A/N: This fic takes place a little while after the events of "Forgiving Rollins", so, as noticeable by the summary it has mentions of rape and sexual abuse. If you're sensitive to this kind of content I'd advise you to proceed with caution. It also contains spoilers for the episodes "Forgiving Rollins" (16x10) and "Undercover" (9x15). A rewatch of these episodes might be interesting, but most of the necessary background is presented on the story, so, don't worry if you don't remember all the details, you'll probably remember as the story rolls. I'd also like to make it clear that this is not a ship fic (Olivia/Amanda), so, there isn't really a romantic content to it. It's more of a character study.

I hope you enjoy it! I'm a sucker for any sort of feedback, so, I'm open to it. Kisses!

Absolution

"Amanda", the soft but firm voice stopped her as she walked towards the squad room door. She knew that tone all too well, and she knew that whatever words came after it meant that she would stay inside the squad for quite a while, and would possibly hear things she didn't want to. Not tonight, she thought to herself before finally turning her head.

"Yes, sergeant?", she asked before carelessly sighing despite trying her best to not let the frustration be so clearly stamped on her face.

"Could you wait for me? I'd like to talk to you before leaving", Olivia said, making Amanda mentally roll her eyes, and bite her lip, because of course she would wait, it was not like she had another option or like this was a casual request she could turn down.

"Yeah, no problem", the blonde replied, her hands inside her pockets and her shoulders already risen up - in that way they always stayed when she was on the defensive.

It wasn't as if she didn't know what Olivia wanted to talk about and it also wasn't as if she hadn't been dreading and dodging the subjects for days on a row now. She was actually surprised she had managed to spend so much time in silence, especially considering the small time she had taken for herself and the torrent of questions that had followed her arrival. Still, Amanda knew it was impossible to dodge or run away from Olivia's questions, she knew one day the sergeant would catch up with her - whether she wanted to or not, and she definitively didn't. She appreciated all the concern and all the care, of course, and she even found all her colleagues' worries endearing in their own unique way, but she hated to be treated as if she was a fragile porcelain doll, as of she couldn't defend herself, or even worse: as if she was broken, or lost and needed to be saved or rescued. As if she was a victim. Another number for the statistics. Amanda Rollins wasn't a victim, she didn't need to be saved or rescued. She was a survivor and she could damn well stand alone on her own two feet.

"I'm ready". Olivia appeared again, this time carrying a few files and a large black leather shoulder bag on one hand and a coat on the other. She silently walked towards the elevator, as if the two women already had every move planned.

"So", Amanda started phrasing - the dryness in her throat making her voice sound deep and hoarse - as she called for the elevator, "Where are we going?", she gazed suspiciously at her boss, her chin dipped down.

"I was thinking maybe we could go grab a drink and talk a bit", she remarked as she walked into the elevator and pressed the button.

"Oh", the blonde commented, lividity slowly starting to rise to her head.

The elevator door shut and the silence once again hung in between them. Amanda noticed Olivia's attention was on her phone, searching for a contact (Probably gonna call the nanny, she thought), and she allowed her blue eyes to lay on the brunette for a few moments. She admired Olivia very much, and she was glad to have a person so remarkable on her life, especially as her superior.

"Hello, it's me, Olivia. How is Noah doing?", she paused and smiled, reacting to what was being told, "Oh, he did? That's lovely! Yes, I will be home later, like I had told you. Thank you so much. Bye bye".

Amanda stepped out of the elevator and sighed, violently scratching her head, now filled with rage over the entire situation. So it was an ambush from the start, she thought. Olivia had planned from the beginning of the day to cram her up with paper work so she'd stay until later in order to be approached like that, damn, the woman had gone to the lengths of scheduling it with the nanny beforehand. This whole drink and conversation thing was definitively an intervention. Next thing she knew the sergeant would be putting on desk duty if she didn't agree to go to one of those meetings regularly.

"Please don't do this. I really don't need this", the detective blurted out even before she could control her own mouth.

"Come on, Amanda", Olivia pleaded to a stranded Rollins as she opened the passenger's door, "You know me. You can't possibly be thinking I plan to make an intervention or something like that", the blonde gulped as she heard those words, "Let's have a drink and talk. Hear me out for a while".

"Okay, Liv", she agreed, walking towards the car. "For a while", she emphasized, looking up at Olivia as she shut the door.

Inside the bar they sat on the dimmest and quietest corner, in a small square dark wooden table for two, most likely intended for lovers and conversations of either a lighter or sexually filled nature - and definitively not in the way both women knew the conversation was bound to turn out to be. Olivia - much for Amanda's dismay - ordered a beer, and the detective decided to follow her cue. She nervously cracked open a few peanuts as she waited for the beverages to arrive, noticing that the observant brown eyes across the table watching her carefully. The waitress interrupted the silence with a few pleasant words and the thump of the bottles against the table before leaving them to their non verbal communication once again.

