Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The elevator was broken - the elevator was always fucking broken, and why she insisted on living in a place where the super couldn't even be bothered to keep the elevator in working order he'd never understand - so he went tearing up the stairs, taking them two at a time, breathing like a bull charging the red flag. Rage propelled him, a rage bright and feral; he was incandescent with rage, so hellbent on accomplishing his task and so fucking angry he probably would've bitten anyone who stood in his way. The anger was familiar, comfortable; the anger was easy. The anger was so big it left no room for anything else, and so long as he was angry he did not have to feel other emotions, like remorse or self-recrimination. He was too angry to feel guilty, and he liked the anger a hell of a lot more than the alternative, however misdirected that anger might have been. On some level, beneath the anger, beneath the ferocious death knells of the wounded beast of his heart, he knew it was wrong, to be angry. Knew it was wrong to cast blame anywhere other than on himself. Knew it, but did it anyway; he'd done it before. I can't be looking over my shoulder…it had been years since he'd said those words, but he could hear his own voice echoing in his mind, and maybe it should've slowed him down, but it didn't. Just something else to feel remorseful about later.

There was the matter of the text message, too, the message from his wife; he had chosen to be angry about that as well, but he'd feel guilty about it when the cloud of his rage had passed and grief came for him. If you don't come home now, don't come home at all. After nearly thirty years, five children, and a perilously close brush with divorce, his entire marriage had come down to a single ultimatum. If you don't come home now, don't come home at all.

He hadn't come home.

Instead he'd come here, to the fourth floor of this inconspicuous block of apartments with its busted ass elevator. Instead he'd come here, and the door he crashed into, the one he was beating his fists against as if it were a child molester and not a simple hollow core door, that door did not belong to his family's home. It was hers. Olivia's.

She answered it quickly, a breath or two after he'd started banging, probably alarmed and not wanting to scare the neighbors. It had been hours since she'd been sent home; she'd had enough time to eat dinner and take a shower and wash Sister Peg's blood off her hands, time to spend alone in contemplation of the day's horrific events, time that Elliot had not been given, because he'd been scooped up by IAB and spent most of the afternoon and evening locked up in a room with his union lawyer and Tucker. It wasn't her fault she'd been allowed to go home and it wasn't her fault that Elliot had chosen not to, but he resented her, just a little, for having been allowed to leave on her own terms, for having a home to go back to, since apparently he didn't anymore. The fact that the loss of his home was his own doing hardly registered now. It would, though. Later.

She opened the door, no doubt knowing already what was waiting for her on the other side of it, no doubt having recognized him by the sound of his fists alone. The sight of her made him angrier, somehow, because she was beautiful, was so fucking beautiful, because she was sad, because none of this was her fault, because he wanted to blame her anyway, just to spare himself. It seemed he'd been right, about the shower; her hair was damp and softly curling around her shoulders, her face washed clean of makeup, no trace of blood on her hands. She wore a pair of stretchy black lounge pants and a plain, loose white t-shirt, and she looked lovelier than any goddamn model he'd ever seen, and he'd seen more than his fair share.

"What's gotten into you?" she demanded, watching him warily, one hand still on the door, blocking the entrance with her body.

"We're gonna talk," Elliot told her darkly. It was not a request. "And I'm gonna ask some questions and you're gonna answer them, Liv. Enough's enough."

For a moment she watched him cooly, something like ice in her dark eyes, probably wondering what would happen if she slammed the door in his face. But they had been partners too long, and they knew one another too well; she knew him too well. If she kicked him out he would not leave, not when he was in a mood like this, would only shout and bang and kick the door until her neighbors called the cops. Let some uni come and put him in cuffs, Elliot thought belligerently; the day might as well end that way. He ought to be arrested, after what he'd done.

You killed her you killed her you killed her, a terrified voice was chanting in the back of his mind, and he needed Liv to let him in, needed her to let him speak, and drown out the sound of that voice. Jenna was a child, nearly the same age as Lizzie, and she had been under his protection, and he'd killed her, and he'd killed her because -

"All right," Olivia said. "Just keep your voice down, all right? I don't want you scaring my neighbors."

Fuck your neighbors, he thought, but she'd opened the door, and so he stepped through it at once, moving to establish himself in the apartment quickly, before she had a chance to change her mind. As soon as he heard her slide the deadbolt home he whirled on her, took a step forward and watched her retreat until her back was flush to the door, watching him like she was scared of him, and he hated himself for it.

"Tell me the truth," he said. "I feel like I'm going out of my mind here, Liv, and I need you to tell me the goddamn truth."

"Elliot, you need to -"

"I need to know!" he barked. Probably she was gonna tell him to calm down, or go home to Kathy, or take a fucking breath, but he couldn't do any of those things now.

"You haven't asked me anything-"

"You aren't hurt," he said. She was right, he hadn't asked yet. He needed to get the words out before he could expect an accounting from her. "You said all that blood on your shirt was from Sister Peg. The medics said you're fine. But I saw it, Liv."

He let the words land, his eyes trained unblinking on her face, searching for some sign that she understood why he was so angry, why he'd come here tonight, searching for some tell that she was already formulating a lie in her mind, but her face was dark and unreadable to him, and that just made him feel worse, because they knew one another, Elliot and Olivia, had worked together for thirteen fucking years and he knew her, and he was supposed to be able to read her. It was an uncomfortable sensation, the sudden not knowing.

"She shot you," he said. "I saw it." Had seen the gun in Jenna's hand, trembling, had seen it swing out, had seen Sister Peg hit the ground, had seen Olivia's body jerk as the second bullet blasted into her stomach, had seen the crimson torrent of her blood staining her shirt. He had seen it, but only him; everyone else had either been behind her or looking at Jenna. Elliot was the only one who'd been looking at her, and he had seen it, and his heart had shattered, and he'd reacted on instinct, and taken Jenna down. Taken her down, not because she'd killed the men who'd hurt her mother, not because she'd killed Sister Peg, not because she posed a risk to everyone else in the bullpen; he'd shot Jenna because she'd shot Liv. Only when Jenna breathed her last and the bullpen went quiet and Elliot looked for Olivia wildly, desperately, she wasn't acting like she was hurt at all, and Cragen had quarantined him alone in the Captain's office and he'd watched through the glass while the medics cleared her and IAB took her statement and she was sent home and there was nothing, no sign of the harm that had been done to her. But he'd seen it, and he had to know.

"Elliot-"

"All that blood on your shirt," he said. "Where you were standing when Peg got shot, the angles were all wrong. There's no way it came from her." It hadn't been blowback from Peg's wound splattered across Liv's stomach, and Liv's stomach hadn't come into contact with the Sister as she lay dying. That blood, it was Liv's. But she was standing here right in front of him, apparently unscathed, and none of it made any goddamn sense.

"Thirteen years, Olivia," he said grimly. "We've had each other's backs, and we've always told each other the truth."

Technically, they had always told each other the truth. There were a number of truths they'd left unspoken, and they both knew it, but keeping quiet wasn't the same as lying. She'd never lied to him before.

Except he was starting to believe that she had.

"Gitano," he said, and watched her blanch like she'd been struck. "I saw him cut you, Liv. You should've died. You should've bled out right there on the floor. And you didn't even need a stitch?"

And another child had died because Elliot had rushed to defend Olivia. Two dead kids, and both times Liv was fine, when she had no right to be.

"Whatever it is," he said. "Whatever this is, I deserve to fucking know." I've killed for you, he thought. God forgive me, but I have. And I need to know why. "And if you can't be honest with me right now, I never want to see you again."

It was the cruelest possible thing he could have said. It cut her to the quick; he saw it, saw her dark eyes go big and doe-like and sad, saw the way her shoulders curled in and she wrapped her arms around herself, a gesture of self-comfort she'd learned as a child when she'd had no one to love her. That made him angry, too, how devastated she seemed at the thought of him walking out on her, made him angry with himself for threatening her that way, made him angry at God, the fucking universe, fate, whatever it was that had made her so fucking lonesome, when she was beautiful and strong and brave and good and deserved love more than anyone else alive. When he wanted, desperately, to be the one to love her, and knew he'd never get the chance. It was downright mean, the words he'd said, but he knew it was the only way he'd ever force her hand. The only thing they couldn't stand to lose was each other.

"I'm not sure you're ready to hear what I have to say," she said slowly.

That threw him off balance; it didn't sound to him like she was denying his accusations. But how could she not? What possible explanation could there be for all this? How could she have been shot, and yet recovered in the span of a few minutes? It defied all logic, but she wasn't denying it.

"I need to know," he said earnestly, pleading almost.

"I don't think you'll understand if I tell you. I think…I think I need to show you."

What the fuck does that mean?

"Turn around, please."

"Olivia, what the fuck-"

"I need to take my shirt off," she said with an unnatural calmness. It was an act, he thought; she was forcing herself to speak slowly and evenly, just like she would with a victim, just like she would if she was afraid. He could see the terror in her eyes, and he felt it echoed in his own heart, but he couldn't back down. The blood of two children was on his hands, and he needed to know why.

"Ok," he said tightly, and turned his back.

The apartment was quiet for a moment, deathly still save for the sound of fabric rustling as she stripped out of her shirt, as she dropped it slowly to the ground.

"Ok," she said into that deathly silence. "Turn around."

On instinct he obeyed her, and turned slowly on his heel, and found himself face-to-face with the smooth tanned skin of her back. She'd shucked her bra, too, a plain tan cotton affair she still held tight in her hands, folded across her chest. All he could see was her back, the arch of her spine from the nape of her neck to the spread of her hips. No scar, no tattoo, nothing, just her, soft and warm and beautiful, and he ached, looking at her, seeing her more exposed than he ever had before, and maybe he should have said something but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and he could not draw breath to speak.

"Watch," Olivia said softly.

And he did. He watched, silently, as the elegant lines of her shoulder blades shifted, as if she were stretching. Watched, in breathless confusion, in a dizzying, growing sense of horror. Watched unblinking, and because he watched, because he was sober and of sound mind - ish - and fully aware of his surroundings and the choices and mistakes that had led him to this point, he would not ever be able to deny what he saw then. He watched, and he saw, and his whole world was shattered.

As he watched, spellbound and breathless, it seemed to him that he could see something moving beneath Olivia's skin. Almost as if he could see her very bones moving, the blades of her shoulders growing more and more pronounced, until it seemed like they were about to burst from her skin, and he would have screamed, but his lungs had been frozen solid by fear, and so he only stood there motionless, mouth agape, as with a soft rustling sound a pair of great feathered wings unfurled slowly from Olivia's back. Well, it felt slow; it took somewhat more than three seconds but somewhat less than five for the wings to settle, and then they spread wide, so wide, towering over her by a foot, maybe two, maybe ten feet from tip to tip. They were wings, covered all over in brilliant feathers, a shade of white so bright it was difficult to look at. Wings, beautiful, and graceful, the feathers making the same soft sound as an autumn breeze whispering through pine needles on the ground. Wings, like an angel's.

"Olivia," he croaked, and she looked back at him, her face framed between the curve of her shoulder and the rise of one of the wings. One of her wings.

"I didn't lie," she said softly, sadly. "My mother was raped, Elliot. But she was raped a long, long time ago, and she wasn't raped by a man."

In that moment Elliot's legs gave out, and he crashed to his knees, the weight of this revelation too great for his body to bear. Angels and demons, giants ten feet tall and men who lived for centuries, all those old stories about the shape of the world before the flood, they were only stories, and while he believed wholeheartedly in God and heaven and hell, the rest of it, the angels and the demons and all of it, he'd always thought of it sort of abstractly. No more real to him than ghosts, or fairies; who had time to worry about angels when there were bills to pay and mouths to feed?

"She wasn't the only one," Olivia continued in that same sad voice. There was something resigned to her tone, something that made him feel as if she weren't just telling him the truth; it felt as if she was letting him go.

"There were giants in the earth in those days," she said, and it sounded to him like she was quoting something, but it was nothing he'd ever heard before, "and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."

"Olivia," he breathed her name in a reverent, holy terror.

"They called us nephilim," she said. "The children of the sons of God and the daughters of man. Not fully angels, not fully human, but something else, something that never should have been. I never should have been, Elliot. But I am, and I'm here."

She was right, he thought; she was right, that she had not lied to him. She had told him what she was, and he had been the foolish one, trying to convince her otherwise. She was something that never should have been, but she was, just the same.

And she was beautiful, and she was sad, and she was his partner, and he had killed a child and forsaken his marriage for her sake, and he would do it all again, he thought, looking up at the radiant beauty of her, the majestic spread of those softly rustling wings. He would burn the whole world down for her.

Chapter Text

"Here," she said. "Take this."

This was a small crystal glass with about three fingers worth of bourbon in it, and Elliot accepted it gladly, took one long slow sip and then cradled the glass in both his hands, his elbows resting loosely on his knees. He'd loosened the knot in his tie on the drive over and it hung low and crooked beneath the open buttons at his collar, and while Liv had been busy putting her shirt back on and pouring him a drink he'd taken the opportunity to roll his sleeves back, and try to bring his heart rate under control. He hadn't much luck; he hoped the bourbon would help.

After Olivia's cataclysmic revelation in the entryway by her front door Elliot had drug himself to his feet and found safe quarter on one end of her sofa, and now that she'd brought him his drink she curled herself into the armchair opposite him, tucked her legs up under her body, looking somehow small and scared, when usually Olivia was neither of those things. She'd seemed to tower over him when they stood by the door, with her brilliant wings spread out behind her in all their glory, but now she seemed to have shrunken in on herself, and there was an expression like heartbreak in her big dark eyes.

For a moment he just looked at her, feeling the bourbon burning its way down his throat and into his belly. Just looked at her, his best friend, his partner, this beautiful woman he'd walked through life with for more than a dozen years now, and tried to reconcile what he'd just learned with everything he thought he knew. Tried, and failed, because there was no reconciling it. How could there be? How could any sane man, sound of mind and practical and well aware of the grim reality of life on earth, just accept that his best friend was an angel? Or part angel, or whatever? But he had seen the wings for himself; he had seen Jenna shoot Olivia, and he saw her now, utterly unhurt. His eyes could see what his mind stubbornly refused to believe, and his heart was caught in the middle.

"Say something," Olivia prompted him in a voice just this side of desperate. Usually she didn't mind the quiet, and usually he didn't, either; they knew each other well enough to fill the silence without words. Only that silence was full of accusations now, and it seemed like that was bothering her, as much as it bothered him.

"I'm kinda having a hard time with this, Liv," he said. Say something, she'd said, and she hadn't said what she wanted him to say, so he settled on the truth.

"I know," she told him heavily.

"So what, you're…you…I mean…" he stumbled over his words, finding it impossible to give voice to the thoughts that filled his head. She was an angel, right? That's what she had been trying to tell him, right? That she was immortal, or something? Immortal was not a word Elliot Stabler could say with a straight face.

"My father was an angel," Olivia said slowly. "My mother was a human. Back then -"

"Back when?"

She shot him a dark look.

"If I say before the flood, are you gonna laugh at me?"

"The flood? Like Noah and the arc, that flood?"

Jesus, he thought, and wished he hadn't, because this conversation sounded too much like Sunday School already; Noah and the flood, all those old stories, they were just stories, weren't they? He'd always thought so. Thought they were just stories, just a way to teach kids to be nice to each other and do what their parents said. The people in those stories, they hadn't been real, had they? The whole world hadn't been drowned in water, the only living creatures those that found shelter on Noah's boat; it was an impossibility. It was just a story.

"Yeah," Olivia said, and Elliot gulped. "Look, it wasn't…it wasn't the whole world," she said, like she could read his mind. "But back then there wasn't a lot of long distance travel, you know? It took a long time to get from Damascus to Shanghai. People didn't really know anything about what was happening in other places. It felt like the whole world drowned, when it came, because everything we'd ever known was underwater. Can you accept that much?"

Elliot nodded, and took another drink.

"Back then," she said. "Things were different. Angels walked on earth. Not a lot of them, not everywhere, but they did. But some of them went rogue."

"Can they even do that?" Elliot asked before he could stop himself. Was he really entertaining this? Did he really believe her? How could he not? Wasn't her very existence proof that what she said was true?

"Where do you think the demons came from?" she asked sadly. "The point is, there were angels here. And some of them married human women. Some of the women consented, some of them didn't. Whether they did or not, pretty much everybody agreed their offspring were abominations. My mother was cast out of her family home when she came up pregnant with a monster."

"You're not a monster," Elliot said softly, but she just kept talking like she never even heard him.

"It's hard to hide a nephilim baby," she said. "I can retract my wings now, but I didn't learn how to do that until I was five or six, and it's not like my mother knew how to teach me. If I get hurt, my body heals that hurt fast. I wasn't supposed to be born but I can't really die, either. I mean there are ways. People figured that out fast."

She didn't elaborate and he wasn't about to ask.

"I can change my appearance-"

"Does that mean this isn't actually your real face?"

That thought troubled him. She was telling him that she was the child of an angel and she couldn't really die but what bothered him most was the thought that he didn't actually know what she looked like. Thirteen years might have been a blip on the radar to her but it mattered to him, and it hurt, thinking that she'd hidden herself from him.

"No, it is," she assured him at once. "More or less. I've made a couple changes over the years, people might notice if I looked twenty-five forever."

She didn't really look forty, either, he thought; there had always been a timelessness to her, and now he supposed he knew the reason why.

"Anyway. The angels were here, they started to cause trouble, and the rules changed. That's what the flood was about, partially, was wiping out the angels who didn't come home when they were called, and their offspring, too. There weren't very many of us, and we were all in the same general area. It was just supposed to be one big disaster, wipe the slate clean."

"Did they drown, the others?" The ones who were like you?

"Most of them. It took a while. Sometimes a body that refuses to die isn't a mercy."

It was a chilling story. She hadn't said God did it, but Elliot kinda figured that was implied, and that was something else for him to struggle with, the idea that God himself had tried to kill Olivia Benson. She was still standing, though, and maybe it was wrong but Elliot was fiercely proud of her for that.

"Wait," he said as a thought occurred to him. "What about Simon?"

He'd met the man, Olivia's brother, recalled Simon's face, his voice, all the tragic details of the unraveling of Simon's life.

"He's a nephilim, too," Olivia explained. "That makes him my brother, in a way. There's maybe six of us in the States, as far as I know. After the flood we had to start over. There was no place for us with the humans, they blamed us for everything they'd lost, but we didn't want to stick together. We didn't want to draw attention. Men hunted us. Most of my brothers were killed by men, or by their own hands. It meant a lot, finding Simon. I…I wanted that connection, so badly."

And it had all turned to shit. That part of the story remained the same; angel or woman, Olivia was lonely and without family, and the one piece of family she'd found had brought her no comfort, and Elliot's heart ached for her then.

"The world forgot about us, mostly. There are some people out there who know about us, who want to capture us or kill us, but there's so few of us left and we know how to keep ourselves hidden."

Yeah you do, Elliot thought.

"So, that's it really-"

"No, it's not," Elliot said, and she looked up at him sharply, confused.

"Come on, Liv. How…how old are you, exactly?"

"I don't really know," she confessed. "Look, the way people keep track of time has changed a bit since I was a kid. I'm about…I guess…maybe five thousand and change. It's not like I keep count."

"Five thousand," Elliot choked. "You're five thousand years old? What the fuck have you been doing all that time? How the fuck did you end up being a cop? I mean…Olivia's not even your real name, is it?"

There was so much he didn't know, so much he needed to know; all thoughts of his own troubles had faded away, forgotten for the moment, because Elliot Stabler was a cop first and foremost, and he was now in the midst of the most interesting interrogation he'd ever been a part of before, and he would have his answers.

"Ok," Olivia said slowly. "Look, I'm not gonna…I'm not gonna tell you everything because that'll take a long ass time and you're struggling with this already-"

"And you're not?" he demanded pugnaciously. She frowned at him, and carried on.

"No, Olivia is not the name my mother gave me. But I chose that name about thirty years ago and I like it, ok?"

He nodded, wanting to protest but wanting to hear her speak more.

"I've moved around a lot. I'm not…I'm not supposed to be here, Elliot. I'm not supposed to be anywhere. If I die, there's no place for me in heaven. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

"Yes." And Christ, but he wished he didn't. If there was no place for her heaven, that really only left one alternative, and it was an ugly one. Elliot's thoughts shrunk back from it, touched the edges of the word hell and retreated. Sure, part of him believed in all that, heaven and hell, but he believed it the way he believed in black holes and supernovas; those things were real, but he was never really gonna understand them, and he was never, ever going to touch them, and he didn't spend too much time really thinking about them, because what good was it gonna do him to worry about it now? Only now Olivia was talking about heaven the way somebody might talk about Vegas, like it was a real place, one a person could get to it, and the reality of it was so overwhelming he'd rather turn away from it than think about it too long.

"I decided a long time ago that I was gonna keep on living. And if I'm gonna live, I want to make that life mean something. So, I try to help people. I've done all kinds of things. I've been a midwife and a teacher but the one thing I was best at was being a soldier. I hated it, though. All these stupid wars, men killing each other over stupid shit, over who owned a piece of land when nobody has an inherent right to any of it, if you ask me, all that…it wore me down. I came here back when the US was still the Colonies. I lived on the prairie for a while. Kept my head down, kept to myself. But I'm a shit farmer and it felt selfish, just hiding out. I helped a Marshal out of a jam in Oklahoma, and I guess that's how I got started being a cop. It changed over time. I moved about every thirty years. Some places they let me wear a badge and some places all they'd let me do was make coffee and talk to crying women, but at least it was something. I've worked in Texas and Michigan, I was in LA before I came to New York. The idea of SVU was just getting off the ground around the time I left California, and I wanted to be part of it. I wanted to help women like my mother. I wanted to make a difference. Is that enough?"

There was so much she hadn't told him. The specifics, that was scratching at his brain; he wanted to know everything, every name she'd ever had and every place she'd ever lived and every friend she'd ever had, every person she'd ever let care about her the way he did, if there had been anyone at all. He wanted to know every name she'd ever chosen for herself and how she'd done it, kept all those identities straight, how she handled her money, who forged her papers, whether it was getting harder to fake her records now than it had been in the fucking Wild West. Helped a Marshal out of a jam; Jesus, it was like something from a movie. No, it was not enough.

But it was enough, because she'd just told him the only things that really mattered. She'd told him that she was who he had always thought she was, a woman who was compassionate and brave and strong and stubborn, a survivor, a champion for those who could not stand up for themselves. Whatever her name, however old she was, she was, at her core, precisely the woman he'd always believed her to be. She was good, and she was lonesome, and she had the heart of a fighter, just like him.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that's enough for me."

"You don't think I'm crazy?"

"I might be crazy, but no, I don't think you are. I saw the damn wings. I saw…I saw you get shot, and recover like it was nothing. I don't think you're lying."

"What are you gonna do?"

"What do you mean what am I gonna do?" he asked, confused.

"Elliot, what I've just told you…I understand if it's too much. I understand if you wanna-"

"If I wanna what?"

"Leave."

All he could do was stare at her; she thought that after she'd shared her biggest secret with him, a secret that had gotten untold scores of her brothers killed, that he was just gonna leave her? Just gonna walk away from his best friend because she was something more miraculous than he'd ever imagined?

"No," he said firmly. "I'm not…I don't know what's gonna happen next, Liv. Tucker took my badge and my gun, I'm on administrative leave for God only knows how long. They might not ever let me back. But I'm not gonna walk away from you now. Not 'cause of this."

"Ok," she said, her shoulders slowly relaxing, some of the tension leaving her now that she knew Elliot wasn't about to turn his back on her. "It's late, I'm sure you've gotta get home to Kathy-"

Shit. Kathy. He'd forgotten.

"She kicked me out," he confessed, and Olivia's eyes went wide in shock. "It's been a long time coming, tonight just kinda brought everything to a head."

He chose to leave out the part where Kathy had said if you don't come home now, don't come home at all; he left out the part where his wife told him that if he really loved her it was her he'd seek comfort from, not his partner. He left out the part where he'd chosen Olivia over his family. Somehow he didn't think either of them were ready to face that truth just now.

"So I can't go home, and I'm not allowed in the precinct, so…can I crash on your couch?"

It was a remarkably mundane question, after all of the batshit crazy things Olivia had just told him, and the whole thing struck him as sorta funny, just then. He was asking a fucking angel if he could sleep on her couch, and she was watching him ruefully from her armchair, and he knew before she spoke that she was gonna tell him yes. They were partners, and that meant they took care of each other. No matter what.

"Yeah," she said. "I'll get you a blanket."

She unfolded herself slowly from the chair, and Elliot watched her, the graceful swing of her hips in those soft pants, the comfortable, easy way she moved around her apartment, her home. The story she'd told him, the story of her life, it was extraordinary, but then she had always been that, extraordinary. She had always been larger than life, somehow, beautiful, and fierce. And whatever name she chose for herself, whatever face she wore, she was, at her heart, Olivia, and there was no one he trusted more than Olivia. Things would be different, after tonight, there was no denying that, but the central truth remained. Liv was Liv, and she had made a place for him when he had nowhere else to go; he would do the same for her.

Chapter Text

He passed a long and sleepless night staring up at the ceiling in Olivia's living room. It was a profoundly boring ceiling; all smooth, not even a trace of popcorn to form an interesting shadow, just white, and blank. That ceiling provided no answers to the many questions that swirled around and around his mind, thoughts caught in the current of his consciousness like a log lobbed into a whirlpool, spinning and spinning and then disappearing into nothingness. He had killed a child, and likely lost his job, and ended his marriage, and Olivia was a goddamn angel. Kathy had kicked him out of the house and Tucker had taken his badge and Olivia had a pair of brilliant white wings hidden beneath the tan skin of her back. Angels were real, and Noah's flood had happened, and Liv had seen it, and he had no idea what he was gonna do with himself when the sun came up.

But the sun did come up, just like it always did, because the very fabric of reality seemed to have changed shape around him but some things remained immutable. The sun would rise, and Liv would go to work, and nothing, not even the horrors and revelations of the previous day, would change that. He listened to the water rushing through the pipes, imagined Olivia waking up, brushing her teeth, taking a shower, wondered to himself if she ever had to wash those wings, and then realized he'd spent more time than he was comfortable with thinking about Olivia naked and so vaulted to his feet and occupied himself for a moment with folding up the blanket she'd given to him the night before. That took almost no time at all, though, and she was still in the shower, so he wandered into the kitchen and set about starting a pot of coffee. He'd never stayed the night in Liv's place before but he knew where she kept the important things, the coffee grounds and the filters and the chipped NYPD academy mug she liked best. There was no milk or creamer in the fridge but he hadn't expected there to be; there was never anything in Liv's fridge except some ketchup and soy sauce and maybe a half-eaten container of leftover lo mein.

Do angels even need to eat? He wondered. She was only half angel, and he'd seen her eat often enough in the past; maybe the human part of her had won that battle, or maybe she only did it to blend in. It was a troublesome thought.

That was where she found him, eventually, standing in the kitchen staring, watching the coffee drip down into the pot, thinking about angels, and the end of life as he knew it. The sound of her footsteps was familiar to him, and he took note of her approach at once, turned to stare at her ruefully from the corner of her little kitchen. There was something wary about her eyes this morning, something uncertain, afraid; she'd seemed scared the night before, too, scared that he was gonna leave her now that he knew what she was. He didn't plan to, wasn't about to walk out on her just because she was something holy, something he'd never dreamed, but he did have to wonder, looking at her now, what the fuck was going to happen to them next. She was dressed for work in a white tank top and black slacks, her blazer draped over the back of the couch where she'd left it. Her gun was holstered on one hip and her badge was clipped to the other, and she was going to work, and Elliot wasn't allowed to go. How often was he gonna be able to see her, when she had to go to the office every day and he was just floating along, waiting for Tucker to decide his fate? No one knew better than Elliot how hard it was to maintain a relationship outside the job; the job demanded everything, and what was Liv gonna have leftover for him now?

"You're still here," she said, and sounded a little surprised.

"Where else would I be?"

"I thought you might have come to your senses, gone home to Kathy."

For a second he just looked at her, dumbfounded. It hadn't occurred to him until she said it that he could have tried to go home. Kathy had told him don't come home at all and he'd been so shell-shocked, so out of his mind, so confused, so angry, so horribly, miserably guilty that he'd taken her at her word. But she'd wanted him to come home. That was all she'd been trying to do, with that message, was make him come home, make him recognize what was important to him, make him choose it. And he'd chosen to stay away all night instead, and never told her where he went, and she knew, now. She knew that when she'd given him an ultimatum he'd found somewhere else to go rather than try to fight for her, and he hadn't told her he'd stayed with Olivia - hadn't told her anything at all - but she wasn't stupid. She'd know where he spent his night.

"Shit," he muttered.

"Are you gonna be ok?" Olivia asked him earnestly, taking a step towards him, worry written on every line of her face.

"Yeah," he said. No, he thought. No, he was not going to be ok. None of this was ok. Liv was about to leave and he was gonna have to go, too. But go where? Home, probably. Kathy would be there, with Eli, and he needed to talk to her. If she wouldn't let him talk he'd at least need to grab some of his stuff; he was still wearing yesterday's clothes, and he wasn't allowed at the station, couldn't go there for a shower and the fresh change of clothes in his locker. If Kathy was past the point of talking to him he'd have to figure out somewhere to stay; Liv's couch was pretty decent, as far as couches went, but it wasn't a long term solution. He couldn't expect her to just take him in; she would, if he asked, but it would wound his pride to have to ask, and Kathy…Jesus, Kathy would blow a gasket if she found out he was staying with Liv.

"There's coffee," he said, pointing to the mugs, because there were a million thoughts racing through his mind and he didn't want to share any of them with Olivia.

The look she gave him told him plainly that she knew he was deliberately trying to distract her, but she didn't call him out on it. Instead she just walked into the kitchen, just came to a stop shoulder-to-shoulder with him, just picked up her favorite mug and took a long sip while he stood there beside her, asking himself how the fuck he'd gotten into this mess.

"Maybe you can talk things out with Kathy," she said after a moment, though she did not look at him, just kept staring straight out the little window just above her sink. "Yesterday was…hard. She's gotta understand you weren't in your right mind last night."

Would Kathy understand, though? He wondered. Would Kathy understand what it had done to him, taking Jenna's life? Would Kathy understand what it had done to him, knowing he'd killed Jenna out of fear for Liv, knowing now that fear was unjustified? Did it matter?

"To tell you the truth, I'm tired of fighting it," he confessed. Liv turned to look at him sharply, and he hung his head, embarrassed at having admitted to such a thing. He'd never said it out loud before, hadn't meant to say it now. Elliot Stabler loved his family and he was not a quitter and he wasn't supposed to do this, wasn't supposed to let the marriage he'd worked so hard to save just fall apart, but he was tired. The first time Kathy left him, he'd dug his heels in, kept coming around, kept talking to her, kept taking her out to dinner until the night she asked him to fuck her, and he did, and after that he was kinda thinking that maybe he'd made a mistake and maybe she'd been right to go but then she was pregnant and what the fuck was he gonna do? Leave her to raise a baby on her own? When he had been the one pushing, the one clinging to their marriage with both hands? He'd gotten exactly what he wanted, had gotten her back, but it never felt the same. Before she'd left him the first time, he'd have said that when he thought of Kathy he thought of home. After Eli, she didn't feel like home, anymore. She didn't trust him and they didn't confide in each other and they were just going through the motions, really. What was the point, he asked himself now, of hanging on to a life where neither of them were happy?

"You can't make this decision right now, Elliot," Liv told him, a note of warning in her voice.

"Thank you for that divine wisdom," Elliot muttered.

"Don't be an asshole," Liv fired back. "You're not yourself right now, El. You…after everything that happened yesterday, you're not gonna make the best choices. Just go home, and talk to her, ok?"

There was no point in being petulant about it when he'd already decided to go home, but he felt a little waspish, just the same. Olivia was five thousand years old, but she was alone, too, and it frustrated him, hearing her giving him relationship advice. Not enough to take it out on her, though. Liv had been good to him, and she was his friend, and he didn't want to hurt her. He didn't want to hurt anyone else.

"Yeah, I'm gonna talk to her," he said. "What are you gonna do? Did Cragen bench you?"

"If Cragen benched everybody who was in the bullpen yesterday there'd be no one left to work," she told him grimly. "I already talked to him this morning. I've gotta go sit with IAB first thing, and then it'll be business as usual."

Except it wouldn't, because business as usual meant Liv and El, meant the two of them together, facing the day's problems as a team, and he wouldn't be there with her, this time. Probably she'd spend the day riding with Fin, and it drove him crazy to even think it but she probably wouldn't mind that. She'd always gotten along better with Fin than he did.

"I won't hold you up," Elliot said, beginning to make his way out of the kitchen. "Tell Tucker I said he can go fuck himself."

"Yeah, I'll do that," she answered drily.

He'd left his jacket and his tie on the back of the sofa, and she'd laid her blazer down right next to them, and he looked at them for a moment, those two black coats next to each other. His was bigger, the fabric rougher; Liv had never dressed flashy but she'd always dressed expensive and he'd always wondered about it, but she didn't have kids and apparently had the luxury of several millennia to build up her portfolio; probably she wasn't hurting for money. The jackets looked nice together, though.

"Hey, El?" she called gently, and he looked over his shoulder, watched her padding softly towards him with both her hands wrapped tight around that chipped coffee mug. "Call me tonight?"

Where would he be tonight? He wondered. Would he be at home, lying next to a wife who felt like a stranger, or alone in some hotel room across town? Where would she be tonight? Would work be kind to her, or would she catch a case? Would she be home in time for supper or would she and Fin pass the night sleeping in shifts in the cribs? There was no way to know, he thought, what this day might bring.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'll call you."

"I just wanna know that you're ok."

Five thousand years; how many people had she known, in five thousand years? How many friends had she made, how many lovers, how many of them had she buried? How many times had her heart been broken? Five thousand years, and she ended up here, in this little one bedroom in New York City she never should have been able to afford on her salary, looking at him like she cared about him, like she was worried about him. Five thousand years, and he was the one she wanted to call her when the day was through.

"I promise," he said.

There wasn't a lot left to say, after that. They both shrugged into their jackets, stumbled into their shoes by the door, walked out of the apartment together, leaving behind two mostly full mugs of coffee and a pot she was gonna have to clean when she got home. They went down the stairs together, and parted at the curb; he went left, towards the garage where he'd left his car the night before, and she went right, towards the subway, and the distance between them grew with each step they took, left Elliot wondering when he was gonna see her again, and what the fuck he was gonna say to her when he did. It was going to be, he thought, a very long day.

Chapter Text

A/N: a warning for the beginning of this chapter; this one starts with a case, so there is some discussion of the crime.

One month later…

"Morning," Fin said grimly, offering her a paper cup of coffee, which she accepted gratefully. Morning was technically accurate, but it was only just after 4:00 a.m. and the world was still all in darkness, no sign of the coming dawn. The call had come in, though, and they had answered, Fin and Liv, and when he stopped at the bodega for his own much needed caffeine he'd picked some up for her, too, two sugars and a splash of milk because they'd been partnered up more often than not since Elliot's suspension, and he'd learned by now how she took her coffee.

"What've we got?" Olivia asked as they made their way into the apartment together. The place was crawling with crime scene techs; there were a couple unis, too, but most of them were hard at work canvassing the neighbors. From what Olivia had seen of the corridor on her way to the crime scene she didn't anticipate getting much from the canvass.

"It's ugly," Fin said.

Isn't it always? She thought, but he was leading her through the living room - the place had been trashed, every piece of furniture upturned, couch cushions cut open as if with a knife, pages torn from books; it was a fucking disaster - and into the kitchen, and when she saw what waited for them there she figured ugly was the best word to describe it.

"Jesus," she breathed in horror.

"Guy basically garroted her," Fin explained. "Cut so deep he damn near took her head off. Used this," he reached out, grabbed an evidence bag from the counter to show her its contents. "Vic was into making pottery, apparently they use the wire to cut through the clay when it's wet."

The wire was thin but tough, with little handles on either end, and bits of the vic were still sticking to it. There was blood everywhere, and shattered fragments of pottery, too.

"And it's our case because -"

"Looks like he raped her," the ME's assistant on the ground by the victim's head piped up cheerfully, and Liv fought a sudden urge to kick him.

"We got a problem, though," Fin said, ignoring the guy completely.

A mostly decapitated vic, raped in her apartment, no witnesses; it seemed to Liv they had a lot of problems.

"What's that?" she asked, because she could tell Fin was waiting, looking at her like he was wondering where her head was at, if she was even listening.

"Vic's got a kid."

As he spoke he pointed to the fridge, and she saw at once what he was trying to show her. Very carefully she picked her way across the kitchen, trying her best not to step in any blood, and stood for a moment looking at the pictures plastered across the fridge, held in place with a myriad of brightly colored magnets.

"McKenna," she read the child's name aloud; it was spelled out in big block letter magnets across the fridge. If Olivia had to guess she'd estimate that McKenna was about four, a sweet little thing with a wealth of dark hair and the bluest eyes Olivia had ever seen. The girl had a wide, brilliant smile, and Olivia's heart clenched in her chest, looking into that precious little face.

Where are you, sweetheart? She wondered. And then please, please don't let him have her. It was a horror her heart recoiled from, the idea that the sweet little girl staring back from the pictures on the fridge might even now be in the clutches of the beast who'd murdered her mother so brutally. In that moment, Olivia prayed, not that she thought it would do much good; God was not in the habit of answering the prayers of monsters.

"No sign of her," Fin said. "But I'm thinking we sweep the place again. These unis, they're green. Might be there's some place they missed."

It was a feeble hope; the apartment wasn't terribly big, and there were only so many places for a child to hide, and what were the chances, Olivia wondered, that the girl had stayed quiet through all this noise? What were the chances that she was alive at all? If Olivia discovered McKenna's body now, she wasn't sure she'd survive it herself.

"All right," she said. "Let's go."

They started in the kitchen, opened every cabinet door. Looked under all the furniture in the living room, double checked the coat closet by the front door. Ducked into the bathroom, pulled back the shower curtain, opened the cabinets there, too. There were two bedrooms, and they each took one, Fin disappearing into the vic's room while Liv took McKenna's.

The perp had been in here, too; he'd ripped the sheets from the bed and flung the mattress up against a wall, had opened every dresser drawer and spilled their contents on the floor, had ripped the closet door straight off its tracks and tossed it carelessly aside. It was hopeless, but Olivia looked, anyway. Laid down on her belly and peered beneath the bed, opened the little toy chest in the corner, and found no sign of McKenna at all.

"I got nothing," Fin called to her from the doorway; she hadn't seen him search the vic's room, but she trusted him, and she knew he'd looked everywhere possible.

"One last thing," she said, and went to the closet. Even though there was no door left on it, even though she could clearly see there was nothing on the floor, she went to the closet, and for the rest of her life she would wonder why she did, and be glad of it.

There was in fact nothing on the floor of the closet, nothing buried in the corners, just the child's clothes and a few storage boxes. Olivia sighed, and titled her head back, feeling defeated and trying to avoid the moment when she would inevitably have to tell Fin she'd had no luck, either. She lifted her head, and gazed upward, as if she were looking towards the heavens she could not see, and when she did she found two bright blue eyes peering down at her from the top shelf of the closet. It was high up, taller than Olivia herself, maybe a foot below the ceiling, covered in a jumble of boxes, and there, squeezed into the very back corner of that shelf, was a little girl, watching her in terror.

"Hey," Olivia said as gently as she could, and behind her she felt Fin tense.

"It's ok, McKenna. My name's Olivia, and this is my friend Fin. We're the police. See?" She unclipped her badge from her belt and held it up for the child to see. "Will you let me get you down from there?"

The little girl retreated further into her corner, shaking her head.

"Did your mommy put you up there?" Olivia asked, her heart heavy with sorrow. The vic, had she known something bad was coming? She would have had to, there was no way McKenna had climbed up on that shelf by herself. The vic had known danger was at the door, and she had done her best to protect her child, and Olivia wanted to weep at the injustice of it all, but tears were not a luxury she could afford right now.

"The bad man is gone," Olivia said. "And we're here to keep you safe. It's ok, McKenna. We're here to help."

Olivia held out her arms to the child, and waited. Waited, holding her breath, to see what might happen next. The shelf was just a little too tall and McKenna was just a little too traumatized for Olivia to risk just grabbing the girl; she would need McKenna to come to her. Please, she thought, please, just come, just-

Very slowly McKenna shimmied forward on her belly, little hands outstretched towards Olivia, and Olivia caught her carefully under the arms and pulled just a little, and then McKenna was coming down, and Olivia swung her easily onto her hip, and as she did the world seemed to stop turning.

