"I think she's asleep," Olivia said quietly, fretfully, peering over the back of her seat to study McKenna's little face. For her part the little girl was slumped over in her carseat, her head leaning against the door and her thumb stuck halfway to her mouth where it had fallen out when she finally conceded defeat and gave into the siren song of slumber. Yeah, McKenna was fast asleep, of that Elliot had no doubt, and he envied her, a little bit, envied the peace and the confidence that came from knowing someone else was going to take care of her, that she did not have to carry that burden herself.
The attack had come after dinner, sometime around 8:00 pm, and it had only lasted a minute, and it had taken less than five for Elliot and Olivia to gather what they needed and bolt. They'd run for the safety of Elliot's car, driven for half an hour before stopping at an ATM long enough to withdraw enough cash to keep them fed and the car gassed up for a few weeks, and then they'd taken off again, headed for the trees and the questionable safety of a small town upstate.
Their bolthole had been Elliot's idea; a cabin in the woods, owned by his old army buddy Buck, far from prying eyes. They'd been talking lately, Buck and Elliot - it was amazing how much easier it was to keep up with old friends now that Elliot didn't have a job - and Buck had sensed that Elliot was struggling, and offered him use of the cabin to clear his head. Elliot hadn't taken Buck up on the offer when it was made, but it seemed like a godsend now, and he'd called from the car, and Buck hadn't seemed to mind him calling so late, had instead seemed happy to help. Liv had made calls of her own, to Fin, to Cragen, to the nephilim who'd been helping her try to track down their renegade angel, and their bases were covered, for now. Just like that, they were on the run with a child in tow, heading for the woods with one eye cast back over their shoulders.
While McKenna was asleep there were questions Elliot wanted to ask, questions he didn't dare voice where she could hear, and he decided to ask them now, while Liv was a captive audience in the passenger's seat, while there was nowhere for her to run.
"What happened back there?" he asked tightly, both hands on the wheel, his eyes roving constantly from the road ahead to the mirrors and back again, looking for some sign they were being followed, though he found none.
"What do you think?" Olivia answered waspishly.
"You called him Michael."
What do you know that I don't?
"It was just a guess," she said with a shrug. "We know the angel who's been causing all these problems calls himself Michael, and we know McKenna heard her mother say Michael the night of the attack. An angel breaks your door and tries to kill us, I'm gonna go ahead and assume it was the same guy. And the way he reacted…yeah, I think it was him."
"You think he was trying to take her?"
"That, or kill her," Olivia said darkly. "But he seemed surprised to see that I'm nephilim. He may not know who we are."
"He's gotta know something, or how else did he find her?"
That was the part Elliot couldn't quite understand. He and McKenna hadn't left the house since Olivia showed up with the girl that first morning. If Michael had been following anyone it would've been Olivia, but how would he have known to do that? If he'd followed her when she first came to Elliot's surely he would've struck then, instead of waiting around.
"I don't know," Olivia said, running her thumb across her brow the way she did when she was anxious and thinking hard. "If McKenna is his child he may…he may be able to sense her. To feel her presence."
That was a terrifying thought. If Michael possessed some otherworldly ability to locate his child then nowhere would be safe, least of all a cabin in the woods far from civilization, far from aid.
"How sure are you-"
"I'm not sure!" Olivia burst out. "I'm not sure of anything! Nothing like this has ever happened before, Elliot. I'm as blind as you are."
"Ok," he said, trying to keep his voice level, "ok. If he does have some way of tracking her it can't be that good, it took him a while to find her. We'll get to the cabin, and then we'll…"
And then what? What could they do? Lay a trap for a goddamn angel? How would they even go about doing such a thing?
"What if we call your guys," he said. "What're their names-"
"Antony and Marcus-"
"Antony and Marcus. What if we call 'em and have 'em come up to the cabin. Three on one, maybe we've got better odds of bringing this guy down."
Elliot didn't include himself in that number; his body would not heal itself in seconds if he took a bullet, let alone a dozen the way Liv had done back in the apartment. He was no good to her, really. Just another fucking liability. He was beginning to wonder if he always had been that, a liability to her. She was so smart, so strong, so capable, and still just a detective, after however many fucking years on the job. Maybe if she hadn't spent the last thirteen years riding with him, with a loose cannon, with an asshole who had too many excessive force complaints in his jacket and a sour relationship with IAB, maybe she would've gone for Sergeant by now. Maybe she'd have moved up the ranks, and maybe if she hadn't spent so much fucking time with him she might have found a man for herself, might have been happy. Then again maybe not; he knew what she was now, and he knew it made her lonely, and it crashed into him, then, sitting behind the wheel and thinking about how he'd held her back, maybe she'd never found a man because she'd always known it wouldn't last. Whoever she loved, he'd die, and she'd be all alone again, and maybe she just didn't want the heartbreak of it, and suddenly there was a lot about the last thirteen years that was starting to make sense.
