"Guess he hasn't killed you in your sleep yet," Fin said as she stepped into the bullpen.

"Not yet," Olivia answered dryly. He was just worried about her, and really she couldn't blame him for that; she was worried for herself. If it had been one of the detectives under her command who'd taken a random suspect home Olivia would've intervened - and probably ordered a psych assessment - but she was the Captain, and there was no one around to give her orders, unless the Chief somehow caught wind of her strange houseguest. No chance of that, though; Fin might have thought she was losing it, but he wasn't a snitch. He'd worry about her privately.

"You gonna cut him loose any time soon or are you gonna give him a key?"

I haven't decided yet.

"Of course I'm gonna cut him loose," she said, choosing for the moment to keep her uncertainty to herself. "Just waiting for the DNA results. I want him where I can find him for now."

"Just take care of yourself," Fin said. Over the years Olivia had grown adept at taking care of herself; there was no one else to do it.

"Why's the light on in my office?" she asked. For the moment she was done talking about Stabler, and eager for the chance to bury herself in her work and maybe - hopefully - forget about the strange man with sad eyes who'd spent the night on her sofa.

"You got a visitor," Fin said cryptically. "I told her to wait in your office, I didn't think you'd mind."

There was no one on her squad whose judgment she trusted more than Fin's; if he thought it was safe to leave her visitor alone in the office, she believed he'd made the right call. But who on earth could it be? It was early yet, the day just getting started, and Olivia didn't have any meetings on her calendar.

Only one way to find out, she thought, and so she nodded at Fin, squared her shoulders, and marched straight into her office.

It was Ayanna Bell waiting for her there, loitering near the door with two cups of coffee in her hands.

"Sergeant Bell," Olivia greeted her warmly, but carefully. It wasn't like they were friends; they'd only met once, just that one weird day, and Olivia didn't know much about Bell, but she wanted to like the Sergeant. Coffee would help with that.

"Captain Benson," Bell said, holding out one of the cups, which Olivia accepted gratefully. "I was in the neighborhood, thought I'd stop by and see if you've got the DNA results back yet."

Of course Bell was curious; she'd lost one of her people, watched him die right in front of her, and whatever opinion Olivia was starting to draw of the man who called himself Stabler, Ayanna had known the real Stabler, known him well, cared for him, and this must have been as difficult for her to navigate as it was for Olivia. More difficult, maybe.

"Not yet," Olivia told her. "We should know something by tomorrow."

"You'll call me, when you hear?"

"I will," Olivia promised. It looked like Bell was getting ready to make her excuses and leave now that she'd done what she'd come to the 1-6 to do, but Olivia had questions of her own.

"Since you're here," she said, "do you have a few minutes to talk? There's something I want to ask you."

"Sure," Bell answered easily, though her eyes were narrowed, watchful.

Olivia gestured to the chairs in front of her desk, and Bell sat herself down there while Olivia settled into her own chair behind the desk.

"What can you tell me about him? What's he like? Your Stabler, I mean."

"My Stabler," Bell mused. "Does that mean you're buying into this alternate universe stuff?"

It was a fair question, but one Olivia did not have an answer to, and so in response she spread her hands helplessly.

"I'm just trying to get a sense for the kind of man he is, or was, or whatever. The fingerprints might match but maybe the behavior doesn't. I'm…I'm wondering what I should expect. What you'd expect from your Stabler."

"My Stabler is dead," Bell said bluntly. "That man, whoever he is, wherever he came from, that's not the Elliot Stabler I know. But I can tell you about my Stabler. No harm in that."

She paused for a moment, gathered her thoughts and took a sip of her coffee, and then she began to speak, her voice low, and full of a sorrowful kind of fondness.

"He could be a real son of a bitch," she said. "Hair-trigger temper, aggressive, cocky. He's a smartass, can't resist a chance to run his mouth. But he's a good man. Decent. Gentle when he needs to be. Good with kids. Dedicated to justice - not the law, but justice. You understand there's a difference?"

"I do," Olivia agreed heavily.

"There's a lot of stories about Stabler," Bell continued. "Most of 'em don't paint him in a good light. He's been in trouble, I'm not gonna deny that, IAB was gunning for him for years, but he's a good cop. One of the best I've ever worked with. He was just…he was sad, towards the end. It really broke him, his wife leaving and taking the kids. I don't think he ever got over that. He was lonely. He felt like he'd failed somewhere along the way and I think…everything he did, he was just… it's like he was trying to make up for it. He'd wrecked his own family so he was trying to save everyone else's."

"Why did she leave? The wife?"

