"Nice of Duarte to loan you to us," Bex said as they walked, flashlights held tight in their hands, ears alert to every sound. Every passing car, every footstep could be an omen of oncoming doom; the way things were going right now, Muncy was beginning to wonder if she'd ever make it to thirty.
"Figured you need all the help you can get," Muncy said, teasing. She was just teasing, and Bex knew it, punched her arm once, grinning, the tension of the night relieved for the space of a single heartbeat.
Muncy liked Bex. They'd come up through the Academy together, been in uniform together. Muncy was going for detective and Duarte had scooped her up, and she was happy - mostly - in Gangs, but Bex was still a uni and probably always would be. Bex said she liked it that way. Muncy would have to take her word for it.
Tonight every body the department could muster was out on the streets; there were hotspots popping up all over the city, people marching, rioting, standing around getting drunk on the corner and watching the chaos unfold, free entertainment. People were pissed about the lockdowns, and pissed about the vaccines, and pissed about the people not getting the vaccines. People were pissed because their jobs were disappearing, pissed because the cops were violent, pissed because the system was broken, from the top down, pissed because they felt helpless, and shit, Muncy felt helpless, too. She wanted to do some good and she figured taking down the gangs counted as good, but she knew what kinda man Duarte was, and she wondered, sometimes. Maybe she should've been a schoolteacher instead. Not that now was a good time to be a teacher. Shit, she figured right now wasn't a good time to be anything.
Whatever else she could've been, whatever else she could've been doing, right now she was a cop, and like just about every other cop in the city she was walking the streets, on the lookout for trouble, trying to mitigate the damage. Just about every cop, but not all of 'em, because the brass had a big to-do going on tonight. The NYPD's annual Women in Policing event was tonight, the one night a year everybody pretended women on the job got a fair shake. The higher ups would be out in force, all dressed up, patting themselves on the back for being inclusive or some shit, and they'd selected one woman, one woman out of the whole department, to venerate above all the rest. They'd shake her hand and give her a plaque and tell her how much they valued her work, and come morning it'd be back to the way it always was. The job was a good old boys club, always had been, and Muncy wasn't fooled.
That ceremony, that was the reason she was on this particular street corner; with so many important people gathered under one roof the brass wanted a heavy presence nearby. Muncy and Bex were three, maybe four blocks away from the venue, and it was their job to make sure that the bricks and the molotov cocktails and the righteous fury of the citizenry didn't cast a pall over the proceedings. Privately Muncy didn't really approve of the whole charade, didn't really think now was the right time for self-congratulation, but the department paid her and she needed the overtime. Needs must.
She and Bex were about a hundred yards from the corner when it happened; they were just walking along, eyes scanning the sidewalks, the alleyways, listening hard, when out of nowhere there came a terrible, echoing boom. Deep and loud, accompanied by the sounds of shattering glass and the sudden wailing of car alarms, the shock of it so profound it made them both recoil; what the fuck? She asked herself, heart racing; what the fuck could've made a noise like that?
"There!" Bex cried, pointing to a plume of smoke rising from just around the corner.
A smart girl would've turned and run the other way, but Muncy and Bex weren't just any girls. It was their job to run towards the danger, and so they did, and as they ran they traded flashlights for guns.
When they rounded the corner they slowed, took a moment to assess the scene. The source of the explosion was apparent at once; there was a burned out husk of a car sitting twisted and bent by the curb, fire licking at the back seat, smoke rising from it in quiet testimony to the devastation. The windows of the surrounding buildings and cars were all blown out, and as Muncy looked she spotted two bodies on the ground. One in the road, burned up and mangled, and one crumpled against the bricks of a nearby building.
One occupant in the car, she thought. One bystander.
"10-13, 10-13," Bex said, and Muncy turned to look at her, found that her friend had already pulled out her radio, was already calling for aid. Bex gave their location, asked for a bus, and while she did Muncy went to see about the victims.
There was nothing she could do for the body in the street, she could see that at once. She wasn't carrying so much as a first aid kit, and she couldn't treat burns with her own two hands, and whoever it was, they were probably gone already. Maybe she could help the bystander, though, so she made her way towards the sidewalk. She passed close by the car, and as she did she saw that the victim lying in the road was a woman; she could see long blonde hair, singed in places, and part of a pretty, dark-colored dress, and she swallowed hard and looked away.
