August 17, 2021
It had been, by all accounts, a good day so far. An hour or two past noon and her whole squad was in the house, gathered around their desks, unraveling their latest cases and ribbing each other gently. Fin and Amanda and Kat, Carisi, even, all together, and happy, and safe. The world wasn't ending; their current cases were all the regular sort of evil - if evil could ever be regular - nothing especially preposterous or nightmare-inducing on the board. She'd just gotten off the phone with McGrath and he'd even managed to be civil, somehow, and her steps were light as she made her way out into the bullpen.
Fin noticed her first, caught her eye in a silent request for company, and she went to him, stood beside him while they watched the bustle of activity around them, the Captain and her first mate surveying their crew and the state of their vessel. The old girl was still floating; all was well.
"So," Fin said softly, his voice too low to carry past her ears. "How you been, Liv?"
It struck her as a funny sort of question, and she told him so.
"You've been in my pocket every minute of the last four days," she grumbled good-naturedly. "You know how I am."
There had to have been a reason he was asking, something he was hinting at; Fin had always been an observant man, and he wasn't above prodding her, now and again, on the things he noticed. He was a good friend, and he cared about her, and she loved him, truth be told, loved his quiet wisdom and his steady devotion.
"You look happy," Fin allowed. He sounded like the thought made him glad.
Was she happy? She wondered. Mia was sick and Brian was an eternal pain in the ass and Noah's teachers were talking about starting him in speech therapy, but her family was whole, still. Good, still, despite the recent upheaval. Work was busy, but it had never really been slow, and she wouldn't be ashamed to show her face the next time she was due to go before CompStat. The squad's numbers were up and everyone was solid, no one she cared about in danger of flying apart. Yeah, she thought, yeah. Things were going pretty good.
"You looked pretty happy with Stabler the other night, too," Fin added slyly.
She looked around in alarm, suddenly worried about who might be able to overhear them, but everyone else was lost in their own little world, no one paying her any attention, no one listening while Fin gently ribbed her about her old partner. It was Fin who'd picked her up in front of the diner before dawn on Saturday, Fin who had seen Elliot's hand lingering at the small of her back as he ushered into the car, Fin who had heard Elliot say you take care of her man, Fin who had answered always, Fin who saw more than anyone else, understood more than anyone else.
"It was just dinner," she said somewhat defensively, though she wasn't sure that bacon and eggs and apple pie at 3:00 a.m. qualified as dinner.
"Stand down, Cap," Fin assured her easily. "I'm just saying, I'm glad you two are talking. Feels like maybe things might be getting back to normal."
She didn't know what he meant by that, if he meant normal like everything was the day before Elliot exploded back into her life or normal like everything was the day before Elliot shot Jenna Fox. Of everyone in her life now, Fin was the only one who remembered the old normal as clearly as she did, the only one who knew what her life had once looked like, the only one who knew how much she was really missing, what she had been missing for the last ten years. The rest of them might have guessed, by now, but Fin knew. She could trust him; she could tell him the truth.
"Yeah," she said, very quietly. "I think they might be."
Things weren't normal with Elliot, weren't the way used to be, might not ever be that way again, but it was starting to feel a little closer to normal. When she thought of him she was no longer consumed with grief, and the meal they shared had been comfortable, and familiar, and safe. She'd enjoyed it, and she'd opened up to him a little bit, and she was starting to feel like maybe, just maybe, she might be able to trust him again. Like normal.
And it was normal that her phone should choose that moment to ring; the damn thing was always ringing, it seemed, always interrupting her in the middle of important conversations, but it was only Brian's name on her cell phone screen, only Brian calling like she'd expected him to. Mia had a doctor's appointment this afternoon and Brian was supposed to pick her up and take her and he'd promised to call Liv once he had Mia in the car, because Liv didn't trust that he'd remember and he was determined to prove he would.
"Hey," she said into the phone, catching it between her ear and her shoulder and shooting Fin an apologetic glance.
"Hey," Brian said. "Why didn't you tell me you were gonna pick Mia up?"
"What?" she demanded, confused. Olivia had been in her office for the last two hours, and Brian was supposed to get Mia. She didn't have any idea what he was talking about; it didn't make any sense.
"I'm not mad you changed the plan," he continued, perhaps missing the note of fear in her voice. "I just wish you woulda called me before I schelpped all the way out here-"
"I don't have her, Bri."
Her words cut him off short, sparked a dreadful, unbearable silence as they both asked themselves the same question. If Mia wasn't at the school, and she wasn't with Olivia, and she wasn't with Brian, where the fuck was she?
Holy Mary mother of God, Olivia thought.
"Liv, I'm in the school office now. They said you sent a uni to pick Mia up an hour ago."
