Work Text:
Briefing Report
Case Number: 184392
Date: 10/1/2021, approx. 1700 hours
Reporting Officer: Luisa Ramazos.
Badge Number: 9537
Location: Central Park
Details of Event: Caucasian male child, age 7, assaulted by elderly woman near duck pond. Incident appeared to be random/unprompted. Upon inspection, the skin of the child's right cheek appeared raised/swollen and reddened, consistent with a slap.
Complainant's mother reports elderly woman called male child "Elliot" immediately following incident.
Elderly woman taken into custody. Presented with disorientation/disruptive behavior. Concerns regarding mental status/safety of self and others. Charges pending.
He plants his palms firmly against the surface of the desk and he reads the words again.
Caucasian male child, age 7.
By seven, he'd spent more nights in the Emergency Room than he can count on both hands. His father knew people. Nurses and doctors and he pulled strings, called in favors. He doesn't know whether anyone ever questioned why the Stabler boy was back again, but he knows they never asked.
Incident appeared to be random/unprompted.
He thinks they always were.
Child's right cheek appeared raised/swollen and reddened.
He flinches. He can't help himself. More than five decades later, he can still feel the sting. His mother's hand, his father's belt, a rolled up newspaper, a book, a baseball bat...
He forces himself to take a breath. His mother thought she was slapping him. She flashed back fifty years into the past and hurt a child, believing it was him.
Her son.
He wonders what he has done to deserve this particular hand of cards he has been dealt. How she could possibly hate him so much that her volatility still follows him in the here and the now.
His mother.
Disoriented. Disruptive.
He doesn't remember a day of his life when those words wouldn't apply to her.
Concerns regarding mental status/safety of self and others
She has never been a safe place for herself or for anyone else.
Charges pending.
Of course, they are.
His octogenarian mother is a menace to society. He has been under for one hundred and four days with a group of brutal militant murderers and his mother is public enemy number one...slapping kids at the duck pond.
Fuck.
He shakes his head and tries to take another breath, but his chest feels tight, like someone has his lungs clenched in their fists and they aren't letting go.
He doesn't need this right now. He needs...he needs-
He swallows hard. His blood pounds in his ears until it is the only thing he can hear.
He doesn't catch the sound of brisk footsteps making their way toward him until the door opens over his shoulder.
"You have to stop doing this," Ayanna tells him.
He doesn't raise his eyes to look up at her. He simply shakes his head. He doesn't know what she means.
His cover, his mother, his world from imploding...all three?
She slides the cell phone across surface of the desk between them.
"Read them," she says, commands.
He swallows again.
He fishes his reading glasses out his breast pocket and picks up her phone. The screen lights at his touch and he can see. There are messages, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Messages from Captain Olivia Benson.
Liv
Asking about his mother. Asking if Ayanna needs help. Asking what she can do to make this all go away.
She'd called him last night, but he'd been standing in the middle of his mother's kitchen.
"I texted her," he says and it's the truth. He did. He told her not to worry, told her he had it under control.
Ayanna shakes her head the same way he is certain Olivia did.
"That's not good enough, Stabler. Captain Benson works well above my pay grade. She asks, you answer. She wants to help, you let her. Only reason I didn't ask her to come up here last night while we were waiting for you was because your mother fell asleep and I wasn't about to bring her in to babysit."
He nods. He knows. He owes this woman more than he can tell.
Both of them.
Bell is speaking and he has to try to listen.
"...I know you're always trying to protect everybody, but that woman has been through hell and walked out on her own. You care about her? Let her care about you. No more pushing her away."
He closes his eyes. Hell. He can't imagine the years she spent without him. The decade of his glaring blank absence from her life, a life he knows nothing about. He thinks he went through the depths of hell without her. He wonders where she has been without him. There is something there. Something murky and nebulous that he senses he doesn't yet know or understand. He wants to ask her, a string on which he wants to tug, but all at once Bell is speaking again...
"You have to stop this bi-polar crap."
He glances across the office to meet her gaze. Bell's dark eyes survey him with a mix of frustration and pity.
