"We have a problem."
Olivia's tongue felt like lead and the lump in her throat made it difficult to speak, but she looked Rafael in the eye, gathered as much calm as she could, and delivered the blow.
"It's your abuelita," she sighed, noticing how Rafael's face fell the instant she said that. "She had a stroke and isn't doing well. The neurologist at Bellevue thinks she doesn't have much time left." She nervously wiped her clammy palms against her sweatpants - she'd been so frazzled after hanging up the phone with Fin that she hadn't even thought about changing out of her pyjamas - and took in his terrified expression.
It was one thing for Rafael to reminisce about the last time he'd seen his abuelita, but another to hear the word escape Olivia's lips - especially when he hadn't her quite this distressed in what felt like months.
She had a stroke and isn't doing well.
No, this couldn't be. She'd recovered remarkably well from the mini-stroke she'd had the previous winter. How had she gone from daily morning walks in the Bronx to lying unconscious in a hospital bed?
She doesn't have much time left.
It felt as though the words were echoing in the room, taunting him.
Olivia looked at him in a sombre silence and didn't press for a response, having correctly inferred from the way he practically collapsed onto the couch behind him and buried his head in his hands, his body numb from the shock, that he was in no mood to speak. His abuelita was fighting for her life, and he couldn't be there to hold her hand; his silent promise to her his entire lifetime.
She doesn't have much time left.
No, this couldn't be. This had to be some cruel joke.
This was his single worst fear since leaving New York behind: coming to terms with the realisation that his abuelita's gentle smile and reassuring hand on his back would exist only in his memory. That the last time he'd hugged her was on the sidewalk outside a Bronx diner before he'd rushed back to 1 Hogan Place to settle last-minute paperwork - and that he'd never be able to expunge that stabbing regret.
Was it time for him to face up to this? Accept that he was an exile from his own city, never to lay eyes on the very people who'd made him the very person he was?
"How much time does she have left?" he finally stammered after what felt like an eternity, his head pounding with a dizzying mix of disbelief and worry. His throat was so thick with emotion that he could barely speak, but the mug of chamomile tea on the coffee table wasn't appealing in the slightest.
"It's… not good, Rafael. She's barely hanging on," Olivia confessed. "Rita thinks there's a tiny chance she could pull through, but the neurologist isn't very optimistic about Catalina's chances after the rough couple of days she's had…"
Rita. Another name he hadn't heard in far too long. Thank goodness his abuelita wasn't alone in Bellevue.
But god damn it, he didn't want to imagine what his best friend was going through in his absence, while he sat here completely helpless with a couple hundred miles separating him from the exact place he needed to be right now - right by Catalina's bedside to hold her hand and whisper to her over and over again that she had to pull through.
Once upon a time he'd been her emergency contact, dropping everything at a moment's notice to see her when she did as much as bruise her knee against the corner of the kitchen table. Now it felt like he was the absolute last person to know.
Even Olivia had found out about it before he did.
Only then did the realisation hit him like a freight truck.
"Wait." Rafael sat up in his seat unsteadily and eyed her suspiciously. "How do you know about this?"
It was a simple question, but he almost feared the answer.
Could the marshals have told her? No, that didn't make much sense; he hadn't received calls from Nguyen or Blake all week and it made little to no sense for them to notify Olivia before him, especially when neither marshal knew that they were finally on speaking terms again. Anyway, the last thing the marshals would want was for either of them to find a reason to slip back into the city - and this definitely was one of them.
That left him with only one possibility - one unbelievable enough that it made his blood turn cold. Did that make any logical sense for Olivia? Would she dare pull something that audacious; that reckless?
Olivia grimaced and he could almost see her cheeks flush- whether with stress or embarrassment, he didn't quite know, but her expression was more than enough to prove that his hunch was right.
He knew the instant she opened her mouth that she'd caught on to his suspicion. "I bought a burner cell to call Fin a few weeks ago and we started talking," she confessed sheepishly, the words tumbling out of her mouth so quickly that he almost couldn't make them out. "And he texted me today telling me to call him back… and that's when he told me what happened."
"Jesus Christ, Liv."
Just over a month ago she'd stood behind his kitchen counter, a few feet from where they were now, and reprimanded him for how reckless he'd been to drive to New Jersey; practically roared that you could have gotten yourself killed. Now she was looking him in the eye and admitting being in regular contact with Fin, after being reminded by the marshals countless times that it was one of the surest ways to sign both their death warrants.
Olivia, of all people, breaking one of the cardinal WITSEC rules by buying a burner cell? What else could he possibly say to that?
But there wasn't time to debate the topic. Not when it'd given him a precious lifeline; one possibly final chance to see the woman who'd practically raised him. Not when Olivia had unlocked something much more pressing.
He had to do something about this, no matter what Olivia thought of his plan.
"I need to go back to New York. I can't let her…" Rafael stopped himself before saying the dreaded word, "… without seeing her again," he declared, his mind in a haze, although hearing himself say those words only brought his idea into clarity. He had to find his way back to Manhattan - and he had to do it now.
Was it reckless? Was it utterly stupid of him to even dare to utter the idea? To consider, even for just a second, that he venture back into the belly of the beast?
It was, but he couldn't afford to care.
All he could focus on was his abuelita lying unconscious in that hospital bed; his sobbing mother by her side realising she was on the precipice of losing yet another family member in the span of just a few months, while he ploughed on with his new life a couple of hundred miles. No - he couldn't let that happen.
He had to find his way back to the city somehow, with or without Olivia or her approval.
"I know, Rafael," she sighed quietly. "I know."
He stared at her for a few seconds in anticipation of the inevitable "but…" and a stern, unequivocal warning against yet another dangerous trip back to New York - this time far more perilous than the previous one - but was shocked to find none of that hesitation.
"We'll rent a car and leave in a few hours' time," Olivia declared matter-of-factly even before he could conjure a single reasonable argument for making the trip. "If we drive fast, we can be back to Manhattan by 9."
Rafael couldn't quite believe his ears. Where was the obligatory cautionary speech; the harsh words?
We'll rent a car. We can get back to Manhattan by 9am.
We.
Was she offering to make the trip back with him?
"We definitely shouldn't take our cars," she continued without missing a beat, while Rafael continued to stare at her in a stunned silence. "I'll find us a rental. Fin's heading to Jersey tomorrow morning to drive us to Bellevue; Rita will wait with your mother at Bellevue. Nick and Brian are helping to keep watch - Fin and Rita are probably talking to them right now."
No, she wasn't just offering to accompany him on this batshit crazy expedition. She was planning to make the trip back with him - and she already was at least five steps ahead of him.
Of course Olivia had already formulated a plan. Of course she'd already mobilised everyone else to make this happen - he'd never expected any less of her. But it still didn't dull the shock that coursed through him as she rattled off each familiar name: Fin meeting us in Jersey. Rita waiting at the hospital. Even Nick Amaro and Brian Cassidy had been roped in, somehow, when his interactions with them had been polite and distant at best.
(Who could forget the time he'd almost sent Olivia's live-in boyfriend to prison? Would Brian let him forget it? How on earth were Fin and Rita going to pitch this crazy plan to him?)
The room was spinning around him, her voice little more than a distant echo against his deafening train of thought. Just a minute ago he'd started to grapple with the possibility that he would never get a chance to see his abuelita again, but here he was, trying to take in the fact that this trip was becoming a very real one at an almost breakneck speed.
"… Are you alright?" Olivia asked cautiously, doubt crossing her face when he didn't respond. She didn't have to ask to know that he absolutely wanted to make this trip, but his silence was unnerving her.
"I know we need a plan… but it's still a lot to take in," he admitted, his gaze averting hers. "I just need a minute."
She softened instantly. "I'm sorry for springing this on you," she apologised, dropping the intensity with which she'd rattled off that plan just a minute ago. "When Fin called and told me what happened…"
"Don't apologise, Liv," he interrupted sternly. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"Leave the planning to me. I'll take care of it," she urged him. "Don't worry about that."
"No, it's not that."
She didn't interrupt him, and instead waited silently as he gathered his thoughts, her calm expression concealing the anxiety that was starting to pool in her stomach. Maybe all this had been too presumptuous of her; maybe she'd let her sense of urgency blind her to just how agonising this would be for Rafael - and the uncertainty stabbed away at her conscience.
"I just… I just don't want anyone to get hurt," Rafael swallowed the lump in his throat, his green eyes still conspicuously angled away from hers.
The conversation came to a screeching halt as the implications of that statement hung over them.
Every single person Fin and Olivia had roped into this grand scheme was putting themselves in the line of fire, but he could focus only on the woman standing in front of him. Olivia was a civilian now: a civilian who certainly didn't need to put her own life on the line to accompany him on possibly the most dangerous trip he'd ever make in his lifetime. With that sobering realisation, Rafael's eyes bore into her, his way of wordlessly conveying that she still had a chance to say no; to back out of this journey back into the belly of the beast, because he knew that seeing even the smallest hint of hesitance in in her expression would plague him with a guilt he simply wouldn't know how to expunge.
He'd already dragged her to hell once after being relocated here. He couldn't afford to do that again - especially when they finally were on the precipice of picking up the pieces. And especially not when the consequences were far more grave than a month-long Cold War between them - both literally and figuratively.
Rafael frantically searched Olivia's expression for a shred of doubt; a silent "we know better than to do this" that would scream at him once more to leave Olivia out of this, no matter how badly every part of him dreaded the prospect of another lonely, frantic drive up the I-95 that ended in a far more perilous destination.
But he found none, instead seeing only the same quiet decisiveness and authority that he'd seen in her eyes the very first time they met in Part 11 two years ago, and he couldn't decide if that emboldened or terrified him more.
