AN: There is nothing I can say here to defend myself, so I won't.
*
Olivia watched the proceedings as though they were something completely foreign to her. The paramedics rushed forward, pressing her out of their way. She stumbled back a few steps before she regained her balance. Everything went by in a blur, and all Olivia could do was follow dumbly.
She only spared a brief glance for Eric Holden's corpse.
Their trip down the stairwell was slowed just enough to keep pressure on the wound. It seemed too slow. Or unbearably fast. Her mind couldn't decide which. She couldn't even understand what they said, the words lost all their meaning. Olivia slid her way into the waiting ambulance.
Sara's eyes closed, and Olivia wrapped her arms around herself tightly, oblivious of the blood that still coated her hands. But the paramedics didn't even slow down. Nor did the activity increase. She took that as a good sign, reminding herself that they weren't overly worried about it. Of course it all was relative, Olivia was well aware of how serious things were.
She remembered Gitano. Her flesh wound versus the little boy that didn't make it. As the paramedic had told her then, she had been two centimeters away from a body bag of her own.
But no, she had to think positive. Even though she could barely think at all.
Olivia barely registered when they arrived at the hospital. Someone stopped her from following and she struggled for a few moments as she watched the gurney disappear down the corridor. Her jacket was pulled open, and hands probed along her shirt.
She finally looked down at the nurse as the woman repeated herself. "Are you hurt, ma'am?"
The question confused her, and Olivia looked down. She finally saw all the blood, coating her hands, and smeared across her jacket and pants. She blinked a few times. "No. It's... It's not mine."
A towel was dangled in front of her. "Wipe off as much as you can, then you can wash up in the restroom."
Olivia followed the instructions automatically. She got the worst of it off her hands, then handed the towel back to the waiting nurse to be disposed of. She completely ignored the woman already in the restroom who looked at her appearance in shock and quickly exited the room. She scrubbed her hands, only able to think of how surreal it seemed. It was far from the first time she had gotten someone else's blood on her, but she usually had a few more degrees of separation and impartiality.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Olivia's face was streaked with dirt that must've been shaken loose from the fire escape. Did she miss the sensation because her face had been frozen numb, or because she had been completely focused on the task at hand? No wonder the nurse was concerned, she looked like hell. Now she was dawdling. Olivia gave her face a quick scrub, then headed back out.
The nurse was at the station, and Olivia stopped in front of her. "The girl I came in with..."
"The doctor will tell you when there's something to know," she said. She gave Olivia a sympathetic look and pointed towards the waiting room. And she saw that Elliot was already there.
He paced until he noticed her walking over, then he stopped in his tracks. Olivia took a seat nearby, staring at the floor.
"How is she?" he asked softly.
"I don't know," Olivia responded. She put her head in her hands as she pushed away the emotions that wanted to bubble forth. "She's alive. She's alive, but she was unconscious."
Elliot took the seat beside her, sighing. "They said A.J. was stable. Took him to surgery. They don't think any organs were hit."
Her chest was too tight to reply. She just nodded. It was good news, but she couldn't show much enthusiasm. Not when she had no idea if Sara would be ok.
Hours passed in near perfect stillness. When her limbs started going numb it was from inactivity rather than cold, and Olivia paid just as little attention as she had on the roof. She only glanced at the door, waiting for someone to come out. Waiting for something so she could shed the weight that was crushing her chest. They should have seen it coming. She should have seen it coming. It was so obvious now, Holden's attitudes and reactions should have told them that he'd snap.
And at that moment, if someone had guessed at her thoughts and even tried the whole 'hind sight is twenty/twenty' cliche, she would have snapped.
The door swung open and Olivia stood. She had no way to know it was their doctor, certainly they weren't the only people there. Her gaze held as he came to a stop.
"Sara Holden?" he asked. Olivia realized that she didn't remember giving the paramedics her name, but clearly someone had at some point.
Thankfully, Elliot responded, as her voice still seemed to be lost somewhere. "How is she?"
"She is alive," the doctor stated. Olivia knew she had more to say, and that one sentence only said so much. But... she was alive.
