Chapter Text
Kathy Stabler often mourned the loss of the nights where she could sleep uninterrupted for more than a five hour stretch at a time. As the mother of five and the wife of a cop— there was no shortage of events that could wake her up on any given night.
She was mostly used to it, by now.
So when she was yanked from her slumber, she didn’t even have to fully wake up for instinct to kick in, pawing blindly at the night table for the phone. This time, she really only had herself to blame. She had insisted, at some point, that Elliot change the ringtone for Olivia so that they could easily tell who was calling in the middle of the night. Because let’s face it— it was usually his partner. Elliot had just tossed the phone in her general direction and trusted her artistic vision.
Unfortunately for both of them, Kathy had tried to be funny.
Which was why they were now waking up to the sound of Olivia Newton-John singing “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Joleeeene…” at some ungodly hour of the night. Morning. Whatever. Some point in time where it wasn’t quite as funny as it had seemed when the sun was up.
“I’m begging of you, please don’t take my man…” Olivia Newton-John crooned.
“Kath, I swear to God,” Elliot muttered, mostly muffled by his pillow.
Kathy managed to flail her hand around enough to hit all the buttons she needed to hit without fully opening her eyes, a trick she had mastered somewhere around kid number two. “Hey, Liv,” she murmured.
Elliot flopped over his arm to expectantly hold out his hand, which Kathy took as an invitation to roll over and nestle against his side. Definitely not what he meant, but what was he gonna do, tell his darling wife that he wasn’t interested in cuddling? Even Elliot was smarter than that.
“Kathy?”
Kathy’s eyes blinked open. Something about Olivia’s voice wasn’t quite right. “You okay, sweetie?”
She could feel Elliot shifting behind her, tensing into a state of alert. Something leftover from his Marines days allowed him to wake up on a moment’s notice, and he was clearly awake now. Kathy could tell that he wanted her to pass the phone to him, but she wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet, at least.
Olivia was quiet for a long moment, before she said, in a totally unconvincing voice, “Yeah.” And then, “is Elliot with you?”
“Mhm,” Kathy hummed. “You get called in?”
There had been a cozy stretch of time where Olivia hadn’t needed to ring them in the middle of the night, even when Detectives Benson and Stabler were being summoned to the precinct. She hadn’t needed to call because she was often in whispering distance: curled up behind Kathy, an arm secure around her waist, staving off the post-partum anxiety fueled nightmares— or dozing on the rocking chair in the nursery with a tiny baby snuggled against her chest.
Those nights had felt safe, and gentle, and soft. And Kathy had been growing accustomed to the warmth.
Until something happened.
Something happened, and Olivia withdrew in an instant, undoing months of gradual progress. Something happened, and she retreated back to her solitude. Something that Elliot wouldn’t talk about. And for once, Kathy couldn’t even be mad at him about it. Because even Elliot didn’t know exactly what had happened, and she could tell it was eating him alive. Something went terribly wrong, and Olivia pulled away, and Kathy was left feeling like they’d lost something beautiful before it even began.
So maybe she was being a little selfish, holding onto the phone the way she was. But it was the most she’d heard of Olivia’s voice in a good long while. Elliot got to hear it every day.
Something had happened, and something felt off now, and Kathy would take any opportunity she could get to reel Olivia back in, little by little. Lasso her back towards them, towards safety, towards comfort, towards home.
“I don’t know,” Olivia replied, voice soft. “What time did Elliot get home?”
Kathy’s brow furrowed as she tried to process the question and figure out what Olivia was really trying to ask. “Six thirty? Seven? Something like that.” She clicked the phone onto speaker mode. “You’re on speaker, El and I are both here.”
“Hey,” Elliot said, voice still gruff from sleep. “You okay?”
Olivia was quiet again. Quiet for a long, drawn-out moment. Too long. Too drawn out.
“Liv, what’s going on?” Elliot asked. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t know,” she said again, and her voice was heartbreakingly small, and it was somewhat terrifying to hear Olivia’s voice that heartbreakingly small. “It’s fine, I’m fine—”
“No, no, no, don’t do that,” Kathy interrupted. “Don’t downplay whatever’s happening, babe, tell us what you need.”
Elliot was already peeling himself out of bed, always unable to remain inactive when he felt something threatening someone he cared for. Kathy watched him instinctively roll his bad shoulder the way he did every time he got up, then pull the string to turn on the lamp, washing the room suddenly in its dim, golden glow.
“I don’t know,” Olivia said. “I don’t— I don’t need anything. I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Kathy said, totally unconvinced by that reply and beginning to grow anxious. She had never been a particularly anxious person by nature, with only two exceptions— the post-partum anxiety she first got after Kathleen was born, and the resurgence of it after Eli. She didn’t like it. It made her feel helpless. “You just needed to chat?”
The crease between Elliot’s brows told Kathy that he wasn’t all that convinced either, as he moved to the dresser and opened a drawer, rummaging through for a pair of pants.