"Liv, you really don't have to come with me," he insisted feebly, perhaps because he could already guess that resistance was futile.
There was no doubt in Olivia's expression, because she simply couldn't imagine doing this another way. There was zero possibility that she would allow Rafael to make that perilous trip solo - especially when she'd made the choice to buy that burner cell all those weeks ago in the thick of her loneliness.
She'd opened this door, and the last thing she wanted was to leave him hanging, helpless in his grief while they were marooned in Maryland. She had to follow through; she wanted to follow through.
And so she did what she'd always done best - keeping herself alive. Keeping them alive.
"Fin and I will find the safest way back into Manhattan, and with Nick and Brian on the watch, there are more than enough eyes around to get us to safety before anything can happen," she declared with more confidence than she actually possessed. "We'll take care of everything."
Who knew just what this sex trafficking ring was capable of that they hadn't even caught a glimpse of yet? Would four decorated cops - or more accurately, three decorated cops and one former decorated cop (now without her gun) - be enough against a syndicate with seemingly boundless resources and an even more voracious appetite for murder?
But she wasn't going to let Rafael see that thread of doubt, because she had a chance to reunite him with one of the most important people in his life, and the raw, visceral grief that'd poured into his expression when she'd delivered the news just a few minutes ago was more than enough to convince her that they absolutely had to do this - as a duo.
"I'll take this risk."
That, Olivia was much more confident of.
She looked at him sitting on the couch, watching her every move and hanging onto her every word, and was taken back to two nights ago - them sitting on this very couch and laughing at Ferris Bueller's Day Off and feeling the tension between them finally melt into a languid, peaceful contentment after a month unmoored. She recalled the exact way her head rested on his shoulder and his arm resting on her back, and the quiet intimacy that'd so effortlessly poured into those touches after more than a month without their skin touching. And she vividly remembered the way he'd gently squeezed her hand after they'd talked at the coffee shop three afternoons ago, his silent but telling sign that they were going to be alright, somehow.
And her staying in Bethesda while he made that trip alone was by no means alright.
Four months had flown by since they'd left New York and it sometimes felt like a fever dream. How many different emotions had she cycled through standing in this very spot in his living room - all the joy, contentment, laughter, hurt, anger and shock enough for a lifetime? Did she even know what she was feeling right now, staring at him on his couch, his body almost frozen with the shock he'd been doused with?
But all that didn't matter; not anymore. She couldn't turn her back on him, not even after the month they'd just had, because she couldn't give up one of the only things she was absolutely sure of.
Bang.
Olivia had done everything she could to block out that sound when it rang in her ears, but she was helpless to its force tonight.
She saw Rafael slumped on that Chelsea sidewalk, blood coating the back of his jacket and nothing but blind panic and shock buzzing around them before she slipped into unconsciousness, his name the last lucid thought on her mind. She felt the weight of the missing holster on her hip taunt her for her defenselessness; the sobering guilt that flooded her mind when she woke up in the hospital bed and saw his arm wrapped in a sling because she hadn't flung him onto the ground in time.
I couldn't protect him that night.
Olivia Benson had made that mistake, and Olivia Davis wasn't about to make it again.
For a just second Rafael looked like he was on the verge of finally caving to Olivia's sheer determination, but he caught himself before he could, because he couldn't let this continue before he'd completed the thought he'd started earlier.
"I don't know if I'd be able to live with myself if you got hurt," he admitted shakily, his voice little more than an anxious whisper. "You getting hurt because you decided to do this for me."
He waited for the umpteenth time that night for the almost stubborn determination in Olivia's eyes to melt into doubt; for her to cave to the weight of the unknown and declare that she wasn't going to bear all that risk for him.
And for the umpteenth time that night, Olivia's expression didn't falter.
The look in her eyes was his undoing, because all he saw was the same resolve and tenacity he'd stolen glimpses of when she sat across from him in his office working on a case, and that he had pretended didn't make his heart beat just a little faster each time. It was the same resolve he'd felt from across the table on Tuesday afternoon in the coffee shop when he finally allowed himself to look at her - really look - and it hit him in full force that she was the very same Olivia who could make his walls crumble with little more than a polite smile in his direction.
Had it only been two days since he'd finally remembered what it was like to be happy with Olivia, sitting here with her head on his shoulder and completely at ease despite them not exchanging a word? They'd finally toppled that Berlin Wall; this was the fresh start they both needed so desperately after being so badly burned by what felt like endless explosions of feeling. And this hitting them just as they were finally emerging from the mess he'd made for them - it was almost laughably cruel.
He hadn't lost her. But if he did this time, it would be permanent.
And even if they made it back to Bethesda with as much as a tiny scratch on her, his guilt would be etched into his skin permanently.
"Liv," he insisted resolutely, but couldn't find the words to continue.
"Let me take care of this. Please," she implored, and took his hands in hers on impulse. "Fin and Rita are getting everything sorted out there. We'll just have to get to Jersey tomorrow morning - and I'll handle that."
There was no arguing with her at this point, because he could feel her resolve pour right through her touch and into him. Olivia wanted to do this, and she'd made up her mind even before stepping through his front door. Was it finally time for him to give up this fight?
But there was just one more thing he had to do before he did.
He straightened in his seat and finally felt his voice return. "Then I want - no, need - you to know this, Olivia," he said seriously, hoping that his use of her full name would unlock any residual doubt she could be hiding. "If you want to back out at any time…"
"I'm coming with you," Olivia cut him off firmly, and he could almost see her NYPD-honed steeliness setting back in. "I know this is important to you, and you can't go back alone."
He opened his mouth to make one final protest, but abandoned that thought when the blazing determination in her eyes cut right through him.
Trust me.
He was going to do precisely that, because he knew no other way with her. He was going to trust her - even if this plan still scared the fuck out of him.
She'd reached across the coffee table for his laptop and fired it up even before he'd fully made sense of the enormity of the exchange they'd just had, and Rafael could only watch in a stunned silence as her fingers danced across the keyboard in search of a car rental place that opened before sunrise.
"Do you have paper and a pen?" she asked without looking up from the screen, and for a second Rafael was convinced that they were sitting in her old office and poring over a difficult case: his living, breathing proof that the Olivia Benson he once feared would disappear into the shadows had never left her.
It took a few moments for the room to stop spinning and his pulse to stop echoing in his ears, but the sight before him was shockingly clear - and with that came the first modicum of clarity he'd felt since she'd knocked on his door.
This Olivia - Olivia Benson - was the closest hope he had to making it back into the heart of Manhattan and back out unscathed. It didn't matter that she didn't have a gun on her hip or badge tucked into her back pocket, or even that the wispy bangs she'd grown over the last month screamed "cushy desk job" more than "NYPD sergeant". The laser-focused way she was mapping out every move was telling enough of the two decades she'd spent studying city maps and spotting danger at every turn, and four months away from that had done nothing to those razor-sharp instincts.
She knew how to keep them safe. He could trust that; he could trust her.
And she knew him. She knew him well enough to buy into this crazy plan and get Fin and Rita moving even before she'd shown up at his door, because not once had she contemplated the possibility that he'd not make this trip. It wasn't even a question of whether they should make the perilous trip back, because he absolutely was going back to New York - and Olivia was coming with him.
Maybe he could live with this kind of recklessness.
(He just hoped they'd both stay alive to tell the tale.)
Rafael didn't know how long he'd watched her over her shoulder, but was jolted out of his reverie when he felt Olivia's hand on his shoulder. "You should get some sleep, Rafael," she suggested gently, the steely drive in her eyes melting seamlessly into affectionate concern. "Tomorrow's going to be a long day."
It was an understatement - especially when he saw the detailed notes she'd scrawled on the notepad he'd handed her earlier. "So should you."
His open bedroom door beckoned, aided by the digital clock on the credenza that told them it was close to 11pm - a ridiculously early hour by ADA standards, but not when it looked like they were going to have to leave town at 5am the next morning. He'd downed his entire mug of chamomile tea in the last ten minutes, but any relaxation he'd hoped for had dissolved with Olivia's bombshell, and his entire body was buzzing with anxiety. Half of him was telling him to retire for the night and squeeze in an elusive few hours of rest, but he dragged his feet on the carpet, and it hit him that he was reluctant to tear himself away from her.
God, he'd forgotten what it was like to need Olivia this badly; to look at her and find a hint of clarity in the rapidly unravelling threads that were his control over his life. His mind was in a whirl, but he could feel calm emanating from her - a calm so elusive in his own life of late, and especially tonight.
And he'd forgotten what it was like to feel so much doubt course through him as he teetered precariously on the words that hung on the edge of his tongue - words he'd swallowed at many points from the time they'd first fallen into bed together, but now made him feel like he was going to burst. Why couldn't he just muster the ounce of courage he needed to look her in the eye and utter the single sentence that would make the difference between a night of agony and comfort?
But he didn't have to, because Olivia spoke first.
"Do you want me to stay tonight?"
It was like she'd read his mind.
She asked that question with some trepidation, her eyes darting nervously between him and the laptop screen. The last time she'd stayed over at his apartment felt like a lifetime ago now, and with shards from their shattered relationship still left over on the floor, they had every reason to tread carefully - especially when something this seismic could end in ruin once more.
"Do you want to stay?" he asked just as cautiously, praying fervently that she'd make that decision for them - because he didn't know what to say otherwise.
Did he want her to stay? He didn't even have to give that question a second thought. It didn't matter that he didn't have the words to tell her, because the truth was written all over him.
He heaved a quiet sigh of relief when she flashed him a weary but reassuring smile. "Why don't you head to bed first? I'll join you when I'm done sorting this out."
