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Chapter Text

March 2024

The Comstat meeting chairperson wrapped up the proceedings, “Thank you everyone.  You are dismissed.”

Olivia sighed in relief, with the Bronx up and running again as a functional unit all the SVU units in the boroughs had made it through Comstat relatively unscathed for a change.  She nodded to the other SVU COs, before grabbing her folders and making her way towards the door, running into Sergeant Ayanna Bell, on the way.  They exited the room together.

Elliot was loitering, leaning against the wall not far from the briefing room.  He was waiting for his sergeant to share a car ride back to their taskforce office when he spotted her, and his favourite NYPD Captain exit the briefing together.  He smiled at the sight, as he was prone to do whenever he spotted Olivia.

Before he had a chance to greet the two women, Chief McGrath came puffing up behind them, “Captain Benson, a minute of your time before you go.”  Olivia made brief eye contact with Elliot, before rolling her eyes, painting on a benign smile and turning to her chief.

“Yes sir, what can I do for you?” she responded.

McGrath barely glancing at Bell and Stabler, “You’re dismissed.”  Elliot and Ayanna took a few steps away, to allow some modicum of privacy for whatever this conversation was but didn’t leave entirely.  The chief turned his attention to the captain, “A reporter from the Ledger is coming by your precinct tomorrow at 11 to interview you.”

“Why?  We’ve got no newsworthy cases at present,” frowned Olivia in confusion.

The chief screwed up his nose like he could smell something bad, before continuing, “It’s almost 10 years since William Lewis died.  Several media outlets are making contact to run profile pieces on the case.  One PP has agreed to give the Ledger access.

Stabler was aware of the views his friend had of her boss, and to be fair they were views he shared if his few interactions with the man were any indication of the man’s character.  His first thought was despairing for his lack of popcorn while watching the exchange.  That was until he saw the abrupt shift in Olivia’s body language.  She went from 0 to 100 in less than 3.2 milliseconds, drawing herself up as tall as possible and bristling, no outright vibrating, with poorly concealed fury at McGrath’s command.  His smile faded and his step forward to back up his old partner was stopped by a hand on his arm.  He paused, turning to his Sergeant, and after her barely perceptible shake of her head, he stood down but retained a laser like focus on the conversation in front of them.

Leaning into the adrenaline dump that happens whenever she is caught unprepared by mention of his name, Olivia channelled the energy into her response, “No! Absolutely not.”  She was pissed, how dare he ask that of her, demanding, possibly even ordering a survivor to talk to the media. Oh, hell no, nope, not going to happen.  How did someone this clueless become the chief overseeing SVU?

“Come on Captain, it was a Manhattan SVU case, you’re the CO of the unit.  On top of that, you were a detective on the case,” McGrath barrelled on, obliviously irritated at the refusal.

Olivia anger came to the forefront, her voice getting louder, “Yeah, a detective on the case until I was very much NOT a detective on the case.  You remember why that was, right?  RIGHT?  I’m pretty sure the Ledger does not want to just ask me about a misdemeanour flashing charge and Alice Parker’s rape.”  She paused for breath, perhaps remembering again where she was, and continued marginally calmer, “I have two people in my unit who were detectives on the case back then.  If the Ledger shows up tomorrow, they can try to talk to Rollins or Tutuola, but my people have my support if they don’t want to talk either.  The case wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs for any of us.”

“And if I make it an order?” continued the chief, with a stubborn clench of his jaw.

Her anger was now deadly quiet as she stepped up, nose to nose, staring him down in challenge, “Just try me.  I’d be more than happy to explain to a disciplinary board how the chief in charge of Manhattan SVU tried to order an assault survivor to discuss her case with the media by leveraging his power over her as her superior officer.  How do you think that’d work out for you?”

McGrath, finally realised his massive miscalculation, broke the staring competition first.  And while still looking at the floor, conceded, “Fine, I’ll cancel the Ledger.”

“Thank you… Sir” responded Olivia somewhat respectfully, although with the delay, the ‘sir’ was clearly a deliberate afterthought.  She then turned on her heel and marched off toward the parking garage without so much as a thought towards not being dismissed.

Both Bell and Stabler smirked briefly at the chief before turning and following the captain to the parking garage.  Elliot was aroused, concerned and confused.  If it was the 10-year anniversary of a case, then it was clearly something that had happened after he left.  But what kind of case would invoke such a response from Olivia?  It worried him even as he considered her righteous anger, which he had to admit was even more stunningly glorious on her now as Captain as it ever was in her Detective days.  While he generally hopes her temper wouldn’t be directed at him, it was a joy to watch directed at others.  He prayed they could work through the last of their issues because he knew at this point, he would follow her through the 9 circles of hell if she asked him too.

It wasn’t until Olivia reached her SUV that she slowed down her rapid march and sagged against her vehicle.  She sighed deeply releasing some tension.  This day suddenly felt a whole lot longer than it had earlier.  She gave the OCCB team a wry smile, “Sorry you had to see that.  Some days McGrath is just…”

“I get it Captain,” responded Ayanna with a smile of her own.  She continued with a question, “You Ok?”

“Yeah, just wasn’t expecting…  While I remember,” Olivia replied before pausing to grab her phone and initiated a call.  “Hey, Fin.  Quick question – have you been running interference on media calls wanting to talk to me about Lewis?  Yeah… No…  No, that’s fine Fin, it was a good call…  A heads up might have been good though, I just got blindsided by McGrath.  It looks like the Ledger tried an end run around you with him…  Of course, he agreed… No, I sorted it… Yes, he still has his head…  Ok, bye.”

She leaned back on the car again, indulging in a few moments of breathing exercises to reduce her blood pressure further.  Elliot took advantage of the quiet moment to repeat Ayanna’s question, “You ok Liv?”

“I’m fine,” she replied.

Elliot snorted in amusement, “Olivia ‘fine’ or are you actually fine?  Cause I’m thinking it’s the first of the two options.”

“Screw you Stabler,” retorted Olivia, but there was no venom in her voice, leaving a vague note of humour at getting called out on her bullshit.

“Whenever you want Captain,” he argued back with a laugh, the humour in full evidence in his voice now.  The comment earned him a baleful glare from Olivia and a gasp of amused shock from his Sergeant.  He continued, “Seriously though, who the hell is William Lewis, and what did he do to you?” 

Chapter Text

Weight, she could feel weight as he sat on her bare legs, she buried her face into the mattress, letting it soak up her tears.  She knew what was coming soon, it felt inevitable, but she refused to submit, pulling at the shackles on her wrists even now.

Hiss – click, she could smell the gas, she felt the heat and even as she wondered what he was heating this time, she knew she really did NOT want to know.

And as the dark chuckle followed, she was hit with the wave of blinding white pain that dragged her under.  She started screaming.  Screaming and hoping against hope that the one person she wanted would hear her.