He clasped his hands together as he continued. "Sara is really quite lucky. The wound tapers, probably because she pulled away, and most of the damage was confined to her trachea. The corroded artery was only grazed. Actually, most of the danger came from her choking on her own blood. We've stabilized her blood pressure, and have her on oxygen. She is sedated now, she probably won't be awake until some time tomorrow. And that's the soonest I'll allow her visitors, she'll remain in recovery until then. She was lucky to get medical assistance so quickly."
Olivia had tried to listen to it all, and only really caught a fraction. "She's going to be all right?"
"Her condition is serious, but she is stable. I don't foresee any complications."
Relief turned her bones into jelly. She would have collapsed, but Elliot was quick to guide her to a nearby chair. Sara had survived. It seemed like an impossibility, something she had been afraid to believe too strongly. But it had happened. It had. A smile crept on her face.
"She made it."
Elliot nodded. "Yeah, she did."
Olivia wanted to argue with Elliot when he insisted it was time to go. The problem was that she also wanted to collapse into a boneless heap. Now that her fears had been calmed, all her energy left with them. So she hesitated because, if she did resist, she'd probably end up proving his point for him.
And really she did not want the aforementioned boneless heap to be slung over one shoulder and carried out.
She followed him out with a sigh of defeat. Her legs were still a little shaky, but Olivia managed to keep her feet mostly underneath her. Well enough that Elliot let her be, even if he was keeping watch out of the corner of his eye. Outside the sun was just starting to rise. The shafts of light made her blink.
In the car she watched the world fly past the windshield, not really taking any of it in. The familiarity lulled her. She tried to fight it out of principle, but the token resistance barely slowed the process.
"Hey, we're here," Elliot said as he shook her shoulder.
It took Olivia a few seconds to recognize her apartment building. She got out, and Elliot did too.
"You don't have to come up," she told him. With mild irritation.
He tilted his head. "Humor me."
Shaking her head wearily she waved him to follow. Mainly because she only just realized that he was walking around without his coat, or else she'd have continued the argument. Olivia didn't have it in her to be cruel right then. She didn't talk all the way to her door.
Opening the door, she turned back to him. "Satisfied?"
"I could hang around for a while."
She didn't want to talk. Not yet. Hell, she didn't have enough handle to even know what she would want to say. Nor did she want company.
"Go home. I'm just going to go crash anyway."
"Ok," Elliot said after a few moments. "Cragen doesn't want to see you until Monday."
Olivia nodded, relieved when he finally turned to leave. She shut the door behind her and tossed her jacket on the back of a nearby chair. The rest of the clothes she peeled off in the bathroom, dropping everything in a pile. She'd figure out what was salvageable later, or perhaps just throw everything out. Probably the latter.
The air and the exercise had refreshed her enough that she didn't even want to look at her bed until she washed away all the evidence of that night. So she turned the tap on hotter than usual, hoping to get the lingering chill from her bones. The water cascaded down her body, and she allowed herself a few moments to just let it flow over her. She had thought it, and even said it already, but it finally, really, truly hit her. Sara was alive. She was going to make it. She had survived.
Tears came suddenly, nearly doubling her over with their strength.
Olivia braced herself against the wall. It had taken her by surprise so she listened to her echoing sobs with a tinge of fascination. Her breath hitched so hard that it hurt. She wasn't entirely sure what she felt. Definitely relief, but there was far more to it than that. Anger, fear, remorse, and a huge pile of guilt.
"Damn it!" She slapped the tiles in frustration. On the roof she had been anything but calm or collected. Knowing that just made her angrier. If she hadn't been fighting overwhelming terror so hard, maybe she would have seen an opening. Did she miss one? Was there even one brief instant where a clean shot would have ended the whole thing?
The thought that Sara's struggle to live might very well lie on her shoulders crushed her. Olivia's tears ran out long after the hot water did.
*
AN 2: Ok, now I want to tell you how this chapter was going to be completely different. Since insomnia night, I knew exactly how this was going to go. Sara was going to die. I do love the character, and it made me sad, but it really felt like that was where this story was supposed to go. And no matter how much I tossed it around in my head, that didn't change. Then when I woke up yesterday morning, before I even started typing up chapter 12, she wanted to live. And then that was where this story was supposed to go. Apparently, I didn't give the girl proper credit. She just refused to give up.
And that's why I left the cliffhanger in there, even though I was ready to have this chapter done the same day. Because it really could have gone either way, and was very close to just that. So, you see, this story has surprised even me.