"Fin," she said in an unsteady voice. "Close the door, please."

He didn't even question it. They had known one another too long, seen too much horror together, entrusted too many secrets to one another, for him to doubt her now. He simply closed the door, very quietly, and stood with his back against it while Olivia lowered McKenna to the ground, and then knelt down beside her.

The girl had been dressed for bed in a sweet little pink nightgown covered in a pattern of flowers. The straps of the nightgown were thin, and they crossed low in the back, low enough that they did not impede the pair of brilliantly white wings that sprouted just below McKenna's shoulders. Wings, shimmering and soft, their feathers gently rustling. Wings, just like Olivia's.

She's one of us, Olivia thought in wonder. It had been thousands of years since the last nephilim was born; the renegade angels had all been wiped out by the flood, and God had not permitted angels to walk the earth since. Nephilim themselves could not reproduce; Olivia knew that all too well, to her sorrow. Where, then, had this child come from? Someone had made her; either she had been fathered by angel - though how such a thing had been allowed to happen Olivia could not begin to guess - or one of the Others had found a way to make new nephilim after all this time.

The Others were not a union, not a regiment, not a cult or a corporation or anything so organized as that. It was just what the nephilim called the people who hunted them. The humans who had learned, through whatever means, the truth of the nephilim's existence, and sought them out, either to kill them or experiment on them. The hunters and the experimenters weren't exactly in league with one another, but they both meant to hurt Olivia and her brothers, and that made them the same in her book. There had been men, over the centuries, who wanted to harness the power of the nephilim for themselves; it was too tempting, the way a nephilim's body healed, the idea that it could be bottled and sold, that immortality could be within a human's reach, and there had always been men, always would be men, who were foolhardy enough to try. Perhaps McKenna was the end result of one of their experiments. Perhaps not. There was no way to know, right now, and no time to find out, because Olivia had to get McKenna to safety, and there would be no safe quarter for her among the humans. She was so small; likely she had not learned to hide her wings yet, and even if she had, she could hardly be expected to hide them at all times. Suppose she was placed with some foster family? Suppose they found out what she was? At the very best she would terrify them; at the worst, her very life could be in danger. No, McKenna needed to be sheltered by her own kind. And there was a nephilim in that room with her, one who wanted, desperately, to keep her safe.

First, though, Olivia would have to get her out of the house.

"Your wings are beautiful," Olivia told her gently, and McKenna smiled at her hesitantly. So far the girl hadn't spoken a word, and Olivia found herself wondering if she even could. Her mother had gone to such lengths to keep her safe, it seemed unlikely the vic would've sent McKenna to a human daycare or preschool. Had she ever even ventured out of her home? The pictures on the fridge, they had all been taken inside the apartment, Olivia realized. McKenna might not have ever even seen the outside world. It had been the same, for Olivia; she was ten before her mother ever let her play out of doors, and it was only a growing negligence on her mother's part that had allowed her such liberty in the first place. Her mother would've kept her locked up forever, if she could have.

"Liv," Fin said, very softly, and she turned to look at him over her shoulder, a warning in her eyes, confusion in his. Maybe he'd thought the wings were just a costume, at first, just part of a child's make-believe game, but when Olivia praised her McKenna had fluttered her wings in apparent happiness. They had moved, and Fin had seen it.

"We have to get you somewhere safe," Olivia said, to Fin as much as to McKenna. "Will you let me wrap you up, sweetheart? You look cold, and I want you to be warm. I'll be careful, I promise."

McKenna nodded hesitantly, and Olivia reached down, grabbed up the sheet from the floor, and began to very swaddle the girl in it, carefully, folding her wings against her body in the way she knew from her own experience would be the most comfortable for her. When she was done she scooped McKenna up into her arms, and turned to face Fin.

"What are we dealing with here, Liv?" he asked her seriously.

"I can't tell you right now," she answered. McKenna wasn't speaking, but she gave every appearance of understanding Olivia's words, and Olivia would not tell Fin the truth where McKenna could overhear. "But I will. Right now, the important thing is we have to get her somewhere safe. I have a contact at the FBI I can call, someone who works on…cases like this."

It was a bald-faced lie.

"I'll take her to DCS myself."

Another lie.

"And wait for my contact there. But I need you to run interference for me. Give me the keys."

It was, she knew, a lot to ask of him. To ask him to go along with her plan, to trust her blindly, when he had no frame of reference for what he'd just seen. To ask him to lie for her, when she was herself lying to him. If he had been anyone else, he might have refused her. Might have asked more questions, might have insisted on going with her. But he was Fin, and he understood her. He knew that she was good police, and he knew her heart was in the right place, and he knew that she could be reckless, but only ever with good reason.

"Here," he said, fishing the keys from his pocket and holding them out to her. "But I'm gonna need answers soon, Liv."

"You'll get them," she promised.

And then she took the keys, and drew in a very deep breath, and watched him open the door for her. When they stepped out into the noise of the apartment McKenna buried her face in Olivia's neck, and Olivia's heart constricted. This little girl; probably she had no father to speak of, and her mother had just died, and there was no evidence that there was anyone else in her life who cared for her. Whether she knew it or not, McKenna was completely, utterly alone, and there was no telling what horrors she had overheard from her hiding spot in the closet. How scared must she be, how lonesome? Olivia's arms tightened around her, and she held McKenna close, let Fin do all the talking as they made their way out of the apartment.

They kept booster seats for kids in the trunks of the squad cars, and Fin put one in the backseat for Olivia while she stood on the sidewalk, holding McKenna close. When Fin was done she strapped the girl in, closed the door, and exchanged a single glance with him before sliding behind the wheel.

The question now was, where to take her? Olivia's one bedroom apartment was small, and there was no guarantee it was entirely safe; if there was an angel on the loose, if the Others were working in New York City, they might be keeping tabs on the nephilim. They might know that one of the nephilim was a cop, might even know she worked sex crimes, might look to her for answers first. No, Olivia needed to take the girl somewhere else, somewhere the Others would never look, somewhere safe.

Somewhere, she thought, like a little two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, where an SVU detective was cooling his heels, on leave from the job and looking for something to occupy to his time. Somewhere, she thought, where there might be someone who knew what the nephilim were, and did not hate them, where there might be someone who wanted to help.

"It's going to be ok, McKenna," she said as she began to drive, watching her mirrors closely, checking to see if anyone was following her. "We're going to see a friend of mine."

Chapter Text

Old habits, Elliot was learning, really did die hard. It had been nearly five weeks since that day in the bullpen, that day he'd shot and killed a teenager, a fucking child, that day Tucker took his badge and his gun and told him he was on suspension, that day Olivia had shown him her wings, that day when the whole fucking world seemed to have come to a stop. Five weeks, and he was still waking up every morning at 5:00 a.m. For the first couple of days he'd been busy; he'd gone to Kathy, just like Liv told him to, and Kathy had told him to go to hell - a little bit nicer than that, but still, the sentiment remained the same. She'd washed her hands of him, but Dickie and Lizzie still had a year of high school left and Eli was only little and Kath was gonna have to find a job and there was no point in bickering over who got the house. Let her keep it, he'd thought; she's earned that much. So Kath had the house and he had the sedan and nowhere to sleep, and it was kinda good, he'd though, in a bleak sort of way, kinda good that he had no job to go to, because apartment hunting in the city was a job unto itself. He'd found a place, though, and settled in, and now he had a routine, sorta.

Up every morning at five, to work out in the living room, squats and lunges and planks and push ups and pull ups on the bar he'd installed over the door to his bedroom, and then he'd have breakfast, and then he'd go for a jog, and then he'd spend the rest of the day on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or whatever the fuck, trying to find cheap furniture to fill the apartment he called home now. It wasn't much, as far as a social calendar went, and certainly didn't require such an early start, but sleep wouldn't come easy, and he was tired of fighting it.

The same thing, every morning, and this morning was no different, and so he was just finishing up his last set of pushups when he heard the knock on his front door.

That was not part of the routine. Who the fuck would be knocking on his door this early in the morning? Who the fuck would want to see him, period? No one, really, no one but Liv. He'd seen her a handful of times since the shooting; it was hard for her to find time awake from work, but she was worried about him, and they'd had breakfast once, grabbed a beer once, eaten takeout sitting on the floor of his apartment once. It wasn't like her to just show up out of the blue this time of day, though, and he couldn't shake the sense of dread that settled in his gut as he popped up onto his feet. He was shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of black basketball shorts slung low on his hips, and he was sweating like he'd just run a marathon, and Tucker had taken his service weapon and his personal pistol was locked up in a safe in the bedroom, and there was no time to go and grab it because whoever had come to visit him was knocking again.

He approached the door warily, peered through the peephole, and felt something like relief when he saw who had come to call on him, though his confusion redoubled. It was Olivia, and he was opening the door to her at once, but she wasn't alone. On her hip she cradled a child, a little girl three, maybe four years old, wrapped up in a pink bedsheet with her face pressed hard to the curve of Liv's neck.

"Hey," Elliot said quietly, pushing the door wide so Olivia could step through it.

"Hey," she answered. "I was gonna say sorry to wake you, but…"

She trailed off, made a valiant attempt at smiling, though she didn't quite succeed.

"Gonna introduce me to your friend?" Elliot asked, his eyes on the girl.

Whatever this was, he thought, it couldn't possibly be good. There were protocols in place; Liv couldn't just take a kid. Any child they found without a guardian was to be turned over to the care of DCS. Some exceptions were made, sometimes - there had been a little boy, once, when Kathy was pregnant with Eli, a little boy who had grown attached to Elliot, and DCS had let him take the kid home, but only after he'd been cleared by a social worker. Elliot and Kathy had a quiet, stable home, and experience raising kids, and they looked good on paper, a cop and his stay-at-home mom of a wife. There was no way, he thought, that DCS would've just handed a kid to Liv, because all those things Elliot and Kathy had - used to have - she'd never had. She'd been turned down by adoption agencies in the past, and her circumstances hadn't changed.

So how the fuck had she wound up at his door before dawn with a child in her arms?

"This is McKenna," she said, indicating the girl. "McKenna, this is my friend Elliot. Can you say hello?"

"Hi," McKenna said, very quietly.

"Hi, McKenna," Elliot answered, but his eyes flicked back up to Olivia, his heart still full of questions.

"McKenna, do you see that box over there in the corner?" Olivia said. "It's full of toys."

It was, in fact, full of a bunch of hot wheels and toy soldiers and Legos that Elliot had picked up from a Salvation Army and spent a whole weekend furiously disinfecting. Right now he was taking Eli every Friday to Sunday, and he had to have something for his son to play with when he came over, and McKenna didn't look that much older than Eli, and Olivia had figured out the best way to distract the girl while the grownups talked at once.

"Do you want to go and play?"

McKenna nodded vigorously, and so Olivia carefully set her down on her feet, and then began to slowly unravel the bedsheet from around her little shoulders. As she did a thousand more questions exploded into Elliot's mind, because that bedsheet had been hiding a pair of pretty white wings, wings just like Olivia's. McKenna appeared nonchalant about this revelation, standing perfectly still until she was free and then taking off like a shot, bound for the toy box, while Elliot just stared at Olivia, waiting for the explanation.

"We found her this morning," Olivia said, her voice low enough not to carry to McKenna in the corner. "Her mother was murdered in their apartment. I don't know what McKenna saw or what she heard, she's not talking. But the perp tore the place apart, and I think he was looking for her."

Another one, he kept thinking, how can there be another one? Liv had told him there were only maybe half a dozen of her kind in the States, but she hadn't said anything about kids, about whether nephilim could have kids, or if their kids had wings, too. There was a hell of a lot she hadn't said, and there was a roaring like a jet engine in Elliot's ears.

"You think, or you know?"

It was his job to ask the question; they were partners, and that meant they bounced ideas off one another, but it also meant they had to, from time to time, reel one another in, or offer a different perspective. Yeah, he figured chances were good that Liv was right, that but they needed to know, and knowing wasn't the same as a hunch.

"I don't know," Olivia allowed. "But come on, Elliot. Humans have been hunting my kind since the days when we were first made. And there hasn't been a nephilim child in…Elliot there can't be new nephilim. There hasn't been an angel on Earth for more than two thousand years."

"How can you be sure? You said that you all went your separate ways, maybe there's something out there-"

"I know this much," she said. "After the flood, the only angels allowed to come down here were sent on specific missions, and they weren't allowed to stay long. And they wouldn't be allowed back in if they'd violated the rule about sleeping with human women, and it's not like you can lie to God. Every visitation has been well documented, and there weren't that many of them. There's a nephilim in Rome, Antony, he sort of…keeps tabs on these things. Comings and goings. I've reached out to him, but it may be a little while before he gets back to me."

"You what, texted the angel group chat?"

She leveled a look at him like she wanted to ask how the fuck he knew what a group chat was, but she held her tongue, and he was kinda disappointed about that, because he wanted to tell her that Maureen had started one for him and the kids. He knew how these things worked, thank you very much. He could send emojis and everything.

"Pretty much, yeah."

"And while you wait to hear back from your friend you just stole a child?"

"What the fuck was I gonna do, Elliot? You really think she'd be safe in foster care?"

The thought of it compelled him to look at McKenna, and so he did, turned his head and looked at that little girl kneeling on the bare floor in his living room, studiously constructing a somewhat lopsided tower out of Legos while her wings shimmered and rustled quietly behind her. Really, she was a sweet little thing, with those big blue eyes, her perfect little Cupid's bow mouth, her nightgown with its pattern of flowers. Precious, that's how she looked, and no, he didn't think she'd be safe in foster care. How would that even go? What would DCS even say, when presented with a child who had wings? Who would they call? And what horror would come from it? Humans have hunted us, Olivia said. Hunted them, Olivia and her brothers and this little girl, too. No, he couldn't blame Olivia for taking her.

"Someone's gonna notice she's missing, Liv."

He didn't want to do that, didn't want to stand there and poke holes in Olivia's plan, stand there and tell Olivia she shouldn't have taken the kid when he felt the same urge to protect McKenna that Olivia did, but they had to think things through. They had to have a fucking plan, or else they might both end up unemployed for good, or worse.

"I can handle that," she said. "I told Fin I was gonna call a contact at the FBI-"

"There's someone who handles angel shit at the FBI?" Elliot asked incredulously.

"No," Liv said grimly. "We can't risk attracting too much attention. But what we do have is Marcus."

"The fuck is Marcus-"

"He's one of us," she explained impatiently. "He's always been good with money, and he's been interested in computers since the invention of the Analytical Engine."

Elliot didn't know what the fuck that was.

"He's got more money than you could possibly imagine and he's a grade A hacker. He can fake whatever documents we need, hack whatever systems we need, make it look like the FBI has taken responsibility for McKenna. With his help, I think we'll be able to keep her. We'll make it look like I'm working with the FBI to solve her mother's murder. Fin will be on board, once I explain everything to him. We can do this, El."

We can do this. We'll be able to keep her. The way Olivia was talking, it sounded like-

"Ok," he said. "Lemme see if I've got this straight. You want us to take care of a toddler and investigate her mother's murder, with a fake FBI agent for cover, while I'm on suspension. That about sum it up?"

It was insane. There was no possible way it was going to work. They were all gonna go to prison. If they didn't get themselves killed. And Elliot wanted to do it so much his hands were starting to shake.

"I know it's risky," Olivia allowed. "But if we're going to find out where she came from, I need to be able to investigate the murder. And if I'm gonna be working the case, someone else needs to look after her. And, well…"

Well, Elliot didn't exactly have a lot on his plate right now.

"You're so good with kids," she said, and he hadn't been expecting that, somehow. He'd thought she was gonna say something about how he didn't have anything else to do, but instead she was watching him with earnest, pleading eyes, telling him she'd chosen him for his skills, and not just his empty calendar.

"You've done this before," Olivia said. "You know how to keep her fed and play with her and do all that shit a parent is supposed to do, and I…I've never done that before. Not with a kid this little."

She'd done it for an older kid, once, for a little while. She'd had Calvin, once, had slept on the couch and let the kid have her bed and taken him to school every morning and loved him, fiercely, but Calvin had been old enough to shower on his own, wipe his own ass, go to sleep without a bedtime story. It hurt her to admit it, he knew, to admit that she didn't really know how to be a parent, that she'd never had the chance, but she was right. He did know what he was doing.

"You want me to keep her here?"

"I won't leave you alone with her," Olivia rushed to say. "Not all the time. I'll come back here at night, we can go over the case together, I can help out when I'm not working."

She wants me to be a fucking stay-at-home dad, he thought. She wanted him to do for her what Kathy had once done for him, to keep the home fires burning while she went out into the world, and wasn't it strange, he thought, how quickly things could change. Part of him was resistant to the idea - he was her partner, and they were supposed to investigate together - but he knew that she was right. While he was on suspension he couldn't talk to the ME or take statements that would hold up in court or carry a gun or any of that shit, and someone was gonna have to stay with McKenna. Liv and Fin and that fucking hacker could handle the policework, so that left him to do the domestic shit.

"Ok," he said, trying to think his way through it. "If someone is out to get her, you think she'll be safe here?"

"No one followed me," Olivia said. "I was careful about that. If someone knows I have her they could try to track my phone, but I don't think our perp was hanging around this morning, there was a heavy police presence in the apartment. If we're careful…yeah, I think she'll be safe here. At least as safe as we can make her right now."

There were so many ways her plan could go wrong. Maybe the perp had been watching, or maybe he would be now, keeping tabs on the nephilim, on Liv. Maybe Marcus wasn't as good as she thought he was, maybe the brass would find out the FBI didn't know the first damn thing about this case. Maybe they'd never find the guy, and months from now they would have to have a reckoning about the child they stole. Maybe they were all about to get themselves killed.

He couldn't say no, though. He couldn't say no, because he'd failed Jenna, and he wanted, desperately, to do right by McKenna. He couldn't say no, because Liv was watching him with those big dark eyes, begging him to be there for her when she needed him most. He couldn't say no, because he wanted it too damn bad, wanted to feel useful, wanted to fucking do something, wanted to know what it would feel like to have Liv come home to him every night.

We are so fucked, he thought.

"Hey, McKenna?" he said, and the little girl looked up at once, watching him curiously from across the room. "Are you hungry?"

She nodded vigorously, and Elliot smiled at her, completely charmed.

"There's a booster seat at the table," he told Olivia, "for Eli. Why don't you put McKenna in it, and I'll make us some breakfast, and we can get to know each other. When did you have to be back?"

"I can spare the time for breakfast," she assured him, and then she reached out, and squeezed his forearm once, gently, her eyes shining at him so brightly it almost made him blush.

"Thank you, Elliot," she said seriously.

"What are partners for?" he answered.

They were for this, he thought. Partners meant that her fight was his fight, too. Partners meant that where she went, he would follow. Partners meant that no matter how great the challenges ahead of her, he would not let her face them alone. They were partners, now and always.

Chapter Text

All she needed was just a minute. Just a minute, to wash her face, to still the trembling of her hands, to brace herself for what was to come, for all the lies she was about to tell, for all the risks she was about to take. A stream of tepid water from the station locker room wasn't as fortifying as a strong drink might have been, but it was the only avenue available to her, and so she took it.

The door to the locker room didn't lock, though, and it opened behind her, the hinges protesting loudly at the movement the way they always did, and when she looked over her shoulder she saw Fin, leaning casually back against the door, using his bulk to keep it in place, to insure that no one would enter that room and disturb them while he said whatever was on his mind.

"Hey," she said, drying her hands on one of the flimsy bullshit no ply paper towels from the dispenser on the wall.

"You ready to talk to me?" Fin asked in a tone of voice that told her plainly he would not accept no for an answer. Not that she could blame him; she'd left him all alone at the crime scene with the unis, with no car and no idea what was going on, left him behind to lie for her, and not knowing why. Fin was no fool, and neither was she; he wouldn't have done that for just anyone, just like she wouldn't have. They'd do it for each other, though. They trusted each other, and it wasn't the first time one of them had kept a secret for the other.

"Fin-"

"Cragen just got the call," he said. "Some Fed confirming they've got the girl in their custody. Fed says they're willing to let us run the case for now, but that you'll be liaising with their guy. That have something to do with your contact at the FBI?"

It had nothing at all to do with the FBI and everything to do with Marcus, who she'd called from the bathroom at Elliot's apartment while he scrambled eggs for McKenna's breakfast. She hadn't expected Marcus to move so quickly, but she was grateful for it; it would spare her having to answer too many questions about where she'd taken the girl. Oh, people were going to ask those questions, but she could spread her hands helplessly and blame it on the Feebs. They made an easy scapegoat.

"Yeah," she said.

"So you've seen this before," Fin said. "The wings."

Every damn day, she thought.

"Yeah."

"You gonna tell me what it means?"

Fin was blocking the door but this place was still too public for her to risk showing him her wings, as she'd shown Elliot, and part of her was reluctant to, anyway. Learning what she was put a person in danger; there were men out there who meant to hunt her kind, who weren't above a bit of recreational torture to get their hands on information. It would be best for Fin if he didn't know what McKenna was. Maybe that was a lie; maybe it would just be easier for her. It was hard, every time, explaining where she'd come from, what she was, and Elliot had accepted it, mostly, but Elliot's whole life was in shambles and he was Catholic, anyway. Elliot was the kind of man who believed; Fin had always been more pragmatic. She didn't want to fight with him.

"Can we just…can we just say she's special?" Olivia asked. "She's special. There aren't a lot of people like her, and that makes her valuable to the kind of people who like to make money off special things. She's in danger, Fin. You can't tell anybody what you saw."

For a moment Fin watched her, thoughtfully, warily. He wasn't a busybody, really; Fin knew a lot, heard a lot, understood a lot, but he didn't press. He didn't like talking about himself and he respected that in other people. In the past, anytime he'd brushed up against something she didn't want to talk about, he'd left it up to her to decide how much she was gonna say, didn't beg or make demands or tell her she owed him anything. Maybe this was different. Maybe it wasn't.

"Found something," he said, "at the crime scene. I managed to bag it before the unis saw it. Nobody knows I have it yet. You tell me if they should."

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out an evidence bag, and then held it at arm's length. He wasn't gonna move, wasn't gonna step away from the door and lose his leverage over it, so Olivia had to go to him, which she did, crossing the space between them quickly and taking the bag from his hands, turning it over in her own.

Inside the bag was a single, brilliantly white feather. Not one of McKenna's; this one was nearly a foot long, maybe three inches wide, and her feathers weren't nearly that big yet, and Fin hadn't seen much of her wings, but maybe he'd seen enough to know that. Maybe he was just protecting the girl, but there was something suspicious in his eyes, like he'd figured it out already. Like he knew, already, that if a child could have wings a grownup could, too, and her mother certainly hadn't. Someone else had been in that apartment last night, though.

"That come from someone special, too?" he asked.

"Yeah," Olivia answered heavily.

The feather was light - of course it was, it was a fucking feather - and it was clean, and well tended, not torn or bent or frayed. Feathers like that, healthy feathers, didn't just fall out; angels and nephilim weren't fucking birds, they didn't molt. There was the smallest brownish stain at the base of the feather; blood, she thought. Blood, like someone had ripped it out.

"Where did you-"

"Under the vic's body. I grabbed it while they were getting her into the body bag. No one saw me."

Smart girl, Olivia thought. McKenna's mother had fought back against her attacker, and left behind a clue as to his identity. Maybe the killer had left behind DNA - though Olivia strongly suspected he had none to leave, not being of this world - but even if he had she doubted it would be in the system anywhere. That feather, that was all the evidence they had so far.

"Are we gonna log it?"

"No," Olivia said.

Chances were good, she thought, that she wasn't gonna make it out of the case with her job intact. She'd broken so many laws already, and they were only just getting started. It was over already, she thought, her time with SVU, her time as Olivia Benson, and part of her was mourning for it even now. She'd enjoyed this life. She'd been happy here, for a time.

"How are we gonna look for this guy if you won't tell me what he is and you won't log the evidence?"

"Same way we look for every perp," she said. "We pull security cams and phone logs and we track down the people in the victim's life and we build a picture. Just like always. Whatever he is, this guy is still a perp, and we'll find him."

"And then what? We turn him over to the Feds?"

It was a good question. What was she gonna do when she found this guy? Nephilim or angel it made no difference; he was dangerous. And he was powerful, and a human prison wouldn't hold him, not if he really wanted out. Arrest and booking and arraignment, all that shit would leave a paper trail, and put too many eyes on this guy, make it damn near impossible to keep the truth of his identity a secret. Human justice wouldn't work, not this time.

I think we're gonna have to kill him, she thought, her heart full of dread. Another sin, to add to the pile. Another black mark against her. Not that it mattered; she'd been locked out of heaven from the moment she was born. No sense in playing by God's rules when she'd lost the game already.

"Yeah," she lied. "Yeah, we'll turn him over to the Feds."

"Fine," Fin said. "Let's get to work."

And so they did.

Maybe I'm crazy, Elliot thought, passing a little yellow Lego to McKenna. She took it from him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, a serious expression on her sweet little face as she considered the tower they were building, and tried to decide where to place the next brick.

He had to be crazy, didn't he, to go along with this? Had to be crazy for believing it. Had to be crazy for taking this risk, for essentially kidnapping a child, for letting Liv throw her career away. He had to be out of his goddamn mind; only a lunatic would've just accepted everything Liv had told him. Angels were real, and they'd fucked human women, and made little babies with wings and immortality, little babies who'd never be allowed into heaven. Heaven and hell were real, after all, not just a matter of faith but a practical reality, places you could go to, or not, depending on who your dad was. Who just believed that shit? How could any of it be true? How could it not?

Mama would've believed it without question. Mama loved the tragedy of the saints and the faith of the Virgin and the righteous glory of the angels. Mama would say that she'd always known it was true, had always known there was another world beyond this one, would say that she'd glimpsed it herself, a time or two. Mama thought an angel had saved them that night she lost control of the car in the snow; Mama said he had an angel to thank for him walking away from that crash with only a broken arm. Or that's what she'd said, right after it happened; she went away for a while and came back sad and never mentioned the crash again, not once over the decades that followed, but that night in the snow with the EMTs she said an angel had saved her baby.

And Elliot had always thought she was crazy, but shit.

An angel saved my baby, too, he thought, a feeling like hysteria sparking and cracking through his lungs. Olivia had saved them, Kathy and Eli, that day in the car, and Elliot felt like he was gonna puke remembering it now. An angel.

It was crazy, but he believed it, because he had seen Olivia's wings, because he believed in her more than he believed in anything else in the entire goddamn word, because he was looking at McKenna now. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. He'd seen it, now. It wasn't just a matter of faith any more, was it?

People's eyes could fail them, though, and maybe if this had happened at any other time Elliot would've doubted his own, but it hadn't happened at any other time. Olivia's revelation had come now, at the precise moment when Elliot had nothing else to believe in, nothing else to fight for. He's always been a believer and he'd always been a fighter and every ounce of his purpose had been stripped from him; Kathy had given up their marriage for good this time, and God had abandoned him when he killed that girl, killed her for the sake of a love he wasn't even supposed to feel, and even though it wasn't official yet he was certain he'd lost his job. There would be no going back, not after one shooting too many, not with Tucker gunning for him. Elliot had only just been cleared from another IAB investigation when he killed Jenna, and he knew Tucker had had enough of him, and it would be Tucker's decision; his fate rested in the hands of a man who hated him. No, he was never gonna get the chance to carry his shield again. It was over; his life was over.

And in the instant of his life's ending, Olivia had brought to him new purpose. Had given him something to believe in, had given him something to do, had given him someone to fight for. Their plan was illegal in about eight different ways and it was risky as all hell, but what did he have to lose? Why not believe, now? Why not fight, now? For Liv, for McKenna, for himself; why not?

Not like you've got anything else to do, he thought, and handed McKenna another Lego. She smiled when she took it from him, and he smiled back; there was something about that little girl's smile that felt like sunshine, a warmth he could almost touch, like a gift he'd always be grateful for.

There were a lot of questions left to answer, and a lot of things left to do. He'd need clothes for McKenna, and more food soon, and more ways to keep her occupied and happy while they whiled away the hours in his apartment, waiting for Liv to come home. Those troubles would keep until tomorrow, though; for now he sat on the floor, building a Lego tower with an angel child, and thinking about the end of the world.

Chapter Text

It was very, very late when Elliot heard the front door swing slowly open. Close to 2:00 a.m., in fact, much later than he'd expected - much later than he'd been hoping, and he was trying, really he was, not to hold that against her. Not to grumble, or complain, or remind her that she'd promised to check in with him but hadn't. He knew how it felt to be on the receiving end of that kind of admonishment, when the infraction, however severe, hadn't been intentional, hadn't really been in his control in the first place, and he didn't want to nag Olivia, or make her feel guilty for doing her job, but Jesus, he had never really understood Kathy's complaints about his work until now, and wasn't that something, really, that when he finally had the chance to experience life from Kathy's side of things, when he finally got it, it was already too late to do anything about it.

"Hey," he called hoarsely, trying not to make too much noise. It wouldn't do, to shout, or jump up, and risk waking McKenna now. The girl had endured a long and trying day, and she hadn't spoken a single word to Elliot - beyond a sweet, shy hi when Olivia first brought her here - but she had fallen asleep on his lap on the sofa, and he was loath to wake her, unwilling to move her. It felt nice, sitting still with a child in his arms; it felt familiar, and warm, and comforting, and he didn't want to give it up. No child stayed small forever, and he'd learned long ago to savor moments like this when he could.

"Hey," Olivia called back, keeping her voice low to match his. He heard the twin thunks of her boots hitting the floor, and then she was padding softly into view, her socks making no sound on the cheap laminate floor. She looked wrung out; she looked exhausted, and sad, and he couldn't blame her for that, because she was coming up on twenty-four hours without sleep, and she hadn't called him, and that meant, he figured, that she hadn't found the man who'd killed McKenna's mother yet.

"She's asleep," Liv observed softly, swaying to a stop just in front of the couch. Her eyes were fixed on McKenna, and there was something like wonder there.

"Passed out about an hour ago," he said. "She fought it like hell."

McKenna absolutely refused to sleep in Eli's little toddler bed; Elliot read her a story and sang her a song - Sweet Baby James, the only song he'd ever really sung to any of his children, not being much of a singer in the first place and being more inclined to leave the lullabies up to Kathy - but the second he turned his back McKenna was on her feet, following after him, doggedly refusing to settle down, and so at last he'd given up trying and turned on some cartoons for her and the exhaustion had won, in the end, as he'd always known it must.

"She must be afraid," Olivia said sadly. "Who knows what she's seen. Did she talk to you at all?"

"Nah," he answered, wishing he could tell her something different. He'd tried to coax some words out of the girl, but to no avail. "She understands just fine," he said. "I don't know if she can't talk, or if she just won't, but she knows what we're saying to her."

"May just have to give it some time," Olivia said around a jaw-cracking yawn that made Elliot wince just to see it.

"You hungry?" he asked. "I made spaghetti. There's some left."

"Starving," Olivia confessed. "But I really need a shower first. It's been a long day."

It was easier to focus on the practicalities, to address the simplest, most urgent details first and leave the more complicated stuff - like the investigation, and the question of angels, and the matter of kidnapping - for later, so he did.

"You go, get cleaned up," he said. "I'll take her to bed and I'll warm up dinner for you."

The apartment was small; there was a bedroom for Elliot and a bedroom for Eli, and an air mattress for Elliot to sleep on if one of the twins came to stay the night, which neither of them had wanted to do so far - not that he could blame them - and just the one bathroom. They'd have to share it, Elliot and McKenna and Olivia, and that meant Liv was going to have to shower in his shower, and it didn't look to him like she'd brought a bag, so she'd have to use his soap, and his shampoo, and the thought of it pleased him in a way he didn't want to think about too much.

"There's clean towels under the sink," he told her. "You need something to wear?"

Olivia looked down at her clothes, the same clothes she'd been wearing since for about twenty hours now, and frowned.

"Yeah," she said. "Just a t-shirt and some sweats, if you don't mind."

"I'll put 'em on the floor in front of the door. You can just grab 'em when you're done."

"Thanks, El," she said, and sounded like she meant it.

They had a plan now, so Olivia turned away from him then, slipped silently across the living room and disappeared inside the bathroom, left Elliot alone with a toddler on his lap. McKenna wasn't so very heavy, and these last few weeks with no job and nothing to do meant he'd been spending even more time than usual in the gym, so it wasn't hard to stand with her in his arms. It came back to him as natural as breathing, holding a child, moving in just the right way to keep from jostling her too much - though her wings were a new consideration he hadn't ever had to take into account before - and with the sound of running water rushing through the pipes for white noise he carried McKenna across the apartment, into Eli's room, laid her down gently on the bed and tugged the blanket up over her. As he watched she rolled onto her side, slid one of her thumbs into her mouth, and folded her wings gently on top of one another at her back, the white feathers rustling softly as they settled into place. She really was a beautiful child, a special child, and she was his responsibility, and a fierce sort of protectiveness filled him, looking at her. He would do anything, whatever it took, to keep that child safe.

But for now she was asleep, and he was satisfied that she was going to stay that way, and so he left her to her dreams, went instead to his bedroom and opened the drawers of his dresser. He pulled out a pair of grey sweatpants with a drawstring Olivia could use to tie them tightly round her hips - don't think about her hips, don't think about her ass, don't be an asshole - and an old white NYPD t-shirt, folded them up neat and stacked them together and then carried them to the bathroom. He set them on the floor in front of the door, and tried not to listen to the gentle sound of splashing water, tried not to think about Liv naked, tried not to think about her wings, tried not to think about how nice it felt, her coming home to him.

There was no telling how long she'd be in the shower so he plated up some spaghetti for her and resolved not to put it in the microwave until he heard the shower cut off, wanting the food to still be warm for her when she was dressed and ready to join him. That left him just standing in the kitchen listening to the shower, though, so he grabbed a beer from the fridge just to give himself something to do, and made more of a production out of popping off the top than he probably needed to.

When Liv came out they were gonna have to talk. Really talk, about what she'd learned over the course of the day, any leads she might have, about her other angel friends and their network and what they knew, what they suspected. He and Liv were gonna have to talk about McKenna, about getting her some clothes and whether his place was really safest for her and just how long they were comfortable harboring her here. Liv's friend had lied for them, but who knew how long that lie was gonna hold; suppose Cragen or somebody decided to call a friend with the Feds for help, and discovered that the FBI had no idea that McKenna even existed? They were treading through dangerous waters, and they needed to prepare themselves for the fallout should this thing go south. Liv had reinvented herself God only knew how many times, but Elliot had only ever been Elliot, and he couldn't just walk away from his life and start over fresh somewhere else. He had something that Liv didn't; he had a family, and though it grieved him he had to admit that made all the difference.

Maybe Liv would want to take McKenna with her. Just disappear, out in the world somewhere, pick a new name and a new life and devote herself to raising the newest nephilim child. Maybe she'd like that, but Elliot wasn't ready to lose her. To lose either of them. Maybe he was just being selfish; maybe Liv wasn't really his to lose. Maybe he was always meant to lose her, because they came from different worlds, worlds that were never meant to intersect in the first place.

He'd gotten so lost in those bleak thoughts he hadn't noticed the shower turning off, but the bathroom door opened then, and one lean, tan arm snaked out, snatched up the clothes and then disappeared again. She'd been moving quick, but not quick enough; a cloud of steam had escaped when she opened the door, steam that smelled fresh, and clean, smelled just like his soap, the soap that Kathy bought for him because he'd never had the time to do it for himself. Olivia had used his soap, and she was gonna wear his clothes, and sleep in his home, however briefly, and it was weird, really, sharing so much with her. Over the years they'd shared so much, so much time, so much heartbreak, so many meals. Petty arguments and life-shattering losses. They'd shared soda and late night confessions and the fragile, jagged fragments of their childhoods that neither of them had ever shared with anyone else. They'd shared space, at their desks, in the car, crowded each other in the locker room and slept on bunks next to each other in the cribs but they'd never shared this. Shower, and soap, and he was gonna make her sleep in his bed no matter how much she protested because she was gonna have to work tomorrow and it made more sense for him to crash on the couch seeing as he had nowhere to be, and if she slept in his bed she'd wake up smelling even more like him than she did right now, and he liked that. She'd probably tell him he was being a dick if he told her that, though - not that he ever would.

He put her spaghetti in the microwave, and listened to the little machine whirring, and tried to focus himself on the troubles before them, and not his partner in that bathroom ten feet away from him, pulling his sweatpants up the long length of her legs.

Chapter Text

"This is really good," she said around a mouthful of spaghetti, and across the table from her Elliot smiled, looked pleased with himself, proud of himself for having developed the skills necessary to feed himself. Olivia had never really been much of a cook; it wasn't for lack of trying, or anything, since over the course of her long life she had often had no one to rely on but herself for sustenance, but even in the old days there had always been people willing to welcome a stranger into their tent for an evening meal. The concept of street food was as old as streets themselves, and she'd never really enjoying cooking for its own sake - and resented how often whatever society she was in foisted the duty upon her on account of her sex - and these days she didn't cook at all, if she could help it, but Elliot had learned to cook, and seemed to be happy about it, and the spaghetti was pretty fucking good.

"Glad you like it," he said. "Now, you gonna tell me what you found out today?"

Olivia nodded, swallowed, wiped a stray bit of sauce from her chin, took a moment's pause to gather her thoughts and in her thinking did not notice the way Elliot's eyes followed the movement of her hand across her face.

"Not a whole hell of a lot," she confessed ruefully. "McKenna's mother, Andrea, she was a trust fund baby. She made pottery for fun, mostly. Sold some of it, but her inheritance was what kept her afloat. We've been going over her financials and trying to piece together her movements, and it looks like she wasn't sending McKenna to daycare or anything."

Olivia understood that, on a certain level, though the news grieved her. It might have been good for McKenna, to spend time with other children, to spend time somewhere other than inside that little apartment, to be normal, but McKenna was no normal child, and Olivia suspected that Andrea had just been trying to protect her daughter.

"The neighbors didn't see them much, nobody seems to know them. We got Andrea's cell records but all the text messages are updates from food delivery services, and she hasn't made a call to a friend in at least a month. I think they must have been lonely."

And Olivia understood that, too. She understood lonely.

"Must have been somebody," Elliot mused. "A person can't survive on their own forever."

"You'd be surprised," Olivia said before she could think better of it, and regretted her words when she saw the sorrow flash across Elliot's face. Olivia had been alive a long, long time, and she'd been alone a long, long time, but Elliot had a point; she'd made friends, too. Maybe not very many of them, and she'd outlived all of them, but there had been people, along the way, people she loved, people who made her endless life a little more bearable. People like Elliot.

"My mother didn't have many friends, either," she said.

"I been meaning to ask you about that," Elliot said suddenly. "You're…however many thousands of years old, so I'm guessing your mom died a long time ago?"

A very, very long time ago, Olivia thought as she nodded.

"So who's Serena Benson?"

It was a good question. Elliot had never met Serena, but he'd been with Olivia at the woman's wake, had held her up when her strength was flagging, when she felt herself in danger of lashing out at Serena's old drinking buddies, those women who had never helped her, had watched her slip slowly away and done nothing at all to stop it.

"I met her when I first came to New York," Olivia said. "It was a fluke, really. I still was trying to decide what I was going to do, what my name was going to be, what job I'd like to go for, and I stopped into a bar one night, and there she was. This beautiful, elegant woman, so drunk she could hardly sit up on her stool straight. I talked to her for awhile, and she told me the whole story."

Olivia would learn later that Serena had never shared her story with anyone, but she'd wanted to talk, that night at the bar. Sometimes Olivia had that effect on people. It helped in her line of work, but it hurt sometimes, too.

"She'd been attacked, got pregnant, got an abortion. She regretted it. I don't know if she'd have been happier if she'd kept the baby, she…she wasn't really a happy person. But we spent some time together, and I was moved by her story. I wanted to help women like her, women like my mother. So I took her name, and maybe that was wrong, but she never knew it. I was always just Olivia, to her. You may not remember this, but no one at her funeral called her my mother."

Everyone called her Serena, and Olivia did, too, and she got the feeling Elliot hadn't noticed, and why should he? She'd told him Serena was her mother, and he'd believed her. It wasn't the only thing she'd lied to him about, but she felt guilty for it, just the same.

"Did she remind you of your mother?"

"Can we talk about McKenna, please?"

