A Soft Place to Land
(title borrowed from Kathleen Edwards' song)
Fleeterberry
Set Post Season 24/03 finales
"Take me away
A secret place
A sweet escape"
-Pocketful of Sunshine, Natasha Bedingfield
May
The phone arrives the same day he gives her the necklace. She's walking into her building at the end of a long day and she's juggling her bag and her laptop and Noah's extra duffel from dance and their dinner which is in a disintegrating paper bag with one handle already ripped off and she's quintuple checked to make sure that gift is in her bag and safe because she's terrified she's going to lose it and Noah is talking a mile a minute about all the things he's got planned for the summer, including a two week long online gaming competition she doesn't have the heart to tell him he will not be participating in, and she's halfway across the lobby when Phillip, the evening security guard, is calling out to her.
"Ms. Benson? Sorry, no, Captain Benson!"
He's shuffling across the distance with a package in his hands and she'd like to hurry up whatever is coming by moving closer herself since she's faster, except her hip hurts like a mother right now and she wants to get upstairs and lie down with a bag of ice on her ass until it's numb but she has to deal with this first so she just stands still and waits instead.
"Alan said someone dropped this off for you this morning. He didn't get a name, ma'am, I'm sorry, I would have insisted, but-"
She smiles and reaches for the excessively taped mailing envelope and of course there's nothing written on it and if she'd been the one to receive it, she would have called the bomb squad simply from the sheer amount of tape on the mangled plastic, but she sighs instead. "When did it arrive?"
"Beginning of his shift, Alan offered to call up to see if you were still here, but the guy didn't have time to wait, dressed sharp, Alan said."
Olivia sighs while she's listening to Phillip bumbling through a secondhand conversation, and she's sure it's from Elliot, even though she has no reason to think that, especially not after she'd seen him hours after he'd left it for her and he could have said something, except it's Elliot and she's well aware he doesn't know how to communicate with her sometimes and he'd just given her an expensive piece of jewelry and he was probably nervous as hell and completely forgot. And she's hurt and a little pissed that he's leaving again, just when she really thought they were finally back on solid ground and it had just started to feel like it used to between them and she had very different ideas of how things were going to progress this summer right up until he announced he was disappearing again. So maybe this is something to soften the blow, something more practical than a piece of jewelry the cost of which she can't even fully process yet.
"Thank you, Phillip, I think I know who left it." She turns away with another item added to her precarious collection of things and when the elevator doors close, she sees Noah's reflection and the way he's got his backpack strapped on his shoulders to leave both hands free to play the game on his phone and she can't help but imagine the way Elliot would subtly correct him and suggest that he at least offer to help her with everything she's trying to hold and Noah does eventually offer to help on his own, but that's only when they reach the door and Olivia literally cannot reach for her keys without dropping something.
Noah is fishing in the bag that's twisted uncomfortably around her forearm and he gets distracted and when his hand comes out of her purse, he's holding the velvet box instead of her keys. "What's this?"
"It was a gift." She wants to snatch it out of her son's hands and bury it back in her bag, except she can't because she doesn't have a spare hand. "Noah, please put it back and get out the keys before I drop the food."
"Can I see it?" He barely finishes asking before he's popping open the lid and looks at the pendant for a moment while he fishes for the keys again, this time successfully. "It's pretty."
It's making her nervous the way he's casually holding the precious box in one hand while fitting the key in the lock with the other, but she doesn't say anything because if she decides to wear it, she doesn't want Noah to realize what a huge deal that would be.
"It's a compass, right? But the letters are wrong. And there's no needle. How are you supposed to use it?" He's carrying her gift into the kitchen and he's still holding it while he's grabbing plates for their dinner and she's trying to watch him and it like a hawk while she leaves everything except their dinner by the front door.
"It's a necklace, honey, it's not a working compass." Of course it's not, because she suspects it's always going to point straight at Elliot Stabler and that's a little too much for her right now.
"So why are the letters different?"
"I don't know." And she doesn't because she spent the entire afternoon not looking up what the compass might mean and what those letters might represent and how much such a necklace might have set him back because again too much.
"Are those diamonds?" His eyes go wide like he's just found a treasure because she doesn't wear fancy jewelry and she usually wears plain gold hoops and studs and dainty necklaces that don't draw much attention.
She doesn't want to admit they are because that's really quite a lot and she knows they are because of course Elliot hadn't gone and picked out something cheap to give her, especially with the way he'd wrapped it in a half-shredded paper bag. It had been expensive and he knew that information alone would scare the shit out of her more than a white picket fence and a manicured lawn and so he stuffed this extravagant gift in a used bag from last week's breakfast before he disappeared so she wouldn't have to face him for a while and she really fucking appreciates that he did.
She lies through her teeth to her son. "They're glass or crystals or something. It's nothing fancy."
Noah finally sets her treasure down on the counter. "It looks fancy."
"Let's eat, huh?"
Two minutes later, Noah is completely distracted, talking about going to visit Connor this summer or maybe having Connor come to stay and that video game thing and Olivia is barely catching every other word because unlike her son, Olivia's attention is once again completely focused on that necklace. So completely, she forgets entirely about the other package she'd abandoned on the entryway table.
