Febuwhump
Series Metadata
Listing Series
Pages Navigation
-
Tags
Summary
He thought the silence between them was a wall. She proved it was a door to be kicked down. Six months after Forlini's, Rafael Barba learns that being broken is just another way to be found.
"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in."
— Leonard Cohen, AnthemSeries
- Part 1 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
A nor'easter traps them in her apartment, forcing a confrontation not with each other, but with the ghosts of injuries past. Rafael Barba learns that some breaks never fully heal; they just learn to predict the weather.
"Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real." — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Series
- Part 2 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
The infection in his arm is bad, but the silence in his apartment is worse. Delirious with fever, Rafael Barba can no longer tell the difference between the woman saving his life and the ghost he’s been arguing with for months.
"I am not sure if I am dreaming you or if you are dreaming me. But I know that we are both awake in the same night." — Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
Series
- Part 3 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
She shows up at his door at midnight, covered in blood that isn't hers. Rafael Barba learns that while he can wash the red from her hands, some stains require a different kind of solvent to remove.
"Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." — William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Series
- Part 4 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
A mundane argument about subpoenas is interrupted by a catastrophic building collapse. Trapped in the dark with a crushed leg, Rafael Barba listens as Olivia Benson decides she is done surviving the people she loves.
"And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in." — Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Series
- Part 5 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
Rafael Barba collapses in a Manhattan courtroom at the exact moment Olivia Benson is stabbed in a Bronx alley. Forced together by a metaphysical bond that demands proximity, they learn that the only cure for their shared pain is the one thing they've been denying themselves: each other.
"Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature." — Plato, The Symposium
Series
- Part 6 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
Deep cover in a shipping container with a cartel boss, Rafael Barba is given a choice: prove his loyalty by beating the woman he loves, or watch her die. He learns that sometimes, the only way to save a life is to break a heart—and a jaw.
"Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!" — Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading GaolSeries
- Part 7 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
Trapped in the wreckage of a plane crash in the Adirondacks, Rafael Barba is fading fast. As they wait for rescue, he and Olivia discuss a fantasy meal that reveals a hard truth: Elliot Stabler might be comfort food, but Rafael Barba is the sustenance she can't survive without.
"I was always hungry with the walking and the cold and the working. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry." — Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Series
- Part 8 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
Rafael Barba wakes up in a hospital bed with a concussion, believing that he and Olivia have been happily reconciled for two years. When the fog clears, he learns that his mind has written a check that his reality can't cash.
"Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated... for it is the sentimental value of the article that is real." — Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
Series
- Part 9 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
Rafael Barba spends two hours on a bridge trying to talk a young man down, and fails. Standing in the freezing rain, washing the phantom sensation of a slipping hand from his palm, he finally admits to Olivia that having a God complex is just a fancy way of saying he's terrified of being human.
"The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly." — Friedrich Nietzsche
Series
- Part 10 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
A parking garage assault leaves Rafael Barba with two broken hands and a shattered sense of autonomy. Forced to rely on Olivia for everything from buttons to soup, he learns that losing his grip doesn't mean letting go.
"The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between." — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Series
- Part 11 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
Olivia Benson is the one with the badge, the gun, and the training. She is the bodyguard. But when a sniper's red dot appears on her chest in a Queens safe house, Rafael Barba proves that you don't need a badge to take a bullet.
"I would rather have a body of pain than a body of hollowness. To be a shield is the highest honor of the heart." — Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart
Series
- Part 12 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
The man in the ski mask uses the word "Again" as a weapon. Rafael Barba uses it as a promise. Even while drowning on a slanted board to protect her location, he knows he is a repeat offender who has no interest in parole.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But love? Love is doing the same thing over and over again, knowing exactly how it will end, and doing it anyway."
Series
- Part 13 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
Chief McGrath thinks he has Captain Benson cornered in an interrogation room with a manufactured evidence scandal. He forgets that when you threaten a saint, you usually summon the devil—and Rafael Barba is in a very litigious mood.
"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
Series
- Part 14 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
To the private research firm in the basement, he is just Subject Four: a vessel for neuroplasticity agents and cognitive stress tests. But even under a cocktail of psychotropics, Rafael Barba's subconscious refuses to break. The scientists are looking for a variable; they didn't expect it to be Olivia Benson.
"Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can't understand it." — Interstellar (Screenplay by Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan)
Series
- Part 15 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
The nerve damage has turned Rafael Barba’s body into a raw wire; even the air from the HVAC vent feels like sandpaper. Sitting on the far end of Olivia's couch, he has to decide if the pain of touching her is worth the silence it brings to the noise in his head.
"I am a cage in search of a bird." — Franz Kafka
Series
- Part 16 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
An Uber Black, a gala dress, and a guardrail in a ravine. When a piece of metal nicks Rafael Barba’s subclavian artery, Olivia Benson realizes that a tourniquet won't work. To keep him alive, she has to get closer to him than she ever intended—by putting her hands inside the wound.
"I held my hand over his heart... I felt the life in him, the fragility of the vessel. It is a terrible thing to hold a life in your hands." — Mary Renault, The Persian Boy
Series
- Part 17 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
The alarm goes off at 6:00 AM. Pavarotti hits the high B. At 9:03 AM, Olivia Benson dies in a courtroom shooting. Rafael Barba has lived this day fourteen times. He is starting to realize that the only way to break the loop isn't to save her—it's to take her place.
"Vanish, o night! Set, stars! Set, stars! At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!" — Giacomo Puccini, Nessun Dorma (Turandot)
Series
- Part 18 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
The nightmare is always the same: a courtroom, a cage, and a verdict he can't escape. But when Rafael Barba wakes up swinging at the ghosts in his head, he realizes with horror that the person he just hit isn't a phantom—it's the woman sleeping next to him.
"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." — Stephen King
Series
- Part 19 of Febuwhump
-
Tags
Summary
A site visit to the Catskills turns into a nightmare when Rafael Barba and Olivia Benson stumble into the territory of a serial killer hunting for sport. With a crossbow bolt in his leg and a storm closing in, Barba watches the hunter become the prey, and realizes exactly why the NYPD gave Olivia a badge.
"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter." — Ernest Hemingway, On the Blue Water
Series
- Part 20 of Febuwhump