Yes, Serena Benson had reminded Olivia of her own mother, and that was the last thing she wanted to think about right now. Elliot held his hands up in a gesture of surrender, and so Olivia changed topics at once.

"The building's entrance has a security cam. We've got unis going over the footage, trying to identify everyone who came into the building yesterday, but it's slow going, and it's possible our perp didn't come in through the front door."

"There's another entrance?"

"On the roof."

Elliot frowned. "You think this guy climbed the side of the building? Went up a fire escape or something?"

"No," Olivia said. "Hang on, I'll show you."

She rose to her feet, walked back across the apartment to the place where she'd dropped her bag, and retrieved the feather she'd stowed there, still safe in its evidence bag. As she returned to the table it seemed to her that a strangely soft expression crossed Elliot's face, and she looked down, trying to hide her smile. Maybe it shouldn't have, but it felt nice, sitting with him, eating, talking about a case. It felt right, felt like so many other nights they'd spent together, nights she'd been missing while he was on suspension. She'd been missing him, his blue eyes and his smart mouth and his unwavering faith. Fin was a good cop, and a good friend, but Elliot was something else.

Elliot was something she couldn't let herself think about too much. He made her feel safe, in a way she so often had not been, made her feel known, when for so long she'd felt as if no one would ever understand her at all. But Elliot was her partner, her friend, somebody else's husband, even if he swore Kathy was done with him for good this time. Elliot was mortal, and however much she cared for him, however handsome he was, however her heart might call out for him in the still darkness of a lonely night, he could not ever, ever be someone that she loved. He would die, one day, whether from illness or age or violence, he would die, and she would be left alone without him, and that would be hard enough, losing her closest friend, the closest friend she'd had in a century; if she let herself love him, losing him might break her.

She could have, though. She could have loved him. In another life.

"Look at that," she said, and passed him the feather before settling down in her seat and taking another bite of her dinner.

"Jesus," he said, turning the feather over in his hands. "Is this what I think it is?"

"Wing feather," she confirmed. "Nephilim or angel, I can't tell." There wasn't much of a difference, really, when it came down to their wings. "But McKenna's father had to have been an angel. Nephilim can't reproduce."

"How can you be sure?"

We tried, she thought. I tried. The words stuck in the back of her throat, though. It was all so long ago, those days when the nephilim were young and did not know yet the extent of their curse, when they'd tried, when she'd tried, to be just like the humans. To love, and to live, to make families of their own, to find homes for themselves. In the beginning, the trying had not hurt so very much, but each progressive failure became a mounting agony. There had been a man, once, a man with blue eyes like Elliot's, a man…there had been a man she loved, once, but there had been no babies. Medicine advanced, technology advanced, and one or two of the more scientific minded nephilim had run tests for themselves, and found the truth. Or confirmed it, really; Olivia had known the truth already, to her sorrow.

"We're sure," she said. "Finding that at the scene makes me wonder if McKenna's father came back for her."

"And you think he, what? Flew onto the roof? Can…I mean you can fly, can't you?"

"That is what wings are for, yes," she said tartly, and Elliot grinned.

"You gotta show me someday," he said. "I bet that's really something."

"It makes our perp harder to track, though."

If he was an angel, he'd be able to do a hell of a lot more than just fly, and that would make him all but impossible to track down.

We might not be the only ones looking for him, Olivia thought, though for the moment she'd decided to keep that to herself. Angels coming down to earth, that sort of thing wasn't allowed, any more, hadn't been for millennia, and if an angel had violated the prohibition against returning, the folks upstairs would be livid when they discovered his transgression. Human cops might never get their hands on him; a horde of his brethren might come down after him, and that, Olivia thought, was the last fucking thing she needed.

"I think we're going to have to talk to McKenna," she said heavily. "I don't know how much she knows, but maybe her mother said something, or she saw something."

"It's worth a shot," Elliot agreed. "We can ask her in the morning."

If there was any way around it Olivia would have protected the girl from those questions, but they'd found no one else in Andrea's life to answer them. No siblings, no parents, relatives too distant to be of any use; Andrea had been utterly alone, and left no one to speak for her but a four year old child who didn't seem to want to speak at all.

"It isn't fair," Olivia said softly, sadly. "She's just a little girl. She's innocent. She didn't ask for this."

Didn't ask to be a nephilim, to be marked for life, didn't ask for the wings on her back and the loneliness that came with them. She was a sweet little thing, too young to have ever really done anything wrong, and yet she was barred from heaven, doomed to be cast out from human society, too, unable to make a family, unable to be part of a world that scorned her. That precious little girl, she had done nothing to deserve such horror, and the unfairness of it all was nearly enough to bring tears to Olivia's eyes.

"Neither did you," Elliot said seriously, and she looked up at him sharply, and found him watching her, his expression soft, and sad, and knowing. McKenna's curse was Olivia's curse, too; Olivia had once been a child, an innocent in the world, hurt by the same cruel twist of fate that had hurt McKenna now, but she had grown accustomed to the ache in her chest. She'd made her peace with it, with her own fate, but Elliot hadn't, yet. Elliot could still look at her the same way she looked at McKenna; Elliot could still look at her, and see something worth saving.

One day he would accept the truth, she thought. One day he would accept that she was beyond redemption. When that day came, it would break her heart, and she knew it. Not today, though; today he was looking at her like he cared for her, and she cared for him too much to tell him why he shouldn't. Instead she let him look, and let herself believe, just for a moment, that she was someone he could care for. It was a nice thought.

Chapter Text

The sunlight woke him, early the next morning. It was a wonder he'd managed to sleep at all, really, squeezed onto the couch with his knees tucked up close, but he had barrelled right over Liv's protests, insisted that she needed the rest more than he did, and maybe she'd been too tired to fight because she hadn't tried all that hard to convince him otherwise, and he had slept, some, in the still hours between midnight and dawn. The first light roused him, though, the way it always did; he never could sleep once the sun was up.

It was barely 6, and he could've lingered there on the couch, but Liv would need to be up soon, would need a cup of coffee and something to eat before she raced out the door and back to work, and he figured since he was awake he might as well get up. He decided to check on McKenna first, make sure she was still sleeping soundly, and then he'd make some coffee, and then he'd bring a cup to Liv. She was always more agreeable in the morning with a cup of coffee in her hands.

He'd slept in his boxers, but he'd kept his shirt close to hand, and he tugged it on now, covered his chest before he slipped silently through the apartment and into Eli's room. He had a lot of practice at that, moving softly enough to keep from waking a sleeping child, and it came to him easily, and he was smiling as he opened the door, thinking about that sweet little girl, but his smile vanished in a moment because inside that room he found the little toddler bed where McKenna should have been sleeping was empty instead, the sheets pulled back and no sign of her anywhere.

"Son of a bitch," he cursed, spinning on his heel. Where could she have gone? The main living area of the apartment was wide open, the kitchen and living room basically just one big space, impossible to hide in, and he'd seen no sign of McKenna there. Maybe she'd slipped out the front door while he was sleeping, and he was berating himself already for being so foolish. McKenna didn't know them, him and Liv, and she had to be scared, and she'd seemed to be a trusting little thing but what if she'd just been biding her time, waiting for a chance to run? He needed help, so he bolted across the hall and into his bedroom, his mouth open to call out Liv's name, to rouse her, to demand her assistance, but he stopped short there, too, caught off guard for the second time that morning.

Olivia was fast asleep, in his bed, her head resting on his pillow, her body wrapped up in his sheets, one of her feet poking out the bottom, seeming strangely vulnerable, given how invincible she seemed in real life. Olivia was asleep, in his bed, and she was beautiful, and she was not alone.

Sometime in the night, while Elliot had been snoring and dreaming and lost to the world, McKenna had slipped out of Eli's room, and into his, and now she was lying there safe and warm and apparently quite comfortable, wrapped up in Liv's arms. Liv had pulled the little girl in close, nestled McKenna tight to her chest, one of her arms draped protectively over McKenna's middle, shielding the girl from the darkness of the world around them. Both of them were fast asleep, bright eyes closed, soft lips parted; Liv was snoring, just a little, a light, soft sort of sound that Elliot found charming even though he probably shouldn't have.

For a minute or two he just stood there, looking at them, feeling something protective and fond and regretful twisting in his belly. The picture they presented was a sweet one, a gentle one; McKenna had no doubt come looking for comfort, and she'd found it there in Liv's embrace. They were a pair, the two of them, lonely, solitary creatures who should not have existed but did just the same, who had against all odds found one another, and found peace together. They looked good, lying there together. They looked right.

Nephilim can't reproduce, Liv had told him, and answered a question he'd been asking himself - but not her, never her, he wasn't a fool - for years now. For years he'd been wondering why Olivia didn't just have a baby, if she wanted one so bad. The adoption people had turned her down but she didn't have to adopt; it wasn't like sperm was hard to come by, either from a fertility clinic or from one of the long line of men who'd been banging down her door since the day Elliot met her, desperate for the chance to be with her. He could understand her not wanting to tie herself to one of those assholes forever, but it wasn't like she didn't have options. He'd always thought she could have gotten pregnant, if she wanted to, had always wondered if she'd resisted because she feared the consequences of passing on the darkness that lurked in her blood. Now he knew the truth, though; she couldn't have a child, even if she'd been willing to try, and it broke his heart, really it did. It wasn't fucking fair. She'd have made a wonderful mother, he thought; she had so much love to give, and she had all the skills, knew how to nurture a child, how to protect one. She'd longed for a family so deeply, and life had been hard, and cruel to her, and stripped away so many of the things she longed for. He'd always kinda suspected, always kinda hoped, that one day her luck might change, that one day she might finally no longer be alone, even as he'd recoiled from the idea of another man sharing something so personal, so intimate with her. It would've killed him, seeing her pregnant with some asshole's baby, worrying, constantly, if the prick was good enough for her, was looking out for her the way he should've, but he'd have been happy for her, too. Only now he knew it was never gonna happen.

Only now it had happened, hadn't it? McKenna was all alone; her mother was dead and her father, whoever he was, couldn't take responsibility for her, and she had found her way into the care of the one woman best suited to protect her, to guide her, to raise her well, to love her. Oh, it was early days yet, and there was no telling what might happen next, but looking at them now Elliot could feel it. That girl was Liv's already. They were making a little family, right in front of his eyes, a family he was not - could not ever be - a part of, and his heart was breaking in half even as he rejoiced for her. She deserved this, he thought. But Christ, he wished with everything he had that he could have been part of it.

Probably he should've gone and started the coffee like he meant to, leave the girls to their dreams, but Liv wanted to talk to McKenna and it might be better to do that now, before Liv left work, since chances were good McKenna would be asleep by the time Liv came home again.

Came home to him again.

He made his way across the room and stopped by the side of the bed closest to Olivia, reached out and gently brushed a lock of hair back from her face. The moment he touched her she stirred, shifting restlessly beneath the bedsheets, the delicate fan of her eyelashes fluttering until at last she woke, blinked up owlishly at him, sleepy and beautiful. Christ, she was beautiful like this, soft and warm and safe in his bed. She always had been, beautiful; every time he'd ever woken her in the cribs there had been a moment, just before her eyes opened, when he thought to himself how beautiful she was, and now was no different. Only it was, because this time they weren't at the station, and he wasn't calling her to come downstairs and join him at their desks. This time they were in his home, and while there was work to be done it was a gentler, more domestic kind of work than they were accustomed to.

"Morning," he said hoarsely.

"Morning," she whispered back. She started to move, but then seemed to remember McKenna beside her, her eyes darting down to the girl at once as if to confirm that she was real, that she was actually there, that she was still sleeping. A mother's instinct, he thought, to look for her child, to protect her.

"Thought we could try to talk to her before you have to leave," he said.

" 's a good idea," she allowed. "But I gotta pee."

Elliot grinned and stepped back, watched as Liv gently slid away from McKenna, stood up and stretched, still wearing the t-shirt and sweatpants he'd given her the night before, hanging loosely off her body and making his hands itch to reach out and touch her.

"I'll keep an eye on her," he whispered, and Liv just nodded, tiptoed off, yawning, to the en suite while Elliot sat down carefully on the edge of the bed beside McKenna.

Their attempts to keep from waking her had failed; as he looked she rubbed sleepily at her little eyes, but then she seemed to realize Olivia wasn't with her anymore and she shot upright suddenly, looking around in fear.

"It's ok," Elliot said soothingly, not touching her but holding out his hands in a comforting sort of gesture. "Olivia's in the bathroom, she'll be right back. You're ok, McKenna."

"Livia," McKenna said. It was the first word she'd spoken since she'd told him hi in the doorway of his apartment yesterday morning, and it sounded like a demand.

"She's right there," he said, pointing to the bathroom door. It was funny, really, how attached McKenna seemed to be to Liv, since she'd spent more time in Elliot's company so far, but if McKenna and her mother had been as isolated as Liv seemed to think they were the girl probably hadn't spent too much time around men; maybe Elliot was too different, and maybe that made her uneasy. At least he knew McKenna could speak, though. That was a start.

McKenna crossed her little arms over her chest and pouted until the bathroom door opened, and then she jumped to her feet, raced across the room and into Olivia's arms, little wings bouncing the whole way.

Had Liv looked like that when she was small, Elliot wondered; had she been a sweet little thing with big eyes and bright, undisguisable wings, eager and affectionate and lonesome? It hurt him just thinking about it.

Across the room Liv had settled McKenna on her hip, and she did it so easily, so naturally, adjusting her hold to account for the child's wings without a second thought, and as Elliot watched she bowed her head, touched her forehead to McKenna's once, gently, fondly, before carrying her back to the bed. Olivia sat down there, next to Elliot, and eased McKenna into her lap, her arms looped loosely around the girl's waist, McKenna's wings fluttering almost playfully. The girl seemed happy now, happy to be held in Olivia's arms, and Jesus, they looked alike. The dark hair, the big eyes, though McKenna's were blue; it did something to him, something he wasn't proud of, to see Olivia holding a blue-eyed little girl.

"There's something very important we need to talk to you about," Olivia said, and McKenna looked up at her expectantly, listening intently. "It's about your mommy."

The change in McKenna was immediate; her wings drew in tight to her back and she rolled forward, buried her face in Olivia's neck and hid herself from view, her little arms wrapping as far around Olivia's middle as they would go, clinging to her tightly. She was trembling all over, the feathers of her wings rustling together anxiously, and Olivia just hugged her, looked at Elliot over her head wordlessly, helplessly.

There was no way to have this conversation without scaring McKenna, but they had to ask. She was their only witness, their only real lead at present, and they needed to know what she knew, but Elliot knew already that Olivia was on the verge of giving up. Her heart was gentle, and this child had suffered so much, and Olivia was too close to her already, would not want to risk hurting her further. Elliot would have to do it.

"McKenna," he said, very very softly, "I know it's scary. I know you don't want to talk about it. But we want to help your mommy. We want to keep you safe. Can you help us?"

He leaned forward, and McKenna turned her head ever so slightly, peeked at him anxiously over the curve of her wing.

"Do you remember what happened that night you hid in your closet?"

McKenna nodded, once.

"Can you tell me?"

Olivia was running her hand in gentle, soothing circles low on McKenna's back, beneath the spread of her wings, and it seemed to help, that reassuring touch.

"Mommy said to hide from the bad man."

We're getting somewhere, Elliot thought.

"And you did," he said. "You did so good, sweetheart. Do you know who the bad man is?"

McKenna shook her head no.

Damn, Elliot thought. He wasn't really sure what he'd been hoping for; McKenna was only about four. What were the chances that her mother had told her the truth about where she'd come from? They didn't know that truth themselves, Elliot and Olivia; they were only guessing. Liv had said that in the old days some of the women who'd joined with the angels had been willing; maybe Andrea had been, too. They'd found a wing feather in the apartment and they were thinking that meant McKenna's father was the killer, but what if he wasn't? What if he was a good man - angel, whatever - what if he loved McKenna and Andrea, and someone else had attacked his family? What if there were two renegade angels on the loose?

There were too many questions, and not enough answers.

"Did you see the bad man?"

McKenna shook her head again; no, again.

"Did you hear anything?"

Liv was looking at him with a warning in her eyes, like she thought he was pressing too hard, but Elliot felt he wasn't pressing hard enough. They needed something, anything, to go on, and right now they had jack shit. Still, though, he wasn't heartless. If McKenna said no again, he would ask no more questions. For now.

McKenna nodded yes.

"Ok," Elliot said. "Ok, that's good. Can you tell me what you heard?"

"Mommy was loud," McKenna said. "She said Michael, no!" This last the girl delivered with an emphatic shout, mimicking her mother's cry, and as Elliot watched Olivia's face paled.

No fucking way, he thought. There was an angel called Michael in the bible, wasn't there? An archangel, an important one. The one who did battle with Satan, and cast him out of heaven.

It can't be, he thought. It just can't.

Maybe it was silly, his rational mind's refusal to accept this possibility; after all, he'd learned that his partner had been fathered by an angel, was even now looking at a little girl with glistening white wings sprouting from her back. Maybe it was stupid, to think anything was impossible, when the realm of the possible had been blown wide open. Still, though, his mind balked from it; surely it's not the same guy, he thought. Right?

The way Liv was looking at him, though, with fear in her eyes, left him with a sinking feeling in his gut.

Shit, he thought.

Chapter Text

Yesterday's clothes were a little wrinkled, a little ripe, and her skin crawled uncomfortably, yearning for the warm softness of Elliot's sweats, but she had to wear something, had to navigate the subway and get back to the station and her spare change of clothes, and she couldn't walk into the house wearing an outfit that belonged to him, no matter how much she might have preferred that to the suit she'd spent twenty-four straight hours in.

She had to go; after they talked with McKenna a while they managed to get her calmed down, and Elliot had plopped her down on the sofa in front of some cartoons, gone to make her a bowl of cereal while Olivia dressed for her morning commute. When she emerged from Elliot's bedroom the sight that waited for her knocked her onto the back foot for a moment, left her staring in wonder, and in grief.

It was just so normal. So remarkably, freakishly, unexpectedly normal, a kind of normal she had never known. There was McKenna, sitting on the couch, little feet bouncing, both her hands wrapped around a bowl of cereal, engrossed in the cartoons, and there was Elliot, in the kitchen, wearing his boxers and a t-shirt, pouring coffee into a travel thermos. Olivia was the only one going anywhere today; he was pouring the coffee for her. McKenna was watching cartoons and Elliot was making Olivia coffee and she was getting ready to go to work, just like millions of other families were doing right now, all across the world. It was morning, and the sun was shining, and this looked like family, these three people gathered in this place, and family was not something Olivia would ever be allowed to have. If she were, though, if she were allowed, if she gave herself the grace to dream, however briefly, about what it might be like to have a family, she'd want to have one with him. She'd want this family, would want Elliot and McKenna, would want that man and that little girl whose eyes were blue like his, whose wings were white like Olivia's.

"Coffee's ready," Elliot called, noticing the way her eyes lingered on him, so she shook off the thought of family and went to take the thermos from his hands.

"So," he said, watching her as she drank from it gratefully. "Michael, huh?"

"We don't know what this is yet," she reminded him. They kept their voices low, not wanting McKenna to overhear.

"Come on, Liv. There's like two angels with names in the Bible and Michael's one of 'em."

And Gabriel was the other. Elliot thought he knew so much; what was it that people said? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

"Angels don't have names," Olivia told him pointedly. "Names are a human construct, and the names people gave to the angels are constrained by the limits of human language and the cultures that came up with them. They didn't call them Gabriel and Michael, in the old days. Our guy could've just told Andrea his name is Michael, he could've made it up. We don't know anything."

Maybe it was coincidence, the name. Maybe Andrea had been arguing with someone on the phone. Maybe Andrea had fallen in love with an angel who said his name was Michael, an angel who lied. Or maybe it was exactly what it looked like; the archangel Michael, in Andrea's kitchen the night she was killed. What would he be doing there? Olivia wondered. Michael wasn't evil; Michael couldn't be evil. He was the antithesis of evil. But the angel who had fathered McKenna, what he'd done was evil, and maybe Michael had been sent to wipe that evil away. It wouldn't be the first time the might of heaven had been brought to bear in an attempt to kill a nephilim. Olivia remembered the rain, and shuddered.

"Well, how are we gonna find out?" Elliot asked stubbornly. "We got nothing to go on and I hate sitting around here with my hands tied."

She knew he did, knew he hated it, knew he hated feeling useless, being so far away from the action. The shooting, Jenna, it had rattled him, but nothing had rattled him as deeply as the prospect of losing his badge. Losing his career, losing his very sense of self; who was Elliot Stabler, if not a cop? And now they had a case, a victim and a witness and a perp to chase, and all Elliot could do was sit around his apartment and entertain a toddler. It was a vital task he had been given, a deeply important one, but it wasn't the same as investigating, and Olivia knew it. In his shoes she'd be going out of her mind, too.

"I'm gonna talk to my guys today," she said.

Marcus, the hacker, had asked for a day, to troll through forums and various nefarious corners of the internet in search of some sign that someone somewhere had seen an angel, to build his fake profile as an FBI agent and lend credence to McKenna's disappearance. Antony, her old friend in Rome, he was doing much the same thing, albeit in a more old-fashioned way. Antony was…Antony was like the almighty nephilim switchboard operator, the only one who'd kept contact with the nephilim when they scattered, the one who kept up with them all, still, kept them connected to one another. Antony knew everybody, and everybody knew Antony, and his ties to the Vatican - while alarming to Olivia on an ethical level - meant he had access to even more information than Marcus. Between the two of them they had to know something, she thought.

"And how are you gonna explain whatever they tell you to the squad?"

He had a point. If information did come to light, would she share it with Cragen, with Fin? How could she not? The Cap was gonna want to know the status of the investigation; lonely single mother raped and murdered in her apartment, sweet little girl left orphaned and traumatized in the attack, the FBI sniffing around. Cragen was gonna want to know, and she didn't want to lie to him, anymore than she already had done. She loved her squad, Munch and Fin and Cragen and Elliot - Elliot, most of all - and their trust in her, their respect, meant more to her than anything else. How could she look them in the face, and lie? How could she keep her findings a secret? If she wanted to continue looking into Andrea's death, she was gonna have to give them something.

"I'll figure it out," she said.

Fin knew how to keep a secret; he was keeping plenty already. He might even, she thought, understand if she told him the truth. Her heart recoiled from the thought of it, though, from the idea of placing Fin, who was as good as her brother, in danger, but she had already taken a risk when she told Elliot. She'd told Elliot because she was selfish, and scared, because he'd threatened to never speak to her again if she wasn't honest with him and faced with the choice between telling him and losing him forever she'd been unable to let him go. Maybe she should have; maybe she should've let him go, let him get on with his life, spare him the danger and the heartbreak that followed in her wake, but when it came down to it she'd lacked the strength to hold her ground, and she didn't regret it, not really, couldn't bring herself to feel shame for her weakness, even if maybe she should've.

Yes, she'd told Elliot, but no, she did not want to tell Fin, not now, not yet. She'd been too careless already. She needed to keep McKenna safe, and to do that, to protect that little girl and all the ones she loved, Olivia would need to handle as much of this investigation on her own as she could.

"I'll figure it out," she repeated, because Elliot was looking at her like he didn't believe her.

"You're gonna be late, is what you're gonna do," he told her.

She glanced at the little clock on his oven, and swore.

"Shit. Are you gonna be ok on your own today?"

As she asked her question Elliot turned his head to look at McKenna, and Olivia did, too. Looked at that little girl in her flower-print nightgown, that little girl with her dark hair and her blue eyes, with her sweet face, with her soft white wings. That little girl, who forty-eight hours before had been a stranger to them, and yet looked so much like the best parts of both of them, together. That little girl, who they would both defend with their very lives.

"Yeah, we'll be ok," Elliot said. "But, Liv, she's gonna need a bath and she's gonna need clothes and we're gonna need groceries."

He was right. McKenna was only little but Elliot was a man, and a stranger to her, and an SVU detective; he wasn't going to give her a bath by himself. And Olivia had carried McKenna out of her home with nothing but the clothes on her back, and the chain of evidence dictated that everything remain in the apartment exactly as it was. She wouldn't be allowed back into the place to gather up McKenna's belongings and she wouldn't be able to explain why she needed to, anyway, but McKenna needed more than just the one nightgown to wear, and more than just a few of Eli's toys to play with. And food, shit they'd all need food, and Elliot could hardly take the angel-child to the grocery store in her pajamas.

"I'll figure it out," Olivia said for the third time.

We always do, she thought. No matter what obstacles faced them, no matter what riddles stood in their path, she and Elliot always found their way through, and she was certain that now would be no different. Elliot would look after McKenna and Olivia would go to work, and between the two of them they would figure a way through this mess.

They really didn't have another choice.

"All right, then," Elliot said. He didn't sound confident, but he trusted her, she knew. The same way she trusted him; implicitly, completely, in defiance of reason, sometimes, more than anyone else alive.

Olivia started to leave then, but though she tried to be discrete about it McKenna heard the rustling sound of Olivia sliding into her shoes by the door, and the child was on her feet in a moment, racing across the apartment with her hands outstretched, calling Livia, Livia.

It was impossible to resist that sweet little voice, impossible to remain firm in the face of the face of the child's obvious distress, so there by the door Olivia dropped to her knees, and wrapped her arms around McKenna tightly.

"It's all right, sweetheart," Olivia told her. "I have to go to work, but you can stay here and play with Elliot, and I'll be home again soon."

Home. It was funny, really, how in the course of a day she had come to think of Elliot's apartment as home, but she had, just the same. This place was home, because it was where Elliot and McKenna were.

"Don't go," McKenna insisted, burying her little face in Olivia's neck, and over the girl's shoulder Olivia looked up at Elliot helplessly.

There was something warm and achingly fond in his eyes as he approached them, as he carefully shifted McKenna's little arms, helped Olivia extricate herself from the girl's grip. Elliot gathered McKenna to himself, lifted her up and perched her on his hip, and he looked so natural, holding a child like that, looked so much like a father that it was nearly enough to make Olivia weep.

"We'll see Olivia again soon," he told McKenna.

"Promise?" the girl asked, her lower lip trembling.

"Promise," Olivia swore.

Chapter Text

"Tell me you've got something," Olivia said urgently, quietly into the phone, tucking her legs up underneath herself and staring around the empty cribs in paranoia. There was no one there, not at 7:30 in the morning on a perfectly normal day when there were no kidnapping plots or other pressing cases going on to merit officers sequestering themselves inside the station house. The far corner of the cribs, on the most comfortable mattress in the room, with a clear line of sight to the door, that was the safest place to make a private phone call, and it was there Olivia sat now, anxiously waiting to hear an update from Marcus.

"It's nice to hear from you, too," Marcus said dryly. "And you're welcome, by the way, for all the work I've done covering your ass after you stole a child."

"I didn't steal her," Olivia insisted, not for the first time. "What was I supposed to do, just leave her there? What do you think social services would do if they found a child with wings?" Olivia decided before she even dialed the phone that she would not say McKenna's name out loud; she cared for the girl too deeply and Marcus knew her too well; he'd spot her attachment to the child at once, and it would worry him, she knew, and she didn't want the headache of it.

"You gotta lighten up, sister," Marcus said. "You've been a cop too long."

He was probably right about that. She had been doing this job, in various forms, for so long now she forgot sometimes that she had not always been a cop. Marcus remembered, though, and Marcus could not have been more different from her. There were very few things Marcus took seriously, and he had always been allergic to the concepts of duty and responsibility. He had been a playboy from the very first, but a curious one, and it was his lackadaisical approach to human laws and his curiosity that made him valuable to Olivia now.

"Look, mostly the last twenty-four hours I've been trying to backstop your little story about the FBI. That Captain of yours is a determined fella - " that might have been an understatement, Olivia thought - "and he was making a lot of calls yesterday. I got it squared away, though, I think he's buying it."

"That's all you've got?" Olivia had been hoping, desperately, that Marcus's uncanny knack for technology might have helped him unearth some clue, some piece of evidence, some whisper about a renegade angel, and while she was grateful for his efforts to keep her out of prison she was restless, and frustrated, her skin crawling with anxiety as the time passed and they drew no closer to their mark.

"What have you got?" Marcus fired back. "Did you develop working phone numbers and email addresses and aliases for FBI agents that don't exist? Did you hack the FBI's internal employee records and create an entire profile for the guy who's saving your ass? It's me, by the way, I'm the guy."

He had a point.

"We found a feather at the crime scene," Olivia said. "Adult, not one of the girl's. The girl remembers her mother shouting at someone named Michael the night of the attack."

"Shit," Marcus said softly. "You don't think-"

"I don't know what to think!"

Too late she realized how loud she was speaking, and curled in on herself, ducked her head and tried again, a little quieter.

"There's no way it's him, right?" she asked, a little plaintively. "That's just not possible, right?"

"I don't think it's possible," Marcus affirmed, and that did help, a little, did reassure her somewhat. "I don't think Michael is capable of going off-script."

"That's what I'm worried about. Look, they tried to wipe us out once before, right? The guys upstairs. What if…what if Michael was sent to take the girl?"

"Take her where? She's like us, she's not going to heaven. You think…you think Michael was sent to take her…down there?"

I hope not, Olivia thought. It was a bridge too far, a cruelty beyond belief, the idea that McKenna was damned, that anyone, man, angel, god, could wish such a fate on such a little girl.

"Maybe just to take her away," Olivia suggested. "It's not like it was in the old days. What happens in one corner of the planet is echoed in another. There's no such thing as a secret anymore. Maybe Michael just wanted to keep her safe."

"But someone raped the kid's mother and slit her throat," Marcus pointed out. "That doesn't sound like someone who wanted to keep the kid safe."

"Doesn't sound like Michael, either, does it?" It wasn't really a question.

They were quiet for a moment, both of them, considering the quagmire they'd found themselves in, mulling over the questions they'd raised, and all the unpleasant possibilities.

We need help, Olivia thought. Marcus hadn't found anything, and neither had she, and she was gonna have to go and talk to Fin soon, and they were gonna have to brief the Captain, and they needed something, anything, to go on. They needed -

"We need Antony," Olivia and Marcus said together.

"I'll patch him into the call, hang on."

She was quiet, waiting for Marcus to finish pressing his buttons, waiting for Antony to join them. Those two, she'd known them for so long, known them back in the old days, the dark days, when they spoke a language no one heard outside the halls of the most deeply orthodox scholars anymore, when they were called by names they could barely remember, when the world felt small, and slower than this. Marcus had always been playful and Antony had always been serious, and though they had worn many names and many faces and lived in many places over the endless centuries of their lives they were still the same as she remembered, the same young men - men, for lack of a better word - who had been her family once, though she could not recall when last she'd seen either of their faces. Too long, she thought; it had been too long.

"You there, man?" Marcus said suddenly, and Olivia listened as another voice answered.

"I'm here," Antony said in his usual serious, steady voice, "though not a man, brother."

"As pedantic as ever, I see," Marcus said, laughter in his voice.

"As much fun as this is," Olivia started to say, started to try to draw them back to the topic at hand, but Antony finished for her.

"You want to know if I've found anything."

"Yes."

"Yes."

A pause then, while Olivia waited for Antony to continue, and he did not.

"Are you going to -"

"I'm simply gathering my thoughts, habibi," Antony told her. Of course he was; Antony was always gathering his thoughts. Gathering dust, more like, she thought, though she kept that to herself, just plucked impatiently at the wrinkles on her trousers and waited for him to speak.

"There's been some whispers in the Vatican," Antony began, finally. "They've been trying to keep it quiet, but you know what they say. Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. The whispers are audible, to those who know how to listen."

"Thank you for those words of wisdom, oh great and powerful-"

"Shut up, Marcus."

"Yes, ma'am."

"As I was saying," Antony continued. "There have been a number of reported angelic visitations in Central and North America over the last five or so years. The young ladies report their experiences to the parish priests, the parish priests call their Bishops, the Bishops call Rome, Rome says keep it quiet, and they do. Miracles are spectacles, in this day and age, it's remarkable, really, that the news hasn't spread further."

"Well, the church has always had a knack for controlling the spread of information," Marcus said dryly.

"Not like this. We've all seen the stories. A grandmother sees what she thinks is the visage of Christ in a piece of toast and the thing becomes a holy relic. But there have been six sightings of an angel, and there's no articles? No feverish television coverage? It's alarming, really."

"Do we know who it is?" Olivia asked, growing impatient with the boys' banter. "The angel, I mean."

"He tells them his name is Michael. Physical descriptions are meaningless, of course; the accounts agree with one another, but we all know the face he wears will be one of his choosing, not his natural shape."

The natural of shape of angels, whatever that might be, remained a mystery, even to Olivia and the rest of the nephilim. Angels assumed a form not unlike the physical bodies of men when they walked the earth, but what they looked like beyond the mortal realm was anybody's guess. It was the sort of thing she didn't like to think about too much; far too existential for her liking.

"Has he been here in New York?"

"That's the strange thing - well, one strange thing of many. There have been no reports from New York, but obviously there has been an angel there, or else where would the nephilim child have come from? We need to learn more about the child's mother, habibi." Olivia liked that, the way Antony still, always, called her habibi, an old familiarity, a constant form of address when she changed her name the way other women changed their clothes. "We need to know where she's been, where she came from."

"She's barely left her apartment since the girl was born, and her family's all dead."

"Yes, but how? That is the question, I think. Has she always lived in the city? If you can find out where she was before the child was born, I can check your information against my list of reported angelic sightings. Perhaps there's some overlap."

"We know she met an angel at some point," Olivia protested. "We don't need to prove that, the girl proves that. We need to know where the angel is now."

"You think he had something to do with the murder?"

"I do, and I -"

"And you, dear sister, are missing the bigger question," Marcus cut in smoothly, smugly, though he did not immediately explain himself.

"Which is?"

"Is your little foundling the only one out there? Or has our heavenly friend left a trail of children in his wake?"

God damn it, he was right. Olivia was too much a cop, too focused on her own case, and she'd not thought about that, not really. What if this Michael - whoever he was - had more children out there? What if he was trying to gather them to himself? What the hell kind of game was he playing?

"Ok," Olivia said. "Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to dig into the mother's past today. Find out where she's been, and get that info to Antony. Antony, I need you to find out more about these sightings. What did the angels do or say, did they visit men or only women, are there any children born to these women after the sightings. Marcus, I need you to…do whatever it is you do. Scrape the internet, poke around in back channels. I can search our state database for similar crimes but I need you to go wide. Go back five years, look for murdered parents with young children, especially if the children were taken, get me a list."

"She does sound commanding, doesn't she?"

"You tease her too much," Antony chided Marcus gently. "It's a good plan. Shall we reconvene this time tomorrow?"

"Unless you find out something we need to know urgently, that'll work," Olivia said.

"All right, then. Off we go."

They said their farewells, and Olivia hung up the phone, her mind racing. It was a good feeling, though. Now she had a plan, and as long as she had a plan, as long as she had a purpose, she had hope.

Chapter Text

Olivia had always liked puzzles. She'd been good at them as a child, had learned early how to sit quietly and arrange all the pieces on the coffee table in the living room, how to find the corners first, how to build the edges and then work her way in. When she was very young the puzzles had been small, and simple; as she grew older, the puzzles grew more challenging. She liked the ones with large splashes of color, liked grouping the pieces each according to those colors, and then filling the puzzle in section by section. There was something satisfying about it, something comforting in the methodical work, something comforting in solving it, in looking down at a completed puzzle and knowing she had done that.

Solving a crime was not unlike solving a puzzle. The first step, always, was to gather up all the pieces; the physical evidence, the crime scene photos, the witness statements. Fill in the edges, the what and the when and the who, and then start working on the center, on the central question, on the why.

She had the outline of this case. The what; a rape and murder. The when; two nights ago, when all the world was sleeping. The who; Andrea Dobson, only child of Renee and Peter Dobson, a perfectly ordinary couple from Colorado who had made a killing on the real estate market and left their considerable wealth to their daughter, an aspiring artist who had taken off for the big city, where she had promptly vanished into obscurity. That was the outline, and Olivia had gathered a number of interior pieces, was grouping them together by color, by association. Andrea's parents had died together, killed by a carbon monoxide leak in their home in Colorado Springs five years ago. Five years ago, around the same time Andrea would have gotten pregnant with McKenna. Five years ago, when Antony's reported sightings of the angel who called himself Michael had begun. They were Catholic, Andrea's parents. Olivia kinda thought that mattered. After they died, Andrea tied up their affairs and moved to the city and never made a single friend, raised her daughter on her own and sold her pottery online. Olivia kinda thought that mattered, too.

Those were the pieces, but there were still too many missing, and her heart was heavy when she made her way home that night. It had been a productive day; after the call with Marcus and Antony she had caught up with Fin, and they'd started their searches in earnest, searched VICAP for similar cases, tracked down the financial advisor who helped Andrea manage her money, dug up everything they could find on her family, worked with the unis to comb through endless hours of security camera footage from Andrea's buildings and the ones around it. Fin hadn't asked about McKenna, and Cragen seemed to buy the story about the FBI, but she wasn't sure how long that was going to last; wouldn't Cragen wonder where the feds were, why they weren't getting more help? How long was this case going to drag on, and what would she do with McKenna if she was forced to declare it cold? What was she going to do with McKenna if she solved it? In the moment taking the girl to Elliot had seemed like the only possible choice, but it wasn't a sustainable one; she'd been reacting, moving on instinct, and now she was beginning to worry about the long term.

And she was really, really fucking hungry.

The second she opened the door to Elliot's apartment she could hear the scrambling sound of little feet, and she barely had enough time to put down her bag before McKenna barrelled into her, calling out her name.

"Livia!" the girl said, reaching her little arms up, and Olivia was helpless to resist her, immediately picked her up and cuddled her close. Elliot had been right behind her, though he was walking a little slower, and he smiled when he caught Olivia's eye.

This is nice, she thought. Nice to have a child and a man to come home to. Nice to walk in the door and smell dinner on the air, even if it was just frozen pizza. Nice to have someone to hold, and nice to look, and see Elliot's face there, smiling at her.

"She's been asking about you all day," Elliot said, and that warmed Olivia's heart, not only because it made her feel as if McKenna liked her, but because it meant McKenna had been talking. She'd been so quiet, that first day, hadn't spoken a single word, but apparently the little interview Elliot and Olivia had conducted had loosed the girl's tongue, and now she was talking. That was a good thing, in Olivia's book.

"Elly says we have ice cream now," McKenna told her excitedly.

"Elly?" Olivia repeated, raising her eyebrow at Elliot.

"Don't start," he grumbled, the tips of his ears turning pink as if in embarrassment. "I told her she could have ice cream when you got home."

It was nice, she thought, to have a home.

"Then it's time for ice cream," she said, and McKenna began to wiggle in her arms, eager to get down, to rush into the kitchen for her treat.

"But first," Olivia said, "I have some things for you. Do you want to see what I brought?"

"Presents?" McKenna asked, her blue eyes lighting up in excitement.

"Sort of. I'll show you."

Carefully Olivia set the girl on her feet, and then reached for the bag she'd brought with her. The day had been a busy one, but she hadn't forgotten the conversation she'd had with Elliot that morning, about all the things they'd need. She'd ducked into a store around lunchtime, and picked up a few items for McKenna. Some fresh clothes, some kid's shampoo, a little box containing three plastic and improbably colored toy horses, and a small stuffed rabbit. The stuffed animal had been an impulsive purchase, wasn't really necessary, but it was soft, and sweet, and it made Olivia think of McKenna, made Olivia wonder if the girl would like it.

If the way McKenna squealed when she saw it was any indication, she loved it. Her little hands darted out and took the rabbit from Olivia at once, and clutched it against her chest, rocking back and forth with her little wings fluttering behind her. It was a precious sight, that little girl who had come so close to horror happy, for once, for the moment, with something soft and sweet to call her own, and the image of it, of that joy, would be burned in Olivia's memory forever.

"You did good, Liv," Elliot told her softly, warmly; the expression on his face made it plain that he was as affected by McKenna's happiness as Olivia was. "Now come on, let's eat."

The three of them went into the kitchen together, Elliot and Olivia walking side by side, McKenna rushing ahead with her rabbit caught in her arms. There were empty plates in the sink, a sure sign that Elliot and McKenna had already eaten, but he'd saved a plate for Olivia, and she popped it in the microwave while Elliot scooped McKenna up and sat her in a chair at the table, while he went to fetch her the ice cream he'd promised.

