Found

by Emily_on_stage

Summary:

the one where liv and amanda were dating when the lewis arc went down and everything catches up with amanda in the aftermath

this kinda wrote itself, i started writing and then i just couldn’t stop.

Amanda is running.

Sand sucks at her shoes like it’s trying to keep her back, every stride half-lost. Her lungs burn, breath clawing in and out in jagged pulls that don’t feel like oxygen. The radio at her hip is screaming—unit numbers, coordinates, someone yelling “Officer down—” and the words warp, tinny and distant, like they’re underwater.

She can’t hear anything except her own pulse.

The beach house is ahead of her, a dark shape against the gray smear of sky and ocean. Too small. Too far. Every time she blinks, it jumps back a little, retreating down the shoreline like it’s on a track. She bares her teeth and pushes harder.

“Come on, come on—”

Her thighs feel like they’re full of broken glass. The salt air rasps in her throat, the wind slaps at her face, but none of it feels real. It’s all background noise to the singular, pounding thought:

Get to Liv.

The radio crackles again. She catches fragments: “Lewis,” “no visual,” “don’t go in alone—”

She can’t even tell if it’s Fin or Nick or Cragen or some disembodied dispatcher in her ear. She slaps the volume down with a shaking hand because it’s just static now, a high, whining feedback that drills into her skull and makes her want to rip the thing off her belt.

The house looms bigger. Weathered wood, pale and blank, windows like dead eyes. The stairs up from the sand are crooked, teeth of gray planks. Amanda takes them two, three at a time, boots thudding, knee almost buckling when she misjudges the second-to-last step, catching herself on the rail with a bark of pain.

“Benson!” she yells, or tries to, but the wind steals her voice. “Liv!”

No answer.

Her hand slips on the doorknob. Sweat. Salt. Blood—she doesn’t know whose. The metal is slick and freezing under her palm, and for a second it won’t turn. She shoves her shoulder into the wood like it’s a suspect who won’t cooperate.

The door flies inward.

Time collapses.

The first thing she sees is Olivia’s eyes.

They find her instantly, as if they’d been waiting at that doorway, tracking her through the whole impossible sprint. Wide, dark, blown with fear or adrenaline or both. There’s a split second where they lock, Amanda frozen on the threshold, Olivia halfway across the room, a smear of pale light behind her from the window, Lewis a shadow at her side.

Olivia’s mouth opens.

And then Lewis puts a bullet through her skull.

The sound is a crack inside Amanda’s teeth. It explodes her world from the center outward. For a moment there’s no motion at all, just an obscene stillness: Olivia’s body caught in mid-recoil, hair lifting with the impact like someone’s pulled invisible strings, the spray of red blooming behind her in a slow, floating arc that doesn’t make sense.

The room tilts. The world whites out around the edges.

No.

It’s not a thought, it’s a howl that doesn’t make it past her throat.

Her gun is in her hand and she doesn’t remember drawing it. Her finger jerks on the trigger, again, again, the recoil snapping down her arm like a whip, but the shots make no sound. Lewis is still standing there, smirking, shoulder-to-shoulder with the body he’s just dropped, like a grotesque prom photo.

Olivia falls.

She doesn’t crumple delicately; she drops boneless, the way bodies do when whatever was holding them together is gone. Her head hits the floorboards with a wet thud that Amanda hears and feels, like someone slammed her own skull into the wood.

Amanda tries to run to her, but her legs won’t move.

She’s glued to the doorway, feet cemented, the distance between them stretching into something impossible. The floor is a conveyor belt moving the wrong way; every desperate step forward slides her further back. Her chest seizes. The air gets thicker, turning to syrup.

“Liv!” she tries again, her voice breaking, shredding her throat. “Liv, no, no, no—”

Olivia’s eyes are still open, staring up at the ceiling, at nothing. Her lips are parted in that half-finished syllable, the almost-name. Blood pools beneath her head, creeping outward in a too-slow halo, curling around the bare arch of her throat.

I promised I’d keep you safe.

The thought slams into her like a car. Out of nowhere, but also like it’s been there the whole time, carved into her bones.

“I promised,” she hears herself say, or thinks she does. Her jaw is moving. Her tongue feels too big in her mouth. “I promised, I promised—”

Lewis turns toward her at last, like he’s been waiting for his cue. The gun in his hand is still smoking, but the smoke rises in lazy curls that spell out words she can’t quite read. His smile is lazy, indulgent, like he’s amused by her insisting on being here for this.

“You were late,” he says conversationally. His voice is calm, bored, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Traffic, sweetheart?”

Her heart hammers against her ribs so hard it hurts. Her vision tunnels around Olivia’s body, her hands hanging limp, fingers curled.

I wasn’t fast enough.

“You should’ve run faster,” Lewis goes on, head cocked, like he’s talking to a child. “You should’ve paid attention. You should’ve known I’d escalate.” He taps his temple with the barrel of the gun. “Or is that too much for the gambler to process?”

The word gambler lands like a slap. Amanda flinches, but she can’t look away from Olivia. The blood keeps spreading, impossibly slow, creeping toward her boots, staining the soles even though they don’t move.

I wasn’t enough.

Her throat works. No sound. Her gun is still raised, her arm shaking so hard she can barely keep it pointed straight, but the trigger is welded in place under her finger, unmoving.

Lewis takes a step toward her.

Behind him, Olivia’s chest doesn’t rise.

“She trusted you,” he says lightly. “That’s the funny part.”

I promised I’d keep you safe.
I wasn’t fast enough.
I wasn’t enough.

The phrases stack, loop, echo, until they’re all there is. The radio on her hip is screeching again, voices yelling “Benson? Olivia? Olivia, do you copy?” but every time the name is spoken, it’s just another bullet ripping through the air and into bone.

Amanda tries to scream.

What comes out is—

 

She bolts upright with a violent jerk that tears her out of sleep like being yanked through ice.

Air won’t go in.

For a long, wild second, she doesn’t know where she is. The darkness is too thick, pressing against her eyes, her chest. The scent of salt and blood clings to the back of her nose. The echo of the gunshot ricochets around her skull.

Her hands claw at the sheets, at her own throat. The cotton twisted around her legs feels like restraints, rough and unyielding. Her pajama collar is choking her, digging into the side of her neck. She rips at it, fingers fumbling with fabric that won’t give.

“Breathe,” she hears, distantly. It might be her own voice, might be Olivia’s, might be no one at all. “Just breathe.”

She can’t.

Her lungs are locked up. Every inhale is shallow, scraping, like there’s a fist around her windpipe. Her heart is running sprints, too loud in her ears. Sweat slicks her spine, her hairline. The room is cold, but she’s burning.

She forces her eyes open.

The dark shapes of her bedroom slowly swim into focus: the dresser, the half-open closet door, the weak city light slipping around the edges of the blinds and striping the walls. No ocean. No beach house. No Lewis.

No Olivia.

Amanda’s stomach drops.

She fumbles for her phone on the nightstand with hands that won’t stop shaking. It clatters to the floor, bounces once, lights up. She almost falls out of bed reaching for it, knees hitting the hardwood, pain sparking up her shins, but she barely feels it.

Lock screen: 03:17 a.m.
No missed calls. No new texts. No little gray bubble with Liv’s name at the top.

Her breath stutters.

Proof of life, her brain chants, hysterical. Need proof, need proof, need—

She jabs her thumb against the screen, swipes, opens their message thread. The last text is from earlier that night, a brief, understated Got home. You sleep yet? followed by Amanda’s reply: Trying. Night, Liv. There’s a smiley she doesn’t remember sending.

Trying.

The word twists in her gut.

“It was a dream,” she tells herself, out loud. Her voice is hoarse, like she’s been screaming. Maybe she has. “It was a dream. She’s alive. It was a dream.”

Her body doesn’t care. Every cell is still on the beach house floor, standing in the doorway staring at a body that won’t move.

She squeezes her eyes shut, forces air into her lungs on a count. One-two-three in, one-two-three-four-five out. Her chest spasms around it. Her hands won’t unclench.

“I promised I’d keep you safe,” she hears herself whisper. It sounds insane in the quiet apartment. “I promised.”

Her heart stutters, a painful double-beat. The thought slams back, harder: I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t enough.

Something inside her snaps.

She’s moving before she’s decided to move.

One second she’s kneeling on the floor, phone clutched in a death grip; the next she’s yanking open drawers, dragging on jeans with numb fingers, nearly falling when her foot catches in the leg. Her brain is still trying to finish the grounding exercise—Name five things you can see, four things you can touch—but the list dissolves under the roar of adrenaline.

T-shirt, hoodie. Whatever’s closest. Her arms slide into sleeves by muscle memory. Her fingers fumble over her keys on the hook by the door. She doesn’t remember grabbing her badge, but it’s suddenly heavy at the small of her back.

She doesn’t decide to go to Olivia’s.

By the time that thought fully forms—You can’t just show up, what are you doing, you’re being crazy, stop—she’s already out of the bedroom. Already crossing the living room. Already unlocking the door with hands that are still shaking, breath still ragged.

The hallway light spills over her bare feet as she steps out. The door clicks shut behind her, soft and final, like a gun being re-holstered.

The stairwell smells like old paint and somebody’s microwave mistake. Amanda takes the steps too fast anyway, one hand on the rail like it’s the only thing tethering her to gravity. Her feet barely touch each landing. The whole building is asleep; she’s the only thing in it that’s on fire.

When she pushes through the front door, the cold hits her full-force.