It was the most relief he'd felt all night - and probably the only relief he'd feel all night. He'd take any hints of it he could.
Rafael eyed the array of tabs on the screen and felt a dull ache form in his chest watching her flit back and forth between them, hints of exhaustion peeking through in her expression despite her attempts to conceal them. "Sure you don't want my help?"
"No, it's fine," she assured him. "Get some sleep. You need it more than me."
"Alright, Liv," he conceded. "But promise me you won't stay up too late."
"I won't," she said confidently, her eyes silently beckoning him to trust me once more.
And so he did.
"Goodnight." He reached out to give her hand a quick, affectionate squeeze - the best he could offer while the last of the shock of the evening lingered stubbornly in his mind.
Her fingers curled around his, and just the brush of their skin made him feel a little calmer. "Goodnight, Rafael."
And with that, Rafael retreated to his bedroom to the sound of Olivia's fingers dancing across the keys, and caught a glimpse of her brows furrowed in concentration when he shut the door behind him.
The bathroom tiles were cold under his bare feet, but nothing could jolt him back to reality as he brushed his teeth listlessly. Maybe the discomfort that ate away at him as he hastily got dressed and turned down the light was guilt - that he was under the sheets in the shaded darkness of his bedroom while Olivia was hard at work outside. Hard at work preempting every danger and risk that hid behind a corner in a journey they were making for his sake.
I should be helping her. That thought taunted him, but what good would he do when his own mind was in such a frenzy?
Had it really been less than an hour ago that Olivia had burst through his front door and dropped that atomic bomb? Were they actually going to attempt this trip - and make it back to Bethesda unscathed? The height of summer had long passed, but Rafael's skin was clammy under the sheets as he tossed and turned, every minute arduously long in the silence and sleep completely eluding him.
His abuelita. He couldn't shake his vision of her lying in that hospital bed, monitors beeping rhythmically in the background, a shell of her former self.
For a minute he was perched by the dining table in his abuelita's Bronx walk-up with the broken A/C, sweating through his school uniform and watching her tinker with one of her iconic Cuban recipes in the tiny kitchen, and Rafael felt like he was going to throw up.
God, the very thought of walking into Bellevue (if they even made it that far) and seeing her so weakened in that hospital bed made his heart race with terror, and he didn't even want to linger on the possibility that the worst would happen before-
"You're still awake?"
Olivia's lilting whisper punctuated the silence and jolted him back to reality - hands balled into tight fists clutching the sheets, sweat beading his forehead, her hand on his shoulder. Bethesda. Two hundred miles from the place he needed to be.
"Can't sleep," he mumbled almost incoherently between laboured breaths. "Too much on my mind."
"Breathe," she whispered soothingly. "I'm right here."
Rafael could barely make out her silhouette, but felt the mattress dip slightly and the sheets rustle under her as she slid into the bed she'd last slept in more than a month ago, a cautious distance still separating them. If this were a different day - if the last hour hadn't happened - he'd feel his stomach clench with desire as Olivia settled into bed, but tonight all he knew was his anxiety, a monstrous and raging fire of a completely different colour from the heated way she used to press his lips to his.
Next to him, Olivia carefully tucked her arm under her pillow, conscious of keeping to her side of the bed as she struggled to find a comfortable position. It hadn't even been that long since she'd last slept in this bed - so why was she suddenly feeling so uncomfortable?
The answer became clear when she finally settled into a semi-comfortable position and pulled the covers over her - she wondered if Rafael had made the A/C this cold on purpose - and felt an almost oppressively heavy tension emanate from him in waves.
Olivia gently tapped his shoulder. "Hey - are you alright?"
He shook his head wordlessly, and she fumbled around in the darkness for his hand, only then realising how tightly he was gripping the sheets.
"You're going to be just fine, Rafael. We're going to be fine." Her fingers curled around his gingerly, silently urging him to let go of the covers, and he exhaled softly as their skin came into contact - the green light she'd been secretly hoping for.
And with a deep breath and burst of resolve, she slid next to him, close enough for her to feel his chest rise and fall unsteadily, and her hair to graze the back of his neck.
"Is this okay?"
"Yeah, it's okay."
The slight smile she barely made out in the dark was all confirmation she needed.
Four months ago they'd laid in this exact position on the uncomfortable, cold mattress their first night in the federal clearinghouse, Rafael's tears seeping into the sleeve of Olivia's T-shirt and their quiet sobs intermingling in the deathly still air. There were no tears tonight - only a heavy, still silence - but she held him close to her chest until his laboured breathing finally slowed, and only then did she finally allow herself to close her eyes and slip into an uncomfortable, fitful slumber.
Six hours until they departed and she didn't want to admit to herself that she was scared shitless, because the last thing that they - Rafael - needed was a single shred of evidence of that rapidly swelling fear.
No, she needed to focus; focus on stepping on the gas pedal in the morning and getting them to New York alive. Getting Rafael back to Lucia and Catalina.
She'd opened this door. Now all she had to do was follow through.
Thursday, 10.48pm
"You have to be kidding me."
The night had started strangely enough. Nick certainly hadn't expected a call from Fin at that hour, summoning him to Rita Calhoun's palatial Upper East Side townhouse, of all places in the city, but the uncharacteristic sense of urgency in Fin's tone was enough to rouse him from a leisurely evening on his couch to a neighbourhood he'd never be able to afford an apartment in.
And when Nick emerged through the imposing doorway and found Brian Cassidy standing alongside Fin in the defence attorney's hallway, he knew instantly what the elephant in the room was, although he definitely didn't expect to be proven right a few minutes later.
"You lied to us about Liv and Barba being alive?!" a furious Brian fired indignantly at Fin, whose resigned sigh made it clear that he'd expected this exact reaction.
"Not so loud!" Rita quietly reprimanded him with a final furtive scan of the room to make sure the doors and windows were shut and locked.
"I had to lie because they're in witness protection, Brian," Fin asserted calmly. "You, of all people, should know that this isn't the kind of topic we can throw around at the bar - the US Marshals would have flipped."
A still-disgruntled Brian folded his arms in frustration. "You could at least have told us that she and Barba are alive somewhere."
"That doesn't make things any better," Fin retorted, and Rita immediately sensed the anger in his voice rising. "They were pronounced dead for a reason."
"Why tell us now?" Nick interjected before Brian could devise another comeback.
"Because Barba's abuelita is fighting for her life in Bellevue and Liv and Barba are coming back to New York. Tomorrow morning," Rita cut in before anyone else could derail the conversation, her voice charged with authority. "And all of us need to be there."
Liv and Barba are coming back to New York.
Tomorrow morning.
Nick's jaw dropped. "What the hell? You spring this on us at 11pm… and they're going to be back in a few hours?"
He glanced at his watch in disbelief. It was one thing to hear that his former partner was alive when he remembered the funeral like it was yesterday - but another to learn that she was going to appear in front of him in a few hours' time.
Liv and Barba are coming back to New York. This couldn't be real. Nick could only look frantically between Rita, Fin, and Brian as the gravity of the meeting engulfed him.
"We decided on this only an hour ago, Nick. I just got off the phone with Liv," Fin clarified.
"So you've been talking to her all this time?" Brian snarled.
Fin decided not to let that remark faze him. "She called me first a few weeks ago. Burner cell."
"Nice work, Fin, hiding this from us when you knew that we were trying to dig into this," he replied venomously.
"Look, argue about this all you want after Olivia and Rafael make it in and out of Manhattan safely - can we focus, please?" Rita sighed loudly, which thankfully seemed adequate to re-focus everyone's attention on the very pressing task at hand. "Just in case you haven't realised, this isn't going to be a walk in the park, and that's why we're all here now."
Fin mouthed a silent "thank you" to her. "Rita's right. We need to go over exactly how things are going to work tomorrow." He grabbed the spare Calhoun & Berkeley legal pad he'd been scribbling on all evening from the table and felt the frenetic energy in the room settle just a little. "Get coffee, everyone - we're going to be here for a while."
Rita tinkered with her coffee machine as Fin calmly rattled off a list of things they needed to do in the next few hours with methodical precision, as though they were preparing for a routine stake-out and not a life-or-death (literally) mission they'd created for themselves that very afternoon. Getting a rental car, picking them up from Jersey, revealing to Lucia that Rafael was alive (Rita promptly roping Nick in because he was apparently "good with the abuelitas", and she really wasn't sure she'd be able to handle Lucia alone)…
God, she had no idea how he'd formulated all this in a night, and thanked her lucky stars that he'd left no stone unturned, because the thought of attending another funeral - this time a much more devastatingly real one - made her nauseous.
Fin snuck a concerned glance at her as Nick and Brian made sense of the plan. It's going to be fine, he mouthed.
You sure? she mouthed back.
Sure, he nodded.
She wanted to trust him - trust them. Three detectives with more years of experience combined than she'd lived on this earth; surely they knew what they were doing.
She'd opened this door, getting Fin to send Olivia that text message. All this had been set in motion because of her - and she couldn't afford to fail.
Alright.
The uneasy smile she mustered was the best she could under these circumstances, but nonetheless, it was a smile.
She'd opened this door. Hopefully she hadn't signed someone's death warrant - or warrants - by following through.
Friday, 5.22am
It was only when Rafael rubbed his bleary eyes in the middle of a fluorescent-lit office before the crack of dawn that it hit him that it was the first time he'd heard Olivia speak all morning.
"Hey, we're looking for a car for the day. Anything that works while ours is in the shop."
The lie slipped out of her mouth as effortlessly as they probably did when she was undercover back in the day. He wasn't sure if he was more taken aback by that or the sound of her voice after a frantic morning getting dressed and staring at the plan she'd scrawled on his notepad, all through which they hadn't exchanged a single word, the enormity of the mission that lay ahead of them oppressive enough to stymie even the most cursory of conversation.