"Antony won't come," she said grimly. "Marcus might, but he's more good to us where he is. He's never been much of a fighter."
"You are, though."
She turned to look at him, smiled at him softly, sadly, in the dim light of the car's interior. An ancient smile, a knowing smile, a smile that had endured a million heartbreaks and yet remained, somehow, intact.
"That hasn't always been a good thing," she said. "I've been fighting for so long now, and I'm not sure it's done any good."
"It has," Elliot insisted earnestly. "Look, I don't know where you've been and I don't know everything you've seen but I've been your partner a long time now, Liv, or at least what feels like a long time to me, and you have done good. You've done so much good. You've saved so many people. You saved her," he said, gesturing to McKenna, sleeping in the back seat.
And you saved me, he thought, because even though he was on the run with a supernatural monster hot on his heels and a sense of almost certain death hanging in the air, he felt saved. He felt righteous, with her by his side. He felt like he had purpose, like his life meant something, like it mattered, being on this road with her. But this was hardly the first time she'd saved him; she'd pulled him back from the brink, tried to hold his family together with her own two hands, kept him alive, kept him balanced, kept him going. She was the needle on the compass of his heart, pointing him unerringly towards grace.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry I got you caught up in this mess. You didn't deserve-"
"Bullshit. You're my partner. Your mess is my mess."
There was something holy about that word partner when he said it to her, when she said it to him, and they both knew it. The chains that bound them to one another were stronger than the job, unbroken even now when he was badgeless and likely to stay that way. Partner didn't mean just sharing the work, sharing the load; they were partners in everything. In triumph and defeat, in hope and disappointment, in life, she was his partner. In a way that Kathy had never been; in a way that no one had ever been, Olivia was his partner, the other half of him, the one he couldn't do without.
And one day, maybe one day soon, he was gonna die, and leave her all alone, and what the fuck kind of partner did that make him?
"I'm sorry," he said softly.
"Elliot-"
"I'm sorry I'm not better. I'm sorry you're stuck with me."
In the darkness she reached out and laid her hand gently on his forearm, her fingers curling around him, holding on tight.
"There's no one else I'd rather be stuck with," she said. "When I joined SVU, I could've been partnered up with anyone, and I…I'm glad it was you."
All those years, and all the people she'd known, and she was glad it was him. That had to count for something.
"It's gonna be after midnight when we get there," he said, because he couldn't say I love you, even if he was thinking it. "Buck says there's two rooms. I'm thinking we put you and McKenna in the bed together in one room and I'll take the other. She likes you, and you can keep her safe better than I can. In the morning we can see about getting some food and make a plan for what we'll do if Michael comes back."
"Ok," Liv said, but she didn't seem too happy about it.
"What?"
"I just…I don't like the idea of us being separated. After tonight, I'm…I'm scared, Elliot. I'm scared that something's gonna happen to her but I'm scared something's gonna happen to you, too."
They'd brought both their guns and all the ammo from Elliot's safe, but that didn't amount to a whole lot, and wouldn't do much good against an angel, anyway. There was very little Elliot could do to defend himself against a creature that was almost unkillable, that couldn't be slowed down for more than a few seconds, and Olivia was worried about protecting him, and he had never felt so useless in all his life.
"We'll see what the place looks like when we get there," he said. "Maybe there's enough space for all three of us in one of the rooms. But, Liv…how do we…how do we stop this guy? You pulled a knife, back at the apartment…"
And Elliot had been wondering ever since he saw it what that was about, since it probably would've been just as easy for Liv to go for her gun as it was to get in the kitchen and grab the knife.
"He'll heal from a puncture wound quickly. Skin, veins, organs, those things will heal fast. Bones take a little more time and he can't just sprout new ones. I was gonna try to take his fucking fingers off."
"That's my girl," Elliot said, grinning, because it was, it was so Olivia, so brash, so fierce, so clever, so undaunted. In the face of unstoppable horror she had bared her teeth, had not backed down but had instead been intent on wreaking as much carnage as she could before her enemy laid her low. Angry, and ferocious, and gentle, too, Olivia was a goddamn force to be reckoned with, and he was so fucking proud of her for it.
"Buck's a hunter," Elliot mused. "He's probably got a ton of knives in the house.
"Good," Olivia said darkly.
They drove on, the night still and dark all around them, thinking grim thoughts about the means to kill an angel, and the lengths they were willing to go to protect McKenna, to protect each other.