Salvation (A Savior Post-Ep)

Jezyk

Disclaimer: Obviously they're not mine or you would have seen this rather than that bs they called an ending.

Spoilers: Savior, duh. And anything prior.

Dedication: To sweet, precious Claire who was stillborn at 28 weeks on 9/28/9 and her now healthy twin Grace who's almost 6 months old and doing well. And to my Sammy, one of the few creatures in the world who really, really loved me no matter how long I wasn't speaking to his dad.

She sat down heavily on the steps. She didn't know what else to do. She didn't know where else to go. She didn't have anywhere else to go. She could go home, of course, but somehow that just felt wrong. Going home, to her old life, felt selfish and thoughtless.

As though that precious, beautiful life meant nothing at all.

And it had. That little girl had meant the world to her.

For six hours and seventeen minutes, Olivia had been a mother. Sort of. But then, just like everything else good that happened to her, it had gone away. Her eyes turned up to look at the sky, the lights of the city blocking out any stars, and she found herself cursing that god Elliot believed in. How could there be some benevolent being up there who loved her that would give her a baby just to take it away? What had she done to deserve such pain?

She was sure Elliot would offer her some bullshit words of condolence, something about how it all worked out according to a plan that was beyond her understanding, but unless the plan involved her eating her gun, she was pretty sure that was all a crock. Quite possibly a crock concocted simply to keep more people from offing themselves.

But even nonsense words that would do nothing to numb the pain in her heart would be welcome, and she supposed that was why she was there.

She wasn't sure how she'd even gotten there. Those short hours pacing the speckled white tile floor of the NICU were crystal clear in her memory. So was the telltale awkward pause from the doctor before she started speaking.

That was when things got fuzzy. Disjointed and unreal, like one of those dreams she expected to wake up from and blame on eating dinner too late.

She vaguely remembered a taxi, but she had no idea if she'd been in it or walked in front of it.

She also kind of recalled a pastor of some sort, which she guessed had been at the hospital. But he could have been on the moon for all she knew. Nothing really seemed to be making sense.

She shivered, looking down to see if her coat was buttoned, only to find she wasn't wearing one. She couldn't swear when she'd had it last – if she'd left it at the hospital or if she'd been so scared at the desperate phone call that she'd run out of her apartment without it.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she fervently hoped that when she opened them again she would be home in her bed and breathing a sigh of relief for having had such an awful dream end.

But when her eyes opened, it wasn't her bedroom ceiling she found staring back at her.

It was Elliot, looking like death warmed over and somehow quite relieved simultaneously.

She tried to smile, but her face crumbled instead, her unshed tears choking any words in her throat.

He settled on the steps beside her, close enough that his shoulder pressed into hers. It was as close as they ever got to physical comfort. Most of the time.

"I've been looking all over the fucking city for you. I never thought to look for you here."

Blinking repeatedly against the tears forming because of the kindness and understanding and worry written on his face that was so unexpected, she realized it was a losing battle. She needed him to be an ass if she stood a chance of pulling herself back together. But he didn't know what she needed from him. He never had.

Tenderness and concern from him of all people was just going to break her.

She cried harder as he unbuttoned his coat and shrugged it off only to wrap it around her shaking shoulders. The sobs were growing harder the more she tried to push them back, exacerbated by the way his hand was gently rubbing along her back.

"Cragen called me right after he left your apartment." He paused for a moment, turning to look at her to see if she was listening. "I tried to get in the NICU to see you, but they wouldn't let me. Apparently a badge means nothing to those nurses."

Part of her bristled at the suggestion that those nurses and doctors and staff who'd worked so very hard were anything less than perfect.

But the rest of her hated them for keeping Elliot from her when she could have used his support.

Not that she would have wanted him to see her the way she'd been. Beyond reason. Beyond logic. Beyond anything but emotion. It wasn't familiar ground for her.

Even the tears she couldn't stop mortified her. She was supposed to be rational around her partner. He was the one who suffered from feelings that got out of control.

He kept talking, assuming she wasn't going to answer any time soon. "I think I called you four hundred times."

She nodded, vaguely remembering the way her phone hadn't stopped buzzing for quite some time. "I turned my phone off," she choked through a hiccup.

"Yeah, I kind of figured that." His hand finally stilled and he slowly pulled it back to his lap. "What happened?"

She shook her head, unable to speak the horror of what had happened to her, to that tiny little baby. She wished that he had been there after all, if only so she would never have to speak the words. Speaking them might make them true, real; it might break the spell of the dream which, as bad as it was, kept her from having to accept the reality.

"Gladys left you in charge of her baby, right?" He was looking at her, she could feel it, but she couldn't meet his stare. He read something in the fresh torrent of sobs, his hand sliding along her hair to tuck it behind her ear. "Jesus, Liv, what happened?"

She fixed her eyes on a car parked across the street, staring at it without blinking until the edges of her vision went gray. It took all of her strength to whisper. "She died." Just speaking those two words caused her to double over, even though she was already sitting, her chest falling onto her thighs.

His hand was on her back again, rubbing away any stoic strength she might have conjured up. "I'm so sorry."

