She wanders to the coffee shop closest to the hospital.
The stupid thing about this is that she knows that she is lucky to be alive, but she does not particularly care about that right now. The doctors are still trying to figure out how she got out with cuts and bruises, considering the accident. They are trying to figure out how she didn't end up with internal bleeding or a concussion or even a few broken ribs, never mind whiplash, from being jerked like that when the car hit.
Easy answer, Olivia thinks sarcastically. The car didn't hit on my side. It hit hers.
Her partner's wife is not someone that she has been particularly close to over the years. They do not hate each other, they are not best friends, but they are somewhere in the middle. And it is this middle ground that Olivia has always been comfortable on. Now all of that has changed, and she does not know what to do about it. It almost scares her, but at the same time, it doesn't, and she isn't sure where she is going to go from here. She left the hospital before the doctors could appeal to Cragen, which means she's going to hear it later, but she doesn't care.
She sits near the window and watches life in the city pass her by, closing her eyes after a moment.
"Oh, come on, Liv. Don't tell me you're that upset about there being another one of me," says a voice, and she looks up.
"How'd you know I was here?" she asks, and Elliot shrugs, taking the empty place across from her and looking to where she is looking.
"Cop ought to know where his partner drinks coffee," he says .It is a reply that she threw at him once when he asked how she'd known where he would be, only then, she'd said that a cop ought to know where her partner would eat.
But it goes without saying that this isn't the usual place, and that if not for the circumstances, neither of them would be sitting here.
"You know, that kid's gonna grow up with some kind of identity crisis when he's old enough to even know what that is," she remarks.
"Guess that's what middle names are for, then," comes the reply.
This is how they are. Right when things look like they are going to fall apart, they end up in some coffee shop, sitting across from each other, making snarky comments at each other, just because they can. Because that is how they deal with these things, and trying to find a new way of dealing with it would throw them both for a loop and they know it.
"I owe you," Elliot says after a moment, in one of those choked-up voices that says he's about to cry and Olivia stares at him for a long while after this, before shaking her head.
"It's my job to look over my shoulder," she says to him, a comment that he made a while ago, and she got mad at him for it then, before admitting that she knew he was right. "I wasn't going to just walk away."
"But you could have."
It goes without saying at this point that he has heard what other people in the precinct say. That she hates his wife, because she's jealous that he has someone to go home to and she doesn't. The truth is that Olivia has never truly hated Kathy Stabler, and probably never will, if only because she knows a few things that other people in the precinct do not know.
She knows that Kathy is the one who saves her partner from himself behind the scenes, when she isn't around to do it, and for this, she is eternally grateful. She has been stuck with Elliot for so long that the thought of losing him now scares the hell out of her.
"No, I couldn't have," she says, more for the sake of arguing than anything else, because this is what they are used to, and this is where they are comfortable, and damned if they're going to let this get any more awkward than it already has.
"Shouldn't have put all this on you."
"You didn't put anything on me, damn it. Quit feeling guilty, will you? I think I've cornered the market on guilt this time." Olivia trails off and downs half the coffee that was placed in front of her before Elliot showed in one swallow. "You're my partner. I've got your back. That extends to her when you're not around."
"Only when I'm not around?" he asks in reply, looking at her with raised eyebrows, and the look on his face is one that makes her want to laugh. Somehow, she doesn't.
"No," she says. "Not only when you're not around. Whenever you two need it. You know that."
He nods, because he does. "I still owe you," he says, and stares out the window, and she can tell that if he looks at her, he probably is going to cry, and ordinarily, under any other circumstances, she'd give him crap about it.
But the truth is that she is this close to tears herself, and she knows exactly why.
"It's not about owing me, El," she says finally. "I'd have still taken her, even if we weren't going to end up in a wreck."
Now comes the hard part. The part where they figure out exactly where they go from here, because he hugged her, but she helped deliver his child. And they're kind of at a loss, but at the same time, they're kind of not, because they know they can keep going, despite this. They're just not sure how.
"She used to think you hated her," says Elliot, in that voice again. "That the reason you were always saying you didn't want to come around was because of her."
"That's ridiculous," says Olivia, "I never hated her. You know I never hated her. I never had any reason to hate her."
"I know you didn't. That's why I've been telling the whole damn precinct to shove it for the past nine years."
There is silence after this. Olivia had never bothered to tell anyone to shove it, because she knew the truth, and they could talk all they wanted, it wasn't going to bother her. She had never really thought about the fact that her partner might have something to say about it, and apparently, he did.
"That explains a lot," she says, and then, "She's not the reason why I never wanted to come around."
She doesn't have to elaborate, because he already knows what she means, and so he nods.
"Yeah, I told her as much. I don't think she ever really believed me, but here's to hoping she will now."
"You're awful. I ought to tell her you said that."
"What, are you two best friends now or something?"
She kicks his feet under the table. "Now I'm definitely going to tell her. Quit being a jerk, Elliot. I know you're trying to deal with all this, but so am I."
It is the first that she has admitted this weakness, this feeling of vulnerability, because the adrenaline rush is wearing off, and now she is exhausted. What she wants is to go home and curl up under the covers and fall asleep, so she doesn't have to think about what happened.
"I know that look," says Elliot, finally turning away from the window and looking at her. "Are you all right?"
