#it’s my eo spiral and i get to choose the outside pov

[lesbenson]

uh here’s the kathy stabler rafael barba good place style purgatory thing that i’ve been plagued by for months. formatted terribly because notes app. pls enjoy or don’t.

the real spiritual plane was the enemies we made along the way ❤️

the last thing rafael remembers is the familiar burn of whiskey and something that resembled falling asleep - emphasis on the falling. endless, endless falling.

he knows forlini’s had been dark and a little gloomy with its remaining patrons, and now he has several questions about this warmly lit but empty room. he looks across the bar to the mirror and realizes he can’t see himself in it, his head spinning. he stares at the glass until he can’t register anything in it, his mind racing but his body oddly calm.

“they kind of cosmically sedate you, at first.” a pleasant voice calls out, and barba realizes with a startle that he’s not alone, not having seen an approaching figure in this mirror-that-doesn’t-mirror.

he turns in his seat, taking her in. straight hair somewhere between blonde and brown, long limbs, a warm smile, a plain blue dress that looks soft. she’s pretty. she seems kind, familiar. she watches it hit him.

“oh no.”

“oh yes.” kathy stabler grins at him, one eyebrow raised in amusement at the sheer horror in his voice. “boo.” she laughs to herself, gracefully hopping onto the barstool next to him. he realizes it’s the only other stool here.

“but you’re- oh hell.” his hands are flattened out against the top of the bar, his body about to launch up and out. dead is the word, but it doesn’t reach his lips.

“yeah yeah, but you don’t have anything to worry about, i don’t think.” she waves barba off easily.

“other than the fact that i’m dead? where the hell even are we?”

she honest to god shushes him.

“we’re here.” she says it like it should answer all of his questions, shrugging easily.

“here? are we- i mean i must be in hell. i have to be.” barba looks around as if there’ll be a sign somewhere, reading they told you not to become a lawyer.

kathy rolls her eyes, reaching up over the bar to pinch two glasses between her fingers and grab the neck of a dark, heavy whiskey bottle. she drops back down onto her stool, clattering the glassware onto the bartop.

“we’re just here. no up or down, gates and flames, from what i can tell, and we can probably debate the fairness of that at another time, but i’ve honestly let it go. don’t ask me about rules or souls or damnation. we’re just out here in the middle of nowhere, looking in. cursed with knowledge and sight. good?” she pulls her lips into a tight line, eyebrows raised in an expression that screams indifference, to barba and to their surroundings.

he silently tilts his head to the side, lips pursed, and breaks his silence to grab one of the tumblers and mutter “yeah, great.”

kathy laughs dryly, “that’s the spirit!”

he glares at her over his arm and she laughs again, twists the lid off the bottle, and uses both her hands to pick it up and pour barba a drink that would probably kill him in literally any other context. he raises an eyebrow and nods in silent thanks, waiting for her to pour her own drink.

kathy raises her glass, “to elliot and olivia,” tapping rafael’s glass before he can respond. he scoffs, taking a long swig of the suspiciously smooth liquor, gulping hard.

“about that… about them, i need to tell you i’m sorry for defending the man that-“ kathy cuts him off with a warning look.

“don’t. i get it. i know you thought you were protecting olivia from elliot’s mess. it’s … i’m used to that sort of thing.” her eyes are dark, her smile sad.

“it was wheatley’s fault you died, i should’ve steered clear of the whole thing but i just couldn’t, i hated to think of liv having stabler thrown in her face like that, after everything she’s done for him and everything he’s- i’m sorry, sorry.”

kathy looks like she pities him. and it would actually be offensive if he wasn’t the one who got her car bomber out of jail. he doesn’t really deserve her respect.

“i’m used to men making the least rational choice in defense of olivia benson. which is funny because, codependent or not, she actually is quite capable of handling herself. it’s everyone else who needs her. but elliot could never help himself. this insane need to protect her, support her, at everyone’s expense, including theirs.”

barba stares at her for a long time, reading the resignation and the understanding in her features. she turns to him.

