Eyes Wide Open

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This story is on an AU track.

Chapter 15: Homecoming

The sound in the doorway that attracted Alex's attention this time wasn't a footstep; it was something best described as a squeak. She looked over to see Olivia sitting in a wheelchair with a toddler on her lap, a wheelchair being pushed by another child so small that all she could see was the top of a blonde head.

Olivia smiled. "Hey. I just came to see how you're doing."

"And brought the brigade, I see." Alex smiled back for a moment before becoming serious. "Are you okay? Bobby said something had happened."

Olivia glanced at Bobby, fast asleep in a chair beside the bed, and then back to Alex. "Nothing serious. A night in the hospital and a week recovering at home, and they say I'll be good as new. I'm only in this chair because the doctor insisted; I can walk. How about you?"

"My stomach hurts a lot right now and I'm going to need physio on my arm, but my eventual prognosis is the same as yours, it's just going to take me a little longer to get there." She was still smiling, but it was more forced.

Olivia wasn't fooled. "And the rest of it?"

Alex's smile dropped away completely. "I'm - I'm working on it. It hit me pretty hard yesterday, after everything that happened, that what happened to me yesterday, my being shot, the early c-section, all tracked back to me having been - to what happened in the garage," she edited quickly, not wanting to be explicit with the children in the room. "It's not easy. Even with what everyone's been telling me, I can't help thinking about all the things I could've done differently that could have prevented that, which would have prevented all this."

Privately, Olivia couldn't help but think that it likely wouldn't have mattered. From all of their research, it had quickly become clear that Sebastian had very deliberately targeted Alex and if not the parking garage, he most likely would have attacked her somewhere else. But she also knew this wasn't the time or place to rely on reason. She wheeled herself up next to Alex's bed and took her hand. "I know how easy it is to look back on a traumatic experience and think of all the things you could have done differently. Believe me, I spent a long time in that space after Lewis. But what I eventually had to accept was that there's no way I could have known any of that beforehand. How could I have known that he would be waiting in my apartment? And how could you have known that someone was out to hurt you?"

"I - I couldn't, I guess."

"Exactly." At that moment, Noah shifted in her lap, letting out a little whine. "Sorry. Little kids always know how to ruin a moment, don't they?"

"I don't mind." Alex was smiling again, much to Olivia's relief. "I love kids. It'd be hard not to, with a big family like mine." She reached out gingerly, lightly tickling Noah under his chin and making him laugh. "Looks like your natives are getting restless though."

"They are at that, which means I should probably get them home before I have a riot on my hands. There's just one thing I want to give you first, if that's okay?"

"What is it?"

She picked a pen and paper up off the nightstand and scribbled down a name and phone number. "My therapist. I know how much cops hate therapy, God knows I did at first, but he's really one of the best. You should call him."

xxxxxxxxx

Bobby was startled awake when his cell phone rang. He reached over and answered it quickly, before it could wake Alex in the hospital bed beside him. "Hello?"

"Bobby!"

"Declan?"

"I knew you could do it, my boy! I knew it!"

"What the hell are you doing calling me?"

"Why, Bobby!" Now the older man sounded affronted. "I heard what you did. You killed Sebastian! Did you really think I could let that go without a congratulations?"

He swallowed hard, suddenly feeling nauseated. "I don't want one."

"Nonsense! Don't you see how perfect this is? I killed Nicole for you, and you killed Sebastian for me!"

Any concern he had about noise was instantly forgotten. "I didn't do it for you, you son of a bitch! Unlike you, I don't go around killing people to free others of their burdens!" He slammed the phone shut and hurled it across the room.

But it didn't hit the floor, or the wall. Instead, it connected squarely with the chest of the man who had just walked in the door, who managed to react just fast enough to stop the phone from dropping. "Whoa. Was it something I said?"

"Something the guy on the phone said," Bobby corrected, taking his phone back from Mike Logan. "I didn't even see you there."

A smile tugged at the corners of the newcomer's mouth. "I gathered as much. I could hear you yelling from the other side of the door."

"Damn it," Bobby hissed suddenly, turning his attention to his girlfriend. Sure enough, her eyes were open. "Damn it, Alex. I'm sorry."

"You didn't wake me up," she assured him, "the phone did. But once I heard you say Declan's name, I though you might want to handle that one without interruption."

"Declan as in Gage? That psycho's making trouble again?"

"Long story," Alex replied as she pressed the button to raise her bed to a sitting position. "What brings you here, Mike?"

"Word gets around. I heard you'd been shot, I wanted to make sure you were okay." He leaned over the bed, giving Alex a feather-light hug. "You look like you're in one piece, I suppose that's a good sign. How are you feeling?"

