Elliot

Wednesday, February 21

"How's she doing?" Fin asked me the next morning. I had stayed at the hospital all night, then come back to the station early enough to shower and change before everyone got there.

"No change," I told him softly. "He was processed last night?"

"He's being arraigned this morning. Three counts of rape, two assault, one attempted murder, one assault with a deadly weapon."

"It doesn't matter," I muttered.

"We got him. We did our job."

"We were too late."

"Did they give you the odds?"

I shrugged. "They basically go down every minute she doesn't wake up." I wanted to wash this feeling off of me. I was used to feeling like I was a failure when we couldn't find the guy or the convict the guy. I was used to feeling like a failure even after we managed to convict a perp and I'd catch a glimpse of the victim at sentencing, realizing that it still wasn't over for them. I felt like a failure when I had an eight year old sitting upstairs with me telling me about what their piano teacher did to them, or when a mother cried over her missing infant or after seeing a father fall apart finding out that their high-school daughter was dead. Yeah, there was a lot of failure associated with my job. But usually the arrest was the good part. The best part. The part before the lawyers started making deals or trying to bully the victim, the part when I'd get a chance to tell the perp what I thought of him and find an excuse to rough him up a little. This time it was empty.

"Right in here, Mr. Kressler," I heard Cragen saying behind me, leading Roger Kressler, one of the more heartless criminal defense attorneys we dealt with, into the conference room. He was followed by Nicholas, who was at least now wearing pants, handcuffed, and being dragged by a uniform. Casey followed at a distance behind them, but detoured to come towards me.

"You joining us?" she asked me. I closed the file I had been looking at and quickly made my way in. Kressler and Nicholas had taken one side of the table. Instead of sitting at the final empty seat, I stood off to the side, leaning up against the wall.

"This is getting ridiculous, Casey, even for your office."

She raised her eyebrows. "Meaning?"

"At the risk of being politically incorrect, he's gay. As in not-attracted-to-women-has-a-male-life-partner gay."

"And?"

"So why would he be out raping anyone?"

Casey pulled out a paper from her folder and looked at Nicholas. "You work for Senator Martin?"

"Yes."

"You write his press releases?"

"Yes."

"Then let me remind you of this little release from last year. 'Civil union rights aren't enough. We can let same-sex couples collect each other's pensions and have the same tax benefits, but until the day that we don't make a distinction between a couple with a man married to a man and a couple with a man married to a woman, we won't have equality.' Those are your words, Mr. Mooney?"

"Yes."

"In that case, we question and arrest men married to women all the time for rape. There you go, you're one step closer to equality. Now, can we get on with why you called this meeting?"

"We want to offer you a deal."

She raised her eyebrows, no doubt trying not to smirk. "You're going to offer me a deal?"

"Assault two, three and a third to ten."

"For three counts of rape one and attempted murder?"

"I never tried to hurt her."

"Well, she's in a coma. So from now on, I'd suggest you try a little harder."

"You have to believe me. I love her."

I glared at him. I could see a psych defense coming from miles away.

"You love her?" Casey repeated.

"Yes. That's the only reason that-"

"Quiet," Kressler said, reaching into his briefcase, pulling out a motion.

"What's this?"

"Not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect."

"I didn't want to hurt her. I love her," he repeated.

"You love her?" I asked, taking a step forward. "You love her so you split her head open? You love her so you broke three of her ribs? You love her so you stabbed her in her gut?"

"I didn't know what I was doing!"

"Be quiet," Kressler warned.

"Did you know she was bleeding into her brain?" I took another step forward to lean down against the table, my eyes level against his. "That her lung collapsed? You love her? You're a sick freak, you know that?"

"Take a walk, detective." Damn. Cragen. I glowered at him for a minute longer before I got up and brushed past him. I kept walking all the way into the locker room. I looked around, then when I saw it was empty, sat down with my head in my hands.

"You gotta let this go."

I didn't look up. I knew it was bad if Cragen had come into the locker room. I didn't fully understand why it was bothering me so much. Maybe it wasn't the case at all. Things with Liv had been completely intertwined with this case from the very beginning, and once again, I found myself unable to separate my personal feelings from my work.

"You were at the hospital all night?"

I raised my head but didn't meet his eyes. "Yeah."

"In that case, you've been working for more than 24 hours straight and in direct violation of union regulations."

"Cap-"

"Go to the crib and get some sleep, or go home and get some sleep. I don't care, but if you don't leave here now, you're disobeying a direct order."

I started to argue, but then quickly stopped. I was quickly running out of steam, and I was having trouble stomaching the idea of spending all day dealing with paperwork and trial preparation. I went back to my desk, packed up a couple of files I half-heartedly intended to look at later, and left.

I looked up from my laptop, hoping against hope that I would see some difference. I had memorized the timing of the beeps on her machines, and I knew when something was going wrong. The doctor had taken out the machine that was breathing for her, and she had managed to breathe on her own- a very good sign- but hadn't been able to wake up. She was in the ICU, and they were taking really good care of her, but it still felt like there should have been something more that they could have done. This never happened on TV. Patients always miraculously woke up despite all the odds. No one ever had to wait.

