"I mean, it seems a little reckless." Nick Amaro, newest member of the SVU squad, stated while his eyes scanned the board in front of him. A cluster of suspect photos, autopsy pictures and final text threads covered its entirety. "Right?"
Amanda Rollins scoffed. "Reckless is right. She was drunk, she knew she was drunk, her texts show that, and yet we still follow a random man out of the bar? Smarter moves have been made."
Rollins turned from the board, looking back at the seasoned detectives she shared the table with. Fin stared blankly at Amanda, unwilling to admit recklessness and victim blame. His feelings were consistent: the perp was wrong, plain and simple.
Scanning past Fin, Rollins' eyes landed on Olivia. A glazed, distant look was cast upon her face. She stared past Amanda and Nick, at a specific autopsy photo, one that showed the clean, but photographed in high definition, fatal stab wound to the chest. Blood had once pooled out of it, pulsed out of it in the last few breaths the body had taken.
Their victim, Laura Knight, was as straight laced as they come; no parking or speeding tickets, never a single run in with law enforcement, single, no kids. She had chosen one night to let loose, one night to have some fun and act like a single 26 year old who lives in the Big Apple. But that's all it took: one night. It also only took one man, with a twisted vendetta or an ax to grind, to destroy the life of another human. Nothing they saw as SVU detectives was very fair, but the fledgling age of their victim made it hurt a little more. Not to mention the parallels between decisions made one night at a bar by this woman, close enough to still be a girl, and those of Benson just a few months earlier.
Olivia did not take for granted the sheer luck she had.
"Elliot put his papers in."
One single sentence had sent her world crashing into oblivion. It had changed every single thought she had ever had about their loyalty to each other, to the job, to the complicated, loving, obsessive relationship they had for 12 years. Cragen had spoken 5 words that left Olivia a different person than she was when she walked into the squad room that morning.
It had been one drink at the bar alone. Then it had been two or three. Then it had been two, three, maybe four every night after work. Different bars. Different drinks. It didn't matter what it was as long as she spent as many hours as possible inebriated to the point of forgetting the betrayal of Elliot Stabler. It only partially worked, but her fury and sadness didn't allow her to see a better solution.
She spent many more nights drunk and alone, than in strange men's beds, but a couple of times was all it took. They didn't fill any of the voids; she desperately needed them to.
As reckless, irresponsible and dangerous as her choices had been, it gave her the one thing she had always wanted. Some twisted kind of joke from the universe.
"Liv? You with us?" Fin spoke this time to her, watching the blank look in her eyes.
Benson blinked hard at the sound of her nickname, torn from the thoughts swirling around in her own head. "Uhh.. sorry. Yeah."
"You good though?" Fin had the question written on his face, mixed with some concern.
Olivia rolled her eyes, the lo0k she was being given by a man she'd known for 12 years seemed a rather harsh reaction to a moment of spacing out. 'Fin." His name came out as a full sentence. "I'm fine."
The sound of footsteps approaching the table in the bull pen made everyone's eyes turn to see their captain, Donald Cragen, making his way over. It was enough to take Fin's attention off of Olivia and she silently thanked her captain for his timing.
"What have you got?" Cragen asked.
"Not much." Fin murmured.
Rollins articulated Fin's answer. "TARU is going through surveillance footage from a bodega across the street from the bar; probably won't get anything off it, but we haven't heard back yet."
Cragen sighed. "Well, go home, get some sleep."
Fin got up from his seat first. "No argument from me."
Rollins and Amaro followed suit, moving from the table to their own desks to collect their belongings. A second thought didn't cross any of their minds as they happily took Cragen up on his orders to go home for the night.
Olivia was a few seconds behind everyone, moving at her own pace, while her eyes still fell to the autopsy photo. The permanence of that stab wound sent a chill down her spine, the bleakest reminder that almost nothing was consequence free and certainly not the things that drunkenly happened at a bar late night in New York City.
"Liv, you got a second?" Cragen asked.
Benson turned to look him in the eye, trying to read what he was wanting to discuss, but his face remained unwavering.
She gave him a small nod. "Sure."
The detective swung by her desk, throwing on her winter coat, as it was a blustery end of fall day, and grabbing her cell phone. She hoped it would be a quick enough conversation. A hot bath and Chinese take-out was calling her name after they'd been working the case for the last three days straight.
Don waited, allowing Olivia past him into his office. He closed the door behind her as she passed the threshold. The handle clicked into place and Don stepped behind his desk, dropping into his chair. Olivia stayed standing.
"You can sit, you know."
She looked at the two chairs staged in front of his desk and her hand moved subconsciously to her lower back. "I'm good. Spent too much time sitting today already."
"How are you doing?" Cragen asked.
Olivia hesitated with an answer. The question felt very loaded, like maybe he did really just want to know, but also maybe he needed to know before he continued whatever this conversation was supposed to be.
"Doing with….?"
"Just everything."
"Fine."
"Just fine?"
"Captain, excuse my language, but can we move on from whatever bullshit this is? I don't think you asked me in here to tell you how I'm doing with everything."
Cragen let out a big sigh, sitting up taller in his desk chair. "I need you to know how necessary this was and that if I could have done this any other way, I would have. You have to know that."
Olivia felt a pit forming in her stomach.
"It was all need to know crap and I was up against a wall."
The pit grew.
"Elliot." The sound of his name coming out of Don's mouth made her flinch, like she'd been threatened with a punch to the gut. "He had to…"
But before the captain could finish his sentence the office door opened.
Elliot Stabler stood on the other side of the door. His was face covered by more facial hair than he had ever had in their time as partners together. It aged him, made him look tired and overworked. The circles under his eyes didn't help or the wrinkled button down shirt he had on. But it was him.
Olivia felt a hot bile rise up in the back of her throat. She blinked, hard, as if that would eliminate him from her vision or confirm that what she was seeing was real. He was real.
She had sat an hour earlier, lost in her own thoughts about how Elliot's exit from the squad had changed the entire trajectory of her life. He left and took a piece with her that she had come to believe she would never get back. She remembered calling and calling and calling him, begging him to answer the phone so they could talk. Then instead of speaking to her, he ignored her. Captain Cragen had to break the news to her that he wouldn't ever walk back into their squad room. She had excused herself to an interview room, where she cried until she couldn't breathe. And then she cried for days. She drank for days. She made as many questionable choices as she ever had to forget even a trace of the betrayal. When the drunken nights subsided, she worked hard every day to numb herself to the pain of losing what had been the closest thing she'd had to family since her mother died. Her efforts all suddenly felt like they had been in vain.
He stood in the doorway staring at her.
"Olivia." Cragen broke through the thickening silence.
"No." She barely whispered.
"Liv." Elliot took a small step into the office.
"No." She said it louder this time.
"I told you, I would have done this differently if I could." Cragen tried.
Olivia turned to look at her captain, tears brimming in her eyes. The hurt she felt was written all over her face.
Before either man could try to say anything else to her, she rushed out of the office. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear her own blood rushing in her ears, drowning out the sound of her footsteps. She moved faster and faster until she was faced with the closed elevator doors at the end of the hallway. She repeatedly hit the down arrow, knowing no matter how many times she pushed it, the doors wouldn't open any faster. The down arrow dinged and Olivia almost fell through the doors. She hit the first floor button and pressed her back against the far wall, steadying herself.
"Liv!" Elliot appeared at the end of the hallway.
The tears that had been threatening to spill, now rolled down her cheeks as she stared at him through the closing doors.