Dear God, she thought, I hope she didn't suffer.
The body on the sidewalk was moving when Bex got there; it was a man, tall and heavy with muscle, dark hair shorn so close he might as well have been bald, wearing a dark colored pea coat. He groaned, once, and Muncy rushed to him.
"Sir," she said, reaching out, placing her hands gently on his shoulders, trying to encourage him to stay still. "Don't move," she said. "You might have a concussion. Are you hurt?"
"Kathy," the man said raggedly. His cast his head back; his eyes were still closed and there was a little bit of blood on his collar, thought Muncy couldn't see at first where it had come from. "My wife-"
"My partner's looking after her," Muncy said, and then looked back over her shoulder, quickly, to make sure she wasn't lying. To her relief she saw that Bex was kneeling over the woman in the road; Bex caught Muncy's eye and raised her hand, rocked it back and forth in an uncertain gesture. Muncy took that to mean the guy's wife was still breathing, but it was anybody's guess what would happen next.
"Sir," she said, turning back to the man in front of her, "can you look at me?"
Muncy fumbled for her flashlight; she'd check the guy's pupils, see if he really did have a concussion, and they'd go from there. Off in the distance she could hear sirens, and that reassured her a little. Help was coming.
At her request the guy's eyes fluttered open. They were blue, and wide, and scared, and they traveled over her face sharply, his brow knitting in confusion.
"Olivia?" he said, in the frightened tone of a man who'd just seen a ghost. He'd said his wife's name was Kathy, so who the fuck was Olivia? It didn't really matter, Muncy figured.
"Sir, I'm Officer Muncy, I'm with the police."
"Oh," he said vacantly. He ran his hand over the back of his head, and his fingers came away sticky with blood. He looked at his hand, and he looked up at Muncy, and in the dim glow of her flashlight she could see there were tears in his eyes. "You look like her," he said. And then he coughed, once, as if expelling some sort of obstruction from the center of his chest. He drew in a deep breath, and began to stand.
"Sir, you really shouldn't-"
"I need to see my wife," he snapped, refusing to stop.
You really, really don't want to do that, Muncy thought. No one deserved to see someone they loved bloody and burned and broken in the middle of the street.
"Sir-"
"Kathy!" he called, his eyes suddenly wild, his body lurching unsteadily away from the building. "Kath!"
"I'll take you to her," Muncy said, catching him by one thick arm. She wasn't sure he'd be able to walk that far without falling over. "Just, take it easy."
"My wife just…just…she just…you want me to take it easy?" he snarled, snatching his arm away.
He had a point, so Muncy didn't protest, just walked beside him, watching him like a hawk. He seemed to be getting steadier; with every step he took some of the tremor went out of his hands, and his eyes were clearing, until he saw his wife, and a stangled, horrified sound that chilled Muncy to the core erupted out of the back of his throat, and then he was running, stumbling, crashing to his knees next to Bex. His hands reached for his wife as if on instinct, desperate to touch her, to help her, but he caught himself at the last second, as if he knew that touching her burned skin now would only cause her further pain, and he's got some training, Muncy thought.
"Jesus," the man said in agony, "oh, Jesus. Kath."
His wife's left hand wasn't too badly injured, and he reached for it, caught hold of it in both his hands and held on tight, and over their bodies Bex and Muncy exchanged a sorrowful look. Kathy wasn't moving, and her man was kneeling over her, weeping, rocking back and forth on his heels, holding her hand, and it hurt like a knife to the belly, watching it all unfold, knowing they couldn't help him, not really. This part of the job never got easier to bear; sometimes walking a beat meant seeing firsthand how brutal and unforgiving life could be. Kathy was wearing a pretty dress and her husband loved her and before the blast they'd been like any other couple, happy and just going about their lives, and now their world was shattered. Behind them an ambulance came wheeling around the corner, a convoy of cruisers behind it with their lights on.
"Sir," Muncy said slowly, "the medics are here. They're going to help her. But they need room to work, ok? You're gonna have to step back."
The look the man leveled at her then was ferocious, full of venom.
