A/N: I actually have someone to dedicate this to. JO, the review you left challenging me to this particular word sparked my muse into going into detail for everyone, so this is for you. Thanks for the challenge. As you all know, I own nothing, so there you have it.
She is supposed to be the one who holds it all together.
What this means, she is not altogether sure of, but what she does know is that there are two people inside of her, and sometimes she can't tell which one she's supposed to be. Most of the time, however, it's easy enough. She is the one who walks into the precinct with coffee every morning, because the guys always seem to forget and none of them really want to drink squad room coffee straight off. She is the one who pushes at her partner's feet when he pushes at hers while she's trying to talk to the other two. She is the voice of reason in a squad otherwise made up of guys who have no problem getting into each other's faces. She has been nicknamed the 'Lonely Lady of the SVU' by the press, who never fail to notice that she is the only woman currently serving there.
She has no personal life at the moment, and doesn't care.
And this is because she is the one to whom even the most frightened victims will speak. She is the one who can talk a child out of a corner, or a dark room. The one who will sit there and be a shoulder for a grown victim to cry on, someone they can talk to and trust. Someone whom they know will help them to get the justice they deserve, someone they can count on. She is the one who breaks apart in psychiatric evaluations with Huang and is afraid that she'll get sent home for being too emotional, when in reality, she is allowed to stay because she is the one who can allow her emotions to show. She is the one who knows that you can't choose the victims she and her partner come across, but the one who wishes that she could, because if she had the choice, no one would ever have to experience the dark side of life.
She is the one that the department calls Detective Benson.
The funny thing about this, and the thing that makes her laugh is that nine years ago, she was the rookie in a squad, the one who had no idea what she was doing. The one who got emotional and let it show when she wasn't supposed to. The one who got in her partner's face after he started making smart-ass comments in front of her when she really wasn't in the mood to deal with it and he knew she wasn't in the mood for it. Nowadays, nine years later, she is the one who will shove someone against the wall and hold them there until she's called off, the one who will willingly hold a child victim in her arms until the moment where someone comes to take them away to someone safe. The one who held her partner together when his own life was falling apart, and the one who left him behind for a stint with the Feds.
She is the one who will give Detective Stabler a piece of her mind if he gets out of hand.
She thinks it's funny, because, when she's Detective Benson, it's like people can hardly mention one without the other, because they've been partners for so damn long and associated with each other for so damn long that people can't tell them apart sometimes. And it's funny because she never thought she would ever have someone that she was so close to. She is the one who throws pens at him because he has a habit of chewing his own, and the one who tells him that it's disgusting and if he's going to do that then he can just keep the pen. She is the one who is not afraid to get in his face when he's being a jerk, and the one that can keep him from crossing the line while barely managing to keep from doing so herself. She is half of a partnership, half of a friendship, and as he put it once, his 'better half at the precinct, but don't get cocky about it, 'cause my real better half is across the bridge in Queens'.
At the precinct, she is Detective Benson. Behind the scenes, she is Olivia.
Amused as she is by the fact that there are two people stuck inside her, she knows that there is also a line between them. At the end of the day, when she leaves the precinct, she goes home, because there isn't really anything else for her to do. She turns on a movie for background noise, sometimes orders take-out, sometimes cooks, and almost always finishes up paperwork. When Detective Benson leaves, someone very different takes her place, and when that happens, she is the one who will curl up on the couch with ice cream and watch whatever she's put on just so she can have a break from her every day life. She is the one who will pick up a book when she gets home and forget everything else until it's finished, by which point, half the time, it's time for her to return to work.
Olivia is the one with demons in her past.
She is the one who will pull the covers over her head on some nights just to make all the shadows on the ceiling disappear, and even though it's childish, she does it anyway. She is the one who watches the old home movies that her mother's friends used to videotape when they had nothing better to do, to look at herself as she was, before she got older and her mother and then life and then the unit jaded her. She is the one who will go on a walk in the rain because she never really had the chance to as a kid, and the one who sometimes has nightmares that she'll never tell anyone about, because she doesn't want to appear weak. She is the one with friends outside the department, friends who she talks to every now and then on the phone, the ones who try to get her away from the city for a little while, but it rarely ever works.
She is the one who knows she doesn't need her partner in order to exist.
Detective Benson and Olivia were the same person inside of her when she was in Oregon, but she was more Olivia then than she is now, and in Oregon, Olivia was the one who would stand on the rooftop of the apartment, staring at the stars. The one who emailed her partner with a fake email address and hoped that he would reply, because she might not have needed him in order to exist, but damned if she didn't miss him. The one who pissed off the Feds by letting herself slip into the role of Detective Benson when she discovered something off in the place where she was, and the person who might just be in love with the Fed she worked most closely with, even though sometimes he gets on her nerves. Olivia is the one who got into a deputy's face at a protest and nearly found herself being charged with assault even though she hadn't done anything. She is the one that pushed to the surface so she wouldn't lose herself while playing someone else.
She is the one who knows what she is doing, even if it doesn't always feel like that.
And what she wants more than anything else is to be able to do good, both as Detective Benson and as Olivia, because hey, no one said that Detective Benson was the only one that could do stuff, anyway. She wants to watch the lines blur sometimes, because she knows that it's the only way that she'll be able to do the job properly, because sometimes, the cases have to matter more than you want them to. They have to get to you more than you want them to. Detective Benson is the one who knows this, Olivia is the one who holds it all together. Detective Benson is the one who will knock Detective Stabler a good one if he pisses her off; Olivia is the one who will open her apartment door for Elliot in the middle of the night because he needs someone to talk to and he couldn't think of anyone else.
She is the one who holds it all together when she herself is falling apart, and the one who knows the squad inside out, and the one who has shadows in her past the same way a lot of people do, but she is the one who never let those shadows take control of her life. She is the one who searches for family and finds it, the one who tells Internal Affairs what she did even if the Feds cleared her, and the one who runs across the city with her partner when a suspect holds his wife hostage and the call comes to them. She is the one who will be there for the others no matter what, and the one who leans on them when she can't lean on anyone else.
She is Olivia and she is Detective Benson. Two people in the same body.
But she is still herself, no matter what, and the differences will always be there to see.