Thankfully, the lackadaisical clerk behind the counter looked just as tired as Rafael did, and barely glanced at Olivia's license before sliding it back across the desk. "How long do you need it for?"
"We'll return it tonight," she informed him confidently, although Rafael hated to admit to himself that he questioned the certainty of that statement.
Will we return it tonight?
But he decided not to utter a word to Olivia, whom he noticed had paid the clerk in cash instead of her usual Visa, and waited in silence behind her as she hastily filled out the paperwork in almost illegible penmanship - probably a deliberate move, knowing her. And before he knew it he was trailing her to the parking lot outside, where she promptly got into the driver's side before he could offer to.
Let me handle this, she ordered him silently as they locked eyes over the car door, and Rafael knew better than to put up a fight when Olivia meant business.
(And with the nervousness in the pit of his stomach that'd been bubbling from the moment his alarm rang that morning, he wasn't sure he'd complete the 200-mile trip in the first place.)
"Ready?"
That was the last word she uttered before he nodded his agreement and they set off.
Olivia clutched the steering wheel with the same laser-sharp focus she did an NYPD squad car and zipped northward while Rafael shifted uncomfortably in the shotgun seat, attempting fruitlessly not to imagine what awaited him when he finally stepped into Bellevue in a few hours' time. God, he didn't want to imagine the look on his mother's face when she finally laid eyes on her very much not dead son over four months since the funeral - or his abuelita in that hospital bed, a shell of her former vivacious self.
Maybe we left Maryland too late. Maybe they wouldn't make it back in-
No, he couldn't afford to think about that. And so he settled for staring out the window as the D.C. suburbs morphed into the same endless stretch of highway he'd cruised down in a blind frenzy not more than two months ago - except that they'd finally cross the invisible barrier separating the Jersey pier and the rest of his life on the other side of the water.
(Hopefully.)
Only the low, steady whir of the engine filled the car as Olivia raced down the I-95 with a forceful, almost manic energy she'd once saved only for the most dire of police emergencies. They'd left their cellphones on Rafael's nightstand that morning, taking only Olivia's plastic Nokia; even the in-car GPS had lapsed into silence, spitting out only the very occasional instruction that she didn't seem to need, anyway - she'd already looked up their route the night before, Rafael recalled from the glimpse of the laptop screen he'd snuck just before attempting to call it a night.
She'd planned this. He didn't need to get in her way.
And so Rafael remained silent, even when she came dangerously close to clipping another car as she switched lanes to overtake it. He remained silent even as possibilities, some hopeful and some grim, raced through his head, the only fraction of assurance they had the tiny Nokia on the dashboard that hadn't (yet) buzzed with a text message from Fin or Rita delivering bad news.
He wordlessly handed her a cup of coffee at the stop they made just outside Delaware - not far from the rest stop where he'd ignored her calls and texts that July morning - and acknowledged her concerned are you alright glance with only a semi-confident, cursory nod that concealed the mounting anxiety he felt watching the minutes tick by on the dashboard clock.
The silence seemed perfectly logical. They were exhausted and running on little sleep and plenty of mounting stress; they were completely consumed by worry for Catalina's rapidly deteriorating condition. Heck, they were making a 200-mile drive they weren't sure they'd be alive to see the return leg of, although that was the last thing either of them needed to bring up. Uncertainty was the operative word of the day - and they were going to have to get used to it.
But one glance at Olivia in the seat next to him, eyes glued to the highway and every manoeuvre purposeful and authoritative, and he felt some much-needed confidence seep into his system. They didn't need to exchange a sentence all morning, because the certainty emanating from her spoke a thousand words on its own.
She'd carefully planned this for him. He couldn't ask for more.
Welcome to New Jersey!
They flew by the sign so quickly that neither had thought to give it a second glance at first, but the way they both flinched when they did was telling enough. It was a cloudless, unexpectedly balmy September morning, but this wasn't a vacation, and Olivia pressed on in the direction of the meeting point Fin had suggested the night before, slowing only briefly to take in the fact that this was the closest she'd been to New York in four months. The closest she'd been to home.
Was New York still home?
Had Rafael agonised over the exact same question while racing down this stretch of highway that equally sunny July morning?
Was he agonising over that very question right now?
Rafael's coffee had long turned cold, but he kept a tight grip on his almost-empty paper cup and held it to his lips, perhaps to hide the way his hands trembled as they passed a stretch of road he recognised clearly - the very stretch on which he'd fully abandoned the nagging voice at the back of his mind telling him to turn back towards D.C.
It was also the same stretch on which he'd ordered himself to finally cast Olivia out of his mind for a few precious hours and drive on without her disappointed voice echoing in his ears, and he couldn't stop a fresh wave of guilt from assailing him when he noticed her fingers tense around the steering wheel.
But there was no time for guilt today. She was the one in the driver's seat; they were making a trip that she'd spoken into existence.
And that made all the difference.
"Are you alright?"
Olivia finally punctured the silence and looked to him concernedly as she tapped on the brakes and they left the highway for the Jersey suburbs - a sight now heart-breakingly foreign to her. In a previous life she'd passed through the Holland Tunnel so many times that could do it in her sleep; now her eyes were peeled to the road ahead lest she make a wrong turn.
Rafael realised that he had a whole array of possible answers to that deceptively simple question as thoughts of his abuelita filled his head and the scent of sterile hospital hallways assaulted his nostrils, but lifted his eyes to meet Olivia's and allowed the strength in them - strength that far outstripped any hint of vulnerability - to steady him.
"Yeah, I'm alright."
He could trust her; even now, as the landscape gradually morphed back into familiarity and a sense of real danger started creeping into the car. He always could.
"We're going to be fine."
She instinctively reached for his hand, and Rafael ignored the subtle way her voice cracked as she uttered that sentence to wrap his fingers around hers. Whether as assurance to her, or himself, or both of them, he wasn't sure, but it was the best they could afford as Olivia pulled up by a deserted parking lot and spotted Fin in a waiting sedan.
She'd opened this door. Now it was time to see if she'd opened the right one.
10.36am
"Hey, can you stop pacing, please?" Rita's voice boomed in Nick's ears despite being little more than an assertive half-whisper. "Sorry - it's making me anxious," she added apologetically when the detective jumped a little.
"Sorry about that," Nick mumbled back. He didn't miss how uncharacteristic of Rita Calhoun that apology seemed - but then again, what did he really know about the surly defence attorney, who'd unexpectedly become one of his closest allies in the span of a single night?
He settled uncomfortably in one of the chairs lining the hallway of the VIP wing at Bellevue (a privilege that Rita had twisted her neurologist friend's arm to arrange when Catalina had first been admitted), but quickly realised that any attempt to calm his raging nerves would be futile. His foot drummed against the floor as he glanced at his watch - Olivia and Barba had to be arriving with Fin any minute now, unless traffic from Jersey was proving a bitch. Or…
Nick stopped himself before completing that thought. No, there wasn't time for this - especially not now.
He had few reasons to despair before they'd even started. Fin had devised what looked like an air-tight plan even under extreme duress, and he and Brian Cassidy had signed off on it. Surely at least some optimism was in order that morning. Olivia and Barba would emerge at the end of the hallway with not even a scratch on them by the end of the hour; Lucia Barba, still raw from the shock of Nick's bombshell revelation earlier that morning, was finally going to be presented with irrefutable evidence that her son was alive.
And Nick was going to come face-to-face with his former partner - the one he'd shed a flood of tears over in a cavernous Midtown chapel four months ago, and the one whose belongings remained tucked away in a spare locker in the precinct that no one had dared to touch all summer long. He was finally going to be presented with irrefutable evidence that Olivia Benson was alive.
"Fin just texted," Rita approached again and abruptly shattered the silence. "They'll be here in ten."
Ten minutes. Six hundred seconds. Were they arduously long or flying by at breakneck speed?
It took him a good few seconds for that information to sink in, but by the time it had Nick's anticipation - and nervousness - had reached a fever pitch. Ten minutes until he confronted the sight that'd caused him many a sleepless night that swelteringly warm summer.
He patted his holster one more time for good measure, and waited.
When he heard Fin's distinctive voice at the end of the hallway exactly ten minutes later, his pulse accelerated unconsciously and he kept his eyes glued to the concrete wall opposite him, almost terrified to lift his head and finally put his long-held, nagging suspicion to rest. Why couldn't he shake the feeling that all this was an elaborate fever dream? Had it really been less than twelve hours ago that he'd sipped Rita Calhoun's overpriced coffee and listened to Fin run over how exactly they'd sneak Rafael Barba and Olivia Benson into a crowded hospital in a city where insidious forces prowled the streets and wanted them dead?
But he had a job to do today, and wasn't going to be the cause of a second funeral, this time one that wasn't an elaborate work of fiction.
And so he finally tore his gaze away from the wall and looked up - firstly at Fin, and then at Rafael Barba, and finally at Olivia Benson, in the flesh.
Olivia's heart had thumped loudly in her chest from the moment she'd stepped out of the nondescript rental car Fin had sourced from the depths of Queens and into the sterile air of Bellevue Hospital - a building she'd spent many a frantic night in, consoling devastated family members and holding the hands of victims. She'd kept her head down walking by the the handful of people they'd passed en route to the super-exclusive wing only Rita Calhoun had the connections to secure, finally daring to exhale when they stepped out of the lift on Catalina's floor - only to feel her breath catch again when she locked eyes with the unmistakably familiar figure waiting at the end of the hallway.
Nick Amaro, in the flesh.
