August 17, 2021

They moved as ghosts in that place, their feet silent on the dusty concrete, the three of them no more than shadows gliding through the swaths of sunlight filtering down from the high windows. They had encountered no one on the stairs, and did not pause when they reached the top; Elliot had dispatched one goon downstairs already, and there was no telling whether his friends might come looking for him, no telling what those friends might do if they discovered their man unconscious, handcuffed to some shelves, bleeding from a grizzly head wound. There was no telling what lay in wait for them ahead, or what horrors might be coming up behind. There was no telling, but Olivia didn't fucking care.

Mia was in this building, Olivia was certain of it. Certain in a way she could not explain, certain in a way that made no fucking sense, but certain, still. Mia was her baby, her child, born of her body, and she knew Mia was close. She could feel it. Elliot could, too, she thought; Elliot's steps did not falter, and the pair of them led Bell down the corridor. The pair of them, side by side, shoulders almost touching, blockading the hall with Bell behind them. Moving in step, their cadence as steady as any soldier's. At each door they paused, Elliot checking the room if it was on the left, Olivia if it was on the right. The rooms were empty, though, musty from disuse, covered in a layer of dust, papers scattered, filing cabinets overturned. The corridor was silent, and there was no sign of life, and yet Olivia's faith did not falter; Mia was here, somewhere.

With each step they took their ultimate destination seemed to become more clear; there was a door at the far end, not to the left or right but straight ahead. One way in, one way out. A place to make a final stand. If Mia was anywhere, Olivia thought, that was where she'd be.

The question was how the fuck were Elliot and Olivia going to breech that door? They couldn't burst through it, guns blazing; Mia was in there, and every bullet fired risked her life, a risk Olivia would not tolerate. Let her own life be forfeit in the crossfire; so be it, she thought. But not Mia's. Her baby girl, sick and scared, just the thought of it loosed something feral and ferocious in Olivia's chest, and she'd kill anyone who stood between her and her daughter, but she could not chance one of her bullets being the one that killed her baby. She wouldn't survive it.

They slowed as they drew level with the door; there were two rooms flanking it, one on either side, good places to take shelter, and they moved on instinct, Elliot and Olivia. He ducked into the room on the left with Bell hot on his heels, and Olivia took up her post in the doorway of the room on the right, facing him. For a moment they stared at one another across the hallway, guns drawn, faces tight. There was a question in his eyes; what do we do now? He asked her silently. She shook her head, just a little; not yet, she told him. They would not shoot blindly through that door, or swing it open and find themselves riddled with bullets the instant they did, dying together the way Olivia always kinda thought they would in a puddle of blood on a dusty floor. No, they needed a plan.

She took the time to listen, hard. To listen for footsteps following them up the stairs, though she heard none. To listen, straining, for the sound of voices beyond that final door, though she heard none. To think, for a moment, about Mia, about the baby Brian hadn't been ready for, the baby she'd prayed for. To remember how it felt, carrying Mia inside her, the kicks of her little feet, the pain and jubilation of her birth. For one single second she seemed to remember all of Mia's life, every cuddle, every smile, her first steps, first word, tantrums and laughter; all of it, clear as day in Olivia's heart, and precious to her, more precious than her own life.

The door at the end of the hall swung slowly open, and Elliot and Olivia both dropped into a crouch, peering around their respective doorways, guns pointed at the unknown.

"He knows you're here," a man's voice called. "He wants to talk to you."

"He must think we're really fucking stupid," Elliot called back tersely. Olivia shot him a pointed look; her heart was racing, and it would be, she thought, incredibly fucking stupid to just walk into that room, but Mia was in there. She'd put her gun on the floor and walk straight into hell right now, if it meant the chance to see her child again.

"There's two of you," the man said. Olivia couldn't see his face, hidden behind the half-open door. "There's a lot more than two of us. I don't like your odds, bro. Plus, you know, we got a kid in here. You wanna start shooting, she dies, that shit's on you."

What the fuck could Wheatley have to say to them, Olivia wondered; what the fuck was his plan? Lure them here, when surely he knew the full might of the NYPD would follow them, and then what? Why did he want to talk, why lay a trap with himself caught in the middle? Small mercies, though, she thought; there's two of you, the man had said, but there were three of them. Wheatley's boys didn't know Bell was there. That might work in her favor, she thought.

