Author Notes: Firstly, there is a trigger warning for William Lewis assault. This is my first fanfiction on here. I would appreciate any and all feedback. I have clear and strong plot ideas in my head, but your guidance would surely help. This story will hopefully be unique in many regards. I am not trying to overdue the Lewis arc, but felt that Olivia is due some proper healing. Thank you so much for reading!
Her face was painted with his dark crimson blood like a Jackson Pollack painting. The blood splatter had been on her face for over an hour, long enough to congeal and dry. It had to be photographed and studied. Like her body. Her body was once again made a crime scene by the same heinous man in less than one year. Olivia Benson couldn't help but imagine her body covered in yellow tape labeled "crime scene." Flashes of the tape draped over body, snugly covering her physical scars William Lewis had left only months before.
During the middle of a trauma the brain often zones out. It can take you to another place, often disassociating as a way of protecting itself from the impending doom. Sergeant Benson knows all of this from her years a police officer, but it was only from the last year that she truly understood where the human brain could take her.
Modern Art Through 1954. It was one of the required classes during her senior year at Sienna College. As part of the early liberal arts craze, she was required to take a fine arts elective. She was never really an artistic person, and abhorred the idea of signing up for such an elective. She decided on Modern Art as the least of all evils. Olivia never expected to fall in love with the class. To her Campbell's soup labels would never be true art, but there was something unique about paint splatter on a canvas. The way the colors converged together. The canvas must have been so heavy with paint. The artist showed so much emotion, look at this corner. Do you see these colors together? Yes, I do. She always did. Olivia Benson always understood Jackson Pollack's painting entitled, Grayed Rainbow best. Most parts of her life equated to a muted rainbow. There was color if you looked hard enough, blue, yellow, purple, orange, hidden among the think and heavy black, white, gray, and silver.
"Detective Benson, is there anyone we can call for you?" the nurse quietly asks.
Olivia's swinging her legs from the exam table slightly. Detective Amaro is nervously hovering, he just wants to get her away from the impending vultures.
"Sergeant, it's Sergeant Benson now." Olivia corrects the nurse she has come to know on a respected professional level. None of this matters with the blood splatter still dried on her tired face. Yet Olivia needs to cling to anything that makes her feel normal.
"Nurse Jessica, would you mind giving us a minute?" Nick pleads with this dark eyes. There is only so much they can take as a team, only so much one person can take a human. He wonders how much more Olivia has left in her.
"Of course, Dr. Johnston and I will be back with your blood work in bit. Just let me know if there is anything I can do. Again, I am so sorry." She walks away, even this is too much for this nurse.
"Fuck Liv, I wish we could get this blood off your face."
Olivia is gone again. She hasn't thought too much about her favorite art class in years. She has the strangest urge to visit the Modern Museum of Art. Her professor for the class was the most eccentric person at Sienna College. She once wore a raccoon tailed hat to class. This same professor also spoke about how roadkill could serve as Popart given the right time and place.
Nick reaches out and tentative lays a palm on her shoulder. He knows she is in shock, and he knows better than anyone else that Olivia will say she's fine. She will feed him that same bullshit line about being fine, even with wearing William Lewis' blood on her face. Even when Lewis had almost killed her only hours earlier. Yes, there really is a limit to what one person can take before they finally truly topple over the edge.
Olivia startles when he touches her. She's back in that mill. Lewis is behind her touching her, his long hands and fingers are roughly grabbing her belt buckle. Stealing more of her soul. His mouth is on her. He is kissing her her cheek and then her ear lobe. For a brief minute Olivia thinks he is the last person that will ever kiss me, before before I kill myself. The gun, that fucking gun. That click will never leave her brain.
Nick immediately recognizes that she is in the middle of a severe flashback. Instinct and training kick in as he goes through their grounding techniques together.
"Olivia, it's okay. Look at me for a minute. We are in the hospital exam room. You are safe, Lewis is gone." Olivia is still not responding so Nick continues.
"Breathe with me. In and out, nice deep breaths." Olivia's blackened eyes finally focus on her partner.
"Good, Liv. You got this. Smell that? It's the hospital room, it smells like antiseptic. You are safe, he can't get you anymore." Nick is trying to be strong for his partner, because dammit they both need it. Olivia's fresh tears finally pool over her eyelids and fall down her cheeks, mixing with the dried blood on her face. The blood pattern changed ever so slightly like art on a canvas, only this time there is no end in sight.
"I just need to go home." When she finally speaks.
"Can I call Brian for you?" Nick is trying for any type of normalcy for her.