"I am not leaving my wife-"
"You don't have to leave her." Muncy could hear doors slamming behind her, could hear boots running across the pavement. "Just step to the side with me, ok? Let the medics look her over."
"Let us take it from here, sir." The first EMT had reached them, bag in hand, and he bulled his way forward, put himself between Muncy and Kathy's limp body, and the husband relented, finally, as if the vision of the EMT's uniform had done what Muncy's voice could not, and convinced him to relent.
"Come on," Muncy said, and led the guy back to the sidewalk, and they sat down on the curb together, their knees touching, watching the army of medics descend, a pall of sorrow hanging over their heads.
"Can you tell me your name?" she asked him.
"Elliot," he said, staring out into the darkness, refusing to look at her. "Elliot Stabler. I'm on the job."
Bex had come with them, and she heard him, and her eyes went wide and she stepped away, pulling out her radio. Elliot was a cop, and that meant he and Kathy were family, and as fucked up as it was knowing their victims were connected to the department would change the tenor of the response, and everybody knew it. The other unis who'd come flooding in were starting to set up a cordon, and the emergency response truck with the floodlights on the back was wheeling around the corner, and the whole thing was starting to feel like a proper crime scene.
"Elliot," Muncy started to ask him another question, but then there came a sharp, sudden scream from the place where his wife lay; Kathy was awake, now, and in grievous pain, and he leapt to his feet, reacting to the sound of her agony on instinct.
"Wait," Muncy said to him sharply, standing up and reaching for him. "You wanna help her? Let the medics do their job."
He began to pace, running his hand over the back of his head again and again, and every time Kathy moaned his whole body shuddered, as if he could feel her pain himself. How awful must this be for him, Muncy wondered, to know that the person he loved was suffering, dying, maybe, to be kept apart from her, to be left with his head ringing and his hands useless to offer any aid? It must have been tearing him apart, and Muncy could see it, could see the way his body swayed towards his wife, his instinct as a husband, as a lover, telling him to go to her, while the part of him that was a cop kept him rooted in place, knowing that he would only get in the way if he went to her now.
He needs to feel useful, Muncy thought. He needs something to do or he's gonna lose it. She could help him with that.
"Elliot, she said. "Can you tell me what happened?"
Elliot stopped his pacing, caught his hands behind his back and assumed the posture of a soldier at ease, and she wondered if that, too, was training, if standing like that was the only way he could hold himself together.
"We were getting ready to leave," he said tightly. His shoulders were shaking, and when Kathy groaned again his eyes darted towards her. "Kath was in the car. I got a call. I was standing on the sidewalk. Next thing I knew…"
Next thing he knew the car his wife was sitting in exploded, and the force of the blast threw him back against the building, threw her clean out of the car. Jesus, Muncy thought. Jesus.
"Where were you going?"
His face clouded over, and he looked away when he answered.
"The fucking Women in Policing dinner," he said.
They'd been so close. Just a few blocks away; they didn't even need to drive, really, except that Kathy had been wearing heels - Muncy could see one of them lying abandoned a few feet away from her body - and the city was in chaos tonight. Probably Elliot thought they'd have been safer in the car than walking. He'd been wrong.
Someone had wheeled a gurney over to Kathy; the medics were getting ready to move her.
"Look," Muncy said. "With Covid, and everything, they're not gonna let you ride in the ambulance." And he didn't have a car to drive, anymore, and they couldn't spare a uni to take him to the hospital, and there was no way she was gonna put him in a fucking cab. "Is there someone I can call for you?"
He dropped his rigid pose; his shoulders slumped and he stared down at the ground, looking forlorn, looking for all the world like a lost child.
"Yeah," he said. "Captain Benson."
"Gimme a sec," Muncy said, and stepped away, pulling her radio out as she went.
"10-13," she said into the radio, pacing on the street, flinching as the first of the floodlights turned on and drowned them all in a harsh and brilliant light. "I need Captain Benson. Anybody know where I can find Benson?"
There was some chatter on the radio, and then a voice answered.
"This is Benson."
It was a woman. Her voice was throaty and warm, and Muncy liked it at once.
"Captain Benson, this is Officer Grace Muncy," she said. "I'm on scene, and I've got someone asking for you here."
"Who is it?"
"Elliot Stabler."
