Yesterday's clothes were a little wrinkled, a little ripe, and her skin crawled uncomfortably, yearning for the warm softness of Elliot's sweats, but she had to wear something, had to navigate the subway and get back to the station and her spare change of clothes, and she couldn't walk into the house wearing an outfit that belonged to him, no matter how much she might have preferred that to the suit she'd spent twenty-four straight hours in.
She had to go; after they talked with McKenna a while they managed to get her calmed down, and Elliot had plopped her down on the sofa in front of some cartoons, gone to make her a bowl of cereal while Olivia dressed for her morning commute. When she emerged from Elliot's bedroom the sight that waited for her knocked her onto the back foot for a moment, left her staring in wonder, and in grief.
It was just so normal. So remarkably, freakishly, unexpectedly normal, a kind of normal she had never known. There was McKenna, sitting on the couch, little feet bouncing, both her hands wrapped around a bowl of cereal, engrossed in the cartoons, and there was Elliot, in the kitchen, wearing his boxers and a t-shirt, pouring coffee into a travel thermos. Olivia was the only one going anywhere today; he was pouring the coffee for her. McKenna was watching cartoons and Elliot was making Olivia coffee and she was getting ready to go to work, just like millions of other families were doing right now, all across the world. It was morning, and the sun was shining, and this looked like family, these three people gathered in this place, and family was not something Olivia would ever be allowed to have. If she were, though, if she were allowed, if she gave herself the grace to dream, however briefly, about what it might be like to have a family, she'd want to have one with him. She'd want this family, would want Elliot and McKenna, would want that man and that little girl whose eyes were blue like his, whose wings were white like Olivia's.
"Coffee's ready," Elliot called, noticing the way her eyes lingered on him, so she shook off the thought of family and went to take the thermos from his hands.
"So," he said, watching her as she drank from it gratefully. "Michael, huh?"
"We don't know what this is yet," she reminded him. They kept their voices low, not wanting McKenna to overhear.
"Come on, Liv. There's like two angels with names in the Bible and Michael's one of 'em."
And Gabriel was the other. Elliot thought he knew so much; what was it that people said? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
"Angels don't have names," Olivia told him pointedly. "Names are a human construct, and the names people gave to the angels are constrained by the limits of human language and the cultures that came up with them. They didn't call them Gabriel and Michael, in the old days. Our guy could've just told Andrea his name is Michael, he could've made it up. We don't know anything."
Maybe it was coincidence, the name. Maybe Andrea had been arguing with someone on the phone. Maybe Andrea had fallen in love with an angel who said his name was Michael, an angel who lied. Or maybe it was exactly what it looked like; the archangel Michael, in Andrea's kitchen the night she was killed. What would he be doing there? Olivia wondered. Michael wasn't evil; Michael couldn't be evil. He was the antithesis of evil. But the angel who had fathered McKenna, what he'd done was evil, and maybe Michael had been sent to wipe that evil away. It wouldn't be the first time the might of heaven had been brought to bear in an attempt to kill a nephilim. Olivia remembered the rain, and shuddered.
"Well, how are we gonna find out?" Elliot asked stubbornly. "We got nothing to go on and I hate sitting around here with my hands tied."
She knew he did, knew he hated it, knew he hated feeling useless, being so far away from the action. The shooting, Jenna, it had rattled him, but nothing had rattled him as deeply as the prospect of losing his badge. Losing his career, losing his very sense of self; who was Elliot Stabler, if not a cop? And now they had a case, a victim and a witness and a perp to chase, and all Elliot could do was sit around his apartment and entertain a toddler. It was a vital task he had been given, a deeply important one, but it wasn't the same as investigating, and Olivia knew it. In his shoes she'd be going out of her mind, too.
"I'm gonna talk to my guys today," she said.
Marcus, the hacker, had asked for a day, to troll through forums and various nefarious corners of the internet in search of some sign that someone somewhere had seen an angel, to build his fake profile as an FBI agent and lend credence to McKenna's disappearance. Antony, her old friend in Rome, he was doing much the same thing, albeit in a more old-fashioned way. Antony was…Antony was like the almighty nephilim switchboard operator, the only one who'd kept contact with the nephilim when they scattered, the one who kept up with them all, still, kept them connected to one another. Antony knew everybody, and everybody knew Antony, and his ties to the Vatican - while alarming to Olivia on an ethical level - meant he had access to even more information than Marcus. Between the two of them they had to know something, she thought.
"And how are you gonna explain whatever they tell you to the squad?"