Later tonight, they'd talk about the case. Once they'd eaten, they'd take McKenna into the bathroom, and Olivia would bathe her, and get her changed into her new, clean clothes, and they'd put her down for bed, and then they would sit together in the living room, and talk about what Olivia had learned. She'd tell him everything, tell him about the conversation with Marcus and Antony and the information she'd gathered about Andrea's family, and they'd toss ideas back and forth the way they always did, and maybe by the time she went to bed tonight she'd feel better, about everything. Talking to Elliot had that effect on her; she always felt more settled, more grounded, when he was with her.

Christ, this was nice, but it was dangerous, too, she knew. Even as she took her plate out of the microwave, even as she joined them at the table and laughed with Elliot at the mess McKenna was making of her ice cream, she felt the danger. It was dangerous, to let this kind of happiness into her heart. It would be dangerous, to get used to this, to being part of a family, to having this much love. She wasn't meant for this kind of life, this kind of life where she had everything she ever wanted. Wanting things only ever led to heartbreak, in her experience, and she wanted this, so badly that the wanting pierced her heart like a knife.

"Everything ok?" Elliot asked her, something wary, something knowing in his eyes like he could see it, could see her pain, could see her mourning for something she hadn't even lost yet, something that had never been hers to claim.

"Yeah," she said. "So tell me, what did you do today?"

The time passed slowly, happily, while they talked. While they talked about ordinary things, about the bird McKenna had seen in the window and the cartoons she'd watched and the games she'd played with Elliot. Interspersed with her easy chatter were little clues from Elliot; he did it masterfully, weaving his explanations into their conversation, letting Olivia know that McKenna was a big girl, fully potty trained, letting Olivia know that McKenna had talked to him and displayed an age-appropriate mastery of language, letting Olivia know that McKenna remained sweet natured, and inclined to listen when spoken to. There were questions he hadn't answered yet, questions about how much McKenna understood, if she knew she was never going to see her mother again, but those were grownup questions, scary questions, and she would not ask them in McKenna's presence.

Eventually she finished her dinner, and McKenna finished her ice cream, and now was as good a time as any to give the girl a bath, Olivia figured, since her fingers and cheeks were sticky from the ice cream.

"Ok, sweetheart," Olivia said. "Would you like to take a bath?"

"Are there toys in there?" McKenna asked.

"Yes," Elliot answered. "Rubber ducks, and a pirate ship."

Those must have been Eli's toys, Olivia thought, and the sorrow surged within her with a vengeance; it was heartbreaking to think about, the stark truth that Elliot's family was broken, now, that he didn't get to see Eli every day, any more, that the place where he lived was somewhere Eli only visited, a few toys and clothes tucked away, unused, most of the time, except for those rare occasions when Eli was in residence. Did it hurt Elliot, she wondered; did it hurt him, to see his son's toys unplayed with on the days when Eli was with Kathy, to know that Eli was growing, changing, every minute, and he wasn't there to watch it all unfold? The rubber ducks and the pirate ship, they were a tragedy, Olivia thought. Elliot didn't belong in this apartment with his partner and the girl she'd spirited away; he belonged at home, with his wife and son, and it made Olivia feel as if she had stolen something, somehow. As if she had stolen someone else's life.

But McKenna did need that bath.

"Will you take her into the bathroom?" Olivia asked. "I'll go get the bag."

She'd left it by the front door, and that was where she went, while Elliot took McKenna by the hand and began to lead her away. That was where they were, when it happened; Elliot was holding McKenna's hand, halfway across the living room and almost to the bedroom, and Olivia was five feet from the door.

Olivia was five feet from the door when it splintered like a wrecking ball had crashed through it, and a great and terrible presence swooped inside. Olivia was five feet from the door when McKenna screamed, and a hail of bullets filled the apartment.

Chapter Text

McKenna did not scream.

It happened so fucking fast; he heard the sound of the door shattering, blasting inwards with the force of a bomb, with a sound not unlike the explosions of IEDs he recalled from his tour overseas, and when he heard that sound, his body moved on instinct. Fast, lightning fast, faster than he could think or rationalize, his body moved; his body knew better than his head what was needed, what to do next. It was muscle memory, or something like it, some deep, primal piece of his subconscious, buried so far he'd never be able to touch it, taking over in the moment he most needed salvation.

His body moved; he was holding McKenna by the hand, and he spun, fast, dove for the ground with her in his grasp, rolled them both so that the sofa was between them and the doorway, covered McKenna's body with his and ducked his head to his chest. The speed with which he'd moved was all but violent, and he'd have to worry, later, if McKenna had been hurt in the scramble to bring her to safety, but a broken wrist was better than a bullet wound. Part of him was braced for her screaming, prepared already to ignore her pleas and wriggling and simply hold her captive beneath the bulk of him, but she did not try to escape his grasp, and she did not scream, or cry, or make a single sound, and instead lay motionless beneath him, paralyzed by fear.

Not that he could blame her; he was scared out of his fucking mind, too.

There were bullets flying through the air above him, maybe even flying through the couch cushions, but he was low down, as flat as he could go, and McKenna was lower still, and covered by him, and there was no way, he thought, there was no way a bullet could go through the couch and him and still cause her serious harm; surely his body would slow it down enough to save her. McKenna was protect, as safe as he could make her in that moment. 

But Olivia wasn't safe behind the couch. Olivia wasn't tucked up beneath his chest, her face buried in the crook of his neck. Olivia was there, on her own, caught between whatever nightmare had come bursting through the doorway and the place where Elliot was lying, and he couldn't remember if her gun was still on her hip and he wasn't even sure it would matter, anyway. Whoever - whatever - had just broken into his apartment, they had the element of surprise, must have caught Olivia on the back foot, and they were shooting, shooting, bullets ricocheting everywhere, and he couldn't tell if there were two guns, or just one, if the shooter was coming closer or falling back; the cacophony was deafening, defeating, and he couldn't do anything, because his own gun was in a safe in the bedroom and it was too far away for him to reach it and he couldn't leave McKenna alone to try to make a mad dash for it and he damn sure wasn't gonna try to carry her across the apartment with a hailstorm of bullets cascading around them. He was trapped, and his only option was to play defense, and hope that Liv would prevail.

There was no way she could, though. How could she survive such a viscous onslaught, when she had been barefoot and tired and utterly unprepared for such horror? He'd seen her survive one bullet, but two? A dozen? How many shots would it take, to bring down a nephilim? How many times had she been hit already?

His heart was screaming in his chest and his ears were ringing and McKenna was silent and suddenly there rose a great and terrible voice upon the air, a scream the likes of which he had never heard before, so loud it made the windows rattle in their casings, so loud it damn near stopped his heart, and just like that the gunfire ceased. For a moment all was still; for the length of a heartbeat an impossible, gut wrenching silence descended upon them while the burning smell of gunpowder danced on the air.

"Oh," a voice said. A man's voice, from the sound of it, rich and threatening; the voice of the shooter, though Elliot did not dare raise his head above the sofa to look.

"You're one of them," the man continued, his tone dripping with derision.

"I am," Olivia answered defiantly.

"Why do you waste your life pretending to be human?" the man asked, curious, maybe, but judgmental most of all. "You are so much more than they could ever comprehend. You are so much better than they are. These men, they are like little children, fumbling through the darkness. You could be their queen, if you wanted."

"What the fuck makes you think that's what I'd want?"

The stranger laughed.

"I suppose it doesn't matter what you want. What matters is what I want. Give me the child, little one. Don't make this harder than it has to be."

The sound of one single footstep, a boot heel on laminate, creaked from the other side of the couch, but there was only one; Olivia must have done something to make the stranger stop in his tracks.

"You really, really don't want to try me, Michael," Olivia said.

It must have been the angel. The stranger who had broken down Elliot's door, who was trying to kill them all, trying to take McKenna, he must have been the same angel who'd killed McKenna's mother, who'd started all this chaos. Olivia must have known, though how she knew Elliot could not begin to guess; he was alone, down there on the floor, out of sight, unable to come to her aid, unable even to watch.

"You are a brave one, aren't you," Michael said. "You aren't afraid of hell?"

"No," she said. "Are you?"

"No," Michael laughed.

"Good," Olivia said darkly, grimly. "Let's go there together." And then Elliot heard her move, as if approaching Michael; he knew it was her, because he'd know her footsteps anywhere. 

No -

The word swelled through Elliot's mind, not so much a coherent thought as it was a great and towering sense of no, a desperation to stop it, to prevent it from happening, to scream, to end whatever had begun in the middle of his apartment before it tore Olivia away from him. No, a feeling and not a word, a negation in every possible sense, recoiling from the implication of Olivia's words, recoiling in horror, and even as that no drowned out his other senses, he heard it, the scrambling of feet, the landing of blows, and then the scream again, the same, but different, and then the flapping of wings, and then a terrible black shadow flew over him and burst through the window beside the TV, and disappeared into the night.

That was good enough for him; the threat was gone - for now; he could not say how long they would be safe, only knew that they needed to move, now - and so he leapt to his feet, hauling McKenna with him, and looked for Liv.

She would have been impossible to miss.

The shell of the door remained, the door itself in splinters across the floor, and Olivia stood in the square of empty space that served as a foyer, stood, still, between the doorway and the sofa. Stood, somehow, was still standing, was still on her feet, was still breathing, and the relief he felt when he saw her was so profound his knees nearly buckled.

On the heels of that relief came another emotion, a feeling unlike anything he had ever known, a feeling that made him think of the saints, a feeling like the ecstasy of touching the face of God, a feeling like awe, in a way he had never before experienced it. There was Olivia, standing, but there was something else, too, something else sharing the same space, the same body as Olivia, something she had never truly let him see before. He had known Olivia the woman, but this was Olivia the nephilim, the mighty, the holy, the damned, and she was righteous.

At some point in the scuffle her wings had burst through her shirt, left it tattered and torn, and now they stretched proudly behind her, blood red and vibrant as rubies dripping from the glittering whiteness of her feathers. There were bullet holes in her shirt, her pants, blood all over her skin, but she was standing, still. However many times Michael had shot her it had not been enough to put her down.

There were signs, here and there, of the struggle, forensics left behind, evidence Elliot knew how to interpret after so many years on the job. Micahel had begun shooting towards the sofa, towards Elliot, but Olivia - she had been armed, after all, and she had fired more than her fair share of shots - had diverted his attention, let him to the kitchen, where she had traded her gun for the biggest knife in the block, eight inches long, three inches wide, sharp as sin, still clutched in her hand, still dripping blood. Hers, maybe, but maybe Michael's; it was impossible to say.

She was standing, Olivia, bloodied but defiant, unbent, and there was glory in her, in those vibrant, powerful wings, in the knife she clutched in her hand, in the fire that burned in her dark eyes. She was standing, and she was the most devastatingly beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his entire goddamn life, and he could not speak, looking at her, could hardly breathe, could only gaze upon her in a reverent, shaken sort of wonder.

"Are you ok?" she asked him urgently, quietly, letting the knife clatter to the floor as she approached him, and the sound of her voice, the sound of his partner's voice, returned him to himself, a little.

"Yeah," he said. "McKenna? Are you ok, sweetheart?"

He was holding the girl on his hip, and he could feel her breathing, could feel her little arms wrapped around his neck, clinging to him, and when he asked his question he could feel her nod.

"We have to go," Olivia said. "Everybody on the block probably heard that, and local cops are gonna be here any second. We can't explain any of this to them and we can't risk them seeing her. We have to go."

"Wait, Liv, we gotta-"

"I know," she said. "I know you wanna talk about Cragen and Kathy and the job and your stuff and your phone and all the shit we need and where we're going but there's no fucking time. We have to leave, now."

The choice in front of him was a perilous one. His years of training as a police officer, as a Marine before that, as the son of a cop before that, told him that running now was a bad fucking idea. Whichever cops responded to this call would know whose apartment had been hit, would see the blood everywhere. They'd look for him, would use his credit cards, his car, his phone to track him, and they'd talk to Kathy, and scare the shit out of her, probably, and probably at least one of his neighbors had seen a pretty, dark-haired woman walk into his apartment, and Cragen was gonna notice if Liv didn't come into work tomorrow, and this was insane.

But Michael wanted to take McKenna, by any means necessary, and Elliot didn't really work for Cragen any more, and Olivia was telling him to go.

They went.

Chapter Text

"I think she's asleep," Olivia said quietly, fretfully, peering over the back of her seat to study McKenna's little face. For her part the little girl was slumped over in her carseat, her head leaning against the door and her thumb stuck halfway to her mouth where it had fallen out when she finally conceded defeat and gave into the siren song of slumber. Yeah, McKenna was fast asleep, of that Elliot had no doubt, and he envied her, a little bit, envied the peace and the confidence that came from knowing someone else was going to take care of her, that she did not have to carry that burden herself.

The attack had come after dinner, sometime around 8:00 pm, and it had only lasted a minute, and it had taken less than five for Elliot and Olivia to gather what they needed and bolt. They'd run for the safety of Elliot's car, driven for half an hour before stopping at an ATM long enough to withdraw enough cash to keep them fed and the car gassed up for a few weeks, and then they'd taken off again, headed for the trees and the questionable safety of a small town upstate.

Their bolthole had been Elliot's idea; a cabin in the woods, owned by his old army buddy Buck, far from prying eyes. They'd been talking lately, Buck and Elliot - it was amazing how much easier it was to keep up with old friends now that Elliot didn't have a job - and Buck had sensed that Elliot was struggling, and offered him use of the cabin to clear his head. Elliot hadn't taken Buck up on the offer when it was made, but it seemed like a godsend now, and he'd called from the car, and Buck hadn't seemed to mind him calling so late, had instead seemed happy to help. Liv had made calls of her own, to Fin, to Cragen, to the nephilim who'd been helping her try to track down their renegade angel, and their bases were covered, for now. Just like that, they were on the run with a child in tow, heading for the woods with one eye cast back over their shoulders.

While McKenna was asleep there were questions Elliot wanted to ask, questions he didn't dare voice where she could hear, and he decided to ask them now, while Liv was a captive audience in the passenger's seat, while there was nowhere for her to run.

"What happened back there?" he asked tightly, both hands on the wheel, his eyes roving constantly from the road ahead to the mirrors and back again, looking for some sign they were being followed, though he found none.

"What do you think?" Olivia answered waspishly.

"You called him Michael."

What do you know that I don't?

"It was just a guess," she said with a shrug. "We know the angel who's been causing all these problems calls himself Michael, and we know McKenna heard her mother say Michael the night of the attack. An angel breaks your door and tries to kill us, I'm gonna go ahead and assume it was the same guy. And the way he reacted…yeah, I think it was him."

"You think he was trying to take her?"

"That, or kill her," Olivia said darkly. "But he seemed surprised to see that I'm nephilim. He may not know who we are."

"He's gotta know something, or how else did he find her?"

That was the part Elliot couldn't quite understand. He and McKenna hadn't left the house since Olivia showed up with the girl that first morning. If Michael had been following anyone it would've been Olivia, but how would he have known to do that? If he'd followed her when she first came to Elliot's surely he would've struck then, instead of waiting around.

"I don't know," Olivia said, running her thumb across her brow the way she did when she was anxious and thinking hard. "If McKenna is his child he may…he may be able to sense her. To feel her presence."

That was a terrifying thought. If Michael possessed some otherworldly ability to locate his child then nowhere would be safe, least of all a cabin in the woods far from civilization, far from aid.

"How sure are you-"

"I'm not sure!" Olivia burst out. "I'm not sure of anything! Nothing like this has ever happened before, Elliot. I'm as blind as you are."

"Ok," he said, trying to keep his voice level, "ok. If he does have some way of tracking her it can't be that good, it took him a while to find her. We'll get to the cabin, and then we'll…"

And then what? What could they do? Lay a trap for a goddamn angel? How would they even go about doing such a thing?

"What if we call your guys," he said. "What're their names-"

"Antony and Marcus-"

"Antony and Marcus. What if we call 'em and have 'em come up to the cabin. Three on one, maybe we've got better odds of bringing this guy down."

Elliot didn't include himself in that number; his body would not heal itself in seconds if he took a bullet, let alone a dozen the way Liv had done back in the apartment. He was no good to her, really. Just another fucking liability. He was beginning to wonder if he always had been that, a liability to her. She was so smart, so strong, so capable, and still just a detective, after however many fucking years on the job. Maybe if she hadn't spent the last thirteen years riding with him, with a loose cannon, with an asshole who had too many excessive force complaints in his jacket and a sour relationship with IAB, maybe she would've gone for Sergeant by now. Maybe she'd have moved up the ranks, and maybe if she hadn't spent so much fucking time with him she might have found a man for herself, might have been happy. Then again maybe not; he knew what she was now, and he knew it made her lonely, and it crashed into him, then, sitting behind the wheel and thinking about how he'd held her back, maybe she'd never found a man because she'd always known it wouldn't last. Whoever she loved, he'd die, and she'd be all alone again, and maybe she just didn't want the heartbreak of it, and suddenly there was a lot about the last thirteen years that was starting to make sense.

"Antony won't come," she said grimly. "Marcus might, but he's more good to us where he is. He's never been much of a fighter."

"You are, though."

She turned to look at him, smiled at him softly, sadly, in the dim light of the car's interior. An ancient smile, a knowing smile, a smile that had endured a million heartbreaks and yet remained, somehow, intact.

"That hasn't always been a good thing," she said. "I've been fighting for so long now, and I'm not sure it's done any good."

"It has," Elliot insisted earnestly. "Look, I don't know where you've been and I don't know everything you've seen but I've been your partner a long time now, Liv, or at least what feels like a long time to me, and you have done good. You've done so much good. You've saved so many people. You saved her," he said, gesturing to McKenna, sleeping in the back seat.

And you saved me, he thought, because even though he was on the run with a supernatural monster hot on his heels and a sense of almost certain death hanging in the air, he felt saved. He felt righteous, with her by his side. He felt like he had purpose, like his life meant something, like it mattered, being on this road with her. But this was hardly the first time she'd saved him; she'd pulled him back from the brink, tried to hold his family together with her own two hands, kept him alive, kept him balanced, kept him going. She was the needle on the compass of his heart, pointing him unerringly towards grace.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry I got you caught up in this mess. You didn't deserve-"

"Bullshit. You're my partner. Your mess is my mess."

There was something holy about that word partner when he said it to her, when she said it to him, and they both knew it. The chains that bound them to one another were stronger than the job, unbroken even now when he was badgeless and likely to stay that way. Partner didn't mean just sharing the work, sharing the load; they were partners in everything. In triumph and defeat, in hope and disappointment, in life, she was his partner. In a way that Kathy had never been; in a way that no one had ever been, Olivia was his partner, the other half of him, the one he couldn't do without.

And one day, maybe one day soon, he was gonna die, and leave her all alone, and what the fuck kind of partner did that make him?

"I'm sorry," he said softly.

"Elliot-"

"I'm sorry I'm not better. I'm sorry you're stuck with me."

In the darkness she reached out and laid her hand gently on his forearm, her fingers curling around him, holding on tight.

"There's no one else I'd rather be stuck with," she said. "When I joined SVU, I could've been partnered up with anyone, and I…I'm glad it was you."

All those years, and all the people she'd known, and she was glad it was him. That had to count for something.

"It's gonna be after midnight when we get there," he said, because he couldn't say I love you, even if he was thinking it. "Buck says there's two rooms. I'm thinking we put you and McKenna in the bed together in one room and I'll take the other. She likes you, and you can keep her safe better than I can. In the morning we can see about getting some food and make a plan for what we'll do if Michael comes back."

"Ok," Liv said, but she didn't seem too happy about it.

"What?"

"I just…I don't like the idea of us being separated. After tonight, I'm…I'm scared, Elliot. I'm scared that something's gonna happen to her but I'm scared something's gonna happen to you, too."

They'd brought both their guns and all the ammo from Elliot's safe, but that didn't amount to a whole lot, and wouldn't do much good against an angel, anyway. There was very little Elliot could do to defend himself against a creature that was almost unkillable, that couldn't be slowed down for more than a few seconds, and Olivia was worried about protecting him, and he had never felt so useless in all his life.

"We'll see what the place looks like when we get there," he said. "Maybe there's enough space for all three of us in one of the rooms. But, Liv…how do we…how do we stop this guy? You pulled a knife, back at the apartment…"

And Elliot had been wondering ever since he saw it what that was about, since it probably would've been just as easy for Liv to go for her gun as it was to get in the kitchen and grab the knife.

"He'll heal from a puncture wound quickly. Skin, veins, organs, those things will heal fast. Bones take a little more time and he can't just sprout new ones. I was gonna try to take his fucking fingers off."

"That's my girl," Elliot said, grinning, because it was, it was so Olivia, so brash, so fierce, so clever, so undaunted. In the face of unstoppable horror she had bared her teeth, had not backed down but had instead been intent on wreaking as much carnage as she could before her enemy laid her low. Angry, and ferocious, and gentle, too, Olivia was a goddamn force to be reckoned with, and he was so fucking proud of her for it.

"Buck's a hunter," Elliot mused. "He's probably got a ton of knives in the house.

"Good," Olivia said darkly.

They drove on, the night still and dark all around them, thinking grim thoughts about the means to kill an angel, and the lengths they were willing to go to protect McKenna, to protect each other.

Chapter Text

She couldn't look directly at him. It was like staring into the sun, something beautiful, and powerful, and awe-inspiring, and dangerous. Something that hurt to look at for too long. That's what he was, what she felt seeing him walking up the gravel path to the cabin's front door with McKenna in his arms. Elliot, cradling a little girl with dark hair and blue eyes and delicate white wings, a Norman Rockwell picture postcard perfect glimpse into the life Olivia had always wanted, into the life she'd never be allowed to have. He was beautiful, holding that little girl, strong and steady and sweet, a man imperfect and temperamental and hard-headed as any other, but a man good, down to his bones, good, and kind, a protector of children, a defender of women, a light in the darkness of the world Olivia inhabited, a light to bright to be viewed straight on; she could only watch him out of the corner of her eye as she dug in the planter by the front door, located the key right where Buck said it would be and unlocked the door.

The interior of the cabin was dark and a little musty; she dropped their bags just inside the door and fumbled for the light. Elliot had his arms full, and McKenna was still sleeping, and Olivia was willing to do whatever it took to keep from waking her. McKenna deserved a chance to rest.

With the lights on she could get her bearings; the door opened up into a neat little sitting room. The cabin lived up to its name; the interior walls were all wood-paneling, the beams of the rafters exposed overhead. There was no TV to be found, and in the sitting room a conversational grouping of matching leather sofa and armchairs were all arranged facing a stone fireplace. There was a kitchen beyond it, and a little corridor off to the right, and so Olivia went right, with Elliot trailing along behind her. There wasn't much to see down the corridor; two bedrooms, like Buck had said, and one bathroom, all sparsely but comfortably appointed. Neither of the beds was made.

"Sheets are in the closet," Elliot whispered hoarsely. "I'll put her down, we can make up the beds together."

"I'll do it," Olivia whispered back. "You go sit down with her, let her sleep."

For a second she thought Elliot might tell her no; he had that look on his face, like he wanted to argue, but he was a father, and knew better than to wake a sleeping child unless he absolutely had to.

"All right," he said, and disappeared, and Olivia breathed a sigh of relief, and turned her attention to the closet in the hall, digging around in search of the bedsheets.

It was a remarkably ordinary thing to do, pull sheets down from a closet and make up beds. Ordinary, and comforting in its ordinariness; it wasn't something she had to think about, really, and she was so goddamn tired of thinking. Tired of planning, and worrying, and wondering, tired of turning their conundrum over and over in her mind, tired of being afraid. There was no end to this terror in sight, but for a few minutes at least she could go through the motions of an ordinary evening.

Or perhaps not so ordinary, because she'd never before made up a bed for Elliot to sleep. Handed him a blanket to keep him warm while he crashed on her couch, sure, but she'd never done this, never smoothed down a sheet where he was meant to lay his body down, never stuffed a pillow into a case for him to rest his head on it. It felt intimate, somehow, doing this thing for him, while he sat on the sofa in the main room with a dozing child in his arms. It felt homey, and Olivia had not shared a home with another person for a long, long time. At least it was only Elliot; his expectations wouldn't be too high, she knew.

It took a little while to get both beds ready for occupants. The front bedroom held one double bed, and the back bedroom boasted a king. One of them could sleep in the back with McKenna, and one alone in the front. But she'd told Elliot in the car that she didn't want them to be separated, and with each passing second she only felt more strongly about that. The cabin was remote, a good thirty minute drive from the closest town, no neighbors to speak of, cell reception spotty. They were on their own out here, entirely, and she didn't like the thought of Elliot in that front bedroom alone. If Michael came for them he'd find Elliot first, find Elliot alone, and Elliot's body wouldn't heal from a bullet wound or a knife the way Olivia's would. She wanted him close, so she could keep him safe. But it would make her feel safer, too, to not be alone with McKenna, to not feel wholly responsible for the girl. The bed in the back room, it was big enough for all three of them.

She was going to have to ask him. She was going to have to swallow her pride and her longing and ask him to share a bed with her - with a toddler to sleep in between them, but still. It was mortifying, but the idea of being without him was worse, somehow.

As soon as she finished with the second bed she went out into the living room, found Elliot sprawled comfortably on the couch, his feet up on the coffee table and his head laid back, his eyes closed, though she knew he wasn't sleeping. They'd spent too many nights together in the cribs; she could always tell when he was sleeping, and when he was only trying to.

"All done," she told him quietly. "I'll take the bags if you can carry her? The back bedroom is the biggest."

We'll see what the place looks like, he'd told her in the car, not entirely an agreement but not a no, either, so she didn't press; she'd let him see the room for himself, and maybe he'd decide all on his own and spare her the mortification of asking him to stay. He rose slowly, carefully to his feet, and she grabbed the bags, double checked that the door was locked and then followed him back to the bedroom, where he was standing looking speculatively at the bed. He blushed, just a little, when he caught her eye, but he did not look away.

"I think it's big enough for all three of us," he said.

Thank god, she thought.

"Yeah, I think it'll be all right."

They went through the motions together, coordinated as a pair of dancers; so many years working so closely together had taught them a language all their own, and they knew how to communicate with just a look, knew one another's strengths and how best to allocate them, knew how to look at a job and determine who ought to do what. Olivia pulled back the covers and Elliot laid McKenna down, and then Olivia handed him his duffel, the bag they'd packed quick as lightning before running from his apartment, and then she rummaged through her own bag, the one she kept in the backseat of the sedan for emergencies. They pulled out cell phone chargers and plugged them in, and Elliot went to the bathroom while Olivia changed in the bedroom, and then it was her turn to pee and brush her teeth, and then she was back in the bedroom, closing the door behind her, walking towards the bed where Elliot was already lying comfortably beneath the covers, waiting for her. Elliot, in bed, waiting for her, and under the circumstances it probably shouldn't have made her belly flip over with a sudden surge of longing but it did, just the same. He was wearing a tank top and his shoulders were so broad and his arms were so strong and she wanted those arms wrapped around her, wanted to sink into the comforting warmth of him and find solace there, but such grace was not hers to ask for, and so she only slid into the bed on the opposite side, and turned out the light.

They were plunged into darkness, into a silence so acute Olivia could feel it settling heavily on her skin. The night was never this quiet in the city; there were always cars and sirens and sometimes voices on the other side of the wall, a television for company, the hum of a refrigerator. Here, though, there was only silence, a terrible, stifling quiet that threatened to suffocate her. Her mind began to race, her heart rate steadily increasing; what if Michael came for them? What if he had been hot on their heels, and the moment her eyes closed he burst through the door? Her gun was close to hand, and Elliot's, too, and she'd brought in a knife from the kitchen, but would it be enough? How were they supposed to stop him? It would be damn near impossible to hack his head off with a kitchen knife, and there were precious few other ways to kill an angel, and she didn't really want to, anyway, kill him, dangerous as he was. She didn't want the blood of an angel on her hands, not if there was any other way.

Beside her McKenna shifted, just a little, and she could feel Elliot tense even as she did, wondering if the girl would wake, but she didn't, only sighed and settled a little further back into the pillows. Her movement broke the spell that had fallen over them, though, and in a moment she heard Elliot's voice murmuring in the darkness.

"Been thinking," he said hoarsely. "Should we turn off our phones? Can he track them?"

It was a good question, a cop's question, and it felt good to have something that felt so much like work to discuss with him. She didn't know how to share a bed with him without breaking her heart in two, but she did know how to work with him.

"I don't think so," she said. "It's not something that any random guy on the street can do, it takes some technical knowledge, and I just don't think he has it."

"Why not?"

She couldn't fault him for asking; she had no evidence to back up her claims, only centuries worth of experience and a gut feeling.

"He's an angel," she said. "Phones and computers, all that technology, it doesn't mean anything to him. He doesn't need it. Angels don't have to call each other to communicate." Nephilim did, of course, but nephilim were not truly angels, and there were a good many things given to angels that had been denied to their children.

"I met an angel once, in Damascus," she told him. "A long time ago. He told me in heaven, there's no real separation among the angels. They're not…they're not like people. They don't have physical bodies; they're all sort of melded together. Whatever one is thinking, or feeling, they all feel it. They're cut off from it, down here. He told me it made coming down to earth lonesome."

The angel had told her how he missed it, communing with his brethren, feeling himself part of something greater, and she had understood; she'd never experienced what he was talking about, but she'd lived her whole life feeling as if some cord had been severed, as if she were somehow wounded, as if there was another part of her out there, somewhere, that she was longing to rejoin. The only time she didn't feel that way was when she was with Elliot.

"How…" Elliot's voice sounded faint, confused. "How could Michael come down here, then? Wouldn't the other angels know he was planning something?"

"Maybe he didn't plan it. Maybe he came here for a good reason, and got twisted somewhere along the way. The point is, I guess, we don't know how long he's been here, or what he's been able to find out, but angels don't really care about man's creations. All the things we've made, the roads and the cars and the planes and the telephone lines, all of it, if you think about it, is just a means to get humans closer to doing things angels can already do innately. He doesn't need a car when he can fly. He doesn't need a phone, probably doesn't even want a phone, because he has no one to talk to, and if he really needed to he wouldn't bother with human technology to do it."

"I gotta tell you, Liv, I think my head is spinning just a little," he said, deadpan, and in the darkness she smiled despite herself.

"Marcus says science is just man's attempt at discerning the mind of God. Trying to figure out how everything works, and why, and what man's purpose is on earth. Man tries to find ways to fly, to communicate with his brothers, to figure out all the secrets of the cosmos, and the angels know all that already. They don't need science."

"Marcus sounds like he'd give me a headache."

"He would," she said, smiling, still. Elliot had that power over her; even when she was afraid, he could always make her smile.

"So probably he can't track the phones," Elliot said after a moment's pause. "That's good. Buck says there's wifi in the cabin, and we brought the laptop. You can talk to your guys, and we can keep in touch with Fin. Maybe Michael will turn up somewhere."

"Maybe," she allowed, a little dubiously. What would Michael do next, she wondered; where would he go? He must have had somewhere to hide; after the first visitation, when he first went rogue, he'd have been unable to return to heaven. The others would have known at once what he'd done, and he'd have been held to account for it. Maybe he'd gone down there, changed teams, as it was, but Olivia didn't think so; no bargain struck with the devil was worth the price. If Michael had felt stifled in heaven, it was nothing to the enslavement of hell. He was like her, she thought, without a place; he'd have to have made one for himself. Angels, proper angels, didn't need to eat, or sleep, but he'd need somewhere to go, to make his plans, to keep from drawing too much attention to himself.

"I think we need to go back to the beginning," she mused, half to herself.

"Of time?"

"Of this," she said. "Michael's first visitation. That's probably when he decided not to go home. He may have some connection to that area, someone there may remember something."

"We'll do that in the morning, then," Elliot said. "Right now, you gotta try to sleep, Liv."

There was no way that was happening, she thought. The night stretched ahead of them, long and dark and full of shadows, but at least he was there, with her. She always felt a little better when he was with her.

Chapter Text

She wasn't sleeping, and he knew it. In the car, in the cribs, he could always tell, and now was no different; now was worse, maybe, because they were lying in the same bed, and he could feel the tension in her, like a telegraph wired to him through the mattress. It was late, and dark, Christ, it was dark, darker than it ever got in the city, and they were both lying very still, trying not to breathe too hard while McKenna dozed comfortably between them, oblivious to the turmoil that wracked the grownups who had taken charge of her.

Olivia's arm was thrown over the pillow behind McKenna's head, her wrist dangling near Elliot's face, close enough for him to just barely make out the time on the dimly lit face of her watch. That watch; it was big, and silver, a men's watch, probably, cinched as tight as it would go to keep it in place around her delicate wrist, the kind of watch she'd always favored, and perfect for her, he thought, because wasn't that just like her, big and bold and brash, and fragile, underneath it all. The watch told him it was just after three in the morning, and he didn't think either of them had managed to sleep for more than a few minutes since they'd laid down, and it made him feel a little foolish, lying there trying to keep his breathing slow and even when neither of them were anywhere close to dreams. What was the point of keeping up their charade? Then again, he thought, what else could they do?

In the darkness it was hard to make out details, but he could see the shape of Liv's face, the strong, proud line of her jaw, the soft curve of her mouth, the slope of her breast beneath the blankets. He swallowed hard, and dragged his gaze back up to her face; now was not the time to be looking at her tits, or thinking about how beautiful she was, not when they were both awake, and tired, with a toddler sleeping between them. Not that there ever was a good time for him to look at her tits or think about how beautiful she was; she had been his partner, off limits for so long, and maybe they weren't partners anymore but he knew what she was now, and knew she'd never want him, not like that. How could she? How could she care for a man, when she knew one day he'd die, and leave her, when she knew he'd never really understand the reality of her endless life? What could he possibly give to her that was worth the sacrifices she'd have to make?

Her eyes flickered open and he sucked in a sharp breath; he hadn't meant for her to catch him looking, and now it was too late to pretend he hadn't been.

"Hey," he said hoarsely, his voice so faint he wasn't really sure he'd spoken at all. Maybe he'd just thought it. She heard him, anyway.

"Hey," she said, and her voice was as low and soft as his had been. "You should be sleeping."

"You first," he said, and shot her a half-hearted grin.

She hummed and looked away; his attempt at levity had fallen flat. Of course it did; there was something about the darkness that didn't seem to leave room for humor. There was something suffocating about it, something about being awake when the rest of the world was deep in slumber that made him want to be honest, not funny. There were things he needed to tell her, and the words were crawling up the back of his throat, eager to bare themselves in the feeble light of her watch face, too weak to survive in the radiance of the morning sun.

"Been thinking," he said, and her eyes snapped back to his face, and his heart started to pound. He wanted to tell her the truth, but once the words were spoken there would be no taking them back. Once he breathed life into the thoughts that weighed heavy on his mind he would be free of them, but she would be haunted by them, hurt by them. But if he didn't tell her now, when would he? The very shape of the world seemed to be changing all around them, and he might never get another chance.

"When this is over…I don't think I'm coming back, Liv."

"To the city?" she asked, alarmed, and he grit his teeth; she wasn't gonna make this easy on him.

"To the job," he said.

"Elliot-"

No, he thought, no, he could not let her interrupt him, could not let her stall his momentum, because if he let her stop him now he might not ever get the words out and then what would become of him?

"Look, if I fight for my job, chances are good I'm gonna lose it. Tucker wants me gone, Liv. He'd just cleared me on sexual assault charges and then I went and killed a kid."

"Those charges were made up-"

"Truth doesn't matter, come on, you know that. It's optics. I've got too many marks against me and IAB wants me gone. If I fight 'em, they're gonna take my pension. And I can't let that happen. That pension's half Kathy's - " her payment, he figured, for all the decades of bullshit she'd put up with, and all the years she hadn't been able to work because she'd been stuck at home raising his babies while he was on the other side of the city - "and we've still got three kids to put through college."

On the other side of the bed Olivia's eyes were wide with shock, with hurt; she had always been an open book to him, and he'd always known, had always known just what she was thinking, had always known better than to believe her when she said she was fine. That look on her face right now; she wasn't fine at all.

"You can't…you can't just leave me, El." The words were sad, and scared, and small, and cut him like a knife, but through the sorrow they made him angry, too, just a little.

"See, this is why I didn't wanna tell you," he said, scrubbing his hands over his face. "I knew…"

Too late he'd realized what he'd been on the verge of saying, and swallowed his tongue, but the damage was done; Liv wasn't gonna let it go.

"Knew what?" she pressed him. "What?"

"I knew that if I told you I was leaving you were gonna say some shit like that to me and I was gonna want to change my mind," he grumbled.

In his head, he knew what the right decision was. The job was killing him by inches, and it had already destroyed his family, and the thought of strapping on his gun and going back out into the city was a terrifying one; it felt like a death sentence, somehow. If he stayed on the force he was gonna die on the force. It was a truth he felt more than understood, a fear rooted deep in his bones, the scent of disaster hanging on the air. He had to break out, had to turn away from the path he'd gone racing down and find some way to redeem himself, to claw his way back to Elliot, and leave the Detective behind before it swallowed him whole. In his head, he knew all that. In his heart, he could not bear the thought of leaving Olivia behind. His heart was crying out for her, recoiling at the idea of someone else walking beside her, furious to think she might go out into the city alone and unprotected without him there to watch her back. What the fuck was going to happen to her if he left? How could he do that to her?

That's what he'd been afraid of; he knew what he needed to do, and he knew he would turn away from the righteous path and sacrifice his very life just to be near her.

"Leaving the job doesn't have to mean leaving you," he said. "We can-"

"We can what?" she snapped, bitter now, the way she got when she was hurting. "Get dinner sometime, if I'm not working? See each other once a month? How long you think that's gonna last?"

"You saying you'd stop coming to see me?"

"I'm saying you need to be realistic! You know what this job does to people."

That was a low blow, he thought; she was talking about him and Kathy. She was talking about how he'd gotten too caught up in the job and stopped being present with his wife and lost her in the process, and saying the same damn thing was gonna happen all over again with him and Liv if they didn't have the job to hold them together, and it wounded him, not least because he was pretty sure she was right.

"And besides," she ground in relentlessly. "What are you going to do? I mean…you're a cop, Elliot."

"And that's all I'll ever get to be?" he fired back. "You've always been like this, Liv, you've always-"

"Are you saying it's my fault you-"

"I'm saying, you remember that night sitting in front of my house? You remember us talking? I told you you could walk away and you said you couldn't. But you could, Liv. You act like you don't have a choice, but all you've got is choices, and you keep making the same ones."

That did it; he'd no sooner finished speaking than she rolled out of bed and onto her feet, making a beeline for the door, pissed as hell. Trust Liv, he thought, to run when things got hard, when he got too close to something she didn't wanna talk about; she always ran.

Not this time.

He bounded out of bed, careful not to disturb McKenna but moving as fast as he could, and he caught Liv by the door, grabbed hold of her arm and swung her back around to face him. It was darker there by the door, further away from the window, but though he could not see her clearly he could feel the anger and the hurt pouring out of her, crashing into him.

"When I was a kid, I wanted to be an architect," he told her. "I loved to draw. We'd drive into the city and I'd have my nose up against the window, just staring at the buildings. I loved it, Liv. It was the only thing I wanted. But my old man said drawing was for girls. He used to hit me if he caught me doing it. And Kathy got pregnant and I needed a job and I ended up here, because that's the only life my old man ever would've let me imagine for myself. Yeah, I'm a cop. Yeah, I love it. But it doesn't have to be me. It doesn't have to be the only thing I ever get to be. Jesus, Liv, is this really wanted for yourself when you were a kid?"

What had her dreams looked like, when she was small and her mother kept her hidden away? What had she wanted for herself, and was it anything like what she got? There was so much he didn't know about her, so many things he desperately wanted to learn, and maybe they were falling apart in that tiny bedroom but maybe they'd find their way back to themselves there, too.

"It doesn't matter what I wanted then," she said. "Things change, Elliot. We find our own way. This…you're good at this. It makes you feel good. It gives you purpose."

She was right about that; he'd felt rudderless, useless, without the job these last few months, but while he'd been stuck in limbo he hadn't been able to reach for anything else. If he finally let go of the job, maybe he could be somebody. If she let him.

"And it keeps me with you," he said. "That's what this is about, isn't it?"

What about me, she'd asked him in the hospital after Gitano, and you can't just leave me, she'd told him tonight, and he wanted her to come out and fucking say it, for once, wanted to know exactly what she wanted from him because if she'd only tell him what she wanted then maybe he could give it to her.

"That's what you think of me?" she said in a quivering voice, though he could not tell whether it was tears or rage that made her words come out so unsteady. "You think I'm that selfish?"

"I think you're lonely," he said. "But you don't have to be."

