Her back was aching like never before. She wasn't sure if it was because of the injection sites that were adding up on her hips or because of the raggedy mattress in the cribs. She wanted to believe it was the latter, at least that way she could complain about it and not feel guilty.
She was still on desk duty, sort of. Call it a special circumstance. They were on call for the rest of the night. Apparently rapists and murderers didn't have any respect for the fact that she was a human being who still required sleep. She wasn't sleeping that much anyway.
Now it was all left down to time. A young girl kidnapped, Mary Johansson. A run of the mill ransom abduction of a child from an affluent family. There wasn't much else to do other than to wait around for the next call.
Cragen had told her to go home about seven times, but she had resisted. By midnight, he could see the exhaustion in her weary eyes and made a deal that if she were to stay, she had to at least try to grab some rest in the cribs.
Which led to where she was, lying in the pitch black on a scratchy blanket. Waiting.
It felt so similar to the first two weeks of being away from work. Staring at her bedroom ceiling, counting how many times the fan spun around in a minute, losing track, and starting again. Only now, she was staring at the grates that supported the bunk above her, counting each metal slat.
The only difference was that she wasn't alone this time.
"You're thinking pretty loudly over there." Elliot said from the bed beside her. He turned and curled on his side, smirking at her in the dark. The reflection from the window caught his eyes, giving her a better vision of where he was.
"I could say the same. You don't seem all that tired." she retorted, quietly laughing under her breath.
"You know how these cases get. Sleep is pointless. The adrenaline is enough to keep someone awake for a week." he said, rolling back to being flat on his back. He folded his hands together, resting them on his chest with a wistful exhale.
Even in the chaos, there was bliss. In a dark and damp room with the scent of metal. The faint sound of traffic drifting in through the window panes.
A home away from home.
"So why are you even trying to sleep?" she asked, her voice barely rising above a whisper.
Sometimes she liked to close her eyes and just imagine that the cribs was actually a cabin. Somewhere far away, where the city lights didn't shine so brightly. She'd mentally put a fireplace in the corner, crackling with embers as the flames light the room. The scent of metal replaced by fresh air and cedar.
She could be anywhere if she wanted to be. If she just closed her eyes and didn't let the dark scare her.
She already knew his answer because it was the same answer she would've given. Because they were only human and the tension in the room during those situations always felt as if it were going to combust. Because if they didn't take a moment to breathe in some air that wasn't tainted with stress and fear, they would fall apart.
"Just needed a break, I guess." he responded. She could hear him shrug his shoulders against the sheets, and she could already imagine the blank stare on his face.
He hated these cases. She knew her partner inside and out, she knew his greatest weaknesses and strengths. She knew just how badly he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs when a case came in involving a child. Even one as cut and dry as this one.
But even with how much she prided herself in knowing him, she was still oblivious to the fact that sometimes, being around her was his comfort. Not the moment of stepping away and finally taking that first deep breath after drowning. Her atmosphere, her radiance, her environment.
Just the way she was the calmness inside the eye of the storm.
Or maybe because she was the storm.
"Are the parents still here?" she asked.
He nodded before realizing she couldn't see him in the darkness. "Yup. Can't blame 'em. We've been in this situation a million times but it never gets easier." he rolled back on his side to look at her. "Why is that?"
She could hear the longing in his question, the endless search of why time and experience hadn't numbed the agony. She considered the idea that he only subjected himself to this so it would take away the nightmares. If he exposed himself to it on the logistical side, the savior side, it couldn't hurt him. But he was wrong. They all were.
"It's always their first time. Not ours. Our jobs require empathy, the only way we can get the job done is to feel it as if it were us." she murmured, barely even listening to the words coming out of her own mouth. It was all on instinct; the answers to the questions that they rarely ever asked. She'd never really pondered, but she still knew the answer as if it were sitting on the surface of her soul.
"I thought..." he trailed off, struggling with his words. "I thought it would get easier. Y'know? That it would become a second nature. Sometimes I think it is. Then I just see the terror on their faces and it's like it's my first case all over again."
She wanted to listen to the way he spoke. He wasn't a man of many words, certainly not a man of many visible emotions. Hearing him open up was always a welcomed event. She never wanted to be too eager for him to talk, but she always wanted to listen.
"I get it," she whispered back. How many times had a victim found out they were infected with something from their attacker? How many times did a solved case just lead to further trauma? They saved the day, but they never saved the aftermath. She understood the terror.
Diego Benitez had cancer. She'd saved him and his mother's lives but she remembered his mother's tearful eyes as the news had sunk in with her that her baby was sick. She always thought she understood the terror that she saw, but until she began to go through it herself, she realized she had barely ever even scratched the surface of understanding. Not until it was her skin, her life, her experience.
She understood now. Those parents out there, terrified out of their minds as they wait in the bullpen, she understood the pit in their stomachs. She understood the clammy palms and refractory emotions. Their lives were upside down. She hated that she understood. It made her a better cop, but it made the rest of her different.
The situations may not have aligned. They were in two different boats on two different paths and yet, she empathized with them in a way she hadn't even been aware was humanly possible. Terror was terror.