It was a personal question - too personal, maybe, given the incredulous expression in Ayanna's eyes - but Olivia wanted to know. Needed to know. What could make a woman leave her husband, the father of her four children, after nearly thirty years? In this world they'd stayed apart but in the world her Stabler came from he said they'd fallen back into bed together; they couldn't have hated each other too much if Kathy had been willing to take him back, even for one night. Or maybe she did, maybe she did hate him; in SVU, Olivia saw shit like that all the time. But she needed to know what made Kathy Stabler run. She needed to know if she needed to run, too.

"Kathy," Bell said. "She and I talk, a little, here and there. They were divorced for years but still friendly, Kathy was the only person I could call when he was losing his mind and needed someone to rein him in. She's a good woman."

She'd have to be, Olivia thought; the man Bell described was a difficult one, but Kathy still took calls from his boss, still stepped in when she was needed. That didn't sound like hate.

"It was the job," Bell said. "He worked too much, and brought the work home with him. Was so scared about something bad happening to the kids he tried to control everything they did. Wanted to keep his family safe from the work so he tried not to talk about it, ended up shutting her out completely. She didn't have a husband anymore, just an angry cop who wouldn't talk to her. Had to get out for her own sake. I always got the feeling she regretted it, a little. She cried when I told her that he'd died."

There was no version of this story that didn't hurt, Olivia thought. In both worlds the Stabler family was shattered, and grieving. Had they ever been happy? Was there a universe out there where they were happy still, all alive, all safe?

"This guy," Bell said. "Your Stabler."

And shit that was weird, too. It wasn't like Olivia had any claim over the man she'd dropped off at the library this morning, wasn't like she knew him, wasn't like they were friends or anything, but he was hers, in a way. He was the Stabler right in front of her, and Bell's Stabler was in the morgue, and they had to come up with some way to differentiate between the two. Yours and mine who would work for now, though the implications were troubling.

"He anything like the man I've described to you?"

Cocky, yes. Smartass; yes, Olivia's Stabler was a smartass, too. He'd kept a handle on his temper but she'd seen it simmering beneath the surface, felt his anger, his hurt the moment he climbed into her car the night before. Decent, he seemed to be, and gentle, too. He'd been gentle with her, when she'd told him about Lewis. Aggressive, maybe; he hadn't been aggressive with her but when she'd told him she'd killed Lewis he'd said good, and meant it. Sounded like he was proud of her, for killing a man.

"I think he is," Olivia said slowly.

The man Bell described was a man Olivia wanted to know. A good man, a brave man, a strong man, a man who wouldn't back down from a fight. The kind of man who wouldn't be afraid of her, the kind of man who wouldn't balk in the face of her anger. A man who loved his family, but who was lonely, who was sad, the way she was.

This is dangerous. The thought floated through her mind as she sat there looking at Bell, wondering if Ayanna was thinking the same thing. Stabler was attractive, not just sexy - though he was that; his hard, heavy body, his soft smile, his warm blue eyes, the whole package was sexy - but possessed of the kind of traits Olivia might have looked for in a lover. But he was a stranger, an impossibility, a risk she couldn't dream of taking.

And besides, he was in love with someone else. With a version of her who was more forgiving, more open, less broken. He was in love with his Liv, and every time he saw Olivia's face it had to be Liv's eyes he was looking into, and even if, even if every word he said was true, Olivia was never going to be his Liv, and she would never settle for being his second choice, his close enough.

"This is crazy," she muttered. It wasn't like anything was gonna happen with Stabler; she'd let him stay with her another night, maybe two if the DNA results weren't back by tomorrow, and then he'd have to go make his own way in the world, and it didn't matter how appealing he was, she had no intention of acting on the maddening attraction she felt for him.

"Sometimes crazy's contagious," Bell said warningly. "Don't let him get too close."

"Your concerns is noted, Sergeant," Olivia said, suddenly feeling embarrassed about the whole thing. Maybe she'd revealed too much, asking about Stabler's wife, talking about her impressions of the man. Maybe Bell could read it in her face, how conflicted she was, how compelled she was by Stabler. If Bell had concerns Olivia needed to quash them, and fast; it wouldn't do for word of this to get out. If people knew what she'd done, how she'd opened her home to this man, how close she was letting him get, they'd doubt her ability to do her job. The job was the only thing she had; she couldn't risk losing it.

"Well, just let me know if you want help keeping tabs on him," Bell said. "And call me when the DNA results come back."

"I will."

"I'll see myself out. You have a good day, Captain."

"And you, Sergeant."

Bell departed without another word, and Olivia remained behind her desk, staring broodingly into her coffee.

The sooner this is over, the better, she thought. There was something like the scent of trouble in the air, and she feared what might happen if she continued down this road. She feared what she might find if she looked too closely at her own heart.