It’s not the gentle kind, not the romantic winter air that makes you feel awake. It’s a slap. It snaps across her cheeks, crawls down her throat, punches right into her lungs like it’s offended she dared to breathe. Her eyes water instantly. She sucks in another breath and it burns, and for a second the sting is almost a relief—something real, something physical that isn’t the beach house floorboards and that gunshot still ringing behind her teeth.

She steps onto the sidewalk like she’s stepping off a ledge.

The street is quiet in a way that feels staged. Too empty. Too composed. New York at three in the morning is supposed to be loud even when it’s sleeping—trash trucks, distant sirens, someone shouting, laughter spilling out of a bar. Tonight it’s… muted. Like somebody turned the city down to low volume. The lamplight pools in too-neat circles on the pavement. The storefront signs glow too bright, neon cutting clean shapes out of the dark.

Too bright. Too quiet.

Too indifferent.

A cab slides past with its roof light on, slow as a shark, and for a split second the tinted window catches her reflection. Her face in the glass looks wrong—eyes wide, skin too pale, mouth parted like she’s still trying to pull air through a locked throat.

And behind her, in that same window, there’s a flicker of a pale beach house door.

Amanda’s stomach lurches.

She jerks her gaze away like the reflection can grab her.

She’s moving without deciding to move, feet carrying her down the block. Her hoodie isn’t zipped. Her fingers are numb. She pats her pockets with clumsy hands like she’s checking herself for bullet holes.

Phone. Badge. Gun. Keys.

Keys.

She stops so abruptly she nearly trips over her own feet, and the thought hits her in a cold spike: Did I take my keys? It’s absurd and huge at the same time. Keys are proof of competence. Keys are the line between “I’m fine” and “I’m losing it.”

Her hand dives into her pocket and closes around metal.

Okay. Okay.

She doesn’t remember grabbing them. She doesn’t remember locking her door. She doesn’t remember most of the last five minutes, because her brain is still halfway in a room that smells like salt and gunpowder. But the keys are there, biting cold into her palm, and she clings to them like a rosary.

She starts walking again, faster.

Her body has a single objective: go to her. It doesn’t matter if it’s logical. It doesn’t matter if it’s messy. It doesn’t matter if Olivia is sleeping peacefully three miles away and Amanda is about to look unhinged on her doorstep.

Her nervous system learned the equation months ago—maybe years ago, if she’s being honest.

Threat + love = move.

When you love someone and the world makes them unsafe, you do not sit still. You do not wait. You do not trust time to behave. You get there.

She makes it to her car like it’s a mission. The streetlights smear across the hood. Her breath fogs in front of her face. Her hands fumble with the key fob, thumb slipping, and the lock clicks open with a sound that’s too loud in the quiet.

She yanks the driver’s door open and gets hit with the trapped cold of the interior. She slides in, slams the door, sits for half a second with her forehead resting against the steering wheel.

In. Out. In— no.

Her lungs don’t want to.

She forces it anyway. The wheel is cold under her palms. Her pulse is still sprinting. Her hands are shaking so hard the keys jingle like wind chimes. She jams them into the ignition on the second try and twists.

The engine coughs to life.

The radio comes on automatically and a voice spills out—too cheerful, too normal—and she hits the button so hard it nearly snaps, killing it. Silence drops back into place. She can hear her own breath, ragged, the wet click at the back of her throat as she swallows against nausea.

She backs out, tires crunching over grit, and pulls into the street.

The city slides by in a cold blur.

Streetlights. Empty crosswalks. The occasional figure hunched in a doorway. A bodega cat watching her with unblinking judgment. Everything looks like a set. Everything looks like it’s pretending not to be a place where people get hurt.

She hits the first red light and it might as well be a fist in her chest.

She stops. Her knee bounces. She stares at the signal like she can intimidate it into changing. The quiet around her becomes unbearable; her brain fills the space with the gunshot again, with Olivia’s mouth forming her name and never finishing it.

The light stays red.

“Come on,” Amanda whispers, voice raw. “Come on.”

She grips the wheel tighter. Her nails press crescent moons into her palms. The car idles under her like a restrained animal.

The cross street is empty. No headlights. No pedestrians. Nothing.

Her foot twitches toward the gas.

For a second she has the vivid, horrifying certainty that if she waits at this light, Olivia will die again. That every second she sits still is a second too late. That time is not neutral; time is the thing that steals people.

The signal clicks, turns green.

Amanda exhales so hard it hurts and she goes.

She drives too fast, not wildly, not swerving, but with an urgency that makes every turn tight and every yellow light feel like a personal insult. The city tries to slow her down with the petty rules of physics and traffic, and Amanda resents it with a ferocity that surprises her.

At another light, she catches her reflection in a puddle as she rolls forward, headlights washing over wet asphalt. The water mirrors the underside of the world—dark, shimmering—and in it she sees the flash again: Olivia’s eyes, wide and anchored on hers.

Amanda’s breath stutters.

She looks away, but the image follows her, stamped on the inside of her eyelids. She blinks hard, like she can shake it loose.

It doesn’t loosen.

You were late, her brain supplies, cruel and flat.

“No,” she says out loud, and the word comes out like a sob. “No.”

She changes lanes. She watches her mirrors too much, then not at all. The empty backseat feels like it’s watching her. She keeps seeing movement at the edge of her vision—shadows that could be a person, could be nothing. Every time a car passes going the opposite direction, its headlights flare and she flinches as if it’s muzzle flash.

This is what the aftermath does. It turns ordinary light into threat.

And there it is, the micro-truth she can’t keep buried, sliding in like a blade between ribs:

Olivia’s eyes afterward.

Not the eyes from the nightmare. The real ones. The ones that looked like they’d been scraped raw.

The way Olivia said “I’m okay” like it was an order.

Not a reassurance. A command. Something she needed the world to obey so she could keep standing.

And the way Amanda had nodded. Had agreed. Had smiled like she believed it. Because what else do you do when someone you love is bleeding out in front of you in slow motion and refuses to call it bleeding?

You comply. You become the echo of their denial.

Okay, Amanda had said, soft. Okay. You’re okay.

She hates that memory now, not because it’s wrong—because she understands why Olivia needed it—but because it meant Amanda swallowed her own fear and called it strength. Because she took the shape Olivia required and told herself it was love.

And now her body is done being polite about it.

Now her body is saying: No. I need to see her. I need to know. I need proof.

She turns onto Olivia’s street before she even realises she’s there.

The buildings look the same as always. The pavement is cracked in the same spots. A trash bag sits by the curb like it’s been abandoned mid-thought. Everything is unbearably normal, and it makes her eyes burn.

Amanda’s hands tighten on the steering wheel until her knuckles ache.

Her heart is still running.

She tells herself she’s just checking. She tells herself she’ll see the lights out, the curtains drawn, and she’ll go home. She tells herself she’ll feel ridiculous and relieved.

Her body doesn’t listen.

It just keeps moving forward, toward the block where Olivia sleeps—toward the place where reality has to prove itself, because Amanda’s brain is still stuck in the doorway of a beach house that doesn’t exist.

And the worst part is: somewhere underneath the panic, a smaller voice is already whispering the next shame, the next dread.

What if she answers? What if she hears you like this? What if you break in her hands?

Amanda swallows hard, throat tight.

Too late.

She’s already here.

Amanda kills the engine and the sudden silence is so complete it feels like stepping off a moving train.

For a second she just sits there, hands still locked on the steering wheel like it’s the only thing keeping her upright. The dashboard lights dim. The heater sighs its last breath and goes dead. The car becomes a cold little box, sealed up with her panic.

Outside, Olivia’s building stands there like it always has.

Brick. Windows. A lobby light that buzzes faintly. A couple of parked cars. A stupid little tree stripped bare for winter, wrapped in those pathetic white string lights that make everything look gentler than it is.

Just… a building.

Which is the problem. That’s what makes her stomach twist.

Because how can something so normal—so boring—hold something so terrifying? How can Olivia Benson, who was a headline and a hostage and a nightmare that aired on every screen in the city, be upstairs behind one of those windows like she’s just… a person? Like she can be contained by drywall and locks and a doorman and the thin, ordinary fabric of a sleeping night.

Amanda stares at the facade until her eyes burn.

She can’t remember which floor, not immediately. She knows she’s been there, knows she’s walked up those steps, knows she’s kissed Olivia on the threshold and pretended the hallway didn’t smell like everyone else’s lives. But her brain is fogged with adrenaline and all the windows look the same—dark rectangles reflecting streetlight, silent, indifferent.

She’s fine. she tells herself, the same way she told herself in the bathroom mirror five minutes after it all ended, after they’d all stopped running and started pretending the ground under them was solid again.

She’s fine. She’s asleep. You’re freaking out over a dream.

Her fingers flex against the wheel. Her palms are damp. Her nails dig into the leather.

“Go home,” she says out loud, like that makes it an instruction she can obey. Her voice is thin, torn at the edges. “Amanda. Go home.”

She doesn’t move.

Her chest rises and falls in shallow, uneven pulls. There’s a dull ache behind her sternum, like her heart has bruised itself from pounding too hard.

Her eyes drag back to the building.

Just check, her body argues, frantic and simple. Just make sure. It doesn’t care about pride. It doesn’t care about boundaries or dignity or the fact that Olivia will hear the panic in her voice and it’ll become something she has to carry.

It cares about one thing:

Alive.

Amanda tips her head back against the headrest and closes her eyes.

The inside of her eyelids is not darkness. It’s that split-second freeze-frame: Olivia’s gaze snagging on hers. Lips parting around Amanda’s name. The crack of the gunshot.

Her throat tightens.

She opens her eyes too fast, like she’s been dunked in cold water.

