluous prose again, reliving each reading of it as he did so - something that he never seemed to have time for between cases.
Now he was officially unemployed with what looked like far too much time on his hands.
He painstakingly shelved his books and hung his clothes in his new closet with the same methodical precision he had back in New York, every carefully curated set a silent reminder of a trial he'd won in a not-so-distant past - the grey he'd donned the afternoon he'd allowed Adam Cain to choke him with a belt, the brown from their Suffolk County take-down, the charcoal that'd made him feel invincible during the especially excruciating William Lewis debacle. His suits had been a badge of honour; an armour that gave him the boldness he needed to stare at sick criminals in the face. Now the victories he'd amassed in them couldn't leave this apartment.
Would he even have a chance to wear these now that he'd left that life behind?
Court always was a show; a performance that gave him an intoxicating high and adrenaline rush that scotch could never. Now the only performing he was doing was lying through his teeth that he was Rafael Marquez from Chicago - a performance that called for the exact opposite of the ostentation that these suits now screamed, especially against the simple, stark backdrop of his apartment.
The last of his ensembles - a more casual navy blue that he'd become especially fond of when he didn't have to go to court - went into the closet, and he found himself staring at it for an uncomfortably long time until he remembered that it was the one he'd worn the last time he had gone to brunch with his mother and grandmother. They always parted with hugs, and that afternoon was no exception, but now he wished that he'd hung on for just a second longer; just an ounce tighter.
Rafael worked through the rest of the boxes systematically, feeling his stomach clench with every memory he unboxed - scotch glasses gifted to him by his fellow ADAs, a series of prints from the Musee D'Orsay in Paris, candid photographs from skiing trips in Gstaad. In his other life he'd craved these getaways all year long, working assiduously throughout the year for a well-deserved two weeks off to feel the wind race through his hair as he glided down a snow-capped Swiss mountain.
Now, standing in a scattered pile of his things and desperately salvaging all he could from his old life, he wasn't sure he'd ever feel that excitement again.
Fatigue was starting to set in by the time he unpacked the eighth box, his mind now swirling with a heady, paralysing mix of nostalgia and melancholy. What was the point of scattering these things around his apartment when he knew that he wasn't ever going to fully recover this life? Why even bother, when he had no one but Olivia, whom he'd known just over a year, to share these memories with?
Maybe he didn't actually want this apartment to become a mini replica of his Park Avenue condo. Maybe it'd have been easier for him to leave these items firmly in the past and start on a completely blank slate, but he wasn't ready to consider that possibility.
He didn't want to complain about his new living situation. Rafael had lived alone since returning from Harvard, and never once had he felt lonely in his apartments; in fact, he'd come to cherish the solitude that only living alone afforded him the luxury of. But here he was, struggling alone in a foreign city to hang onto as much of his old life as he could, and realising that this was what loneliness felt like.
"Fuck," Nick cursed as he punched the steering wheel. "Fin, the car still refuses to start. I think we need to get it to the workshop."
"Are you sure?" Fin's voice piped through the phone speaker. "Wasn't it fine just a couple of weeks ago?"
"I don't know," Nick sighed exasperatedly. "It worked just fine when Liv was the one driving. But I can never get it to start."
"Give it another try. It's probably just being stubborn again." Stubborn, as though it, too, sensed Olivia's absence.
He should have called this in much earlier, when Olivia had first... left... a couple of weeks ago, but he couldn't bring himself to climb into the driver's seat - her seat. Instead he'd settled for hitching rides in Fin and Amanda's squad car, leaving the stubborn sedan in its assigned spot in the precinct parking lot to gather dust. Only that Cragen's sudden return meant that he now assigned everyone's duties, and Nick's short-lived days of working in a trio were over - which also meant that he was back in the squad car that he and Olivia had once spent countless hours driving around the city in, this time in her driver's seat.
It's just a stupid car, he'd told himself when his heart sank hearing Cragen's instructions to head up to Catherine Summers' apartment in Riverside while Fin and Amanda crossed the Manhattan Bridge in search of Frank Maddox's movie set. But Nick's futile attempts to actually start this goddamn vehicle were quickly unravelling any ounce of calm and rationality he had left. Too many sleepless nights in his empty apartment, too many forced smiles as he tried to convince Zara that he wasn't on the precipice of breaking down yet again over losing his partner and friend in such a violent way, and too little time for the gaping hole in the squad room to heal itself.
