In complete darkness, Sonny startles awake. He gasps and coughs. With each breath, his lungs suck in the dust that he can't see is thick in the air. He does hear the faint sound of alarms going off in the distance. What the fuck just happened? Wait….Benson. Where the fuck is Olivia Benson?
The last thing he remembers, he was saying goodbye to their witness, Gabriella Parker. He walked her to the door before coming back to join Olivia at the table in the tiny witness room. It was coming back to him. They were strategizing, deciding who would be first on the stand, which detectives would buck up which witnesses, stuff like that. Sonny planned to be in this tiny room in the bowels of the courthouse all afternoon.
It must have been a bomb…..or an earthquake….or Jesus, maybe it was the end of the world. Next thing he knew, he was here….on the floor, and it was pitch black. Now he literally can't see the hand he's holding right in front of his face.
"Liv"?! Sonny Carisi yells out her name and tries to move. Pain shoots down his right leg but he manages to stand. He hears her coughing and he blindly moves forward, trying to reach out for her. There's debris everywhere and he trips over what he thinks is maybe a chair to get to her.
"Carisi"? Her voice sounds weak but he hears it and moves in that direction.
He feels around in the dark until their hands touch and they grab onto each other.
"Liv… holy shit….are you ok"?! They huddle together in pitch black darkness and he hears her wheezing, trying to breath without sucking in all the dust.
"Here. put this over your mouth". He hands her the handkerchief from his suit coat pocket.
"No, you keep"-
"Liv. Take it". He folds her hands around it, turns and starts feeling around on the floor to try and find his briefcase.
"Rollins gave me this….keychain flashlight thing for Christmas", he explains while he searches. "She said I kept scratching up the front door when I came home late".
"That doesn't sound like Amanda" Liv's breathing already sounded a little better.
In the dark Liv wouldn't be able to see his eyebrows raise, the nod of his head or the smirk on his face. Since they'd gotten the surprising news that changed their lives again… Amanda had been on a bit of a tear making their new house 'just so'.
No one at SVU knew about this yet. They'd even waited months to tell their families. Carisi had been dying to tell Olivia Benson, but Amanda wanted to be the one, and with her class schedule and Liv's job those two hadn't had a chance to get together. She made him promise…..
"I got it"! He finds it under a big block of busted up concrete. He isn't able to move the block but he pushes it with his foot and pulls on the tattered leather briefcase until it finally slides out from underneath.
Reaching inside, he finds the keys, hooked to the incredibly bright LED light keychain. Not only would it keep him from scratching up the paint on the front door of their new townhouse, but Amanda was worried about him driving home so late at night.
When he was prepping for trial, there were times when he headed home as late as midnight. What if he got a flat tire, and someone didn't see him on the road? She'd asked, near tears. This light could be changed to flash obnoxiously and it even had a little built in stand.
That was also a little out of character, but Sonny thought it was kinda sweet and most definitely adorable. She worried about the randomest things right now.
The number of Amazon packages he'd picked up on the front stoop the past few months was…..a lot. Last week she bought a radon test kit after watching a particularly bad episode of Dateline. Amanda just wanted all of them to be safe. And she wasn't wrong, all her purchases had merit….but by the time she had this baby, he fully expected the entire house to be sheathed in biodegradable bubble wrap.
The light flashed on and immediately he was struck by how dire their situation was. They were trapped. In a space the size of a large closet. He coughed as he looked up above. There was a huge steel beam overhead leading down to the floor. God knows how much weight it was holding, but that's what kept the two of them from being crushed. He almost couldn't make out the other side of the space with the amount of dust in the air. Were they sealed up in here? Was air getting through?
"Jesus Christ". Carisi never swore, but this was…..it was bad. There wasn't a single bit of light coming through any of the collapsed walls. Nothing but broken plaster, giant chunks of concrete….he sees Liv squint in the bright light and lowers it.
Suddenly he remembers there'd been one of those water jugs in here. Frantically he walked around, trying to find it.
"Oh thank God"! There it was. Knocked over, but unbroken. Probably intended for one of the bigger waiting rooms. Lucky for them it had been stored here. He knew that they were not going to be rescued in an hour. Whatever happened, it was catastrophic. They might be stuck here for days until someone could dig them without water and air…..Carisi takes off his suit jacket and turns the big plastic jug upright.
"Here". He reaches out to Liv, wanting her to hand him back the hanky. Opening the lid he pours just enough water out to wet it and hands it back to her.
Olivia breathes a sigh of relief having the cool wet fabric to filter out all this asbestos laden dust that hangs heavy in the air.
"What about you"? She asks him.
Carisi loosens his tie and reaches into the briefcase, triumphantly pulling out his spare.
"Always prepared. You're such a Boy Scout". He sees her eyes squint and can tell she's smiling.