"So...", Amanda said, making it sound like a question.

"How are you?", Olivia asked after taking a gulp of the beer, "I was gonna ask, I just wanted to drink first. Calm down, Rollins, I didn't bring you here to not talk to you".

"I wasn't...", she paused, "I wasn't thinking that", she replied fast. "I'm okay. Fine".

"Could you elaborate?", she asked with a smile. Amanda was angry at the whole arrangement, but she couldn't bring herself to be rude when Olivia was smiling to her, despite knowing that the woman intended to achieve.

"Well, you know, as fine as can be, with everything that has happened", the detective replied irritatedly, cracking more peanuts open.

"You didn't go to the appointment, with my therapist", she stated, eyes fixed on Amanda.

There. It had taken her less than 5 minutes to reach the point of the conversation. At least she didn't circle around it, Amanda thought.

"Yeah, I didn't. I didn't think it was necessary", her blue eyes defied the woman sitting across her, every little bit of her calm and control gone.

"Even after everything that has happened", the question arrived in the form of a statement.

"It had already happened, even before the incident with Reese or the trial. I don't need a shrink now", she dismissed it with another gulp on the beer, hers already on the bottom.

"And you also didn't need one back then", again Olivia asked without asking.

"No, Olivia, I didn't. I don't see what's the point of it. Going to a shrink and telling the same story over and over again", her face was now flustered, her body leaned on the table as she gestured angrily in circular motions, "I mean, what's... what's the point?".

"It's not as simple as that. The therapist is trained to listen and counsel you. And there are group meetings for survivors, you know how powerful the group support can be", she pleaded, drinking a bit of her beer.

"I can't... I can't go to group meetings... for that", she shook her head, "Come on", she argumented, as if it made sense to Olivia like it made to her.

"Why can't you?", Olivia asked, distraught over the image of a disheveled Amanda: her blonde hair messy, pale complexion flustered, blue eyes filled with tears, face twisted in an angry and pained expression, "Why can't you go on a group meeting for rape survivors?", she pushed, despite her distress over Amanda's reactions, finally saying the word the both of them had been dancing around ever since the scandal with Patton had broken out.

Amanda froze for a few seconds, struck by that word being associated to her and the way Olivia had managed to ask the question.

"Because...", she started, quickly giving up on providing any elaborated explanation, "I just can't. It's not fair".

Olivia raised her eyebrows, surprised at the choice of words, it definitely wasn't what she was expecting to hear. She gulped more of the beer, that now was lukewarm, trying to rearrange her thoughts, to make sense of what Amanda was trying to say without having to push the detective even harder. Her decision was for a more careful approach, noticing that the woman's posture had changed: the elbows rested spreaded wide on the table, both hands falling to the sides of the empty bottle - it was a defeated look.

"Why isn't it fair, Amanda?", she questioned softly.

The waitress shyly interrupted as she brought two more bottles of cold beer and offered them the chef's steak, which they both politely declined - despite Amanda remembering she hadn't eaten anything since lunch, which explained why she already felt mildly intoxicated with just one bottle of beer. She sadly watched the languid woman waiting on another table and smiling to some touchey grabey guys before turning her head towards Olivia and focusing on the question she had been asked.

"It ain't fair because I know the ordeal rape... survivors go through. I've heard all those awful stories. But... with Patton...", she paused, sighing deeply and mentally wishing she could disappear, "I walked right into the situation. It's not like I didn't know what could happen, you know?", her sea blue eyes were on the verge of overflowing, "I went there to have sex with him. To help my sister", her tone was now angry, disgusted, "It ain't fair for me to go to a meeting where people have gone through hell and talk about a situation I put myself into, knowing what could happen, being able to defend myself". She drank one third of the bottle's content in one swallow.

"You can't blame yourself, Amanda. He raped you. And he raped another woman. He is a predator. He created the situation, he overpowered you, just like he overpowered Reese. And he used your sister as a bargaining chip to get his way. What happened was not your fault, in any way", Olivia leaned in, placing her hand on top of Amanda's cold and shaky one.

Amanda pulled her hand away, sinking into her chair and sighing, an acid smile taking over her lips.

"You didn't hear me, did you, Olivia? Yes, he raped Reese. It was the same M.O., and it wasn't smart of her to allow him into her room, but it was not the same as what happened to me", she paused, "Yes, he created the situation, but like I said, I walked right into it -

The sound of the baton being dragged along the metal bars took over Olivia's ears once again, bringing back all those memories that sometimes seemed to be forgotten.

"Send me to Sealview. Undercover", she had asked Cragen.

"Not a chance", he denied promptly.

"Why?"

"Because it's a suicide mission"

"I've done it before. I can do it again"

"With tree huggers, not convicts and corrections officers"

"Captain, you know that I can handle it", she had assured him.

Walked right into the situation, Olivia thought, the pressure on her chest grasping tighter.