~O~

 “Seriously though, who the hell is William Lewis, and what did he do to you?”  Elliot had deduced that whatever this case was, it was serious enough to justify a 10-year acknowledgment and it had impacted Olivia personally given her outraged response to her chief.

Both women rapidly sobered in their demeanour at the question, they stared at him stunned.  “You don’t know who William Lewis is?”, Olivia blinked in response.  Her brain stuttered to a halt; this was most definitely NOT a conversation she was anticipating having today.  After Elliot shook his head, confirming that he was oblivious to the impact William Lewis had on her life, Olivia gathered her thoughts rapidly and turned to Ayanna, “Do you need him the rest of the day?”

The sergeant remembered the case; she didn’t know it well, having only been a uniformed officer back then, but she had been a part of the all-hands manhunt during both of Lewis’ sprees and had followed the trial as well as any NYPD cop had at the time.  She recalled the speculation associated with the captain’s injuries and inconclusive rape kit results presented at trial, and why on earth she would choose to stay with SVU after the case.  Ayanna turned to her subordinate, it was clear to anyone with eyes in their head how he felt about the captain, and if he didn’t know who William Lewis was, then his day was about to turn to crap.  Keeping an eye on Elliot, she answered Olivia’s question, “He’s all yours, captain.  And Elliot, if you need tomorrow too, take it.”

Elliot’s confused frown only deepened after Olivia all but ordered he get into her SUV.  The lack of any actual answer to his question was ominous enough, but Olivia and Ayanna’s subsequent commentary and behaviour before his sergeant left gave him a deepening sense of foreboding.  He realised he might actually prefer not knowing who William Lewis was after all.

For her part in this, Olivia felt resigned as she started driving, this conversation had been a long time coming.  There was never a good time for it, but she had definitely been running low on solid reasons, and even hare-brained excuses to avoid it were in short supply now that Elliot had been back for the better part of 3 years, excluding his undercover excursions.  She was honestly surprised it didn’t come up during the Shadowerk case, with the 10-year anniversary of her original Lewis abduction hitting almost the same time.  But then she’d realised that the more important date to everyone but her was the one where he’d died.  While she’d been the one that had garnered more than her fair share of notoriety from the publicity during her abduction and the one that finally managed to get at least some charges to stick, she was, after all, only one of his many victims.  To all his other survivors and everyone else, his death date was the more important anniversary to mark.  So yes, she was resigned, she’d never be ready for this conversation, but she had to have it now while she could still control the narrative before the media interest took that control from her.  And hadn’t she already lost enough?

“Is there anyone at your place this afternoon or tonight?” asked Olivia, finally breaking the silence in the vehicle.

Elliot responded, “No, Mom and Eli are both where they should be.  Why?”

“We need privacy for this,” she responded.  Then Olivia initiated another phone call, “Hey Siri - call Martha…  Hi Martha, are you able to stay with Noah tonight and drop him to school tomorrow?  I gotta work thing…  Oh good, thank you.  I’ll be out of touch for a few hours, but can you reassure him that it’s nothing dangerous…  No thank you, I’m going to swing by the apartment now for a couple of things before I get into it… Ok, great.  Thanks again.”

A sense of dread that had been clawing at Elliot was getting harder to put aside.  He tried for an out, “Hey Liv.  This all seems like a lot of trouble; I can just look at the files or google…”

Olivia didn’t let him finish, “No.  Do me a favour and just don’t, ok.  Like ever.  If you have questions after today, then ask me, or Fin if you have to.  Or I can get you some of the photos from the files if you really want.  Just please promise me you won’t ever google.”

“Ok, I won’t,” he quickly reassured her, mild panic started to grip him, and they continued in silence.

They made a quick stop at her apartment for an overnight bag and what looked like they could be her hard copies of the case files.  Elliot wondered why there was more than one but again filed that information in the wish-I-didn’t-have-to-know pile of questions in his mind.  Then during her follow-up call to Fin, advising him of her afternoon plans, Fin had reassured her that no further explanation was necessary and that he had everything under control at the precinct.  As brief as it was, the ease at which Fin acquiesced to her plans further exacerbated Elliot’s anxiety.  It was not long after that that they arrived at Elliot’s apartment.

On entering the apartment, they first shook off their jackets; Elliot then headed for the kitchen, “Tea?”

“Please,” Olivia responded as she put her stuff down beside the couch.

Elliot regarded her carefully as he waited for the kettle to boil.  She was deliberate in her movements, precise; she was holding herself together so tightly that he knew that even the slightest misstep could cause her to unravel, and he desperately didn’t want to be the initiating force in that.  He was cautious with his question, “I’m not going to like what I’m about to hear, am I?”

Her responding chuckle was raw and brittle but released some of her tension: "No, Elliot, you really aren’t.”  He noted the use of his full name; he could see she was keeping him at arm’s length while they did this.  He sighed and turned his attention to making tea.

There was little conversation until they were both changed into more comfortable clothes and seated on his couch with tea.  Elliot noticed that Olivia had made a point finding the balance between sitting as close to him as she could and still being out of arm’s reach.  He felt like he was in a minefield and unsure as to which of them was more tense.  He waited patiently for her to start.

Olivia began, “One of the reasons I haven’t mentioned this to you before now is that this was national news when it happened.  So, either you knew about it at the time and chose not to come back, or you had amputated me so thoroughly from your life that you didn’t hear about it back then.  I guess it’s the latter, given that you don’t know, but honestly, I was never sure which option would hurt more.  I still don’t know that; all I do know is that having been so thoroughly removed from your life back then still hurts, and it was only after William Lewis that I finally gave up on you ever coming back.”  She stared at him then, challenging him to disagree with her or have some other kind of come back to that.

Elliot swallowed thickly, wisely realising he should not speak in this moment, and also not trusting his voice as he felt guilt beginning to wrap itself around his throat.  He nodded, acknowledging his responsibility for her confessed hurt and encouraging her to continue.

“So,” she began the story with an overview, “He’s dead.  10 years ago, next week.  He died during the second incident.”  His mouth opened in surprised horror at the meaning of her words before snapping shut again.  Olivia continued, “Yeah, there were two.  The first was May 2013, the trial was January 2014, he was found guilty on some of the charges and jailed for it, and then he escaped at the end of March to initiate the second incident.”  She paused for another raw and unhinged chuckle, looking up at the ceiling to quell the tears forming in her eyes, “God, ‘incident’ is such a stupid word; it doesn’t even begin to describe the magnitude of what happened.  Both so-called incidents were sprees involving multiple homicides, assaults and rape, with me dragged along literally kicking and screaming for the ride.”

He held his breath, the feeling akin to the pause at the top of a roller coaster waiting for the drop.  Words like homicide, assault and rape rattling around his head as he saw Olivia kicking and screaming in his mind’s eye.  The guilt that had wrapped around his throat dropped down to his chest, the crush on his heart causing physical pain.  He whispered his earlier question, “Please tell me what he did to you, Olivia?”