It took a minute for the initial shock to wash over them both. They stepped aside as Rafael promptly barged through the door separating the hallway from the privacy of Catalina's suite and Lucia's relieved sobs filled the air, leaving Nick and Olivia outside in a silence that they weren't sure was more incredulous, stunned or paralysed - or perhaps a combination of all three.
"Liv," Nick finally choked out first, his voice catching in his throat as he took in her presence in front of him.
She sported new wispy bangs that framed her face with a distinctly un-NYPD breeziness, and was and clad in a nondescript black T-shirt and jeans combination a far cry from the slacks and blazers he'd come to associate her with over the last two years, but every last shred of doubt he'd carried that morning was dead and gone and replaced only by a bone-chilling shock, because Olivia Benson was unmistakably alive and standing before him.
"Nick."
Just the way she said his name - a single syllable so ephemeral yet cuttingly real - shook him to the core, and another wave of shock washed over him.
"You made it," he gasped in visible relief. He didn't bother to ask her where she'd come from - they both knew that the question was off-limits, anyway - because that hardly mattered now that she was on Manhattan soil, just a few floors above the streets she'd spent years of her life plying. Streets she'd once plied with him.
She searched her mind for a response that would dignify that uncharacteristic display of emotion from him, but abandoned all of them in favour of a tight hug.
His chest almost burst with emotion as he wrapped his arms around her - Olivia. This wasn't just a fever dream he'd conjured in the depths of grief or denial. The shock that'd nearly knocked him off his feet seconds ago rapidly gave way to one emotion: relief.
"You have no idea how happy I am to see you, Liv."
"Me too, Nick."
The corners of her lips curled into a smile both familiar and steadying - the same one she'd given him that afternoon in their squad car when she'd just belted out the lyrics to Eye of the Tiger and their cheeks hurt from laughter; the moment they realised they'd finally made the switch from partners to friends.
And to realise that he still had his friend, after four endless months with her ghosts everywhere in the precinct and doing his best to trudge on without her, made all his agony a thing of the past.
"We've missed you so much. SVU hasn't been the same without you," he confessed.
The latter was an understatement. Sure, they had Cragen back; their manpower shortage was finally going to be solved on Monday after numerous transfers from other boroughs hadn't materialised at the last minute. They'd survived a summer of almost non-stop crime with a tiny squad - one without Olivia. But the "heart of SVU" (to borrow the wise words of John Munch) had taken a piece of the squad room with her the day she'd left, and Nick was starting to get the feeling that nothing would ever replace it.
She hadn't been in this hospital ten minutes, but Olivia's voice was already choked with emotion. "I miss everyone. I miss this city."
There weren't any windows in this hallway, but she could just make out the roar of traffic - the soundtrack of the city - in the distance, and felt her heart clench in the same way it did as Fin drove them through the Lincoln Tunnel and through the crowded city streets, both Rafael and Olivia silent in the backseat as they laid eyes on their hometown for the first time since that night in Chelsea four months ago. A living, breathing city they'd spent their entire lives calling home and protecting, on the other side of the tinted glass windows of this sedan, yet one that they couldn't touch.
How had trash piles unceremoniously stewing in the morning heat and the occasional rats that scurried across sidewalks become so imbued with nostalgia in that short span of time? Fin had kept his driving cautious to avoid arousing suspicion, but also had known from their misty-eyed expressions that his caution had the unintended side effect of awakening memories they'd once thought dead and buried under the burden of starting afresh - and so he'd indulged in a few small detours en route to Bellevue, allowing the duo to soak in the contours of the streets they'd long memorised.
Now Olivia was a guest in the city she'd once called home, ushered through every door by at least one pair of watchful eyes and bound by an unspoken rule against leaving this hallway, lest she sign the death warrants of any one of the people on this hospital floor.
She was grateful for this, she really was. The fact that they'd made it here was enough of a miracle in itself. But that didn't stop a deep ache from settling in her chest being inches from the life she'd once led, yet would never be able to grasp again.
"How's the squad doing?" she asked Nick, despite her mounting fear of the emotions his response would induce in her.
"We're just getting by. Cragen's been a great CO; we're getting a new rookie on Monday - but it still isn't the same without you, Liv. And Cragen's probably going to leave by the end of the year, so…" His voice rapidly trailed off as he suddenly became conscious of hitting her with all the pessimism that continued to hang over the SVU squad room - not something that she needed to hear.
"I hope you're sitting for the sergeant's exam, then," she remarked.
"Fin got me a copy of the study guide…" he confessed shakily, "Your old study guide, actually… but to take it so soon, I'm really not sure..."
To take it so soon after you left.
He deliberately left that sentence incomplete, but she didn't even have to guess to know that was exactly what was weighing him down.
"Don't let 1PP parachute in some pencil-pusher," she teased, although the intent behind that suggestion was completely serious. "You'll make a great sergeant, Nick. Give the exam a shot. When's the next sitting?"
"In a month. And that study guide's so thick, I could use it as a TV stand. How did you do it?"
"I actually did use it as a TV stand while waiting for the results," Olivia chuckled. "But it's really not as bad as it looks. Take a couple of days off before the test and sleep next to it."
"Says the applicant who ranked 48 out of 8,000 test takers," he retorted.
"I'm willing to bet you'll rank 47 or higher," she declared with a surprising amount of confidence.
His cheeks flushed. "Come on, Liv. You know that's not going to happen."
"I mean it. Give it a shot," she asserted, looking him squarely in the eye. "SVU needs a sergeant like you."
She was utterly serious. Maybe it was finally time for him to stop dragging his heels and hiding the registration form in his desk drawers.
"And please, don't hold back on my account."
Olivia's reassuring smile was her silent permission for him to finally take that leap after months of indecision, and he felt something stir in him.
"Okay," he declared, feeling some confidence sink in. "I'll give it a try."
"Good," she beamed, not just with pride, but also with relief, and Nick made a mental note to have that form filled and submitted the instant he got back to the precinct, that nagging hesitance now expunged.
"Enough about me, now," he said as they finally settled onto the bench he'd been pacing in front of just fifteen minutes ago. "How are you doing, Liv?"
How are you doing, Liv? Those five words made a deceptively simple question. "God, I don't even know where to start," she replied with a dry chuckle that she wasn't sure was nervous, sarcastic, or neither.
"We have all morning," Nick pointed out. "I only have to get back to the precinct after lunch."
She cocked an eyebrow. "I take it that Cragen doesn't know you and Fin are here?"
"Of course not. He thinks we both have the stomach flu - and you know how contagious that is, and he doesn't need Rollins off the job too."
"Stomach flu? That's an excuse I haven't heard before," she joked. "Glad you didn't pull that one on me a few months ago."
"Just for the record, I really was at the dentist that morning," he declared indignantly. "You really didn't have to interrogate me for the rest of the afternoon."
"No offence to you, but how many adults still have all of their wisdom teeth?" Olivia teased.
"Hey, I actually did get them removed this summer. Zara's my witness."
Olivia couldn't help but smile thinking of the last time she'd seen Zara, so vivacious and full of life as she camped out in the precinct break room while Nick and the others worked on an extremely grisly case on the other side of the wall.
And she couldn't help but smile thinking of the last time she and Nick had talked like this, so far removed from whatever case they were working on and just existing peacefully in a parked squad car on some quiet Harlem street. She'd admonished herself for not being able to recall their last conversation for months after arriving in Bethesda, but now she did have one crystal-clear memory to take the place of that black hole - and she sure as hell was going to soak in every moment of it.
"So… you and Barba, huh?" Nick smirked as he laid eyes on the closed door that separated the hallway from the privacy of Catalina's suite.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she feigned ignorance. "And what happened to us never talking about this?" she added with a raised eyebrow that was more light-hearted than reprimanding.
We don't talk about our relationships. Sure, she'd met Maria a handful of times and neither had ever forgotten the time he and Munch had stumbled upon a half-dressed Olivia emerging from Brian Cassidy's bedroom, but their unspoken rule had always been to skirt the issue, because why bring that into the squad room when they had jobs to do?
But they weren't in the squad room, and heck, Olivia wasn't even on the job anymore. Maybe she even liked that this had come up…
"So you and Barba do have something going on!" he deduced triumphantly, to which her cheeks turned a beet red.
"It's a long story, actually…"
"Well, we have all morning here, so let's get to the bottom of that," Nick suggested with an amused grin.
Olivia slapped his arm playfully, but damn, it felt good to finally have someone who wasn't Fin's muffled voice on a burner cell to talk to about this - and so she let the floodgates open.
12.23pm
It took a lot to make Rafael Barba cry, but the floodgates had opened, and now the tears wouldn't stop falling.
The tears had started falling as soon as he'd flung the door open and was greeted by his mother, who'd immediately sprung out of her seat and pulled him into a tight embrace even before either of them had exchanged a word, relief pouring into every touch. They'd continued falling when Rafael finally pulled away and laid eyes on his abuelita in the hospital bed next to him, a cacophony of beeping machines keeping her alive and her expression so devoid of its usual vivacity that it sent a shiver down his spine looking at her.
And just as the torrent of tears had ceased enough for him to start filling his mother in on everything that had happened in the last four months, she'd pulled him into yet another tight embrace, muttering prayers of thanks in Spanish, and he'd become undone yet again. Now he was sitting by Catalina's bedside with Cuban take-out that Rita had one of her secretaries pick up and deliver to the hospital, his mouth full of a slice of New York that he hadn't even realised he'd craved so badly, and he thought that he might burst from just how overwhelming all this was.
Before the sun had risen he'd been Rafael Marquez, an unemployed resident of Bethesda, Maryland, but one step out of the car and into the New York air and he'd never felt more like Rafael Barba for the first time in four months - the Manhattan ADA who'd poured his life into getting heinous criminals off the city streets. The Manhattan ADA who had family who'd missed him; friends who'd put their lives on the line for him.