Silence filled the room again, blanketing itself over them. They both knew where the conversation was heading, but neither of them wanted to step into it. She knew the curiosity burned on the tip of his tongue, waiting for her to give any sort of sign that it was okay to ask.
"How do you do it?" he asked, his voice nearly shaking. "How do you cope, Liv?"
She closed her eyes again, pretending to inhale the scent of pine in her imaginary cabin. Nothing, not even her own hypothetical thoughts could hurt her there.
How do you cope with terror standing beside you, wherever you go, whatever you do? How do you go day after day knowing that the sweet release of reuniting with safety isn't coming in the near future? Those parents out there, they will see their child by the next nightfall, they will feel that relief and their terror will subside. Her's won't.
"Ask me again once I've done it," she whispered, feeling a tear stinging in the corner of her eye. She didn't cope. She just existed on the sole plane she was forced to be on. She woke up, she went to sleep. What else could she do?
To them, she would be made out to be a hero, a survivor. She was; there was no disparaging that. She just didn't see that in the mirror. There was no handbook, no instruction booklet on just how exactly she was supposed to make her way out of this.
Ask me again once I learn to cope.
The terror, it had become a friend. Well, maybe more like a neighbor. Anything was better than the idea of it becoming herself. Like any elephant in the room, she couldn't ignore it. She tried. She did what she could do.
Ask me again when I've survived.
She wasn't a hero yet. She walked the halls of Sloan Kettering. She woke up in the morning. She forced herself to come back to work. She was subject to radioactive imagery. She just kept living. The real question seemed to be, how does she cope with the impending doom?
How do you breathe?
Ask me again when I've made it to the other side.
Right now, she was just surviving the sympathy. The looks, the whispers, the changes in her life. Was there even a choice? The train didn't stop, it just keeps moving. Life doesn't pause for anybody, let alone her. What did they think she was doing?
Deep inside her, she envied those parents sitting out in the bullpen, crying into soiled tissues. She envied the fact that they would see the light again. They would lift their head above the water and breathe once more. She was stuck. The hand of her disease holding her under the tide until she kicked and screamed for breath. Their battle would be over soon, maybe even before the sun rose. She would suffocate long after.
She hated the envy. It wasn't a good color on her. Every psychoanalyst around the world would tell her it was perfectly understandable to envy someone in a situation where the outcome would be different. She didn't want to be that person.
"Liv... You okay?" he asked, taking notice of her sudden silence.
She thanked the universe for the darkness, she didn't want to cry in front of him again. At least not for a while. "Just uh — just try to rest, El." she breathed, turning over to face the wall away from him.
Her ears were ringing with the swirling of unfelt emotions. The prickle in her eye only grew stronger as she tried to contain the need to gasp out a sob. The ringing became so loud that she hadn't heard the sound of his bunk creaking, or the three steps he took over to her side.
The bed dipped beneath her back, inviting in the instinct for her to clamp her eyes shut. His hand rested gently against her shoulder blades, his touch practically lighter than air.
She bit down on her bottom lip, ever so slightly shaking her head as she internally chastised herself. Do not do this. Do not do this right now.
"It's gonna be okay, Liv." he whispered in a voice that was reserved just for her. The softness, almost childlike essence that had a sense of obviousness within it. He believed what he was saying.
She just wasn't sure if she did.
It wasn't long before the exhaustion had caught up with her. She had drifted off into sleep before she even had time to realize how tired she was.
But the peace didn't last for long.
The moon had disappeared just as quickly as the sun had rose. The sunlight beaming through the windows hadn't woken her, but instead, the sounds coming from the bullpen. She quickly rubbed her fists over her eyes before pushing herself off the bottom bunk.
The squadroom was filled with chaos as several officers entered. The sound of Mrs. Johansson's joyful sobs stood out the loudest. Olivia wasn't sure of what had happened or what she missed, but she made her way to the circle the other officers had formed.
As she stood next to Elliot, she watched the parents cradle their little girl, finally reunited after the longest 48 hours of their lives. Tears of praise and happiness spilled over, cries that thanked the God above them for bringing their baby home.
In front of her was the display of exactly what she was searching for. Not the reunion or the fresh breath of air. The love. The moment that was suddenly cemented with an unforgettable rush of pure love. A mother's love, in its rawest form.
Something stirred within her, breaking the confines of being deemed endearing. It was so much more than that. A tornado inside of her stomach, revitalizing every emotion she had forgotten existed.
Her hand found Elliot's bicep, "You asked me how I cope." she whispered, barely taking her eyes off of the scene in front of her. Her brows raised, allowing the moment to describe the indescribable. "That's how."
Someday, she would hold her own child with that same unearthly force. She would feel the breath of air that was coming with her, the catharsis and everything else. Her hand would find its way to her own flesh and blood and cradle it as if her life depended on it. She would feel what was in front of her; something so much more than just the definition of love.
He understood what she meant. She didn't have to spell it out for him. He could see it in the unformed tears that were in her eyes. His head nodded slowly, letting the realization wash over him that Cragen was right.
This would save her life.
So, they stood and watched. A moment to be savored; a moment of understanding and acceptance. A moment so much more than anyone could've ever expected.
That love would save her.