He frustratedly jammed the key into the ignition one final time with extra aggression, wishing that he had Olivia's magic touch, and the car whirred to life after an excruciatingly long silence. Finally, he exhaled, and stepped on the gas.
The last time Nick had cruised alone in a squad car was the awkward period after the Cragen and Carissa Gibson debacle when he'd asked Captain Harris if he could work alone, but he'd never quite gotten used to the silence that replaced the animated chatter and frenetic case discussions that only a partner like Olivia brought to his drives. And this abnormally silent drive uptown was bringing him right back to those days, except that there was no personnel decision to undo or partner to ask back.
Desperate for something to fill the car with white noise, he reached for the radio knob and turned it to the last station that'd been playing.
It's 80s Hour! Stay tuned for an hour of non-stop 80s classics that are sure to get your toes tapping and mullets on fire!
Ah, fuck, he cursed again.
In the first few months he and Olivia had worked together, music had been little more than a convenient way to smooth over the palpable awkwardness between them as she grappled with the disappearance of Elliot Stabler and Nick's status as a seemingly shoddy replacement for the larger-than-life former detective. It'd taken time, but the walls started to crumble, slowly but surely, and occasionally they'd find themselves cruising down the West Side Highway en route from an interview in the Bronx, Olivia belting out the chorus to Eye of the Tiger or The Final Countdown with more gusto than he'd ever seen in the squad room or even the end of the week at Forlini's.
Nick had laughed quietly with his partner, biting back sarcastic comments about her complete lack of pitch and sometimes joining in with a sheepish smile when he heard a song he knew by heart. And then they'd return to the precinct and never speak of this little ritual as they hunkered down to crack the case. But it'd been an unmistakable sign of just how much things had changed between him and Olivia since their testy first few months together: before they'd both realised it, she'd become much more than just his reluctant partner. She was his friend; someone she allowed to see her at her highest, lowest, and most unguarded. A friend he now also missed very much, even if he didn't admit it nearly as often as he wished he had.
After the Lewis debacle, they'd resumed their silent trips, Nick conspicuously keeping his hands away from the radio as she drove, until a relieved smile emerged a few months later when that croaky, out-of-tune, but unmistakably Olivia voice beside him came back to life. It'd been his first signal - maybe even more telling than the string of perps that she had managed to nail since her return - that things were going to go back to normal, one way or another.
Now she was never coming back, nothing felt normal, and he was the one hurting.
Nick was tempted to kill the music before he could wander further down this sorrowful train of thought, but instantly paused when the opening bars of Eye of the Tiger flooded the car. He tapped his toes to the song as he turned onto the highway, every beat his little tribute to the moments of levity between them.
"Let me know if anything catches your eye."
The sales attendant led them along a seemingly endless line of cars in the lot, each looking equally nondescript and practical as the next one. Nondescript and practical are good, the marshals had told them as they dropped Olivia and Rafael off at the car dealership. You want to blend in as much as possible.
"Honestly, I'm not too fussy as long as it works," Olivia shrugged. Years of riding around in admittedly terrible NYPD squad cars - including the barely functional sedan she and Nick had always struggled to get moving - had lowered her standards significantly. "How about you, Rafael? Anything you're looking for in particular?"
She knew instantly that something was bothering him when she picked up on Rafael's nervous, hesitant manner - eyes darting around nervously, hands shoved into his pockets. "What's wrong?"
"I think we - I - have a bit of a problem," he whispered, just out of earshot of the attendant.
Olivia frowned. "What, with this car dealership?"
He choked out the next sentence like it physically pained him. "... I can't drive, Liv."
The endless row of cars was making him especially anxious - even more so as he watched drivers confidently zip down Rockville Pike, a stark and agonising reminder of just how marooned he'd be without a vehicle. There was literally no reason to drive in New York, with its sprawling subway network and Uber access at his fingertips, but in the absence of the former in this part of town and a generous ADA salary to fund unlimited trips on the latter, the woeful mismatch between him and his new surroundings couldn't be more apparent.