I had called the university in the morning, but they had insisted that I go in for the seminar group that I led. I had gone home long enough to shower, change, and pick up my laptop, taught the seminar, and had come back to the hospital to find that there was no change. Detective Benson had finally left after I assured her that I wouldn't leave Christine's side, and I had tried to sit down to do some work. I wasn't getting much done.

Finally, I decided for a distraction. I opened an internet explorer window to get into my e-mail account. After what had happened last night, I had sent e-mails to each of my sisters, checking up on each of them, making sure that they were okay. I got onto the yahoo homepage, but before I could sign in, one of the headlines caught my eye.

Senator Martin's assistant arrested in Columbia student's attack.

What?

I was going to click on it when one of the video headlines jumped out at me. In the display picture, Nicholas Mooney was shown with a microphone stuck in his face. I knew the guy. I had worked under him when I had volunteered on the Senator's re-election campaign, and had met him a couple of times since at various Democrat events.

Mooney apologizes, explains his actions.

What the hell?

He was the one?

What the hell?

Before I had a chance to click on either of the links, the steady beat that I had gotten used to changed. It sped up to an irregular beat. I snapped my computer shut and put it on the table beside me, then got up to see what was happening. Christine was stirring slightly, with her breathing becoming heavy and laboured. I pressed the call button on her wall. Almost immediately, a doctor appeared.

"What's going on?" she asked, picking up the chart that sat at the foot of her bed.

"I don't know. She just started-"

"Quiet," she told me harshly, putting her stethoscope against Christine's chest. She glanced down at her chart, then looked at me. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave. If you go to the waiting room down the hall, I'll let you know when I've got news."

I nodded but couldn't take my eyes off of her. Behind me, I more people come into the room. One of them took over for the doctor, who came over to me.

"Sir," she told me calmly, putting her hand on my forearm, "I need you to leave. I'll let you know if there's anything." When I still didn't move, she started pushing me gently towards the door. The beeping on one of her machines was getting louder. She pushed me again, and I obeyed. I stood in the hallway for a minute, completely unable to move, then finally took off towards the waiting room that she had directed me to. It was empty. I took a deep breath, looked around, and threw my fist into the wall.

I was more than a little surprised when I stopped by the station and Cragen told me that Elliot had gone home. Cragen explained that he had been sent home on orders, and then proceeded to order me to do the same thing. I argued, but he wasn't going to hear it this time.

I was exhausted and working on autopilot. I parked my car and made my way up without the doorman even acknowledging my existence. I got into the elevator and leaned back. My neck was sore from the position I had fallen asleep in, and I was still wearing the clothes I had been in the night before. I sighed. He had seen me like this a thousand times before, what difference would 1001 make?

I knocked softly at his door, doubting for the first time that I should be there. If Elliot had actually come home when Cragen told him to, he was probably actually sleeping. Regardless, a minute later I heard footsteps inside.

He didn't look surprised to see me. He stepped aside to let me in and closed the door behind him. I still wasn't used to him in an apartment. I had known him from the beginning as Elliot Stabler, the family man with that slightly overcrowded home in Queens. To see him living alone in an apartment still seemed out of place. "Any change?" he asked.

"Sorry?"

"In Christine. Is there any change?"

I shook my head. "No change when I left." He nodded and made his way into the small kitchen and reappeared with two beers. He handed one to me and motioned towards the couch. I took a seat towards one end, the way I always did when we sat together. He didn't take the end furthest away, instead sitting down almost right beside me. My leg touched his. There were literally hundreds of times we'd either gone out for a beer together after work, or when we'd ended up at one of our apartments. But now everything was different. Now that he was sitting right beside me. Now that I was acutely aware of his arm brushing against mine every time he inhaled. Now that I was afraid to take a sip of my beer for fear of him seeing me shaking.

"Did you see the news?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "I've been asleep. Why?"

"He held a press conference. He claims that he was in love with her and was suffering from erotomania. He mentions her and her case by name."

"And she was desperate for no one to ever find out."

"Yeah."

He rested his right hand on his knee, leaving his pinky casually touching my leg. I felt sparks shoot through my body. I tried to stop it, but my breath caught in my throat. Elliot noticed. He put his beer down, then pivoted his body towards me. Slowly, achingly slowly, he brought his hand up and pushed my bangs back from my forehead.

"I'm afraid this might be a mistake," I whispered.

"Maybe," he agreed softly, slowly, never taking his hand away. "But I think it's more of a mistake if we never see what this could be. This isn't going to go away just because we want it to."

I wanted to kiss him. I needed to kiss him. Now that I felt like it was okay for us to try and be together, I felt everything I had to have been repressing for months, possibly even years, finally surfacing. It was unlike any feeling I'd ever had before. I brought my lips towards his, and heard my cell phone ring from inside my jacket.

"Ignore it," he whispered. I did, and our lips finally met. It was a kiss, a real kiss, not just a foreplay kind of kiss, but the kind of first kiss that made you weak in the knees kiss. His mouth was warm and soft, everything I had been waiting for and wanting for so long. A cell phone rang again, this time from the table in front of us. I intended to ignore it as well, but I couldn't help but pull away.