He gives half of a mirthless laugh and shakes his head. He knows she didn't mean it. He knows she doesn't know, but the timing is ironic.
"My mother is bi-polar," he says quietly. The words are difficult to say. In truth, he isn't sure he has ever spoken them aloud. To anyone. Not this openly, this honestly, but he owes Ayanna the truth.
She sits down heavily into the chair behind her desk and stares up at him as though she has suddenly been given pieces of a puzzle she had been missing before.
"Elliot, I'm sorry. I didn't-" She starts, but he holds up his hand, waving her apology away. She hasn't done anything wrong.
"Not your fault," he assures her.
Ayanna is silent for minutes on end before she speaks again. "Have you known for a long time?"
He nods. The length of his life he has known something wasn't right. She has never been properly diagnosed the way Kathleen has.
"It runs in families, doesn't it?" She asks. Her voice is quiet, delicate as though she is aware of the need to tread lightly.
He nods again, bites down hard on his bottom lip before he speaks.
"My daughter." The words rasp against his aching throat. "Kathleen."
His child.
His beautiful, brave, bold child. His second born. His first defender. His reactor. His balance. His mirror. His truth-teller.
Last night in the kitchen, he watched them together, his mother and his daughter. Bookends of his life. The beginning and the end. The before and [God-willing] what will be long after.
The two have one singular thing in common: him.
It is his fault that his mother's illness courses through his daughter's veins.
A dozen years ago, he almost lost her to herself and he knows he would have, if it hadn't been for Olivia. His precious child exists today because of her.
She is healthy, here, and whole. He also knows she confronts her illness every single day. She has told him that the fight she wages isn't a battle, it's a war.
He thinks his child is a warrior.
She is regimented and resolute. Therapy every week. Medication every day. She doesn't want to lose herself, so she fights.
His mother has never been a soldier, at least not in any way that matters. He thinks this is why he can't extend the same grace to her as he does his daughter.
He has always respected strength.
"Is she okay?" Ayanna asks and he isn't sure whether she is asking about his mother, his daughter, or Olivia.
"She's a fighter," he answers, because two out of three make that true.
Bell gives him a small smile. "She's yours. I wouldn't expect anything less."
The place is dusty, drafty, and dark.
There is something strange about it. Her grandmother isn't here, but she still feels as though she is being watched. She promised her father she would take care of it last night and she can, she will, she is.
There are dirty dishes in the sink, dirty clothes in the hamper. There is food left in the fridge that has lived long past its expiration date. There are bottles of medication with prescription names she recognizes all too easily.
Unopened.
Full.
She takes her medication religiously. The little pills are her lifeline to routine, to regularity, to a chance at a whole life.
"I'm eighty-two years old. I just can't figure out normal."
She closes her eyes against the sudden burn of her tears and presses her palms flat against the surface of the table. She gives herself a moment, then two, as she tries to remember how to breathe because she knows. She knows what it's like to grapple for normalcy every single day.
She is overwhelmed being here alone. In three months without a caretaker, her grandmother has single-handedly lost control of herself, her health, her mind. She can't imagine what a lifetime of chaos could do to a person, what it's done to her grandmother, what it did to her father.
Her grandmother has always been characterized and caricaturized.
Impulsive, irresponsible, flighty.
Emotional, dramatic, deceitful.
Mercurial, reckless, negligent.
Words she heard her father use to describe his mother before she understood. The same words that applied to her a little more than a decade ago.
She owns them now.
She knows they are part of her story, part of what happened so that she could be here.
Most days, she is fine. Most days, she holds her own. She hasn't missed a day of work in years [except to go to see Eric Church with her sisters in Pittsburgh last fall].
Some days are harder than others.
Today is one of those days.
Today, she feels afraid.
The reality of the tightrope she walks hits too clearly here, when she stands alone in this cluttered kitchen. The reality that without her pills, without her therapist, without her progress, her roots could be ripped out in an instant.
Without these resources and her will, she would be her grandmother.
Towering one moment, plunging the next.
Certain she can do it on her own.
Certain she doesn't need help, or medication, or another soul with whom to share her struggle.
She knows it all too well. She knows her grandmother needs help.