Olivia nods. "Yeah, I'm fine," she says. "Don't worry about me."
He shakes his head at her. "Liar," he replies. "You are not."
She doesn't know why, but it is this remark that makes the tears come. Sometimes she really hates that he can read her the way he does, and other times, she's glad that he can, because those are the times when she can't seem to find her voice.
"Liv," he says now, "I would have lost them both if it weren't for you. And that scares the hell out of me enough on its own, but if you'd gone, too…"
"Don't you start crying on me now, Stabler, or I'll smack you," she says, because she doesn't think she can handle being emotional about this if he's doing the same thing.
"Are you kidding me? It probably won't hit me until I'm back in that hospital room," he tells her. "But you shouldn't go around here acting like you're all right when you're not."
This statement is so hypocritical that if she'd had the nerve, she'd have laughed at him, like she did when they were leaving the hospital and she told him that it was just what the world needed, another one of him walking around.
"You know, we spend all this time thinking we're so damn invincible, and that nothing can get through this armor we put on every morning, and then something like this happens and it all falls apart," she says, finally, and there is a note of something in her voice that she can't place, and it bothers her.
"We were lucky," Elliot tells her. "It could have been a lot worse. It almost was."
Those damn doctors, she thinks. They probably told him she flatlined in the back of the bus right after she had the baby…Someone is going to hear it from her, because she can tell that one of the reasons behind her partner's sudden moment at being philosophical and heaven forbid, even therapeutic in the manner of getting her to talk to him, is that someone told him something that he more than likely didn't want to know.
"Elliot," she says, and realizes that the something she cannot place is some kind of desperation, "I'm sorry."
He stares at her. "What the hell are you sorry for?" he asks, the words coming out more bluntly than he'd meant them to. "Who ever said I was mad at you?"
She supposes that she was wrong this time. That the look that had been on his face wasn't one of anger towards her, but more than likely towards the one who'd hit them.
What she wants is for the department to give the two of them five minutes alone with the guy, and the pictures that got taken for evidence of injuries, so he can see how many lives he nearly tore apart when he tore through that intersection.
Elliot continues before Olivia can bring herself to say anything else. "Liv," he says, "These things…they can't be assigned blame. You did what you were supposed to. That other guy didn't. This is his fault, not yours."
But she can tell that he blames himself for taking the run upstate instead of leaving her to do it and she can tell that if he continues to think about it, this isn't going to end well, never mind the fact that they didn't lose anyone.
"There are other ways I could have gone," she says, thinking this over as she says it. He shakes his head at her.
"Don't put yourself on a guilt trip," he tells her. "There were other ways for him to go, too."
She nods, absently. "Feels like I'm going to crash," she says, and the double meaning behind this is not lost on either one of them.
"Adrenaline's wearing off, then?" he asks, and she nods again.
"Yeah."
Silence. He isn't sure what to do with this bit of information and knows that she probably isn't, either, but somehow, they'll figure it out. They always have before.
"It really does work that way," she says, once more staring out the window. "We do look over our shoulders."
"Not always on the job," he says. "Why?"
"Because for the past eight years, you were all I had, and then when I found out I had family, you were the one that told me that it was everything."
"You actually heard that?"
"I only pretend not to listen to you, Elliot."
He laughs at this. "Could have fooled me," he says. "But you still didn't answer my question. For most partners, it doesn't go when we're off shift. Why's it different for us?"
"Because it is." She wipes at a stray tear that she hadn't noticed before and knows she ought to leave this place and go home and sleep this off and bounce back tomorrow like nothing happened.
But Kathy will still be in the hospital and she will still have delivered her partner's baby, and there will still be considerable amounts of guilt stuck somewhere inside of him, and inside of her.
"You still haven't answered my question," he says after a minute. "Quit putting me off, Liv."
Olivia snorts. "It extends because I say it does," she says. "Just because we're not on shift doesn't mean I can't look after you, and just because you're not around doesn't mean I'm going to walk away."
"So, they're just an extension of me, then," he says, more of a question than the statement it comes out sounding like.
Olivia shakes her head. "No," she says. "They're the people I would drive all the way out to Queens for."
He recognizes the remark hidden underneath the way it's been phrased now, and a faint smile crosses his face.
"Nice, Liv," he says, and she knows that the crisis has passed, and that they will move on, and that now if they're any more emotional than they already have been, it will be something they can give each other crap about. "You know it goes both ways."
"Yeah, I know," she says, and is struck by the sudden desire to get up and leave. "You wanna get out of here?"
He nods, and gets to his feet. "I should head back."
"Yeah, you probably should," she says, and pokes at him as they walk out of the place. "I mean it, you know. They're not just an extension of you."
"I know it," he says, and then, "Thanks."
"For what?" she asks, truly startled by this, because, after all, she was just doing her job, never mind the favor he'd asked of her.
"For saving them," he replies, and looks at her for a long moment before going on. "For saving me."
He doesn't have to elaborate on this, because she knows what he means.
They (that is to say, his family) are not an extension of him, by any means, but for the past eight years, he and they have been the only ones she's had, besides the unit.
Extensions, she thinks, have nothing to do with anything. They go in their separate directions and she watches him for a minute, before turning.
And as she does, she misses seeing him turn to look over his own shoulder at her as she walks away.