Chapter Text
2003
There was a collective groan in the squad room of the 16th precinct because there was a mention of a new ADA. Alex Cabot had to go into the Witness Protection Program and had left massive hole in the unit, and the last thing anyone wanted was a new over-eager prosecutor trying to make a name for himself in their domain.
Olivia was sitting at her desk, the phone pressed to her right ear as she muttered "Look, just drop her off at the station after her newspaper club, okay? I'm going to be stuck here. Yeah. Thanks." She hang the receiver up, running a hand over her face as she joined the rest of the squad in Cragen's office.
"Great. A hotshot from Brooklyn, probably barely out of law school," Elliot grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest, his protective temper already spiking. "Just what we need. Some kid trying to use SVU as a stepping stone to the DA's chair and to boost his ego."
"McCoy says he is the real deal, Elliot. Keep it in your pants," Cragen warned, though is own expression was tired. He looked past them towards his door. "In fact, he should be—"
The door of Cragen's office was suddenly thrown open.
The man who walked through did not look like a "kid". He moved with an absolute, controlled authority that immediately commanded the room. He was wearing a way too expensive dark three piece suit for a city employee, a perfect knotted tie, and a leather briefcase was gripped in his hand.
His dark green eyes scanning everything with a critical, razor-sharp gaze.
"Detectives, Captain," the man said, his voice deep and in a somehow educated New York way. "I'm ADA Rafael Barba."
Elliot shifted his weight, preparing to give the suit his trademark intimidating glare. But next next to him, Olivia completely stopped breathing.
Cragen's office seemed to fade into a static hum around her. The lights blurred. For a terrifying, dizzying second, the smell of the precinct was replaced by the humid air of a New York August in 1991. The sharp, expensive suit faded into a worn-out Shakespeare in the Park shirt from 1989, and the slicked-back hair became the unruly dark waves of a twenty-something pre-law student who used to press his lips against her collarbone and whisper about a future that never happened.
Rafa
It couldn't be. It was impossible. This has to be some sick trick the universe was trying to play with her. — God yes maybe she tried to find him but he was already off to Boston, she had been too terrified, her mother had been sick, and the pregnancy test had been too positive.
Barba's eyes swept over Munch, then Fin, and finally landed on the squad's junior female detective. The slick, practiced smile gone from his face. The absolute composure he carried shattered in a microsecond. His jaw so tightened so hard Olivia could see the muscle leap in his cheek.
For a fraction of a second the calculated Manhattan attorney was gone. In his place stood a boy from the Bronx, who had spent an entire late autumn staring at the blank door of his mothers apartment door, wondering why the girl named Livia had vanished into thin air.
"Barba?" Cragen asked, noticing the sudden, dead silence that had fallen over his new prosecutor. "You alright?, maybe Fin, Munch, Liv and Elliot y'all should go back to work."
Barba blinked, trying to get his face back into a mask of professionalism, though his eyes remained fiercely, desperately locked onto Olivia.
"Yes, Captain," Barba answered, his voice wary and a fraction tighter than before.
"Just..trying to get accustomed with the environment."
Elliot's eyes darted from the new ADA to his partner. He did not know what it was, but his radar was screaming. Olivia's knuckles were white where she was gripping the edge of the desk, her face entirely pale.
"Liv?" Elliot muttered out of the corner his mouth, stepping subtly closer to her, his shoulders squaring up in some protectively, "You good? Are you coming?"
Olivia felt the blood rushing in her ears, Elliots voice sounding like was underwater. She forced her fingers to uncurl from the edge of Cragen's way and made her way to the open door of the office that Elliot was holding for her.
"Yeah, sure, Elliot," she choked out, swallowing hard to force her breathing to steady. She tried not to notice the way how Barba's eyes were virtually burning a hole into the back of her head.
She caught the time on her Computer desktop: 3:45 PM.
Panic spiked straight through her chest. The newspaper club let out at 3:30. The drive from the middle school only took twenty to thirty minutes to get to the precinct. Which meant she had less than fifteen minutes before the green-eyed whirlwind of her eleven-year-old daughter, Lily, came walking through that secure door.