She also knows she isn't the only one.
She takes a deep breath and lets the air out slowly, evenly.
She looks around the kitchen again, wondering where to start when she feels something warm and soft brush against her denim-covered shin.
She looks down into the fluffy face of one of the cats.
There are five of them. Five.
(That she can find)
She has never had a cat in her life and somehow she is now in possession of nearly half-a-dozen.
The white and brown one bumps its head gently into her leg once more and she reaches down to lightly brush its soft fur with her fingers. She recognizes it as the one who tried to weave its way into her father's path last night in the living room.
The cat paws at her ankle, her shin, her knee until she lifts it up and settles it into her arms.
"Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" She teases gently as the small creature cuddles itself close to her chest.
"Are you a boy or a girl?" She asks before she realizes that she is talking to a cat and expecting answers. She wonders if she has spent too much time here already.
She sets her new friend down on the countertop and reaches for the unopened mail scattered across the surface.
There are bills, past due notices she knows are going to kill her father when he sees them, magazines, charity fund requests, and two postcards from a friend on L.B.I. asking Dear Bernie when she is coming home.
She shakes her head because she wonders whether her grandmother has ever felt at home anywhere. Whether her whirling mind has ever truly let her put down roots and rest.
She knows the feeling. She understands.
She scours the place. Every surface, every closet, drawer, and hiding place. She cleans, washes, and wipes away months of dirt and dust and stagnation.
She is discarding at the same time she is finding.
Bits and pieces of her grandmother. The woman beneath the whirling hold of her illness. Her grandmother loves old music and she still has the record player to match. She remembers dancing around the living room as a little girl, watching her reflection accompany her in the shine from the hardwood floor.
Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Ben E. King. The little brown and white cat follows her from room to room, watching and waiting.
Her grandmother must loves books, but she picks up eight different novels with makeshift book marks slipped between the pages at various progress points in the story.
Her grandmother can't finish what she stars.
She is a prolific list maker, photo album keeper, and collector of colorful costume jewelry. There are lists scattered around the apartment, stuck to the refrigerator, the mirror in the bathroom, the inside of a cabinet. She wonders how much of her grandmother's memory is truly failing her and how much of it is her illness robbing her of concentration.
The lists don't make sense, at least not to her. It's as if she started to write and then something pulled her away, distracted her...
- Art classes start July ?
- Washing machine
- Call after that
- Chicken Cordon Bleu
She reads.
- 37
- No more pills
- Library books
- 4:30
- Birthday
They're all erratic, disjoined except for one.
- Tell Elliot I'm sorry.
Clear as day.
She feels the familiar prickle of emotion play across her nose as she reads her grandmother's handwriting, her sentiment, her desire. There is no context, no way to understand, except she deemed it important enough to write it down.
She slips it into her pocket and motions for the little cat to follow her when she leaves.
By the time she has finished, she has filled seven bags with garbage, cycled through six loads of wash, and packed five cats into her Subaru Outback.
Her grandmother's place is clean and clear and calmer. It's easier to breathe and easier to think.
She isn't sure if or when her grandmother will come back to her home, but it's here when she is ready.
It's late and the house is quiet by the time he arrives. He sets his keys on the table in the entry way, keeps his jacket on because he can't stay.
The hallway is darkened and when he turns and catches the briefest glimpse of himself in the mirror on the wall he jumps.
He doesn't recognize himself.
The shadowy circles beneath his eyes, the scruff of his beard make him nearly unrecognizable in the dark.
"Why are you hiding?"
He hears his mother's voice as clearly as if she is standing next to him.
[He turns around just to make sure...]
He is alone.
I'm not hiding.
But he is.
He is lying. He is hiding.
He is hiding from himself, from his children, from his life, from Olivia.
It's easier to be someone else, to slip into someone else's skin, than it is to be himself. He knows he will have to discuss it with his therapist one of these days.
He almost smiles, remembering Olivia's quip about months of therapy going to waste.
He knows he has to try to figure out why.
Why losing himself is so much easier than what he is trying to find.
He is losing himself. No matter what he tells Bell. There isn't much left of him and the pieces keep slipping through his fingers every time he tries to put them back together.