He ran over that thought countless times and felt a fresh wave of tears pool in his eyes with each reminder. Two months ago he'd stared at Lower Manhattan from the Jersey pier and wondered if Rafael Barba was just as dead in New York as he was in Washington D.C., but all it'd taken was one long, lingering hug - one that he wanted desperately to commit to memory - for him to know for sure that it wasn't the case.
"Abuelita," he choked out shakily, one hand gently resting on top of hers. "It's me, Rafi. I'm here. I came back for you."
Lucia was silent behind them, watching her son with an almost unbearable tenderness that made Rita and Fin melt, catching glimpses of it through the small window on the door.
"I miss you every single day I'm away," Rafael stammered in a mix of English and Spanish, his voice trembling with every word. "It's been hard… and sometimes I wonder what you'd tell me to do if you were with me. Remember the time you told me to apply to Harvard even though I didn't think I'd ever stand a chance of getting in?"
He smiled wistfully recalling that conversation; how she'd painstakingly read every word of his typewritten college application essay despite her shoddy eyesight, circling her favourite lines with red ink and words of praise escaping her lips with every paragraph. He'd submitted that essay three days later - and Catalina had been the one by his side as he opened the acceptance letter that changed his life.
There were many more of those moments: she'd been at his college and law school graduations; he'd opened the New York Bar exam results at the same table in her Bronx apartment, gotten the call about the Brooklyn ADA position while she helped him move into his first post-college apartment, even made him blush when he'd brought her on a tour of the Manhattan courthouse after he'd made the lateral transfer and told everyone in sight that he'd become el juez someday.
That dream was dead and gone now, but that loss didn't dull any of the tender affection that Rafael still had for Catalina, and his tears dotted the blanket Lucia had draped over her that morning.
It'd never been about the awards or achievements with his abuelita; she couldn't care less about how many of his peers he'd have to beat to make it to the top of the food chain. All she'd cared about was that Rafael set his mind to things and tried everything he previously thought impossible - and that silent, unwavering faith was the reason he had everything he did.
He had to try. He had to find the Rafael Barba she'd never once stopped believing in; the one who rose to any challenge and didn't let bullshit faze him - trivial bullshit like the poison he'd stained his and Olivia's relationship with.
"It's been hard…" he repeated, as he clutched her hand,"… but I still want to make you proud, abuelita."
He had to try. He had to pick himself again and stop being so fucking afraid of what lay ahead of him.
Catalina hadn't moved an inch since he'd arrived at the hospital that morning, but Rafael still had the distinct feeling that she could hear every word - and with that came a strength that'd almost forgotten the feeling of; the strength that'd pushed him to every new height he'd reached in his life. Strength that he could trace back to Catalina - her indomitable spirit; the reassuring way she patted his back whenever he got home from middle school or met him at a restaurant near the courthouse between court sessions, telling him to pick himself up and keep going.
He was going to be strong for her.
"I'll find a new job and do something good with the rest of my life," he declared, not caring how sentimental or cheesy it was for Rafael Barba. "I won't let all this defeat me, because I know you'd never let that happen."
Because for every victory she'd shared with her only grandson, there were far more tragedies woven into the fabric of Rafael's childhood. Catalina had been there for Rafael when the bullies from P.S. 109 had come for his lunch money for the first time and left a massive bruise on his calf; she'd opened her door at 2am when he'd fled his own apartment to escape his father's alcohol-fuelled rages while Lucia had been in Florida visiting family. And years later, when he'd failed his first college final and lost his first major trial, he'd be on the phone with her within hours, wringing every last ounce of disappointment and anger dry while she interjected with words of encouragement.
It didn't matter that he couldn't practice law any longer. It didn't matter that the legal career he'd worked so hard for had been stolen from under his feet. He was better than wallowing in self-pity any longer - and his resolve strengthened the more he looked at his abuelita in her hospital bed, so placid and motionless that the mere sight of her felt like a stab to his chest.
He couldn't be el juez now or ever, but he could still carry a piece of Catalina Diaz with him when he returned to Bethesda. And he could let that be the push that finally sent him out of his self-loathing spiral; the one that'd almost consumed him and Olivia whole.
"Please hang on for me, abuelita," he begged her. "Mami needs you. You can get through this. I know you will."
Those were the same words she'd left with him every single time he'd called on the verge of tears or precipice of giving up. If only he could share some of his newfound strength with her; that she'd be able to miraculously get up and return to her Bronx walk-up in the pink of health, especially when he couldn't be by her side to keep a watchful eye.
Rafael blocked out the beeping monitors that only seemed to taunt him the more he listened to them. How he wished he had some kind of sign that she'd heard him; that she knew that he had finally returned to her and wanted - no, needed - her to hang on; for this stroke to lift its spectre and return his abuelita to him and Lucia, in all her spirited, resilient, stubborn glory.
"She can hear you," Lucia smiled serenely behind him, as though she'd read his mind. "I'm sure she did. Every single word."
He turned to his mother with a fresh wave of tears in his eyes.
"She's always been so proud of you. And so am I, Rafi," she proclaimed proudly.
He'd never been one to show much physical affection with his mother, but this time, he pulled her into a hug, and the piece of Rafael Barba that Rafael Marquez had once thought lost forever finally fell into place.
1.41pm
Olivia watched as Nick disappeared into the elevator at the end of the hallway, his half-eaten sandwich in one hand and other hand hastily typing a text to Cragen explaining that he'd be back at work that afternoon, and couldn't help but swallow a pang of disappointment, especially after spending the morning trading stories and grasping at any moments of levity they could, knowing a few hundred miles would separate them once more by the end of the day.
How easy would it be for her to chase after him and re-emerge through the familiar glass doors at the 16th Precinct within the hour? To stand in the middle of the squadroom she'd once commanded and become Sergeant Olivia Benson once more; to confidently roam the streets of Manhattan knowing that she owned them?
Alas, she was crouched in the corner of an empty hospital hallway, a cold bench, garish fluorescent lighting, and Fin's watchful presence around the corner a few feet away her only companions for the rest of the afternoon. She could barely make out Rafael and Lucia's conversation between the almost impenetrable door of Catalina's room, but it wasn't her place to know, anyway - so all she did was wait.
And then, a distinctive voice filled her ears.
"Liv?"
She'd recognise that voice, gravelly and so profoundly cutting, anywhere.
"Bri?"
Her pet name for Brian Cassidy slipped out on instinct when she caught sight of him approaching from the end of the hallway, his features frozen in time - lop-sided smile, light brown eyes alive with a comforting familiarity when their gazes locked, the unmistakable swagger in his gait that even the events of the day hadn't dulled.
Brian stopped dead in his tracks a few feet short of the seat she was resting on, his mouth slightly agape as he looked her up and down. "Oh my God," he muttered only after a long pause. "It's really you."
"Hey, Bri," Olivia smiled softly, and she could see his eyes light up a second time taking in the sound of her voice.
"My God," Brian choked out in disbelief. "I can't believe you're alive."
One of her hands lightly grazed his fingertips as he sat down next to her, and the tears that immediately flooded his eyes made Olivia's chest ache with melancholy. The last time she'd seen him was the night he'd moved to his new studio in Crown Heights, taking the last of his boxes down the narrow staircase of her building, and along with that the last of the warmth in Olivia's bed.
It didn't matter that they'd parted ways. Twice, in fact. It was impossible for her to look at his unchanging face, still as boyish as it'd been that night in 1999 when they'd had one too many drinks at Maloney's and fallen into bed, and not feel a twang of emotion. Or to recall the morning a few months ago when they'd gotten dressed for Munch's retirement party and she heard his breath catch seeing her, even in such a simple black shift dress he'd seen countless times, and not to smile remembering just how happy they'd both been at one point; the way he looked at her like she'd made every single one of his dreams come true.
Olivia gingerly wrapped her fingers around his, watching his stunned expression melt into something so tender and vulnerable that a lump formed in her throat. God, she'd been to hell and back to Brian Cassidy, and that beautifully twisted connection was written all over them. She could see it in his piercing eyes; feel it in the way he squeezed her hand, a part of him still in disbelief that she was real and alive.
He suddenly remembered the brown paper bag he'd brought with him. "Got you your favourite. Lox and cream cheese, because they can't possibly do those better wherever you are now."
Olivia barely stifled a gasp when she reached into the bag and found a painstakingly wrapped bagel from her favourite joint uptown - at least twenty blocks from his IAB office and even further from his new place in Brooklyn. "You really didn't have to make this detour for me."
"Hey, if you're going to be back in New York for just one day, you can't possibly miss a good bagel," he said casually. "I'd have brought dollar pizza from that place we liked so much if not for how disgusting those slices get in those take-out boxes."
"Thank you." She beamed as she unwrapped the brown paper and took a whiff. "Definitely beats hospital cafeteria food."
"So… how have you been?" he asked in between bites.
After her earlier conversation with Nick, she'd thankfully found an answer to that question that didn't involve a meandering monologue. "As good as I can be under the circumstances. It's been an adjustment… but I got a new job, and the city is nice. How's IAB?"
"You know, the usual. Cops dunking on us all day, sitting in those damned white-washed interview rooms we all hate so much…" he grunted, which made Olivia wince.
She instantly regretted bringing it up so soon in their conversation. "I'm sorry, Bri."
"I applied for a transfer. Vice isn't going to have me back… but maybe Narcotics or Organised Crime will give me a shot," he chimed in more optimistically. "But… IAB's still better than investigating dry-cleaner break-ins, at least," he added with a dry chuckle.
