So... I'm going to get pummeled for this, but I promise there are REASONS. They might not be apparent now, but they will be later.
XII:
He breezed into the Manhattan SVU and headed straight for his wife's desk. "We're going to be late," Rafael commented.
"Shit, is it that late already?" Liv said, glancing at her watch, then grabbing her phone and tossing it in her purse. "Amaro – I'm heading out for my appointment."
The man she was casually referring to raised a brow and said, "This your baby daddy, Benson?"
Cragen came out of his office and said, "Going somewhere, Olivia?"
"Yeah, I've got my five month checkup," Liv said cheerfully.
"Ah, well, don't let us keep you," Cragen said with a smile.
Rafael held his tongue; it wouldn't do to out themselves yet to the entire unit. It was bad enough that Cragen knew, and Fin… and Stabler had known about Peanut before he'd gone off and left. But he was glad of the privacy that hiding in the shadows afforded them.
He hoped that no one read too much into his hand protectively coming to rest on Olivia's back as they got into the elevator: he couldn't turn off his instincts to protect her entirely.
"We're going to find out the baby's sex today," Olivia said with gentle excitement.
"I wish we were waiting," Rafael said.
"Do you want a boy or a girl?"
"Mi amor, I just want a healthy baby," he said softly. "And I want for you to be happy. That will make me happy." He watched her for a moment and smiled; she was practically glowing with excitement and joy, and it did his heart a world of good to see it. He'd spent the morning arraigning a murderer and a child molester and staring down the barrel of such evil, Rafael had begun to have tunnel vision, wondering if it was all for nothing. If everything they were working toward was just an exercise in vanity.
But then Olivia… Liv was growing their beautiful little Peanut right before his very eyes and the world didn't seem like such an awful, dismal place all of a sudden. He could see light in the darkness, and hope bloomed in his heart.
They headed out into the drizzly grey day, and Liv wrinkled her nose. "Ugh," she muttered. "At least it's not cold out."
He chuckled and took her hand, threading their fingers together. "Want me to hail a cab?"
"Why? The doctor's office is only a couple blocks away," she replied.
"I'm trying to be nice to my sexy, gorgeous –"
"Fat, waddling –"
"You aren't fat," he interjected. "You are pregnant. There's another whole little person inside you there, Olivia." He smiled and dropped her hand to gently caress her belly, making her pause mid-stride and stare at him with tears in her eyes. "Mi amor, please don't cry – I just want you to be comfortable and happy, I promise."
"I… I know you do," she said, sniffling a little as she tried to stop tearing up. "I just… I just sit on my butt all day and file paperwork and do computer searches and talk to the ME and the DA's office and… I hate it."
"It's not forever," he reminded her gently.
"No, but then I go home and it's just me and I'm wondering where I'm going to fit a crib and a changing table and why we're still living in two separate apartments so far apart when we've been married for years and it's just… I give up, Rafa. I just give up." She threw her hands up in frustration.
"Liv, it's all right," he assured her.
"But it isn't all right! I need you – I need you, Rafa, not… not waking up cold and alone every morning and wondering if you even remember I exist," she sighed, her hands falling back down to her sides in defeat. "I hate this. I can't do this alone."
"You aren't alone –"
"You could've fucking fooled me and my 4-cup coffee pot," she muttered as they joined the crowd waiting at the crosswalk.
"You think I don't want more?" he asked harshly. "I want everything, Liv. But we're adults with responsibilities and practicalities have to factor in – and until the baby came along, we were just fine like this." It was a lie: a bald-face lie. An admission of wanting, of needing her more than she had already believed possible, would be tantamount to shaking them straight to the foundations of their relationship.
"We really weren't, but I couldn't think of any other way to –"
They stopped under the awning of a building under construction, and he pulled her close, tucking her into his arms and just holding her. "I'm sorry – fuck, Liv… I didn't mean to make it sound like –" He took a deep breath and let it out shakily. "Mi amor, there is nothing on this earth that I want more than to wake up every morning and go to sleep every night with you, and to make a home with you and our bebé. I am so sorry – so sorry if I have ever made you feel like I didn't."
"We need to make time to talk about this," Liv murmured. "I feel like we haven't been on the same page for the last couple of months and we don't –"
"I've been insanely busy," he said gently. "I know that doesn't make up for anything at all… and it's no excuse at all." He sighed and pressed a kiss against her temple, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply; it had been so long that he'd almost forgotten the familiar gentle notes of her sweet perfume and the unique musk that made up her scent. "I'll do better. And I'm going to figure something out about the living situation," Rafael promised. "Now, let's get going before we're late."
"Raf," she said quietly over the noise of the gyro place she'd insisted on going for lunch, "are you upset?"
He blinked at his wife, startled, automatically reaching for her hand over the tabletop. "Why would I be upset, Olivia?" The confusion was genuine: he had no idea why she would begin to think such a thing. They had just been given such news – such wonderful news – and it was all he could think about.
"You aren't having a son."
"Liv, mi amor, I already told you," he said with a small smile and what felt like unending patience, "I don't care what sex our child is, so long as it is healthy."
"Yeah, you say that now, but every man dreams of having a little boy to teach how to play catch and… you know, boy things," she sighed.
He sighed and squeezed her hand. "I'm not every man, mami," Rafael reminded her gently. "We're going to have a beautiful niña with freckles and brown eyes like her mother, and little brown pigtails and she's going to be fearlessly bossing around everyone else on the playground because with us as parents, what other outcome could there possibly be?" He chuckled and pressed a kiss to her hand. "Te amo. Now, eat your döner kebab – which looks like it could feed your entire squad, by the way – and give our daughter some lunch."
