August 10, 2021

"You should see it, babe," Brian was saying, excited like a child on Christmas, his voice coming through the cell phone speakers tinny and loud. "It's beautiful down here. I mean, it's hot, but it's nice. I played golf today, you should've seen this place, girls in bikinis riding around selling beer and shit, it's amazing."

"Uh-huh," Olivia answered absently. He was only getting about half her attention at present; she'd only just walked into the station, her cell phone caught between her ear and her shoulder, her purse sliding down to hang too heavy on the crook of her elbow, juggling keys and a giant iced coffee and trying to sign the requisition form Kat had just thrust under her nose while Amanda tried to get her attention from across the bullpen. Christ, she hadn't even had time to slip out of the jacket she'd put on in the morning and was currently boiling inside of now; she didn't really give a shit about how much fun Brian was having in Florida.

"We should bring the kids down here," he continued. That caught her attention; anything having to do with the kids always did.

"We can't take a vacation right now, Bri, come on, the kids start school in two weeks and I can't get the time off -"

He's an idiot, Amanda mouthed at her, and Olivia would've laughed but there was a uni with a clipboard waiting for her signature and if she didn't get the chance to actually take a sip of her coffee soon she was going to throw it at someone.

"No, I meant…I think we should move down here, Liv. The doc said you should think about retiring-" like she needed the reminder that thanks to Richard Wheatley and her wrecked ankle her doctor thought she was past her prime - "and your pension will go a hell of a lot farther down here than it will in the city. Come on, you could afford a house here, a nice little backyard-"

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" she snapped, a little louder than she'd meant to, and the uni in front of her paled and scuttled away like a frightened rabbit searching for cover.

"Hey, Cap-" Kat was turning back towards her, a question on her lips, but Olivia shot her a dark look and took off towards her office. The questions could wait; Olivia needed a goddamn minute to herself.

"I'm serious," Brian said. "The city's no place for a kid to grow up, you and I both know that."

Olivia knew what the city had done to both of them, as children, knew the abuse Brian had suffered as a child, knew his father had died on the job wearing the same uniform Brian grew up to wear himself, and she knew all about her own loneliness, and the innocence she'd never been allowed to have, and she did think about it, sometimes, what it would be like to bring the kids up somewhere a little more...wholesome.

"This is our home," she said, the heels of her boots clicking in an irritated rhythm as she drew nearer the door of her office. Maybe her kids deserved better, but she couldn't think about leaving, not now.

"Hey, Liv, you should-" Fin started to call out to her, but she ignored him, too, flung the door of her office wide and slammed it shut behind her. She leaned back against the door heavily, dropped her purse on the floor where it landed with a thud, and then covered her eyes with her hand. There was a headache building at her temples, and Brian wasn't helping.

"This is our home," she said again. This is my home, she thought. The city could be dangerous, could be lonely, could be frantic, frenetic, isolating, maddening, but she loved this fucking city. She loved the bodegas and the subways and Central Park, loved the sidewalks and the alleys that always stank of trash. Her mother was buried here, and every inch of Manhattan was tattooed on her heart, every block dripping with blood and memories, and who the fuck would Olivia Benson be in Boca Raton? What good would she be to anyone, retired and directionless, with no crusade to fight, no one to help, nothing to do?

"Your mother is here," she added, trying to talk Brian down, but he wasn't having it. He got like this, sometimes, latched onto an idea and gnawed away at it like a dog with a bone. That man had a dreamer's heart, and it had been charming when they were young but they were both past fifty now and it was high time he grew up.

"She's been talking about leaving for years. She'll go wherever her grandkids are, you know how much she loves them."

"I am not packing up and moving to fucking Florida with you and your mother," Olivia snapped. What a nightmare that would be, picking up stakes and relocating to a town where the only people she knew were the Cassidys. "Jesus, Bri, Mia's doctors are here."

"They got doctors in Florida, we can find her someone else."

There may not be enough time for that, she thought, and felt her heart clench with grief.

That was why Olivia was running late, this morning. Mia had another appointment, and Olivia had spent most of the morning sitting in the doctor's office, talking to a grim-faced young man in hushed voices about her child's future. She's not responding to the medication the way we'd hoped, the doctor had said. There's a few more things we can try but if her symptoms continue in this direction we may have to discuss the need for a transplant.