Olivia popped out of her seat and began pacing.  The fidgeting she had been indulging in so far was no longer sufficient as a pressure valve for the tension in her body.  Flashback sensations were hitting her thick and fast – hands touching, pulling, pushing, overwhelming, the burning pain bounced through her scars in sequence like a demented game of whack-a-mole, the weight of his body on her, breathing so close to her ear, claiming her for his own to do with as he chose.  She wanted to scratch off her own skin to get some level of relief.  So, as an alternative, she paced, trying to put distance between herself and the memories plaguing her, and uncertain if she could put words to them until the desperate cries of her heart during those four days of hell bubbled to the surface.

She turned on him then, “You have no idea what it feels like to be totally alone.  To be fighting for your life with the devil, totally alone.  Knowing that no one was coming for you, that no one was going to save you, and that you were about to die.”  She paused, looking away and swiping at the tears she’d been unaware of until now streaming down her face.  She tried to gather her spiralling thoughts as she moved away from him, sitting in the chair furthest away from where he was.  She knew she hadn’t answered his question, but she also knew with her whole being that what he had done to her had transcended the physical; he had gotten into her head, burning, and burrowing into her soul, changing her forever.  There was far more to this than what he had done to her physically.

Elliot had to remind himself to breathe; he sought some clarity, “But the squad, a boyfriend?  Someone?”.

Olivia shook her head in denial, “Oh, they started looking for me eventually.  Cragen had made me take some time off, and Brian was working double shifts, so no one knew I was missing for two days.”

Elliot’s fists and jaw clenched in anger.  Where was her partner?  Where was this, Brian?  Why had no one noticed where she was for days? Wait… days… If no one realised she was missing for days, then she… had… been… missing… for… days!?!  He looked up at her again, the painful shock of that realisation all over his face, the unspoken question in his eyes.

“Four days that first time and just a few hours the second time,” she answered the unasked question.  His head dropped then, hands clasped over his face as his own tears began to fall as he shook his head in pained denial even as he accepted her words.

Olivia continued allowing all the hurt and pain to spill out and over, “He told me, on that last day, that he could see I was thinking of someone.  Someone I wanted to see one more time before I died.  You have no idea how alone it felt to be thinking of someone I hadn’t seen in two years.  To be thinking, in that moment of the single most important person in my life, who had disappeared, who had abandoned me without the courtesy of a goodbye, without the courtesy of any closure.”  She fired one last shot to lock in her message, “You told me once that you were my partner for better or worse.  You missed worse, Elliot, you missed it.”

She stopped then, watching him intently as he quietly and thoroughly fell apart, openly weeping into his hands as the utter depth of his betrayal of her and the consequences it had dropped on her was brought into the unrelenting glare of harsh daylight.  They stayed like that for a while, at an impasse, seated on opposite sides of the room: her waiting… him crying…  It was only when his sobbing subsided and he could start to think again, that the impasse was resolved.  He brought a voice to his deepest fear, “Do you blame me for what happened?”

“No, of course not; Lewis was the only person to blame,” Olivia retorted impatiently.  “Maybe things would have been different if you were here, maybe they would have been the same, I don’t know.  All I do know is that the aftermath would have been easier if you had been here,” she refused to allow him to wallow in what-ifs for even a second.

He realised, “But it’s why you can’t trust me, why you’re not ready for more between us.”

“Yes,” she admitted quickly, “Yes, that’s why.  I very nearly didn’t survive the last time you left me.  If we try… and fail… and I lose you again… I won’t survive a second time.”

Elliot nodded, taking her words to heart.  He had to fix this, fix them.  He’d been blundering around in the dark since his return, too afraid to ask or hear the answer to what his departure had done.  And it wasn’t like she hadn’t given him hints before, telling him he’d been the single most important person in her life, identifying his PTSD before anyone else did, holding him to account over the one-sided friendship that had evolved, reminding him that being a survivor was hard.  He just hadn’t listened to any of her hints, too far inside his own head to notice.  He finally continued, “I am so sorry for what it’s worth. What can I do to fix this?”

Olivia took a little pity on him then, she could wallow in this pain, continue to be stuck here, but she didn’t want to be.  She wanted to move forward, “Stop running away, Elliot.  Show me you’re reliably back.”  She was reminded of Lindstrom’s words from over a year ago, “I deserve better from you, and I deserve happiness.  You can help me find happiness, Elliot, if you really try.”

He sighed in relief; he still had a chance.  After everything she had been through, after all the ways he had failed her, she was still willing to give him a chance.  He responded, “I will try.”  They stared at each other with soft smiles, taking a moment of hope in this afternoon of heavy revelations. 

It wasn’t to last, though, with Elliot being who he was and his smile slowly converting to a smirk in a misguided attempt to keep the lighten the mood.  The first thing he tried was his luck, asking again gently but with a touch of mischief, “So, you still haven’t told me what he did to you.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were being evasive.”

“Urgh, Elliot!!” she responded, clearly irritated but not angry.  “You are the most stubborn son of a bitch that I have had the misfortune to have to deal with,” Olivia continued, in amused frustration.  “And an idiot,” she finished.  She appreciated his attempt a levity, it was part of who he was to her, a bringer of light to her dark, but in the moment at hand it only served to further impress on her how unaware he still was of Lewis’ impact on her.  She breathed a tension releasing sigh, allowed the mood in the room to change again.  She realised that now she had exposed that hidden part of her soul and the wounds that lay there; the physical description of what she went through felt less consequential and easier to discuss.  Make no mistake, significant pain was still there, but it just felt less now.

Elliot put his idiocy aside, the soft smile returning to his face as he regarded her.  He could see this crucible of an experience was a defining changed in her life, and as much as he hated so much of this conversation, he was hungry for the whole story.  He asked again, finally with the suitable level of sensitivity and respect the question required, “Please Liv, please tell me what he did to you?”

Chapter Text

She realised her eyes were closed and wondered where she was.  If it was still with Lewis, then faking unconscious for a bit longer would give her a welcome reprieve.  The pain was everywhere, rolling over her in waves, her head, stuffed with cotton wool, felt fuzzy.  None of it was new and immediate, but it was still significant.

She took an inventory; the mattress felt different, and she was covered in a sheet and blankets, which was new. Her clothing was different too, and her shirt and pants were no longer stuck to her damaged skin where she had been burned.  She twitched her limbs, and while sore, they moved as she desired without restraint.  Maybe he was gone, and she was finally alone?

She felt a gentle hand on her shoulder, her eyes sprung open as best they could in her fuzzy state as she gasped and shrunk back.  The kind eyes of her captain staring back at her, “Shh Liv, you’re ok.  You’re at Mercy, you’re safe.”