Olivia closed her eyes for brief, hopeless second, praying to a God she never spoke to. Please let him be gone. Let him get back to Hogan Place. Let him be trapped in Cragen's office for the next two hours.
Because Lily's resemblance to the man who had just walked into the Captain's office wasn't just vague— it was uncanny. It was frightening. Lily had the exact same thick wavy dark brownish hair. She had those startling, glimmering green eyes that seemed to look right through a person. And worst of all, whenever Lilly was particularly precocious or proud of herself, she wore the same lopsided smirk he used to wear when he knew he was right about something.
Through the glass windows of Cragen's office, Olivia could see Barba shaking his hand, his back to the bullpen.
Shit. Shit. Shit
"Liv, earth to Liv, seriously," Elliot's voice broke through her spiraling thoughts. He stepped fully into her line of sight, his blue eyes narrowed with concern an alarming amount of suspicion. "You look like you're saw a ghost. Did you eat today? Is it the case?"
"I'm fine El. Just a headache," she lied quickly, her eyes darting past him, toward the elevator at the end of the hall behind the secure gate."I'm going…to go to the break. Get some Tylenol."
"You want me come with you?"
"No!" Olivia snapped a little too fast, a little too loud.
Fin and Munch both looked up from their paperwork. She softened her tone immediately, offering Stabler a fragile smile "No, I'm good. Just need a minute."
She practically bolted towards the hallway, her heart hammering against her ribs. She needed to intercept her daughter. She needed to grab her, hide her somewhere in the backrooms of the station or just smuggle her out of the building before the past the present collided in a way that she could never undo.
Barba was leaving the office, his head down as his thumbs flew across the buttons of his Blackberry, deeply engrossed in an email from the DA's office. He took three long strides into the bullpen before he suddenly collided with a tiny person.
The impact was not hard, but it knocked a heavy, oversized backpack right off the kid's shoulders, sending it clattering the floor.
"Oh, sorry Mister, did not see you," a bright, clear voice chimed.
From across the room, Olivia froze, her entire body locking up in sheer terror. She could not move, She could not breathe. Barba stopped blinking as he looked down. For a split second, his eyes scanned the little girl who just bumped into him. But his mind clearly miles away, stuck on his caseload and the absolute shock of seeing "Livia". He did not truly see her— not even wondering why a kid was so familiar and comfortable at a police station.
"No harm done. Watch were you're going, kiddo," Rafael mumbled. He adjusted his cuff, shook his head and kept walking straight out the bullpen, his eyes back on his phone.
He did not notice. The elevator doors slid shut behind him, and he was gone. Olivia let out a breath so ragged it hurt her chest.
The man who had missed half of his daughter's life— the first steps, the first words, the first loose tooth— had just walked right past.
"Hey, Mom!" Lily called out, totally oblivious to the whole emotional charged scene she just had walked through. She hoisted her heavy backpack onto one shoulder and marched over the desks."Uncle Fin! Uncle Munch!"
"Hey there, lil Benson", Fin grinned and giving her a fist bump.
Within thirty seconds, Lily had plopped herself, right onto the corner of Munch's desk, immediately launching into a rapid debate about what the absolute best gummy bear color was.
"Clear is the only superior flavor because pineapple is a tropical taste, whereas red is just artificial cherry. You're letting sentimentality cloud your judgment, Uncle Munch." Lily argued, her hands gesturing wildly, her green eyes flashing with a subtle stubbornness.
Munch pointed a finger at her, narrowing his eyes. "Listen to me, cherry has historical—"
Olivia watched her daughter from her desk, a bittersweet, aching lump forming in her throat. God, could Lily talk. She leaned her chin on her hand, a faint, sad smile touching her lips.
There was really no question where that gene had come from. The kids was an absolute force of nature.
She looked back toward where Rafael just disappeared. They had survived day one. Bus as she looked at her brilliant green-eyed daughter, Olivia knew that time was running out.