Captain Benson didn't answer. For almost a full minute the radio was completely silent, and that was really fucking weird, Muncy thought, because Benson had just been right there. Had she dropped her radio or something? Why wouldn't she talk? Just who was she, and what did Elliot mean to her? Maybe she was his boss, Muncy thought; maybe Benson was his Captain, and that was why he'd called for her. The silence, though, made her wonder if maybe Benson was someone else entirely.
"Where are you?" Benson demanded sharply. The tone of her voice had changed; there was nothing commanding or comforting about it now. The woman sounded downright scared.
Muncy told the Captain where to find her, and the radio went silent again. Job done, Muncy turned back to Elliot.
"Benson's on her way," she told him as she walked back over to him. Bex was with the other unis, setting up a canvass, but there was no scene commander on site yet, and a lot of people were just milling around, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Muncy had taken charge of Elliot, and she decided she'd stay right there with him until the Captain turned up and relieved her of that duty.
"Good," he said, and then added, "fuck," for good measure.
"Will you tell me about her?" Muncy asked him. "Kathy." She wanted to keep him talking, but the details of the car bombing, the reasons why someone might have been gunning for Elliot and his wife, that was above her pay grade. He'd have to tell the story of this night a thousand times in the coming days; Muncy wasn't gonna ask him to think like a cop right now. Right now, she kinda thought Elliot needed to just be a man, a man who was afraid, a man who loved his wife.
"She didn't deserve this," Elliot said miserably, angrily. "She's…she's a good woman. She…she's…this shit was never supposed to touch her."
By this shit Muncy figured he meant the job. That was the reason they'd been targeted, wasn't it? It seemed unlikely that a cop and his wife had been unintentional targets, since it was their car that had blown up. Someone had wanted to take them out. Maybe wanted to take him out, and got her by mistake. That was the kinda grief no man should have to live with; looking at Stabler now, she wondered if he could. Wondered if Kathy wasn't the only one whose life was coming to an end tonight.
"It's my fault," he said, and Muncy realized then that she'd fucked up; he was getting agitated again, working himself up, blaming himself for what had happened.
"All of it," he said, and he wasn't even looking at Muncy anymore, seemed to just be talking to himself. "It's all my fault, it's all my fault, it's all-"
It had started to rain, and the bomb investigation guys had turned up, were crawling all over the car like ants, and Muncy followed Elliot's line of sight, realized what had made him stop speaking. The medics were rolling Kathy's gurney toward a bus.
"They're taking her away," he said. "They're - Jesus - they're taking her -"
"Maybe you can say good-bye," Muncy said, but the guy was already moving.
As they started weaving towards the bus, and Kathy, a black SUV came up from the other side of the cordon, and Elliot froze in his tracks, so Muncy did, too. Froze, and watched a woman climb out of the driver's side of the SUV, and beside her Elliot sucked in a deep breath, and held it, and she looked at him, for a second, studied the expression on his face, saw something there that looked like agony, something that looked like grief, and then looked back, looked at the woman, at her dress swirling beneath the hem of her long coat, at her high heeled shoes splashing purposefully through the puddles on the street, at her long dark hair and the raindrops shining on her shoulders. The woman went straight to the bus; Muncy was too far away to hear anything, but she thought the woman was speaking, looking at Kathy's body on the gurney, and then the medics were loading the gurney in the ambulance, and then -
"Liv!" Elliot called out sharply, and began to march away from Muncy, and Muncy just stood there, watching.
Watching, as Elliot and the woman walked towards each other; they were purposeful, both of them, moving slow, and Liv, he'd called her. Liv. A nickname, maybe, Muncy thought, for Olivia, the same name he'd called her when he first saw her. You look like her, he'd said, but the woman was too far away for Muncy to really judge that for herself. They both had dark hair, though.
Elliot and Liv stopped maybe six feet away from each other, and stood for a moment in silence, staring. All around them the scene was frenetic with energy; the first responders had all been given tasks, and bodies were moving everywhere, and the ambulance was pulling away, but the two of them remained frozen, still as statues, and that, Muncy thought, was really fucking weird. She approached them slowly, from the side, and with every step she took towards them more details revealed themselves to her. Elliot and Liv, they were staring at each other, hard, unblinking, and both of them were holding their hands down hard at their sides, and neither of them was breathing.
