Chapter Text
October 2003.
They stop at a bar on the way back. Elliot doesn’t break the silence to check with Olivia and simply pulls over at an anonymous dive that’s nowhere near their usual lives.
“Come on,” he says, gentle but firm, the first thing either of them have said since they’d gotten back in the car. “We can both use a drink.”
What goes unsaid is that this is a no man’s land between knowing and not knowing, where Alexandra Cabot’s life hangs in the balance between the two. They can’t know what they know once they leave here; they’ll put it alongside their grief into a separate part of themselves that they won’t take off the dusty high shelf they leave it on until - well. That’s the fucking kicker, isn’t it?
“You said she’d be alright,” Olivia had told the doctor blankly when he’d delivered the news three nights ago. “I don’t understand, there’s been some mistake. You came out here hours ago and said she’d be fine.”
The doctor had babbled about blood loss, arteries, nicks, bullet wounds, unpredictability; Detective Benson is an officer, surely she’s seen enough in her line of work, surely she understands? Elliot’s rage was already coalescing like a still, hot star, but Olivia had a million questions, and her voice had grown higher and louder as she’d asked each of them until they’d drawn an audience and a pair of lurking security guards.
“Liv,” Elliot had said quietly as he tried to draw her away, finally resorting to holding her back when she started struggling against him. “Things happen on the table sometimes. Things take a turn. You know this.”
He’d put her in his car then too, driving to his house at four in the morning without any complaint from her, too busy staring at her hands and the blood she hadn’t gotten out from under her fingernails in some kind of shock. She’d sat down on the cement step on the path to the door, even though he’d gone and gotten the guest bed ready, and after a while he’d joined her. Kathy had come out with coffee and quiet words at some point and the kids had been hustled off to school. Together they’d watched the sun rise, and Olivia still hadn’t said anything until the sun was fully up and the light had broken harsh and orange across her face.
“This doesn’t feel real,” she’d said. Her voice was far away, like it was looking for whatever did feel real. Elliot wondered where that was, and tried not to be angry with a dead friend. It fucking figured, he’d wanted to say in the last few days, and only Liv’s stricken face had stopped him. They’d begged her. They’d begged her. It figured that she couldn’t help her own ego, her own pride, even with the end barreling straight for her.
Now it’s another night. They trudge their way inside the door and Elliot grabs a beer for them both from the bar. Olivia’s found a table in some dark corner, and she’s got her head in her hands, stretching the skin across her forehead while her wide eyes look sightlessly down at the scratched table, the way she does when she’s thinking her way through a problem she can’t physically chase down.
“Hey,” Elliot says as he nudges her arm with the bottle and slides into the seat across from her. “She’s okay. It’s better than - it’s better. Right?” It’s all he trusts himself to say, even here in an anonymous corner of an anonymous bar where nobody’s paying any attention to them at all. And he’s been checking.
But Liv still hasn’t said anything at all, not since she’d choked out How long? and hadn’t gotten an answer. How long? and that half step forward, Liv writing volumes for him to read in half a second. It’s not the first time Elliot’s wondered about his partner, but it’s rare that he feels like he might have missed something this big. He takes a long drink and keeps his questions to himself. At length, Olivia sits up, dry-eyed and stone-faced, and follows suit.
“Right,” she replies, two full minutes late. Her voice sounds like her own again at least, and something tight in Elliot loosens just enough that he doesn’t feel like he’s on the edge of constantly doing something he’ll regret. Alex Cabot is alive, and that fact dies here with the rest of their beers.
He takes Olivia home, and she slips out of the car with a silent squeeze of his hand. In the morning, they’ll go to the funeral. They’ll stand by the closed casket, the open grave. Alex won’t be inside either one, but it won’t stop Liv from looking away from both of them, clenching her hands into fists, anger and guilt high on her cheeks. Elliot knows the feeling.
She’ll be back, he won’t tell her, knowing better than to make promises. But he’ll look up at the sky, squinting into the brightness of the cool autumn noon, and think it anyway.