Olivia hesitates, and finally shakes her head, "no, I am good."
Another secret she carries. They all add up like dominoes ready to fall, just a slight breeze from the wind they will go over one by one. Brian left only days before. The "I love you" came at the end of the relationship. There is no point in telling Nick that Brian is gone, he will only worry more. He will want stay at her apartment with her. Olivia wants to be alone, she wants be inside her own head for the
rest of time, she thinks.
Nick is back talking to her, they both know Lieutenant Murphy expressly told him not to discuss anything that has happened to Olivia with regard to William Lewis. Murphy is standing guard outside the hospital room, quickly proving a sort of allegiance to this broken squad. He will fight like hell to keep Tucker away, even if it will only give her hours instead of the days he wishes he could grant her. Murphy feels an unexplainable and fierce pull towards Benson. He's seen damage in his life, enough pain and hurt to last multiple lifetimes. He knows inherently why she broke protocol and went after this bastard herself, deep in his soul he knows he would have done the same thing.
As Murphy continues to pace, Nick and Olivia are existing. This is a newer feeling for Nick Amaro. He too, feels like he has been falling and slipping. A little less living. It always seemed like the outcome was worth it, someone HAS to do this job. It might as well be him and his family at the 1-6. But, as Nick stares at Olivia's broken eyes, as he feels her broken soul, he wonders if any of this is really worth it any more.
There is a slight knock on door, the kind that does not wait for an answer, it merely announces. Dr. Johnston calmly walks in, he's an older doctor who wears years and wrinkles well. Olivia also knows him from the victims that forever link their lives together, she's been doing for this for too damn long. It's the only thought in her brain at the moment.
"Detective...," the doctor pauses for forgetting Nick's name.
"Amaro. It's okay Doc, I will be right outside if I am needed." It's not until Nick has completely left the room before he can take a full breath of air.
Dr. Johnston is holding Olivia's chart in his hand. They are going through all the formalities or so she thinks. It's only a matter of time before she can finally leave this godforsaken hospital. Her skin is crawling with the need to leave, she wants to peel the red paint off of her face as well.
What happens next in the exam room is something that Olivia Benson never saw coming, not ever. Especially in recent months, her life has been a roller coaster ride. Some people are fanatics, they wait in line for hours to ride roller coasters. Olivia hates fucking roller coasters, which is ironic after all these years.
"Sergeant Benson, I have known you for years. I wish there was a better way to say this or handle this, but I know you. You always want the direct approach." Dr. Johnston suddenly stalls, realizing that he may have gravely misjudged Olivia's condition or state of mind. He knows about her attack and her career, but it's her eyes that scare him the most.
Olivia is hearing the doctor, she's just choosing not to respond. It really sounds like he's going to tell her she has a rare cancer, or maybe just leprosy. She has a really inappropriate urge to laugh right now. Jesus Christ, in her brain where everything has been made so raw, in her heart where it is so scarred, and her soul where it feels so heavy, she suddenly realizes that an incurable cancer does not sound like a bad plan at all.
"Jesus, Jim. Just tell me. It sounds like I am dying. We both know they do routine blood work as part of exam and investigation."
He will always take her lead. "Olivia, you are certainly not dying. But I have to tell you, I am really worried. With everything going on and all the stress. Olivia, your pregnancy test is positive, you're pregnant."
He's mistaken. There is no way she is carrying a child after everything. After all her years on earth. What a cruel joke.
"How?" Is her first question. "I mean, apart from the obvious how part. I took a test two months ago, it was negative. I'm almost 45 years old."
Then sheer and utter panic sets in. Her breaths are too fast and too shallow. Her mind is back there with Lewis and the gun she had to her head. The monster made her hold a gun to her head and pull the trigger possibly ending her own life, he did it several times. Except it was never just Olivia's life, she now knows it was her unborn child's life too. She's hyperventilating, this will be the first flashback of many, and it is so debilitating.
The next images that come to mind are the untold number of wine glasses she has consumed over the last few months. Of Brian leaving, saying he loves her, and that hecannot imagine a family with her.
Nausea hits Olivia hard and fast, she's a ball of knots with no end and no beginning.
She could be sick from her assault, her panic, or morning sickness. Then finally the tears come, marring the rest of the dried blood on her face, that is her canvas.
Olivia has so much guilt to wade through. Her emotions are unstable at best, but somewhere in a place she cannot begin to see, describe, or even explain, she feels like living.
It is one those luminous colors almost hidden to the naked eye, in her grayed rainbow. It is there waiting, and it worth everything.
"Sergeant, let's see what we can do about getting this blood off your face."