She nodded, knowing he was, knowing anyone would be. She was just a baby, after all. No one wanted babies to die. Least of all Elliot. Her eyes darted toward his as she sat back up. "You were right, you know."

The pain on his face cleared for a moment, his features resolving into a look of confusion instead. "What?"

"About me not being a mother, not having kids, about me not getting it." Normally she resented the shit out of his seemingly continual reminders that he had a family and she didn't. But she'd finally understood, in those terrible, frightening hours, while she was signing consent forms for Baby Dalton, that her partner's words hadn't been meant to hurt her. He'd simply been stating a fact, a fact that became abundantly clear to her the moment another's life was in her hands.

It was one thing to preach about right and wrong from a completely emotionless point of view. It was something else entirely to be responsible for someone else.

She knew what it was like to be on the other side of that now, to know that it would cost so much money and time and effort and probably wind up being completely futile and yet clinging so desperately to the hope that it would work out simply because she loved that little girl that she could turn a blind eye to facts.

"Liv, that's not-"

She shook her head, knowing he'd heard an accusation where there wasn't one. "No, I know." Wiping at her eyes, she shrugged. "When her future was up to me, all the moral high ground didn't matter. I didn't care if she was paralyzed or was brain dead or couldn't breathe or anything. I just wanted her to live." The tears she'd just wiped away were back with a vengeance. "I just wanted a chance to love her."

His hand moved across her back, not stopping to rub, but moving around her, pulling on her shoulder until she leaned against him. "You did love her. And Gladys loved her."

Olivia nodded. She wouldn't have thought it possible, but she had fallen in love with that little baby and no matter how short their time together had been, that nameless baby would be in her thoughts forever. She sniffled. "She only lived for three and a half days, but she changed my life. She changed Gladys' life. That's a lot for a little baby."

She wanted to feel good that she'd had the opportunity to be there and to love her, but Olivia still felt guilty. She looked at her partner, knowing he'd lie to make her feel better, but wanting his reassurance so badly that she didn't care. "What if I made the wrong decision? They said her brain was bleeding and she needed surgery but the surgery might not help and it was possible she could survive without it and I said to do it, I said to do whatever they could to save her, but-"

His finger pressed over her lips and in the silence that followed, she realized her frantic words betrayed how very badly she needed to be comforted.

"You made the right decision, Liv."

Her head shook, seemingly of its own accord. Nothing she ever did turned out right. Perhaps it had been her involvement that doomed the baby. "How do you know? She might have been ok without it. They said she couldn't handle the anesthesia, she was just too little and it taxed her lungs too much."

His hand squeezed her shoulder, once again silencing her guilt-ridden words. "You made the right decision because you did everything in you power to save her."

Her shoulders shook as the sobs continued. "But I didn't save her."

"If it had been up to you, you would have."

He was right. She looked up at him and nodded. "I would have done anything to save her."

"I know that." He didn't look pompous as she groveled and she wondered if she would have had the same restraint had their positions been reversed.

"That's what you tried to tell me and I wouldn't listen." She wanted to apologize for being such a bitch about it when he'd tried. "When it came down to it, I couldn't play god."

"This isn't how I wanted you to find out." His arm squeezed her tighter as he leaned his head against hers. "You shouldn't have to bury a baby."

"I have to plan her funeral." She pushed herself into the warmth that his touch provided. "I have to name her first. Gladys never did."

"I'll help you."

She glanced up. "You have spare baby names left over? I'd have thought you guys used them all up."

He smiled before pulling her head back to rest on his shoulder. "I meant with the funeral, but I'll help you pick a name if you want."

"I think-" She paused, rethinking the idea before she said it, fearing for a moment that Elliot might laugh at her stupidity. But then she realized she was sitting on his front steps in the middle of the night with mascara streaks down her face after ignoring his phone calls for hours. "I want to name her Serena."

"It's perfect."

"Why did this happen, El? Why did she have to die? She was only three days old!" She didn't even try to stifle the sobs as she buried her face in his shirt.

"I don't know, Liv." As he spoke, he curled his other arm around her, pulling her closer into his chest. "I wish I did."

The fact that he didn't have any trite scripture quotes to throw in her face was disarming. She'd wanted him to say something obnoxious so she could get angry. Anger was so much easier than despair. Which explained why Elliot was so quick to fly off the handle all the time. Because it hurt less to be pissed off.

The porch light came on, followed immediately by the sound of whining hinges.

"Elliot? Is that you?"

Kathy's voice was like a splash of cold water on her face. She hadn't done anything wrong, but she knew how easily Kathy could misinterpret finding Olivia sobbing in Elliot's arms in the middle of the night. She tried to pull back, as though Kathy hadn't already seen enough.

But Elliot's arms stayed tight around her, keeping her against his chest. "I'll be in later."

"Ok." The door closed quietly and the light disappeared, plunging them back into the safety of the darkness.

Olivia tried to sit back once again, pushing her hands against his chest. "You should go inside, El."

But again, his arms didn't give. "No, I'm not going anywhere." He held her, waiting until she gave up and slid her arms around him as well.

And he kept holding her, offering her what he had to give, what she needed most right then. Understanding. Comfort. Love.