His hand was still wrapped around her upper arm, fingers digging in to soft flesh, holding her close. In their bare feet he was a few inches taller and she had to tilt her chin back to look up at him, and he could see her eyes shining at him, could see her whole body shaking as she tried to keep her breathing even, tried to keep from exploding, tried to keep from making too much noise and waking McKenna up. Their whole conversation had been conducted in breathy whispers, voices quiet but burning with the heat of their emotions, and it was taking its toll on both of them, having to be so restrained.

"Yes, I do," she told him sadly. "That's all I'm ever gonna be."

It broke something inside him, hearing those words from her. The quiet acceptance of her lot in life, the resignation to the idea that she would, always, be alone, the total lack of fight from a woman he knew possessed the heart and the strength and the fire to take on hell itself, it shattered him. In that moment, he broke, and he did the only thing he could think of, the only thing he could do.

He used his hold on her arm to pull her closer, and sank his mouth over hers.

Chapter Text

It was the most delicious sort of torture, the ecstasy of the damned, a glorious relief and a soul-crushing defeat; to finally feel his kiss, so dearly longed for, so mercilessly frightening, was breaking her in two. She wanted him to kiss her, wanted this, the burn of his stubble against her cheeks, the taste of him on her lips, the fervent certainty of his tongue surging in her mouth and the buckling of her knees as her resolve wavered. She wanted it, but she could not have it, and damn him, damn him, damn him, for offering her the one thing she could never accept.

She lost herself in that kiss, but only for a moment. She allowed herself to feel, only for a moment, the solid weight of him against her, the comforting warmth of him, the radiating desire of him. This moment, this one, cataclysmic devastation, was all she would ever have of him, and she drank him down like whiskey, whimpered, once, at the burn of him in the back of her throat, and then pressed her palms to his chest and pushed him away, hard.

Elliot stumbled back from her, confusion written all over his dear face, his eyes darting to the place where McKenna lay, confirming for himself that she was still sleeping before his gaze snapped back to Olivia.

"Fuck you," she snarled at him quietly.

"Liv-" her name tripped haltingly from his lips, his affect perplexed, his hands held out towards her, fingers curling around nothing, reaching for her and yet knowing he would not be allowed to touch her, not after this monumental miscalculation.

"Fuck you, Elliot," she said again, her voice still low but heated. "You can't do this to me."

Something rather like hysteria was bubbling up the back of her throat, and it was funny, really, that the one person she trusted most, cared for most in all the world was also the only person she truly, deeply feared.

"Olivia, please," he was pleading with her, shame-faced, his shoulders curling in; it would wreck him, she thought, to realize that he had pressed his advances where they were not wanted. Olivia and Elliot were the goddamn sex police and matters of consent were their forte and he had just fucked up in that department - pretty spectacularly, actually - and he must be feeling guilty, must be feeling desperate, but she was feeling pretty desperate, too, and could not leave room for his feelings when her own were swallowing her whole.

"You just told me you're leaving," she forced herself to say. She was shaking from head to foot, all but vibrating with fear, and hurt, and something that felt like grief, something that felt like mourning for a man who she could still see standing in front of her. "And if we aren't partners on the job, we can't…we can't be anything, Elliot. Don't you get it?"

"No," he said, some of the uncertainty leaving him as he seemed to grasp the true meaning of her fury, as an answering fury began to build inside of him. "No, I don't get it. I'm trying…Jesus, Liv, I'm trying to show you we can be-"

"We can't," she insisted, frustrated with him, God, she was so fucking frustrated with him. He could be so arrogant, so fucking sure he knew best, but he wasn't listening to her, wasn't looking at their situation with clear eyes, had instead ignored every obstacle in their path and bulled forward like none of it, not heaven or hell or death or any of it, mattered. Maybe it didn't, to him; maybe he'd never really understand the forces that ruled her life. She wanted to make him understand, though. Needed to, needed him to know she was not turning him away because she did not want him, needed him to understand that the choice had been taken out of her hands long before she ever met him.

"I told you what I am," she said. "I can't stay in one place too long. I've only got another ten, fifteen years left in New York and then I'll need to move on. And even if I did stay, even if I risked blowing my cover, I can't…I can't…you're gonna die, Elliot."

Just the thought of it made her feel like throwing up; she could not bear it, to watch his body lowered into the ground, to know she would never hear his voice again, to feel the hollow space inside her heart where he was supposed to be, and yet it was inevitable, the loss of him. All she could do was try to mitigate the damage but he seemed determined not to let her.

"Not today," he said grimly, but even that was not guaranteed, because Michael was still out there, Michael still wanted to get his hands on McKenna, and he'd destroy anyone who stood in his way. "I'm alive right now-"

"And one day you won't be, and I'll be all alone again, only instead of wondering how it would feel to be with you I'll know, and I'll miss that feeling for the rest of time. I'll miss you forever, and I can't live with that."

Forever was after all such a very long time, and she could not add to the weight of her grief; she wouldn't survive it. That was something she had learned, over the long years of her life; sometimes it was easier to wonder than to know. There were some things too beautiful for her to touch. There were already so many souls she grieved for, so many friends lost along the way. There had been one man, once, a man she loved, a man she wanted, a man she meant to start a family with, and losing that love had cost her so dearly she could not bear to endure it again. It would be better for everyone if she let Elliot go, after this; if they survived whatever Michael had planned, it would be better if she and Elliot went their separate ways and never spoke again. Better a clean break than a slowly festering wound. One could heal; one would only hurt.

"Olivia," Elliot sighed, his voice low and sad. He reached for her, ran the pad of his thumb gently across the rise of her cheek, and it was only then that she realized she had been crying. His face was so, so soft, his eyes so warm and kind, and she wanted to collapse into him, wanted him to hold her, wanted to feel his hands running over her hair, over her back, wanted to hear his voice telling her that everything would be ok, wanted to believe him, but.

There were some things that wanting would not change, and it was unfair of him to ask this of her, to ask this of her now, with that little angel girl sleeping in the bed behind them, with the three of them caught in something that felt so much like family, something that was doomed to end. It couldn't last; none of this will last, she thought, looking at him. Why couldn't he see how much it was hurting her to push him away? Why was he making her push him away; why couldn't he just back down?

Because, she supposed, because he was Elliot, and Elliot never backed down from a fight, and Elliot had always been a stubborn son of a bitch, and she loved him for it. She loved him for it desperately.

"You're scared," he said. "And the timing's for shit."

A startled, choking little laugh escaped her; he was right about that. His timing was absolute shit; they were alone in a cabin in the woods waiting for an angel to come and try to tear them limb from limb, lying to their bosses, to their friends, with IAB already out for Elliot's head. There could have been no worse time for him to kiss her, to try to ask her for the one thing she wanted most. There could have been no better time either, though.

"But I can't stand here and watch you walk away from us just 'cause you're scared."

He stepped in closer, close enough so he could press his lips to her temple, close enough to make her feel weak, and she could not stop herself from leaning into his touch. She wanted it too badly, and it felt too right, standing there with him, and she could never have him the way she wanted but he was just there, and she gently nuzzled her cheek against his, aching with a need just to feel him, each breath she took a memory sealed away deep in her heart, a memory she would grieve for in the dark years of the future when she was alone, without him.

"You've got forever," he told her. "And I've only got a little while. But the future isn't certain, not even for you, Liv. You don't know what's gonna happen next. We might both die today." They really, actually, literally might. "All we've got is right now, and right now, I want you."

"You'll change your mind-"

"Bullshit-"

"I can't, I - I - we're not supposed to, Elliot. Humans, nephilim, we're just not meant to be."

While they argued, wrestling with her stubborn doubts and his stubborn determination, still their faces were softly touching, leaning into one another, so close that her lips brushed his chin when she told him no, but this time he pulled back a little, just far enough for her to be able to see the earnest sincerity in his bright blue eyes.

"Says who?" he demanded.

"Elliot-"

"I don't know about fate and I don't know about forever but I know this, Liv." He reached out, lightning quick, caught hold of her hand and brought it up to rest against his chest, so she could feel the kick-drum beat of his heart beneath her palm.

"You and me, we were meant to find each other. You came walking out of the rain that night and you changed everything for me. There's no going back. Don't stand there and tell me we're not meant to be. We're everything. And you know it. You can feel it."

It was a shockingly impassioned speech from the man who'd told her he didn't believe in soulmates, the man who'd told her he didn't believe in love at first sight, the man whose perception of love had always been pragmatic. It was not something she'd ever expected him to say, and yet she knew that he believed it. She could feel his belief in the trembling of his body beneath her hand, and she could feel his certainty in the beat of his heart, marching in rhythm to her own. The nephilim were cursed - she was cursed - cursed never to enter heaven, never to bear children, to walk the world always in darkness, with none but their brothers to stand beside them, and them scattered to the winds, too far away to touch, and it should not have been true, that she was meant for this man, this one human man with his too-short life.

But she could feel it. Every word he'd said was true; they had, both of them, been changed in the instant of their meeting, been profoundly, irreversibly altered, and she was not the same now as she had been then. She was something new; knowing him had made her new, and she did not know how to be without him, now. It was too late, she realized, too late to close her heart to him, because she had let him inside it thirteen years before, and he lived there, now, lived within the chambers of her ever-beating heart, and always would, no matter what happened next.

"I can't give you what you need," she breathed, one last, feeble attempt at setting him free. She could not give him children - not that he needed more, really, since he had five already - and she could not grow old with him and she could not join him in heaven when his time on earth was through. She could not be the one to journey with him through all the phases of his life, and he might grow to hate her, when the last of his hair had finally fallen out and his face was lined and wrinkled and his strength at last deserted him and she remained unchanged. And even if he loved her, for all the rest of his days, even if they were happy for all the remaining years of his life, she would, at the end, be without him, be left with nothing but memories of his love, and that was a fate worse than hell.

"Only thing I need is you," he answered, his words ghosting gently over her soft parted lips. He meant it, she knew. His was the shorter life; he would not have to know a world without her in it. He would not have to put her in the ground. How different things looked, standing in his shoes.

She drew in one sharp, short breath, and as her lungs expanded she found, at last, the strength to move.

"I'm sorry," she told him, and then she opened the door, and slipped away.

Chapter Text

He wanted to follow after her, Jesus, he really did, but McKenna was still sleeping peacefully in the bed behind him, apparently oblivious to the devastation Elliot's impulsivity had wrought, and he couldn't just leave her and Liv wouldn't want him to, anyway. Liv didn't want him, it seemed. It felt like relief, when he kissed her, felt like he finally, finally had a chance to reach for what he wanted most, but she'd said fuck you and pushed him away, and he didn't know what to do with it, the heartbreak in her eyes and the guilt in his chest.

It had seemed like the right thing to do, in the moment. Baring his heart to her, being honest, had felt so much like joy, and with the world coming to an end all around them and an angel on their heels he was certain there would never be a better time to reach for her, but it seemed he'd been wrong. Jesus, he'd been wrong; she'd told him she was sorry, told him she couldn't love him not because she didn't want to but because she couldn't stand to lose him, and where was the logic in that, he wanted to ask her, how did it make sense, to push him away now because she didn't want to grieve for him later? Couldn't she see it was too fucking late for that? It didn't matter, he thought, didn't matter that he'd never touched her, didn't matter if he never kissed her again; they were bound to one another, now and always. He would carry her inside his heart for all the rest of his days, and whatever she said he didn't think she was gonna forget him in a hurry.

Or maybe she would. She was however many fucking thousand years old; maybe she forgot everyone, in time. Maybe she really would move on. Maybe he'd been a fool, to think he could ever mean as much to her as she did to him, when he would only walk the earth for such a little while, and she would remain, timeless and inviolate, forever. Something like anger began to simmer in his belly; it was petulant and childish, maybe, but he felt it just the same, felt angry with her, angry because she meant everything to him, and he was beginning to worry he meant nothing at all to her.

The floorboards creaked softly as she drifted through the house beyond the door, and he listened to the sound of her, wondering what she was doing, wondering what he was gonna say to her when they finally had to face one another again. It was still dark, still another hour or so to go before dawn, and when the sun rose they'd have to talk. They'd have to see to McKenna, get her fed, quiet her fears, and they'd have to talk to Liv's friends, and try to come up with a plan; they were gonna have to be partners, and how the fuck was that gonna go? How could he work with her, live shoulder-to-shoulder with her in this little cabin, after he'd kissed her, after she'd spurned him?

They'd worked together in tense moments before, had managed to overcome fights and disagreements, had survived what about me and that bullshit at Sealview and everything else, but this felt different. Always before he'd swallowed down his feelings for her, refused to act on them, refused to let himself admit how much she meant to him, but he'd kissed her now, and there was no hiding from it, from the truth of what he'd done, from the truth of his heart, calling out for her. Would she be cold, now, trying to put distance between them? Would she try to pretend like nothing had happened? And when this was all over, if they all made it out alive, would he ever see her again? What if she just took McKenna and disappeared, started over the way she'd been doing for millenia, and left him all alone?

The door didn't sit flush with the floor; there was a gap about the bottom, almost a solid inch, more than enough room for him to see the light from the hallway, the light she must have turned on when she walked away, and in that pool of light he saw a shadow form, heard the soft sound of footsteps. Wherever Olivia had gone she hadn't stayed away long; he could see the twin shadows of her feet, right on the other side of the door. He pressed his palm flat against the door, and he could have sworn he felt it, the heat of her, standing right there, so close to him and yet too far away to reach. The house was still and silent, and he held his breath, waiting, wishing he could reach through the door, wishing he could grab her by the shoulders, wishing he could hold her.

Just give me a chance, he wanted to scream. Olivia believed herself to be cursed, unwanted on earth or in heaven, doomed to be alone, and maybe she was right but goddamn it he didn't want her to be, and if she'd just…if she'd just let him, let him hold her, let him love her, he was sure, so sure, that he could make her happy. That he could love her, the way she'd always deserved, that together they could banish the darkness that haunted her steps. Not forever, maybe, not for the rest of her interminable life, but for a while, and wasn't that worth it, he wanted to ask her, plead with her; wasn't a small piece of happiness better than none at all? Didn't she want to know?

The shadows on the floor swayed, a little, and the door rocked back like a weight had just gently pressed against it, and he heard the whisper soft sound of fabric on wood, and realized she must have sat down there, on the floor with her back against the door. Out in the hallway, alone and sad, Olivia was sitting by the door, so Elliot sat, too, sat down on the floor with his back against the door, imagined their bodies mirroring one another, the same, the way they always had been.

Did she know he was there? He wondered. Could she feel him, the way he could feel her? He always seemed to know when she was near, always seemed to gravitate towards her, always had, from the moment they first met. He'd always stood too close to her, his hands drifting to her shoulder, her elbow, the back of her neck, seeking the comfort of her, without conscious thought. He always felt better when she was close by; maybe she did, too. Maybe that's why she'd come back, why she was sitting there now; maybe she'd decided that it was too dangerous to love him, but she couldn't abandon him, even now, and that gave him cause to hope.

The gap beneath the door was just big enough for him to slide his fingers underneath it, and so he did. He was facing away from the door, facing the bed where McKenna was sleeping, reaching out blindly, but he trusted in that moment that he would find his mark. He knew her, and he knew where to find her, knew in the dark, knew without looking, and he would not ever stop reaching for her. She was afraid; I'll be bigger than her fear, he thought. She was his partner, and he would not leave her to the shadows alone. He would be there for her, always.

And she must have known it, must have known that he wasn't gonna let her go without a fight, must have known that he was there, reaching for her, because after a moment he felt the warmth of her fingers, wrapping around his own. Through the gap in the door she found him seeking her touch, and she clung to him, and the touch of her hand gave him hope, even as it shattered him. For several long, slow minutes they stayed just like that, sitting, wishing, holding onto one another, and he found solace in the softness of her skin, even as he wondered if this would be all he'd ever have of her. Maybe this was as close as they would ever come to holding one another; maybe this was all they'd ever be, human and nephilim, frailty and divinity, separated by the veil of fate, each inhabiting a world the other would not ever know. On his side of the door was love and death and endings, and on hers was God and lonesomeness and a cruel eternity, and maybe they would never truly bridge that divide, but for now, for this brief moment in time, they had reached across it, and found comfort in one another.

She scrubbed the tears from her cheeks and rose slowly to her feet, stretching her back and trying to prepare herself for what was to come next. There was no way to avoid it; she would have to face him. There were so many things to do, so many things to talk about, logistics to work out and mysteries to solve and cataclysms to prepare for, and as much as she wanted to stay right there with her fingers laced through Elliot's she knew it was not meant to last. Nothing with humans ever was.

There was no point in trying to go back to sleep; the sun would rise soon, and she could never sleep while it was light out, and if she went back into the bedroom now Elliot would be waiting for her, and he might want to talk, and she really didn't want to talk anymore, and didn't want to risk waking McKenna, anyway. Instead she left the bedroom behind, drifted into the kitchen and dug around in the cabinets until she found a container of coffee grounds and a package of filters for the old Mister Coffee on the counter. The carafe was clean and the coffee grounds still smelled like coffee, and she figured that was good enough; it might taste like shit but making it would give her something to do, so she focused on that. She went through the motions only half aware of what she was doing, staring out the little window above the sink and into the inky black of the woods beyond the cabin.

How safe were they here, truly? She wasn't comfortable out in the country like this; she'd been living in cities for over a century now, and she'd got used to having people around her, and it was unnerving, the stillness. It made her see things that weren't there, had her jumping at shadows, her ears straining to hear every little noise, every whisper of a breeze through the trees, every crack of a stick beneath some little creature scurrying through the night.

As she stood, and listened, and made the coffee and stared out the window, there came a sudden, shocking burst of light in the back yard, briefly illuminating everything bright as day, as if a bolt of lightning had just struck, though no rumble of thunder followed after it.

Olivia reacted immediately; she dropped the coffee and snatched her gun up off the counter where she'd left it, and then darted to the back door. Slowly, carefully, she eased the door open a crack, peering out into the yard, but the light had fled, and all was once more in darkness, and she couldn't see shit.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck the words flowed through her mind, a mantra of horror, her eyes scanning the grass, the treeline, but it was dark, too dark, she couldn't see -

"You can come out," a soft, warm voice called out from the darkness, sounding faintly amused.

It wasn't Michael's voice, she knew that at once. Michael's voice had been deeper, harder, and he wouldn't bother to announce himself like that, wouldn't give up his advantage, would've attacked her quickly, before she had a chance to defend herself. So who the fuck was it, and what the fuck was she gonna do now?

Chapter Text

"Who's there?" Olivia snapped, peering into the darkness. Jesus, it was dark out here, darker than it ever got in the city; she was pretty sure she'd never been so far from a street light in all her life.

"Fear not," the voice answered drolly, "for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy."

She'd have shot her mysterious visitor right then, if only she could've seen the bastard.

"I'm not fucking around," she called back. "Show yourself."

To his credit - and it was, she saw in a moment, a he, or at least he was presenting himself as one - he did as he was told, stepped forward from the shadows into the circle of light extending out from the open door where Olivia crouched with her gun in her hand. It was an angel - though she'd had no doubts on that score, given the theatricality of his arrival, what with the great flash of light and everything - wearing a long white robe, his shimmering wings extending behind him, brilliantly white and fluttering softly as he moved. His hair, his face, were nondescript, the sort of face a person might forget in an instant, though it seemed to tug at Olivia's memory. She couldn't quite say why he seemed familiar; her memory went back a long, long way.

"It's good to see you," the angel said. "I understand you're calling yourself Olivia now."

"Do I know you?" she asked, feeling a little bit petulant about the whole thing. She'd met an angel, once, outside Damascus in another life, and she supposed it was possible that this was the same angel, but it was hard to know for sure. An angel could change their appearance at will; what if he only seemed to be familiar? What if it was the one who called himself Michael in disguise?

"We met once, long ago," the angel told her. "On the road to Damascus. We spoke at length, you may recall, about what it means to be an angel, about what it's really like, on the other side of the veil. You were young then, and angry. I recall I liked you, tremendously."

"Gabriel?" she asked warily. That was the name of the angel she had met there; she might not have recalled his face, but she knew his name. She was beginning to think he might be trusted; if it were Michael in disguise, he could have attacked her by now, had nothing to gain by continuing to chat with her, except perhaps entry into the house, but given the way Michael had burst through Elliot's apartment she didn't really think he was the sort to try to bluff his way inside. Michael seemed to prefer violence.

"The very same," the angel told her, smiling. "I've been sent to deliver a message. Will you receive it?"

"Yes," she said, though she had not moved from her position just inside the door, though she had not yet put down her gun.

"You're doing well," Gabriel told her. "He is pleased."

There was no point, really, in asking who He was. Olivia knew.

"He doesn't want McKenna dead, then?" Olivia asked. They'd been wondering about that, Olivia and her brothers, wondering whether Michael had been sent to eradicate the nephilim child, and she needed to know for sure.

"Of course not," Gabriel said, sounding baffled by the very idea.

"It's not like He hasn't tried to wipe out the nephilim before," she reminded him.

"Yes, well. Things change."

That was the thing about angels, she supposed; they existed to serve a higher power, and didn't really have the luxury of questioning it. Or did they? They must have had some free will, she thought, or else how would any of them ever have been able to fall? It didn't really matter, in the moment, but it was the kind of question she'd like to argue about with Elliot.

Elliot. She really, really didn't want to think about Elliot right now.

"You're right to be afraid for her. The one who calls himself Michael is coming for her. He will find you here, eventually. And when that moment comes, do not be afraid."

"You came all the way down here to tell me that?" she asked. You've done well, do not be afraid, was that all the advice an angel sent from God had to offer?

"What would you have Him do, Olivia?" Gabriel asked her.

In response she rose to her feet and stepped at last from the doorway, still holding the gun though she'd lowered it, was no longer pointing it at him. In the faint glow of the lights from the kitchen she could see his face, and she could see that he seemed amused, and the thought that anything about this mess might be funny to him left her all but shaking with rage.

"Anything!" she burst out. "You know as well as I do He could stop all this right now, if He wanted to. It's sick, Him just sitting up there and watching. She's a child, she can't protect herself, she - "

"Do you really want to argue theology with me, little one?" Gabriel asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "He knows all, He sees all, but you are free to choose. He knows already what choice you will make, but does knowing mean He made that choice for you?"

"Jesus Christ," she muttered, rubbing her thumb across her brow. She could feel a headache coming on.

"Not quite," Gabriel said cheerily. "Anyway. You've done well, that's the message. But I've something else to tell you, if you're willing to hear it. This doesn't come from Him, this comes from me."

"Is there a difference?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "You have your choices to make, and so do I. I was watching you, before I came down here. I saw you fight with your man."

"He's not my man," she said, almost reflexively. Sometimes it felt as if he was, as if he belonged to her, but Olivia knew better; Elliot had never been hers to claim, hers to choose. Even now, separated from Kathy and well on his way to divorce - again - he was not hers, and would not ever be. There could be no happy ending for them, the human and the nephilim, the mortal and the cursed; he deserved the chance to live, and she could not bear to mourn him. And now, having spurned him, she was certain there would be no going back; he was a proud man, but he had a gentle heart, and she wounded both, his pride and his heart, and he would not forget that injury. She'd be lucky, she thought, if he ever talked to her again after this.

"Oh, but he is," Gabriel told her, his voice gone soft, and strangely gentle, as if he were talking to a child. "You are so clever, little one, and you see so much, but you are blind to the truth that's right in front of you. You have a soul, and so does he, and his soul has been bound to yours from the very beginning."

It was a nice thought, but not one she could allow herself to entertain. It hurt too much, the hoping. From the moment they first met Elliot had felt familiar to her, almost as if she knew him already, and they thought so much alike, ached so much alike, raged so much alike; she found such comfort with him, and loved him, yes, loved him, whether she was willing to say the words out loud or not, but his soul was destined for heaven, and hers would never reach it, and she could not, would not, let him bind himself to a curse.

"I can almost hear you thinking," Gabriel said. "But you're thinking small, Olivia. Did you not wonder, when you met him, why you seemed so drawn to him? Did he not feel familiar to you?"

Gabriel had assured her once that while angels shared insight into one another's thoughts they enjoyed no such connection to their nephilim children, but she couldn't help but wonder, in the moment, if he could read her mind. Yes, Elliot had always felt familiar, but how did Gabriel know that?

"There is a purpose for every soul," he told her. "Your man, his soul has a purpose, and he will not rest until he fulfills it, though it has been the work of many lifetimes. Think, Olivia. Think of his voice, think of his eyes. You've seen them before, you know you have."

Very slowly Olivia turned away from Gabriel and retreated just far enough to reach the three short steps leading down from the house to the grassy yard, and she sat herself down there, and covered her face with her hands.

Yes, she'd seen those eyes before. It was her first thought, upon meeting Elliot, how familiar were his eyes. How much they reminded her of a man she'd known once, when she was very young. So young that she did not know yet the extent of her curse, so young that she had been foolish enough to love, to give of herself to another. The man's name was Elam, and he had been her husband, and she had left him behind when she discovered she could not bear children, when she learned that she could not die, when she learned, for the first time, the price of her birth. She'd set him free, let him go so that he could find someone else, so that he might have a chance to have the family he wanted, the life that he wanted, and she had mourned him for millenia.

And Elliot's eyes, they looked just like his.

But not just him; Elliot was not the only man she'd met who reminded her, so strongly, of her first love. There had been others, over the years, each of them a blue eyed man with a fighter's hands and a tender heart, each of them a man she cared for, though she never could bring herself to say it out loud. Elam was first, in the village where she grew up. Zacharias, in Damascus. Jake, when she was living on a farmstead in Oklahoma, Jake the widower who used to come and sit around her fire sipping whiskey in the evenings, whose blue eyes told her he wanted to kiss her, though she'd never let him. Lenny, in Detroit in the 1950s, when she was working as a secretary in the precinct, who never seemed to want to go home any more than she did, who brought her coffee sometimes and made her laugh. All the lives she'd lived; there hadn't been a man every time, not every time, but there had been some, and each one had broken her heart just that little bit more, but she'd never considered - never even dreamed - that they might have, all of them, been the same man.

"Some souls," Gabriel told her, "can't rest until they do the thing they were made to do. He was made to love you, little one, and you never let him, and he won't stop coming back until you do."

A great, choking sob worked its way up the back of her throat, and for once, she let it out. She let herself weep, let the terrible, gut wrenching flood of her tears loose, and did not try to stem their flow. It was a truth too overwhelming to contemplate, a joy and a grief so vast she did not think her body could contain it. All she'd wanted, all she'd ever wanted, was a family, a place to belong, a heart to love her, and she'd made her peace with the idea that she'd never have it, that it wasn't meant for her, really she had, and she'd pushed him away, time and time again, left them both lonesome and aching for one another, and yet he had not given up on her. Through all the seasons of her life he had tried, again and again to reach her, and she mourned, in that moment, for all the lives they'd never have, and for the irredeemable mess she'd made of this one.

And yet there was joy, still, in the knowing. In the knowing that there was a heart that loved her, as fiercely as she'd always longed to be loved, in knowing that while she had lived five thousand years and more believing herself alone she never really had been, because he had been there, always. Elam, Elliot; it was all the same. It was all him, loving her.

"I fucked up," she choked out the words, and startled when a gentle hand came to rest on her shoulder. She looked up sharply and found Gabriel standing over her, his expression achingly fond.

"There's no sin in love," he told her. "And there is no one, no human or nephilim, beyond redemption. You have loved him, and tried to protect him from you for the sake of that love. I just thought…I just thought someone ought to tell you that you don't have to. You can love him, Olivia. You're allowed."

That only made her cry all the harder, but as she wept Gabriel knelt down, and wrapped his arms and his wings around her, and held her close while the torrent of her tears ran their course.

Chapter Text

The dawn came, the way it always did; the rising of the sun stopped for no man nor angel. The cosmos did not pause in its endless cycling just because Elliot's heart was shattered, just because Olivia had turned her back on him, just because Michael was hunting the child they protected. The stars took no notice of the fumbling creatures dancing beneath them. The dawn came.

And with it McKenna woke; Elliot had stayed right there on the floor where Olivia left him, his heavy bulk barring entry should Michael come calling, his eyes trained on the place where the angel child slept, at peace, and he saw it plainly when she began to stir. He had no sooner risen to his feet than her little arms were reaching, a sleepy voice calling Elly? Elly? She didn't speak much, not as much as he'd expect from a four year old, but she spoke enough, and he knew what she wanted, and went to her at once.

"I'm here," he said, reaching down and lifting her easily from the bed, settling her on his hip. She was trembling in his arms. "It's ok, sweetheart," he told her, using the same warm tone he'd used with his own daughters when they were small. He missed that, the days when he could hold his daughters like this, carry them around as if they weighed nothing at all. It had been a sweet time, a simpler time, and he mourned for it, though he was proud of the young women they had become. Proud of Dickie, too, of course he was, and proud of Eli, who was just barely younger than McKenna himself. He loved them desperately, his children, and already he could feel McKenna burrowing her way into his heart, and wondered what would become of him when this was over, wondered if he would ever see her again.

"Livia?" she asked him, her eyes still wide and fearful.

"She's here," he said. "Let's go find her."

McKenna wouldn't settle until she'd seen Olivia's face, and he knew it, and he knew, too, that there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. He and Liv were gonna have to work together, gonna have to find some way to move forward despite his disastrous fuck up earlier in the morning. Might as well be now, he figured.

The corridor was deserted and the house beyond was silent, but the cabin wasn't so very big. The doors to the bathroom and the second bedroom were open, and he could see as he walked by that Olivia wasn't there. She wasn't in the little living room, either, but when he turned to the right he found her, sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly off into space. Whatever she was thinking it must have consumed her completely; she didn't even glance at him as he came into view.

"Hey," he said softly, and at the same time McKenna called out Livia, her little hands reaching, squirming in Elliot's grip, and that seemed to jerk Olivia back to herself. She gave her head a little shake, and offered a weak, sad little smile as she rose to her feet, walked across the kitchen to them and took McKenna from his arms.

"Good morning, sweet girl," she said to McKenna. "Did you sleep ok?"

McKenna nodded enthusiastically. That makes one of us, Elliot thought.

"There's coffee," Liv told him, and he tried not to think about it, how sweet she looked, standing there holding that dark-haired little girl. She'd rested her cheek against McKenna's temple, was swaying absently, reflexively, the way every woman he'd ever known did when she held a baby in her arms. She's a natural, he thought, and then remembered she'd told him she'd never be able to have kids, and he suddenly wanted to throw something, to scream in the face of such unfairness.

"There's granola bars and some cans of soup and spaghettios in the cabinet, too," Olivia continued, apparently oblivious to the maudlin thoughts that gripped him. "We may not have to leave here today."

That sounded good to him; granola bars and spaghettios couldn't sustain the three of them indefinitely, but they'd come to the cabin to keep McKenna safe, and couldn't risk taking her out in public, and he couldn't bear to leave the girls alone to fend for themselves for the time it would take him to find a grocery store. Maybe that made him an overprotective prick, since Liv was the one who could survive a bullet to the gut and he was the mortal liability, but still.

"I'll make the coffee," he said. "Why don't you sit down?"

She frowned at him, but carried McKenna back to the table anyway, and he went over to the counter, found the coffee maker with a filter already in it, the can of grounds open beside it, the carafe half full in the sink like Liv had tried to make a start on the coffee but got distracted before she could finish. That wasn't like her; something must have been weighing heavy on her mind, to get her all turned around like that. He had a pretty good idea what that something was.

But he decided as he made the coffee that he wasn't gonna ask her about it. Liv was a runner; always had been. She'd told him she didn't want him, said fuck you when he kissed her, and he wasn't gonna ask her in the broad light of day why she was determined to be unhappy. They had to get through the day; the reckoning could come when the dust settled, when Michael was no longer a threat. Elliot could only hope he'd be alive long enough to have one more chance to talk to her.

She could not die, but shit, this was killing her. The secret Gabriel had told her was eating away at her insides, dissolving her like acid. Elliot was hers, the one who was meant to love her, his soul so closely bound to hers that he returned, again and again, searching for her. There was no way, she thought, that he had any memory of his previous lives; she figured if he'd known it wouldn't have taken this long for her to learn the truth. He didn't know, of that she was certain, but she did.

She knew the truth now, and wished with everything she had that she didn't.

It felt like hope, knowing that he loved her, that he loved her so much he was willing to sacrifice his own peace, his own eternal rest, just to see her again. But it felt like a curse, too; his soul has a purpose, and he will not rest until he fulfills it, that's what Gabriel had told her. Elliot kept coming back because she hadn't let him love her, but whatever he felt, whatever purpose he had, he was, still, a mortal. If she gave in, if she told him the truth, if she accepted his kisses and joined her heart to his, would he rest when this trip around the sun was through? What if she gave in, and lost him forever this time? What if she let him love her, and watched him die, and he never came back again, having finally done the one thing he was meant to do?

We've fucked this life up so much already, she thought, looking at him. He was past forty, now, with an ex wife he'd given all of his adult life to, with five children who needed their father. Who was she to take him from them? How much of a life would they have, really, when he was bound to die and she was doomed to live?

What if we tried again? She wondered, watching him working on the coffee, domestic and at peace in the kitchen, while she sat at the table with McKenna on her lap. The scene felt like nothing so much as a taste of the life they could have had, if only. Him, and her, and their child, at home together, happy and safe; it was her greatest dream. If she let him go this time, what if he came back again? What if they could get it right next time? Would she know him, the next time she saw him? Or would he be, as he had been every other time she'd met him, bound to another? Elam had been first, and he had loved her first, but she'd left him, and he'd found someone else, and married her, and had the family Olivia had always dreamed of with another woman, and after that time each she found him he had been spoken for already. Would it be the same, the next time around?

A selfish part of her wanted to find out. A selfish, lonesome, guilty part of her wanted the cycle to continue, if only so she could live in hope of seeing his face again after this version of him died.

But wouldn't that be cruel, she asked herself now; wouldn't it be cruel, to doom him to an eternity stuck on this endless wheel, all because she couldn't bear the thought of carrying on without him? Wouldn't it be cruel to make that decision herself, and not give him the chance to decide his own fate?

You know what he'd pick, she told herself. He loved her; he wanted her. He'd kissed her, told her we were meant to find each other. Accused her, just a few hours before, of trying to keep him on the job just so she could be near him, and damn it, he'd been right. She'd do anything, anything, to keep him near. Even if meant giving up the chance to love him, truly, the chance to hold him, the chance to make a family with him; if keeping him at arm's length meant he'd come back to her, she'd do it. She'd trade the chance to love him for the chance to know she did not have to face all the ages of the earth alone.

And oh, but that made her angry. Angry with herself, for even considering doing such a thing to him, for needing him so badly, but angry, mostly, with God. Oh, she was angry with Him; He was the one who'd set this whole thing in motion. The architect of the universe, the one who had known all this heartbreak was coming before it even began, and had done nothing to stop it. The making of the nephilim, the cursing of them, that was His doing. And what kind of God, she asked herself, would place this choice in front of her? The choice to love Elliot for a few decades and mourn him for all eternity, or to remain apart from him and meet anew each generation; it was an impossible decision.

I have to tell him, she thought. I don't think I can.

"Coffee's ready," he called out from across the kitchen, fetching down two chipped coffee mugs from the cabinet. His shoulders were tight; she could feel the tension in him, even from across the room. No doubt he thought her cruel already for having spurned his kisses; would he hate her, when he learned the full truth? When he learned that his soul kept returning, again and again, because she was too stubborn, too afraid, to give him all of herself?

No matter what choice she made, she would shatter everything they'd ever known. Everything had changed; no part of their lives would remain the same, after this. When she looked at him, watched him walking towards her with the mugs in his hands and a wariness in his gaze, she could almost see it. Could almost see every man he'd ever been, every name he'd ever had, every time she'd almost let him touch her, every time she'd broken his heart, and tears gathered in her eyes unbidden.

Elliot noticed; his brow furrowed as he set one of the mugs down in front of her. McKenna noticed, too; in her arms the girl shifted, and then reached up to brush at Olivia's tears with her little fingers.

"Livia sad," McKenna said.

"It's ok, sweet girl," Olivia lied. "Everything's going to be ok."

Chapter Text

Very little about his current predicament made sense to Elliot - stuck in a cabin in the woods; hiding from a renegade angel; kissing Olivia and then regretting it, two things that had always seemed equally unlikely to him - but one thing that did make sense to him was lunch. Olivia had spent most of the morning holed up in the back bedroom on the phone with her nephilim contacts and so Elliot had spent most of the morning alone in the front room with McKenna, trying to keep the poor thing from going stir crazy and failing rather spectacularly. They'd left his apartment in a hurry, brought a few things to keep her occupied but certainly not enough, and she kept asking to play with his phone and he was almost stressed out enough to let her, but now it was getting close to noon and he figured that, angels or no, that meant lunch time.

So he scooped McKenna up and carried her into the kitchen, sat her down at the table and listened to her singing a little nonsense song to herself while he heated up enough spaghettios to feed all three of them. Maybe Liv wasn't hungry, maybe she intended to stay in the back bedroom all afternoon, but whatever she wanted Elliot figured she'd need to eat eventually, and he couldn't seem to make her happy but he could make sure she was fed.

The beeping of the microwave must have caught her attention; she came drifting into the kitchen while he was burning his fingers on the third bowl, while McKenna was insisting too hot, too hot.

"Just wait a minute, sweetheart," Elliot told the girl, though his eyes were locked on Liv. "Let it cool down."

Maybe that's what Liv had been doing, avoiding him all morning. Maybe she'd been trying to let things cool down between them before she faced him again. She was just standing in the doorway, tapping her phone against her chin and watching him thoughtfully, sadly, and he found himself wishing, not for the first time, that he could read her mind.

"I made you some, too," he said, pointing to the bowl at the head of the table, just waiting for her.

"Thanks," she said faintly, and then she drifted across the kitchen, ran her hand gently over McKenna's head once in greeting and settled herself in the empty chair, An awful sort of tension seemed to follow in her wake; he could feel it, every muscle and tendon in his body tightening, something like fear constricting his lungs.

He couldn't live like this. Yeah, maybe he'd been foolish to push her; maybe it had been fucking stupid of him to try to kiss her when they were running for their lives, when he'd just announced his intention to leave the department for good, when Liv's whole world was turned upside down, and he'd take responsibility for that and he'd make his apologies, but Christ, he couldn't do this. He couldn't live without her.

"Gotta potty," McKenna announced cheerfully to no one in particular, already scrambling down off her chair.

"I'll go with you," Olivia said, and damn it, Elliot thought; she really was trying to avoid him.

"Do it myself," McKenna insisted.

"Are you sure?" Olivia didn't sound too sure, but McKenna was four years old, and potty trained, and had been doing a pretty good job on her own so far. It looked to him like Liv was just searching for any excuse not to be alone with him.

"Do it myself," McKenna said again, and then she danced away, and Elliot was left standing by the counter, looking at Olivia, who seemed forlorn, somehow, helpless, somehow, in a way she ordinarily never was.

He waited until he heard the bathroom door close before he spoke.

"Liv," he started to say, but she looked away from him and shoveled a spoonful of spaghettios into her mouth like a child trying to avoid having to answer an unpleasant question, and Jesus, that made him mad. If nothing else he was her partner, and they were supposed to do these things, the hard things, together.

"How long you gonna be mad at me this time?" he demanded, stomping across the kitchen and plopping down in the chair across from her. He was so out of sorts he'd left his lunch sitting on the counter, but he wasn't gonna go back for it now; he wanted to talk to her more than he wanted to eat. He was thinking about Gitano, about coming into work the next Monday and finding out that Liv was gone, that she'd just up and left him with no word, that she'd run away rather than speak to him. She'd run, and made herself a little home at Computer Crimes, and he'd often wondered if she'd have come back on her own if their paths hadn't crossed. If he hadn't blown up at Blaine, if he hadn't needed her help with that case, would she just have carried on with her new life? Had she been happier there, without him? And why the fuck had she done it, just left him after he told her that she was all he had, after he'd told her he couldn't stand to lose her? Maybe that was why she'd left, after all; maybe she'd known, even then, that they were always headed for this. For ruin.

"You think I'm mad at you?" she asked around a mouthful of pasta, swallowed hard and knitted her brow together in confusion.

"What am I supposed to think?" he fired back. "You've been avoiding me all day."

It was only noon, and it had been less than eight hours since the disastrous kiss, but that short span of time felt like forever to him; even an hour was too long to endure a pouting and distant Olivia, and no one had ever accused him of being patient.

