8.
The squad sweated Joseph Solitice out in the interrogation room for a few more hours (with Fin taking the lead after Olivia barely stopped Elliot from crushing the doctor's head against the table), but it seemed that the man was disturbingly correct: there was no law against what he did.
He shot Olivia a light smirk over his shoulder as he walked out alone, as if there had been some sort of competition between them. Olivia shuddered and turned back to the ream of DD5s. Cragen had given her a week of desk duty, which was frustrating but, even Olivia had to recognize, probably for the best. There would be time for the scandal to clear, for word of her innocence to permeate deeply enough into the NYPD that she wouldn't have to negotiate some rookie's distrust at a crime scene. Cragen had stood by her. She wasn't about to complain.
"Might be legal now," Fin said, "but it's only gonna be so long before someone knows it's tearing crime investigations apart. It ain't gonna be legal for long."
"And then what?" said Munch. "I can name a number of other things that are illegal. Cocaine, for example. Child pornography. Pederasty. And has that made our jobs any easier, my friends?"
"For God's sake," said Elliot, glancing uneasily at Olivia, "shut up."
Olivia stayed out of the conversation. The question of Joseph Soltice seemed milky, floating and shifting before her eyes. Callahan, that sweet kid, was dead, Damrosch coming to take her shift and finding him Tasered and bloody and barely breathing. Elliot had ignored the cruiser in his rush to reach his partner, and only an hour ago they had gotten word from Callahan's commanding officer, whose voice shook as he described the young man's end.
And so Brady Harrison was behind bars again. Normally Olivia felt relief when she knew justice would be served, but now it seemed meaningless. What would happen when he got out this time? When one of a hundred other perps she had helped to put away was released, driven to vengefulness from the horrors of prison, horrors Olivia knew firsthand? When there was no partner to come to her rescue, no defense attorney oiling in on a trail of money? When Olivia was alone?
Cragen laid a hand on her shoulder on his way out. "Liv, take a day or two if you need, all right?"
"Awww, right after my suspension?" Olivia said, forcing a smile. Elliot, Fin, and Munch all pretended to laugh, which almost made Olivia's smile genuine. "I appreciate it, Cap, but it's good to be back."
"Make sure you get some rest, Detective. You take care." Cragen gave her one more searching look over his shoulder, then shrugged his coat on as he headed down the hall.
Olivia filled out the forms as if hypnotized, coming out of autopilot only to say goodnight to Munch and Fin. They invited her for a beer, tentatively, but Olivia requested a rain check. She wanted to be at her desk, doing her job.
"Liv?"
"Yeah?"
"Almost midnight." Elliot said.
"Yep."
"Can I give you a lift?"
She cracked the lightest of smiles. "I got a lot of catching up to do."
"Liv—"
"El, I'm fine."
"Where have I heard that one before?" He rolled his eyes.
"Have I thanked you?"
Elliot looked momentarily fazed. He leaned against the wall beside her desk, swallowing. "Yeah. You have."
Olivia was fairly sure she hadn't. "Okay," she said.
"C'mon. Let's go."
"You go. How long's it been since you saw Kathy?"
Olivia didn't want to go home. She didn't want to be the Olivia who had been caught defenseless in her own apartment, who had come within inches of having a second mangled body on her hands. (Harrison was on 24-hour suicide watch until his trial, a thought that offered her no comfort.) She wanted to be Detective Olivia Benson, the woman who found justice, the woman who could make something real and productive from her fury.
"She understood," said Elliot. Olivia doubted that, and gratitude seeped from her every pore. What a stroke of fortune that this man was her best friend. Another cop victimized by Joseph Soltice's lab might not have been so lucky.
"Go home to her, El. And give her my love."
"You sure you're all right?" he said, his brow still furrowed in that familiar look of concern.
"I will be."
He squeezed her shoulders for just a second before exiting the squad room, leaving Olivia alone.
For another fifteen or twenty minutes, she continued diligently with the forms. But she was tired, tired all the way through her bones, and the words began to blur before her eyes.
She didn't want to go home.
Glancing around the precinct, Olivia heaved her body from her desk and let herself into the crib. She collapsed onto the bottom bunk, facing the wall. A few hours of sleep, she thought, would do her good before she got back to work.
But sleep didn't come. Her mind could only retrace the events of the past two days, refusing to let them go.
While she stared at an ant traversing a crack in the paint, Olivia heard the gentle click of the door opening behind her. "Go home, El," she said.
"He did."
Olivia felt her throat freeze up. She didn't answer, didn't turn.
"Can I come in?"
With her face still to the wall, knowing Alex couldn't see, Olivia nodded. She heard her girlfriend's footsteps come closer, could feel her shadow falling across the bunk.
"Olivia?"
Olivia didn't answer.
"You're all right?" Alex said, uncertainly.
Olivia shrugged.
Alex was quiet for a moment. Olivia heard a sound like a spike heel scraping on the floor, and then Alex's shadow seemed to loom a few inches shorter.
"May I?"
Olivia nodded again, stiffly and invisibly. Alex slid onto the bunk behind her, hip to Olivia's hip, knee to knee, her breasts folding naturally against Olivia's spine. Alex kissed the nape of Olivia's neck, and for a few minutes they breathed together, both staring, Olivia thought, at the cheap, chipping taupe paint on the wall before them. Alex's arm came around her, and Olivia didn't push it away.
Then, quite suddenly, she felt the gentle heaving of Alex's ribcage against hers and heard her voice break suddenly.
"I couldn't—I couldn't—" Alex cried softly. "Oh, Liv, I was so scared. I was so scared."
Wavering between indignance and compassion, Olivia grasped Alex's hand to her chest. This seemed to cause the ADA a fresh wave of tears, and Olivia bit her lip as she felt them fall against her hair, against her neck. "I almost lost you," Alex wept. She quivered along the length of Olivia's body as she cried; the vibrations shook Olivia. "That bastard almost made me lose you. I can't, Liv—if you were—I love you so much, Liv."
Olivia kept Alex's hand loosely in hers, doing nothing with it. Alex scrabbled to hold onto Olivia's passive fingers.
Then, softer, "I still could lose you, couldn't I?"
Olivia swallowed. It hurt.
"Look at me, Liv. Please look at me."
Olivia rolled over to meet blue eyes now rimmed with red. She dropped her gaze almost immediately.
"Oh," said Alex blankly. Shouts rose from the street, but they sounded like they came from drunk rabble-rousers, not people in danger, and Olivia didn't stir. "Liv?"
Alex put a hand beneath Olivia's chin and kissed her firmly, trying to remember everything she could about her lover, about her lips, her tongue, the inside of her mouth. Their lips worked each other's gently, and Alex could taste Olivia's exhaustion, the sweat and fear and dirt of the last two days. Her core twisted with the force of it. She pulled back and let her hand run gently over Olivia's neck and shoulder, down her arm, coming to rest on her hip.
"What can I do?" Alex said.
"Mmm?"
"I don't want to lose you." Alex was trying to keep her voice steady, but Olivia could hear it shake. She brought her fingers up to Alex's face, catching a tear on her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw, the swell of her trembling lips. She slid two fingers into Alex's mouth, between her teeth, and felt her breath quicken. It was so quiet now, in the crib, in the station, outside, like all the city had stilled and come to rest here between them.
"Stay," Olivia whispered.
-the end-