"How do we know she's in there?" Olivia called out.

The man didn't even bother replying, because the second she spoke, a small, shrill voice answered.

"Mommy!"

It was not a matter of thought, of considering her options, making a decision; it was not a choice. Olivia heard her daughter's voice, and she was moving, then. With gun drawn she stepped out of her hiding place and raced for the half-open door at the end of the hall.

"Liv," she heard Elliot hiss, and then, "shit," and then the heavy sound of his feet as he came tearing after her. Probably she'd just made a monumental mistake, but he was hot on her heels. He was right there with her, the way he always should have been.

The man in the doorway heard her coming, threw the door wide and stepped back just in time to avoid colliding with Olivia as she burst into the room. The scene before her was startlingly, bizarrely calm; the bulky office furniture had been pushed against the walls of the room, a big space that had once housed a number of cubicles, and the center had been cleared of dust and refuse. They'd dragged a few of the rolling office chairs into that empty space; Mia sat on one of them, apparently unhurt though her eyes were wild and scared, and three burly, seedy looking men sat in chairs flanking her, with guns in their hands, two on the left, one on the right. The man in the doorway made four; we can take four, Olivia thought, half-hysterically, but she retained just enough sense not to start shooting there and then; for one, she was an easy target for them, and for another she didn't want Mia to witness such carnage at such a tender age. She had always wanted, desperately, for Mia to grow up safe and loved, to be protected from the hard realities of life that Olivia herself had been acquainted with far too young. She'd failed; she would not make it worse.

"It's ok, baby," she said, racing forward. "It's gonna be ok. Just close your eyes, ok? Just keep 'em closed."

Whatever was about to happen, Olivia didn't want Mia to see it, and thankfully for once her obstinate daughter listened, and screwed her little eyes shut tight. The men sitting around Mia stood and began to close ranks, and Olivia pointed her gun at the one closest to her, her hands steady not from lack of nerves but from years of training.

"You really don't want to get between me and my daughter," she snarled.

"She's a feisty one, isn't she, Elliot?"

It was Richard Wheatley's voice, but it sounded wrong; tinny, and too quiet. Olivia looked around wildly, and her eyes landed on a laptop sitting on a table off to the right, where she saw his face smirking back at her from the screen, and fought a sudden, wild urge to shoot the damn computer, like it'd do any good.

"What's the play here, Wheatley?" Elliot asked. He hadn't fully entered the room; he was in the doorway, with his gun on the guy standing there, covering Olivia's six.

"I'm on my way out of the country," Wheatley said. "To a lovely little place with beautiful beaches and no extradition treaty with the US. But I couldn't leave without sending you a little parting gift."

"You're out of your goddamn mind," Elliot growled.

That's the fucking truth, Olivia thought. Wheatley had somehow evaded federal custody and was making his escape, but he'd decided to waste time with this little sideshow and risk his freedom, and Olivia couldn't understand why he'd bother doing something so monumentally stupid. Just to get one over on Elliot? Why the dog and pony show with that laptop, when his men could have shot Elliot a dozen times over by now and been done with it?

"I've been wondering," Wheatley said calmly. "Little Mia, she's such a pretty thing, isn't she? Such pretty blue eyes. Like her father's, I'm sure. How old is she again, Liv?"

"I'm not fucking around," Olivia told him. "What do you want?"

"Such a temper. Did I strike a nerve?"

He had, of course, but not in the way he'd meant to; Olivia knew what he was insinuating. He'd been wondering if Mia was Elliot's, but she wasn't, not even close. Mia had come along years after Elliot left. Mia's father did have blue eyes, but Olivia could tell the difference between Brian's blue and Elliot's, knew both of them so well that the idea of mistaking one for the other was laughable. Wheatley didn't know, though. Blue was blue, to Wheatley. But he had struck a nerve, if only because there was a part of Olivia, a small, fragile piece of her soul that had always wondered what it would be like to bear Elliot's child. A part of her that had always thought of him when she thought the word father, a part of her that had rejected every other man as a possibility, because they were not him. But Elliot had left her, and someone else was father to her children, and it was too late for them now, and she felt foolish and selfish and pitiful for ever having dreamed, even briefly, of a different sort of life for them.