Liv smiled a little and murmured, "She needs a name –"
"I always thought I might name a daughter after my abuela." He hesitated a moment, then shrugged. "My father's stepmother, I mean. After my blood abuela died, abuelo married a blonde-haired Swedish lady named Luise. She's the one that made sure I knew that going to Harvard was a right, not just a dream. They got divorced when I was in high school and she moved to California and I don't know if she's alive or dead or… anything. But she saved my life, Liv."
She had been picking at her fries, dipping them in tzatziki sauce, but when she looked up at him, her eyes were full of tears. "How about Eva Luise Benson Barba?" she suggested. "After our grandmothers?"
"I think that's beautiful," he said softly.
"Do you remember your abuela's last name? I could do some checks while I'm still sitting on my ass, maybe find out what happened to her if – if you want," she suggested. Her tone was hesitant. "I mean, I'll have to get Cragen to sign off on it, obviously, and –"
"Liv… it's been years; she's probably dead," Rafael said, smiling sadly. He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced: it was awful, but he was used to a certain standard and that was not it. His falafel and pita were actually delicious – definitely a lighter lunch than he was normally used to, but the sheer insanity of the meal that his wife was consuming was daunting. "And if she isn't… she probably doesn't want her ex-husband's grandson getting in touch."
"You never know," she sighed. "Sometimes… sometimes, family is everything, Rafa."
He squeezed her hand again and nodded. "Yeah," he agreed. "It is."
If nothing else in the brownstone was completely finished to his liking, the nursery was. And Rafael was glad of it. Because on their anniversary, he intended to give Liv her set of keys and get her things moved as quickly as possible so they would be settled before Eva's arrival. He was already packing up his law books and pretending nothing suspicious was going on – only that he was going to add to his office library – when she came over to stay the night.
He had listened to her talking about how she wasn't certain she wanted anything too feminine for Eva straight out of the gate – no lace, no bows, no pink and purple and dresses and all the nightmare cutesy things that most moms put their little girls in trying to make them "cute" – and had taken that theme into the decorations for the little girl's bedroom. Three of the walls were ivory, and one was dappled green and yellow; one of the walls had Winnie-the-Pooh decals on it, and the furniture was all dark wood, heavy and solid, expensive, with a Pooh Bear bedset in neutral green and yellow and brown to match. All of the small clothing in the dresser – onesies, socks, pajamas – were all simple and unfussy in neutral colors and in sizes newborn to 3mos. And several cases of newborn sized diapers were waiting in the closet in readiness.
He was nothing if not practical.
He had read parenting books between cases, he read pregnancy books while cuddling with Liv when she thought he was ignoring her for emails and the office.
Rafael Barba thought he was prepared.
He was dead wrong.
A sealed courtroom was a special kind of hell. There was no communication in, no communication out. No press allowed. The only people involved were the legal teams, the judge, the testifying witnesses, the plaintiff, the defendant, the jury, and the court reporter. It wasn't pretty and it certainly didn't make for a good trial, usually, when the defendant was hellbent on using grandstanding with the press as part of their defense – hence the sealed courtroom and trial.
And in a spectacular upset, Barba had actually won the case after five days of bitter tooth and nail fighting. Only to come out of the courtroom to see his assistant, ashen-faced.
"Fitz?" Rafael said. "What's –"
"It's Olivia. Your wife – Captain Cragen called three hours ago. She… something happened, Barba. Something – shit. I can't do this. I can't fucking do this. I quit, man. I quit." The shaking man shoved his ID badge into Rafael's hands and walked away, leaving him bewildered and more than a little frightened.
Rafael hurried to his office and got his phone, alarmed to find that the voicemail box was full and he had nearly a hundred texts. Bile rose in his throat as he listened to the increasingly upsetting voicemails, until he sat down on the floor in the middle of his office just to have some solid ground beneath him again. And then he read the texts.
He didn't reply, cursing himself for a coward.
But he did dial the phone. "Captain Cragen, this is… this is Rafael Barba. I just got out of a sealed courtroom and got – got my messages," he rasped, his voice suddenly giving out.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Barba," Cragen said softly. "I am so sorry – "
"Where is she? What… what happened?"
"Olivia is at Mercy: they haven't given me an update in the last half hour, but she should be out of surgery any time now," Cragen said with a heavy sigh. "No one really knows what happened. One minute she was fine, and the next, she was bleeding heavily and gave birth on the floor of the precinct, and almost bled out. Rafael – words cannot express how sorry I am at the loss of your child – Olivia's child –"
Rafael took a shuddering breath and said, "Did… did Eva even take a breath?"
"No," Cragen said.
He exhaled shakily. "Then, legally, she wasn't alive." He bit his lip for a long moment, then muttered, "But you try telling my heart that: it's screaming that's my little girl, papi's princess. That little girl and Olivia are the only things in this life that fucking matter to me and I've lost – god damn it –"
He still had his assistant's ID badge clutched in his hand, the man's resignation fresh in his brain. The anger, the resentment, the shock, the pain, the fear… everything coalesced into a sudden roar of rage and he hurtled the badge across the room with enough force that it hit the wall and bounced most of the way back to him.
Cragen said, "She's going to want you here when she wakes up."
Rafael closed his eyes, felt ashamed, sad, sick… but he nodded. "Yeah – yeah, I'm… I'm coming," he promised softly. It was the least he could do.
He didn't know how they were going to make it through the next few hours, let alone the next few days. And it hurt as badly as the fresh wounds that had just been inflicted on them, flaying him alive at the seams.
He was never going to be able to look at that fucking nursery again without throwing up.
He was never going to be able to set foot in that house again without having a panic attack.
God curse him for being a coward.
TBC...