No. No, no.

Her gaze snaps back up to the building, to the windows. She tries again to find the right one. She scans, counts floors, recalculates. Her brain is doing math it shouldn’t have to do.

Come on. Come on.

As if if she stares hard enough, she can make a light flick on. As if she can will a silhouette into existence—Olivia moving through her apartment, half-asleep, grabbing a glass of water, scratching her hair, doing some small human thing that will prove Amanda is in the right timeline.

Nothing moves.

Everything stays still.

Amanda’s hand lifts, shaking, and she grabs her phone. The screen feels too bright in the dark car. She blinks hard and opens their messages.

Her thumbs hover over the keyboard.

Are you awake?

Delete.

Sorry, I know it’s late. I just—

Delete.

She swallows, jaw tight, and tries again, fingers clumsy like she’s wearing gloves.

Had a nightmare. Can you just—

Delete.

She can feel the shame rising now, hot and sour, crawling up the back of her throat. The shame is almost worse than the fear, because shame has structure. Shame is familiar. Shame is what she does when she needs something.

She stares at the blank text box until her eyes blur.

This is pathetic, she thinks, viciously, trying to bully herself back into control. You’re going to wake her up because you couldn’t handle a dream? You’re going to show up outside her place like some— like some—

Like some scared little girl, her brain supplies, unkind.

Amanda presses the heel of her hand into her eye socket hard enough to make stars burst behind her eyelid. It doesn’t help. It just makes her breathe hitch.

She lowers her hand and realises her cheeks are wet.

She doesn’t remember starting to cry.

It’s like her body did it quietly while she was busy trying to negotiate with herself, a betrayal happening in real time. A tear slips down her jaw and disappears into her collar. Another follows. Her lips part on a sound that isn’t quite a sob, isn’t quite a laugh. Her breath stutters, tripping over itself.

“God,” she whispers, and it comes out like a prayer and a curse at the same time. “Oh, God.”

The building stays the same. The windows stay dark. The world refuses to answer.

Amanda wipes her face with the back of her sleeve, angry at the wetness, angry at herself, angry at the fact that she can’t just be normal about this. She tries to inhale deep, tries to ground—You’re in your car. You’re on a street. It’s a dream. It’s a dream.—

Her lungs don’t listen.

Her throat tightens the way it did in the nightmare, the way it does when panic decides it owns the space behind her ribs. Her hands shake around the phone. The screen swims.

She thinks, very suddenly, with a clarity that hurts:

I need to hear her voice.

Not see a light. Not see a silhouette. Not stare at a building and hope the universe shows mercy.

Voice is proof. Voice is a handhold.

Amanda taps Olivia’s name before she can talk herself out of it.

The phone rings once.

Twice.

Each ring is a hammer blow. Each ring is a countdown. She holds the phone to her ear and stops breathing entirely, like the act of inhaling might ruin it, might jinx it, might make the universe choose the worst possible answer.

On the third ring, there’s a click.

A tiny intake of breath on the other end—sleepy, real, alive.

And then Olivia Benson’s voice, low and rough with sleep, says her name like it matters:

“Rollins?”

Amanda’s lungs forget how to work.

The sound that comes out of her is not a word. It’s just air—broken, wet, desperate—like her whole body has been waiting for that single syllable and now it doesn’t know what to do with the fact that it got it.

She presses her forehead against the steering wheel, phone pinned to her ear, eyes squeezed shut.

“Liv,” she tries, and it comes out strangled. “Liv, I— I—”

Her throat closes.

Her chest heaves.

She can hear Olivia shift on the other end, the mattress creak faintly through the line, sleep evaporating from her voice as the tone changes—sharp, alert, instantly present.

“Amanda?” Olivia says, firmer now. “Amanda, talk to me.”

Amanda drags in a breath. It comes in shallow, ragged, like she’s breathing through a straw.

“I—” she manages, and the word breaks immediately. “I had— I—”

The rest collapses into a sob.

She hates it. She hates the sound of it, the way it spills out of her without permission. She hates that Olivia can hear it. She hates that she called. She hates that she’s parked outside this building like a lunatic, like she’s one bad night away from being the kind of person Olivia files away under complicated. She hates herself most of all for the fact that none of that matters because her body is still convinced Olivia is—

No. Don’t go there.

“Amanda.” Olivia again, sharper now, and for a second it’s Lieutenant Benson, it’s command, it’s the voice that cuts through chaos and gets people moving. “Hey. Listen to me.”

Amanda tries. Truly. She tries to obey. She tries to drag her brain up out of the undertow long enough to form a sentence.

“It was— a dream,” she forces out. The words come out broken, between breaths. “I— I couldn’t— I thought—”

She makes the mistake of letting the image surface.

Beach house. Door. Olivia’s eyes finding her. Lips shaping her name.

Her lungs seize. Her vision swims. The steering wheel suddenly feels too far away, like she’s floating off her own seat.

“Okay,” Olivia says, and it’s so calm it’s almost unbearable. “Okay. You’re having a panic attack. I’m with you.”

Amanda’s throat works. She swallows. It does nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts, because apology is her reflex, because it’s the only thing she knows how to offer when she takes up too much space. “I’m sorry, Liv, I’m— I’m sorry—”

“Stop.” Not harsh. Just firm. The kind of stop that isn’t punishment, it’s safety. “Don’t apologize.”

Amanda’s breath shudders. She holds it, then lets it go in a shaky exhale that sounds like it hurts.

There’s a tiny sound on the other end—fabric shifting, sheets, the creak of a mattress as Olivia sits up. The world on Olivia’s side is waking up in real time, and Amanda can hear it. She can hear Olivia becoming present.

“Where are you.”

Not are you okay. Not what happened. Not even what do you need.

Where are you.

A rope tossed to someone flailing in dark water. A question that is also a direction: come back to here. Come back to now.

Amanda’s mouth opens. Nothing comes out at first. Her tongue feels thick. Her jaw trembles.

“I—” she starts again, and the word nearly catches. She squeezes her eyes shut, digs her nails into her palm hard enough to sting.

Say it. Say it and let her hate you. Say it and let her know.

“…Outside,” she whispers.

The silence on the line is immediate.

Not the dead, abandoned silence of someone hanging up. Not the silence of confusion or annoyance.

It’s the kind of silence Olivia uses when she’s processing a new piece of information, recalculating in her head, shifting into a different gear. Amanda can almost see her face in her mind—eyes narrowing slightly, mouth set, that stillness that happens right before action.

“Outside,” Olivia repeats quietly. “Outside where.”

Amanda’s throat tightens again. Shame floods hot through her ribs, thick and nauseating.

“…Outside your apartment.”

A beat.

A longer beat.

On the other end, Amanda hears Olivia exhale, slow and controlled, like she’s forcing her body not to spike. Like she’s taking her own medicine without letting Amanda see.

“Outside?” Olivia’s voice is softer now, but there’s an edge under it—something sharp that isn’t anger, exactly, but alarm. “Right now?”

Amanda’s eyes sting. Another tear slides down her cheek and she doesn’t bother wiping it away. Her hands are shaking too hard.

“Yes,” she whispers. “I’m— I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry— I didn’t mean to, I just— I couldn’t—”

“Amanda.” Olivia cuts in, not raising her voice, just slicing clean through the spiral. “Listen to me.”

Amanda tries to breathe. Her chest shudders. The steering wheel is damp beneath her forehead.

“Don’t apologize,” Olivia says again, more gently this time, like she’s placing the words right in front of Amanda’s feet so she has something to step on. “Stay where you are.”

Amanda’s stomach twists. “Liv, I—”

“Stay.” A heartbeat of command. Then, softer: “I’m coming down.”

Amanda can hear movement now—Olivia swinging her legs out of bed, bare feet on floor, the rustle of fabric as she stands. The tiny, ordinary sounds of a person alive in her own apartment at three in the morning.

The relief is so sharp it almost makes Amanda gag.

And underneath it—beneath the relief, beneath the shame, beneath the still-panicked ache of her ribs—there’s something else. A tremor in Olivia’s breath between words, so small Amanda might’ve missed it if she weren’t listening like her life depends on it.

Olivia is steady. Olivia is controlled.

But she is not untouched.

Amanda’s sob catches. She swallows it down hard, as if she can make herself lighter, smaller, easier to hold.

“Okay,” she whispers, voice wrecked. “Okay.”

“Good,” Olivia murmurs. “I’m right here. I’m coming.”

The line goes quiet but not dead.

Amanda can hear Olivia moving—drawer sliding, the soft thump of a closet door, the creak of floorboards that she recognises now. There’s the muffled clink of keys being grabbed from a bowl. Every sound is proof. Every sound is oxygen.

“Elevator,” Olivia says, a minute later, a little breathless. It’s not information; it’s reassurance. Still here. Still coming.

Amanda nods like Liv can see her. Her hand is starting to cramp with how tightly she’s holding the phone. Her other hand hasn’t left the steering wheel, fingers dug in like the car might drift away if she lets go.

Outside, the building’s lobby door is a closed mouth.

“Can you breathe for me?” Olivia asks, somewhere between floors. Her voice is softer now, echoing slightly in the elevator car. “In for three, out for five.”

Amanda drags the air in. It scratches. Her chest feels too small.

“One… two… three,” Olivia murmurs with her, barely audible over the faint hum of machinery. “Out. One… two… three… four… five.”

The numbers are a rope. Amanda clings to them.

