Work Text:
Jenna raised the gun again, and even though she pointed it directly at her mother’s killer, Elliot felt his gut clench. Olivia was just in front of him, exposed, trying to stem the bleeding from Sister Peg’s chest, not protected behind a desk or a door or a wall…just right there, almost in the exact spot Sister Peg had been in when she’d been shot.
“Jenna!” he called, attempting to draw her attention back to him so he could try to talk reason into this child who had lost everything. But she didn’t lower the gun even an inch…it was like she couldn’t even hear him. He saw her finger twitch on the trigger.
Elliot fired his weapon and saw Jenna go down, the gunshot in her side a glaring condemnation of what he had no choice but to do.
No. No. No.
Elliot holstered his gun as he rushed to her, ignoring the three criminals in the cage. They could wait; he was almost certain that two of them were dead. She couldn’t. Kicking the gun out of her hand was a reflex born of years of experience and training; he knew she was done shooting. Done with the bloodbath.
Her body felt so delicate in his hands as he lifted her, supporting her torso and head in his arms. For a moment, he was strangely fixated by the blood on her teeth…why was there blood on her teeth when he had shot her in the side? He knew the answer, knew what it meant, but it was strangely incongruous with the rest of her face, with the smooth, unlined skin of a child, the eyes that seemed so confused about what she had done and what had happened to her.
“I just bought if off the street,” she told him, as though he had asked her where she gotten the gun, as though it were of any importance in what he knew were her final moments. “It’s easy.”
Elliot looked on in horror, his heart pounding painfully into his chest, into his neck, into his back, as she exhaled for the last time, the light in her eyes replaced by the blankness he had seen all too often.
She was gone, and just as he forced himself to realize the consequences of what he had done, he heard Olivia exclaim softly over Sister Peg’s death.
It’s all over.
He saw Olivia looking at him across the squad room, her beautiful mouth open in horror, her eyes as wide as he assumed his were as he gazed back at her.
Suddenly, he had no idea what to say. No idea what to do. As the squad room burst into life around them, only he and Olivia unmoving in the chaos, Elliot felt as though everything he had ever known about himself, valued within himself, dissolved into the kind of fine ash that would be swept away in a steady rain.
I killed a child.
He didn’t even notice as Cragen came up behind him. “Stabler,” he said softly, rather more as a father would address an injured son than a captain would address an officer who had just used lethal force. “Elliot,” he amended when Elliot still didn’t look up.
Elliot felt Cragen grip his shoulder, and the gentle but firm pressure finally brought him back into some sense of the reality his mind had been trying to deny. He looked down at Jenna, still in his arms, her eyes unseeing.
I killed her. I killed a child.
“Son,” Cragen finally said. “You have to let her go. Put her down, Stabler. Let her go.”
“El,” Olivia said, coming to kneel beside him. “It was a good shoot. This isn’t your fault.”
Nothing about shooting a child is good. And who else’s fault would it be?
Elliot finally lowered Jenna’s body to the ground and stood, still not completely seeing all the action around him as the EMTs came for Eddie Skinner and the plainclothes officer who had taken a bullet graze to his arm. Everyone else was dead.
They’re all dead.
Jenna, Sister Peg, the detective from Homicide, Special Agent Greer, and Luke Ronson. Five deaths in less than two minutes. How had it come to this?
“Come with me,” Cragen ordered quietly. “My office.”
Elliot noticed as Olivia removed his weapon from its holster. It was standard protocol, he knew that, but to have his partner remove his gun as though he was some kind of threat, some kind of unstable young officer who might resume the bloodbath at any moment…
“It’s just protocol, El,” she murmured as she followed Elliot and Cragen into the captain’s office. It was as though she had read the muted protest in his mind. But that had always been what he and Liv had been able to do, hadn’t it? Read each other’s moves, each other’s moods, sometimes even each other’s thoughts.
“Sit,” Cragen ordered, his tone still much gentler than usual.