He doesn't see much worth keeping anymore.
"Dad?"
He hears his daughter's soft voice issuing from the living room and he closes his eyes against the immediate burn of his tears.
"Is that you?"
His child is still awake. She calls him by his name.
She reminds him.
He steps out into the dim light of the living room.
"It's me, sweetheart."
His daughter is sprawled across the couch. The light the lamp casts makes her golden hair look like a halo. She has an indent of the design of the throw pillow marring the fair skin of her cheek and she blinks up at him sleepily.
He thinks she must have fallen asleep.
He bends down, cradles her close, and presses a kiss to her temple.
"Are you all right?" Kathleen asks before he can. His child steals his line. He nods and bends to kiss the top of her head again.
"How'd it go?" He asks quietly. She texted him earlier, letting him know she was sorting through her grandmother's place.
[She shouldn't have to]
His mother is his responsibility and yet his children have taken it upon themselves to pick up the pieces he can't yet touch. If he knows his child at all, Kathleen has it taken care of.
"It was fine," she answers slowly, tactfully in a way that he can tell there is more she has to say.
"I cleaned the place top to bottom and I did a bunch of laundry." He nods.
"What 'bout the cats?" He asks and his daughter gives the softest laugh. She knows he isn't overly fond of them.
"There were five of them," she tells him. "They were all friendly and sweet and I couldn't just let them back out onto the street, so I took four of them to the animal shelter. They'll be safe there and they'll find good homes."
"Good," he says. He is happy to hear it, but most of all he is happy he doesn't have to -
"Hang on, four of 'em? Thought you said there were five."
Kathleen nods in a way that makes him feel as though he has to prepare himself for something.
"Dad, meet Henry," she says, shifting her legs beneath the throw blanket so that he can see the little brown and white cat sleeping nestled in the fabric.
"I wasn't sure if he was Henry or Henrietta, but the lady at the shelter confirmed it for me. It's Henry."
He knows his expression is betraying him when she speaks again. He doesn't miss the slight plea in his daughter's tone that reminds him of when she was small and begged endlessly for a dog, a cat, a rabbit to love.
"Gramma will need a friend to keep her company when she moves back into her place and one cat is better than five," she reasons as though she is waiting for him to protest.
He won't.
He surprises her. He surprises himself.
He gives her the slightest hint of a smile and if his child didn't know him so well, he thinks she might have missed it.
"Sure he isn't yours?" He teases gently and his daughter rolls her eyes affectionately. She reaches across the cushions and pulls Henry into her lap before she shifts her legs from her position on the couch and brings her feet to rest on the floor.
"I found all this mail," she says delicately, motioning toward a pile on the coffee table in front of them as he makes his way around to sit down beside her.
He nods to the cat, his form of greeting. He has never had a cat in his life and he doesn't plan to start now.
"Just keep Henry on your side of the couch," he instructs. He doesn't miss the sound of his daughter's soft laugh.
Kathleen leans forward, cradling Henry in her lap as he reaches out for the stack of mail. He rifles through the letters and he can feel his daughter's gaze on his face as he does. There are bills and past due notices he has let slip by. He hasn't been a good son. He hasn't taken care of his mother.
He hasn't taken care of much lately.
"This isn't your fault," she whispers with such conviction that he doesn't have the heart to tell her that she is wrong.
"Some things slipped through the cracks," she continues. "It happens, but it won't happen again."
He swallows hard into the quiet at the same moment Henry starts to purr.
He reaches across the cushion and squeezes Kathleen's hand in acknowledgment. She is ever honest, always absolving.
He wonders where her exquisite forgiveness comes from. She has every reason to hold onto grievances, every reason to resent him and yet...
"This isn't your fault," she repeats. "None of this is your fault."
If his child only knew.
"It's not," Kathleen pushes adamantly, as if she knows he doesn't believe her. He feels his child shifting beside him. He watches as she reaches into her pocket of her jeans and pulls out a torn slip of paper. She unfolds it and presses it into his palm.
He glimpses his mother's handwriting before he reads.