He had a point. If information did come to light, would she share it with Cragen, with Fin? How could she not? The Cap was gonna want to know the status of the investigation; lonely single mother raped and murdered in her apartment, sweet little girl left orphaned and traumatized in the attack, the FBI sniffing around. Cragen was gonna want to know, and she didn't want to lie to him, anymore than she already had done. She loved her squad, Munch and Fin and Cragen and Elliot - Elliot, most of all - and their trust in her, their respect, meant more to her than anything else. How could she look them in the face, and lie? How could she keep her findings a secret? If she wanted to continue looking into Andrea's death, she was gonna have to give them something.
"I'll figure it out," she said.
Fin knew how to keep a secret; he was keeping plenty already. He might even, she thought, understand if she told him the truth. Her heart recoiled from the thought of it, though, from the idea of placing Fin, who was as good as her brother, in danger, but she had already taken a risk when she told Elliot. She'd told Elliot because she was selfish, and scared, because he'd threatened to never speak to her again if she wasn't honest with him and faced with the choice between telling him and losing him forever she'd been unable to let him go. Maybe she should have; maybe she should've let him go, let him get on with his life, spare him the danger and the heartbreak that followed in her wake, but when it came down to it she'd lacked the strength to hold her ground, and she didn't regret it, not really, couldn't bring herself to feel shame for her weakness, even if maybe she should've.
Yes, she'd told Elliot, but no, she did not want to tell Fin, not now, not yet. She'd been too careless already. She needed to keep McKenna safe, and to do that, to protect that little girl and all the ones she loved, Olivia would need to handle as much of this investigation on her own as she could.
"I'll figure it out," she repeated, because Elliot was looking at her like he didn't believe her.
"You're gonna be late, is what you're gonna do," he told her.
She glanced at the little clock on his oven, and swore.
"Shit. Are you gonna be ok on your own today?"
As she asked her question Elliot turned his head to look at McKenna, and Olivia did, too. Looked at that little girl in her flower-print nightgown, that little girl with her dark hair and her blue eyes, with her sweet face, with her soft white wings. That little girl, who forty-eight hours before had been a stranger to them, and yet looked so much like the best parts of both of them, together. That little girl, who they would both defend with their very lives.
"Yeah, we'll be ok," Elliot said. "But, Liv, she's gonna need a bath and she's gonna need clothes and we're gonna need groceries."
He was right. McKenna was only little but Elliot was a man, and a stranger to her, and an SVU detective; he wasn't going to give her a bath by himself. And Olivia had carried McKenna out of her home with nothing but the clothes on her back, and the chain of evidence dictated that everything remain in the apartment exactly as it was. She wouldn't be allowed back into the place to gather up McKenna's belongings and she wouldn't be able to explain why she needed to, anyway, but McKenna needed more than just the one nightgown to wear, and more than just a few of Eli's toys to play with. And food, shit they'd all need food, and Elliot could hardly take the angel-child to the grocery store in her pajamas.
"I'll figure it out," Olivia said for the third time.
We always do, she thought. No matter what obstacles faced them, no matter what riddles stood in their path, she and Elliot always found their way through, and she was certain that now would be no different. Elliot would look after McKenna and Olivia would go to work, and between the two of them they would figure a way through this mess.
They really didn't have another choice.
"All right, then," Elliot said. He didn't sound confident, but he trusted her, she knew. The same way she trusted him; implicitly, completely, in defiance of reason, sometimes, more than anyone else alive.
Olivia started to leave then, but though she tried to be discrete about it McKenna heard the rustling sound of Olivia sliding into her shoes by the door, and the child was on her feet in a moment, racing across the apartment with her hands outstretched, calling Livia, Livia.
It was impossible to resist that sweet little voice, impossible to remain firm in the face of the face of the child's obvious distress, so there by the door Olivia dropped to her knees, and wrapped her arms around McKenna tightly.
"It's all right, sweetheart," Olivia told her. "I have to go to work, but you can stay here and play with Elliot, and I'll be home again soon."
Home. It was funny, really, how in the course of a day she had come to think of Elliot's apartment as home, but she had, just the same. This place was home, because it was where Elliot and McKenna were.
"Don't go," McKenna insisted, burying her little face in Olivia's neck, and over the girl's shoulder Olivia looked up at Elliot helplessly.
There was something warm and achingly fond in his eyes as he approached them, as he carefully shifted McKenna's little arms, helped Olivia extricate herself from the girl's grip. Elliot gathered McKenna to himself, lifted her up and perched her on his hip, and he looked so natural, holding a child like that, looked so much like a father that it was nearly enough to make Olivia weep.
"We'll see Olivia again soon," he told McKenna.
"Promise?" the girl asked, her lower lip trembling.
"Promise," Olivia swore.