"Is your phone playing Sexyback?" I asked slowly.

He groaned. "That was Dickie's idea. That each of them should get their own ringtone for when they called me. That's Maureen." He picked up his cell and opened it. "Hi Sweetheart."

He took off with his phone into the kitchen, and I heard my own phone ring again. I reached over the end of the sofa to where my jacket had fallen and pulled my own phone out.

"Benson."

"Sorry about that," Elliot apologized, coming out from the kitchen. He saw me on my phone and stopped immediately.

"I'll be right there," I assured Cragen. "Thanks for calling."

"What's going on?" Elliot asked once I had snapped my phone shut.

"Christine's awake."

We both quickly got our jackets. He picked up his gun, wallet, and phone, all of which he had left beside the door, and I smoothed down my hair.

"Wait," he told me before I had a chance to open the door. "Look, we keep getting stuck in this limbo of being interrupted and leaving everything unresolved. I don't want to do that this time. I know that our jobs complicate things, but this time. . . I want to be with you."

I broke two knuckles and needed three stitches. A nurse who was passing by when I put my fist through the wall had been nice enough to not only to call maintenance before someone else saw it and called security, but had also started a chart for me and pushed me to the front of the ER line. The doctor had injected me with Lidocaine to do the stitches, but I had refused any more painkillers. It was an intense pain, the kind of pain that kept you from thinking too hard about anything other than how much it hurt. And the pain in my hand was so much more pleasant than dealing with everything else that was going on. Eventually the throbbing intensity subsided though, and I was stuck back in the waiting room. Doctors were still crowding her room, and I felt myself slowly building up to running my newly bandaged hand back into the wall.

Instead, I got up and went back downstairs to the gift shop. I couldn't think of anything appropriate to get her. I didn't want to get her flowers. I knew she loved bright colours, but I didn't know which her favourite was. I knew that she read The Economist religiously, but I didn't want to bring it to her if I didn't know if she would be able to read with one of her eyes swollen shut. That put all magazines and books out. I wandered around the shop, finding nothing that I could think of for her. Finally, beside the door sat life-sized stuffed puppy. It was supposed to be a Chocolate Lab, the same as the dog Christine had said she had bought. I paid for it at the counter, than slowly made my way back up. There was only one doctor in her room this time that I could see from the open door. The same doctor who had first come in. Her glance caught me, and she came into the hall to see me.

"Is she okay?"

"She's awake. She's still fairly unclear about the events of the attack, which is to be expected. She became extremely panicked when she started to try and piece things together to the point where we had to give her some Diazepam to calm her down."

"Can I see her?"

"Keep in mind that she's fairly groggy and that your presence might upset her. If she starts getting agitated, you need to leave."

"Okay," I quickly agreed. "Thanks." I took a deep breath and just barely stepped into the doorway, knocking gently against the open door. She turned her head slightly to see me. The beeping on her machine sped up.

"Can I come in?"

She nodded and reached for her bed's remote with her good arm to move herself into a slightly more upright position. Her left eye was completely swollen shut and her right wrist was in a half-cast. Her arms were covered in finger sized bruises, both her bottom and top lips had been split open, and a huge purple bruise extended over the length of her jaw on the left side. I slowly went over to her right side so she could see me properly. To my surprise, she reached out her hand to me. Despite her sprain, she managed to squeeze my fingers tightly.

"I remember thinking that I was going to die," she said softly. Her voice was hoarse and sounded. . . vulnerable? Could a voice sound vulnerable? "That I was going to die and that would be it. There wouldn't be anyone to know I was gone." Out of the corner of her open eye, I saw a tear roll down her cheek. This scared me more than anything else. I'd never seen Christine cry before. Even come close to crying. I squeezed her hand back. She quickly used her other hand to wipe the tear away, but it was no use. She was crying for what I was willing to bet was the first time since she had been raped.

"I can't do this anymore, Rick," she whispered.

"Do what?"

"Deal with this. Any of this. It's just. . . it's just too much."

If I had asked her or offered anything, she would have refused. I walked around to the other side of the bed and kicked off my shoes. I knew I wouldn't be allowed, and I wasn't even sure that this was what she wanted, but it was the only thing I could think of to comfort her. I climbed into the bed with her, carefully staying on top of her blankets and as close to the edge as possible without falling out. To my surprise, she rolled over to me and rested her head on my chest. I slid my arm around her shoulders and she brought her arm to rest on me. She was smaller than she had been only a few months ago. Coupled with the injuries and wires coming out of her, I felt like she was going to break.

"I can't do this anymore," she repeated, she shoulders starting to shake beneath my arm. It took me a minute to realize that she was sobbing. Slowly, I brought my hand up to stroke her hair, then kissed the top of her head.

"It's over," I promised her. "They got him. It's over."

This only made her cry harder. She gripped my shirt with her bad hand. In the doorway, I saw the nurse who had helped me earlier. She evaluated the situation, then seemed to decide against telling me I wasn't allowed in bed with her.

"It's over," I told her again. I didn't have the heart to tell her that if the news that was plastered all over the internet was any indication, nothing was over. Not by a long shot.