She blinked owlishly, trying to understand, “Where is he?”

“He’s not here; he’s in the Bellevue Prison Wing,” he replied.

She was starting to sink back into the cotton wool, “No, not Lewis, Elliot.”

Cragen felt his heart break for her yet again, “I’m sorry Liv, we’ve tried tracking him down, but we can’t find him.  He’s not coming.”

Her eyes closed again as she nodded, confirming she’d heard him, a single tear leaking down and into her hair.

~O~

Olivia began the more traditional retelling of her saga with Lewis; this was the part most people were interested in, and she’d done this part before many times between making statements and testifying.  It was easier due to her prior experiences with it, but this was Elliot.  Elliot, her partner, the protector who roughed up suspects just for looking at her sideways let alone laying a finger on her.  She knew she wasn’t wrong in what she’d told Lewis, if Elliot had been around back then… he would have.

“He fixated on me during an interrogation.  I played the role, you remember?”  Elliot remembered it well; it was a dangerous game, using feminine flattery and faux interest to get a suspect to open up and talk to them, sharing secrets they otherwise wouldn’t.  It was dangerous but so effective on so many perps.  “He fixated, then got off on a technicality, was released on bail, and none of us realised the danger.”

She paused then, letting the memory flow over her before she wordlessly stood and grabbed the thicker of the two case files; skimming through it, she found what she was looking for and placed it down in front of Elliot, open at the page she found.  It was an evidence image of her old apartment; he could see that it had been trashed, all but destroyed – furniture upturned, stains on the rug, personal effects and picture frames scattered and smashed.  But what stole his breath away was a piece of furniture in the middle of the image – one of her dining chairs on its side, duct tape still adhered to the legs.  He closed his eyes, frozen, his mind filling the gaps of what had occurred there, and he listened for her to continue.  “Lewis was lying in wait in my apartment, no idea how he got in.  I got home, and before I knew it, I was staring down the barrel of his gun, and it felt like everything just… stopped.  I didn’t eat for three days, barely slept, and had little water. He force-fed me pills and booze to subdue me.”

Elliot could feel a rage building at this; this piece of crap was lucky he was dead already. If he had been around at the time, he knew he would have broken this monster apart piece by piece.  He took pains to control his breathing, massaging his temples with his knuckles and hoping that with his measured breaths, he was showing Olivia that she could trust him with this and had the time and space she needed to be able to continue unprompted.  He wanted her to tell her story on her terms, he owed her that much at the very least.

Olivia picked up the file again, skimming through it, clearly looking for something else.  And for a second time, she placed it down in front of him.  This time it was a head and shoulders image of Olivia herself, the type of photo often taken during a rape kit or physical evidence collection.  He picked up the file to take a closer look at the image, noting her dishevelled hair as well as the sweat, dirt and blood that stained her skin.  He ran his eyes over it, spotting the bruising on her upper chest, neck and right cheek, the cut on her top lip, the blackened bruise around her left eye and the messy bleeding cut on her forehead.  He remembered a similar cut he had received at the height of the Wheatley shenanigans and realised she had been pistol-whipped.  But as disturbing and horrific as the injuries depicted in the image were, they were not what broke his heart.  No, what broke Elliot Stabler’s heart was the look in Olivia Benson’s eyes; the Olivia he remembered was not there; she was gone.  She may have been physically rescued at that point in the case, given that photos had been taken for evidence of her injuries, but mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually, at the time that image was taken, she was far away, still deep in the battle with the devil for her soul.  Elliot looked up at Olivia then, searching for her eyes, looking for her, that she was there again, and it was only when he found her there that he was able to breathe. 

“I told him about you, I didn’t mean to.  It was after I had the upper hand, I thought he was unconscious and I was trying to figure out what to do,” continued Olivia, she had started pacing again.  “I told him you wouldn’t have questioned yourself after what he’d done.  You would have kicked his teeth in for torturing me.  You would have broken his legs for beating me.  You would have broken his arms for cutting me.  You would have broken his back for burning me with cigarettes, and you would have broken his face for branding me with heated keys and wire coat hangers.”  She was almost breathless as the words tumbled out, adding one final declaration, “You would have made him beg for his life for making me watch while he murdered and raped others, and leaving me with lifelong scars.”

Elliot nodded, swallowing thickly again. He closed the folder and placed it back down on the coffee table; the thought of what had been done to her was horrific to him, so much so that he was rocking with the physical pain of it.  He wasn’t sure if he could cope with anymore, she was right, he would have made William Lewis beg for his life after what he’d done.  Before he could formulate another thought, Olivia stopped in front of him, her hands dropped to the hem of her loose casual top, and she pulled it up and over her head in an easy motion. 

It was one thing to see 10-year-old images of the trauma wrought by William Lewis, and to hear the detail of it.  It was quite another to see the residual scarring from that trauma in person on the woman he loved.  Elliot couldn’t help but reach out, brushing his fingers over a few of her abdominal scars, recognising the key shapes, the long, thin wire-sourced scars, and the small rounds of scar tissue from lit cigarettes.  He slowly stood as his vision searched higher, and after brushing the last few on her chest and shoulders, he pulled Olivia into a tight hug.  She relaxed against him, recognising this for what it was: an affirmation of gratitude for her life, relief that she was still alive and that he hadn’t lost her completely to Lewis.  He buried his face in her hair, sobbing again in the face of her physical injuries and muttering, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over again like a mantra.  Olivia allowed him this; she had always felt safe in his arms and still did again now, so she let him take whatever affirmation he needed.  He eventually regained control after his second breakdown, “Sorry, I felt like I needed to hold you.  I should have asked first.”

Olivia leaned back and looked up at him; a sad, soft smile played across her face.  She had a decade or more to process this, and here she was, dumping 11 months of trauma all on him at once.  While she didn’t want to have to comfort him (it was, after all, her trauma and not his), this was a concession she was willing to provide given how much of her story still remained to be told.  “It’s ok, this is a lot,” she replied.  She then continued, quirking an eyebrow, “But can you let me go so I can put my shirt back on?”  He gave her a sheepish smile in response before nodding, releasing her from the hug and sitting down, taking a large gulp of his all-but-forgotten beverage.

Olivia, sat next to Elliot once her shirt back in place; he put his arm around her and drew her close, “Thank you,” he whispered, kissing the crown of her hair, acknowledging that it should not be on her to comfort him in this.  Her story was so overwhelming that he was struggling with the retelling, and he was so in awe of her for surviving the incident in the first place.  Then he asked, “What did you do to end it?”

She gathered her thoughts again, her raw and bitter chuckle was back “After I told him what you would have done to him, he taunted me.  He taunted me until I lost control and I beat him with a metal rod I’d broken off the iron frame bed when I freed myself.  I couldn’t stop and I beat him until I thought he was dead.”