"But you have a license," a confused Olivia pointed out, recalling the plastic card she'd seen him inspect in the clearinghouse. Changing names and reissuing documentation, the marshals did - but falsifying them entirely, they did not.
"The last time I drove a car was in law school. Almost twenty years ago. I haven't needed to drive since, so…"
"You don't feel comfortable driving."
"Yeah." He averted her gaze.
"So you don't want to get a car?" she concluded.
"I know I need one if I want to get around, but I don't even feel confident enough to drive back home now," he whispered anxiously.
"It's like riding a bike. You can't forget how to drive," she assured him. "And this is sure to be better than city traffic will ever be."
(Thank God she hadn't accidentally blown their cover by mentioning New York.)
He shook his head worriedly and gestured at the road a few yards away. "Look at how fast people drive here. I can't go back out there without at least some practice."
The sales attendant eyed them concernedly from a few feet away, and Rafael anxiously looked to Olivia for a solution. Shit, he should have given her a heads-up before they'd ended up here. Why hadn't he thought about this before the marshals had dropped them off?
Perhaps the doubt in his expression flicked a switch in her, but she was feeling far more like Olivia Benson - the detective who solved problems - than Olivia Davis in the middle of this expansive parking lot. "Well, I'm not leaving this place without one," she declared assertively. "I guess that means that I'll be driving us around for the time being."
"Are you sure?" He frowned sceptically, although it sounded like the only option now that they were stranded a few miles from home without the marshals tailing them. "You're alright with driving us - me - around?"
He couldn't believe how pathetic that sounded coming out of his mouth. High-flying ADA, to someone who needed to be driven around an unfamiliar city by his one and only friend - the only contact he had in his new phone who wasn't Nguyen, Blake or his landlord in Florida.
This definitely was doing wonders for his already very fragile ego.
"It's fine," she smiled, making Rafael wonder how she was so unfazed by his outpouring of apprehension. "You can practice driving around in mine until you're comfortable enough to get your own."
"Thanks, Liv," he replied gratefully, although his cheeks were quickly turning a beet red. If necessity wasn't enough of an incentive to get him to refresh his driving skills, sheer embarrassment certainly was going to be. He wordlessly trailed her through the car dealership as she decided between a Honda Civic and Ford Focus, both in a dull grey that wouldn't look out of place in a suburban mall parking lot.
"Name for the vehicle registration?"
"Olivia B-, I mean, Davis."
Thankfully, the clerk didn't notice the mortified look that Olivia and Rafael exchanged as she slid her brand-new license - a glaring reminder of her almost-failure - across the table. "New to town?"
"Yup." Her mouth suddenly felt dry.
You're just undercover, she admonished herself. Pretend it's Oregon all over again. Why did it feel so much easier to be eco-warrior Persephone than herself all of a sudden?
"Where from?"
"Portland," she managed with a polite - but guarded - smile.
"Nice. I have family out there."
Shit, she almost cursed audibly. The combination of one summer of undercover work there and the guidebooks and websites she'd perused in the clearinghouse suddenly felt manifestly inadequate to sustain an actual conversation about Portland. As though he'd read her mind, Rafael instinctively moved in closer, his calm expression barely concealing the intense worry he was emanating.
Please don't ask anything further, please don't ask anything further...
"I should have all your paperwork done in a few minutes' time."
Thank God.
"Welcome to D.C., Miss Davis," he added with a smile.
Olivia and Rafael managed cursory smiles back, but her palm was still clammy as she picked up the pen and signed Olivia B-, no, Olivia Davis on the dotted line, just like she'd practised.
They couldn't have been more relieved to finally accept the keys to the Ford Focus ten minutes later, the nervous energy slowly evaporating as she approached the turn-off onto Rockville Pike, which was now flooded with homeward-bound rush-hour traffic from central D.C. She stared down the unending row of shops and restaurants lining both sides of the road, taking in the sheer expanse of space before them. No more awkwardly rubbing shoulders and elbows on a packed subway car while trying to keep her balance, or the little sources of friction that plagued city life - toe stubs against subway poles, rats crawling on the track, unknown liquids dripping down from scaffolding above them as they walked down the street.
