Chapter Text
Jet sighs as she scrolls through the endless maze of miscellaneous, disorganized files at the bottom of the barrel that is the NYPD database.
All hope for the joint case between SVU and OCCB has been reduced to data mining, as their career trafficker is currently in the wind. Several people from the 1-6 have come across this particular criminal over the years and it was Captain Benson who suggested that Sloot look for scraps; something to point them in the direction of a lead. Somebody desperately needs to sort through this black hole of potentially useful information and update the entire system, but that would take months at best. She won’t be the one to recommend that to the brass, not wanting to be assigned the task herself. Still… old incident reports, disjointed notes, case briefings, memos, photographs, chain of custody logs, and more sit here, categorized only by the date uploaded. She scrolls until she finally hits a point where all the dates remain the same, a result of the mass dump of files from the old system.
God only knows what the actual dates are on these things.
She’s getting pretty deep into the dump when one of the aliases for their trafficker catches her eye and she clicks on it, opening a door to about twenty separate files, each of which is labeled. “Thank God,” she mumbles under her breath.
“Got somethin’?” Sergeant Tutuola asks from where he stands with Benson and Stabler across the squad room.
“Maybe. Gimme a minute,” she mumbles in response. The three nod and turn back to their own task.
Among the labels are notes, copies of communication with the DA’s office, photographs of evidence, the initial incident report, and finally, leads.
Jet moves the mouse to hover over leads but hesitates, an unmarked file catching her eye. Compared to the rest of the section, it seems out of place and intriguingly ominous.
“What are you?” she questions dramatically under her breath.
She clicks on it, and her computer quickly downloads a video file. In the video player, the file is labeled as a series of numbers (signifying its place in the system) and the letters EBOS. Jet’s face contorts in confusion; it’s not any acronym she’s familiar with. The date on the file remains unknown, and curiosity gets the better of her as she moves the mouse to click play.
The video buzzes to life, chunky computers and old telephones atop desks coming into view. The unmistakable noise of a squadroom fills her headphones as the grainy screen focuses on a man across a desk.
“Hello, there, Big Brother…” A voice speaks, narrating the video dramatically. Jet grins despite not knowing who the voice belongs to.
“Hello…” She responds.
“This is my relatively competent partner, Brian Cassidy. But you already knew that.” The camera zooms in on the man across the desk, a young guy with close-shorn hair in a baggy suit. He looks up from his case file and flashes a boyish grin. He sits up to fire back.
“And this is my relatively sane, dinosaur of a partner, John Munch.”
Off-camera, another voice speaks absentmindedly. It sounds oddly familiar but Jet can’t place it.
“Yeah, he enjoys long walks on the beach and wasting our valuable time with conspiracy theories…” The camera spins around to face the voice’s owner and Jet’s jaw instantly drops.
On the screen before her is a decades younger version of the man standing across the room. Elliot Stabler’s eyes remain fixed on the case file in his hands, a small smile on his face as he walks from the entryway to stand in front of the narrator. He shakes his head.
“Do you think Anderson has ever met that creeper from across the street? I’m still not convinced he wasn’t part of it.”
Jet’s jaw remains dropped as she takes in the youthful version of her older colleague. He has hair, is, of course, the first observation she makes, snickering to herself. Her eyes flick back and forth from the screen to the man himself, taking in the changes. Expensive, deep blue Italian suits; boxy, pale suits. Heavier frame and standing straight as a steel rod; scrawny with a somewhat poor posture. Laugh and stress lines; lack thereof.
Most notably, though, is the difference in his eyes. The Elliot Stabler on her screen looks lighter, his eyes a brighter shade of blue, a smile easily worn across his features for no particular reason. Jet looks back up to him now and frowns. His eyes are deeper, darker, sadder, and so much more tortured, more tired than that of his younger self. It’s not that she’s never seen him smile or relax – she has, particularly when Captain Benson is around – but it’s a fleeting mood for him, the causes for such an attitude few and far between for him. A smile, a laugh is a struggle for him nowadays, and the thought pains the young detective. She may not be the most sentimental of people but she’s nothing if not observant and Stabler’s a good man; that truth is plain, clear, and simple to her.
The camera angle suddenly raises as the narrator stands from his desk. “Introduce yourself, Detective,” the narrator demands, playfully. Elliot’s smile widens, almost imperceptibly and he shakes his head, his eyes still fixed on the paper in his hands.
“Get that out of my face, John,” he mutters, although his words are mild, relaxed, no real malice behind them.
“Didn’t Anderson say she didn’t know him?” The other young detective asks. Cassidy, she remembers. At that, Elliot pinches the bridge of his nose, then looks up.
“Yeah, that’s not the point. I’m not thinking if she said she did, I’m tryna think through the implications of if she did,” he announces, slightly annoyed. “Ya know, what that might mean? How it would correlate if it was him?” The other men remain silent, staring at him, perplexed by his train of thought. Elliot sighs.
“Mkay, you guys are no help” He whips his head around the room. “Has anyone seen the other half of my brain? ‘Bout 5”8,” He announces, loudly, raising his hand to gesture at that height. “Dark brown hair, dark brown eyes… drop-dead gorgeous, body language of a street fighter, smarter than all of us… happens to be able to read my mind…”
The words are barely out of his mouth before someone jumps onto his back, arms wrapping around him tightly to support her weight. The force of the impact causes Elliot to stumble forward a step, his small smile instantaneously breaks into a full-blown grin and his hands come up to grip her forearm.
Jet gasps, clasping a hand over her mouth, eyes widening impossibly at the recognition of the woman in the video. The impossibly young face of Olivia Benson, Detective Benson, is absolutely beaming as she cocks her head to look at the side of her partner’s face, eyes shining.
“Wow, I mean… that’s specific, Stabler. Like, one-in-a-million chances of finding someone matching that description–”
“One-in-seven-billion,” he corrects.
“One-in-seven-billion,” she adjusts automatically. “Let alone getting partnered with them.” She hops down from him, stepping to the side, only to cockily sling her arms around his shoulders. “One lucky son of a bitch, that would be.”
He grins in response. “Ya don’t say…”
She gives a happy “Hmph ” and playfully shoves him, walking over to her own desk, dropping into her chair. “Hit me,” she commands.
He grins proudly and practically skips to his own desk, all too happy to oblige. He begins rattling off his thoughts, thoughts which don’t seem incomplete until she finishes them for him without missing a beat. The cameraman, John, slowly moves back to sit in his own seat. He keeps the focus on the two at the desk, seemingly aware that this exchange is something worth recording.
Sunlight streams from high windows, lighting up the two partners’ faces, brown and blue sparkling as they communicate on levels unknown to those around them. Jet’s hand remains clasped over her mouth, suddenly feeling incredibly privileged to have stumbled across this unmarked file. It’s a moment in history; frozen in time, saved, lost, found, and playing out before her eyes.
She understands, now; the rumors she’s heard whispers of, coming only from those a few generations her senior. They’re both quicker than any other cop in the room, firing off facts, seamlessly weaving in clever jokes. They act as each other's sounding board, amplifying the subject of their conversation until the answers reveal themselves. They speak as one, sentences stopping exactly when the other picks it up, and yet somehow, it’s not abrupt in any way; as if the other always knows exactly when the other will speak. It’s fucking magical, even as a witness, twice-removed.
It’s also disorienting and overwhelming. Jet pauses just as John begins to speak again and shakes her head. She doesn’t know what the fuck that was but what she just witnessed was the stuff of legend. Her eyes flick up once more, to observe the titans those two scrawny kids became.
Benson and Stabler. She sees it now.
“Hey, d’you find somethin’?”