The hallway light in the building flicks on behind the glass as the elevator arrives. Amanda watches it with laser focus, like if she blinks, she’ll miss Olivia entirely. A shape moves past the frosted glass panel in the lobby door—tall, familiar, barefoot in sweats and an old NYPD academy hoodie that hangs off one shoulder.

Amanda’s breath catches.

The door buzzer sounds, then clicks as Olivia unlocks it from inside. The heavy glass swings open.

And there she is.

Hair mussed like she’s raked her fingers through it on the way down. Face clean, bare of makeup, shadows under her eyes carved deep by too many sleepless nights and not enough rest. Sweatpants bunched at the ankles. The hoodie strings uneven. One hand gripping her keys, the other holding her cell to her ear.

Real. Human. Alive.

For a heartbeat, Amanda just stares.

Her brain does this wild stutter, like a scratched DVD trying to play two scenes at once. Beach house doorway—blood, gun, the wrong kind of silence—overlaid with this mundanity: a lobby with ugly tiles and a wall of mailboxes, Olivia standing in the middle of it, squinting into the dark toward the street like she’s not sure where Amanda is.

“Amanda?” Olivia’s voice doubles—faint through the phone and clearer, softer, coming from ten yards away. Her gaze casts over the parked cars until it lands on the one with the woman curled around the steering wheel.

Their eyes meet.

Something in Amanda’s chest gives out.

She’s moving before she’s decided to move, again. The phone slips from her ear, falls into the cup holder, Olivia’s voice crackling tinny from the speaker as Amanda shoves the door open. Cold air rushes in, slapping her cheeks, stealing the breath she didn’t really have to begin with.

Her legs feel like they belong to someone else. She stumbles as she gets out, catching herself against the car frame, and then she’s crossing the short stretch of sidewalk with all the grace of a newborn foal. The world tunnels down to a single point: Olivia, framed in the lobby doorway, stepping forward as if she can’t stand the distance either.

“Hey,” Olivia says, low, as Amanda reaches her. Up close, the harsh hallway lighting is unforgiving; it shows every line in her face, every worry etched in. It also glints on the faint sheen of sweat at her temple, the tremor in the hand she isn’t quite showing. “Hey. I’m right here.”

Amanda tries to answer.

What comes out is a wrecked sound, somewhere between a sob and a gasp.

Her body hits its limit.

She falters on the threshold, knees threatening to give, and Olivia moves without thinking, closing the last step between them. She gets a hand around Amanda’s upper arm, steadying, guided by instinct and a hundred nights of standing between victims and whatever’s coming next.

“Hey,” she repeats, closer now. “Hey. Come here.”

Amanda goes.

She collapses into Olivia like that’s the only direction her body understands. Her arms find their way around Liv’s waist, clutching desperately, fingers curling in the fabric of the hoodie as if she can anchor herself that way, as if she can keep Olivia’s heart beating purely by proximity.

Her face presses into the warm hollow between Olivia’s shoulder and neck, breath hot and ragged against skin that smells like sleep and laundry detergent and the faintest trace of Olivia’s shampoo. The world shrinks to the feel of Olivia’s ribs under her cheek, the rise and fall of her breathing, the solid weight of her.

Alive.

Amanda’s shaking so hard their teeth nearly knock together. Big, ugly sobs tear loose from somewhere she thought she’d welded shut. Her shoulders hitch with each one, whole body jerking against Olivia like she’s being pulled on a string.

Olivia takes it.

She wraps her arms around Amanda with intention, not hesitance. One palm slides up between Amanda’s shoulder blades, broad and warm and steady. The other finds the base of her skull, fingers threading into damp hair at her nape, applying just enough pressure to say I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Stay right here.

“It’s okay,” Olivia murmurs, the words rumbling through her chest where Amanda can feel them. The harsh hallway light hums above them. Somewhere upstairs, a pipe clanks. The city moves on, indifferent.

“Hey. Hey.” She tips her chin, resting it lightly on top of Amanda’s head. “I’ve got you. Breathe.”

Amanda tries.

Her breath saws in and out in rough bursts, hitching around sobs. She’s aware, dimly, of the front of Olivia’s hoodie growing damp where her face is pressed, of the snot and tears and the sheer humiliation of coming apart like this in a building hallway at three in the morning.

She can’t stop.

“I can’t—” she chokes, fingers spasming in the cotton at Olivia’s back. “I— I can’t—”

“You’re okay,” Olivia says quietly, low enough that the words feel like a secret. She rocks them a fraction, just enough for movement, a soothing back-and-forth. “You’re okay. I’m here.”

Her voice is so calm it almost sounds like a lie. But her hands are steady. Each circle she draws between Amanda’s shoulder blades is the same: up, around, down. Data points in a map back to her own body.

Olivia glances once at the open lobby door, at the sidewalk outside, at the dark street. The night feels too exposed. Amanda is shaking under her hands, noise catching in her throat like she’s being strangled by her own panic.

No way in hell is she letting this happen on a sidewalk.

“Come on,” Olivia murmurs into Amanda’s hair, turning them gently, keeping her arm firm around Amanda’s shoulders as she backs them into the lobby. “Let’s get you upstairs, okay? You don’t have to do this out here.”

Amanda’s legs obey whatever direction Olivia sets. She stumbles, toes catching on the threshold, and Olivia tightens her grip, guiding, not forcing, walking backwards toward the elevator with them welded together.

The lobby blurs. The elevator doors open with a soft ding. Olivia manoeuvres them inside without breaking contact, reaching blindly to hit the button for her floor. As the doors slide shut, the reflection in the metal panels shows a version of them Amanda wouldn’t recognise any other day: Olivia, barefaced and rumpled, holding a crying woman who looks like she’s been dragged out of a storm.

Amanda sees the wreck of her own face—red-rimmed eyes, blotchy cheeks, hair straggling out of its tie—and something in her twists with mortification.

She burrows in closer, as if she can hide inside Olivia’s chest.

Olivia adjusts automatically, arm tightening, hand at the back of her head gently pressing her in, like she’s saying don’t look, you don’t have to look, I’ll hold it for you.

“It felt so real,” Amanda finally forces out, the words torn from her on a sob. They taste like blood and salt and shame. “Liv, it— it felt—”

“I know,” Olivia says.

She does. God, she does.

For a second, something sharp and cold slices through her composure—a flash of being the one on the floor, the one in the chair, the one in the hospital bed, listening to her own voice say “I’m okay” like it’s a safe word and knowing it isn’t true.

She hears Amanda’s breath hitch on he, hears the horror baked into the single sound, and her own lungs stutter.

Not here. Not now.

Olivia clamps down on it, feeling the tremor start in her own hands and forcing it still. She directs all of it—fear, anger, that deep, marrow-level exhaustion—into the steady pattern of her thumb tracing circles at the nape of Amanda’s neck.

The elevator doors slide open onto her floor.

She steers Amanda down the hallway with quiet, constant touches: a palm at her back, fingers curling around her elbow. Amanda’s steps are uneven, her breath still a mess, but she goes where Olivia puts her, eyes unfocused, clinging like she’s afraid gravity will change its mind if she lets go.

At the apartment door, Olivia works the lock one-handed, key scraping a little in the deadbolt. She eases them inside, kicks the door shut with her heel, and the familiar scent of her place washes over them—coffee and old books and the faint trace of whatever she cooked hours ago.

Safe.

The contrast between that smell and the memory still fresh in Amanda’s head—salt air and gunpowder—almost makes her dizzy.

Olivia coaxes her toward the couch.

Amanda doesn’t remember sitting down, but suddenly she’s there, weight sinking into the cushions. Olivia stays in front of her, close enough that their knees bump, hands still on Amanda’s shoulders like she’s anchoring her in place.

Amanda’s hands don’t get the memo that they can let go. They fist in the fabric of Olivia’s hoodie, refusing to release their grip.

Olivia doesn’t make her.

She slips down to her knees on the rug instead, bringing them to eye level, making herself smaller, easier to hold onto. Her knees protest the hardwood with a dull ache; she doesn’t care. From here, she can keep her touch on Amanda’s arms, her thighs, her hands—anywhere that might get through.

“Look at me,” Olivia says softly.

Amanda’s gaze drags up from somewhere over Olivia’s shoulder, skittering, unfocused, then finally lands on her face.

God, she looks wrecked.

Her pupils are blown wide. Mascara—what’s left of it—is smudged at the corners of her eyes. Her lower lip trembles. She opens her mouth like she might say something and then closes it again, throat working.

“Amanda,” Olivia says, gentler. “You’re here. With me. Not there.”

Amanda swallows hard. Her fingers twist in the hoodie strings.

“You were dead,” she blurts.

The words shoot out of her like a bullet, bypassing every filter. Her voice cracks clean down the middle. Saying it out loud makes it real in a way that hurts more than the dream did, because now it’s in the room with them.

Olivia’s face goes very still.

For a second, the room tilts for her, too. She feels the shape of the word in her own mouth—dead—the way she’s heard it paired with her name too many times in other people’s nightmares. She feels again the weight of Lewis’s hand on her throat, the press of zip ties on skin, the moment she genuinely didn’t know if she’d ever see any of this again.

She feels it—and chooses not to go there.

She sets it down, gently but firmly, like a dangerous object she refuses to pick up right now.

Amanda’s hands tighten, nails biting into Olivia’s biceps through the hoodie. “You were—” She chokes on the rest, shakes her head like she can throw the image off. “He— in my dream— you—”

She can’t finish.

“Hey.” Olivia’s voice is a low murmur, a steadying hand on ice. She lifts one palm to Amanda’s jaw, thumb brushing clumsily at a tear track. “Amanda. Look at me.”