"I'll cut to the chase," Wheatley said when neither Elliot nor Olivia answered him. "I'm not a child killer, whatever you might think."

"Angela might disagree with you," Elliot said. He'd told Olivia about that, how Wheatley was responsible for the death of his adopted son, but the boy had been much older than Mia was now, and she supposed Wheatley was probably just splitting hairs in an attempt to defend his honor.

"Like I said," Wheatley continued as if he had not heard Elliot at all, "I'm leaving the country. But when a prisoner slips through federal custody, they make such a fuss. All these cops and Marshals running around, getting all worked up. What better way to guarantee my safety than to make sure the whole NYPD is busy looking for someone else? I needed a distraction."

"You stupid motherfucker," Olivia whirled on the laptop, trembling with fury; a distraction? That's all this was to him? He had kidnapped a sick child, risked her life, for a distraction?

"Little ears, Olivia," Wheatley chided her. The screen showed her only his face, no hint of a room beyond him, no clue as to where he might be, and he knew it, and he was smug as shit about it. "Of course," he continued, "I couldn't pass up the opportunity to enact some revenge on you, Elliot. Seeing as you've taken my children from me, you've taken my wife from me-"

"Your kids are in jail because you got them mixed up in your shit," Elliot said, "and Angela's not your wife. You lost her a long time ago."

"And Olivia's not your wife, either, is she?" Wheatley pointed out. "Still, though, you'd be devastated if something happened to her."

One of the men in front of Olivia took a single step forward, and suddenly Wheatley's entire plan seemed to crystalize in her mind's eye. Elliot had been right, that Wheatley wanted him to suffer. Elliot had been right, that Wheatley didn't want him dead. Wheatley wanted him broken. And Wheatley wanted to watch it happen.

She couldn't spare the time to look at Elliot over her shoulder; there were three men with guns standing in front of her, standing between her and Mia.

"Elliot," she said, very softly.

"I know," he answered.

There was no way out. There was no way she was going to survive. There was no other choice.

It happened fast, so fast, so fast Olivia would never be able to recount it later, not exactly as it happened. It happened fast, and the only reason it happened fast, the only reason they were able to move so quickly, the only explanation for the seamlessness of the dance of bullets and blood that followed, was them. If anyone else had been with her, Brian or Nick or any-goddamn-body, they might not have known what she was going to do. Another cop might have hesitated, or predicted her intentions incorrectly, or tried to think, and in the instant of thinking cost her everything. But it wasn't Brian, or Nick, or any-goddamn-body else watching her back; it was Elliot. And Elliot knew her. Elliot thought like her. Elliot understood. Elliot didn't even have to think about what came next.

Olivia dove forward, fired one bullet into the body of the man standing directly between her and Mia, aimed her gun upward in the hopes that if the bullet went through him it would go away from Mia.

Mia screamed.

Olivia dove forward, fired her gun, and when the man in front of her crumpled she crashed into Mia's chair, sent the chair flying as she dragged her daughter underneath her own body, sheltered her close.

Behind her Elliot shot the man nearest him.

Behind her Bell came racing through the door.

On the floor Olivia rolled her body, covering Mia completely, and shot one of the two men left standing.

Bell shot the other.

The four men had fired, of course; a hail of bullets had bounced and buzzed around Olivia, but she hadn't counted those shots. All she'd been thinking about was Mia. Mia, tucked beneath her. Mia, who she loved with everything she had.

There were other things Olivia didn't notice; she didn't hear Bell's voice calling, or the sound of boots in the corridor beyond as ESU came running to the rescue, about five minutes too late. She didn't hear Wheatley swearing on the laptop, watching his plan to ruin Elliot's life turn to ashes. She didn't hear Elliot calling out her name.

The whole thing took about four seconds, start to finish.

Four seconds, four bodies down, and then a familiar pair of hands were on her, and the sound came rushing back into the world with a roar.

"Olivia," Elliot said, trying to roll her over, trying to check her for wounds, but she wouldn't budge, not yet.

"Are they all down?" she cried, her voice too loud, her ears ringing.

"They're down, they're down, lemme see you," Elliot said.

In the doorway Bell held the ESU guys back, called for their CO so she could manage the fallout. Olivia didn't give a shit about the fallout.

On the floor she rolled off of Mia, and turned her attention to her daughter.