"Jesus, Elliot, not everything's about you," she snapped, twirling her spoon through her cheap canned pasta moodily.

That did make him wonder; had she met Jesus? How many theological questions could she answer, on account of having been there? A conversation for another time perhaps; he was preoccupied with more immediate concerns.

"I made a mistake, all right?" he said. "I fucked up, but how long are you gonna punish me for-"

"You think it was a mistake?" she asked in a small voice. Six little words that set his head spinning.

"I…"

Wait, he thought. Was it a mistake?

"I kissed you," he said slowly, and to his surprise she actually blushed. "And you didn't want me to-"

"I wanted you to," she confessed.

"I gotta tell you, Liv, I'm kinda getting mixed signals here."

"Sorry," she said. She was sorry, but she also wasn't explaining, wouldn't even look him in the eye, and he ran his hand over the back of his head, trying to keep a grip on his frustration. Christ, he loved her, but she was the most difficult woman he'd ever met in his entire life. Reticent, and quick to run, and allergic to talking about her feelings. He was self-aware enough to admit that he wasn't the easiest person to talk to, either; he understood why she found it so difficult to open up. It was something they shared in common. They'd always been better at talking around things than facing them head on, but he kinda felt like they didn't have a choice. If they weren't honest with each other now, he might lose her for good. One of them was going to have be brave enough to crack their heart open first; he'd done that already, in the bedroom in the small hours of the morning with his hand on her arm and his heart on his sleeve, but she was still retreating, and he had to stop her, somehow.

"Just…would you just talk to me, Liv?"

"I already told you," she said, suddenly impatient. "It doesn't matter what I want, it only matters what we are, and we're never gonna work."

"Bullshit," he said. "That's bullshit, and you know it. We've got a chance here, Liv. We don't have to waste any more time."

That made her look at him strangely, made tears gather in the corners of her eyes, and he couldn't understand why, when he'd only thought to encourage her.

"We've wasted so much time already," she told him sadly, and then scrubbed her hands across her face.

"I'm not mad at you," she continued while he watched her, while he asked himself what it was gonna take to change her mind, while he began to wonder if maybe nothing ever could.

"And I don't want you to beat yourself up over…that," she added. She couldn't even say it out loud, that he'd kissed her. "But things are the way they are and they're not gonna change. So can we just…can we just work together?"

He wanted to say no. He wanted to stand up from the table and collect his lunch and storm off to the bedroom, lock himself inside there and hide out like she'd done. But that would've been childish, he figured, and as much as a part of him wanted to throw a tantrum a bigger part of him didn't want to be separated from her, and so he stayed.

"Fine," he said. "What did you find out this morning?"

Her shoulders relaxed, just a little; work was always safer ground, for them.

"There have been six sightings of the angel who calls himself Michael. Six visitations, and six babies born afterward."

Elliot's stomach lurched unpleasantly; there were six nephilim children out there? Five more little kids just like McKenna? Where were they, he wondered, and how were their parents keeping them safe? Were their parents keeping them safe?

"McKenna is the oldest one," Olivia continued. "We think he decided to go after her first."

"Go after her why?"

That was the question, wasn't it? What did Michael want with her? They were operating under the assumption that Michael was McKenna's father, but if he was, if he'd father those kids, what did he mean to do with all those angel babies?

"We can't say for sure," Olivia said, not that Elliot had really been expecting an answer. "Marcus thinks…Marcus thinks maybe Michael left the mothers to deal with the infant stage, teach the kids to walk and talk and use the bathroom on their own, and now that McKenna is old enough to do those things he'll take her and raise her up the way he wants. Same with the other kids. One angel on his own can only do so much; if he's got a whole…team of them, maybe he thinks he can use them."

"Like an army," Elliot said slowly.

"Yeah."

An army of soldiers who could not be killed - or at least, could not be killed so easily as a human - raised to do the bidding of the kind of man - angel, whatever - who raped and killed a woman just for standing in his way. It was a terrible thing to think about.

"Heaven won't have him, after what he's done, and even in hell he would be bound to do someone else's bidding. He may…he may want Earth to himself."

"You can't possibly be serious."

That was the kind of shit that happened in movies. The realm of fantasy books; comic books, even. A supernatural being, more powerful than any man, with an army of soldiers at his back, taking over the whole world. This theory Olivia was spinning, it wasn't the sort of thing people usually talked about in all sincerity over bowls of spaghettios, but her eyes told him that she believed it; her eyes were full of fear.

"We don't know," she said again. "But if he just wanted to get rid of the kids why'd he wait until now? Why keep coming back after McKenna? It feels like…he wants them for something. For some purpose. He needs them."

"So maybe he won't kill her, if he turns up here." It was a feeble hope, but one Elliot clung to with both hands.

"I don't know. He's had six kids that we know about already. He may just decide to get rid of all three of us, and go find some other women."

"All done!" a little voice called out from the hallway, and Elliot and Olivia both jumped, trying to hide the fear in their expressions as McKenna came back into view, grinning and sweet. She was a precious little thing, and she didn't need to hear this, Elliot thought. She didn't need to know that her father was a monster, that the path laid before her was shrouded in darkness. That just made him think about Olivia, though, about the child she had been, however long ago; he watched McKenna climb up into Olivia's lap, watched Olivia cradle the girl close, and wondered if Olivia's mother, whoever she had been, had ever treated her daughter so gently. He hoped to God she had.

Chapter Text

"I love you, buddy," Elliot said quietly into the phone.

"Love you, daddy," Eli answered in a sing-song little voice, long on the you.

"Be good for mommy, ok?"

"Yes, daddy."

"Ok. Night-night, bud."

"Night-night."

Elliot hung his head and scuffed the toe of his shoe against the hardwood floor, feeling guilty, feeling guilty for so many different reasons it was hard to pick just one, though for the moment it was this; he felt guilty for being away from his son, for letting Kathy go, for doing the one thing he'd tried so hard not to do, for breaking his family in half. He was loitering in the hall outside the bathroom, a clean towel clutched in his hands and the phone caught between his ear and his shoulder, saying good night to Eli while Olivia gave McKenna a bath, and he felt as if he were being torn in half. As if a great canyon had sprung up between his feet, Kathy and Eli on one side and Olivia and McKenna on the other, and no safe way to bridge the gap, and if he didn't pick one side or the other, soon, he'd tumble into the abyss.

There was a shuffling sound on the other end of the phone, and then Kathy's voice filled his ear.

"Thank you," she said. "He misses you."

"I miss him," Elliot answered earnestly, miserably.

"When are you coming back?"

Back, she said, not home, because his home wasn't with her, not anymore, because she'd given him an ultimatum - if you don't come home now, don't come home at all - and he'd gone to Olivia instead, and maybe the choice that was tearing him apart right now had already been made months ago.

"Don't know," he answered honestly. He hadn't told Kathy where he was going, or why, or for how long; he didn't want to put her in danger, and anyway there was no explanation for the predicament he found himself in that Kathy would believe.

"Are you…ok?" she asked him carefully. Probably she thought he'd snapped, taking off like this, thought that the loss of his family and his job had been one loss too many; probably she thought he was even now sitting on the edge of a bed in a shitty motel room with his gun on his knees.

"Yeah," he said. "Honest, Kath, I'm fine. I'm safe, I'm good. I just…I got something I need to take care of."

"Remember when you used to tell me things?"

Remember how you spent years yelling at me for not telling you things? Wisely he kept that thought to himself, but still. No, he didn't remember a time when he'd told her everything, not really. When they were young he hadn't wanted to worry her, wanted her to think he was strong, and by the time they grew up there was so much shit in his head that scared him he hadn't even known where to begin unburdening himself to her. He'd told Liv things, though. He could always talk to Liv.

"I'm sorry," he said. He figured that was what she wanted to hear, anyway.

"Come back in one piece, Elliot," she said. "Good night."

"Good night."

She hung up the phone and he tucked it in his pocket, wondering if he'd be able to do what she'd said, if he would come back from this nightmare in one piece. He wasn't really sure that he could.

But Liv was in the bathroom waiting for him, so he gave his little head a shake, and stepped inside.

Liv was kneeling on the floor beside the tub - and regretting the pressure on her knees, probably - and she was gently washing McKenna's hair, and the girl's eyes were closed and her head was swaying under Olivia's hands and Elliot could tell at once that McKenna was tired. Maybe not as tired as him and Liv, but still tired, and hopefully she'd go straight to sleep tonight. Hopefully they all would; he and Liv needed to be on their A game, and couldn't afford another night only halfway spent in sleep.

"Hey," he said as he came in, sat himself down on the closed toilet lid and set the towel down on his knees. "How's it going in here?"

"We're almost done, aren't we, sweetheart?" Olivia said, half to him and half to McKenna. She'd brought in a cup from the kitchen, was using it to gently sluice warm bath water over McKenna's hair to rinse the shampoo suds away, one hand resting on the girl's forehead to keep the soap out of her eyes.

She's a natural, Elliot thought, looking at the pair of them together, his pretty, dark-haired partner and that sweet, dark-haired little girl.

"I'm just going to wash around your wings now, sweetheart," Olivia told McKenna in a soft voice, picking up a washcloth and beginning to gently clean around the joints of McKenna's shimmering white wings.

Who does this for you? Elliot wondered, watching her. He didn't think Liv could reach that spot on her back herself. But she kept her wings tucked away most of the time, through some mechanism of biology or sanctity he did not understand. Did it hurt her, he wondered; did it cause her discomfort, not being able to let her wings hang loose and free?

"Livia," McKenna said drowsily. "Why wings?"

"Why do you have wings?" Olivia asked, searching for clarification. McKenna had a tendency to speak in short sentences, only two or three words at a time, and sometimes Elliot and Olivia needed a little help to figure out her meaning.

"Yes," McKenna said. "Why?"

"Because you're special." It wasn't the whole truth, but it was the only answer Olivia could give her, and Elliot knew it.

"You don't. Elly don't. Mama don't."

Elliot winced at the word mama, and felt guilty all over again, for sitting here with McKenna, for having survived Michael's attack, when the girl's mother had not been so fortunate. McKenna was pouting, just a little, and her voice sounded sad, as if she had noticed how different she was from the people in her life, and didn't like it.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Olivia said, leaning in close to McKenna as she spoke. "I do have wings."

Mckenna turned to her sharply, set the bathwater to lapping at the edges of the tub.

"Show me," she demanded, and Elliot swallowed once, hard.

Liv had shown him her wings, once. She'd had to take off her shirt to do it and the sight of her bare skin had nearly stopped his heart, and the full glory of her wings had changed the course of his life forever. Would she do that again here, now, just to set McKenna's fears to rest, just to prove to the girl that she was not alone?

"Ok," Olivia said. "I'll show you."

She rose slowly to her feet, pointedly ignoring Elliot's gaze as she turned her back on him. She slipped her shirt carefully up over her head, and then unfastened her bra, and he hated himself for it, for the warmth he felt when he saw the smooth, tan skin of her back, for the longing he felt to reach out and touch her there. Olivia carefully held her shirt against her chest, covering her tits and her soft belly, and turned again, turned so that McKenna could see her back as her wings slowly unfurled, and all the while Elliot watched her in profile, his eyes tracing over the proud line of her jaw, trying not to stare at the curve of her breast, only half hidden beneath her crumpled up t-shirt. Christ, she was beautiful, more beautiful than anything he'd ever seen in his life, and in the next breath her wings were there, just there, graceful and vast, taking up so much space in that tiny bathroom that he had to lean back to avoid getting a face full of feathers.

"Pretty!" McKenna cried, clapping her hands in delight.

Olivia had been facing the bathroom door with her back straight and her eyes closed, but when McKenna spoke she smiled, and looked back over her shoulder.

"See?" she said. "I'm just like you."

"Livia pretty," McKenna declared.

Olivia smiled, and Elliot couldn't help himself, then.

"Yeah," he said, looking up at Olivia, at her soft mouth raised in that sweet smile, at her dark eyes, at the wealth of dark hair tumbling over her shoulder, at the elegant curve of her neck, at the transcendent beauty of her magnificent wings, moved by the vision of her. "Pretty."

Olivia's eyes darted to his face, a question there, though he wasn't sure if it was meant for him, or if she were questioning her own heart, in that moment.

"Beautiful," he said, very softly.

For the space of a few heartbeats her gaze held his, and he did not breathe - could not breathe, for the beauty of her, for the way his heart ached for her, for the grief he carried for her - only looked at her, and wished, with everything he had, that she would only relent, and let him love her the way he longed to do.

"I have to put them away now," Olivia said, maybe speaking to McKenna but looking at Elliot still.

"Do you have to?" he asked. It would really be something, he thought, to watch Olivia walking through the world with her wings spread behind her. To watch her be free.

"I do," she said. She did; she could not leave her wings loose forever, and she could not let go of the restraints that had been placed on her, by fate, by her own hesitant heart. Slowly her wings disappeared once more, and once more she turned her back on him, dressed herself while he kept his eyes on McKenna.

"Ok, sweet girl," Olivia said when she was presentable again. "Let's get you dried off."

Liv lifted McKenna out of the tub and Elliot handed her the towel, went to drain the tub and then sat down on the edge of it while Olivia helped McKenna dry off, helped her into her nightgown, careful, so careful, as she tugged it down, fitted McKenna's wings through the opening in the back. How many nights, Elliot wondered, had he and Kathy done this same thing, sat in a cramped bathroom and tenderly bathed their children, got them ready for sleep with hearts full of love, in a home that was warm and safe? More times than he could count, and this felt like that, a little; Olivia wasn't his wife and McKenna wasn't his child and they weren't any of them safe, but there was love in that room, and warmth, and it felt good but it hurt, too, like being given a taste of a future he'd never be allowed to enjoy. Like God himself had place a gift into Elliot's hands, and yet was standing by, ready to snatch it away again.

"Go lay down," Olivia said to McKenna. "We'll be there in a few minutes."

The bedroom was right next to the bathroom, and even if Michael burst through the front door right now he couldn't get to McKenna without going through Elliot and Olivia first; McKenna was safe to travel that short distance by herself, but still Elliot couldn't help but wonder why Olivia had sent her off alone instead of going with her. He got his answer in a moment.

"Something's coming, Elliot," Olivia told him quietly, fearfully. She was leaning back against the sink, worrying the damp towel between her hands, and he was still sitting on the tub with his forearm's resting loosely on his knees. "I can feel it."

"You think Michael will come tonight?"

There was no logical explanation for it; Olivia had told Elliot everything she knew about Michael, and that wasn't a whole hell of a lot. It had taken the angel more than one day to find McKenna at Elliot's apartment, and there wasn't a soul in the world who knew their current location, but Elliot trusted her. If Olivia said something was coming, he believed her.

"Yes," she said. "I don't know…I don't know why, but I think…I think this is it."

"Ok," he said grimly. "Whatever happens next…I'm here, Olivia. We'll face him together."

The expression on her face was fearful, and sad. She didn't have to say what she was thinking; Elliot knew it already. They'd barely made it out of their last encounter with Michael alive, and they had no reason to believe their luck would hold this time. Still, though, they had to try.

"We'll put the guns in the bedside tables," he told her. They'd agreed not to leave the weapons out where McKenna could see them; even with her sleeping sandwiched between them, it was a risk they didn't want to take. They needed the guns close, though, and so had come to that compromise.

"There's hunting knives in the closet," Olivia told him.

"Bring them all," he said.

They went through the house together, then, checked that every window was locked, dragged furniture in front of the doors in a feeble attempt to slow Michael down. They checked that their guns were loaded, and slipped extra magazines into their pockets. Olivia pulled down the knives from the closet, and when they were satisfied they'd done all they could they returned to the bedroom. McKenna was already snoring, splayed out in the center of the bed like a starfish. Olivia stored the weapons in the bedside tables while Elliot heaved the old wooden dresser in front of the door, and then they sat down on the bed, one on either side of McKenna.

Let him come, Elliot thought. God help us all.

Chapter Text

When their doom came for them it was not heralded by the shrill calling of trumpets. There was no great flash of light, no boom of thunder, not even a stunning burst of power like the one that had demolished the door to Elliot's apartment. In the end the only warning shot their enemy ever fired was the single sound of a creaking floorboard beneath a heavy foot.

That was all it took, one low, brief creak, for Elliot to spring into action; he'd been dozing, not deep enough to call it sleep, and the sound spurred him into motion without hesitation. He woke Olivia with a hand over her mouth and a finger pressed to his lips, asking for quiet. She must have read the fear in his eyes; her gaze flicked to McKenna, and then to the little closet on the other side of the room, and Elliot understood what she wanted at once. He scooped McKenna up, shushing her gently, and dashed across the room on silent feet, laid her down on the floor of the closet, and it broke his heart, really it did, the way she looked up at him, small and frightened, wrapping her little white wings around her body as if in comfort.

"It's going to be ok," he lied, speaking as quietly as it was possible for him to do. "Just stay here, and stay quiet."

She nodded, and he closed the door on her, thinking to himself that he had just looked upon the angel child for the last time; there was no way he was going to survive this. Death had come for him.

It might as well be like this, he thought, as Liv tossed him a gun - safety on - as the pair of them dropped into a crouch, one on either side of the bed. They were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, making their final stand, facing impossible odds but too proud to run. There had always been something reckless, something wild about the pair of them together, him and Liv; he'd always felt invincible when she was by his side. Maybe she had cause to feel that way, given what she was, but he was only a man, and his number was up. At least he'd die with her beside him; if he had to go, he'd never want to go without her.

The doorknob twisted slowly, slowly; whoever was out there, they were trying to be stealthy, had made almost - not quite, but almost - no noise as they approached. They'd had to pass every other room in the house to get to this one, and so must have known that the quarry they were searching for was waiting inside, trapped. Fish in a barrel, Elliot thought, adrenaline coursing through his veins like a current through copper wire, lighting his nerves up like a Christmas tree.

He could only see Liv's head, poking up over the side of the mattress, but that was enough; he could see her face, her eyes trained on the door. Elliot had pulled the old wooden dresser in front of it, knowing it wouldn't stop their attacker indefinitely, hoping it'd slow him down. She was watching, waiting, and she was beautiful. Beautiful, and fierce, throwing herself into harm's way, confronting near certain death, for the sake of one little girl, and he loved her for it, for her selflessness and a million other things besides.

This is the end, he thought. It wasn't the best plan, the trap they'd laid here; there would be no escape for them now. There was a window above the bed; he could've grabbed McKenna, vaulted through it, made a mad dash for the car, but neither he nor Liv had entertained the possibility, and he knew why. If Liv wasn't able to stop Michael he'd just come after them again, and they'd be fucked without her; their opponent could fly, and bullets would not slow him down for long. Elliot could've sent Liv with McKenna, but that would mean almost certain death for him, and there wasn't enough time for all three of them to escape that way. Besides, they both wanted this to end, not drag their flight on and on. He knew that, same as he knew the color of Olivia's eyes; she ran from love, ran from commitment, ran from anyone who wanted to hold her down, but she never, ever ran from a fight.

It took maybe three seconds, from the moment Elliot closed the closet door to the moment when Michael's patience ran out. He blew threw the doorway like a wrecking ball, propelled by some momentum, some furious power Elliot didn't understand; the force of his body charging forward left the door in pieces, but he stumbled over the ruins of the dresser, and Elliot and Olivia took the gift that providence had given them, and attacked at once. They fired, both of them, again and again, their ears ringing, the smell of gunpowder in the air, and Michael screamed each time their bullets struck him. He wasn't too far away and Elliot and Olivia had both been trained well, and almost all of their bullets found their mark, and Elliot never so much as blinked, and Jesus, he would remember that moment for the rest of his life. He hadn't gotten a good look at Michael back in the apartment, had been tucked behind the couch covering McKenna, and so he had not really been prepared for the sight of him. Michael was tall, and his wings were vast, bigger even than Liv's. His hair was dark and his eyes were blue, and he seemed almost to glow, as if he radiated his own ambient light. And he was in agony; his body twisted this way and that, blood dripping from a dozen different wounds, a gun clutched in his hand though he seemed to lack the strength to raise it as each bullet only sent him careening away. He couldn't find his footing as long as they were hurting him, but their magazines wouldn't last indefinitely.

We're fucked, he thought.

"Olivia!" he bellowed above the sound of the gunfire. They needed to get the jump on the angel, needed to avoid giving him the opportunity to recover while they reloaded. They needed to act, fast, and Elliot had a plan, but no time to tell her what it was.

She didn't need the words, anyway.

They stopped shooting, both of them, and Elliot lunged forward, and Michael, his face caught in a horrible snarl, swayed towards him, struggling to lift his gun with an arm not yet healed. Olivia used the diversion to dive for the knives she'd stashed in the bedside table. Michael started to raise his gun, and Elliot fired, hit him square in the hand, heard him shriek, a wretched, miserable, unholy sound, as the gun bounced away from him.

"You!" Michael growled, and surged forward; Elliot managed to shoot him once more, in the belly, before Michael's powerful body plowed into his, and they both went crashing back against the floor.

There was something in the air, something crackling with heat, something that made the hairs stand up on the back of Elliot's neck, something like the seconds before a lightning strike. Something was coming; Olivia had told him angels had powers nephilim lacked, but she had not told him what those powers were, and he didn't know, really, what to expect. Not that it mattered; for the moment Michael seemed content with battering him, and they rolled across the floor together, fingers clawing, knees jabbing, trying to hurt each other any way they possibly could though they were too closely bound for either of them to get a punch in. Michael was going for his neck, murder in the angel's eyes, and Elliot faught valiantly, trying to kick him off, and then -

He and Michael grunted together as Olivia jumped on the angel's back, the sudden addition of her weight knocking the wind out of Elliot and Michael both, and Michael stopped trying to strangle Elliot as he diverted his attentions to Olivia, screeching and clawing, trying to buck her off as she did something - Elliot didn't know what, but something - to him with those knives that made him half-feral with desperation. Elliot couldn't let Michael stand, couldn't let him throw Olivia off balance, and so he began instead to try to hold Michael down on top of him, hooked his legs over Michael's and tried to lock his arms around Michael's back, and probably if he could have seen the three of them caught in this bizarre clinch from the other side of the room probably he would've said they looked ridiculous. There was nothing funny about it, though; he was fighting for his life, for Liv, for McKenna, for the world that he loved and the future he dearly longed to see.

The sounds of agony from Michael were unceasing, and Elliot was just beginning to hope that maybe, just maybe, they had a chance, when the building sensation of disaster erupted all around him. Michael had been working his way up to something; a powerful burst of energy radiated out from him, as if he'd carried a bomb in his chest, hot and quick and unstoppable, accompanied by a blinding light, and the force of that blast left Elliot's ears ringing, threw Olivia across the room where she landed in a heap.

"Liv!" her name tore from him in desperation as he struggled to rise, but every muscle in his body seemed to have seized up, and his head was spinning, and his heart shrieked in horror, seeing that there was blood at her temples, that she wasn't moving.

Michael rose slowly to his feet; the bullet wounds had healed themselves, but what Olivia had done to him was far more grievous. Elliot could see the truth at once; while she'd been on him, she'd been hacking at the joint of his right wing, attempting to sever it from his back. She'd nearly finished; it was hanging at a horrible angle, blood pouring everywhere, and there was a look of madness in Michael's eyes that was terrible to behold. He turned his back on Elliot, and began to advance on Liv.

"Time to die, little one," he said in a voice made monstrous by rage.

"No!" Elliot cried, and with the kind of hysterical strength he'd never really believed he possessed he scrambled for his gun abandoned on the floor, and rose up, fired the last of his bullets into Michael's shredded and bleeding back. There was no thought behind it; he didn't make a choice. There was no choice, for him. It was always Liv.

His attack had the desired effect; Michael was on him in a moment, hands tight around his throat before Elliot even had the chance to defend himself, and Jesus, the fucker was strong, so strong he lifted Elliot clean off his feet, and Elliot tried, really he did, to fight back, tried to kick and claw, struggled in every way he could to escape, but to no avail. The world started to go dark around the edges, and this is it, he thought. This is it.

But even as the life began to fade from his body he could see salvation; he could see the bright glow of white wings, not shredded and bloody like Michael's but beautiful, beautiful. Not like the demon Michael had become, but like an angel, welcoming him into heaven.

"NO!" Olivia roared in a terrible voice, and flew into them. She flew, like she'd told Elliot she could, like he hadn't really believed she could, not until he saw it for himself. She flew, and when she collided with them Michael lost his grip, and Elliot fell to his knees, and as he did she landed beside him, and wrapped him in her vast, glorious wings, surrounded him entirely and caught him in a warm and comforting darkness that felt like home.

Chapter Text

There was no thought, nor time for it anyway; she'd seen Elliot in danger, seen Michael's hand around Elliot's throat, and reacted on instinct. Elliot was hers, her love, had always been her love, and she had watched him die too many times before in too many other lifetimes, and would not be parted from him again. She threw herself around him, wrapped him in her wings and bowed her head, and waited for the end to come. This would be the end, she knew; they'd fired every bullet in both their guns, and the knife had tumbled from her grip and landed God only knew where, and the defensive position she'd taken up on the floor left her vulnerable. Michael bore a power no nephilim could match, and she was tired, and her ears were ringing from the terrible blow he'd dealt her. All she could do was kneel, holding Elliot tight; all she could do was shield him, and wait for death. She did not know what waited for her on the other side of the veil, what fate lay in store for a creature who should never have been born, but she would face it, for Elliot's sake. Maybe Michael would focus on her; maybe she could give Elliot one last chance to run.

At least, she thought, at least she got to hold him before she died. Nestled in the darkness beneath her folded wings she held him tight, so tight, just like she'd always wanted to do.

"Foolish girl!" Michael spat. Probably he was advancing on her, but Olivia did not watch; she kept her head bowed low over Elliot's body. She closed her eyes, and held on.

"He's only a man! You could have been like unto a god, and you throw it all away for what? For him?"

"For love," she said, refusing to look up. "He is mine, and I love him, and I won't let you hurt him, not while I'm still breathing."

"I'll deal with him after you're dead, then," Michael told her grimly.

Even as she braced herself for Michael's attack, even as she tensed her muscles and listened hard and prepared to throw herself between Michael and Elliot, she felt that strange tingling sensation again, that build up of something like electricity crackling through the air that she'd felt before Michael's last blast, the one that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

This is it, she thought, and then the bed, maybe I can roll him under it, maybe -

She did not, in the end, have time to push Elliot's heavy body beneath the bed, or even to make the attempt; in the fragile, hopeless instant between one heartbeat and the next there came an an almighty crack! from somewhere above her head, and she curled herself still further over Elliot, still deeper within the shelter of her wings, and would be glad of it, later, because as she did the ceiling above her shattered into a torrential downpour of dust and splinters and fragments of pipe and wire, and a glow bright as the sun itself filled the room.

Michael was cursing, and she could hear the flapping of wings, and she dared to look up, and found herself staring in slack-jawed confusion at a most unexpected sight.

It was a cohort of angels. Angels, six of them, each surrounded by a nimbus of glowing light, led by Gabriel himself, descending on Michael. He tried to flee, but there was nowhere for him to turn; they surrounded him in an instant, blocked him from every direction, and closed in around him in a swirl of light, a swirl of white, like the radar images of hurricanes she'd sometimes seen on the weather reports.

"This ends now, Michael," Gabriel said.

"You can't take me!" Michael shrieked, flailing desperately, striking out with hands and wings and feet, a maelstrom of violence, though the angels were undeterred.

"No," Gabriel agreed. "We won't be taking you anywhere."

That made Michael pause, and Olivia watched, kneeling on the floor with her arms wrapped around Elliot, feeling somehow numb. Her mind, her spirit, seemed to have shrouded itself as if in a layer of wool, dulling the edges of her terror, her confusion, protecting her from a moment that was so overwhelming she'd never be able to understand it, not really. In the circle of angels Michael froze, and he was awful to behold, with his shredded wing, the blood that seemed to drip from every part of him, his eyes wild with fear.

"No," he said, as if he knew what Olivia did not, as if he knew what fate the angels intended for him. "No, please."

"The time for mercy has passed," Gabriel told him, and sounded almost mournful about it. "The time for justice has come."

He drew in a deep breath.

Olivia blinked.

Michael began to weep.

"Be not," Gabriel said in a deep and powerful voice that seemed to echo, as if in the moment he spoke a thousand other voices joined themselves to his, and Michael screamed, once, and Olivia watched as he crumbled into dust before her very eyes.

Silence fell, as the clothes he'd been wearing wafted gently to the floor, no piece of skin nor hair nor feather to mark where a living creature once had been.

Holy shit, Olivia thought faintly.

Their work down now, the five angels spread their wings and departed the same way they had come, but Gabriel lingered, crossed the room and sat himself down on the edge of the bed near the place where Olivia knelt, smiling gently, looking as calm as if he'd only stopped by for a chat, as if he had not just disintegrated one of his fellow angels with nothing more than the power of his voice.

"Hello, little one," he said cheerfully.

"What the fuck?" Olivia asked him.

That made him laugh.

"You're safe now," he said. "It is finished. He is pleased."

Olivia's knees were hurting and some of the numbness was fading from her mind, and anger was rushing in to take its place. Gently she laid Elliot down on the floor; he'd passed out, whether from Michael's attack or from something the angels had done she could not say, but he was breathing, still and peaceful as if in sleep, and she had questions for the angel, and she needed, desperately, to vent the frustration, the rage, the remains of the fear that were threatening to choke her. As soon as she was certain Elliot was safe she rose to her feet, and only then recalled that her shirt had been shredded as she spread her wings earlier in the fight. It tumbled away from her, and she crossed her arms over her chest, and glowered at Gabriel. If he had been anyone - anything - else, she'd have hit him, but she knew better, and could only assault him with words, and not fists.

"No, seriously, what the fuck?" she demanded. "You knew you could do that all along! Why didn't you stop him! Why did you let him hurt those women? He killed McKenna's mother, the children - "

With each word she spoke her voice rose higher and higher, her entire body trembling from adrenaline, from fury. Her anger had no effect on Gabriel; he only sat, calm and cool, watching her with something like fondness in his expression.

"The lord moves in mysterious ways -"

"I swear to God, I will -"

"Listen to me," Gabriel said seriously. "No creature, man nor angel, is beyond redemption. When Michael first strayed, he was given a chance to repent. Many chances, as it happens. And the children…do you think the world would be a better place without them? Or do you think, perhaps, there may still be some purpose for the nephilim?"

"Are you suggesting He wanted Michael to attack those women?" The very idea of it was vile.

"No," Gabriel said. "He doesn't want suffering. But the suffering happened, Olivia. And now the new generation of nephilim have been made, and there may yet be some good to come from them. And some good was done in this room tonight, I think."

There was blood at her temples, and Elliot was unconscious, and McKenna was still hiding in the closet probably scared out of her mind, and Michael had just been, not just killed but unmade, and Gabriel wanted her to believe that this was good?

"Think, Olivia," Gabriel said. "Think. Ask yourself: why do you think we appeared when we did? What do you think called us to this place?"

"I hate riddles," she ground out from behind clenched teeth.

"No, you don't. You love riddles, and puzzles, and you know the answer."

What had precipitated the angels' appearance? They had come, she thought, when all hope was lost. When she was defeated, in the very instant before her ruin. If they had waited another heartbeat longer, she might have been dead already. Was that what brought them down? Had they only wanted to wait to test the strength of her resolve? What had been said, she asked herself, in the seconds before the angels' arrival?

They had come, she realized, only after she admitted, out loud, that she loved Elliot. It was love that brought the angels to her. It was love that saved her, in the end.

"You have known the truth all your long life, and you have fought it," Gabriel said. "It is not your purpose to be alone. You were meant for more, little one."

"Who does He think He is?" she demanded. Gabriel's revelation had not brought her peace; it had only made her angrier. "He's playing games with people's lives! People are dead because He let Michael go free! These children…all these children are in danger! Because of Him!"

"He is the God of Abraham," Gabriel said. "It is not for us to know his will."

The God of Abraham; God had demanded that his servant Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac, and only relented and spared the boy's life when Abraham proved his willingness to remain obedient to God, no matter what it cost him. Had all this just been a test for her, a test to prove her commitment to McKenna, to Elliot, to make her acknowledge the purpose God had laid out for her?

"This is wrong," she said, shaking her head. That sweet little girl was orphaned, now, and the other nephilim children Michael had made, what would become of them? And what would become of her; what fate lay in store for Olivia now? She'd admitted that she loved Elliot, but their circumstances had not changed; she would only lose him again, maybe forever, and all she felt, in this moment, was misery.

"You've had a hard day," Gabriel said gently, rising slowly to his feet. "So I'll forgive your blasphemy. You still have a long road ahead of you, little one. There is much still for you to learn. For now, though, the ones you love have need of you. Go to them, and comfort them, and look to your future with joy."

"Fuck you," Olivia said, and found to her horror that tears had begun to gather in the corners of her eyes.

"I really do like you, you know," Gabriel told her. "I wish you well."

And then he spread his vast wings, and with one powerful stroke launched himself up into the air, disappeared into the night through the gaping hole he and his friends had left in the ceiling. Behind her Olivia heard Elliot groan, as if on cue, as if it were only Gabriel's presence keeping him down and now that the angel had gone he could rise, and she swallowed her own frustration, her own grief, and went to kneel beside him.

"What happened?" Elliot asked groggily as he struggled to pull himself upright.

"That…is a long story," Olivia said. "I'll tell you later. Are you ok?"

He was sitting up now, swaying just a little, but his blue eyes were clear, and he smiled when he saw her, and that smile was warm, and soft, and beautiful, and for a moment all she could do was stare at him. He was hers, and he was safe, and they were, still, doomed.

Chapter Text

Elliot stood for a moment in the doorway, just watching.

They'd talked about it, him and Liv, about what to do next. The ceiling in the back bedroom had caved in when - according to Olivia - the angels descended, and shit, Elliot was gonna have a hard time explaining that one to his old pal Buck. Does your insurance cover acts of God? Because, you see…

It was late, and they were all of them exhausted, and Elliot was battered and bruised, and he didn't think any of them was up to facing the long drive back to the city, not until they'd had some rest. There was a double bed in the other bedroom - the bedroom that still had a fully intact ceiling - and so once Olivia got McKenna calmed down, once she'd promised that the bad man was gone for good and McKenna began to believe her, Olivia carried the girl to the safety of the second bedroom, and that was where they all were now, Elliot in the doorway, watching, Liv and McKenna curled up on the bed. Liv was sitting back against the headboard, McKenna cradled in her arms, the girl's head resting gently on her shoulder, and Olivia had wrapped her brilliant white wings around them both, her wings sheltering the pair of them like a blanket. Her eyes were closed and her cheek was resting on McKenna's little head, and she was humming softly, so softly Elliot couldn't quite pick out the tune. It sounded, he thought, a little like Blackbird, and that made him smile.

There was a sense of awe, almost, of peace and hope, that filled him as he looked at them. The storm had passed, and their enemy had been defeated, and they were all of them safe, now, and it felt…good. It felt good, the whole world quiet and still now, the anxiety and terror of the last few days faded away, leaving behind only relief. His body was weary and his mind was still reeling, still struggling to accept the truth of all he'd seen - and the truth of what Olivia'd told him, about what happened while he was unconscious - and he was tired, sleepy like a child after a long day of playing on the beach, a satisfied, pleasant sort of exhaustion.

Still, though, he lingered, didn't retreat in search of a comfortable place to try to get some sleep. He stayed there in the doorway because he wanted to, because he wanted to see, because he wasn't sure when he'd ever get a chance to experience a moment like this one again, and he wanted to savor every second of it.

They were beautiful, Olivia and McKenna. So alike, with their dark hair, their bright wings. Two lonesome souls who'd found a kindred spirit in one another, and Olivia's care for the girl, her devotion to the child she'd discovered, was humbling. She held McKenna, her touch tender as any mother's, and though Elliot grieved the knowledge that Olivia would never bear a child of her own he could not help but think that she had found herself a daughter, just the same. There was no way, he thought, that Olivia would let McKenna out of her sight now, no way she'd let the child go to foster care; Olivia had always longed for family, and she had one now, and he was happy for her, was joyful at the prospect. She deserved this, he thought; she'd dreamt of family for so long, and now all her dreams were coming true.

But, he asked himself, was there room for him in this dream of hers? In this family she had built? When the sun rose would she still be angry with him for leaving his post by her side, would she still insist that there was no future for them, for man and nephilim? Would she still run from him, or had the night's cataclysmic events changed her tune?

Christ, he hoped she'd changed her mind.

The sight of her was so captivating he could hardly blink; he drank her in, hungrily, his fingers itching to reach for her though he held himself back for McKenna's sake. The girl needed to sleep, and she did not need to know how he ached to touch Olivia. Just to touch her, to feel the warm slide of her skin beneath his palm; it burned through him hot as fire, the longing. When her wings had burst forth she'd not had time enough to take off her shirt, and it had been torn to pieces by her wings' sudden emergence, and she hadn't yet tucked her wings away, and hadn't yet bothered with another shirt, either. She was sitting on the bed wearing nothing more than a pair of low-slung sweatpants and her bra, though her wings hid most of her skin from view, the way she'd wrapped them around herself. Her hair had been caught in a ponytail earlier in the night but several locks of it had tumbled free during their fierce battle with Michael, and the end result was endearingly messy. Half-dressed and tired she was the prettiest goddamn thing he'd ever seen in his life, and the longer he looked at her the closer he felt himself come to telling her so, and so finally, regretfully, he wrenched himself away from the doorway, and padded quietly back to the other bedroom.

Probably Liv would stay with McKenna tonight; they could sleep together in that little bed, but there was not room enough for Elliot as well. The couch was small, and he knew he'd not rest easy there, so he figured he'd just sleep beneath the open sky in the back bedroom. It'll be like camping, he told himself, only more comfortable, because at least there was a bed instead of just a sleeping bag rolled out on the ground.

The collapse of the ceiling had made an almighty mess. Everything in the room was covered in the detritus from the angels' miraculous appearance. He tossed the pillows on the floor and then carefully folded up the corners of the blanket that covered the bed, trapped as much of the mess as he could in the middle and then tossed that aside. The bare sheet beneath was clean enough to sleep on, so he left that in place and then stripped the cases off the pillows before throwing them on the bed.

That'll do, he told himself, and then he started to lay down, but his ass had no sooner hit the edge of the mattress than he heard the creak of a floorboard in the hallway, and he turned to look, watched as Olivia came treading silently into view.

Her wings were folded neatly behind her, still visible but no longer stretched to their fullest extent, and if he strained he could hear her feathers rustling quietly as she moved. There was nothing to shield the shape of her from his hungry gaze now; he could see her, all of her, the bounce of her soft breasts in the confines of her plain bra, the slope of her shoulder, the neat tuck of her waist, her soft, tender belly, the points of her hips sharp just above the waistband of those sweatpants, and though it shamed him he felt his cock stir at the sight of her, her body so lush and inviting that he could not help but react to it. Could not help it, but still, he tried to settle himself down; it wasn't fair to her, his desires asserting themselves now, after everything she'd been through tonight. It wasn't fair to her, because she'd told him no, and he was not the kind of man who'd push his way in where he was not wanted.

Things are the way they are and that's not gonna change; he could hear those words echoing in his mind even as he watched her cross the room, even as she sat down on the bed beside him, even as they leaned back against the headboard together, mirroring one another's posture from their arms crossed over their chests down to their feet crossed at the ankles. Olivia had seemed pretty sure, earlier, that nothing could change their circumstances, but that was before Michael turned up, before they almost died, before Olivia nearly sacrificed her very life to save him. It felt to Elliot as if everything had changed, but maybe he was a fool.

As they sat there, quietly, together, Olivia stirred; she uncrossed her arms slowly, and dropped her left hand down to the bed, let it rest between them, palm up, and it felt like an invitation to Elliot, so he drew in a slow, deep breath, and then uncrossed his own arms, let his right hand cover hers, and let that breath out again as she threaded her fingers through his, and held on tight.

"What really happened here tonight, Liv?" he asked her in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper.

"I told you," she said. "Gabriel and the angels came and they…they got rid of Michael. Turned him into dust."

That was a chilling thought. Who knew angels could even do that? What else could they do? Elliot really, really hoped he'd never have cause to find out.

"But why now?" he asked. "Why didn't they do it sooner?"

"I don't really know," she confessed. "He said something about…he thinks the nephilim children, McKenna's siblings, have some higher purpose."

"Any idea what that might be?"

Liv and her friends thought that Michael meant to make them into an army. What if heaven wanted the same thing?