Amanda does. Barely. Eyes flicking, then finally locking onto Olivia’s.

“I’m alive,” Olivia says.

Simple. Unadorned. No caveats, no hedging.

She lets the truth of it sit between them for a beat.

“I’m here,” she adds, quieter. Her thumb moves in a slow arc against Amanda’s cheekbone. “You’re in my apartment. You called me, and I answered, and you’re here.”

Amanda’s breath hitches. Something in her posture eases a tiny fraction, shoulders dropping half an inch like her muscles just noticed Olivia’s words and decided to try believing them.

“And you’re safe,” Olivia finishes.

It’s not a promise she makes lightly. She knows better than most how conditional safety really is. But in this room, in this moment, she will fight to make it true.

Amanda’s face crumples.

“I thought we were too late,” she whispers, and the sentence lands with the weight of a confession, a sin she’s been carrying around like a stone. “In the dream. I— I saw the house and I was running and I still— I still didn’t get there in time—”

Her throat closes around the last word. She swallows, hard, forcing it out anyway. “I thought I didn’t get there in time.”

The words hit Olivia somewhere deep and bruised.

Too late.

It’s her own worst fear, mirrored back at her from Amanda’s mouth. Not for herself—for everyone she’s ever tried to save and couldn’t. For every victim who slipped through the cracks. For every time she showed up and found a body instead of a survivor. The idea of someone she loves carrying that particular brand of guilt over her is like pressing on a bruise that never healed properly.

She lets herself feel it for exactly one second.

Then she moves.

Her hands slide from Amanda’s shoulders to wrap around her fully, closing the space between them. She leans in, pulling Amanda off the couch and into her arms again, this time tighter, more deliberate. Amanda comes without resistance, folding, curling into Olivia’s chest like she’s finding her original shape.

“No,” Olivia says, voice quiet but fierce against Amanda’s hair. “Hey. Look at me.”

Amanda shakes her head, burrowing in, but Olivia persists, one hand at the back of her neck, not forcing, just holding.

“You got there,” Olivia says. “You hear me? You got there. I’m sitting here with you because you— and Fin, and Nick, and everyone— you got there.”

Her voice wobbles, just for a heartbeat, and she swallows it down.

“You didn’t lose me.”

Amanda makes a sound that’s almost a laugh, almost a sob. Her fingers claw at the back of Olivia’s hoodie.

“I almost did,” she breathes. “I almost did and I— I can’t—”

“I know,” Olivia says. Her eyes burn. She presses her lips together, hard, for a moment, then eases them apart to let out a slow, controlled breath that brushes warm over Amanda’s temple. “Believe me, I know.”

She closes her eyes briefly and chooses, again, the present over the flashback.

She does not think about rope. About the taste of fear in the back of her throat. About hearing her own voice on taped playback. She doesn’t think about the way the world narrowed to single choices, single seconds.

Instead, she focuses on this: the weight of Amanda in her arms. The damp heat of her cheek against Olivia’s chest. The hitch in her breath slowly, slowly spacing out. The solid thud of two hearts, not one.

“You’re here,” Olivia says softly. “I’m here. We’re not too late. Not tonight.”

Amanda’s grip tightens again, as if trying to fuse them together.

Olivia doesn’t let go all at once.

She loosens her arms in increments, like she’s easing someone out of a rip current. Amanda is still latched on—hands fisted in fabric, forehead pressed to Olivia’s collarbone, breath catching in uneven, ugly pulls—but the worst of the panic has started to burn itself out, leaving behind that drained, shaky aftertaste.

Olivia keeps one hand at the base of Amanda’s skull as she guides her back onto the couch. Not pushing—never pushing—just steering. Amanda folds down like her bones have turned to water.

She sits hunched forward with her elbows on her knees, head down, hair falling into her face like a curtain. The room is warm compared to the street, but she’s still trembling, every muscle in her body buzzing like she’s been electrocuted.

Olivia stands there for a second, watching. Calculating. The way she does at a crime scene, except this is quieter and the evidence is all internal.

“Okay,” she murmurs, mostly to herself, and then she moves.

She grabs the throw blanket from the chair—soft, worn, the one she drags around on insomnia nights—and drapes it around Amanda’s shoulders. Amanda doesn’t look up, but she flinches at the sudden contact, breath hitching, then subsides when the blanket settles and warmth wraps around her like a second skin.

Olivia tugs it a little tighter, an almost-maternal adjustment that feels too intimate for how wrecked they both are. She doesn’t comment on it. She just makes it happen.

Then she pulls her own hoodie off—slow, so it doesn’t feel like an ambush—and sets it in Amanda’s lap like an offering. Cotton and detergent and that faint trace of Olivia’s skin. Familiar. Safe. Something solid to hold.

Amanda’s fingers find it immediately. Not consciously. Like a compass needle snapping north. She bunches the hoodie in her hands and presses her face into it for half a second, breathing it in like she’s trying to replace the salt-and-gunpowder ghost in her nose with something real.

Olivia’s throat tightens at the sight.

She doesn’t mention that either.

Instead, she crouches in front of Amanda again, slow enough not to startle her, and keeps her voice low, steady, unhurried.

“Hey.” A gentle knock on the door of Amanda’s brain. “Can you hear me?”

Amanda nods once. Tiny. Almost nothing.

“Okay.” Olivia pauses, waits for the nod to settle. “We’re gonna do one thing at a time.”

Amanda’s shoulders rise on a shallow inhale. Her breath catches halfway, like it hits a wall.

Olivia puts her palm flat against Amanda’s knee—not gripping, just contact. An anchor. A point of gravity.

“In through your nose,” she says quietly. “Out slow. I’m matching you.”

Amanda tries. The inhale is jagged, but it’s an inhale. Her nose whistles faintly.

Olivia breathes with her. Deep and deliberate, the exhale long enough to be a metronome.

“Good,” Olivia murmurs when Amanda gets even a fraction of it right. Not praising. Just confirming reality. “Again.”

Amanda’s fingers tighten around the hoodie. Her shoulders shake on the exhale.

“Okay,” Olivia continues, the way she would talk someone down from a ledge—calm voice, clear facts, no drama. “Listen to me. You’re on my couch. Your feet are on the floor.”

Amanda’s feet are bare on the rug. She hadn’t noticed. She flexes her toes against the fibers, startled by the texture.

“Feel the rug,” Olivia says, as if she can see the exact moment Amanda’s brain makes contact with it. “It’s scratchy.”

It is scratchy. The word makes Amanda’s mouth twitch, almost. Almost a smile, but it doesn’t get that far.

“The blanket’s on your shoulders,” Olivia continues. “My apartment’s warm. The lamp’s on. There’s no beach. There’s no house. There’s no—” She stops herself before the name can land between them like a weapon. She swallows it down. “—nothing here that can hurt you.”

Amanda’s breath shudders. Her head dips lower.

Olivia shifts her hand on Amanda’s knee, giving a small squeeze that says stay with me.

“Okay,” she says. “Choices.”

Amanda makes a small, helpless sound like she doesn’t understand the word.

Olivia keeps her voice soft. “Do you want water or tea.”

Amanda’s shoulders lift in a half-shrug that’s really just her body trying to decide if it’s allowed to want anything.

“Water,” she croaks. Her throat sounds sandpapered raw.

“Okay.” Olivia stands. “Do you want me close, or… not touching right now.”

Amanda’s head lifts a fraction, eyes glassy and red-rimmed. For a second she looks genuinely frightened by the question, like if she answers wrong Olivia will disappear.

“Close,” she whispers.

Olivia’s face does something tiny—an almost imperceptible softening—and she nods like that’s the easiest thing in the world to give.

“Okay,” she says, and adds, because she knows Amanda needs the reassurance packaged as a fact: “I’m staying.”

She goes to the kitchen without rushing, fills a glass with water, drops in a couple ice cubes. The clink is loud in the quiet apartment, but it’s normal-loud. Safe-loud. She carries it back and sits on the couch, angled toward Amanda, close enough that their knees brush but not so close it feels like being crowded.

She hands Amanda the glass.

Amanda’s hands tremble as she takes it. She spills a little on the hoodie in her lap. She looks down at the wet spot like it’s evidence of failure.

“It’s water,” Olivia says gently, reading her instantly. “It’s allowed to be messy.”

Amanda’s throat works. She takes a sip. The swallow is audible. Her eyes squeeze shut like the cold shocks her back into her body.

“Good,” Olivia murmurs. She keeps her hand resting on Amanda’s knee. Steady. Present. Real.

“TV on low, or quiet?” Olivia asks.

Amanda shakes her head immediately. “Quiet.”

“Okay.” Olivia reaches for the remote anyway, not turning it on, just shifting it out of reach like she’s removing a temptation. “Quiet.”

Amanda takes another sip. Her breathing is still uneven, but it’s breathing. She stares at the glass in her hands like it’s the only thing she’s allowed to hold.

The silence stretches.

In it, Amanda’s gaze drifts—unfocused, exhausted—and catches on Olivia’s neck.

There’s a faint mark there, just above the collar of her t-shirt. Not fresh-fresh, but not gone either. A shadow of bruising that the harsh hallway lighting didn’t hide, and the soft lamp light doesn’t either. A smear of purple-yellow at the edge of Olivia’s throat where fingers once pressed too hard.

Amanda’s stomach drops through the floor.

“Oh,” she whispers, and it’s not awe. It’s horror.

Olivia follows her gaze, understands instantly, and her jaw tightens. She reaches up automatically, thumb brushing the spot like she can erase it with friction.

“It’s nothing,” Olivia says, too fast.