Elliot sat. It was easier, after all, to follow orders than to make even the smallest decision himself. Olivia walked past him and placed his weapon on the captain’s desk. When she turned and locked eyes with him again, her own eyes were glistening with horror, worry, and empathy.
“Benson, back to the squad room,” Cragen ordered, his voice sharper now. “FID and IAB will be here any minute, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the DA’s office shows up, too. We’re going to be crawling with brass on top of all that. I don’t need you and Stabler anywhere near each other. You know how this plays out.”
For a moment, Olivia’s mouth opened as though she might object, as though she might tell Cragen that Elliot needed her with him, that they needed to be together. But she didn’t, only saying, “I’ll be right outside” before she left the office and closed the door behind her.
Elliot immediately wished she hadn’t, wished she had fought to stay by his side.
You idiot. You know she can’t. You know this isn’t her choice.
It wasn’t. They had danced this dance before, and he knew the procedure. They couldn’t speak of the incident—hell, he couldn’t even speak to his captain about it—until after FID and most likely IAB had interviewed all of them. He had to give up his weapon immediately, and it would be examined as evidence just as it would have if he had been a perp instead of a detective. He would be on modified duty at best, but most likely on administrative leave after something like this.
“You’re gonna want to call your PBA rep,” Cragen said, and Elliot wondered if he was genuinely concerned or just wanted to fill the silence.
“Don’t need ‘em,” Elliot mumbled. “Everyone in the squad room saw what went down.”
I killed a child.
“You do, Stabler.” The captain sounded like himself again. “Anyone could see this was a good shoot, but with your jacket, they’re going to be going over everything.”
Elliot opened his mouth, but Cragen cut him off. “Not another word. You know this conversation isn’t privileged.” The captain gazed over Elliot’s shoulder through the window overlooking the squad room.
The site of a mass killing.
“Tucker’s on his way in,” Cragen announced, his voice resigned. Elliot knew the captain would rather have had any other IAB rat than Tucker, who had tried so many times to take Elliot’s and Olivia’s badges, always without success.
“Okay.”
Cragen crossed to the door and opened it, giving Elliot one last look-over before he left. “Just tell him the truth. Anything he asks, just tell him the truth.”
I always have.
Cragen looked like he wanted to say more but didn’t get a chance to as Ed Tucker swept into the office.
“I’ll give you the room,” the captain said.
“No need,” Tucker responded, his suspicious eyes already on Elliot. “Stabler and I are going to 1PP.”
As Tucker led Elliot through a squad room now full of investigators and body bags, he caught Olivia’s eye, saw her mouth the words “Call me after,” and turned away from her as he left the precinct for what he knew could be the very last time.
***
It went just as Elliot could have predicted, and by the end of the IAB interview, Elliot felt anger seeping through the numbness of the last several hours. Tucker had questioned him on everything—not just the shooting, which even IAB couldn’t spin as unjustified, but on his jacket, on his previous referrals, on their treatment of Jenna Fox before she had come back into the squad room with a handgun. It seemed as though Tucker were looking for anything he could pin on Elliot, anything that would make this mess his fault.
When Tucker began questioning Olivia’s actions rather than his own, Elliot stood. “We’re through here,” he said, his voice harsh and clipped. “You wanna go after me, let’s see you do it. She had nothing to do with this.” It was true; Elliot was the one who had made the shot. All Olivia had done was to try to talk to Jenna and then try to care for Sister Peg.
“You two are a package deal,” Tucker said as Elliot opened the door to leave. “Where I find one of you, I always find the other.”
Elliot put his hand on the doorjamb and turned toward Tucker. He wanted to say something biting, cutting, anything to get this rat off Olivia’s case for something that had nothing to do with her. He had fired his gun; she had not. He wanted to punch Tucker in the jaw, to shove him against the wall and get in his face.
But he didn’t. He turned and walked away, his shoulders bowing under the absolute conviction that Tucker was right—there was no one without the other, and if Elliot was honest, there hadn’t been for a long time.