"I'm sore, but I'll live."

He grinned. "I should've known. Bobby, how's she doing?"

That got chuckles from both of them as Bobby responded. "She really is doing well. If everything stays good, she could be discharged by the day after tomorrow."

"What?" Alex said in mock offense. "You don't trust me?"

He laughed now too. "Alex, honey, there are three people in this room right now, and not one of them is any good at giving accurate personal injury reports."

"Three...so that includes you?" Bobby teased, then promptly cringed when he realized what he'd just said. Of course he'd downplay his injuries.

But Logan didn't seem fazed in the least. "Including me. Did I ever tell you how I got banged up by a suspect who was mad that I confiscated his burrito?"

"His burrito?" Alex asked incredulously.

"Oh, yeah. This was back when I was at the 2-7, before the whole Staten Island thing. We were having one hell of a day, we'd just caught our fourth murder case since the start of shift..."

Alex settled back against her pillows, letting Mike regale her with the antics of the heavily intoxicated suspect. The laugh was exactly what she needed after the hell the previous day had been.

She started to bolt upright when the door opened, but relaxed back against her pillows when she realized she knew the latest arrival. Bobby smiled, but Mike's gaze was frozen on the newcomer.

"Hey," Carolyn said as the door swung open. "I brought you -" But the rest of the sentence died on her lips as she saw who was in the room with Bobby and Alex. "Mike?"

He swallowed a couple of times, still staring. "Hey."

The silence and the stares dragged on until Bobby finally cleared his throat loudly. "Do you two need to be alone?"

Mike began laughing while Carolyn ducked her head in embarrassment. "Sorry," she said over the sound of her former partner's laughter. "That was just...unexpected."

"I can see that," Alex replied wryly.

"Anyway." Carolyn held out the large gift bag she was carrying, placing it on the edge of Alex's bed. "This is for you."

"Thank you. You didn't have to get me anything." She peeked over the top of the bag, seeing two boxes inside. "What is all this?"

"The box with the green ribbon is yours," Carolyn explained, beaming. "There are some chocolates in there, skin lotion, bubble bath, your basic self-pampering kit. The one with the pink ribbon is for Sarah."

"That's so sweet!" Alex pulled her friend into a one-armed hug.

"Wait, wait," Mike broke in. "You included a gift for someone else in a bag for Alex, and she thinks it's sweet? Who exactly is this Sarah?"

Carolyn looked from Alex to Bobby. "You didn't tell him?"

"It didn't come up," he replied before filling their bemused friend in on their newfound relationship and the unexpected child that had come with it.

By the time they'd fully caught him up, his mouth was hanging open. "You two have a kid? How old?"

"Well -" Bobby glanced at his watch. "About an hour short of one day."

Mike looked from him back to Alex as the pieces finally clicked together. "Oh, damn, I'm sorry. How's she doing?"

"She's holding her own," Alex replied. "The bullet missed her, thank God. Bobby and my dad have both been going back and forth to the NICU all day."

"That's good," he said warmly. "If you want me to take a turn, though, you just let me know. I know I'm not exactly the type who people want around their kids, but I think I can manage a check-in on one baby, especially one surrounded by nurses."

Alex just smiled, shaking her head. Mike might have a reputation as an angry man to be watched out for, but she'd known him long enough to know that underneath all of that brashness ran a soft streak a mile wide. "You'd better learn to manage," she told him mock-sternly, "because I expect to see you around more than every so often."

He grinned now too. "You mean that?"

"You bet. And I don't think I'm the only one either." She looked pointedly at Carolyn, who blushed a little at having been caught staring at her former partner. "In fact, I think Bobby and I will be okay right now." She reached into the bag, opening up the pink-ribboned box and finding exactly what she was looking for: a small stuffed rabbit. "Why don't you two go take this up to Sarah, and while you're at it use the time to catch up? Just one thing," she added to Mike, smiling. "If you see my dad up there, give him a minute of your time, okay? He still talks about how much he admires you from that councilman thing."

As they stepped out, already starting to navigate the first few awkward moments of a reunion eight years in the making, Bobby turned to Alex with a smile of his own. "That was subtle."

She shrugged off his sarcasm. "It was needed. You saw the way they were looking at each other."

"You're turning into a romantic," he teased.

She reached up, gently running a hand over his face. "It worked for us, didn't it?"

xxxxxxxxx

"You could've knocked me over with a feather when I found out you retired," Carolyn was saying. "I was sure they'd have to drag you out kicking and screaming when you hit mandatory."

"I used to think the same," he admitted. "Especially after I finally got off Staten Island. And I still loved the job. It was all the Department and inter-office politics that finally got to be too much."

She laughed now. "Okay, that I can believe."