Amanda’s eyes fill all over again. “It’s not— it’s not nothing.”

Her breath starts to hitch.

Shame floods her, hot and nauseating, because here she is—making this about her—when Olivia is the one who—

“I’m sorry,” Amanda blurts. The apology bursts out like a reflex. “I’m sorry, I’m being crazy. I shouldn’t have come here. You don’t need this.”

Her voice breaks on the last word. You don’t need me falling apart when you’re the one who went through it.

Olivia’s expression stills. Not cold. Focused. The way she looks at a witness who’s about to recant.

“Stop,” she says gently.

Amanda keeps going anyway, because she can’t help herself, because the spiral is slick and she’s already sliding. “Liv, I— I’m putting this on you and you— you went through—” She can’t say his name. It sits like a stone in her throat. “You’re the one—”

“Amanda.” Olivia’s voice is calm, firm. A line drawn in the sand. “Stop.”

Amanda’s breath catches. She looks at Olivia, helpless, waiting for the reprimand.

It doesn’t come.

Olivia leans in just a fraction, keeping her voice low like she doesn’t want the walls to hear.

“You’re not a problem I have to solve,” she says, each word measured. “You are not… a mess I’m tolerating. You hear me?”

Amanda’s mouth opens. No words.

Olivia’s hand squeezes her knee again, steadying, not demanding. “You came because you were scared,” Olivia adds. “That’s allowed. That’s… human.”

Amanda’s eyes spill over. She presses her lips together hard, trying to hold it in, and fails.

“I thought I could handle it,” she whispers.

Olivia doesn’t interrupt.

Amanda stares down at the hoodie in her lap like it’s safer than looking at Olivia’s face. Her fingers twist the fabric until the seams bite into her skin.

“When it was happening,” Amanda says, voice small, raw. “When we were… in it. I thought I could handle it because I had to. There wasn’t time to fall apart. There wasn’t— there wasn’t room.”

She swallows. Her throat clicks.

“And now…” Her shoulders hitch. “Now it’s over and my body’s—” she shakes her head, a harsh, disbelieving motion. “It’s cashing the cheque, I guess. Like it waited until it was safe and then it— it hit me.”

Olivia’s eyes soften in a way that hurts to look at.

“The nightmare felt real,” Amanda continues, words tumbling now that the dam is cracked. “Because the fear was real. Because I— because I saw you—”

Her voice collapses. She squeezes her eyes shut.

“I thought we were too late,” she says again, quieter, like a prayer she hates. “And I can’t— I can’t stop thinking about how close it was, Liv. How— how easy it would’ve been for it to go—”

She stops, breath snagging, because saying the other outcome feels like summoning it.

Olivia doesn’t push her to finish. She doesn’t make her name the thing.

Amanda drags in air, shaky, and the next confession comes out like it’s been waiting behind her ribs the whole time.

“I’m scared,” she whispers. “I’m scared that… loving you is a liability.”

Olivia’s brow furrows slightly.

Amanda laughs, once, a broken little sound with no humor in it. “Not like— not like you’re a liability. Like—” She flounders, searching for words that won’t insult. “Like caring this much is dangerous. Like it makes me stupid. Like it makes me… easy to break.”

Her fingers tighten around Olivia’s hoodie until the fabric twists.

“I didn’t—” Amanda’s voice cracks. “I didn’t know it could feel like this. I didn’t know I could… need you this much.”

The room is quiet except for Amanda’s breathing and the distant hum of the city through the windows. Olivia sits very still, absorbing it, taking it in like she’s receiving evidence she didn’t know existed.

When she speaks, she doesn’t give a monologue. She gives a shard of truth, small enough to hold, sharp enough to cut.

“I’m not okay either,” Olivia says.

Amanda looks up so fast it almost hurts her neck.

Olivia’s face is composed, but there’s something tired underneath it—something raw that she keeps wrapped in professionalism and routine and the constant motion of the job.

“I’ve been trying to be okay,” Olivia continues, voice quiet, controlled. “At you.”

Amanda’s throat tightens. “At me?”

Olivia’s mouth tightens too, like she regrets how honest it sounds. She exhales through her nose, slow.

“Like it’s a performance,” Olivia says, almost reluctantly. “Like I owe you… a version of me that isn’t—” She gestures vaguely at her own body, her own skin, as if the truth is somewhere under it. “—damaged.”

Amanda’s eyes sting again. “Liv…”

Olivia shakes her head once, a small motion, firm. “Everyone’s walking on eggshells around me,” she says quietly. “Fin. Nick. The whole squad. People look at me like I might crack if they breathe wrong.”

Her jaw flexes. She swallows.

“I can’t do it at home too,” Olivia admits. “I can’t—” Her voice dips, softer, almost embarrassed by the need underneath it. “I don’t want you to handle me. I don’t want you to look at me like I’m fragile.”

Amanda’s heart twists. “I don’t— I don’t think you’re fragile.”

“I know,” Olivia says, and the fact that she says it so quickly makes Amanda realise she does know—she’s just afraid anyway. “But sometimes when you look at me after…” She trails off, eyes flicking away for half a second. “Sometimes I feel it. The caution.”

Amanda flinches as if she’s been struck.

Olivia reaches out, touches Amanda’s wrist lightly—an apology that isn’t spoken.

“I’m trying,” Olivia says, quieter. “I’m trying to be… normal. I’m trying to be the Liv you were dating before he—” She stops again, refuses the name. “—before all of it.”

Amanda’s breath shudders. “And I’m trying to act like I’m fine,” she whispers, hearing herself for the first time. “So you don’t have to worry about me on top of everything else.”

Olivia’s eyes meet hers.

In that look, something shifts—tiny, seismic.

They’ve been doing the same dance from opposite sides: Olivia pretending she isn’t haunted so Amanda won’t treat her like glass; Amanda swallowing her fear so Olivia won’t feel guilty for surviving.

Both of them trying to protect the other by lying with their bodies.

Amanda’s fingers loosen slightly on the hoodie. Her shoulders drop an inch.

“We’ve been… pretending,” she says, voice small.

Olivia’s mouth presses into a thin line. Then it softens.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “We have.”

Amanda stares at her, heart aching with it. “I don’t want to,” she whispers. “I don’t want to do that with you.”

Olivia’s gaze holds, steady as a hand at the base of a skull.

“Then don’t,” she says simply.

It’s not a magic fix. It doesn’t erase nightmares or bruises or the way Lewis’s shadow still clings to the corners of both their minds.

But it is something.

It’s permission.

Amanda’s eyes fill again, but this time the tears feel different—less frantic, more human.

She nods once. “Okay.”

Olivia shifts closer on the couch, their thighs pressing together, her arm sliding around Amanda’s shoulders beneath the blanket. Warm, solid.

“Okay,” Olivia echoes, and she leans her temple gently against Amanda’s. “We’re not doing this alone.”

For a while, they just sit there.

The apartment hums softly around them—the fridge cycling on in the kitchen, a car passing on the street below, a radiator clanking once in the wall like it’s complaining about the hour. The lamp throws a warm, tired circle of light over the coffee table, the couch, the blanket bunched around Amanda’s shoulders.

Olivia’s arm is firm around her, hand resting on her upper arm. The pressure is solid, steady. Amanda can feel the weight of each breath Olivia takes along her own ribs, the subtle expansion and release of the body pressed to her side.

It’s the first time all night Amanda’s nervous system isn’t sprinting.

She feels drained. Hollowed out. Like the nightmare took a shovel to her insides and scooped everything out, leaving just this trembling, exhausted shell on Olivia’s couch.

But the longer she sits here, the more she becomes aware of something else—something that isn’t just her.

It starts small.

Olivia shifts, just a little, to resettle the blanket around Amanda’s shoulders. The movement tugs at Amanda’s attention. She looks down, following the motion, and sees Olivia’s hand.

Her fingers.

They’re not shaking hard. Not like Amanda’s had. It’s a tiny tremor, the sort you might miss if you weren’t looking directly at it—just the slightest quiver in the tendons as Olivia’s thumb strokes idly along the edge of the blanket, the faintest irregularity in the contact.

Amanda’s breath catches.

She watches, transfixed, as Olivia’s hand stills. The tremor doesn’t immediately stop. It lingers, a ghost under the skin, like the aftershock of an earthquake traveling through bone.

Olivia must feel Amanda’s gaze, because her hand goes deliberately still, fingers pressing down just a bit more firmly, as if pinning the tremor in place.

Amanda’s heart twists.

She lifts her eyes, really looks at Olivia for the first time since she burst into the building. Takes in the whole picture, not just the broad strokes of alive.

The dark half-moons under her eyes. The way the lamplight makes them look even deeper. The paleness at the corners of her mouth. The faint, stubborn set of her jaw—the same one she gets in the squad room when she’s holding a line no one else can see.

And that clench. There. When her mind brushes against the word they both keep not saying, her jaw tightens, a ripple of tension that runs through her neck, down into her shoulders. A muscle ticks just below her cheekbone.

Amanda feels it through the arm around her—Liv’s body going a fraction more rigid, then forcing itself to relax.

The cost is right there, hiding in plain sight, and Amanda realises with a flood of guilt that she almost missed it. That she’s been so busy drowning in her own fear that she didn’t see the water lapping at Olivia’s chin.

She thinks of the bruise at Olivia’s throat. The way she’d brushed it off. The “I’m okay” said like an edict. The admission that she’s been “okay at you” like it’s a show she’s obligated to put on.

Amanda’s chest aches.

She swallows, throat dry, and lets her head tip sideways until her temple is resting against Olivia’s shoulder. It feels like leaning against a wall that’s been holding up more weight than it should for too long.