It’s been her for years. It’s been us for years. I’m closer to my partner than any other person in my life. It was a hard truth to swallow, something he had denied letting himself realize for at least eight years.
Elliot’s phone pinged with the impeccable timing Liv always seemed to have, and as soon as Elliot saw her name flash across the screen, his heart swelled so overwhelmingly he wondered why he had never felt it before. He didn’t unlock the phone to see her message; he didn’t think he could bear it.
He wanted it too much. He wanted her words, her concern, her companionship more than anything, but it was too much…too much because he realized, and not for the first time, that he wanted her comfort more than he wanted his own wife’s. He wanted to take her in his arms more than he wanted to go home and sleep next to Kathy in their marriage bed.
I have felt it before, Elliot realized. All the times she was in danger, all the times we saved each other, I felt this love and hid it from myself, calling it partnership. All the times I tried to protect her…all the times I stared when she wasn’t looking, all the times I laughed at something she’d said hours before. All the times I dreamed of her.
But she isn’t, and can’t be, mine. Of that, he was absolutely certain. He had made vows to Kathy, and to his children at their baptisms, that did not allow even for this longing he seemed unable to control.
Elliot had no interest in asking a uniform for a ride to the 1-6 to pick up his car. Someone from Tucker’s office had given him a pair of NYPD sweats and taken his clothing as evidence, though Elliot wondered what the point of that had been. He would not be called in by a civilian for walking around in bloody clothes, so he just…walked.
He knew the way. Though he wasn’t sure he’d ever actually walked it before, the route between One Police Plaza and the 16th Precinct was indelibly programmed into his brain.
He quickly passed the bodega where he and Olivia had picked up cups of unusually good coffee anytime they had to come this way. A few blocks later, he looked into the brightly lit window of the 24-hour diner where they’d shared many a late-night or early-morning meal on the way into or out of stakeouts and crime scenes. Then, the corner where the hot dog stands owner had always unabashedly stared at Liv’s chest every time they’d stopped for a quick bite…Elliot actually smiled a little, a grim thing but better than the numbness he was still battling, as he thought of how often he’d wanted to punch the guy. Liv had always taken it in her stride, usually reminding the stand owner, “Hey, I’m up here” with a cocked eyebrow and that half-smile, half-grimace that was all her.
Before he’d even realized how far he’d walked, Elliot found himself staring at the 1-6, the “house,” as they called it, which sometimes seemed more familiar and welcoming than his own home in Queens.
He glanced down at his phone. 10:24 PM. The squad room was certainly still a crime scene, though he knew by now the bodies would have been taken to the medical examiner’s office, the injured to the hospital. He hoped Eddie Skinner was hurting bad.
He wondered if she was still there, somewhere in the building, talking to investigators or the rest of the squad or…waiting for him.
Abruptly, Elliot realized he couldn’t be there. He couldn’t walk through those doors, couldn’t face the stares and the questions and even the reassurances he’d likely get. He couldn’t look past the crime scene tape to the place where Jenna had fallen, the cell where two of her victims had been killed, to the place where Olivia had knelt over Sister Peg’s body.
Most of all, he knew he couldn’t face Olivia Benson. Not because she wouldn’t have his back…not because she wouldn’t be his greatest support through whatever fallout there would be from this…not even because he knew she would see through whatever kind of bravado he might try to throw out. No, he couldn’t face her because what he had done tonight, what Tucker had said about them, and the swelling in his chest when her name had flashed across his screen meant that he could not allow himself to be around her when he was this vulnerable, this willing to do anything that would break him out of the numbness that had overtaken him as Jenna had died in his arms and the anger at Tucker and the NYPD as a whole.
So, Elliot took out his phone again, ignored the two missed calls and three messages from Liv along with several others, and called his wife.