It was spacious. Clean. But different.
Now she owned a car that wasn't an NYPD loaner, and what she typed into her GPS next was in her hands, not the police radio's.
"Where should we go?"
Maybe this was what the agency she and Nguyen had talked about in the clearinghouse felt like - finally being able to decide where to go, after two weeks of being under the marshals' watchful eye. She owned this car; she had her foot on the gas.
But Olivia was quickly realising that this agency was just as paralysing as it could be liberating. What good could it do when neither of them had the slightest clue about the area; when all the shops and restaurants were blurring into one another? The steering wheel felt especially heavy in her hands, and Olivia hesitated before joining the stream of traffic, eagerly looking to Rafael for a suggestion.
"Can we drop by Barnes & Noble? I think I saw one on the way here."
Unusual choice, she thought, but a destination was better than none at all. Rafael made himself comfortable in the shotgun seat, his eyes peeled to the road outside the window as he silently drank in the sights of their new home. His expression was stoic, almost emotionless, but the subtle way his eyebrows dipped as they passed yet another row of restaurants told her all she needed to know.
Olivia's GPS churned out directions like clockwork, their only authority in a maze of unfamiliar street names and signs. Keep right. Speed camera ahead. Go straight on Rockville Pike.
At the first stoplight they came to a pause at, Olivia impulsively reached for the radio knob and turned up the volume on the first station that came on, letting upbeat percussion punctuate Google Maps' cold, robotic voice.
To kick off tonight's 80s Hour, here's Survivor's Eye of the Tiger!
Her lips curled into their first genuine smile of the day.
Cragen had wanted updates on the Frank Maddox investigation the instant Nick returned to the precinct, and the squad gathered around the corkboard for the first time since the funeral, trading their findings and leads like it was just another ordinary day at SVU, even if the Olivia-sized gulf never quite disappeared.
Perhaps that was the impetus for Nick, Amanda and Fin's impromptu decision to grab a drink at Forlini's before heading home for the evening, where they occupied the table they usually got when they went there after a trial. Five chairs, as usual, the two vacant seats marking the exact places where Olivia and Barba typically sat. For a second Fin wanted to motion for Anthony to move them to another booth - perhaps one that wasn't so charged with raw sorrow - but one look at his frown and he knew that Anthony had taken the loss of two loyal customers especially hard. Someday Fin would open his mouth, but not today.
"It's been one hell of a day, hasn't it?" Amanda remarked into her Cabernet (Olivia's usual order).
"Don't even get me started," Nick deadpanned, while Fin stared into his beer in a stony silence. "At least I got the car to work again."
"I have a bad feeling about this case. Frank and Catherine - they're both slimy as hell. The media circus, the rumours flying around… Barba would've known how to handle it." Maybe she was actually starting to miss the ADA's flamboyant courtroom antics and shark-like media savviness, as much as they'd grated on her for the longest time. And that was exactly what they needed to navigate this high-profile case: a shark who knew how to swim among other sharks.
"At least we've got Cragen back," Fin chimed in. "Better than having the brass at 1PP parachute in some dickhead with no experience." There was no better choice for them. Cragen had his steely way of keeping things running while partaking in the air of mourning that still hung over them - a strange yet oddly comforting combination. In a time where blessings were few and far between, Fin was counting every single one of them.
"True." Nick motioned to Anthony to pour them a second round of drinks. "Small victory, I guess. We've been pretty short of those lately. Any news on who our new ADA is going to be?"
"Nothing yet," Fin shrugged. "I just hope they don't suck. We had it pretty rough before Barba came along."
"You know that getting someone on Barba's level is going to be a tall order. Maybe the DA will poach someone else from Brooklyn."
"Anyway, it's not up to us," Nick pointed out. "We'll just… wait for news, I guess."
"I guess this is the way things are going to be now," Amanda shrugged.
"Better get used to it," Nick replied flatly.
"Better get used to it," Fin echoed.
Olivia was leaning against the car with a Starbucks cup in hand as Rafael exited the store.