Closing his eyes in resignation, Elliot sighed.  He knew without any further clarification that this final act was something Olivia regretted.  He wished she’d killed Lewis outright then and there, but he knew she wished she hadn’t lost control.  He tightened his arms around her, and pulled her even closer, and as she turned and buried her face on his chest, she shook with sobs as the emotions of the resurfaced memory overwhelmed her.

Chapter Text

Not guilty of attempted murder.  Not guilty of attempted rape.  Guilty of assault of a police officer.  Guilty of kidnapping…

Olivia Benson stared down William Lewis as he was escorted from the courtroom in cuffs.  It should be over, she thought.  It should be finished with.  But the knowing smile he sent her way as he left the room said as clearly to her as if he had spoken out loud that he was not yet done with her.

She bolted from the courtroom, barely noticing her friends and colleagues waiting for her in the corridor outside; she disappeared into a nearby stairwell for a moment alone.  She collapsed down on a step, running her hands through her hair, her breathing coming faster and increasingly uneven until she found the emotion bubbling out of her in silent sobs.

She felt utterly exposed.  The lonely, deviant sex crimes detective story Lewis had fabricated had been built on the skeletal remains of her life.  Whatever scraps of life she had managed to pull around herself after he had taken her, destroying her home and damaging her body in the process, were blowing in the wind, leaving the skeleton exposed again.

She suffered that exposure, and for what?  They hadn’t believed her. They hadn’t believed he had been about to rape her when she had overpowered him.  All she had suffered, all that she had been through at his hands, and they hadn’t believed her.

He would have believed her.  He would have had her back.  And if he hadn’t been able to prevent it, he would have wrought vengeance on her behalf.  It was no romantic fantasy; it was an absolute truth.

But where was he now?  He wasn’t here, and he didn’t have her back, so she sobbed silently in broken despair.

~O~

Elliot held Olivia close as she cried, relieved to be able to provide some comfort to her as she shone a light onto her past trauma for his benefit.  He couldn’t help but wonder how he had managed to be so oblivious to this until now.  He realised that at the time, the whole Stabler tribe were still in the walkabout phase of the 10-year gap, overseas and out of touch somewhere.  But he’d been back 3 years, so shame filled him as he looked down at her.  This was the one-way street she had so rightfully called him out on coming home to roost.  Even though he’d really started trying, particularly after she’d trusted him to meet Noah and bring him home from Woodstock, telling him that night that she had wanted to, but… He knew his efforts still fell well short of where they should be.   He wondered then who had held her like this in the aftermath; he hoped someone had, that this Brian she mentioned had stuck it out with her then and given her the care she would have undoubtedly needed.

It was then that Elliot also remembered Olivia had mentioned two incidents as well as a trial at the start of this conversation, and so far, they’d only talked about one.  He hoped to God the worst of the tale was over as equally as he feared it wasn’t.  He noticed that she was coming back into herself; the sobbing had subsided, and her breathing was becoming more even again. 

“You Ok?” he asked, receiving a nod into his chest as a reply.  He tried a second question, “You want another cup of tea?”

“Got anything stronger?” came the muffled reply from the direction of his shirt.  Having also thought he could do with something stronger when he considered the topic of a second incident, he couldn’t help but reflect that they were in sync as ever and smiled as he extracted himself from Olivia’s arms.

“Sure,” he replied as he headed to the kitchen for the drinks; he paused only to grab a box of tissues from the counter and drop them on the couch next to Olivia so she had the opportunity to take a moment while he poured.  “Is Scotch ok?”

As she tidied her eye makeup as best she could with tissues, she responded, grateful he wasn’t offering vodka, “Yes, sounds good.”

Elliot poured the drinks, promptly returning to the couch and handing one to Olivia.  “So,” he queried.

She echoed back, “So.”

“So, this has been a lot, but you mentioned a trial and a second incident; you wanna talk about those today or leave them for another day,” he asked.

Taking a sip of scotch, Olivia quickly confessed, “I don’t actually want to talk about them at all, but I do want to get all of this out of the way today before the media attention peaks next week.  Having said that, a break would be good.  Any questions so far?”

Elliot nodded, agreeing that a break was prudent, considering what Olivia had already shared.  So, he took a sip from his own glass and contemplated the questions that had bubbled up in his mind so far.  There were the heavy ones – asking for more detail on what had occurred in her four days in hell, but that wouldn’t give them the much-needed reprieve before descending into the remaining parts of the story.  He settled on something lighter, “You mentioned a Brian a couple of times; was he your boyfriend?  Did he look after you afterwards?  Can you tell me about him?”.  He looked up at her again and noticed her expression change.  She smiled; it was a wry smile, almost a smirk.  And then she chuckled, she laughed at him, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he had to concede his track record for sticking his nose into her dating life was already proven dubious, he’d be offended.  He tried to recover, “I just meant, I just wanted to know if you got the support you needed back then after going through something like that,” before sighing in exasperated defeat.

Olivia nodded, sobering her expression, “I know”, she responded gently, considering her next words carefully after not having quite wiped her amusement away.  “Brian supported me as best he could and as much as I would let him.”  Elliot nodded, remembering how she’d kept everyone at arm’s length after the undercover basement incident at Sealview; it wasn’t just about what support she would have needed but also what support she was willing to accept.  He took another sip of his Scotch, unwisely timing it with Olivia’s next revelation, so he ended up choking and coughing, “Cassidy was never very good with victims, so I didn’t tell him as much as I should have.”

He recovered quickly and stared at her in open-mouthed bemusement, “You and Brian Cassidy?  After I left?  What rock did he crawl out from under?”

“Elliot, don’t be an arse,” she scolded.  Then Olivia sniggered at the memory of similarly scolding Brian when he turned up in one of their interrogation rooms, “He popped up as a UC on a case that ended up in SVU’s lap and punched my partner.”

Elliot rolled his eyes, knowing full well that if he’d been in that position, he’d have taken a swing right back at Cassidy, “And what did your partner do?”  He was proud of himself, managing to get the word ‘partner’ out without any attitude, acknowledging and accepting that someone else had had that title after him.

“Arrested him,” Olivia responded before taking another sip.

After smiling at his imagination's image of Cassidy getting arrested, Elliot decided to move the conversation along, asking the most obvious follow-up question, “What caused the breakup?”

She responded with a sad smile, caught up in the memory and her ongoing affection for Brian Cassidy, “I still care for him; we looked after each other through some pretty dark times.  But we wanted different things, so we parted ways sometime after I’d passed the sergeant’s exam, between the trial and the second incident.”

“Speaking of…,” Elliot prompted.

Olivia hummed in acknowledgement of the conversation's left turn and returned to the serious purpose of the conversation.  She didn’t want to dwell on the trial, so she summed it up as briefly as possible: “The trial was about as awful as you can imagine.  Lewis represented himself, humiliated me on the stand, and I perjured myself to get at least some of the charges to stick.”