"Narcotics or Organised Crime would be lucky to have you. I'd have put in a good word if I weren't, you know…"
"That means a lot. Thanks, Liv," he smiled gratefully, despite grimacing at the reminder.
"Of course."
And with that, the conversation lapsed into an awkward silence, Olivia chewing slowly on the bagel (which was delicious) while Brian fidgeted with the distinctly IAB jacket he'd donned that day, looking visibly uncomfortable as though something was weighing on his mind.
You okay? she mouthed to him, to which he only nodded tentatively, his mind still a million miles away, and Olivia decided not to press the issue. Brian had never enjoyed being pushed when it came to things like this, and all she could do was wait.
But her instinct was proven right minutes later when he cleared his throat, straightened in his seat, and looked her directly in the eye.
"I need to apologise to you, Liv."
The sudden seriousness and earnestness in his tone, so markedly different from his usual gruffness and sardonic banter, made her sit up instinctively. "Apologise for what?" she asked confusedly.
Olivia racked her brains. Had they fallen out over something that she didn't even remember? Sure, their last conversation had ended on a slightly awkward note, with her dropping the last of his things off at his doorstep without hearing from him after, but surely that wasn't something worthy of discussion?
"No - I need to. Please," he implored so earnestly that she didn't want to interrupt him. "I should have picked up my stuff from your apartment, not asked you to drive out to Crown Heights to drop them off. And I didn't even text to thank you. You deserved better, and I'm sorry."
So it was about the last conversation they'd had. "Oh, Bri," she sighed sympathetically, although her confusion remained. "You really don't have to apologise for that."
Guilt still crossed his face. "It killed me, knowing that it was the last thing I said to you before you… left."
"You couldn't have known that I was going to leave," she pointed out calmly.
"Yeah, but…" he idly traced one of his shirt buttons with his finger, deep in thought, "the least I could have done was thank you. For everything. Get everything else that I haven't said off my chest, because I should have said all that to you before all this happened. And I'm the luckiest bastard alive to have this do-over, so I have to say it now."
He looked up at her with the reverence he seemed to save only for her; that silent, adoring smile that no one other than Olivia would ever associate with Brian Cassidy, because she alone had seen that side to him. "I just… I just need to tell you that you meant - mean - so much to me and that I'm never going to forget that. I should have told you all this that day - and when I thought it was too late…"
God damn, she hadn't expected to be the one crying today.
They'd parted ways one freezing winter's night on a sidewalk outside a restaurant they'd once frequented, them having missed their reservation because they'd been stuck at work yet again - and Olivia thought that she'd left that chapter of her life behind as shut the door to her apartment and watched Brian disappear down the hallway, content that they'd both tried their hardest to keep the flame alive for as long as they could.
She was sure she'd left that chapter of her life behind when she stumbled into Forlini's a few weeks later and left with Rafael Barba's breath on her air and his arm on the small of her back, everything she'd been through Brian now little more than a bittersweet memory as the scorching heat between her and Rafael exploded. And then she'd left New York, and left Brian Cassidy behind once and for all, never once thinking that she needed something more from him - not even when he'd ignored her final text to him letting him know that she'd left his clothes by his door. Why ask for more? She'd left that chapter of her life behind - and was on the precipice of starting a new one with Rafael.
But god, she'd been to hell and back to Brian Cassidy - sometimes it felt like they'd swum in the depths of hell for much longer than they'd enjoyed their moments of levity - and with the distracting, scorching heat now quelled and smoke cleared, something stirred in her.
She'd officially left this chapter of her behind when she'd left New York that April night, but leaving the city behind wasn't the same as closure - and this was exactly what this was, his palm pressed against hers and voice laced with so much conviction that she could feel strength seep into her. Strength she needed to drive back to Bethesda that night and face whatever came next.
"You too, Bri. Thanks for everything."
The three words didn't feel like close to enough to do justice to everything that they'd been through, but she didn't have to elaborate on them any further, because she didn't need to. Not with him.
And with that, it felt like the air between them finally settled, now replaced by a calm, comfortable tranquility.
"And I really hope you're doing well wherever you are now, because that's all I want for you," he added sincerely.
It was like a massive weight had been lifted off his chest when Olivia gently squeezed his hand and mouthed an appreciative thank you, the air now clear of the expectant silence that'd enveloped them earlier and his spirits lifted. "You'll be out of IAB in no time - I know it."
"God, Liv… I don't know how or why you believe in me this much, but I really don't deserve this," he said in awe.
If this had been a few months ago, Olivia would've playfully slapped his arm multiple times by this point in the conversation; they'd probably have exchanged a few pithy, sarcastic remarks, because that was the easy dynamic they'd seamlessly fallen into after they'd reconnected working the Delia Wilson case and they'd moved into that shiny new apartment uptown. But today wasn't the time for that; wasn't a time for easy or hiding behind the masks of sarcasm and pensive sighs they whipped out as armour when they both collapsed into bed, exhausted.
Sure, she and Brian had their issues - they'd clashed one too many times over the most minute of household chores and some much, much more looming issues that cast clouds that refused to go away. She'd hurled many cutting insults his way after a frustrating day at work, pushed him away callously, cancelled too many dates at the last minute, apologised so many times that each one had felt less convincing than the previous. How could someone she'd gone through absolute hell with still look at her so adoringly; with the same awe-struck expression he'd worn the first time they'd locked lips in a long-closed West Village bar?
Maybe it was time for her to put the last of her armour down; to stop cataloguing every possible way things could go wrong in her head whenever she encountered the smallest of hurdles. She'd done nothing but fight fires and scale mountains her entire life. Perhaps it was finally time to give up that fight; let Olivia Davis the chance to just be, that Olivia Benson never seemed to give herself.
He wanted her to be happy. She just had to let that in.
"I'm really glad that we could talk, Bri."
She hadn't realised how badly she'd wanted to hear all that from him - to finally find closure with one of the people she'd been forced to jettison so abruptly that night in April; and in this case, a person whose life had been so intertwined with hers that she now couldn't imagine it any other way.
"Me too, Liv."
He'd imagined this moment for months; only last night had it become a real possibility and not just the tormented vision of a person in mourning. But even then he hadn't realised how badly he needed to get this off his chest - to look Olivia in the eye and close the book on their relationship, and hear her voice tell him that they'd cleared the air. And with that, the last of the crushing guilt Brian had carried around for the last four months finally faded into obscurity, and he was utterly convinced that he had to be the luckiest bastard alive.
Closure felt pretty damn good, he thought.
Closure, even closure that she didn't realise she'd needed, felt pretty damn good, Olivia thought, as the last of the smoke cleared and she glanced at the closed door to Catalina's room, wondering about the man standing on the other side of it. This chapter of her life - Brian Cassidy, New York - was over, but far from dead - and she felt much readier for whatever awaited them when they crossed state lines for the second time that night.
3:49pm
Rafael and Rita had never expected that their long-awaited reunion would take place in a dingy hospital stairwell, especially when they'd been regulars at some of the most exclusive bars in town, but that didn't dull the sheer relief that poured into them as they shared a hug.
"You have no idea how happy I am to see you, Rita," Rafael blurted out, not caring that this easily was the most sentimental she'd ever seen him. With the doctors making their rounds as the afternoon drew to a close, Rita and Fin had promptly moved Rafael and Olivia out of sight while Catalina got examined, finally giving him and Rita the opportunity they needed to talk.
"I'm so relieved you made it back in time. God, I'm so happy to see you alive," she confessed, making sure to really look at him to confirm to herself for the umpteenth time today that this was real - that Rafael Barba was living and breathing and standing in front of her.
She'd shed a few tears telling Lucia the truth that morning; she'd mentally prepared to come face-to-face with her "dead" friend when Fin had texted saying that they were on their way, but nothing could have prepared her for the moment she saw him emerge at the end of the hallway, still unmistakably Rafael Barba.
"Thank you for everything. Taking care of my mami and abuelita - I know they wouldn't have gotten through this if not for you."
"You know I'd do that for you anytime, Raf," she smiled wistfully, and felt the agony of the past week disappear into oblivion once and for all.
"Still - this couldn't have been easy on you at all," he remarked. "So… thank you."
"Enough about me - are you doing alright?" she asked concernedly, suddenly acutely aware of just how little time they had before Rafael and Olivia had to be driven out of the city. "How's the new city? Did you find a new job?"
"God, I don't even know where to start. It's a nice city. Not New York, but decent enough. Jury's still out on the job search, though. I'm still exploring my options."
"I figured you'd be upset about not being able to practice law, but I'm sure you'll make it work somehow," she reassured him. "Try something you'd never try in New York; find another one of those god-damned hidden talents you pulled on me in college."
"Hey, I did tell you that I was auditioning for A Midsummer Night's Dream. You were just too drunk to remember," he chuckled.
Rita burst out in laughter, but felt foolishly close to tears just seconds later. When was the last time she'd gotten the chance to sit down with him, jettison anything law-related for a couple of hours, and just laugh about their fucked-up, youthful stupidity over wine and scotch? Sure, this hospital stairwell wasn't quite a Tribeca bar, but God, she missed this - she missed him.
"Seriously, Raf - I know things have been fucked up the last few months, but you're going to be fine." Her expression suddenly turned serious. "You're a fighter. And don't give me that look: if you got through seven years at Harvard with pretentious assholes and pseudo-intellectuals, you can get through anything."
For a second Rita wondered what pithy quip he'd fire back in response to that uncharacteristic display of sentimentality, but that hardened, sarcastic edge was nowhere to be found - and was that sadness in his expression?
"You have no idea how badly I needed to hear that, Rita," he managed, his voice cracking as he squeezed the words out of his throat.
She felt a ripple of nausea form at the back of the throat hearing the pain in his voice. "God, what's wrong?"
