Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine…
There are many things Alexandra Cabot has learned in life. In school, she learned everything they made available to her, graduating high school as valedictorian with a 4.0 GPA. College was just as easy for her, and she graduated from Yale with a political science major and another 4.0 GPA. Harvard Law was just as easy, but she graduated with a 3.9 GPA, blaming the drop of one-tenth to the one and only night she allowed herself to drink before a test. Even after school, after she was already in the workforce, she continues to learn. But the things she treasures learning the most was what she has learned of Olivia Benson.
Alex has learned over the months something that she would have never guessed when she first met Detective Olivia Benson; Olivia was a romantic. Not necessarily in words. Alex feels extremely blessed when she gets the uncommon "I love you," or the seemingly off-handed compliment when it's not about work that she knows Olivia had sat for long moments, rolling the words around in her head making sure everything comes out right.
No, Olivia's not a romantic in words, but in actions. They're mostly simple acts, something one would do for a friend even, but Alex instinctually knows that from Olivia they mean so much more. It was in the way Olivia always handed over her leather jacket, even when she's in nothing more than a t-shirt. It was in the umbrella and simple note (It wasn't raining this morning. Don't want you to get sick.) left in her office after a long day in court. It was in the dinners delivered to her office when she had to cancel a date due to paperwork. It was in the way Olivia always subtly moved her body in front of Alex's when someone she didn't know approached them.
It was also in the way Olivia would sleep in boxers and a sports bra with no covers and still sweat, but refused to turn on a fan because Alex was huddled under the sheet and comforter as if she were in Antarctica. It was in the way Olivia would slowly, gently make love to her on the rare night that work hadn't been completely horrible. It was in the way Olivia would smile at her, a smile Alex had never seen Olivia send towards anyone else. It was in the way Olivia would brush her hair back and kiss her forehead before leaving anytime in the middle of the night. Underneath all the hardness, Olivia Benson was a romantic.
Alex has also learned that Olivia was a poet. It was in the way she wrote up her DD-5s, somehow conveying both her empathy and anger in the rote reports. It was in her silences, always somehow managing to give away more about herself in them than in words. It was not in her words, but in the meaning lingering somewhere behind them if you only took the time to find it. With very few words, Olivia Benson was a poet.
After only one children's case, Alex had learned Olivia was an angel, just as the papers had dubbed her 'The Angel of SVU'. When they first began working together, Alex had expected a detective in it for the glory, depending on her name being feed to the reporters as much as possible to further her career. Even as Alex believed it, she somehow knew it wasn't true due to the fact there was barely any information about the detective other than the facts of a case or the occasional sound bite. But after a single case, she knew it to be a fact.
She learned Olivia had held the crying child's hand the entire time the doctor did the exam. She watched as the little girl clung to Olivia's neck as they entered the precinct. She watched the detective gently coax the girl to answer her questions, always knowing when to press for further information or when she needed to hold off and allow the child a moment to step back from the abuse. She noticed Olivia never ate unless the child was willing to eat. She witnessed her sleep on the floor, leaning over the bed in the crib, unconsciously rubbing the girl's back during the night. Throughout it all, and every case since, Olivia Benson was an angel.
A month after working with the SVU, Alex had learned Olivia was a warrior. Upon joining the unit, she had been skeptical of a woman taking on the cases they worked. She most certainly saw where it would be easier for a victim to speak to a woman, but just how effective could said woman be in taking down the obviously abusive men they had to deal with? Alex somehow got the idea in her head that this Detective Benson would be sheltered by the male detectives in her unit, that they would carry the brunt of the physical duties and have Olivia handle the victims and deskwork.
A week after working with them, she got the first glimpse that she may have been wrong. She walked into the observation room and noticed Olivia guzzling a bottle of water. Upon questioning, Captain Cragen informed her, because Olivia showed no signs of letting up on the water, Olivia had just ran twelve city blocks before subduing the suspect. Another week passed before she noticed a bruise on Olivia's jaw. She was told by Elliot, who had noticed her studying the bruise as they were talking over the case, that Olivia had caught a stray punch during an altercation she was trying to break up between a husband and his wife's boyfriend in her apartment building. Another time she began to decide she was way off base about the detective was when she learned Olivia wasn't in the interrogation room with a suspect due to the fact she was in the hospital with a dislocated shoulder from having taken down said subject. The final act was one Alex witnessed firsthand. She was standing in the observation room watching Elliot play bad cop and Olivia playing good cop to a t when the suspect exploded across the table towards Elliot. So quickly Alex barely saw the movements, Olivia had the suspect subdued over the table with his hands in cuffs behind his back. Whenever the need arose, Olivia Benson was a warrior.
There are many things Alexandra Cabot has learned in her thirty years. Some she has forgotten over the years, while some she uses on a daily basis. But out of everything she has learned, she cherishes most the things she has learned of Olivia Benson; that she is a romantic, a poet, an angel, and a warrior. She has also learned that no matter what information she grasps about Olivia, there will always be something else to learn about her. And Alex is fully prepared to hang around until she learns it all.