For once, she doesn’t reach for an apology first.

“I was so scared,” she says.

The words drop into the quiet like a stone into deep water—simple, heavy, true. They’re not polished, not dressed up as a joke or a dismissal. They are what they are.

Olivia goes still.

Not the brittle stillness of someone shutting down. The shocked kind, like she didn’t expect the sentence to be that naked. Like she’s used to “you were so brave” and “thank God you made it out” and “you’re so strong,” but not this.

Amanda feels her own pulse thudding in her throat. “That’s all,” she adds, voice frayed. “That’s… that’s the whole thing. I was so fucking scared.”

She doesn’t specify of what. She doesn’t have to. It’s all there—the beach house, the call, the news, the empty chair at Olivia’s desk, the possibility of a world where this couch never holds both of them at the same time.

Beside her, Olivia’s breath hitches.

Amanda feels it more than hears it—a tiny catch against her hair, a sudden tightness under her cheek as Olivia’s chest locks up for half a second. When she pulls in the next lungful of air, it’s a shade too sharp.

Amanda turns her head, just enough to get a look at her face.

Olivia’s eyes are glossy.

She’s blinking faster than usual, lashes dark and spiky with the moisture gathering there. Her gaze is fixed on some middle distance past the coffee table, jaw doing that little clench again, throat working as she swallows something back.

The mask is slipping at the edges.

It’s not dramatic. It’s not a sob or a collapse. It’s smaller, meaner: the micro-expressions that slip out when someone’s too tired to keep holding the walls exactly where they’ve been.

Olivia swallows again, and Amanda sees the ripple pass down her neck, sees the way her fingers tighten minutely on Amanda’s arm.

For a second, Amanda panics in a new direction—Shit, I’ve pushed her too far, I’ve broken her, I shouldn’t have——

Then Olivia turns her head.

Just enough that their eyes meet.

For half a heartbeat, neither of them looks away.

What Amanda sees there guts her.

Not the legendary “Benson steel.” Not the controlled, professional calm. Not the version of Olivia that commands rooms and holds victims together and stares down monsters.

Just… a woman. Tired. Bruised. Holding up far too much for far too long. And underneath all of that, flickering raw and terrified, is the same thing Amanda just said out loud.

The same I was so scared.

Olivia’s mouth parts, like the words want to fall out.

Her eyes shine. One tear collects in the inner corner of her left eye, threatening, then clings there stubbornly, refusing to fall. She blinks once, twice, slow, as if she can trap it before gravity wins.

Her voice, when it comes, is very quiet.

“Me too,” she says.

Two syllables. That’s all.

For Amanda, it’s like the floor drops out beneath her again.

She knew. On some level, she’s always known that whatever Olivia feels is never as tidy as Olivia presents it. But hearing her say it—no qualifiers, no redirect, just me too—makes something inside Amanda crack along a whole new fault line.

“Liv,” she breathes, and her own eyes go wet all over again, but the tears feel different now. Less frantic. More like grief. More like relief.

Olivia holds her gaze for another second, then seems to realise how naked that admission is. She looks away, blinking, lashes lowering, mouth pressing into a fine line that tries and fails to smooth out the tremor in it.

Her hand flexes on Amanda’s arm.

That tiny tremor is back in her fingers. It travels up into her wrist, her forearm, the muscles in her shoulder.

Amanda sees it. Really sees it.

Something in her—a part that’s been curled on the floor of that nightmare beach house, screaming and blaming and begging—sits up.

Without fully thinking it through, she shifts.

Her own hand lifts, slow, like she’s approaching a skittish animal. Half instinct, half question. She hesitates midway, hovering an inch from Olivia’s face, giving her the chance to lean away, to put the mask back on, to make a joke and stand up and go pour herself a drink and never talk about this again.

Olivia doesn’t move.

Her eyes flick to Amanda’s hand, then back to her face. There’s a flicker—fear? curiosity?—and then a small, decisive stillness.

She lets her.

That’s the new thing.

Amanda closes the distance.

Her fingertips brush Olivia’s cheekbone, tentative at first, tracing the faint track where a tear almost fell. Olivia’s skin is warm under her touch, softer than Amanda expected, the bone solid beneath it.

She cups her cheek, thumb resting just below the eye, careful and gentle. It’s the same gesture Olivia used on her earlier, thumb sweeping away tears, except this time Amanda is the one anchoring.

It feels huge. It feels fragile. It feels like walking onto a wire thirty stories up with no net.

Olivia’s eyes flutter shut.

For a second, everything that lives under her armour shows on her face—tired lines easing, mouth loosening, that iron control sighing at the chance to let go even a fraction. Her exhale is shaky. Not much. Just enough to be honest.

Amanda’s chest aches with how much she loves her in that moment.

She slides closer on the couch until their sides are pressed together and uses her other arm to wrap around Olivia’s shoulders, careful not to crowd, giving her space to pull back if she wants. When she feels no resistance, she draws her in, slow but sure, reversing the earlier pose.

Olivia lets her.

She lets her weight tip sideways, head lowering until her temple rests against Amanda’s shoulder. It’s not the full-bodied collapse Amanda had made into her minutes ago—it’s smaller, subtler—but for Olivia Benson, whose spine has been welded straight by decades of not being allowed to falter, it might as well be free fall.

Amanda tightens her arm around her, hand splaying across Olivia’s upper back, feeling each rise and fall of her breathing, each tiny shiver in the muscles under her palm.

“Me too,” Amanda echoes quietly, into her hair.

She isn’t talking about the fear anymore. Or not just the fear. She’s talking about the not-okay, the pretending, the eggshells and the nightmares and the way love makes everything both harder and more necessary.

Olivia’s fingers find the hem of Amanda’s t-shirt beneath the blanket and curl there, holding on. It’s a small grip, almost shy, but it’s there.

They sit that way for a long time.

There are no speeches. No promises they can’t keep about how it’ll get easier, how the nightmares will stop, how the bruises will fade from more than just skin. There’s just shared breathing, shared weight, the quiet synchronization of two nervous systems slowly, slowly learning that the other is safe ground.

Outside, a siren wails somewhere far away, rising and falling, and neither of them flinches.

At some point the tears taper off. They don’t decide to; they just run out, like the well finally hits dry. What’s left is this heavy, leaden tiredness that settles in Amanda’s bones, in the spaces under Olivia’s eyes, in the way their bodies lean into each other because upright on their own feels like too much work.

The clock on the microwave blinks 4:52 in blue digits from the kitchen.

Amanda notices it over Olivia’s shoulder and flinches a little. She hadn’t meant to take this much. This long. This deep a piece of Liv’s night.

“I should go,” she mutters automatically, words muffled against Olivia’s shoulder.

She doesn’t move.

Olivia huffs a quiet, disbelieving sound into Amanda’s hair. Not quite a laugh. “Yeah,” she says dryly. “You’re in great shape to drive.”

Amanda’s fingers twitch on Olivia’s back. “I could call a cab.”

“You could,” Olivia says. There’s no judgment in it. Just fact. “You could also not.”

Amanda’s throat tightens. “Liv…”

Olivia lets out a slow breath, like she’s weighing something, then shifts, pulling back just enough to see Amanda’s face. Their noses bump. They’re close enough for Amanda to see the tiny burst of red where a blood vessel broke in Olivia’s left eye, a quiet little badge of all the pressure she’s been under.

“Stay,” Olivia says, simple as breathing.

The word lands between them like a stone in soft earth, sinks in, takes root.

It should be that easy, Amanda thinks wildly. One syllable. Stay. But her mind kicks up every protest it can find.

“What if you don’t sleep,” she blurts, because that’s the first one on the pile. “What if I— I wake you up. Or I— I have another nightmare, or you—”

“Amanda.” Olivia’s voice is gentle but firm, the verbal equivalent of a hand at the small of her back, steering her away from the cliff edge. “I haven’t been sleeping anyway.”

There’s no bravado in it, no martyrdom. Just honesty. It hurts more than Amanda expects.

Olivia goes on, softer. “If you have another nightmare, we deal with it. If I do, we deal with that too.”

Amanda swallows. Her chest aches. “You want me here for that?” she asks, and the question is so naked she almost wants to claw it back as soon as it’s out. “You’re sure?”

Olivia’s eyes flicker, something like surprise passing through them that Amanda would even doubt it.

“I called you,” Olivia says quietly. “At the hospital, after.”

Amanda’s breath stutters. The memory of that voicemail—Liv’s voice small and contained and terrified—still wakes her up some nights.

“I wanted you then,” Olivia continues, not looking away. “I want you now.” She gives the tiniest shrug, like she doesn’t quite know how to dress this vulnerability up so it looks less raw. “So… yeah. I’m sure.”

The room seems to tilt.

Amanda lets out a shaky breath, half laugh, half sob. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Olivia echoes, and something in her posture relaxes, minutely. Decision made.

She squeezes Amanda’s shoulder once and then eases away, slow, like she’s checking the connection won’t just snap if she lets go. Amanda’s body protests the loss of contact immediately, a phantom ache blooming where Olivia’s warmth was, but she forces herself to sit up straighter, to remember that they’re not done touching, just moving.

Olivia stands with a soft groan; her knees crack. She winces, laughs quietly at herself, then offers a hand.

“Come on,” she says.

Amanda takes it.

Olivia hauls her to her feet with more care than force, like she’s helping an injured runner up from the track. Amanda sways once, caught between the pull of the couch and the gravity of Olivia’s hand. Olivia steadies her with a palm on her hip.