“So, he used it as an opportunity to revictimize you?” asked Elliot, quickly figuring out the state of play.

It was Olivia’s turn for open-mouthed bemusement, forgetting momentarily that Elliot was, after all, a very experienced SVU detective and was well aware of how this crap played out in court.  She had been so used to battling it all on her own after the way Lewis had charmed the jury; his immediate recognition of the power imbalance in court often used by defendants was a refreshing change.  All she could manage was to nod in response.

“And the perjury?” he continued, taking full advantage of the earlier invitation to ask questions.

Olivia sighed, her earlier regret at her loss of control still evident, “I said he’d lunged at me to justify the beating.  He didn’t.  He was cuffed when he taunted me into losing control.”

Elliot just nodded at that; he suspected her answer was going to be something like that.  They both knew that sometimes, a little colouring outside the lines was needed to ensure justice was served.  Rather than continue to push the conversation as he had been, he pulled back again, remembering it was her story to share in her own way.  So, he waited for her to continue, quietly watching her as she sipped the scotch, seemingly lost in her memories.

It felt like too much time had passed when Olivia finally spoke again, “They didn’t believe me.”  She looked at him again, meeting his eye as he frowned incredulously; he didn’t understand who hadn’t believed her and when.  She continued sadly, “The jury.  They acquitted him on the attempted rape charge.  They didn’t believe me.”  Tears flowed down her face again, and she sagged just as she had in the courthouse stairwell after the trial.

Chapter Text

“Do what you’re gonna do,” she conceded as he secured the final of her four limbs to this Godforsaken table she was currently bent over.  And with that, she steeled herself for the highest-stakes game of chicken of her life.

He pulled her up then, touching, groping, kissing…  She gripped the edge of the table tightly as she felt his breath in her ear and his hands on her belt.  Fighting the rapidly rising panic, she focussed on slowing her own breathing, controlling it, minimising and preventing her body’s physical response to his unwanted attention.

She knew he needed the struggle to maintain interest.  If she could hold the line, offering no resistance, maybe he’d stop, maybe she could escape fate… 

It was then that she won the battle.  She could still feel his hands on her, but he had paused, “That’s it?  That’s all you’re gonna give me, huh?  Just gonna stand here, play possum?”

He stepped back from her then, a brief reprieve she warily accepted while not letting her guard down for even a moment.  He released her right wrist from the rope restraint and moved further away to his bag, “You know what, new game,” he continued.  “My rules… not yours.  This is going to be fun,” he finished as he unloaded the bullets from the revolver before returning one to its chamber and spinning the barrel.

She stared in disbelief.  After all this, after everything that had happened during their first encounter and then at the trial.  After everything he’d put her through, he was risking it all in a life-or-death game of chance!?!  Why didn’t he just shoot her with the fully loaded gun and be done with it?  The confusion remained as he went through with taking the first turn of Russian roulette himself; it remained until he threw the gun down on the table in front of her.

Oh…

And there it was; the battle might have been won, but the war was far from over - he wanted her to take her turns herself.  Once upon a time, she would have claimed that there were no circumstances on the planet in which she would put a loaded gun to her own temple and pull the trigger.  But here she was, gambling with her only available chance.  As her mind and body fought with every ounce of sanity she had left, her finger tightened on the trigger, and she pictured the face of her old partner, wishing once more she’d been given a chance to at least say goodbye.

~O~

Elliot reflected on what Olivia had told him so far.  This piece of crap laid hands on her and kept her for days.  He’d re-traumatised her on the stand, and he’d been fucking believed over a decorated SVU detective.  If she wasn’t the epitome of a credible witness, then who the hell was?

Olivia had started pacing again after confessing her disappointment at the jury’s decisions.  She worried her bottom lip with her teeth, flexed her hands and wriggled her fingers in agitation.  He watched her moving about, a deep worry filling him again as she only paced when she reached parts of the story that were particularly difficult to verbalise.

“How did he get out of prison?” he prompted, in hopes that it would break the stalemate and give her somewhere to begin with the retelling of the second time William Lewis had got his hands on her.

She shook her head, shuffling the memories into better order, “He had charmed the head juror; she was visiting him regularly and took him drug-laced cupcakes.  He coded and was transferred to Bellevue on a medical release.”

“Fuck.  She’s in jail for that?” asked Elliot, hoping something had gone right in this catastrophe of a case.

Olivia snorted in disgust, “No, there were chain-of-custody issues at Rikers; she was never charged.  Didn't stop her from trying to screw me over with the grand jury though.  She is in jail now for facilitating the escape of two other serial killers, though.”

“Seriously!?!”

“Yeah, that manhunt was something else,” she replied.  Elliot threw his head back and sighed; the hits just kept coming.  He decided at that point that he had to assume that when it came to William Lewis, if it could go wrong, then it most definitely went wrong.  Olivia had stopped pacing and was staring up and out the window at the patch of sky that could be seen from his living space.  It was dusk, and the scattered clouds he could see from his vantage point were streaked with red.  Then, she quietly asked him the question that destroyed him, “Have you ever played Russian roulette, Elliot?”

She turned to him and met his eye.  Elliot’s brain was screaming; there could only be one reason she would ask such a question, only one.  “No Liv,” he still begged for an alternative, “please tell me you didn’t.”

“I did.  I took two turns.  It was the only option left that wasn’t certain rape and death for one of us,” she replied.  “I also publicly confessed to the perjury at his request, slipped my protective detail to go to him alone, and told him to rape me instead of the 12-year-old girl he’d taken as bait.”  She paused then, having blurted out the confession of her more egregious errors of judgment in the second incident with William Lewis, and stared at Elliot nervously, waiting for a response from him.

As Elliot processed Olivia’s latest revelations, he maintained eye contact, hoping she had been exaggerating or spinning the story, but to his dismay, he could only see brutal honesty there.  He broke eye contact first; his gaze dropped to the floor in front of him as both he and Olivia wondered if he was going to break down again.  After some moments in thought, he got up, and without speaking another word, he went out to his patio garden.  A large metal box was attached to the wall, a plain box designed to hide a hose reel and outside tap, with space for other gardening tools.

He started punching the metal box for the single offence of being a blank surface he could imagine William Lewis’ face projected onto, not that he knew what the fucker looked like.  He kept hitting it over and over as the utter depth of his betrayal washed over him.  Eventually, guttural sobs punctuated the gaps between the sound of fists versus metal.  This was worse than her original attack; she had willingly stepped into the abyss, not knowing what would come.  Thankfully, she found extra steps of solid ground.  How had she managed to allow him back in life after he had failed her so badly?