Later that night, after Noah has gone to bed, after she spent an hour leaning on the counter and staring at the necklace and contemplating putting it on and wondering if maybe Elliot had been expecting her to put it right on and maybe he'd wanted her to ask him to put it on her and she's still not sure what she even thinks about it, about receiving an expensive gift from the man who's certainly not a friend but obviously not something more either, after she finally closes the box and puts it on her nightstand so she can see it first thing in the morning and start off her day with more confusion, when she's shutting off the lights and unpacking her work bag to find the charger for her laptop and she finds the package he'd dropped off and carries it to the couch and lies there for an hour staring at it.
It's late. Not just late for a normal human, but even for her. Her eyes are drooping and she's well aware that if she doesn't go to sleep soon she's going to fall asleep on the couch and wake up with her back hurting in addition to her hip. She climbs to her feet and drags herself to her bedroom and lies on her side and stares at the package some more.
She's contemplating opening it, but she's afraid because the man was confident enough to give her a diamond-filled necklace at work and somehow there's something he dropped off for her knowing full well she wouldn't see it until he was gone on whatever secret mission he's on now. She thinks about saving it, waiting until later to open it, like she had with the McCann's gift, but then she's wondering if it's something important that he needs her to see right away, but then again he knows she left the McCann's gift for months and so maybe he's expecting her to do the same here but he also knows she left that gift unopened because it was normal and if there's one thing she absolutely understands in her life anymore, it's that her relationship with Elliot is not normal.
She starts picking at the tape, thinking it'll be a long while before she can even unwrap it and so she can always change her mind before she gets it opened. But once she's started, she finds she can't seem to stop, curiosity getting the better of her as she peels away the layers of tape. Under the tape, inside the torn padded envelope, she finds a phone. A cheap one, nothing fancy, a standard burner, but it's already been opened and powered up, to get the number she realizes.
He's off god-knows-where doing god-knows-what with god-knows-who and they both know he's not in the best place emotionally already and they both know he tends to get in way over his head with these things and he's asking her to hold the end of his lifeline so he doesn't drown.
She bites her lip to hold back the sob that wants to escape. He's scared, that's what this phone is telling her. She wonders if maybe he shouldn't have kept the compass as a means to find his way back home. But her finger slips as she's holding the phone, accidentally opening the call history and she's surprised to see there's a number there. It's not his cell, she knows, but she suspects it's the number he'lll be answering for the length of this assignment.
It's not just a lifeline for him like she'd originally thought, no, it's for both of them, some way to reach one another for however long he's gone. She's tempted to call him, press that button, to thank him, to tell him to be safe, to remind him to come home. But she doesn't. She knows it's for an emergency, she knows no one cleared this, and she doesn't want to risk losing this link to him by crying wolf. Besides, she can't call him right now because she can't talk past the lump in her throat.
She doesn't have to think about it then, she just reaches for the little box that she joked about liking, pulls the chain free, and clasps it around her neck.
As she's drifting off to sleep, she thinks she understands. He doesn't care if everyone knows about the necklace because she could have bought herself a beautiful piece of jewelry, but the phone, that's different, that's revealing something meant only for the two of them, it's admitting they need to be in contact, and that's not something either of them are necessarily ready to acknowledge in public.
It takes weeks for her life to settle back down into something resembling normal, normal for her anyway, almost four weeks before she can sit down without thinking about the least painful way to do so, six weeks before she and the McCanns have worked out which week Noah is spending with them and which one Connor will be with her, almost eight weeks before the fucking paperwork is completed with the NYPD for the exception of two cops firing one weapon in a fatal shooting which is doubly complicated because only one of said cops is available to explain and she maintains that she only aimed but didn't actually pull the trigger. The apparently perpetual churn of detectives in her squad continues and she wonders if maybe she's part of the problem, if no one trusts her leadership or she's too hard or too soft or too something, because Cragen never had this much trouble keeping detectives, in fact he'd had the same four leads for over a decade. She thinks about calling him for advice, then again, she thinks the man earned a peaceful retirement and the right to never hear from her again.
The compass is dangling from her neck, its weight unfamiliar to her still, the heaviness catching her off guard sometimes when she leans over, but in other ways, it feels like it has always been there, her fingers naturally moving to caress the surface when she's stressed or upset. In June, Fin asks once about the new necklace she's suddenly wearing all the time - even in the shower, not that he'd know that - but she offers him a smile and the information that it was a gift and her friend leaves the room without so much as a sarcastic remark, but a grin on his face. By July, Fin has asked three times how's Stabler doing and doesn't believe the first two times when she shrugs and says his guess is as good as hers. The third time though, his eyes dart to the pendant before returning to hers and he mentions Stabler's been quiet and she sighs heavily and reports the information she has - that Elliot is working and he'll be gone for a while - and Fin's eyes linger on the necklace and he shakes his head and mutters about bastard needs to get his head examined on his way out of her office.