"Look at me, baby," she said. Mia was shaking from head to foot, her cheeks stained with tears, but her blue eyes flew open, and a ragged cry of relief tore itself from the back of Olivia's throat. She dragged herself upright and hauled Mia into her lap, and her daughter flung her arms around her neck, clung to her, and sobbed.

"It's ok, baby," Olivia said. "It's ok, you're ok. Are you hurt?"

Mia was crying too hard to speak, but she shook her head no. That wasn't quite enough for Olivia, but Elliot knew what to do; while Olivia cradled Mia in her ams Elliot ran his hands gently over Mia, watching to see if the girl winced, checking to see that her hands and feet would move, searching for wounds. He found none, and Olivia caught his eye, and grateful, she was so grateful, grateful that Mia was safe, grateful that Elliot was with her, but as she looked at him his face fell, and she realized in a moment why.

When Elliot lifted his hands from Mia, they came away bloody.

"Liv," he said in a low, terrible voice. "I think you're hit."

"Get me a medic!" Bell screamed from the doorway; she must have heard him.

Was she hit? Adrenaline was coursing through her veins, lit up her whole body like a live wire, and her nerves weren't reacting like they were supposed to. She couldn't feel the pain in her knee and shoulder from where she'd hit the floor, hard,, and if she'd been shot she couldn't feel it, couldn't feel anything but the weight of Mia in her arms, couldn't feel -

Oh, fuck. She could feel it.

"My stomach," she said.

"Holy Mary, mother of God," Bell said.

"Coming through!" the medics yelled, and the ESU team parted before them like the Red Sea before Moses.

If the firefight had been fast, the approach of the medics was slow. Mia was in her arms, half-hysterical, saying mommy no, and Olivia could feel the wet brush of Mia's tears against her own neck. Olivia's body was burning, now, hurt in a way she never had been before - and really, she thought, really it was a miracle she'd made it this far without getting shot, but she'd never really known before what it felt like, and fuck, it hurt. And Elliot was there, looking at her like the world was ending, his hands on her shoulders, unable to get to her wound because Mia's little body was in the way.

"Take her, El," Olivia said heavily. There was no one she trusted to take care of her daughter more than Elliot.

"It's gonna be ok," he told her. "I'm right here, Liv. It's gonna be ok."

The funny thing was, she believed him.

Mia screamed, when Elliot reached for her, but he was strong, and steady, and gentle; he pulled her little arms free while Olivia murmured it's ok, baby, it's ok, Elliot's going to take care of you. That broke her heart, really it did, the sight of Mia's hands reaching out for her as Elliot lifted her away, but it was Elliot taking Mia from her, and Elliot would protect that child with his own life, and Olivia knew it.

"It's ok," she said again, but her shirt was heavy with blood and the world was going a little black around the edges.

The medics descended on her, cut away her shirt and began to bandage the wound, to prepare to put her on their gurney and get her out of there, and the ESU guys were standing around uselessly, and Bell was watching from the doorway with her hand over her mouth, and Elliot was beside her, with Mia in his arms.

A weak sort of smile tugged at her lips; she'd always wanted to see him holding her baby, and it was beautiful now, beautiful -

"Jesus," she swore as the medics worked; whatever they were doing fucking hurt, and everything was going a little blurry, but Elliot was there, the clearest thing she could see, her touchstone, and she kept her eyes focused on him, watched him rubbing his hand gently over Mia's back. Mia was too big for Olivia to hold on her hip these days, but Elliot held her there steadily, as if she weighed nothing at all, and Mia must have believed her, believed her when she said that Elliot would take care of her, because Mia was clinging him to him, now.

The medics got the backboard underneath her, and with a lurch they raised her up, and for one terrible moment Olivia thought she was gonna puke but then she was on the gurney, and they were rolling her down the corridor, and Elliot was walking beside her. The whole time he'd kept Mia where Olivia could see her; he'd known. He'd known she needed to see her baby.

Feebly Olivia flung out her hand, and Elliot caught it, deftly, laced their fingers together while he held Mia steady with one arm. He held her hand, and Olivia squeezed his tight, once, in thanks. That was her last memory, before the world went black; Elliot, beside her, holding her hand, her blood drying on his skin, Mia safe in his arms. It was a good memory; maybe a little grim, but then they always had been. They were good, too, though.