Olivia closed her eyes in resignation and sighed.  This reaction was what she feared, not for herself but for the pain it would cause to him.  It was the altruistic part of why she’d never gone out of her way to tell him about the case; the more selfish part was self-preservation in not having to mention it to anyone else ever again.  Before she thought too much about it, she collected the necessary first aid supplies from the bathroom cabinet, a cloth from the cupboard, and a bowl of warm water from the kitchen.  She sat back down on the couch and waited him out.

The sounds from the garden gradually slowed and then stopped.  Elliot took the time to get his breathing under better control while he leaned on his now-dented garden storage box, before he headed back inside.  He stopped in the doorway, staring at Olivia in anguish and taking in the first aid preparations she had made while he was outside.

Olivia met Elliot’s gaze and asked, “I’d ask if you were Ok if I didn’t already know that was a stupid question.”

He returned the non-question with one of his own, “How many times has your life been at risk while I was gone?  I could have lost you and never would have known.” 

Olivia hummed in agreement, “Come, sit.”  Elliot sat beside her; she took one of his hands and started to clean and treat his injured knuckles.

“So, you publicly confessed to perjury?” he asked, taking advantage of the distraction generated from the first aid treatment.

“Yes.”

Elliot followed up with another question: "How do you still have a job?”

“My CO lied; he told the grand jury and 1PP it was a tactic to draw Lewis out, so 1PP walked it back in a press release afterwards,” she replied.

“And you slipped your detail?” he continued, allowing the frustration at her apparent lack of self-preservation to leak out.

Olivia sighed again, “Yes, Lewis lured me out with the 12-year-old and said he’d release her if I came alone.”

“Did he?”

“No,” she snorted in reply, stating the obvious.

Elliot was afraid to ask but forged on anyway, “What did he do?”

“He told me to choose which one of us he should rape first,” Olivia responded as she started to apply the protective gauze pads and tape to the hand she’d cleaned.

He already knew her choice: "So, did he?”

“What, rape me?”

“Yeah.”

Olivia shook her head in denial, “No, he tied me down and started the assault, but I didn’t resist, so he got bored and changed tact.”

“To Russian roulette?” queried Elliot, moving the conversation along so he didn’t have to think too much about how close she’d come to being raped, although imagining her playing that deadly game with her nemesis was quite possibly worse, and he was barely holding it together as it was.  Olivia nodded in response before he followed up with another question, “And you put a loaded gun to your own temple and fired?  Twice?”

“Yes, he went first and then made me take a turn,” she replied, volunteering the extra information; then she took his other hand and began cleaning the wounds on his knuckles of that hand.

“Which chamber was the bullet in?”

“The 6^th.”

“So, it was your turn.  But he didn’t give you the gun a third time?”

“He didn’t,” she confirmed.  “He looked like he was going to take the shot and kill me, but then, at the last moment, he turned the gun on himself and took his own life instead, using his non-dominant hand.”

“He committed suicide with his non-dominant hand,” Elliot checked in to clarify.  After getting another nod in response, he verbalised his realisation, “One last shot at fucking you over.  That’s why there was a grand jury?  He tried to pin his suicide on you, and they thought you did it?”

Olivia gave Elliot a wry smile in reward for quickly figuring Lewis’ final tactics out.  She then applied gauze and tape to the second set of busted up knuckles, “Yes, Brooklyn DA convened it.”

“And they refused to indite?  Where was IAB on all of this?”

“Tucker believed me,” she smiled sadly at the memory.  That was when her relationship with Ed Tucker had started to pivot, when she’d started to see him in a new light.

Elliot went quiet then, lost in thought, as she finished treating his knuckles.  He eventually commented, “I’m just so damn angry.”

“At me?” asked Olivia, confused and wondering if he’d just figured out that her Ed was Tucker.  Today was probably not the best day for that conversation on top of the emotionally charged Lewis conversation.

“No,” he replied as he gave her a look that asked if she was either stupid or crazy.  He continued, “Of course not.  I’m angry at myself for not being here, and I’m angry at Lewis, of course.  Although, I do really want to shake some sense into you for walking straight into danger like that.  But then you didn’t have a choice.”

That conclusion got her attention, and she cocked her head to the side, “Most people would say I did have a choice.”

Elliot rolled his eyes, “Most people don’t know you as well as I do.  You never had any choice from the minute he took that little girl.”

“They tried to stop me, with the protective detail, and from making the public confession,” Olivia argued in response.

He shrugged, “They were just delaying the inevitable.”

Olivia frowned with the query, “So, you’re saying that a showdown between Lewis and me was inevitable?”

“Yes, as soon as he decided you were his Swan song, his final act, it was inevitable,” he stated, in what he thought was an obvious conclusion.

Olivia blinked back the tears then, she felt seen, really seen, for the first time in such a long time.  Maybe for the first time in over a decade.  To have her version of events believed without question was not an experience she’d ever felt before with the second William Lewis incident.

Elliot pulled her close and pressed a kiss to her right temple, “Promise me.  Promise you’ll never put a gun to your own head ever again.  Promise me, Liv.”

“I promise,” she whispered in reply, sinking into the embrace.

Chapter Text

She let go of his hands over the gun and allowed her body to relax back to the floor.  Not that she could describe anything as relaxing at that moment, but her abdominal muscles appreciated the reprieve, and the burning pain enveloping her left hip eased ever so slightly.  How many damn years on the job, and she’d now been shot for the first time ever.  God damn bounty on her head!  It’s not something she’d recommend, and she almost missed his question as she tried to get her head around the pain. 

“You get hit?” he asked as he went to get up.

She breathlessly confessed, “I’m hit.”

“Where?” he queried in response.

“My left hip.”

He recognised the need to get them both out of there and away from the gas as soon as possible, “Can you walk?”

“Not really,” she replied as he grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet.

“Come on.  Up, up,” he ordered as he lifted her into his arms.

Despite the pain as he lifted her, she noticed he still had his eyes screwed shut against the gas, so she worked with him, giving him directions, “To the left… To the right.”

After they made it outside, he lowered her down to sit on the steps and sat next to her, continuing to hold her.  She leaned into the embrace.  If she had to get damn well shot, then she’d rather no other person to be with her when it happened; when he was there, he always had her back, just as she had his, and she was thankful for it.

~O~

There was an unusually intense debate on what type of food they should get delivered for dinner and who was going to pay for it.  Both Elliot and Olivia relished in bickering about something inconsequential after the heavy discussions of the afternoon.  Only when they were seated with a plate of food Elliot broached the topic on his mind, “How did you do it, Liv?”

“Do what?” she queried.

Elliot contemplated his own trauma of Kathy’s death and the months that followed, where he was almost swallowed alive by his PTSD, flailing about in his attempt to get justice for her.  He’d only survived it all by the narrowest of margins, helped in no small part by his best friend and current dinner companion.  She had told him outright that she believed her recovery journey would have been easier if he’d been around, and while he suspected he was going to have to go back to his therapist to process the guilt of his absence, he took the comment at face value.  He thought she might have some useful insights, “Survive all of that, survive it and get to where you are today.”