“You okay?” Olivia asks.

Amanda thinks about lying. Gives up.

“I’m…” She rolls the word around, looking for something accurate. “Tired.”

It’s the closest thing to truth she can manage in one word.

Olivia nods, accepting that as enough. “Good,” she says. “Let’s get you horizontal before you fall over.”

She flicks the lamp off as they move toward the hallway, leaving the apartment in softer shadow. The city light coming through the blinds silvers the edges of furniture, throws faint stripes across the floor. In the dim, everything feels gentler, less exposed.

They pass the front door. Olivia reaches out automatically and checks the deadbolt, thumb pressing against its cool metal. Amanda watches the gesture, feels an odd wash of safety at the sight. Lock engaged. World out. Them in.

In the bathroom, Olivia pauses. “You wanna—?” She gestures vaguely at the sink, the mirror, the little cluster of neatly arranged toiletries.

Amanda hesitates in the doorway, suddenly acutely aware of the salt on her face, the puffiness around her eyes, the way her hair’s gone limp and tangled from tears and sweat.

“Yeah,” she says, embarrassed but grateful.

Olivia nods and steps aside, giving her space but not leaving. She leans against the doorframe, back to the hall, not watching the mirror, giving Amanda privacy without abandoning the doorway.

Amanda moves on autopilot: cold water, splash, pat dry. Her reflection looks like hell. Red eyes, blotchy skin, a vulnerability in the set of her mouth she doesn’t recognise. For a second, shame rises again—Look at you. Jesus.—

Then she notices a toothbrush still in its packaging on the edge of the sink. Purple. New.

Her stomach does a weird, startled flip.

“I— is that…?” she asks, voice catching.

Olivia shifts, glances in. “Yeah,” she says, like it’s nothing. “Picked it up a while ago. In case you… in case you ever stayed over on purpose.”

Amanda’s throat clogs. She looks down at the toothbrush as if it’s some priceless relic.

“On purpose,” she repeats faintly.

Olivia’s mouth tilts. “As opposed to panic-attack emergency,” she says, half-wry, half fond.

Amanda huffs a broken little laugh. It cracks something open and eases it at the same time.

She unwraps the toothbrush with hands that are only shaking a little now and brushes her teeth, focusing on the mundane scrape of bristles, the mint burn. Olivia looks away again, politely not making a thing of it, arms folded, one bare foot rubbing absently along the top of the other.

When Amanda’s done, Olivia flicks the bathroom light off and nods toward the bedroom.

The doorway feels like another threshold, another point of no return. The bed inside is unmade—sheets rumpled, pillows dented, a throw blanket kicked half off the end like Olivia got up in a hurry. The sight punches a fresh little hole in Amanda’s chest: Liv was asleep. Liv was sleeping. Liv was living an ordinary moment before Amanda’s nightmare crashed through her night.

“Sure you still want—?” Amanda starts, hovering in the doorway.

“Amanda,” Olivia says gently. “Get in the bed.”

There’s no edge to it. No joking, even. Just simple, tired insistence.

Amanda nods because saying anything else will make her cry again. She toes off her jeans, suddenly shy about stripping down to just her t-shirt and underwear in this context, even though they’ve seen each other in a lot less clothing and a lot more urgent circumstances. Everything feels… softer now. Raw.

Olivia turns away, reaching for the far side of the bed, giving Amanda a sliver of privacy as she climbs in. The sheets are cool against Amanda’s skin. She slides under them, pulling the blanket up to her chest, and inhales.

The bed smells like Olivia.

It’s subtle—fabric softener, faint traces of shampoo, skin. The kind of scent that clings to pillows and lingers in cotton. It hits her nervous system like medication. She lets her head drop into the indentation on the nearest pillow and closes her eyes for a second, just breathing it in.

On the other side, Olivia circles the bed and sits down with a sigh that sounds about forty years long. She flicks off the bedside lamp; the room drops into almost-dark, the only light now the city glow bleeding through the blinds.

There’s a moment of awkwardness—two people, two bodies, a shared bed, all the ghosts between them.

Olivia breaks it without fanfare.

“Okay,” she says quietly. “Ground rules. No apologising in the next eight hours.”

Amanda snorts, the sound surprised out of her. “You think I’m gonna sleep eight hours?”

“I’m aiming high,” Olivia says. Her outline is just a shape now, darker against the dark as she settles onto her back, then rolls carefully onto her side to face Amanda. “We can work up to it.”

Amanda’s smile falters, then steels. “I’ll try,” she says.

“That’s all I’m asking.”

There’s a pause. Olivia’s hand twitches a little on top of the blanket, halfway between them, like it’s thinking about something.

“You want to…?” she starts, then stops, clearly annoyed at herself for not being smooth. She exhales, tries again. “How do you wanna… lie?”

It’s such a simple question, but it lands with disproportionate weight. How do you want me. What feels safe. What feels good. It’s an invitation, not an assumption.

Amanda considers.

Her body answers before her mouth does. It wants contact. Skin. Weight. The proof of another heartbeat under her hand.

“Can I—” She clears her throat. “Can I just…?”

She reaches out, slow, letting the movement be its own question.

Olivia doesn’t make her finish.

She shifts closer, closing the gap in the bed until their foreheads almost bump. Amanda hesitates one last second, some last reserve of I-don’t-want-to-be-too-much, then lets go and fits herself into the space Olivia offers.

She turns onto her side and tucks herself against Olivia’s chest, one leg sliding between Olivia’s, one arm curling around her middle. Liv’s body is warmer than the sheets, solid and real, the curve of her ribs a perfect shelf for Amanda’s hand. Her ear ends up over Olivia’s heart.

There it is.

Thud.

Alive.

Olivia makes a soft sound—half exhale, half something tender—and wraps both arms around Amanda in return. One folds under Amanda’s head like a pillow, the other drapes over her back, hand landing between her shoulder blades, fingers spread wide.

“You good like this?” Olivia murmurs into the top of her head.

Amanda nods, the motion rubbing her cheek against Olivia’s t-shirt. “Yeah,” she says, voice already thickening with the first pull of real tiredness. “This is… yeah.”

“Okay.” Olivia’s hand rubs a slow line up and down her spine, a motion already etched into muscle memory from how she soothed her tonight. “If you need to move, move me. I won’t break.”

Amanda’s chest tightens. “I know,” she says softly. Then, because it matters: “I won’t either.”

“Good,” Olivia whispers.

For a while they lie there, adjusting in small increments, chasing that perfect fit you only find with time and trust—a leg shifted here, an arm replaced there, a pillow nudged. The sheets rustle. The mattress dips and settles beneath their combined weight.

Amanda’s breathing evens out faster than she expects. The panic’s still a live wire under her skin, but it’s being slowly wrapped in cotton, muffled by the warmth, the dark, the feel of Olivia’s hand tracing lazy circles between her shoulder blades.

Her mind tries to kick up the nightmare again once, throwing up the image of the beach house door like a test.

It hits the buffer of Liv’s heartbeat under her ear and fizzles.

“You still with me?” Olivia asks quietly after a minute, words more vibration than sound against Amanda’s hair.

“Yeah,” Amanda murmurs. “Just… listening.”

“To what?”

Amanda snuffles a laugh, small, a little embarrassed. “You.”

Olivia huffs, but there’s no teasing in it. “Hmm,” she says. “Good.”

Silence again. Deeper, now. The kind that feels full, not empty.

Amanda’s eyes grow heavy. The urge to apologise one more time flickers up—for waking you, for needing you, for loving you like this—but the rule Olivia set catches it, nudges it aside.

No apologising in the next eight hours.

Instead, she says, very quietly, “If I… if I freak out again…”

Olivia’s arm tightens around her, just a touch. “Wake me up.”

“I don’t wanna—”

“Amanda.” Soft reprimand. “Wake me up.”

Amanda swallows. The knot in her throat loosens a fraction. “Okay.”

“And if I do,” Olivia adds, after a beat, like it costs her something to say it, “you get to do the same for me.”

Amanda lifts her head enough to look at her. Even in the dim, she can see the seriousness in Olivia’s eyes.

“That’s the deal?” Amanda asks.

“That’s the deal,” Olivia confirms.

Amanda settles back down, tucking herself in even closer, as if she can fuse their bones. “Okay,” she says into Olivia’s shirt. “Deal.”

Olivia’s lips press briefly to her hairline—just a ghost of a kiss, more a breath than anything else. Then her head drops back to the pillow.

Their breathing finds each other. Staggers at first, then slowly syncs—inhale, exhale, two rhythms becoming one pattern. Amanda’s fingers curl in the fabric at Olivia’s side, holding on. Olivia’s hand rests easy on Amanda’s back now, no tremor, just warmth.

Sleep doesn’t come in a sudden drop. It comes in waves: there and back, drifting, small half-dreams dissolving before they form. Each time Amanda startles, the hitch of fear running through her, there’s the immediate, grounding proof—an arm around her, a chest under her ear, a quiet murmur of her name.

Each time Olivia flinches, some echo crawling up from the deep, there’s the weight of Amanda’s hand tightening at her waist, the soft, sleepy drag of fingers tracing little circles, the anchor of another body saying here, here, here without words.

At some point, the waves smooth out.

Amanda doesn’t know when they cross the line from almost-sleep into real sleep. She only knows that when the next siren wails far off in the city, it threads through a dream that isn’t a nightmare, and her body doesn’t leap to chase it.

The last clear thing she’s aware of before the dark finally takes her is Olivia’s heartbeat under her ear and the quiet thought, startling in its simplicity:

She’s alive. We’re here.

The rest can wait.