Work Text:
February 14
4:42pm — Olivia
The light felt like it was burning. Her eyes felt heavy and dry as she opened them, and the sudden intrusion of light seemed garish. Olivia could see that she was not at home, but nothing else registered. All she saw was white and jarring lights. She listened, desperate for some intelligible clue. Voices. Indistinct and rushed, but not overly loud. Beeping. A monitor? A hospital?
“Olivia!” a louder voice, over the homogeneous din.
Elliot’s voice.
“Elliot,” she tried to cry, but her throat and jaw were stuck where they were. She could suddenly feel the tube in her throat and her mouth. The sound caught in her chest, and she couldn’t hear it over the tapestry of voices.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ She tried to reach out, or rather, up, as it dawned on her that she was lying on her back. On a table.
With a monitor. And a tube.
‘Emergency room’, she reasoned.
“I’m fine! I don’t need anything; I need to see her. Liv!” she could hear Elliot barking. But where was he? Her eyes tried to scan the room for him, but she couldn’t lift her head. Her senses were coming back to her in waves, as her hearing and vision sharpened, she became acutely aware of the pain and weakness overwhelming the rest of her body.
“Whoa, hey, Captain Benson, welcome back,” a voice close to her said. “I’m going to need you to not move right now, okay? You’re at Mercy Hospital. You’ve been shot, and we need to figure out what all we’re dealing with.”
“She’s conscious?” Elliot yelped from somewhere beyond her feet.
“Detective Stabler, I really need you out of here. You’re bleeding, and they need to work on her.”
Olivia tried again to reach toward the sound of him, and she felt a hand grab onto hers and guide it back down to her side. Soft, thin fingers encased in latex. ‘Not Elliot,’ she registered.
“Captain Benson,” the other voice said. “You need to be still now. Davis, give her some Versed. We need to get her prepped for the OR.”
‘No, no, no,’ she thought. ‘I don’t want sedatives, I want to know what happened. Why was I shot? Where is Elliot, and why is he bleeding?’ She tried again to grasp for his hand, but her limbs felt even weaker than before, and she could no more than flex her fingers. The heaviness washed back over her then, dimming the noises and lights once more.
~oOo~
4:47pm — Elliot
“Liv!” Elliot screamed again before slumping against the wall in front of an exasperated resident. He was spent. He was nauseated by the smell of the hospital, and starting to choke on the terror in his throat. “Fuck!” he spat, glancing over to his right shoulder. ‘Shit’, he thought. The kid wasn’t wrong, he really was bleeding pretty steadily. ‘But there’s nothing in my shoulder that’s gonna kill me,’ he surmised.
Olivia on the other hand.
“Jesus.” Elliot slid to a squat and began weeping into his bloodied hands. Mostly her blood from the pressure he’d tried to apply to the wound.
Fin rushed down a corridor and turned just in time to see the resident and a nurse exchange bewildered looks over his head. “Stabler! Where’s she at?”
Elliot looked up feebly and hooked his head over his shoulder. The resident extended his hand toward Fin.
“Uh, Captain Benson is—”
Fin disregarded both the outstretched hand and the young man on the other end of it. “You look like shit, man, are you okay? You hit?” Fin held out his hand, but to Elliot, who took it with a mix of gratitude and grief and started to stand up.
“I’m hit but I’m fine, I mean my shoulder’s fine, but—” Fin nodded, meeting Elliot’s forearm with his other hand as he got to his feet. “Fin she wasn’t wearing a vest, there was no warning. She wasn’t even supposed to be there, the piece of shit, he—”
“Okay, okay. Slow down. We’ll figure all that out, but she needs all hands on deck, so let’s get out of their way.” Fin had clearly been working very closely with Olivia since Elliot left SVU. He sounded like her in this moment, the softness from his voice new to Elliot, but the instinctive ability to appeal to the senses of someone in distress so devastatingly familiar. “Hey man, you’re not gonna perform any surgery today, so let’s get that hole in your shoulder closed up so you can see her when she’s out.”
~oOo~
3:00pm — Elliot
Elliot got off the elevator on the 4 th floor above the café, only to find the floor appeared to be vacant.
“Detective Stabler!” a mockingly cheerful voice greeted. “Happy Valentine's Day, my friend, glad you could join us.” Richard Wheatly waved a hand in the direction of Dr. Vargas and Jet, bound to chairs behind him. His other hand held a pistol trained on Elliot’s head.
“You’re dead,” Elliot said, incredulously.
“No,” Wheatley said. “Angela is dead. I am alive and well. Well, alive. I have some unfinished business to take care of. And then all will be well.”
“Where’s Olivia,” he growled.
“Oh, the lovely Captain Benson, yes. She’ll be joining us shortly.” The monster chuckled. “You told her to meet us at 3:45. I wanted us to have some time to catch up,” he sneered.
“I what?”
Wheatley reached into his pocket with his free hand. Elliot reached for the pistol at his hip but was warned off with a shot whizzing by his opposite ear.
“I don’t think that’s wise, Elliot.” He held up a small device and pressed a button. Elliot heard his own voice delivering a message he’d never spoken. “Hey, Liv. It’s me. Look I have a surprise for tonight. Do you think you could duck out early? Meet me—”
“What the fuck is that?” Elliot asked.
“Well, it’s the voicemail you left her, clearly. Sounds a lot like the one she left you, doesn’t it? Your friends’ AI capabilities are very helpful.” Richard nodded. “My methods were so outmoded, having people followed and photographed… it’s incredibly time-consuming. Besides, after a while all of the schools and nursing homes look the same…don’t they?”