"Ever since leaving New York I haven't been able to shake the feeling that something's missing from my life. I don't know - maybe it's because I can't practice law, or that I thought I'd never be able to see anyone again. But I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that the last few months have been some of the hardest I've ever experienced," Rafael lamented. "And of course I couldn't tell my mami that, because the last thing she needs right now is another thing to worry about."
And with that admission, the facade of strength he'd spent the afternoon keeping together crumbled.
"Sometimes I think about what the Rafael Barba of a few months ago would think of me now," he added with a dry, hollow chuckle. "He'd probably sneer."
"And throw in a pointed insult just for good measure, but that's besides the point now. You're not in New York anymore. You don't have to hold yourself to the impossibly high standards you set for yourself here."
She took his silence as an invitation to continue. "Cut yourself some slack, Raf. You've been through the single biggest change of your life. It doesn't matter if Olivia's beating you to it, because this isn't a game."
He grimaced. She had to have heard about the tiff he'd had with Olivia.
She placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "And on that subject - you and Olivia… are you doing alright?"
He racked his brains for a few seconds as the events of the last month - and week - flashed through his mind, almost expecting to be assaulted yet again by the taunting you're the problem; you're the reason I can't move on he'd hurled at Olivia that sweltering July night, but one memory came into greater clarity - two nights ago with her head on his shoulder as the dipping sun bathed them in gold.
"Yeah, we're doing alright," he smiled. "We're going to be just fine."
He couldn't quite explain why, but he was sure of it - and God, that feeling was good.
Rita's relief was visible. "Thank goodness. I just knew you two wouldn't be able to go for long without talking," she explained with a smirk.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he teased, grateful that the mood had lifted so quickly.
"Come on, don't think I didn't know about… whatever it was going on between you two. You underestimate me."
She chuckled lightly seeing his cheeks flush with embarrassment. "I'm glad you two have each other. Makes it slightly easier wondering how you're doing wherever you are."
How badly he wished he could open Google Maps on his phone and tell her exactly where they'd ended up to finally get it off his chest, but he didn't let that distract him from the excellent point she'd just made.
This wasn't a petty competition. He had to put it to rest, once and for all, because he had Olivia - and he couldn't afford to push her away again.
"I'll be fine, Rita," he assured her, feeling some confidence creep back into his voice. "Don't worry about me."
"Like I said - you attended classes with smug assholes like Trevor Langan for seven years. And much, much worse. You're made of strong stuff - don't doubt that."
"Hey, Trevor's not that bad," he protested. "He let me borrow a pen when I forgot to bring one to the Criminal Law final."
"Trust me, he did not remain that way after he took over his father's firm. Why does no one but me see this?" she insisted exasperatedly.
"I'm not going to lie, Rita - I missed your mean streak."
"Wow, I'm flattered that you chose to associate me with that," she deadpanned.
Their laughter echoed through the stairwell, and ebullient warmth filled Rafael's chest - enough for him to exile any thoughts about how little time they had from this mind. It was the first time in as long as he could remember that he truly felt himself again, and he wished he could bottle this up: him and Rita, basking in rose-tinted nostalgia and a world where Rafael Marquez didn't exist and he could be unabashedly Rafael Barba.
How he wished it wasn't temporary.
"By the way, I brought something for you." She reached into her purse and pulled out a nondescript envelope. "Fin told me that WITSEC doesn't allow old photos… but I found some in my Harvard albums that I thought you should have anyway."
Rafael gingerly opened the flap and gasped rifling through the small stack of Polaroids she'd meticulously archived - one of him by the bay window in his old dorm room, hunched over a copy of The Waves, another sprawled out on the grass in Harvard Yard one sunny afternoon in their first year of law school… and one of the two of them on the steps of the law school, hours after they'd received the letters notifying them that they'd been accepted, their innocent and bright-eyed smiles emblems of a better time.
He clutched that envelope tightly and felt a fresh wave of tears pool in his eyes. He'd replayed these memories on loop so many times that he feared he'd wear them thin eventually, but the photos were unmistakably real in his hands - along with Rita's immaculate penmanship on the back of the photo of them.
Harvard Law - R & R, '92.
"Thanks, Rita." Rafael could hardly believe she'd hung onto these photos for so long - and thank goodness she had, when his own collection was probably sitting in some storage unit guarded by the marshals. "I'll keep these somewhere safe."
"And… I found this in my Harvard box while I was looking for the photos." She pulled a worn, yellowed copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude from her purse, the pages stained with his distinctive haphazard annotations and highlighter marks. "Sorry I forgot to return it to you."
"Only thirty years too late, Rita," he joked wistfully as he thumbed through the novel, feeling a tidal wave of nostalgia wash over him taking in those familiar lines - until a small slip of paper floated to the floor from between the pages.
11/05/1991
Return books to library
Laundry (get quarters)
Think about Rita's birthday gift
Buy envelopes for law school application (!)
His handwriting had only deteriorated after years of frantic scribbling on legal pads in court, but he'd recognise the youthful ambition - and naivete - in that college scrawl any day.
Buy envelopes for law school application!
Rafael lingered on that line - a tangible reminder of his sprint to the bookstore before it closed for the day. A tangible reminder of how badly his 21-year old self wanted to stand on the steps of Harvard Law School and maybe 60 Centre Street someday.
He'd done it all, and then some. And he could trace everything back to the slip of paper in his hands.
"I couldn't bear to throw that away. Keep it, Raf."
"I can't believe you kept it," he exclaimed in awe.
He couldn't help but hug the book to his chest. Sure, he had a brand-new copy from Barnes & Noble sitting on his shelf in Bethesda - one where the pages weren't this tattered and the cover wasn't horribly faded - but nothing could beat the feeling of holding his old copy, now a souvenir of the life he'd once led and person he'd once been.
"You deserve to have something lying around to remind you of all this," she added, and he was convinced that she'd read his mind. "It's the least I could do."
"Thank you, Rita," he said sincerely, leaning in for another tight embrace. "I can't believe you and Fin made all this happen in just one night - you're a miracle worker. You have no idea."
"Anytime. You're going to get through this, Raf. And I sure hope to God that the Feds are gonna bust this god damned sex trafficking ring and the next time we meet will be at Forlini's…"
Rafael didn't have to say anything for Rita to know that it was everything he hoped for too. Sitting in Forlini's a few years from now, reminiscing about the time he'd spent away from the city- was it wishful thinking? But right now, he couldn't care.
He knew he'd keep her serene, composed smile with him for a long time to come - the same smile from all-nighters in the library or endlessly long chats in a silent dining hall, now immortalised on the grainy Polaroid he held onto like a priceless artefact.
It was a priceless artefact. Evidence of Rafael Barba; evidence that his former life hadn't been wiped from the face of the earth.
"Hey, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we need to get going soon if we want to beat rush hour traffic out of the city," Fin interrupted apologetically with a gentle knock on the door, one eye on his watch.
Rita hid the pang of sadness that assailed her. "Go and say goodbye to your mom and abuelita, Raf," she smiled forlornly, and motioned towards the open door.
"Okay," he nodded, but paused for a second to pull Rita into one last, lingering embrace. "Thank you for everything, Rita. You have no idea how grateful I-"
"Don't mention it," she managed through the lump that was rapidly forming in her throat. "You're going to be more than fine - and you know I'm always in your corner. Take care of yourself, Rafael."
"You too, Rita."
Their eyes met one last time, and Rafael swore that he could feel strength flood into him once more.
7.30pm
Rita heaved a quiet sigh of relief when she heard a familiar knock at the door.
"You're back," she remarked as she ushered Fin into her townhouse, now back to its spotless state after an evening frantically cleaning her living room while awaiting Fin's safe return from the drop-off point in suburban Jersey. "How was traffic?"
"Not too bad. Managed to get Barba and Liv out of the city before things got terrible. I helped them get a new rental for the trip back to wherever they came from. She promised to text once they're back safely."
"Thank goodness." She promptly handed him a can of beer from the stash she now kept in her fridge specifically for him - surely a reward was in order after that incredibly nerve-racking day.
Rafael had been reunited with his family. Everyone was alive. On all accounts, it was a roaring success - and they finally could sit down and just breathe.
"I'd have suggested we all head to Forlini's to celebrate, but I don't think any of us is up for that now," she laughed. "So, canned beer it will have to be."
"Hey, canned beer is perfectly fine with me," he smiled, and slid next to her on the couch. "Cheers, Rita."
"Cheers, Fin."
For a few minutes they basked in the comfortable silence of the room, in disbelief that it'd been a hive of activity less than 24 hours ago. Only the unwashed coffee cups that everyone had sipped from and Rita hadn't found the time or energy to load into her dishwasher remained on the table, evidence of the grand plan they'd all thrown themselves into, and were never to speak of again.
It made her head spin. She'd return to Calhoun & Berkeley on Monday morning with a half-hearted explanation for her sudden absence all of Friday (a privilege that being a founding partner bought her, thank goodness) and show up in court with information only a handful of people in the city shared with her - that Rafael Barba and Olivia Benson were alive and well, and that she'd successfully pulled off one of the most daring and reckless things she'd ever dared to think of.
And one of them was sitting next to her on her couch, after working overtime to make the impossible happen when she'd begged for his help. He'd moved mountains to make this happen.
"Fin?"
Her voice echoed in the silence.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For everything."
She had so much more to thank him for than the events she'd set in motion the afternoon before, but settled for those four words and a knowing smile.
"Anytime, Rita."
Neither knew whose hand found the other's first, but it hardly mattered when all that washed over them was a profound calm.
They just hoped that Olivia and Rafael were feeling the same, wherever they were.