Brian's voice was tight and tense; he knew Olivia, and he knew she wasn't fucking with him, knew she wasn't the type to pull a prank or lie to keep his kids away from him. Brian knew exactly what Olivia knew, in that moment; Brian knew that something was very, very wrong.
It was not the first time Olivia had known fear. It was not the first time her entire world had been upended in the course of a single breath, was not the first time she had gone from smiling and content to desperately fighting to save someone she loved. There was something preternatural about moments like this one, something that made life, the world, everything in it funnel down to a single point, blacked out all other thought, all other sound, all sight and smell. For an instant the only thing that existed in Olivia's consciousness was the unsteady sound of Brian's ragged breathing, and her own towering fear.
"I didn't," Olivia said breathlessly, and though her voice was low her very soul seemed to be screaming, her heart ricocheting around her chest like a frightened bird in a cage. Adrenaline flooded through her, sharp and fast, her hands suddenly shaking, her vision going a little blurry around the edges. She swayed on the spot, unmoored, untethered, catapulted from an ordinary afternoon into a fucking nightmare in the blink of an eye, and some of her terror must have showed on her face because Fin moved, then, ducked his head to look into her eyes and saw horror written there, and then snapped his fingers to get the team's attention, drawing them into a tight, protective circle around Olivia.
"Brian-"
"There's a resource officer posted at the school," he said, and even as he spoke Olivia could feel it, could feel him transforming from the sometimes careless, sometimes foolish little boy he could be into the cop he once had been, falling back on procedure and training in a moment of devastation and raging fear. "I'll lock the place down, no one in, no one out. They gotta have cameras here, I'll pull the tapes. Get a team here, I need unis, detectives, whatever you got. You got the pull, you can get a command center set up here."
"What about-"
"Hang on a second," he said, already a step ahead of her, knowing exactly what she was about to ask and rushing to answer her unspoken question. She heard a rustling sound as he moved the phone away from his mouth, heard his voice distantly as he spoke to the receptionist. "Noah Benson," he said to the woman in a sharp and dreadful voice. "Third grade. He still here?"
Silence, for a moment, and then the receptionist must have answered because Brian was speaking again.
"Get him up here now," he barked to the receptionist. "Yeah, I'm on the fucking list, he's my son."
Rustling, again, and then Brian's voice was close in Olivia's ear once more.
"He's here, Liv, he's safe," Brian assured her. "They're sending him to the office now, I'm not gonna let him out of my sight."
So it was only one of her children missing, then, only one of her children vanished into thin air, only one of her children taken by a stranger for reasons Olivia could not begin to guess at. She was relieved, to know that Noah was safe, was so fucking grateful that her son would soon be standing with his father, that her sweet boy was not lost to her, but she could not spare the time to rejoice for Noah while her heart was screaming for Mia.
"Olivia," Brian said her name sharply, her whole name, snapping her attention back to him after she'd been quiet too long. "Babe, you gotta-"
"I'm coming," Olivia said.
Fin heard and raced to his desk, flung the top drawer open and pulled out his keys, determined not to let her face this horror on her own, and her knees nearly buckled then, to think of how desperately she needed him, to think of how selflessly he had answered the call, even before she'd asked for him.
"Get here fast," Brian said grimly.
There was nothing else for Olivia to say to him; he needed to hang up the phone so that he could coordinate the lockdown, so that he could order the camera footage, so that he could take hold of Noah and shelter him while Olivia raced through the city. Olivia needed to hang up the phone so she could call Missing Persons, and Major Case, and every goddamn body. The entire NYPD would turn up for Mia, would come to the aid of one of their own, especially a Captain. It had not ever been her intention to use her rank as a privilege, but she would, now, would do anything, everything, whatever it took to get her baby back.
With trembling hands she ended the call, and turned to face Fin.
"Where we going, Liv?" he asked her, ever the good soldier, anticipating her needs and standing ready to help her.
"The school," she said. "Somebody…somebody took Mia."
"Jesus," she heard Amanda gasp sharply, but she did not linger to explain; instead she took off running, Fin hot on her heels. Running for the door, for the car, running to get to the school, to the last place her daughter had been seen, because every second counted in a case like this, and every second that passed brought her closer and close to the unthinkable. Mia's life hung in the balance, not just on account of the danger she faced from whoever had taken her, but because of the medicine she needed, the medicine that was helping her little body to function, the medicine that wasn't enough to save her long term but was keeping her alive for now, the medicine that the monsters who'd taken her almost certainly did not have with them. The clock was ticking, because if Mia didn't get her next dose soon, it wouldn't matter what the perps had planned for her; she would be lost, forever. The most precious gift, Olivia's own heart walking around on two little legs, she would be gone. Forever.
Not my baby, Olivia prayed as she ran. Please, God, not my baby.