Olivia still didn’t understand what he was getting at, “What do you mean?”

He continued, “Well, just before we returned from Rome, I contacted Fin.  He told me you were the captain now and about the award, and I was so proud of you, of where you’d got to.  And then I got back, and I know there was a lot going on, but Fin told me you had a son now, and I was so happy for you.  I remember how badly you’d wanted to be a mother.  So, I was so happy and proud of where you’d gone without knowing any of this.  But now… Knowing you went through something so horrific and then recovered AND did all of this.  I mean, I’m in awe, you know, and wondering how you got there.”

She contemplated her answer while finishing a mouthful of food and answered, “Noah.”  There was a pause, and then she clarified further, “Well, therapy and Noah.  And the squad, you know, we became family.”

He hummed in agreement, “Family is everything.”  Aside from how Olivia had held him at arm’s length since his return for reasons now abundantly obvious to him, he had also noticed how close she was with certain squad members.  Fin obviously, now her deputy, he was loyal to a fault to Olivia, far more than he appeared to be to the NYPD.  And Amanda, he’d describe her as a friend now but looks of dislike and distrust he’d received from her when he first returned to New York made much more sense.  She’d started almost immediately after he’d left, before he’d even turned in his papers. He wondered how long it had taken for her to realise that the angry and hurt Olivia she’d likely have met when she started wasn’t the true Olivia and that the anger and hurt were his fault.  And if the true Olivia had emerged again before everything went to hell with William Lewis.

They ate in silence for a while, both contemplating their own thoughts.  Elliot finally broke the silence, “I know you brought a bag, but we finished early enough that you could go home if you wanted.  Did you want me to drop you home?”

“Oh no,” Olivia replied with a slightly ironic chuckle.  “No, after today, I will be having nightmares tonight.  I’m not burdening Noah with hearing that if I don’t have to.  I’m sleeping in your bed tonight.”  She narrowed her eyes at him before he got any ideas, “And you’re sleeping on your couch.  That is, when you’re not up and waking me to prevent me from waking your neighbours with the screaming.”

The cheeky smirk that had begun to spread across Elliot’s face with her mention of the sleeping arrangements sobered just as rapidly with Olivia’s final sentence.  He nodded and swallowed thickly as a wave of guilt flowed over him, “I can do that”.  He felt guilt at both his absence from the discussed events and at the resurfaced trauma the retelling, done for his benefit, had wrought on her mental health.  Maybe he’d take up Ayanna’s offer of a day off tomorrow after all and make an emergency therapist appointment.  His habit of leaning on Olivia as his initial source of comfort was not an option here; he’d got so many things wrong over the years, but he knew without the slightest doubt that, in this case, he needed to sort his own crap out so he could be there for her in a way he’d not managed for a long time.  He contemplated the impact all this would have had on her emotionally as he watched her eat; by almost all appearances, she looked like the self-assured captain he’d gotten to know since his return, albeit with slightly smudged makeup and mildly fuzzed-up hair from the events of the afternoon.  He concluded that you’d never know the breathtaking trauma she held hidden under the surface if you weren’t already aware of it.  He had to ask, “How bad was it?  Your PTSD?”

Olivia smiled sadly, “I cut off my hair and wore black nail polish for months.”

“You’ve had short haircuts before,” he observed, mildly confused as to why that would be an indicator of her PTSD.

“No, I cut off my own hair,” she clarified. “Took to it with scissors myself and left chunks of it all over Brian’s bathroom floor.  One of Lewis’ things was to pull my hair, so it had to go.”

“Christ,” Elliot muttered.

Olivia continued, “I was off work for over two months before my therapist would sign off.  Even then, it was a close-run thing for Cragen to let me stay, particularly after I lost it at a suspect who was also a victim.  And I nearly unloaded my gun on Brian when he startled me in the apartment; I didn’t, thankfully.”  

“So, all in all, pretty bad then,” concluded Elliot, to which Olivia nodded in response, quirking an eyebrow as she remembered all the other ways she struggled with her PTSD after Lewis, her summary to Elliot barely scratched the surface.  “Any triggers?” he asked.

“Cigarettes and vodka, I avoid both,” she responded shrugging.  She looked down at her hands, picked at a hang nail and blushed a little, “And a few others that only impact intimate relationships.”

“Noted,” Elliot smirked briefly, long enough to catch Olivia’s eye and was rewarded with her rolling her eyes again.  Once he had her attention, he sobered, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

He looked at her with unbridled appreciation, “For sharing this with me, trusting me with it.  Bringing it all back up to the point where you’re going to have nightmares about it, all because I missed it when I should have been here.”

“Elliot,” she deflected, uncomfortable with conversation direction.

He was undeterred, “No, I mean it.  And I’ll see my shrink tomorrow so I can sort my head out on it without leaning on you.”

Olivia skirted around his serious tone, “Who are you, and what have you done with Elliot Stabler?”

“Har har…”

“I’m sorry I dumped the whole shit show on you all at once.”

“I get it; you wanted to control the narrative before the media attention kicked off,” Elliot concluded.

She nodded, not disagreeing but trying to work out how to word what else she wanted to add, “I just…”  Her mind returned to their conversation in her kitchen just over a year ago after the BX9 attack, “Last year, when I said I wanted to, but I can’t.”

He understood immediately, “You mean us.”

“Yeah.  Talking about this was one of the barriers,” Olivia confessed, thinking back to how torn she’d been.  It may have been a decade in the past but his disappearing act and resulting missing-in-action when she had really needed him was something she’d been actively trying to get over since she confessed it to Amanda in that dodgy hotel in Woodstock.

“And now?”

“Us still scares me, but maybe…”

His smile could have lit up the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Centre; “I can work with that.”

Olivia took herself to bed soon after, the afternoon of confessions because of her hand having been forced had drained her and she knew she wasn’t going to sleep well.  As Elliot watched her disappear down his hallway, he reflected on the day.  It certainly hadn’t unfolded how he thought it had when he’d left his home that morning.  He stared at his knuckles ruefully, as he flexed his fingers acknowledging that the pain in his hands was nothing in comparison to what he felt in his heart.  The past was out of his control.  He could not change the mistakes he had made, nor the decision that had led to those mistakes and the butterfly effect that had flowed from them.  The future on the other hand… that was something he could go on with.  He wasn’t blindfolded anymore; he could see the gaping edges of the wounds he had left.  And while he still wasn’t entirely sure how to fix them in full, he now knew how to start.  He could go on one step at a time.  Starting tonight.  Starting now.  Starting with what she needed from him in this moment – a guardian against her nightmares.  If he couldn’t be there then, he can certainly be here now, and he wouldn’t wish for anything else ever again.

The end… Thanks for reading!