“Kathy?” he said when she picked up, anxiously asking him where he had been in the hours since the news had broken about Jenna’s rampage and death, why he hadn’t called her back, why he hadn’t come home. “Kathy, I just…I can’t right now. Please, just come pick me up. Will you do that? I’ll be…” he racked his brain for where he might go near the precinct that he wouldn’t be seen. “I’ll be at the 24-hour arcade around the block from the precinct. Yes, the arcade. Text me when you get there.” He hung up before she could ask any more questions, stuffed his phone and his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants, angled his head down, and hurried away from everything and everyone behind the doors of the 1-6.
***
Five nights later, Elliot woke for what seemed like the thirtieth time from the worst nightmare he had ever experienced. Ever since he had come home from the precinct on the night of the shooting, two nightmares plagued him in a random rotation that dominated his mind when he was sleeping and kept him nearly silent while he was awake. The first one was the one where he held Jenna in his arms as she died, except instead of Jenna, he found himself staring at one of his three daughters, watching the light leave their eyes. The other saw him hesitating to take the shot and then holding Olivia in his arms as she died.
Though he thought the answer to which of the dreams was worse should have been obvious, he had to admit that both terrified him to his very core.
“Elliot, honey, I’m right here. I’m right here.” Kathy’s voice was sleepy but soothing as she sat up next to him, rubbing her hand softly across his bare, sweaty back. “You’re okay; it’s over.”
It will never be over. She would understand that.
Elliot tried to shake off both the nightmare and the thought that never should have crossed his mind, as though Kathy competed with his partner. Of course, there was no competition. He wouldn’t allow there to be.
Elliot got up and padded into the bathroom to splash his face and shake off the latest horror. That’s what he told himself, anyway. If he was honest with himself, though, he would have admitted that it was because Kathy’s touch was the last thing he wanted after watching Liv die in his arms, the image and experience of the dream seeming so very real.
This can’t go on.
He didn’t realize he had spoken the words aloud until he heard Kathy agree with him, most of the grogginess gone from her voice. “It’s time to move on, Elliot,” she said. “You’ve given all you have to this job; you’ve sacrificed so much. It’s enough, honey. Take your pension and, for God’s sake, let’s move on.” Her voice held no measure of accusation, only pleading—and he knew that, for once, she wasn’t focused on the way the job had interfered with what she considered his familial duties. She wasn’t focused on his relationship with Olivia. Her concern was for him.
How does she still love me after everything I’ve done, after all the ways I’ve failed her?
He shook his head, a moment of what seemed like clarity flashing through his sleep-deprived, traumatized mind. She was right—he had lost his grip, and it was time to leave. He had to do it to save himself, but he knew that his trauma after so many years with the Special Victims Unit was only part of it. He had to do it to save his family; he had to choose his family now.
“I’ll file my papers in the morning,” he muttered, not looking at his wife as he pulled on a hoodie and some sweatpants and headed downstairs. He knew there would be no more sleep that night, and although he had just decided to save his family from his job and from the danger posed by his treacherous feelings for his partner, he just couldn’t be around Kathy anymore that night. “Go back to bed, sweetheart.”
He sat at his kitchen table and pulled out his phone. The little red numbers above his Messages app and the Phone app were in the double digits, most of the notifications from Liv. He should call her; he knew it was the right thing to do. Although it was nearly three in the morning, he knew she would answer, knew she wouldn’t object to the hour after five days of silence.
His thumb hovered over the call button. Just one press, and he could talk to her. He could hear her voice. He could say goodbye.
Except that he knew something that stayed his hand, that moved his thumb away from the little phone icon. He knew without a shred of doubt that if he heard her voice, he would never have the strength to leave.
He put the phone down, unsure of whether or not he had done the right thing. But his resolve would break the second she said his name. It may not have been the right thing, but in Elliot’s mind, it was the only thing.
Goodbye, Liv.
He let the tears stream down his cheeks in tribute to all he was giving up, and the choices and closure he was denying her. He knew she would suffer for his decision, for his leaving her without saying goodbye…and he knew she would never know or believe how much he was going to suffer with her.
Then he wiped the moisture from his face, grimaced, and set about deleting every message and voicemail she had left over the past five days. He couldn’t bear to read them, couldn’t bear to hear her voice.
Goodbye.