"And for what it's worth," Mike added, "you going back to the FBI was not exactly something I expected either, especially after everything you said in the Garrett case."

"That one wasn't on me," she protested. "Turned out one of my old cases wasn't as closed as I thought. It took me over a year to finish that one up, and by then the open spot in Major Case had been filled and it didn't seem like that was going to change anytime soon. So since I didn't have an NYPD spot to go back to, the Feds held onto me." She shrugged. "It wasn't so bad, really. I started being able to do work more like what I did at Major Case. Once I didn't have to sit behind a desk and ask three supervisors to talk to someone across the hall, I actually started liking my job."

"That's good," he replied sincerely. "So where are you working now?"

"I'm with Alex at JTTF," she said with a smile. "What about you? Cop or not, I can't see you just sitting back doing nothing."

"You're right about that," he admitted. "Actually, I'm working with Deakins - you heard he went into the private sector after he left?" Carolyn nodded, and he continued. "Well, something like eighty percent of his staff is former NYPD, so when he heard I was leaving the department, he asked if I wanted a job."

"That must be nice for you. You still get to do the good work without all the NYPD mess."

"I didn't expect to like it as much as I do. But it's been six years and I'm still there. I'll tell you the one thing I don't miss, besides the politics, is the hours. I can actually know that I'm going to be working the hours I'm supposed to and not be called out in the middle of the night. I can stay late if I have a tough case to chase down, but I don't have to."

"Now you're making me envious," she teased, but then her smile dropped away as she looked closely at him. "Have you been staying late a lot recently?"

"No," he replied, bemused. "Why?"

"Because you look like you did after we'd worked a case for several days straight," she said bluntly. "Something is keeping you up at night. And you look run-down enough that I'm going to guess it's not a positive something."

"Thanks," he said sarcastically.

"Quit deflecting," she chided. "I know you saw me staring. From a purely aesthetic perspective, I have no complaints. But I can also tell there's something serious going on in your life right now." She fixed him with a warm, inviting gaze. "You want to talk about it?"

The truth was, he did. Until now, there hadn't been anyone he felt comfortable talking to, but looking into Carolyn's eyes, the past eight years seemed to melt away. She was the same woman who had supported him after one of the worst days of his career. But unlike that incident, she wasn't a part of this one, and he didn't want to burden her. "It's kind of a long story."

"I have time." She stepped in front of him, halting both of their forward progress. "And I don't think Alex and Bobby expect us back for awhile."

It was an impossibly tempting offer. "Not here," he said finally. "I can't, not with all these people."

She could see the truth of his words in his eyes. "Okay. Let's find a place."

xxxxxxxxx

"I've got it," Elizabeth called as the doorbell rang. The door creaked open, and then she spoke again. "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Sergeant Benson."

As soon as she heard the man's voice, Olivia was very glad she'd insisted her husband take the children to the park after getting her settled. She'd only made the suggestion because they'd been bouncing off the walls, but it would serve her well here too. She might have made her peace with Tucker, but she doubted Elliot would be so forgiving. "Let him in, Lizzie, it's okay." She reached for the remote to turn the TV off.

The Lieutenant stepped into the den as Elizabeth headed up the stairs. "You don't seem surprised to see me."

"Amaro gave me a heads-up," she admitted. "But even if he hadn't, there was a shootout in our squadroom. It's not exactly an unexpected turn of events that IAB wants to interview me. Sit down." She indicated a chair.

"In a hurry to get this over with?"

"For both our sake," she replied with a small smile. "My husband's out with our sons right now, I don't think he'd be thrilled about you being here."

"Fair enough," he admitted. "So let's get to it. Where were you when the first shots were fired?"

"The interview room next to Lieutenant Murphy's office with Lieutenant Eames."

"Who was there because..."

"Because she was the victim of a rape, and we believed we had the suspect in custody. She had previously stated that she believed she could identify her attacker's voice, and so we brought her in to make the ID."

"She was to identify the man who had raped her. And she brought a weapon along?"

"She never tried to hide that fact." Olivia couldn't help becoming a little defensive. "She's a cop, it was a work day, she's in the habit of carrying. And I took it from her before she made the identification - and no, that doesn't mean I thought she was a threat in any way. I just wanted to make sure everything was done by the book. It's the same reason I didn't allow her to speak with her former partner, despite the fact that he was present, until after the lineup had been conducted."

"So you returned the weapon to her after she made the identification."

"Not immediately. She was very upset and I wanted to give her a chance to calm down first - not that I actually thought she'd hurt herself, but again, procedure. Bobby Goren sat with her for a while until he was needed, that calmed her down a lot, and then I sat with her. It was only when I thought she was close to ready to leave that I gave it back to her. I figured that once she was ready to go, she'd want to leave as quickly as possible. It was maybe a minute after that that we heard the shots fired."