He frowned quizzically at her choice of drink. "Coffee at 6 pm?"
"Unpacking and cleaning await me when I get back… to the apartment," she replied, consciously avoiding calling it home. "So, what did you buy?"
He pulled a trio of paperbacks out of the bag he was holding - One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. All by Gabriel Garcia-
"-Marquez." They exchanged a knowing look.
The worn and heavily annotated copies his high school English teacher had given him were probably languishing in some storage unit in rural Virginia, but these sufficed as substitutes for his nightstand. Rafael had thumbed through them as he waited in the check-out line, reciting the first line of One Hundred Years of Solitude under his breath without skipping a beat.
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. It instantly took him back to one of the many afternoons he'd spent poring over these books in his Bronx walk-up to the cacophony of childish shrieks and screams outside.
"I guess it's a good visual reminder to sign the right name on my receipts," he added dryly.
What he didn't tell Olivia was that he'd ended up paying for the books in cash because he couldn't even look at his new debit card, emblazoned with Rafael Marquez in capital letters, without feeling like he was going to break out in hives. But the paperbacks felt good in his hands - sturdy, steadying, and most importantly, they made him feel like himself again.
"Want to get something to eat?" She gestured in the direction of the Cava across the empty parking lot - ostensibly a salad place that wouldn't look out of place in Union Square or opposite Bryant Park. How long until they opened an outlet in New York? He gave it two years. (Not like he was going to be in the city to witness that, anyway.)
A dinner crowd was starting to form in front of the Five Guys next to it, and Rafael couldn't help but sneak furtive glances over his shoulder as they walked into the store, every shaded corner and black SUV in the parking lot a potential threat lurking. He wondered what was running through Olivia's head, although he noticed the way she hesitated as she walked in, taking a few extra seconds to carefully scan the room before deciding that it was safe enough to enter, and for a split-second he thought he saw Olivia Benson's shadow.
She clearly hadn't lost her police instincts overnight. Rafael wondered if he was on the precipice of losing his legal instincts - or if he'd already lost them somewhere between New York and D.C.
He decided to swallow that thought and quickly turned his attention to the array of salad condiments before them.
"Are you having these here or to-go?"
Olivia and Rafael cast one glance at the rapidly filling restaurant, the chatter in the room as lively as the orange and yellow wall decor, and the decision was easy.
"To-go, please."
They had somehow wordlessly mutually agreed that they were going to eat in the parked car, the cup holder now a vessel for the bag of pita chips she'd decided on impulse to get for them to share. She wasn't even sure how hungry she was - was she eating out of want or sheer necessity? - but forced herself to stab a meatball with her fork as the evening sun dipped over the massive Marshalls they were parked in front of. Neither moved to turn the radio back on, leaving the roar of passing traffic and chatter from the young families and teenagers across the parking lot as their only soundtrack.
Their first and excruciatingly long day in Maryland - the first of many - had finally come to a close, but she wondered what it'd be like to pump the gas and turn onto the I-95 headed straight for New York City. Four hours, in decent traffic; maybe three and a half if she stepped on it.
(She didn't realise that Rafael was thinking the exact same thing.)
There was so much they still needed to do to get settled in - they needed computers, kitchen condiments, toiletries, cleaning products… a list that only grew each time they thought of it. The reasonable thing to do would have been to turn out of the parking lot and head in the direction of CVS once they finished eating, but they hesitated, instead letting the evening slowly descend over them in a languid, lethargic silence.
"So… I guess this is life for us now," he remarked after a long lull, his tone flat and emotionless.
"I guess it is," she echoed listlessly.
The air around them was tranquil and pink and purple hues painting the sky almost idyllic, but they couldn't shake the restlessness that was starting to settle in.
There was nothing wrong with Bethesda, or Maryland, or D.C. They had everything they needed at their fingertips - apartments, their things from New York, now a car. It was safe; clean; orderly. They hadn't blown their covers after a full day of small talk with every store clerk they encountered; as far as they were concerned, they'd successfully replaced Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba with their brand-new counterparts.
However, their true and crushing fear was waking up the next day and having to do this all over again.