"No," she sighed. "I'm going to talk to Marcus and Antony in the morning. We'll keep an eye on the kids, but as long as they're safe we'll leave them with their parents. I don't want to break up any more families."

The way McKenna's family had been broken.

"When they're older…I don't know. I may track them down, just so they know they're not alone. But for now, they deserve the chance to just be kids."

And what about you? He wondered, stroking his thumb gently over the back of her hand. What do you deserve?

"And McKenna?"

"I'm going to try to keep her, I think," she confessed. He'd expected as much. "Marcus can help with the paperwork. I just…she's been through so much already. I don't want her to lose us, too. I don't want her to go to a stranger. Maybe I'm just being selfish, though."

"Giving that little girl a home is the most selfless thing you can do," Elliot told her fiercely, sincerely. "You…you're her mother already, Olivia. She loves you, and you…you belong together."

"You make it sound so easy," she said wistfully.

"It is, sometimes," he answered. "Love…it's the hardest thing in the world, but it's the easiest, too. You two…it's like you were meant to be."

"I've been hearing that a lot lately," she grumbled, and that didn't make any sense to Elliot at all.

"Who's telling you that?"

"It's nothing." She pulled her hand away sharply, suddenly, crossed her arms over her chest once more, and Elliot turned his head to face her, his brow furrowing with worry. She saw the question in his eyes, and answered it without further prodding.

"It's just something Gabriel said."

And shit, but that was weird. She'd talked to Gabriel. The Gabriel.

We're never gonna be able to tell anyone about this, Elliot thought. No one would ever believe it.

"What'd he say?"

"Just that I'm meant for more, whatever that means."

She was being evasive, and he knew it, and a petulant piece of his heart was angry with himself for passing out, for not hearing the angel's words for himself. Liv could keep a secret; he might not ever know the truth of what the angel had said.

"Maybe he's right," Elliot said slowly. "Liv, maybe…maybe you can have the things you want."

It doesn't matter what I want, that's what she'd told him earlier. She'd wanted him to kiss her, though, she'd told him that, too. Did she want him to kiss her now? Staring at her in the darkness, his body warmed by the proximity of her, the stars twinkling through the gaping hole in the ceiling overhead, he studied her face, searched desperately for some sign that she was not resolved now as she once had been.

"I want…I want to believe you," she said, her voice trembling, just a little.

Slowly Elliot reached out and cradled her cheek in his palm, and he saw it, saw the way her eyes fluttered closed at the contact, saw the way she pressed herself reflexively into his touch, saw the way her soft lips parted, heard the sharp intake of her breath as he touched her.

"Then believe me," he said. "Please just…believe in me, Liv. Right here, right now, believe me."

Please.

"I do," she whispered.

That was all he needed to hear; it was not a promise of forever, was not a commitment to the future, but it was, he thought, a start, and so he leaned over, and pressed his lips gently, reverently to hers.

Chapter Text

She wasn't entirely sure how it happened; it wasn't a conscious decision she made, wasn't a choice, examined and well thought out. It was just that one minute she was leaning to the side, kissing Elliot - kissing him, softly, warmly, the brush of his lips against hers leaving her trembling with longing - and the next she found herself perched on his lap. It was easier this way, kissing him; she was sitting astride him, and their faces were suddenly on the same level, and neither of them had to twist and bend to reach the other. Instead she wound her arms around his neck, and his hands found purchase on the bare skin of her hips, and perfect, she thought, it was perfect.

Perfect, the way he moved with her, his head tilted just a little so their noses weren't getting in the way, his hands warm where they cradled her close, his body strong and steady beneath her, his lips parted, just a little, like he wanted more but was just waiting for her permission. She gave it to him readily, let her tongue snake inside his mouth just for a second, just long enough to flick against his, and when she retreated he chased after her, and she could feel him smile against her lips, could feel him beginning to harden beneath the place where her legs were spread wide over him.

They were a mess, still, the both of them; his clothes were bloody, and there was blood dried at her temple, and she was half-naked, her hair tumbling out of the ponytail she'd drawn it back into, and her sweatpants were thin and so were his and she could feel it, could feel his cock stirring just from this, just from this kiss, just from the heat of her astride him. The knowledge that she was doing this to him, that she was the reason for his body's response made her shiver all over, and she could hear the rustling of the feathers of her wings behind her as that shiver passed through her. When was the last time she'd touched someone with her wings free like this? When had she last showed them to anyone at all? She couldn't recall, and couldn't spare a moment to even consider putting them away, not when Elliot was kissing her, not when his hands had begun to move, charting a determined path up from her hips along the slope of her sides.

Too fast, too fast, she thought. This was all happening too fast; they were safe now, even with half the ceiling caved in around them, safe from physical harm, but there was danger here of an altogether different kind, and there had been no time to think. No time to consider the consequences, and maybe that was the only way she and Elliot were ever gonna touch each other, if they didn't stop to think about it first, if they just dove right in, and let the question of what happens next linger a little while longer. She knew what would happen next, though; Elliot had no intention of coming back to SVU, and their circumstances had not changed, and there would be no future for them, no matter what he said. She could not be anything other than what she was, and nor could he, and what they were was doomed.

She could have this, though. She could have this, tonight, could just once let herself be with him. This might be the only chance she'd ever get to hold him, and it was happening too fucking fast but she wasn't about to slow it down, not for anything. The longing she felt for him was a desperate, needful thing, a desire left unfulfilled for centuries. In every life she'd lived she'd wanted him, yearned for him, and she'd never been able to have him before and she was certain she'd never be able to have him again.

If this one night was all she'd have of him, she'd take every piece of him she could get.

And so she did not stop him, when his hands slipped behind her back and toyed with the clasp of her bra, when his mouth landed hot and full of yearning at the curve of her neck.

"I want to see you," Elliot growled there, his teeth scraping against her skin, and she could not find the breath to tell him yes, and so only nodded fervently.

That was enough, for him. His mouth stayed busy at her neck but his hands worked quickly, unclasped her bra and tugged at it, and then he grunted when he realized he could not get it free from the impediment of her wings.

"Just a second," she told him, charmed by his frustration. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, and then slowly, slowly, retracted her wings, drew them into her body the way she normally wore them, and as soon as they were out of the way she stripped off her bra, tossed it to the side and reveled for a moment in the look of awe-struck wonder that crossed his face as he took in the sight of her bare body for the very first time.

"You're beautiful," he told her shyly, earnestly, smoothing his hands along the slope of her back, pulling her into him so he could kiss her again, and she opened her mouth to him eagerly, her entire body electric from the sensation of her bare, sensitive nipples scraping against the fabric of his t-shirt, from the taste of his tongue heavy in her mouth, from the intoxicating hardness of his cock beneath her, straining towards the place where she was hot and wet for him already.

His hands did not remain idle on her back; while she kissed him, while she dragged the blunt edges of her nails through his short hair his hands searched out the heavy curve of her breasts, cupped them, kneaded them, his thumbs finding the hardened points of her nipples, and that made him smile, too, and Jesus, she had always loved the sight of his smile, but she was learning to love the taste of it more.

"Can you," he tried to say between heated kisses. "Can you - would you -"

She retreated a little, just far enough to look into his eyes, to give him the breath to speak.

"I want to see your wings," he said. "You don't have to hide 'em, not from me. They're beautiful, too."

And as much as he might have wanted to see them, she found she wanted to show them to him just as badly, wanted to be honest with him, wanted the chance, if only for a few minutes in a strange bed in a half-demolished house, to stop denying the truth of herself, of her nature, of her heart.

"Ok," she answered shakily.

As slowly as she had drawn in her wings she let them out again, and it felt like relief, to expose herself to his reverent stare, to reveal herself in full, and not hide from him.

"Thank you," he said, and reached for her, leaned forward so their chests were flush together, so his hands could ghost gently, gently, over the curves of her wings, as tender with them as he had been with her breasts, and she buried her face in his neck, overcome with affection for him, overcome with the realization that he was the first person to touch her there for millenia. The realization that he was, actually, the only one who had ever had, because the only other person who had ever touched her wings was Elam, her first love, and Elam was Elliot, the same soul reborn, again and again, loving her, always, searching for her, always, and he had found her again, and a rush of tears choked her.

He still didn't know. Elliot did not know the truth of who he was, who he had been, the purpose his soul had been trying to fulfill for years beyond counting. He did not know because she had not told him, and she was not sure she ever could, and suddenly she was thinking, and that would not do, because if she stopped to think now she would be lost to her doubts and her fears and the cruel hand of fate. She had to make the thoughts stop, and so she did the only thing she could to free herself in that moment.

She caught his face in her hands and drew him to her for a fierce, devouring kiss, and as she did she ground her hips down against him, and swallowed the sound of his answering moans. His hands flew to her hips, and just like that he was guiding her, encouraging her to rock against him, to thrust her cunt down onto the hardness of him, and she was so slick with yearning for him and he was so hard with longing for her that she could feel the head of his cock straining for her entrance through the layers of their clothes, could feel him trying, despite the barriers between them, to enter her, and when his cock caught against her clit she could not help but whine.

"Yeah," he breathed into their kiss, his hips joining hers, rising up towards her while he pulled her down against him. "Come on," he grunted, encouraging her, and each word he spoke shot through her like lightning. She might come just from this, just from grinding against his lap like a pair of horny teenagers in the backseat of a car, if he kept talking to her in that voice thick and hungry with need.

"Like that?" she gasped at him, wanting to hear him speak again, wanting to hear him tell her that he was pleased with her.

"Like this," he growled, and then one of his hands drove unexpectedly beneath the waistband of her sweatpants, and she leaned back, gave him room to work as his fingers searched desperately for some way to reach the heat of her.

With her hands on his shoulders, one of his hands in her pants and the other anchored at her hip, she took a moment just to watch, to watch the way his eyes focused with laser-like intensity on her face, to watch the straining muscles of his neck while his body still rocked beneath hers, steady as a ship at sea, to watch and to see the truth of it for herself. The truth that this was Elliot, holding her, touching her, Elliot whose voice dripped with sin when his fingers trailed through the wetness at her center and he growled his appreciation. Elliot, who had always belonged to someone else, Elliot who had never been hers to claim, Elliot who could have chosen anything else but had chosen her instead, time after time. Elliot, who was Elam and everyone else he had ever been, Elliot who she loved not just for who he had been in their past but who he was in their present, Elliot, who was good and strong and angry, like she was angry, who could be reckless, the way she was reckless, who was gentle with children and tender with her when she needed him to be, Elliot who was a father and a cop and a fighter and would be her lover, if only for tonight. Elliot who did love her, whether she was willing to let him to or not.

Elliot, who was so strong, whose body made her ache, Elliot who was hellbent on fucking her now, and by God, she was gonna let him.

"Christ," he choked out as one of his fingers slid easily into her cunt, her body so wet, so open for him that he encountered no resistance at all, his eyes dark with a fervent, ravenous desire.

"More," she told him, and then she surged forward, kissed him again, hard, teeth catching against his lip, and in the next second he thrust three fingers into her, deep, as deep as they would go, hard, spreading her open, and she panted and whined into his kiss, her hips rocking down against him, seeking to draw him into herself, as far as he could go, wanton and needy on his lap and for once in her life not ashamed. Whatever she wanted, he wanted the same, and there was no time for guilt, not now. The time for guilt would come later.

With an abruptness that caught her off guard he withdrew his hand, brought his fingers, slick with the evidence of her longing, up to her lips, and smeared that wetness across her skin, and she opened her mouth to him, caught his gaze and held it, challenging him and delighting in the challenge as she sucked those fingers into her mouth, thinking about his heavy cock beneath her and wondering if she'd have the chance to taste that, too, before the night was through. Hoping that she could.

"Fuck," he swore, his voice heated and dripping with passion, and then he tangled his free hand in her hair, pulled her in close and licked the taste of her from her lips.

"Want you," he panted, his tongue brushing her lips, "Christ, I want you."

"You have me," she answered, because he did, because really he always had, and she smiled in victory when his hands reached once more for her sweatpants, this time determined to remove them. She had every intention of letting him; he wanted her, but shit, she wanted him, too, and she was tired of fighting it. She had waited too long for him, had been lonely and starving for him all the years of her long life, and she would be sated tonight.

Chapter Text

Some moments of a man's life stand out; some moments remain burned on the brain, as vivid five, ten, fifty years after the fact as they were in the instant of their making. Some things, once seen, are never forgotten. Some memories are borne in the blood, profound enough to change the very DNA of the ones who experience them.

For Elliot, this was one such memory, and he knew it, even as he lived it, paused on the cusp of bliss to savor the vision in front of him, knowing that he might not ever feel this free, this wild, this much himself, ever again. The stars were twinkling through the canopy of the trees overhead, the hole in the ceiling less a devastation and more a gift for the gentle light and cool breeze it afforded him. The cheap sheets were scratchy and rough against the bare skin of his ass, only adding to the heightened sensations zinging through his oversensitized body. And her, most of all, her, the only thing he could really see, the only thing he really wanted to see, the only thing that mattered, maybe the only thing that ever had.

Olivia, and naked, perched on his lap, tan skin glowing under a faint sheen of sweat. Olivia's breasts, soft and round and heavy; Olivia's nipples, pebbled and glossy from the attention of his mouth. Olivia's neck, arched elegantly and reddened from his eager kisses. Olivia's stomach, soft and smooth. Olivia's hips, hard bone beneath his trembling hands. Olivia's cunt, pink and glossy from her desire, crisp dark curls and soft beckoning flesh. Olivia's wings, brilliant and white like snowfall in the morning before the plows got to it, feathers rustling quietly as her whole body quaked with need. Olivia's hand, strong and delicate, wrapped around his cock.

Touching him, as he had so often dreamt she might, and nothing, no feverish fantasy conjured in an early morning shower or devastating dream tossing through his head on a restless night, could have come close to the power and the beauty and the glory of her.

"You're beautiful," he told her, because she was. Was so beautiful he could not stop himself from saying so, could not keep the words locked inside his heart a second longer. Always, she had always been beautiful, but never, he had never been allowed to say so, before, and the words tasted sweet in his mouth. He was through with hiding, through with lying, through with pretending he didn't love her; he loved her desperately, madly, to the point of devastation.

"So are you," she told him gently, shyly, trailing her free hand over his chest, along the defined muscles of his abdomen, something like wonder in her dark eyes.

"Come on," he urged her, tugging lightly at her hips; the proximity of her wet heat to his aching cock was making it hard to think. "I want to feel you."

Those words made her blush but she must have wanted it, too, because she raised herself up on her knees, caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she used the hand wrapped around him to guide his cock to her entrance. Eager, he was so eager, so ready to bury himself inside her that he would have pulled her straight down on to him then, but reverence stayed his hand; it would be better, he knew, to let her set the pace. It would be better to watch as she took him in slowly, to savor every flicker of emotion on her face, to memorize the way they looked as they came together at last. His eyes bounced wildly back and forth between her pretty cunt and her pretty face as slowly, slowly she lowered herself down; a gasp, soft and sweet, slipped past her lips as the head of his cock plunged between her folds, and he groaned at the heat of it, the silken clutch of her body around him, the most delicious feeling he'd ever known. She rocked against him experimentally, and he felt it, felt her body stretching around him, sucking at him, desperate to draw him in deeper, but she held off, for a moment, teased them both with short, shallow thrusts, electrifying, maddening in their promise.

"Tease," Elliot gasped at her, and she grinned.

"Wanna take my time," she panted back.

He couldn't fault her for that, so he tried to restrain his impatience and let her maintain control for the moment. His cock was slippery with her now, the slick from her cunt soaking the head of him, glossing up her fingers where they clutched at him, each downward thrust of her hips pushing him that much deeper inside her. Again, and again, she rocked over him, lean thighs trembling from exertion, and as he watched her, watched her eyes flutter closed in bliss, watched her soft lips part on each of her lilting sighs, watched his cock disappearing between her glistening folds, he noticed another change in her; her wings began to spread behind her back, fanning out, not stretched to their fullest extent, not yet, but shifting as the pleasure built up within her and he found himself curious, developing a theory he decided to test at once.

He curled his fingers harder into the curve of her hips, and as she descended once more he pulled her down and thrust suddenly up into her, burying his full length inside her, and as he did she cried out in pleasure, and her wings shot out to the side, unfurled at last, huge and powerful and glorious to behold. No stained glass window nor painting of old could hope to capture the transcendence of his angel, perched on his lap and wanton, rapturous in her desire.

"Fuck," she hissed, softly, and he liked that, liked the sound of her cursing for him, and so he held her tight against him and thrust his hips up once more, plunging his cock deeper still, and she choked back the sound of her cries. Little McKenna was still sleeping peacefully down the hall, and it would not do to disturb her, to interrupt the delirious joy of this moment with a sleepy, frightened child.

"Gonna have to be quiet, baby," Elliot panted at her. "Can you do that for me?"

She shot him a dark look, though he wasn't sure what had offended her more, him calling her baby or him drawing attention to the sounds she was making.

"Can you?" she asked him pointedly, and as she did she squeezed the muscles of her cunt around his cock and drew a strangled sound from the back of his throat. Her answering smile was victorious.

Two can play at that game, he thought, grinning.

He started to move, intent on getting his own back, but she pushed him down, pressed her palms to the hard plane of his chest and held him in place beneath her as she rose up on her knees, high enough that he very nearly slipped out of her completely, before sliding back down the length of his shaft once more, and that time they both moaned, too overwhelmed to stop themselves.

Jesus, it felt good, though. Felt so fucking good, every nerve in his body singing with desire, his whole world narrowed down to the place where their bodies met, his eyes glued there, watching as she raised herself up again, as his cock slid slowly out of her, shiny with her, the folds of her sex cultching at him, unwilling to let him go, and then she came down again, and wasted no time; in a moment she was riding him in earnest, rising up and plunging down, over and over, the movement of her body so powerful now that he could see her wings trembling behind her.

As she found a rhythm that suited her he joined the movement of his body to hers, his arm winding around her waist, holding her to him, rising up as she came crashing down, and the combined force of their thrusts left them both reeling. He could feel the rush of her impending release in the clenching of her cunt around him but as glorious as it was, as beautiful as she was, it was not enough, to simply lie beneath her, to pound up into her; he needed to be closer to her, needed to feel her heartbeat against him, wanted to kiss her, wanted it with everything in him.

Suddenly he pushed himself upright, dragged them back until he was sitting up with his back against the headboard and her still on his lap, eye to eye with him now, their chests pressed hard together.

"There's my girl," he said breathlessly, smoothing his hand over her hair, and feeling her shiver all over, his cock buried as deep inside her as it was possible to be.

"Yours," she promised him, and then she wound her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Kissed him long and slow and deep, her tongue winding against his own while her hips rocked gently against him, and there was less room to move, like this, less power behind the shifting of their bodies, but it was better this way, he thought. A slow and grinding build, sweat-slicked bodies pressed close, skin sliding on skin, and he wrapped his arms around her, stroked his hands gently along the base of her wings, and when he did she whimpered into his mouth, a rush of wetness at her center telling him that she liked it when he touched her there. So he didn't stop, just kept kissing her, touching her, rocking with her, encouraging herself to grind down against him until they got the angle just right, until every pass of their hips exerted the kind of pressure on her clit that left her moaning into his mouth.

Together, they did it together, pressure and friction and the endless of his cock inside her driving them both closer and closer to ruin until he felt himself right on the edge of coming undone.

"Where," he asked her urgently, his lips catching against hers as he spoke, needing her to be the one to make this choice, when he knew already what he wanted.

"Inside," she panted back, her arms tightening around his neck. "Please, inside me."

Nephilim couldn't have children, she'd told him that already, but he'd have done it anyway; she wanted a family and he would've given anything to be the one who gave it to her. To see her body change, to watch her glowing as she carried their child, to see her dreams come true, to see her holding a baby of her own, to see her happy, and know that he was the one who had made it possible; anything, he would've done anything to give her a child, his child, and as he came apart, as he groaned and emptied himself inside her, holding her close, her hips flush against his, the vision of her pregnant danced behind his eyelids, and grief followed on the heels of his relief. Not too much, not so much sorrow that it drowned out his joy, but enough to sting at him, just the same.

The sudden flood of his come inside her - and maybe thoughts just like the ones that plagued him - seemed to trigger her own downfall; she tightened fiercely around him, buried her face in the crook of his neck, and shivered from head to toe as she came on him, around him, her wings fluttering with the force of her release, and through it all he held her, his soul awash in wonder and tender affection, and mournful, still, for all the things that they had lost, all the things that they would never have.

Her mouth was open, pressed to the line of his throat, and as she drifted away in pleasure he ran his hands along her back, soothing, gentle, soaking in the warmth of her, until he realized that her shaking was not subsiding. Concerned, then, he reached for her face, lifted her chin so that he could look into her eyes, and when he did he found tears sparkling there, and no smile upon her face.

"Olivia," he said quietly, his heart clenching in fear.

"I love you, Elliot," she told him. "I love you. I do."

He kissed her once, softly, and pulled her back into him, held her close and gave her a moment to try to pull herself together, and worried in his heart, because her confession of love had not been a happy one. It sounded for all the world like a goodbye, and he did not understand it, and he was, truly, afraid.

Chapter Text

"Thanks," Elliot told her softly, warmly, as he stepped out of the bathroom, damp towel caught in his hands.

"Of course," she answered. Of course, she'd let him come to her apartment when they made it back to the city. Of course, she'd let him use her shower. They were both a bit grimey after their trip to the woods, and Elliot's apartment door had been blown to pieces, and the department had agreed to pay for its replacement but god only knew when that would happen. Of course, she had not turned him away. He was her partner, and she couldn't leave him to navigate all that alone, not everything they'd been through together.

But.

The but seemed to hang in the air between them, had been there, swinging above their heads like the blade of a guillotine, since they'd fallen apart in one another's arms the night before. She loved him but. She wanted him but. They were going home but. In an effort to protect her own heart Olivia had gone quiet on him, thinking about the future and all those buts and what had to be done, and he'd noticed it, the way she'd withdrawn, she knew he had, and he was standing there now, in her bedroom, fresh from her shower, staring at her with a question in his eyes.

"Did you figure out how you're gonna explain all this to Buck?" she asked him. A safe question, an easy question, a question of practicality.

"No," he answered, shooting her a half-hearted grin. "You figure out what you're gonna do with little miss yet?"

McKenna was currently sitting on the couch, watching some inane children's cartoon, half-asleep, drowsy after a long ride in the car. Olivia had decided to keep McKenna, but it wasn't as easy as making the choice; there were a million logistics to work through first.

"I've called the Captain and Trevor Langan-"

"Trevor Langan?"

"Don't look at me like that, he's with a firm that does family law now, he does a lot of adoption work pro bono," she explained defensively. "The department will give me a few weeks to get settled with her as a new foster parent, and Trevor is going to help with the courts. I'll need the time, though, DSS is going to require me to move into a two bedroom."

She could afford it; she'd been working for centuries now, and Marcus had helped with some investments, and she had enough money squirreled away to finance the move, to support her and McKenna whether she ever went back to work or not. And at the moment she was leaning towards not; Olivia lived for the job, but Elliot wasn't coming back, and it would break her heart to walk into the bullpen and not find him there waiting for her. Besides, McKenna was still so young, still hadn't learned how to hide her wings; what if a few weeks wasn't enough time to teach her? She couldn't go to daycare with the wings out, and a private nanny didn't really solve the problem, either. And there had been so much upheaval in her short life recently; maybe it would be for the best, Olivia staying home with her. It might break Olivia's heart, though.

"That's a good start," Elliot said. "I need to clean up my apartment and then I need to see Eli. It's been too long."

"That's good," Olivia said. How long had it been since this all started? Only a matter of days, but it felt as if a lifetime had passed since she'd discovered McKenna in that closet.

"So, I'm gonna go," Elliot said warily. "But before I do I need to know…when am I gonna see you again?"

Am I gonna see you again, that's what he was really asking. They'd finally crossed that line and probably Elliot thought that meant things were settled. He was - had always been - an all or nothing kind of man, and she knew that for him everything would change the moment they came together. He wouldn't have touched her unless he was willing - unless he was ready, unless he wanted - to commit to her, to give her all of himself and ask for all of her in return. It was why they had never fallen into bed together before now; well, it was one of the reasons. They'd never touched each other before because they knew the moment they did they would be forever changed, forever bound. And maybe he was right, but.

But Olivia was still a nephilim. Olivia still was cursed with a never ending life, and Olivia was still barred from heaven. That hadn't changed, would never change. She still couldn't let him tie himself to a curse, still couldn't face the grief his mortal life would bring her, in the end. There was still no way.

"I don't think that's a good idea," she said, very quietly. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, twisting her hands together in her lap, and as she spoke she stared resolutely at her toes, too scared of his heartbreak to face him when she delivered that blow.

"Goddamn it, Olivia," he swore. "Don't do this."

"Nothing's changed -"

"Everything has changed. Look at me, Liv."

She was helpless to resist him; much as she did not want to she lifted her gaze to his face, and nearly wept at the naked longing she found there.

"You say it isn't fair, you say we won't have forever so what's the point of having a few decades right now. Don't I get a say?"

No, she thought. In a way he was right, she knew he was; the choice shouldn't have been hers alone. It wasn't fair, her unilaterally decided to forsake both their dreams. But he didn't understand what he was asking for, not really, and she reckoned she did. Just this once, she knew better.

"I can't do this, Elliot."

"Can't do what?" he took a step forward, dropped the towel and reached out like he meant to touch her, but she shot him a baleful look and he kept his hands to himself.

"This," she burst out angrily. "Us. I can't…I can't be more than your friend, and I think after last night it's pretty clear we can't just be friends. Especially when you're not on the job anymore."

"We can figure it out-"

"I can't, Elliot! I can't-"

"You can - "

"I can't watch you die again!"

Shit.

She didn't mean to say that. It had been her intention to keep the secret of Elliot's past lives forever, to never put that burden on him, but in the heat of the moment the words had just slipped out and there would be no taking them back. As her words sank in he gave his head a little shake, confused, the torrent of pleading from his lips paused for a moment, but only a moment.

"What's that mean?" he demanded.

"Elliot-"

"What's that mean again? What the hell is going on here, Liv?"

It was too late; she was going to have to tell him. He'd never let it go, if she did not answer him now. He would not rest until he heard the truth from her lips. It might make him hate her, but if he hated her he'd go, and wasn't that what she wanted, anyway? Didn't she want him to leave, to go back to his life, back to his family, to give up his pursuit of a love that would only wound them both?

"This," she started to tell him but then lost her voice for a moment. How the fuck was she gonna explain this to him?

"This, this life, this isn't the first time we met."

"What the fuck are you -"

"We've met dozens of times." Maybe more. "You've had so many names but you always had the same eyes. The same soul. You keep…you keep coming back."

"You're talking about reincarnation?" he asked faintly. He was taking it hard, she could tell; he leaned back heavily against the wall, as if it were the only thing holding him upright, rubbed his temples like he felt a headache coming on.

"Yeah, I guess," she said. "And every time…every time we met we cared about each other. And every time you died it broke my heart."

For a while he was quiet, eyes closed, breathing deeply, trying to process what she'd said. Trying not to shout, she could tell; McKenna was on the other side of her bedroom door and Elliot wouldn't want to scare the girl, but there was a vein throbbing in the side of his thick neck and his hands kept clenching into fists.

"Did we ever…." he asked slowly, barely breathing.

"Once," she confessed in a small voice. "The first time. A very long time ago."

"What happened to him?" Elliot demanded. "To me?"

Olivia really, really didn't want to tell him, but she had come too far to back out now, and maybe he was right. All those lives, those were his lives, too. Maybe he deserved to know.

"I married him," she said. "I was still young, I thought I could have a normal life. And then we found out I couldn't have children, that I wasn't going to die. He wanted a family so much and I couldn't take that away from him, so…I left. He married someone else, had kids, died in his sleep."

And she had wept for weeks after she heard the news. Her heart still ached when she thought about it.

"You've been pushing me away for a thousand years," Elliot grumbled dangerously.

Longer than that, she thought. Much longer.

"Elliot -"

"So, that's it?" he said darkly. "You really don't give a shit about me, do you?"

"Elliot, no," she started to say, dismayed, but he was under a full head of steam now, and would not stop.

"You look at me, and you see him. That, last night, that wasn't about us, it was about some guy you say I used to be. And you're gonna walk away from me just like you walked away from him. You're a real piece of work, you know that?"

"That's not -"

"You ever think he didn't want you to leave? That he wanted you more than he wanted a family with someone else? You ever think about what you did to him? Or, shit, me, I guess? How many times have you told me no, Liv?"

"I only wanted you to be happy." She was crying, now; she could not stop it, any more than Elliot could stem the flood of his anger. His heartbreak was painting the whole room red, and she had done this to him, and maybe he was right. Maybe it was the wrong choice. Maybe she had been selfish. Maybe she'd been trying so hard to spare herself a little grief that she'd caused so much more in the process.

"You've made up your mind," he said. "You've written me off in this life, too, haven't you? Am I gonna come back?"

She spread her hands helplessly; it was a question she did not have the answer to. In her heart, she hoped the answer was yes; maybe they'd get it right, next time. The thought offered her no reassurance, though. She didn't want the next version of him, didn't want to start all over again. She wanted Elliot, precisely as he was in this moment. It was Elliot she loved, Elliot she'd reached for the night before, Elliot who could have made her happy, if only things were different.

"I love you," he said. "You won't let me, but I do. You want me gone, I'm going. I'll see you next time, Olivia. In the next life."

And then he pushed himself off the wall, and stormed out of her room. The door closed behind him, and she did not hear him say good-bye to McKenna, was left alone in the silence with her tears.

Chapter Text

Two months later…

"How was your day?" Lucy asked brightly, bouncing over to where Olivia stood near the door, kicking off her shoes and dropping her bag after a long day at work.

It was, Olivia thought, a little bit like having a wife. A perky, cheerful wife who was probably too young for her, but still. Every night when she came home from work Lucy was there; Lucy spent all day looking after McKenna, and most nights she cooked dinner, and always made sure there was enough left for Olivia. Lucy kept the house clean, and Lucy always, always asked how was your day? and Olivia always, always lied to her. It was Marcus who'd found Lucy, Marcus who'd drawn up the NDA and promised Olivia that McKenna's secret would be safe with Lucy. So far it was; who was Lucy gonna tell, anyway? Who would believe her, if she claimed to be watching after a child with angel's wings? Lucy didn't seem to be interested in notoriety, but she was very interested in the healthy paycheck she received from Olivia each week, and so far the system was working. Olivia was working with McKenna, slowly teaching the girl how to pull in her wings, how to hide them so that she could navigate the world safely, and maybe one day soon McKenna wouldn't need to spend so much time with Lucy. Maybe one day soon she'd be able to venture out of the apartment without scaring Olivia half to death. Then again, maybe not; maybe Olivia would always be afraid for her daughter's safety.

"Fine," Olivia said. The day had been fine. The work had been compelling, exhausting, consuming, the way it always was, and she had enjoyed Fin's company, and she felt a certain sense of satisfaction at having closed a case the way she always did. There was grief in her heart still, though, Elliot's empty desk across from hers a shrine to all the things she had lost. It was two months, now, since they'd come back from the cabin, and she had not spoken to him, not even once, and she knew in her heart she never would again. At least, not this version of him.

I'll see you next time.

Christ, she hoped she would, and wondered who'd he be, the next time they crossed paths. In this life she'd fucked up too badly, would never be able to fix what she had broken. Maybe next time she'd get it right.

"How did things go here?" she asked.

"Oh, we had a great day!" Lucy assured her. "McKenna is doing so well with her shapes and colors. We're working on recognizing letters. I think she'll be reading before kindergarten. Honestly, Olivia, she's so smart."

That was true, and Olivia knew it. When they'd met her McKenna had been reticent and quiet, hardly speaking at all, but she was beginning to blossom, with help from Olivia and Lucy and the telehealth therapist she saw once a week. Horror had unfolded all around McKenna, and Olivia worried about how that horror might simmer in her little brain, how it might manifest itself later on, but for all the atrocities committed in McKenna's vicinity the girl hadn't actually seen very much, and seemed to be adjusting well. Small mercies, Olivia thought.

"Thank you," Olivia said. "Are you going to be all right getting home? Want me to call you a cab or something?"

"I'll be fine," Lucy said, the way she always did. "Have a good weekend!"

"You, too."

And then Lucy was dancing out the door, and Olivia was alone in her quiet apartment, the sounds of her daughter's little snores from the baby monitor the only noise she could hear, and a comforting one. The next two days she was off work - hopefully - and would be allowed the grace to do nothing more than spend time with McKenna, and she was looking forward to it desperately. Raising a child was more work - and more rewarding - than Olivia had ever imagined, and she loved that little girl with all her heart, and all she ever wanted was more time with her. Lucky, then, that neither of them was able to die; they had all the time in the world.

"I like the new place," a voice echoed suddenly from her kitchen, and Olivia swore, drew her gun and dropped into a crouch, her heart in her throat. No one should have been there, Lucy would never let anyone in, and she certainly wouldn't do that without telling Olivia, and what if they wanted McKenna, what if they wanted to hurt her, what if -

"Jesus," she grumbled, holstering her gun as her intruder came striding into view.

"No," he told her cheerfully. "Just Gabriel. Seriously, though, this place is nice. Much nicer than your last apartment."

It was bigger, too, big enough for McKenna to have a bedroom of her very own.

"If you're just here to compliment my home decor choices -"

"I'm here to ask you a question," he said.

"Ask it, then."

"All right - what on earth is wrong with you?"

"Excuse me?" Olivia demanded, perplexed. Who'd ever heard of an angel speaking to someone this way? The tone to of his voice, the shine of his eyes; Gabriel looked frustrated with her, and she couldn't for the life of her understand why.

"I've met a lot of people in my time, angels, demons, humans, what have you -" that what have you was unsettling; what else was there? - "and you have to be the single most stubborn creature I've ever encountered. What's that about?"

"If you came here to talk about Elliot you can just go home," she told him grimly. "That's done."

She'd fucked it all up, telling Elliot the truth. Now that he knew about his past lives he thought she didn't really love him, not the him that he was now, and he'd turned his back on her, not that she could blame him. The way he'd reacted only reinforced her belief that she'd done the right thing; they were too different, the man and the nephilim, and they existed in different worlds, the reality of their lives too divergent for them to ever come together. It was over, she knew it was.

"Oh, no, little one," Gabriel said. "It's not done, not by half."

"Nothing's changed -"

"Everything has changed, and you know it. You can feel it, Olivia. Why haven't you used it yet?"

He looked curious, almost, like he was a scientist studying an especially fascinating specimen.

"Used what?" she snapped. Fucking angels, she thought, always riddles wrapped in riddles, pretending to offer help but just making matters more complicated.

"The - er - the little item you picked up from the pharmacy last week."

As she looked at him she felt the blood drain from her face; she'd forgotten, somehow, just how much Gabriel knew. Just how much he could see, just how impossible it was to hide anything from heaven.

"There's no point," she said. "It's not possible."

"Then why did you buy the test? Why go to the trouble, if you're so certain?"

Because she wasn't certain. Because she didn't want to be. Because she'd been throwing up every morning for the last few weeks and everything felt different and she wanted to hope, even if there was no reason to, even if there was no point. It felt nice, the hoping. She wasn't ready to be disappointed again.

"Everything has changed," Gabriel repeated. "You must know that, you must feel it. But you're not doing anything about it, and I just…for the first time in your whole life, the clock is ticking, Olivia. You're actually running out of time. Take the test."

"What's that mean?" she demanded. "Running out of time, what's that mean?"

"Take the test, and then we'll talk."

Am I really gonna do this? She asked herself. Was she really gonna entertain this insanity? It was not possible for nephilim to conceive. It had never happened, not once, in the history of the world. Nephilim were hybrid creatures who were never meant to exist in the first place, not human enough to bear children, not human enough to die. But there was an angel in her kitchen, smiling at her, glowing softly, telling her to trust, to believe, to hope, and he wouldn't have come, she thought, if he didn't know what he was doing. He wouldn't ask this of her if he didn't know the answer already.

Without a word she turned away from him, and walked slowly towards her bedroom. She stopped on the way, poked her head into McKenna's room and checked that the girl was sleeping soundly, and then she drifted through her bedroom to the en suite, to the plastic bag she'd tucked away in the cabinet and the little box nestled inside.

One pink line for no, two pink lines for yes; she read the instructions on the box, committed them to memory, and followed them perfectly, and then she sat herself down on the closed lid of the toilet, and buried her face in her hands.

It was all she'd ever wanted, really. A child, a family. Someone to love, a place to belong. She'd made that, with McKenna, the pair of them knitting together into something like a family, growing stronger every day. Fin knew already what McKenna was, had seen the wings himself when this whole thing had started, and he was like an uncle to the girl. Munch and Cragen, they would be, too, in time. It made Olivia happy, the connections they'd found, the life they were building. It was good. It was enough.

But she'd let Elliot hold her, and spared no thought for condoms or pulling out, and why should she, when she'd known it was only ever going to happen once, when she'd known she would never be able to conceive a child? One night, one beautiful night, one too-brief embrace, that was all she'd ever have of him, and she'd contented herself with that, grieved for him, missed him, but clung to the memory of how it'd felt, him moving inside her, his breath on her lips. It was enough.

Only now there was a test sitting on the bathroom sink, and an angel in her kitchen, and the promise of more hung in the air.

What if he's right? She asked herself. What would happen, if the test showed two pink lines? She'd have to tell Cragen, spent the next few months on desk duty. Talk to Lucy, find out how the girl felt about looking after two children, once Olivia was cleared to return. Find a bigger apartment, eventually. She'd have to decide on a name, and buy a bassinet, and she'd have to find some way to explain all this to McKenna, and…

And what? Call Elliot? Tell him she'd been wrong, when she told him she'd never get pregnant? How could he ever forgive her, after the way she'd hurt him, the way she'd walked away from him? He'd love the baby, she knew he would, but the man had five children already; how would he react to the thought of another? Would he want partial custody of his child, would they pass the baby back and forth every other weekend? It was a nightmare; it was a dream; it was both.

The minutes passed, very slowly, but eventually Olivia gave in and reached for the test.

Two pink lines.

Pregnant.

"That's not possible," she breathed.

"All things are possible to him that believes," Gabriel's voice called to her through the bathroom door delightedly. The motherfucker must have slipped in there while she was barricaded in the bathroom.

"Get in here," she barked, and the door opened in a moment, Gabriel standing just on the other side of it.

"Now do you believe me?" he asked.

"What the fuck is going on?"

"My goodness, do you always react to good news this way?"

"I swear to God -"

"No need for swearing. I'll tell you everything, little one." He stepped into the bathroom, perched himself on the ledge of the bathtub, and then he took her hand. His hands were warm and soft, and his eyes were kind.

"He knows all," Gabriel said. "He sees all. And he sees you, little one. You were right, about the injustice of the nephilim's fate. And even knowing that you were doomed, you were still willing to sacrifice your life to protect that little girl. You were willing to walk away from the man you loved to spare him more pain. You have been selfless, and you have been good, and He has seen it."

"I don't understand - "

"You can't change who you are, what you are or where you came from. But you chose who you wanted to be. You aligned yourself with the angels, when you could have far more easily turned your back. There is a place for you in heaven, now. For you, and all your brothers and sisters who are willing to make the same choice. For your little girl, one day, when she's ready. This gift He has granted to all the nephilim. But to you He has given a special gift. A new life."

This can't be happening. It was everything she'd ever wanted, and the joy that swelled within her heart was deep and vast, wide as an ocean, but Elliot was not there to share in her joy. Elliot was lost to her -

"And He knows how stubborn you are," Gabriel continued. "So I'm afraid your gift comes with a catch."

Of course it does, she thought moodily.

"You will die, Olivia. Even now you are aging, becoming more human than you have ever been. Your days on earth are numbered. Just like your man's. You ran from him because you did not want to live through all the ages of the earth without him. And now you won't."

The expression on his face; he was looking at her like he thought that was the most delightful news. Maybe it was. He'd just confirmed that she was expecting a baby, that she would eventually be welcomed into heaven, but he'd just told her she was going to die, too. It was a lot of information to process all at once. Maybe too much.

"Will you say something?" he asked her.

"I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do."

I don't know how to feel. A mortal life, an end to the infinite cycle of grief and pain, that wasn't so bad. But a mortal life meant she would not be able to walk by McKenna's side forever, would not always be there to guide and comfort her children. She would have to leave them behind, and step into the unknown, into a realm no nephilim had ventured to before. And Elliot…what if it really was too late? What if he never forgave her? What if her remaining years on earth were spent mourning for a man who lived, but hated her?