Elliot felt his blood run cold. What was happening with his mother, with Noah, while he was standing in this vacant office with this lunatic?
“Have a seat.” Wheatley gestured with his gun to a vacant chair near the door. “Just keep those hands where I can see them. And enjoy the show.”
“El? Where are you?” Olivia’s voice suddenly rang through the cavernous unused vestibule of the floor.
“She’s early…Must be very excited to see you, Elliot,” Wheatley taunted.
Elliot stared at the deranged smile in front of him as the gun barrel shifted slightly, from Elliot to the door. He looked beyond that, at Jet and Vargas, silent and obviously terrified. And somewhere outside this room, the love of his life was trying to find him with no way to know what else she was walking into.
If he didn’t call out to her, it would take her longer to find them, but he didn’t know if he could disarm Wheatley either way. This maniac was not going to relent until Eliot had been brought to his knees, and the surest way to do that was the pistol pointed at the door where Olivia was bound to find them eventually. If silence wasn’t an option, the only choice he had was to try to call her off.
“Turn around! Get out, Liv!” he bellowed. “It’s a trap!”
The clacking of her heeled boots slowed and was closer than before. Elliot winced. “Elliot, are you alright?” Closer.
“I’m okay Liv, but you’ve gotta turn around, you need to get out of here.”
~oOo~
3:39pm — Olivia
“Elliot, what the—” She could feel him in this corridor.
“Please Liv. I’m okay.” She could hear the constriction in his voice; he was steady, but tense. There was an urgency bordering on panic. He was afraid. “I’ll be home in a little while. Meet me there.” He was pleading with her now. Closer. To her left. She took a deep breath and reached for her gun before she opened the nearest door, and a hail of bullets erupted.
~oOo~
February 15
1:10am — Elliot
Elliot slouched wearily in a chair with Fin on one side of him and Kathleen on the other. He’d checked in with his sergeant who assured him that Jet and Vargas had been recovered safely and returned to OCCB. Wheatley was dead. For certain this time. She’d seen the body with her own eyes. Elliot had expected as much; Liv had gotten off two nearly perfect shots before going down. But it was nice to get that confirmation. There were details put on Noah and Bernadette for the time being, just in case. He’d called Rollins, who was going to pick up Noah from dance and settle him in at their house. Fin had called McGrath and updated him on Liv’s condition. McGrath had “suggested” that Fin return to babysit the squad, after which there had been some unrepeatable words exchanged. Ultimately McGrath determined that Fin could monitor SVU’s activities remotely unless a situation arose.
Ayanna had apparently called Kathleen, who’d arrived to Elliot’s surprise. Her eyes were already watery on her arrival, but at seeing her father and the despair on his face, she’d tossed her arms around him and both had started to sob. In any other circumstance, he may have been annoyed bout being treated with kid gloves. But there was no space left for agitation. There was no space for anything besides Olivia.
Olivia, who forgave him when he was unforgivable. Olivia, who had shown him compassion, when she was within her rights to show him contempt, or even to disown him entirely. Olivia, who had, against all odds, returned his love even after he’d been so selfish as to literally run from it.
Olivia. She was fighting for her life, and it was his fault. He noted a sense of déjà vu, and for a moment, the guilt that when it was Kathy in this place his heart had still found its way to a waiting room and to Olivia.
‘Olivia’. At this point her name was a mantra. A prayer. Maybe that was sacrilegious. But he didn’t care. She was his religion, his alter, his purpose. His eyes were heavy and dry. His body ached with despondency.
“Benson?”
Elliot was on his feet and closing the space between himself and the doctor before he found the breath to speak. “She’s my partner.”
The doctor nodded and glanced back to the chart in front of him. “Thankfully the chest entry missed anything vital. The breathing issues were due to a significant volume of blood in the chest cavity. It was a pressure issue, but both lungs are intact. Most of the bleeding was from the abdomen. We had to take a piece of the liver, but it looks like everything else was repairable. She’s out of surgery, but she’ll probably be in ICU for a few days.”
“I need her,” Elliot breathed out the words, feeling like he’d exhaled for the first time in hours.
“It’ll be a bit yet,” the doctor cautioned. Fin crossed the room now and gripped Elliot’s forearm before the spark of the refusal could ignite his raw nerves. “Not too much longer,” The doctor promised. “And if it helps pass the time? Go buy her a lotto ticket. She’s extremely lucky.”
‘I’m lucky,’ he thought. ‘She’s the saint that puts up with me.’
~oOo~
10:27am — Olivia
Her eyes fluttered open again. This time the light was softer. There was no tube. She was vaguely aware of a tight aching across her abdomen, which was enough to tell her not to move. There was a solid weight over her right arm, so she turned her head to that side. Elliot was sleeping in a chair, his torso slumped over onto her hospital bed with one of his huge hands gripping hers and his other resting on her forearm. She took him in for a moment before squeezing his hand and watching his eyes jolt open.
“Hey,” he breathed, sidling closer to her as he sat up. “Liv, hey.” He brought both hands to hold hers and lifted her knuckles to his lips.
“You look exhausted.” She sighed. “How long have you been here?”
“Me? I— Olivia—” he stammered. “We’ve been here about 18 hours. You…You got shot.”
“I sort of remember,” she murmured, and then, managing a smirk. “Not exactly Cupid’s Arrow, Detective.”
He kissed her palm before pressing it to his own cheek. “Copy that, Captain.” He finally allowed himself a slow, relieved smile, as she ran her thumb under his eye. “I’ll do better next year.”