Kathy hoped Olivia would allow Elliot to come retrieve her. She always felt much better with all her loved ones under one roof.
“I guess I just…” Olivia trailed off. “I don’t know. I’m sorry for calling so late…”
“You can call us any time,” Kathy murmured, sitting up just to lean back into her pillow, watching Elliot fidget with items on the dresser as he stood by, waiting for some sense of direction. “You wanna come here? You know you’re always welcome here.”
“Did I… did I go to Queens with Elliot after work today?”
Kathy looked up at that, and met Elliot’s concerned gaze at the odd question. “What do you mean?”
“Elliot— can Elliot still hear me—?”
“I can hear you, Liv.”
“Did I leave work with you today?” Olivia asked, and her voice could only be described as desperate. It wasn’t the way Kathy ever liked to hear Olivia’s voice sound.
Apparently Elliot didn’t, either. “Where are you?” He demanded. “What’s going on? Are you hurt?”
“I told you, I’m fine,” Olivia insisted. “I’m not hurt, just— just please answer the question—”
“Yeah, we left work together. You didn’t come to Queens. I offered, you said you just wanted to go home to shower and crash. Now tell me where you are.”
“The precinct,” Olivia said, and Kathy could feel her heart in her throat. She couldn’t think of any good reason for Olivia to be at the precinct at— a quick glance at the clock informed her it was 1:42 A.M.— without Elliot also being called in.
“Why are you at the precinct?” Kathy asked, trying to keep the nerves out of her voice. Elliot was in full action, grabbing a shirt, his sneakers.
“I don’t know,” Olivia said, for the millionth time, and Kathy did have a follow up question to that— several, really— but Elliot got there before she could.
“Is anybody else there? Cragen, Fin, Munch…”
“No. Just— just me—”
“Sweetheart, you’re freaking me out a little,” Kathy said, definitely failing in keeping the tremble out of her voice. “Can you please tell me what’s going on? I know you don’t know, but whatever you do know…”
“Kath, I don’t— I can’t remember,” Olivia admitted, and her voice was wobbling too.
Kathy felt her heart drop down to her stomach. “You can’t remember,” she repeated. “What can’t you remember?”
“The last clear memory I have is— is walking out of the precinct to go home,” Olivia said. “The sun wasn’t even going down yet. And then I— I just woke up in the cribs, and it’s 1:30 in the morning, and I don’t remember a single thing in between.” Her voice broke on the last word.
Kathy took in a shuddery breath.
“Liv, can you tell me what day it is?” Elliot asked, and Kathy was very grateful that he seemed to be able to handle this, had settled somewhere in between his two gears of “overprotective cop” and “overprotective dad.”
“Friday,” Olivia said. “May ninth? Or— or it’s past midnight, so it’s Saturday, now, that was yesterday—”
“Year?”
“2008,” Olivia said, and the fact that she didn’t even give Elliot shit for asking was probably the biggest indicator that she was terrified.
“That’s right,” Elliot said, relief evident in his voice. “That’s right. That’s good. I’m gonna come get you.”
“No, El— it’s almost two in the morning—”
“Olivia, I’m scared and I want you here,” Kathy said with finality.
Maybe it was a low blow. Since Eli’s birth, the car accident, the shared trauma— Olivia had been unable to deny Kathy much of anything. She had stayed a solid presence by Kathy’s side through the recovery, the nightmares, the physical therapy. All of it.
“Kath, honey, I’m okay, really…”
Kathy almost had to roll her eyes at the way Olivia defaulted right back into the role of caretaker when she could not be more obviously the one needing to be taken care of, in this bizarre situation. It was so ridiculously on brand that it was almost reassuring.
“Liv, I’ll be there in thirty,” Elliot leaned over to say into the phone, pressing a quick kiss to Kathy’s forehead before ducking out of the bedroom, hardly even giving Olivia the chance to argue again.
“Stay on the phone with me,” Kathy instructed Olivia. “So I don’t worry.”
“I know exactly what you’re doing.”
“And you’re gonna let me do it,” Kathy said with more certainty than she really felt. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, sliding her feet into the slippers she kept beneath her side table. She would be restless until her detectives came home, and chances were Eli would wake up by then, the lingering effects of his four month sleep regression still gripping the family by their throat. “Do you remember if you’ve eaten? Are you hungry?”
“Don’t you dare cook for me at two o’clock in the morning,” Olivia ordered, though there was no real bite behind it. She just sounded terribly exhausted.
“Okay,” Kathy said, and decided that meant that Olivia could probably use some chicken noodle soup and a biscuit. She started making her way to the kitchen, lowering her voice as she moved past her sleeping children’s rooms. “You want me to talk at you about the baby for a bit?”
There was a moment of hesitation, before Olivia softly obliged, “yes, please.”
Kathy allowed herself to smile at that, and some of the pressure in her chest lifted, just slightly.