"What did you do then?"

"At first, we just took cover inside the interview room. But then we heard Johnson making threats against someone - Detective Rollins, although I didn't know that at the time. We looked through the blinds and saw that his back was to the interview room. Eames opened the door and approached him from behind, I followed her. She raised her weapon and ordered him to drop his. He turned his weapon on us, but in doing so, he opened enough distance between himself and Rollins that Eames was able to take a shot. She hit him but not significantly enough to incapacitate him. At the same time, he fired two shots, both of which hit her - I also took a bullet from a through-and-through, but I didn't realize that at the time. She fell backwards and I caught her. He turned the gun on us - specifically on her - again. I couldn't get at my weapon without him seeing me, so I tried to cover her with my body. I heard the shots but I didn't feel anything. It took me a minute to realize that Johnson was the one who'd been shot."

"By Robert Goren."

"Yes."

"To your knowledge, what is the relationship between Robert Goren and Lieutenant Eames?"

"If you're asking if they're romantically involved, the answer is yes. And they have a child together."

"How long have you known about this relationship?"

She thought for a second. "Um, right around the time Goren started working this case with us. Lieutenant Eames is someone I consider a friend, and I saw them together in the parking garage. The depth of their connection to each other was obvious."

"And yet, you and Lieutenant Murphy allowed Goren to continue working the Sebastian case even after it became clear that his girlfriend's rape was directly connected to the case in question."

"Yes." Olivia's tone was firm, unapologetic. "And I stand by that decision. Even with his personal stake in the case, Goren was an invaluable part of the investigation. He was the one who was able to discern an essential, but very much obscured, fact in the case that led us to our suspect."

"The suspect he later killed."

"It was a matter of life or death," she said firmly. "I would have shot him if I'd been able to get to my gun."

"I understand that, but the fact remains that you didn't shoot him. The man with every reason to want revenge did."

"No. I firmly believe that he wouldn't have shot unless he felt it was the only option."

"Believe based on what?"

His personality came to mind, but Olivia brushed that aside. Tucker would want something concrete, and she had that to give. "A conversation we had a few months ago. He was talking about a serial killer he once hunted, who was murdered before she could be caught, and he said that he wished she could have been stopped the legal way - meaning tracking her down and putting her in prison. And this was someone else who hurt him in a personal way. He's not the type of person who goes around taking revenge on people."

"Let's move on to after the shooting. Goren ran over to you, to check on Eames."

"Like I said, all he was concerned about was her. And he put the gun down first."

"Right. And then he picked her up and the three of you left the scene. I understand Eames and you; she was injured, and it was quicker to take her in a police vehicle than wait for EMS which meant someone had to drive. But you let - scratch that, you encouraged the shooter to leave the scene?"

"He wasn't going to disappear. He had just seen his pregnant girlfriend shot, nearly murdered, and he was terrified he was going to lose both her and the baby."

Tucker stopped writing in mid-sentence. "She was pregnant? This child they have together -"

"Was born yesterday by c-section and is currently in intensive care," she confirmed. "Eames and the baby are both doing fine, but that was anything but a certainty in the immediate aftermath of the shooting."

"Okay, so that's a more compelling reason for him to leave. That still doesn't answer the question of why you allowed it."

There were more than a few answers to that one too, and again she chose the one that was most likely to be palatable to IAB. "As you said, Eames needed medical help immediately, and I couldn't carry her myself. Given the fact that she was recently the victim of a rape, I was concerned that she might not be okay with being carried by another member of the unit. Even if she had tolerated it, panic could have raised her heart rate and blood pressure significantly, which would have caused her to start bleeding more quickly. It was clear that Goren's touch wasn't bothering her at all; if anything, it was helping to keep her calm. I didn't feel that it was wise to spend time on other possibilities that had a much higher risk of problems." She looked Tucker directly in the eyes. "My priority was the victim, just as it always is."

"All right, Sergeant," he said after a long moment. "That'll do it for now. We'll be in touch."

Olivia couldn't see the entryway from her position on the couch, but she heard the door click shut. A few moments later, she heard Elizabeth come down the stairs and then saw her in the doorway to the den. "Who was that?"

"Just someone investigating the shooting," she said as casually as possible. "Do me one favor, though, and don't mention this to your dad. That's one conversation he and I have to have on our own."

Bet you didn't think that conversation between Benson and Goren would end up being important! Surprise!

This episode references the original L&O series episodes Mayhem (see burrito-wielding maniac) and Pride and the CI episodes Stress Position and To the Bone.

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