"You're spiraling," Gabriel said drily. "I can see it in your eyes. The panic."

"Of course I'm panicking, what did you expect me to-"

"No, this is more or less what I expected," he said. "I'd like to make a suggestion, if I may."

She shot him a dark look, a look he chose to ignore.

"You can sit here asking yourself all these questions with no way to answer them and make yourself sick with worry, or you can just go talk to him yourself. You don't know how he'll react? Tell him, and find out."

"It's late," she protested feebly. "I can't leave McKenna-"

"I'll look after her."

An angel for a babysitter; this night kept getting weirder and weirder.

"She's the daughter of an angel. That makes her my niece, I suppose. That makes her family. She'll be safe with me. And you have an errand to run. Go to him, little one. Go to him, and tell him you love him. Trust that love. Let it guide you. It is a gift, to love, to be loved. Accept it, for once in your life."

It was a strange thing, knowing that she was going to die. Even if she didn't know when, or how, she knew that she could now, and the awareness of that death, the knowledge that the life she led would end, suddenly colored every thought in her head. There would be no next time for her and Elliot. There would be no second chance to get it right. There would be only this, this one fragile, fleeting life. If she wanted him, she would have to reach for him now, or lose him forever. One chance. One life.

"Go," Gabriel urged her gently.

Olivia leaned forward suddenly, and kissed him on the cheek.

"Oh!" he cried, surprised, blushing.

"I think I hate you, just a little," she said. "But right now I think I love you more."

"Well, I - " he stammered, flustered, apparently, by her all-too-human display of affection.

"I'll be back," she said. "Take care of my daughter."

"I will," he promised.

And then Olivia drew in a very deep breath, squared her shoulders, and marched out of the bathroom, out into the night, towards Elliot, the love of her one life, the father of her unborn baby, the only man she'd ever really wanted, the only one she was ever going to want.

Here's hoping, she thought. What a beautiful, terrible thing; hope. She would live in hope, for now. At least until she saw his face.

Chapter Text

There was a small, petulant part of him that did not want to open the door. Why should he, when she had so thoroughly closed it, when she continued to insist that they had no future together, when she'd as good as told him that she didn't love him enough to give her heart to him, that she never had, not since the first time? Why should he open the door, let her inside, when all he could think every time he saw her face was how she'd loved him once, loved him enough to marry him, but not enough to stay with him, loved a version of him he could not recall, a version of him he would never be again? How could a man compete with himself?

There was a part of him that did not want to open the door.

He opened the door. He was always going to open the door.

"What are you doing here, Liv?" he asked her, sighing. It was Liv who'd walked away from him, or sent him away, or whatever. It was Liv who decided they weren't gonna work before she ever gave them a chance to try. Why would she show up at his door, in the middle of the night? Had she changed her mind? What would he do if she had? It wasn't like he could just forget it, the way she'd wounded him, the mind-bending secret she'd confessed to him. Did she expect to just pick up where they left off?

Jesus, he wanted to pick up where they'd left off.

"I need to talk to you," she said.

" 'Bout what? Work?"

She'd be back on the job by now, he figured. Not like she needed to work, being an immortal almost-angel thing with a toddler to chase after, but he knew her. Knew she couldn't stay away. Liv needed something to do, someone to save, some purpose greater than herself to make up for the mistake of her birth. The truth of who she was, where she'd come from, was different from the story she'd given him when they first met, but the broad strokes remained the same. She remained the same. And he knew her, inside and out.

"No," she said, and for the first time since he'd opened the door he let himself look at her, really look at her, at the wild look in her eyes, the wrinkles in her clothes, the nervous way her hands twisted together. Something was wrong, he realized. She was upset about something, worried about something, and she'd come here for help. Goddamn it, he thought; she wouldn't let him hold her, but she'd still come to him when she needed something, and he was gonna give it to her, whatever it was, and what did that make him? A fool, maybe, but a fool in love.

"Can I come in?"

"Yeah." Really, he should've just invited her in to begin with. He held the door open for her, and she slipped by him, went to stand in the middle of his kitchen, still wringing her hands agitatedly.

"Maybe we should sit down," she said.

"Ok." He gestured towards the couch, started to walk there, but then she frowned.

"Maybe I'll just stay here," she said.

"Will you just tell me what you need? You're freaking me out a little here."

More than a little, truth be told; she was scaring the hell out of him. What could have her so spooked? Michael was gone, disintegrated by the power of angels or whatever the fuck, so what did she have to be so worried about?

What if something's wrong with McKenna? He wondered, fear settling heavy as lead in his gut. That precious little girl; he'd only known her for such a short time, but he cared for her, fiercely, and he missed her something awful, had wondered every day how they were getting along, Liv and McKenna, alone with no one to look after them. What if the girl was hurt, or sick, or something awful like that? He'd help in any way he could; he'd do anything for the them.

"The thing is," Liv started to say, and then she fell silent, chewing on her lip. How could someone who was thousands of years old look so lost, so young, so scared?

"Liv-"

"Gabriel came to see me tonight."

"Ok." Fucking Gabriel, again. More riddles and angel nonsense. Elliot hadn't met the angel, but Liv said he was one of the ones who'd gotten rid of Michael. Liv had said some other stuff, said that Gabriel talked to her, but Elliot couldn't remember what all the angel'd had to say. Knowing Liv she probably hadn't told him the half of it, anyway.

"They changed the rules," Liv rushed to explain. "The nephilim won't be barred from heaven any more."

"How could they do that? How could they just change the rules?"

It didn't make any sense. What about the nephilim who'd already died? Would they be allowed in, or kept back? What about the ones who were still living, would they still have some hoops to jump through to earn their eternal rest? Would they have to be baptized, make confession? Was any of that shit really necessary, anyway? Who had it right, he wondered; did anyone on earth have it right? Those were the kinds of questions that kept him up at night.

Across the room from him Liv spread her hands helplessly, as if to say I don't know.

"That's not all, though," she told him. "Gabriel says…Gabriel says I'm mortal now. I'm going to die."

Elliot rocked back on his heels, taken aback by this news. It shouldn't have shocked him, hurt him; Elliot had spent thirteen years believing Liv could die. Just like everyone else he knew, just like him and Kathy and the kids and everybody. It did hurt, though. The thought of a world without Liv in it, that grieved him.

"When?" he demanded.

"How the fuck should I know? Do you know when you're gonna die?"

"Take it easy, I just meant -"

"I know what you meant. No, he didn't say it was imminent or anything but he did say…this is my last chance, Elliot. There's not gonna be a next time, you know? I've only got this one chance to get this right."

That, he realized, must have been why she came. Why she showed up at his door with a look in her eyes like the world was ending. It was, ending. She'd lived for thousands of years, started over God only knew how many times, always knowing that if she fucked up where she was she could try again somewhere else, and she'd run out of time. She'd run out of time, and she'd come here, to him, and it should have made him hopeful, and maybe it did, but shit it galled him, too. She'd only come to him when she knew she was dying.

"What exactly is it you wanna get right?" he asked her slowly, and her shoulders slumped, defeated, crestfallen, almost, like maybe she'd expected him to be on the same page with her, to dive right in to whatever she was suggesting but he didn't know what she was suggesting and he hadn't forgotten the way she'd hurt him.

"There's three things I have to tell you," she said. "I don't know which to tell you first and I don't know if it makes a difference but I think it does."

"Start at the top," he said. "Go in fucking alphabetical order, whatever."

"You're really angry, aren't you." It wasn't a question.

"Did you think I wouldn't be? Jesus, Liv, after everything -"

"I love you," she rushed to say, and all he could do was stand there staring at her, his mouth hanging open stupidly. In some ways he'd expected that, given how this conversation had started, but still, it shook him. How long had he waited to hear those words from her? How many years had he spent, suspecting she felt as much for him as he did from her, and yet believing she'd never come right out and admit it? How much happier would they both be if she'd said that to him two months ago, instead of abandoning him?

"That's the first thing," she said. "I love you. I love you, Elliot. I didn't know…I didn't know until we were in the cabin with McKenna that you were…you. I didn't love you because you used to be someone else. I loved you, I love you, this man you are right now."

He wanted to believe her; he wanted that more than anything.

"The second thing is, I'm sorry."

She was dying, and she loved him, and she was sorry, and he was still angry with her, a little. Just a little, but the anger remained, because she loved him, and she was sorry, and she was only telling him because she was dying.

"I thought…I thought you'd be better off without me. I thought you could just be happy with your family. I thought I was only gonna hurt you. I thought I didn't…I thought I didn't deserve you. But you were right, that night. I made that choice myself and it wasn't fair. I didn't ask you what you wanted and I didn't listen and I'm sorry."

The anger cracked like a walnut, shattered into pieces, ineffectual and inconsequential. Yeah, she'd hurt him, and yeah, it wasn't fucking fair, but he knew why she'd done it; hell, he'd probably have done the same thing, in her shoes. Sacrificed himself for her happiness, because he loved her, hadn't he done that before? That little boy Ryan, Jenna; hadn't people died, because he loved her? Sometimes love hurt; he knew that better than most.

It didn't matter, he thought. It didn't matter that she'd left him, didn't matter that he was still struggling with the whole reincarnation thing. What mattered was this: they were, both of them, dying, with a finite number of years left, a clock ticking somewhere, counting down the minutes until they died, and they had a choice, right here, right now. They could choose, in this moment, how they spent the rest of those years. One last life, one last chance to get this right, like she'd said. Maybe they had five years left, ten, thirty if they were lucky. He'd take his chances with her; he loved her more than his pride.

"You love me," he said, walking slowly towards her, intent on taking her in his arms, holding her the way he'd wanted to do for so long now. "And you're sorry. That's two things, Liv. What's the third thing?"

When he reached her he caught her by the hips, settled his hands there and held on tight, and she didn't flinch or step back or try to step away; she swayed towards him, just a little, and she was beautiful like this, up close like this, and he could remember it so clearly, the way she'd felt moving over him, the shine of her wings and the way she moaned when she came and he wanted that again, wanted it over and over, and maybe she did, too, because when she looked up at him her eyes were hungry.

"I want you to remember," she said. "I want you to remember I said I love you first. I said I'm sorry first."

"Whatever it is," he said. "Just tell me, and we'll figure it out together, ok?"

He slid his hands over her hips, caught them together at the small of her back, pulled her in close to him, and she went willingly, buried her face in his shoulder and drew in a deep breath, and as he held her he realized she was shaking.

What could it be, he wondered, what could be worse, what could be more terrifying, that her admission of her mortality? What could scare her more than dying, more than loving him?

"If I say it I can't take it back," she whispered. "You'll know, and everything will change, and you might hate me, maybe-"

"Never gonna hate you, Liv." He never would; he never could. Even when she hurt him, even when he was sitting alone in his apartment brooding and missing her, he'd never hated her. The way he loved her was an immutable fact, as unchanging, as much a part of him as the color of his eyes.

"Tell me."

"Ok."

She leaned back in his arms, and looked him right in the eye as she spoke.

"I'm pregnant," she said.

Chapter Text

I'm pregnant.

"What?" he said, staring at her with his mouth dropped open, slack-jawed in - in what? In horror? In amazement? Confusion? She couldn't quite tell, but it made her stomach twist uncomfortably, the wildness in his eyes, the irrevocable declaration she'd just made. There would be no turning back now, no pretending that this had never happened. But that was the point, wasn't it? She didn't want to turn back, but what if he wasn't happy about her news? What if it was too much for him, six kids - seven, really, because McKenna was hers now, and always would be - juggling her and Kathy, trying to make it all work. Would it be too much work, more work than he wanted to do?

The what ifs were going to kill her.

"I know you didn't exactly sign up for this -" she started to give him an out, because it kinda looked like he wanted one, and why shouldn't he? It was too late, she realized; the moment of their salvation had come too late, and they were too old for this, with too much baggage, and Gabriel might have known that they loved each other but what did Gabriel know about the truth of life on earth, about the difficult choices that dictated the course of a human's life? Plenty of people lived and died without the one they loved beside them; love alone did not solve all the great problems of life.

"Are you…are you sure?"

She was starting to feel a bit queasy.

"Yes," she said. It wasn't supposed to be like this, she thought; this moment wasn't supposed to be full of doubt. In her head she'd thought it would be joyful. Where was the joy, then? Where were the smiles? Why did she feel as if her life was ending?

Maybe, she thought, because it was.

"I thought you said nephilim can't -"

"They can't. We can't. He…He made an exception. For me." For us. Free will, that was the kicker; God opened the door but let man choose. Elliot loved her; the door was open. Would he choose to walk through it? All those questions; she was starting to suspect he wouldn't.

Those suspicions were dispelled in a moment as a wide, brilliant smile spread across Elliot's face. His hands were settled loosely on her hips, and he used his hold on her to pull her hips flush with his, the blue of his eyes so bright it was hard to look at them at such close range.

"So," he said, grinning, "she's a little miracle. Our own personal miracle."

"She?" Olivia choked, a relief like hysteria winding its way up the back of her throat, about to burst out of her like a flower growing, shooting up between cracks in the sidewalk. That smile; he was not angry, was not doubtful, was not turning aside from the burden of yet another child. It was a welcoming smile; it was a smile born of joy, the joy she'd longed to feel, a joy that was slowly bubbling up inside her chest.

"Yeah," he answered. "Yeah, why not. Another little girl. Another perfect angel, just like you."

"I'm not an angel," she said, a bit sadly. She wasn't, not in any sense; only half-angel, caught between two worlds. Only half good, half righteous, half a woman.

"You are," he said. "You're my angel."

Under different circumstances she might have rolled her eyes, might have cringed at those words falling from any other man's lips. But from this man, in this moment, it felt like a blessing. He knew what she was and what she wasn't, where she'd come from, knew the shape of her sins and the name of her fears and the limits of her sanctity, and said it anyway, and meant it, and she loved him for it.

"We're gonna need a bigger apartment," he mused, still grinning, and something inside Olivia flinched like a kicked dog.

"Elliot," she said, starting to pull away, "let's not get ahead of ourselves-"

"Does everything have to be a goddamn fight with you?" he asked, his smile taking some of the sting out of his words. "Liv, just…think about it. Think about everything you've told me. We've been…if what you say is true, you and me, we've been working to get to this point for how many thousands of years? You said we've got one last chance to get it right, so let's…let's get it right. It's you and me, Liv. It's always gonna be you and me."

"I want that," she confessed. "It's just…"

It was just that she was afraid. It was too much change, happening too fast, and she could see it in his eyes, see that he was picturing forever, and she wanted forever, she did. Didn't she? An apartment with Elliot and McKenna and this new baby in it, Eli and McKenna growing up together, a family, a hope, a future worth looking forward to; yes, she wanted it. But what if it didn't work? What if he grew tired of her, what if they made each other crazy, what if his kids hated her? What if she wasn't cut out to be a mother, what if she failed McKenna and her baby, too?

"Olivia," he said sternly, in that tone of voice that made her look into his eyes, reflexively, almost, unable to ignore his plea.

"Do you think that God gave you this baby and made you mortal because we're no good for each other?"

She didn't really have an answer for that.

"Are you afraid I'm gonna leave the toilet seat up, or something? I am housebroken, you know."

"I'm afraid you're going to think I'm not worth it." The words came out so quiet she wasn't really sure she'd spoken at all, not until she registered the expression on his face; he looked like he was about to laugh at her.

"If there's one thing I know for a fact," he said, "it's that you're worth it. I been trying to tell you that since the first night in the cabin. Since fucking Gitano, if I'm honest. If I get one shot, one choice, I'm choosing you. I'm always gonna choose you."

The only way she was ever gonna find out what always looked like was to live it. Every promise they made to each other would only ever be proven through the passage of time; she could not know everything in this moment, in any moment. The only way to find out if they were gonna last was to allow them both the chance to start.

And there was an angel across town in her apartment, come all the way from heaven just to send her to this man, just to ensure that on this night she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

Have a little faith, she told herself.

"If I get a choice," she said, "I'm choosing you."

"Good," he told her, and before she could speak another word, he leaned in, and kissed her. Kissed her slowly, soft and sweet, waited until she sank against him, until the tension drained slowly from her shoulders to slide his tongue between her lips, his hands running gently over her back while her own fisted in his shirt, pulled him in tight against her.

There was fear in her, still. There might always be fear in her; she had suffered too many losses to let go of her expectation of regret. But she had always been stronger, braver, with him beside her. They had faced down horror together, in this life and many others besides, and her grief had always been lessened by his gentle presence. So long as he was there beside her, she would survive; she was certain of that.

There was fear in her, but oh, there was joy, a rapturous, wild relief that spread through her like a forest fire, lighting up the tinder of her grief and her disappointments and her doubts and turning it all to bursting, ravening joy, consuming everything in its path. She kissed him back, fervently, passionately, let his strength hold her up, let it become her own as their bodies wound together, her tongue sliding against his, the taste of him bursting through her mouth. That fire, it burned, lit a spark of need within her, and she took a step back, and then another, pulled him with her until her back hit the wall and they groaned together, hopeful and eager.

"Gotta ask," he managed to get the words out between heated kisses, his hands sliding beneath her shirt to run in circles over the tender skin of her back.

"Yeah?"

"Do you still have your wings?"

"Yeah." She knew she had not lost them; she'd been teaching McKenna how to hide her own wings, and found practical demonstration useful. Immortality had been stripped from her, and she'd been given the baby she'd always believed was beyond her reach but her wings were a part of her, still, and always would be. It was a gift she was grateful for; though she sometimes grew tired of having to hide them she would not ever wish to lose them, because they were hers, because they had shaped the course of her whole life, because she did not know who she would be without them, and did not want to find out.

"Good," he said, and kissed her again. "Because I wanna see 'em."

"Now?"

"Now," he agreed, and pulled himself away from her at last, stepped back to watch her hungrily, expectantly.

To show him her wings she'd have to remove her shirt - if she didn't want to ruin it, which she didn't - and she almost - almost - felt uncomfortable, awkward, on display, but before that hesitation could take root she recalled the way it felt, rocking above him in the bed in the ruined cabin, recalled the heat of his eyes and the tenderness of his touch and the way they'd made this baby she now carried, and the desire to feel that again, that wholeness, that pleasure, that unfettered joy, outweighed any reservations she might have had.

Bold as a boxer she looked him in the eye, and slowly pulled her shirt over her head, and she thought she heard him groan, very quietly, as her body was revealed to him. The bra followed, and that was a relief, too, a relief to be rid of it even as her skin prickled and burned beneath his longing stare. They were standing a bare foot from one another, squared up and ready, and as her wings slowly unfolded from behind her a look of wonder crossed his face.

"See," he said, stepping towards her, letting his left hand slide across the bare skin of his waist. "An angel." His right hand settled on her still-flat belly, and the wonder remained in his eyes, did not dim for a moment. "A miracle."

It was, she thought, it was a miracle. A miracle that they had survived, that they had found this peace, this happy ending she'd thought would never be in the cards for them. It was the grace of God.

"Liv," he said, and as he spoke it seemed to her that his eyes darkened, though she did not yet know why. "Where's McKenna?"

"At home. Gabriel's with her."

That made him laugh.

"Gabriel? You've got Gabriel watching your kid?"

It was, she had to admit, a little funny. A little insane. But their life had always been a little bit mad.

"He won't let anything happen to her."

"You think he'd mind staying there a little while longer?" Elliot asked, and then she understood, understood the darkness in his eyes and the need in his touch and the reason for his question.

"No," she said, a little breathlessly. "No, I don't think he'd mind."

"Good," Elliot said again, and then he was on her, pulling her in close, kissing her hard, and she sank into that kiss without reservation.

Chapter Text

He knelt before her as a supplicant before an altar, the fervent press of his lips more devout than any prayer, and above him, around him, she glowed bright as the sun itself, her soft lilting cries sacred as a prayer.

She was an angel, his angel, the answer to his every question, the locus of his devotion. Together they had come to this place, stumbled through his apartment shedding clothes and trading eager kisses until she tumbled to his bed, took up the position she now held, reclining on her elbows with her wings curling forward around her body, feathers brushing gently against the bare skin of his shoulders while he knelt at the foot of the bed between her supple thighs and covered her core with his mouth. There had been no time for this, before, no time for this kind of penitent exploration, but she had pledged herself to him, and him to her, and they had the rest of their lives, now; not all the time in the world, perhaps, but more time than he'd ever imagined they'd be lucky enough to enjoy, and he meant to make the most of every moment.

Every moment, beginning with this one, with the rasp of her coarse curls against his cheeks and the taste of her bursting on his tongue. She was all, everything, and he loved her, had loved her, always, world without end, amen, and he meant to show her. Meant to prove the truth of not just his desire for her, but his care for her, needed her to know, to feel, that he was hers, completely, and completely committed to protecting her, loving her, from now until his last breath, and after that, too, if God was willing, if grace was kind. With eager lips and determined tongue he drank deeply of her, followed the direction of her insistently rocking hips and her uninhibited moans until she was shaking from it, from his lips suckling at her clit, his tongue laving against it, driving her higher, and higher, until he had to feel for himself the heat of her, the wetness of her, the velvet clutch of her cunt, and his hand shot up, two fingers delving deep within her, curling until she screamed.

Her thighs were thrown over his shoulders, pressed hard to his ears and muffling the sound of her breathless cries, but it was not enough, not enough closeness, not enough touch, not for either of them, and she pulled herself up into a sitting position, blessed him with the gentle touch of her hands smoothing over his head, pressed her cunt so close to his face he could hardly breathe, and ground herself against him, hips rocking in time to the thrusting of his fingers, and close, he could tell she was close from the sound of her, from the way the inner walls of her sex clenched around him, and he did not falter for a second, sucking and licking at her, plunging his fingers into the warmth of her again and again, and as he moved her body seemed to draw in tighter, and tighter, her every muscle gone taut with longing, pulling him in, and in, and now, he thought, it had to be now, any second now she would come, and he wanted to feel it, to taste it, more than he wanted his next breath.

The way she held him, she was too tense to fall away from him, and so his free hand rose up; he meant to reach for her breast, but his palm fell against her belly instead, and he remembered, remembered what she'd told him, the miracle they had been giving, the miracle taking shape even now within her body, and while he fucked her with his mouth, with his right hand, his left hand remained there, hovering over the little spark of life that would one day be their child, and she seemed moved by this, affected by his devotion. Though her body continued to writhe with pleasure she reached down to cover his hand with her own, laced their fingers together and held on tightly to him as she fell apart, painting his chin a rush of wetness. As she came her wings wrapped suddenly around him, enveloped him in a soft and comforting darkness where nothing and no one else seemed to exist, just him, and her, two bodies, two hearts, twining themselves together, never again to be parted.

As she came down her wings fell away from him, and he missed it, just a little. It felt nice, the embrace of those wings, almost as nice as the embrace of her arms, but when he looked up at her, opened his eyes and stared in wonder into her beautiful face, there was no disappointment in him. She leaned down and he stretched up and they met in the middle in a tender, awe-struck kind of kiss, a kiss that began slow, and gentle, began as no more than a gentle brush of lips, but quickly grew into something else. Emboldened by her response to him and proud of the orgasm he'd given her Elliot felt a fierce desire to make her come again, and again, wondered to himself how many times he could make her come, wondered if he could make her come more than anyone else ever had. He didn't know the record, and now was not the moment to ask, but he meant to best it, if not tonight than one night soon. He meant to be the best, for her.

In a rush of growing need his tongue surged between her lips and her hands reached for him, tugged at him, and she slid backwards along the bed even as he rose up and covered her body with his own. For a second he wondered if maybe it would hurt her, lying on her back, wondered if her wings would make this position uncomfortable, but she wrapped them once more around him, held him with her wings even as she held him with her arms, fingertips and feathers both trailing along his back, lighting him up with desire for her.

The last time - the first time - she had straddled his lap, taken charge of their encounter, and he'd enjoyed that - Jesus, more than enjoyed, he'd fucking loved it - but what he'd loved most was being able to look into her eyes as he surged within her, and he wanted that again, and so long as she was comfortable on her back he was determined to keep her there, where he could see her, feel her, all of her.

Maybe he should have asked what she wanted, but she was kissing him, nipping at his lip one moment and then licking against the roof of his mouth the next, and her hips were rocking beneath him, grinding her soaking cunt against the rock-hard length of his cock, and there was, he figured, no real need for words; she was telling him already what he wanted, and all he had to do was listen.

So he did, listen; he reached down between them and ghosts his fingers once more over her silken folds, gathered up her wetness and then spread it along his cock before lining himself up at her tender center.

"Please," she breathed against his mouth when he hesitated a second too long; he'd been right, after all. He did know what she wanted. He wanted the same, and did not make her ask again.

"Shit," he swore fervently as the head of his cock dipped inside her; she was so fucking wet, slippery with her arousal, but tight, still, coming down from her orgasm, and she fit around him so snugly he feared for a moment he might come right there, less than an inch inside her and dying already, brought to the point of ruin by the glory of her.

"Please," she gasped again, clawing at his back, trying to draw him into her. "Fuck, please -"

Her curses cut off on a sharp cry; he drew his hips back while she begged for him so prettily, and surged forward, fast and hard and suddenly he was deep, so deep inside her he could have sworn he felt the beat of her heart through the fluttering walls of her cunt, and he had a little theory, decided to test it out, reached between them and strummed his thumb over her clit and just like that she was coming again, overwhelmed by the sudden stretch of him inside her, overwhelmed, he figured, the same way he was, by the sheer bliss of it, of them, coming together once more.

That's two, he thought. We can go for three. He wanted more, but his own need was almost more than he could bear; he wasn't sure how much longer he would last, caught within the inferno of his beloved, delirious with joy at finally having been given everything he'd ever dreamed of.

Still, despite his own shattering need, he meant to try. For her, he meant to try, to be good, to bring her pleasure, to make her feel the same joy, the same love, the same relief that sparked and shone within him like lightning.

"Look at me," he growled at her, holding himself steady over her with his hands planted on hte mattress by her shoulders, and he watched her eyes flutter open, saw the heat and the love and the power there, and shivered all over.

"I love you," he reminded her.

"I love you," she affirmed breathlessly. Beneath him she was not still; he could feel her body still thrumming in pleasure, her hips still lazily pressing up towards him, her wings still fluttering gently around his ribs, his back. Surrounded; he was utterly, completely surrounded by her, and there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

Slowly he withdrew, watched the play of emotions on her face, the way every piece of her responded to every piece of him, and when he thrust back into her he watched hungrily, watched the arch of her neck as her head tilted back, watched the rise of her breast, suddenly frozen as she forgot for a moment how to breathe, watched her, and thought to himself he had never, in all his days, seen anything so lovely as her.

He bowed his head, let his mouth settle at the curve of one glorious breast, and then began to fuck her in earnest. Desperately, eagerly, he rocked into her, again and again, and she welcomed him, held him, blessed him, accepted him, and beautiful, it was beautiful, and Jesus, it felt good. Too fucking good.

"Not gonna last," he gasped the words against her breast, and then caught her flesh between his teeth, not hard enough to break the skin but enough to bruise, maybe, he hoped, enough to leave a mark for them both to see later, and remember. He was not going to last; there was no way he could hold off his own release, not when she felt so perfect, when she held him so tight.

"Almost," she keened, that one word all she could manage, but it was enough, for him. She was almost there, but almost was not good enough for him. He wanted her to shatter when he did, wanted them to come together, if he could manage it.

"Touch yourself," he told her. He couldn't do it, needed his hands to stay where they were to keep from collapsing on top of her, but she could do it, and he wanted her to, wanted to know how she touched herself, wanted to make damn sure that she felt as good, as righteous, as fucking godlike as he felt in this moment.

She did not answer him with words but he felt it, felt her hands move, felt her fingers running over her clit, brushing against his cock, slipping through the mess they had made of her, and he felt the hold of her cunt around him tighten still further, and that's it, he thought. That's it.

They came together, the way he wanted them to, his grunts and her cries mingling together, her fingers and his cock pushing them both over the edge while her cunt contracted around him and he spilled himself inside her. Bliss; it was bliss, a breathless, timeless burst of light and sensation that left him so weak he was shaking with it. Their chests were pressed hard together, their hearts pounding against one another, and her wings were holding him, and he had never known a satisfaction so complete.

Beneath him she was limp, sated, now, relaxed and replete; he pressed a gentle kiss to her chin and then rolled away, gathered her up in his arms and did not even flinch as her legs wrapped around his thigh and painted his skin with their wetness. There would be time enough to clean up later; there would be time enough for everything, later. They had time now.

Some of that time they spent in silence, simply holding on to one another. It was a gift that had too long been denied them; he'd spent too many years unable to touch her, keeping record of where he could put his hands and where he couldn't, tucking those hands in his pockets instead of catching hold of her, and he didn't have to, anymore, didn't have to restrain himself, didn't have to keep himself apart from her, and he reveled in the closeness of her.

"So, you're happy, then?" she asked him when she finally remembered how to breathe, whispering the words into the crook of his shoulder where she'd buried her face. She was lying on her side, allowing him the opportunity to run his hand along the outline of her, from perfect tits to the dip of her waist to the rise of her hip and back again, and he indulged himself even as he laughed at her question.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm pretty fucking happy."

"I meant about the baby," she murmured. "I know you've already got-"

"I love my kids," he cut her off before she could start to spin herself up into worried and doubts and questions. "All my kids. That means McKenna and this baby, too. Happy…Christ, Liv, happy isn't a big enough word for what I feel right now. You…you're going to have a baby. My baby. Our baby. We're going to have a baby. It's…yeah, I'm happy. I'm really, really happy."

She'd always wanted that, a baby of her own to hold, to love. A family, a place to belong. And he had always, always wanted to be the one to give it to her, had been unable to stomach the thought of someone else touching her, loving her, sharing that joy with her, while he was trapped on the other side of the city, too far away from her to reach. But now her dreams were coming true, and he could walk this path beside her, sharing in her joy, and one day soon he would hold a child who was half him, half her, and all blessing; there was, he thought, no greater gift than that.

Happy; shit. This feeling, this moment, was more than simple happiness, more than joy, more than anything; it was everything, and they shared in it together, now and always.

Chapter Text

Thirty years later…

They'd scheduled it, the same way they might have scheduled a routine physical or an eye exam. 9:00 am tomorrow, how's that sound? That's what the doctor said. It sounded pretty fucking bad to her, but then it wasn't like there was ever a good time. Not for this.

They'd scheduled her mother's death.

It was a stroke, they'd told her a week before when Mom first went into the hospital. A stroke had zapped most of her brain function and her heart wasn't beating on its own and the doctors had put her on life support, and McKenna got the feeling they'd done it as much for her as for her mother, maybe more so. Mom had always been adamant about not wanting intervention and she wouldn't be too happy about it now, but McKenna needed the time. She needed a little time, to gather her siblings to her, to make her own goodbyes. The time was coming to an end, though. The doctors had scheduled it; they'd be shutting off the machines at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow.

It was still today, though - barely - the clock was ticking closer to midnight and McKenna and Sophie and Noah had decided to spend the night with their mother. To spend one last night with their mother. The big kids, as Mom and Dad had always called them - though Dad's five older children were hardly kids now, Maureen was in her fifties - had come by throughout the week, held Mom's hand while McKenna and Sophie and Noah went to the hospital cafeteria to get a bite to eat, offered what comfort they could. Eli had taken Dad's dog home with him so the poor thing wouldn't be alone. Mom wasn't their mom but they loved her, too, and they'd been a godsend, all of them, but now it was dark, and quiet, and late, and the five of them were gone, and it was just Mom's three children now, united at the end of all things.

We should have seen this coming, that's what McKenna kept thinking. It was less than two months since Dad died - of a heart attack, in his sleep - and she'd known the day he was buried that Mom wouldn't stick around long. She was in good health, and probably should've had at least a few more years ahead of her, maybe a whole decade in which to watch her grandchildren grow, to pick up new hobbies or rediscover old ones, but McKenna had known the truth, seen it written on Mom's face. Mom didn't want to stick around a few more years, a decade even, without Dad. He'd gone, and she would be determined to follow; that had always been their way. They had always done everything together, and death would be no different. It wasn't like Mom made herself have a stroke, or anything, but McKenna would spend the rest of her own life swearing that Mom had died of missing him.

There were rules on the ward, but everyone, all the doctors and nurses, seemed to know what was coming for the Stablers, and they bent the rules for McKenna's family. The rules said only two people were allowed in the room at a time, and over the last week they'd sometimes had as many as seven. Everyone had come - everyone who mattered. All eight of Mom and Dad's kids, the grandkids. Uncle Fin, Aunt Amanda, Uncle Sonny. Uncle Rafa, Aunt Alex. It was hard, seeing them all again so soon after Dad's funeral, watching them touch Mom's hair, whisper their goodbyes. It was nice, too, though. Nice to have family.

The rules said only two people were allowed in the room at once, but there were three of them now, gathered around Mom's bedside. Sophie was sitting in the chair beside her, holding Mom's hand, and Noah was perched on the end of the bed by her feet, his eyes trained on her face. Her eyelids kept twitching, and every time they did Noah jumped. McKenna knew how he felt; her heart skipped a beat every time, too, but the doctors had told them not to hope for much. It's just a reflex, they'd said. It was just her body responding to some stimuli, not a sign that she'd come back to them. The machines were the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth, and even that connection was tenuous; the scans all said the same thing. That she couldn't hear, couldn't think. That her mind was gone, that though her body remained there was no piece of her left inside it.

Sophie and Noah were sitting, but McKenna was pacing by the door, watching over them. She felt responsible for them, somehow. She was the oldest, after all. She was their big sister and she was supposed to watch out for them, keep them safe, comfort them, and that responsibility had never weighed as heavily on her as it did now. Now that Mom and Dad were both gone.

McKenna was pacing by the door, and so it was McKenna who saw the visitors first.

The door swung slowly open and she looked up, expecting to see a nurse - though there was no reason to expect anyone, they weren't checking Mom's vital signs every few hours anymore - but it was not a nurse who walked through that open door.

It was three men instead, all of them somber-faced and moving slow. Two of them she recognized - Uncle Marcus and Uncle Antony - but the third was a stranger. She didn't bother with him, and instead flew straight into Uncle Antony's arms.

"Hello, habibi," he murmured as he held her close, using the same endearment for her that he'd always reserved for her mother.

I'm so glad you're here, she thought, but the words stuck in her throat; just seeing them brought her to the verge of tears, because she knew why they had come. Marcus and Antony, they were like her, like Mom. They were nephilim, half man, half angel, keepers of secrets. She'd known the truth about herself, about Mom, since she was very small, and Marcus and Antony had reached out to her often, helped to initiate her into their world, helped her to make peace with herself. And they had come now to bring peace to Mom, to their own little sister.

Antony released her gently so that she could hug Marcus, so that he could greet her siblings, who rose and came to hug him as well. Sophie and Noah knew the truth, too, though they had no wings of their own, though their lives would chart a different course than McKenna's.

"I'm sorry we have to meet under these circumstances," the stranger told her while they watched the family reunion playing out in the hospital room. "I was always fond of your mother, and I am sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," McKenna told him sincerely. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know your name."

"Of course you don't," the stranger told her, smiling. "No need to be sorry. Gabriel." He introduced himself, and held his hand out for a shake.

McKenna just stared at that hand in confusion.

I'm going crazy, she thought. I've finally cracked.

"Fear not," Gabriel told her gently. "I'm just another uncle, really."

"You're an angel," McKenna said incredulously.

"So are you. Sort of. And so is she. And I have come, with your consent, to take her home."

"McKenna," Noah said, very softly, from somewhere behind her left shoulder, and she whirled around to face him. This thing Gabriel meant to ask of her, this consent he sought, could not come from her alone; it was a choice she and her siblings would have to make together.

They had all come from different places, McKenna and Noah and Sophie; all three of them had different biological parents. But they all looked alike; dark hair, blue eyes, each of them in their own way a mix of Mom and Dad, their parents' legacy living on.

"Are you ready?" she asked them.

She wanted the answer to be yes and she wanted the answer to be no and she did not know yet what her own heart desired most. It might be nice, she thought, to spend a few more hours alone with Mom, but they'd endured a week of goodbyes already. She'd said goodbye to her mother a hundred times in the last seven days. Who would it help, prolonging the inevitable? Would it help, even, or would this be better; would it be better to wait until daylight, to watch the doctors turn off the machines, to watch her mother's body slowly grow still and lifeless, or would it be better to let Gabriel take her now, calm and quiet and surrounded by the ones who loved her?

"She's ready," Sophie said. Her posture was resolute but her eyes were damp and her lower lip was quivering, the same way Mom's used to do when she was sad. "She never wanted this. It's…it's not fair to keep her on the machines."

"Soph's right," Noah agreed heavily. "It's…it's time."

Behind them Marcus sniffled; he was crying already, and Antony reached out and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. Over the last thirty years Mom had grown old and grey, but they had not changed a bit, nor ever would, McKenna knew. They were like her, not gifted the chance of a mortal life, but fated instead to walk the earth until the very end of days, fated to protect it, as McKenna herself intended to do. On this night one nephilim was departing, but another remained to take her place, and McKenna made a silent vow to try her best, to make her mother proud.

"You're all very brave," Gabriel told them. "And so was she. You are the very best parts of her. Of both of them. You can be proud of that."

"Thank you," McKenna told him thickly, earnestly. "How do we…"

"Why don't you go and say goodbye to your mother? Take your time."

And so they did. One at a time, McKenna first, Olivia Stabler's children approached her bedside. McKenna bowed low and kissed her mother's forehead, and whispered one final I love you, before stepping back to allow Sophie her own chance at a farewell. What Sophie did, what Noah said, McKenna could not say, but as they finished they returned to her, and she wrapped her arms around them, and held onto them both as Marcus and Antony and Gabriel drew up to the other side of the bed.

"I think," Gabriel said slowly. "It might be nice if there was singing. Can any of you sing?"

No one answered him with words, but after a heartbeat's pause Antony began to sing. His voice was low and sweet, and only trembling a little, as he sang a slow song of lamentation in an ancient language McKenna did not recognize. The words held no meaning for her, but she could hear the sorrow in them, and tears began to course silently down her cheeks as Gabriel bowed his head, and placed his hand gently on the crown of Mom's head.

"You have done well, little one," he said in a soft voice while Antony sang. "You have devoted yourself to the care of others, and countless people owe their lives and their joy to you. You have loved well and with passion, extended that love to everyone who ever knew you. Be blessed, and know that you are loved. Know that we will watch over your children, and we will keep them safe. The world was brighter, while you were in it, but your time has drawn to an end. On the other side your man is waiting for you, little one. It's time to go to him. It's time to go home."

And then he leaned down and kissed her cheek, and the machines all went deathly silent, and Mom's chest fell on one final exhale, and did not rise again.

There was no great flash of light, no clap of thunder, no sudden vision of Mom's spirit departing her flesh; there was only silence as Antony's voice failed him, a silence so complete that for a moment McKenna was convinced that the world itself had stopped turning. Maybe it had; Olivia Stabler was a titan of a woman, half angel, half human, all heart, and the world ought to pause, McKenna thought, to mark her passing.

"Be at peace, children," Gabriel told them. "Your parents are united, as they so dearly longed to be, and they will wait for you. Know you are loved, now and always."

There wasn't really anything McKenna could say to that and she was crying too hard to speak anyway, but it didn't seem to matter. Gabriel smiled at them one last time, and then promptly vanished, leaving Olivia's family behind to mourn her.

In death she was peaceful, still and beautiful as she had always been beautiful, but she was gone, and McKenna could feel the absence of her. Would probably always feel the absence of her. But it was like Gabriel said; Mom and Dad were together now, and that was all they'd ever really wanted, and all McKenna wanted for them. It must have really been something, she thought, to love someone the way her parents had loved one another. To build a life, and spend that life in love. It was a gift, and one she was grateful to have witnessed.

In this moment, though, she felt only sorrow, and so she stood still, holding on to her brother and sister, and the three of them wept together, and bid farewell to the woman who had always been the very center of their lives. One life, her life, had ended in that room, but a new one had begun, a life without her in it but one which nonetheless would be defined her, by the lessons she had taught, by the love that she had shared; she would not ever be forgotten.

Elliot and Olivia Stabler left the earth within months of one another. Their spirits departed and yet pieces of them would remain, always, in the hearts of their children, in the hearts of every life they had ever touched. And though the ones left behind would never know it, Elliot and Olivia continued to watch over their children from afar, their guardian angels, always.