"We gotta talk," Olivia said. There were tears stinging at the corners of her eyes; it had been an awful day and all she wanted was to go home and hold on to her children but she had to be here instead, with a million things to do and a million people who needed her attention and no time for her to process the devastating news she'd received and she felt guilty, Jesus, she felt so guilty, because it felt impossible, sometimes, to be good at her job and be a good mother at the same time and Brian was offering her a way to focus all her energy on her family and just the thought of it made her angry enough to throw a punch and what the hell kind of mother did that make her, anyway?

"We're talking right now," Brian said.

"No, I mean about Mia. We gotta talk about Mia."

"Oh, shit, she was at the doctor this morning, right?" He'd been so busy golfing he'd forgotten about the appointment; he was lucky he was too far away for her to hit him. "What did he say? Can she come off the meds?"

"No, she fucking can't, Bri." This phone call had to end, now; if it went on too much longer she really was gonna cry and she couldn't spare the time for it. "I can't do this right now, ok? I'll call you when I'm done here."

"Liv-"

She hung up the phone and shoved it into the pocket of her pants, dropped her keys on top of her purse and began trying to fight her way out of her jacket without dropping her coffee in the process, but anger made her hands unsteady, and something that felt dangerously close to panic was licking up the back of her spine.

"What's going on with Mia?" a voice called out softly from somewhere to her left.

"Jesus Christ!" She, shouted, nearly jumped out of her skin, coffee sloshing over the back of her hand. From the minute she entered her office her eyes had been closed, her mind too distracted to take note of her surroundings, and it wasn't until he spoke that she realized Elliot Stabler was sitting on the sofa by the window, looking up at her with a worried expression on his face.

"I'm sorry," he said, rising slowly to his feet. "You didn't used to be this jumpy."

"I've got a lot on my mind," she grumbled.

She also only had her jacket about halfway unzipped and the adrenaline rush from the shock of his voice wasn't helping matters and she was gonna scream if she didn't get it off soon. Silently Elliot held out his hand, took her coffee from her so she could wrench the jacket off at last, and then smoothly passed it back to her. She took a long, grateful sip, and the coffee was cold enough to settle her nerves, just a little, and she tried to breathe, but that was hard to do with Elliot looking at her. Watching her, reading her, gauging her mood, his blue eyes bright and intent, locked on her face.

"What's going on with Mia?" he asked again.

Part of her wanted to tell him. Part of her was desperate to talk to someone about it, about the tests and the scans and the blood work and the pills and the hopelessness and the terror of it. It was impossible to talk to Brian about it; he'd shut down, or worse, insist that Mia was gonna be fine, refuse to see just how bad things could get if she didn't respond to treatment. Amanda was a mother, and a friend, but it was hard to talk to Amanda about the big things, sometimes, hard to let Amanda see her weak, and Fin would've listened, would've cared, would've been a help to her but she didn't want to burden him with this. This, this thing where Mia's liver was slowly failing and no one could tell Olivia why, and no one could tell her what was going to happen next, this abject fucking terror she felt, this uselessness, this inability to save her baby girl from this horror; this was the kind of thing she would've talked to Elliot about, before. She would've been vulnerable, with him, could've been, the way she never really had been with anyone else. Elliot had kids, he'd understand her fear, but he understood her, too, and he'd be able to reassure her and she wanted that, desperately.

But he'd been gone for ten years and everything had changed and even though he was being kind to her now, even though he'd been a friend to her in recent days, even though he'd seemed to have found his feet, seemed more like the man she remembered and less like the chaotic shell of himself he'd been in the wake of Kathy's death, she wasn't ready, yet, to trust him with this. With her heart, with her hurt. Wasn't ready, yet, to rely on him the way she used to do, because he had broken her clean in half once and some days she worried that she'd never been put together the same and she wouldn't survive it, if he let her down a second time.

"It's nothing," she lied. "But I'm sure you didn't come here to talk about that. What's up?"

She always felt stronger, steadier behind her desk, so she went there now, sat herself down there and tried to get her bearings, brushed her hair back from her face and tried to look like the world wasn't crashing down around her ears.

"We've been working an Albanian crew the last few months," Elliot began to explain, dropping into one of the chairs across from her desk. "It looks like they may be trafficking girls. We could use SVU on this."

"You want to work together?" she asked, surprised. It didn't come easy to him, asking for help, and she knew it, and she wanted to be there for him, if he needed it. Her unit was stretched thin as it was, but they could spare the time for a trafficking case.

"Yeah," he said. "What do you say, partner? Be just like old times."

No, she thought sadly. No, it really won't.

"Yeah," she said. "Fill me in, I'll see what we can do."