“i see how much he loves her, now that i’m not there.”

he smiles, “you don’t have to die to see that.”

she laughs. “no, but you see things differently out here. clearer. i see what he does but i also see how he feels. and really, what he feels is love. deep, pure love. for her.” she looks down at the wooden grain of the bartop “and guilt. lots of it.”

barba nods “once a catholic boy…”

kathy raises her eyebrows in silent agreement. “i’m willing to be flattered that he bothered to feel guilty about loving her at all. i always sort of figured he’d run into her arms the first chance he got - sans actual adultery. isn’t that awful?” she laughs but it’s humorless. “we loved each other, but i was waiting for him to cheat on me while he was waiting for me to leave him, i mean really cut him loose.” she shakes herself out of the train of thought. “to his credit, he only realized how complicated his feelings for olivia were after he lost me. not sure how he made it as far as he did, but it was a little nice to know he wasn’t consciously in love with another woman for over twenty years of our marriage.”

she shrugs. he thinks she’s strangely pragmatic about the ongoing emotional affair between her husband and his partner. and then he wants to laugh. now who’s too invested?

“he was never the sharpest tack.” it’s out before he can think better of it, but he figures there’s nothing counting for or against him out here. kathy glares at him, a playful smile on her face.

“he is in every other department. but women, love … not his strongest conversational subjects.”

“they’re olivia’s.” his smile holds so much pain. “she draws it out of everyone, that raw emotion-“ he bites his tongue, tilting his head apologetically, “maybe you don’t want me to talk about her like that, right now.”

she grins “oh, no, let’s make a nice list of all the ways olivia benson is my husband’s perfect cosmic match-“

“she’s not!” barba exclaims, surprising them both with his burst of frustration. “i don’t- i just don’t think she is. but she clearly wants to be.”

“no, she doesn’t. and that’s how i know she really does love him unconditionally - just like you said - because it’s completely beyond reason. she can’t talk herself out of loving him. he was married, she didn’t want to love him. he was divorced and she didn’t want to pursue him. he stomped on her heart and she still could not stop loving him. and when he came back i know he turned her whole life upside down but she took it all in stride.”

she sighs, throwing back more whiskey and he finds himself leaning in, almost conspiratorial.

“so you can see… how she feels, here?” he tries to keep the desperation out of his voice. he fails. it doesn’t matter. if there’s one person who won’t begrudge him his nosiness and insecurity here, it’s stabler’s wife.

but she hesitates. “it’s not- a button i can press, or a list i can- i just know, now, she was so constantly torn between her love for him and her guilt for being so close to a married man that she did everything to keep our marriage intact. and it helped, and it mattered, but it didn’t change the fact that they were madly in love with each other, and it didn’t help the problems elliot and i already had. there would be years at a time where we couldn’t communicate at all. and now she’s- they’re both- they think acknowledging that they love each other now means acknowledging that they always did. and they won’t be able to forgive themselves for that.”

“but they have always loved each other.” he wants it to be a question. a leading question, but a question. but there’s no denying what they both know.

she casts a sideways glance at him, then nods, facing the non-reflective mirror. “they just need to admit it to themselves. save everyone else a lot of headaches.” kathy pulls a little half smile.

barba thinks he sees how stabler ended up with this woman. she’s funny, emotionally intelligent, and tough in the way liv is- in the way someone whose had to protect their heart becomes. but he can see she’s given up in the places liv would double down. he thinks that’s what it takes to spend your entire life with elliot stabler. a level of release that olivia can’t achieve. he also finds her hard to actively dislike and it makes liv’s guilt that much more understandable. this woman whose death could have, in a twisted way, been prevented if her proximity to elliot had just been severed, is also willing to rationalize what anyone else would think of as total betrayal.

he starts to understand what kathy means about seeing things more clearly, with a little distance.

barba clears his throat “well i’ve gathered that they’re both too headstrong for that.”

she nods, finishes her drink, and loudly places the empty glass back on the bar. “yeah. but anyway, you should get back. while you still can, and all.”

kathy claps him on the back like a fucking baseball coach and his vision starts to blur.

“olivia will come around, eventually. she just likes to give up on people so they can’t give up on her. just keep telling her you’re sorry and don’t bring her dad into it next time.” her nails are digging into his shoulder when she smiles warmly and whispers “good luck, mr. barba.”

-

he comes to with a hard jolt like the snap of a thick rubber band. his pounding forehead is resting on the cool metal of the bar. the bartender cuts him off.