What's going on here? Muncy wondered. What could make two people look at each other like that, in a moment like this? Just what had she stumbled into?
"They tried to kill her," she heard Elliot say. "They tried to kill Kathy."
"Elliot," the woman said, and a shock of recognition lanced through Muncy; she knew that voice. That was Captain Benson, the woman from the radio. Not his boss, Muncy thought; they did not have the easy familiarity of people who saw each other every day. They had the shell-shocked, paralyzed affect of soldiers at the end of a grueling battle, trying to make sense of the carnage. He'd called her Liv, Olivia; Olivia was Captain Benson, was the woman Elliot had asked for, the one person he wanted with him most when his whole world was ending, and Muncy had no idea why, and she was staring to think she didn't want to know. Whatever was between them, it was heavy, and she didn't want to shoulder that weight.
"I'm so sorry," Benson said. "Where are the kids?"
"Oh, Jesus, the kids," he said, devastated, and oh, Jesus, Muncy thought, they've got kids. It was bad enough, a man losing his wife, but children losing their mother in such a horrific way compounded that grief, made it unbearable.
"I gotta call the kids-"
"We can do that from the car."
"We?" he asked. It was a question Muncy didn't understand; he'd asked for Benson. Muncy asked him to think of someone who could come take care of him and he'd asked for her. He'd known she was coming, he could see that she had come. Why would he doubt her dedication to him now?
"I'm your partner," Benson said in a voice dripping with sorrow. "For better or worse."
That explained it, Muncy figured, why Elliot had asked for Benson, why she'd come when he called. They were partners, or had been once - Captains didn't have partners, but Benson hadn't always been a Captain - and they would take care of each other, always. Like Muncy and Bex; no matter how much time passed or how things changed, partners were partners for life.
"Olivia - "
"They're taking her to Mercy," Benson said. "I'll drive you there. We'll deal with this, Elliot. We'll find out who did this."
Benson had given the marching orders, but they didn't move, at least not right away. For a second they just stood there, staring. Muncy couldn't really see Benson's face, but she could see Elliot's. She could see his face, weathered and lined from the passage of time, his eyes darkened by grief, and in that face she could see a broken heart.
"You look good, Liv," he said, very softly.
"Let's go," she answered tightly, and turned away.
That was Elliot taken care of, Muncy figured. She'd go find the scene commander, let him know that there was a witness, that they could find the vic's husband at the hospital and interview him there. The night was just getting started, and there was a lot of work to be done.
Two years later…
Muncy recognized the guy as soon as he stepped off the elevator. She'd have known him anywhere.
He'd shaved his head completely, given up trying to hold on the last of his hair, and he'd traded in his dark pea coat for a grey henley and a leather jacket. He was still wearing his wedding ring. But his eyes were clear, and his shoulders were straight, and he walked with purpose. He walked like a man who knew exactly where he was and where he was going; he walked like a man who wouldn't tolerate an interruption.
The thing was, though, he was in Muncy's house, and no one had told her he was coming, and that meant someone needed to stop and ask him what the fuck he was doing there. She decided to do that herself.
"Detective Stabler!" she called out, and he spun around to face her, his expression confused. His eyes landed on her face, but no recognition dawned there; she might have remembered him, but it looked like he didn't remember her at all. She couldn't blame him for that; they'd met on the worst night of his life, and he'd had other things to worry about. The details had been splashed all over the papers, and Muncy had learned all about it secondhand; how Kathy had died, how Stabler had been targeted for his work in Organized Crime, how he blamed Richard Wheatley for the bombing, how Wheatley had secured himself a mistrial and then vanished, how Stabler and his five children were left without justice. How Stabler and Benson had both been accused of railroading an innocent man. She'd heard a lot about it from Durate, too; Duarte thought Stabler was a thug, and she'd thought that was pretty rich, coming from Duarte. Rest his soul.
"Detective Muncy," she introduced herself. "You may not remember this, but we've met before."
"Sorry, Detective," he said, taking her hand when she held it out and shaking it once perfunctorily. "Can't say I remember."
"It was a bad night," Muncy said. "I was there when…"
"You were on the scene," he said, nodding in sudden understanding.
