AN - wanted to try something new and different, so here's a Rolivia and Cabenson for you all
"Interesting, isn't it? The places you find people these days?"
Olivia looked up at Alex Cabot, who was leaning in her office doorway and smirking. "Sometimes downright unimaginable," she replied, without a hint of cynicism.
"Took them long enough to get your name on the door," the blonde remarked, stepping into the room with a sweeping glance at the space she'd known only as Cragen's.
"If Don was here, he'd probably agree with you."
"He was a smart man," Alex nodded. Then: "You asked to have Nick Hunter's charges reduced." She smiled.
Liv couldn't help but snort lightly, amused that Alex's ADA connections still held strong. "Yeah."
The two women held each other's gaze momentarily. Alex took another step toward Liv's desk. "Thank you," she murmured.
"I plead temporary insanity," was Liv's mumbled response.
"All insanity aside..."
"Not aside!" Liv exclaimed, her frustration driving her up from her chair. "Alex" but Cabot shushed her, waving her hands as she hurried back to shut the office door.
"Liv, please, just... "
"Alexandra, I never would've imagined you turning your back on the law."
"Screw the law!" the blonde spat, "Do you know how long it's been since 'the law' has been written to benefit the victim over the perpetrator?!"
Olivia spread her hands, leaning on them across the desk. "Why now? If it's always been that way? Why wait all these years to become a full-time savior, huh?"
Liv regretted it before it was even completely spoken. She watched as Cabot's eyes clouded, then Liv forcefully squeezed her eyes shut and sighed. "I'm sorry. I just don't understand."
"I didn't expect you to," Alex confessed. "But I did expect your help. And Jules expects it." Alex crossed the room again, skirting the desk in favor of coming right up to Olivia. "Do we have to see eye to eye, for both of us to want what's best for Jules?"
Liv knew there'd be hell to pay for Hunter's stint in Rikers – and worse, now that Stone was reducing the charges. But Alex was right; this was how they had worked together, for years.
Outside the office, the precinct was quiet. Just a skeleton crew was left, manning the desks for the night. If the two women tried, they might have even been able to hear the rustling of paperwork being filed, or squad house coffee perking.
All Olivia heard was her own tense breaths as she raised her dark eyes to Alex's icy ones. "I wish I had known where you were," she whispered.
Alexandra shook her head, close enough for the curtain of her blonde hair to brush Liv's shoulder. "I can't," she replied. It was not an explanation, but all she could offer. She touched one of Olivia's hands gently. "But I missed you."
If Carisi had noticed his Lieutenant's change of breathing, how she had paled at the site of the former ADA when they had found her, he hadn't let on. None of them had ever let on, if they'd known. For years, Alex had been the storm that Olivia kept navigating into. Over and over again, despite being alternately burned or frozen out as the landscape dictated. She turned her head, letting her lips bump into the other woman's as if the kiss were accidental.
Cabot's avidity for chasing a nobler and more intrepid path to justice may have been what first enchanted the then-young detective. Their coming together, over time, had come to mean different things to each of them – and this time would be no different.