"Tell Elliot I'm sorry."
He leans forward, pressing his elbows hard into his thighs and tries to steady himself, tries to remember how to breathe. He doesn't know how to gracefully receive tenderness, he never has.
He feels his daughter's hand touch his shoulder through the fabric of his coat.
"I have something else to show you."
He nods at the floor, studying the lines of the hardwood until the couch cushion beside him moves and Kathleen has left.
He glances over at the little purring cat who has taken his daughter's place and before he can say anything she is back.
Kathleen sets a crinkly white bag from a pharmacy onto the coffee table before she lifts Henry up into her lap and beside him again.
"I wanna show you," she says, leaning forward and using her free hand to empty the contents of the bag onto the table. One by one, she places them on the table.
Bottles of medication.
Full.
Unopened.
Prescription medication. There are various dates, some recent, some months old. All made out to Bernadette Stabler. Eight full bottles of medication.
He recognizes some brand names. Medication for his mother's heart, for her blood pressure, for her memory, for her arthritis, medication for...
"I take two of these," Kathleen says quietly, pointing to the bottles before them.
He studies the labels. The names are familiar. These medical marvels that allow his miracle of a daughter to...
"These little pills are what help me be me," she elaborates. "The me I want to be. They don't change me. They help me. They temper things," she says carefully, searching for the right words. "So I can be okay."
He nods. He wants to look at his child, but he is afraid of losing the last shards of control he holds so he nods at the floor again.
"If I didn't take my medication..." she whispers haltingly. He nods and she tries again.
"Last night, sitting with her in the kitchen, watching her cry..."
He can't imagine what his child saw. He saw his mother and his daughter. His past and his future tangled up together in his present.
"Sometimes, I look at her and I feel like I'm looking in the mirror," she whispers, confesses before she lets out the softest sob and the sight of her blurs before him.
"Leen."
He pulls her close, pressing his mouth to the top of her head and kissing her there for endless minutes, endless minutes until he feels her shaking subside. Henry stays still and silent as though he recognizes the seriousness of this. Kathleen turns into him, into his chest and tucks her face into the crevice where his shoulder meets his neck.
She reminds him of when she was a little girl and she used to curl up in his arms and sleep like this for hours. It reminds him that however much has changed, some things remain the same.
His daughter.
His future.
His mother.
His past.
One he can not change. The other is a gift he holds in his hands.
"I won't ever let you feel like you're losing yourself, Leen," he rasps against her temple.
Promises, vows, swears.
It is her answer he isn't prepared for.
"I won't let you either," she whispers. She shakes her head and he can feel her hair tangle in the scruff at his jaw. He closes his eyes, but he knows his child can feel the way his breathing changes, the way he fights for air.
She knows.
His child lets him go. She kisses his cheek before she pulls away. "Don't forget who you are," she whispers and before he can stop himself...
"Who am I?"
His daughter looks up at him and brushes an errant wisp of hair behind her ear. She doesn't seem surprised that he doesn't know anymore, that she has to remind him.
"You're my Dad," she starts softly, "You're our Dad." He listens as she lists because he is desperate to hear.
"You're a good cop. You're a good man. You're Olivia's."
He catches Kathleen's light eyes and swallows hard. "Olivia's what?" He asks, but his daughter simply smiles.
"I don't know, but it's something special."
He worries his bottom lip mercilessly as he watches the little cat climb from Kathleen's lap and onto the coffee table. Henry sniffs the prescription bottles and then carefully choses one to knock over with one swipe of his paw.
"I love you," she says softly and he has to look back at his daughter to make sure she isn't talking to the cat.
She reaches across the cushion for his hand on his knee and he feels her squeeze it tight in her own.
"I'll keep reminding you," she assures him. "Olivia will, too." He doesn't miss the faint smile that tugs on the corner of his daughter's lips.
"She keeps trying. You just have to let her. You have to see it, Dad."
"See what?" He asks.
"Your reflection. The way we see you. They way you really are."
Kathleen presses a kiss to her father's cheek and leaves to take a shower. When she returns, he is sprawled on the couch, sound asleep with Henry resting comfortably on his chest.