"Yeah."
The mood shifted between them, left Muncy feeling a little awkward. It had been years, now, since Stabler had lost his wife, and Muncy hoped for his sake he'd come to terms with it, to the extent that he could, but he was still wearing his ring and probably wouldn't appreciate the reminder, just now.
"Thank you," Stabler said sincerely. "I'd forgotten your name but I remember…I remember there was a kid on scene who was good to me. So thank you, for that."
Muncy wondered what else he remembered, what else he'd forgot. Wondered if he remembered calling her Olivia. The last few months Muncy had been working on Captain Benson's squad and she loved it, loved feeling like she was doing something that mattered, loved working for another woman, loved having a boss she trusted, in a way she'd never been able to trust Duarte. The last few months, she'd gotten to know Benson, as well as anybody could, anybody who hadn't been walking by her side for two decades like the Sarge, and if she had to remind Stabler of somebody, she was glad it was the Cap. There were worse people to be compared to.
"You here to see Captain Benson?" she asked.
"Yeah, I am, actually."
"She's in her office."
"Thanks."
Muncy didn't bother trying to stop him, didn't bother giving the Cap a warning. Benson would want to see her old partner, Muncy knew. For better or worse, Benson had told him that night in the rain, and she'd meant it, Muncy figured, because she'd turned up when he needed her, because she'd stepped in to help him without hesitation, because - if the papers were to be believed - she'd trusted his gut when no one else did and followed him in his righteous pursuit of justice. That was hard to reconcile, for Muncy; the papers and the whispers on the force said that Stabler was rogue, said that he and Benson had crossed the line - a couple of lines - but Muncy worked with Benson every day, and there was no one more by the book than the Cap. The Cap had been furious, when Muncy winged that guy with her radio, had been insistent that she wouldn't tolerate loose cannons in her squad, had butted heads with Duarte when he colored outside the lines. So how could someone as righteous as Benson throw her hat in with a vigilante like Stabler?
The truth, Muncy figured, was probably somewhere in the middle. Probably Stabler wasn't quite as dirty as Duarte said, and probably Benson wasn't quite as clean as she looked.
The shades were pulled up on the windows of the Captain's office, and Muncy watched it happen, watched Stabler knock on the open door, watched Benson look up at him and smile, watched him step inside, into her space, casually and without hesitation. She watched Stabler cross the room, watched him sit on the edge of Benson's desk, his thigh inches from her arm, watched Benson look up at him, smiling. She watched, and she remembered.
Remembered blood on Stabler's hands, and the terrible way he and the Cap had stood locked in a gaze full of longing and misery while his wife bled and faded away on the pavement behind them. Remembered his voice calling Liv, and the splash of rainwater around the soles of the Captain's shoes. Benson was smiling at him now, warm and open, but Muncy could see it, still. The shadow that seemed to fall over them, that would haunt them, for all the rest of their days. There was grief in them, even now, when they were smiling. It was grief, that kept the ring on Stabler's hand, grief that sent Benson home at the end of each day to an apartment where her son waited for her alone, without a father. Muncy had seen it in her, the grief. The sorrow, the mourning for something Benson had lost, something Muncy could not name.
She hoped they'd help each other with it, the grief. Hoped they'd help each other carry it. Hoped they'd carry each other, and hoped that their future would hold more smiles than tears. They deserved it, she thought. They deserved the chance to rest.
Churlish came walking out of the breakroom, munching on a pack of peanuts. Muncy had taught her the trick for fishing snacks out of the vending machine, passed on the knowledge that Benson had gifted to her, and she smiled, thinking about it, about Benson. The Cap might have been a little sad, a little withdrawn, a little hard to get to know, but she was good, and she was kind, and she was smiling, now.
"Who's that?" Churlish asked, gesturing towards the Captain's office.
"That," Muncy answered, "is Elliot Stabler. He was the Captain's partner."
"On the job, or…" Churlish asked, and Muncy couldn't blame her for the implication. The way Stabler was sitting, way too close to the Cap, the way the Cap was looking at him…they didn't look like they were working. They looked, she thought, like they were in love.
"Both, I think, maybe," Muncy said.
Churlish hummed. "Good for her," she said.
Yeah, Muncy thought. Good for her.