"I knew what could happen. Actually, I knew what would happen. I knew what Patton would do. He was right, I knew he didn't take no for an answer. And I knew what he wanted -

His heavy breath was the only sound in that cold, dirty room. "Oh, we're way past apologies now.

Now, shut up and do what you're told", he had ordered her. "What do you want?", she had made the mistake to ask. "What every guy wants", he smiled, "No one can hear you. You must like it rough".

I knew what would happen, Olivia thought to herself, I knew it.

"I knew that even if I had the guts to fight him he would beat me up and I'd eventually just give up -

She couldn't hide, there wasn't enough space for her to hide. "Guess whose ass is mine, now", he had found her. "Okay, you win. You win", she felt afraid. "That's more like it", he said before beating her, "And that's to let you know who's in charge".

"I'd give in. And I did".

She hadn't given in because Fin had arrived before she lost her strength, but she knew in her core she had been close to giving in.

Amanda was crying, in that silent and quiet way she was taught to cry since she was a toddler. "Now swallow those tears and dont'ya dare wake papa up", she remembered her mother saying. It had taken her more guts to fully confess to Olivia her reasons to not seek help than she had expected, but at least now all the questioning and wondering from her boss would stop, and that was at least a bit of a comfort to her.

"I'm sorry, Amanda", Olivia finally broke the silence, her voice sounding shaky and husky, "But now, more than ever, I urge you to seek counselling. Maybe not group therapy. But you need professional help".

"Come on...", she fumbled, stormily wiping a stray tear away and gulping down what was left of her beer.

"I mean it, really. I understand how you feel, I know you feel ashamed, I know you blame yourself. But you need help", she leaned in closer, eyes fixed on Amanda.

"Liv, save this speech for the victims you deal with everyday, okay? I've heard you say it a thousand times, in case you have forgotten. Save it for them. I really don't need to hear this generic crap", the blonde hit the empty bottle on the table, sinking even lower down the chair.

"I say this from personal experience", Olivia limited herself to say, "Believe me", she begged, tears starting to fill up her piercing brown eyes.

"Now, please, you can't possibly compare what happened with Lewis to what happened to me", Amanda was enraged, "He targeted you and he kidnapped you. Look, I am sorry for all the hell you went through with him, it was horrible, but if you wanna bring it out on me right now as if it had anything to do with what I just said... Please", she waved her hand, dismissing the idea. "I'd really just better go. This conversation was a mistake", she rose up from her seat and picked up her wallet, starting to fish out for money inside it.

"I wasn't talking about William Lewis".

Amanda turned her face back towards Olivia, her deer in the headlights expression showing she had been taken off guard by the statement. She gently laid one palm on the table - as if the wooden surface was something that had to be dealt with delicacy - and proceeded to sit down, attentive sapphire eyes on Olivia, as if to assure her she was listening closely.

"It happened a long while ago. Too long ago. Almost in another life. At least that's how it feels now", she started, pausing to gulp down a bit more of her already warm beer, "It was on the job. I was working undercover at a correctional facility. Cragen had been against me going there from the start, he said it was a suicide mission, but I insisted, I said I could handle it. Boy was I wrong", she let out a sarcastic half smile.

"You were raped?", Amanda jumpily asked, regretting the question as soon as the words left her mouth.

"No. But I got close it. Fin was undercover too, as a C.O. He found me before it happened", Olivia waved her hands effusively.

The detective nodded, her blue eyes lost somewhere down the bottle of beer before her. Olivia had almost been raped while undercover. That was certainly something she had never expected to hear.

"How was it?", she asked, immediately adding, "If you don't mind me asking".

"It's okay. Well, it was seven years ago. The place was called Sealview. One of the inmates' daughter had been raped and during the investigation we found out her rapist was a correctional officer, who was also raping her mother and countless other women on the inside. But we didn't have ways to prove it, so I insisted on going undercover to unmask the whole rape scheme that was happening on the facility. Like I told you, Cragen was against it, but he ended up accepting it. It was something of a covert mission, no one at Sealview knew either I or Fin was a cop - Stupid, I know", the sergeant paused, running her long fingers through her hair and letting out a throaty sigh, "There was a lockdown, the guards were taking shots against some sort of outbreak, a few inmates and I caused a fuss about the lack of information and Captain Harris, the rapist, grabbed me and took me to an empty basement", Olivia inhaled heavily and drank more of the beer, "There were beds there, it was very clear that the place was Sealview's private motel", she said, disgustedly, "He attacked me, tried to rape me, but I managed to hit him and escape. I hid for a while, but there wasn't really much place to hide, so eventually he found me. The whole time he searched for me he slammed his baton against the cell bars. That sound still haunts me. I managed to escape a second time, even though I knew what was bound to happen. He caught up with me and had me pinned against a door, that's when he unzipped his pants, ready to force himself on my mouth. Fin got there just before he could do it. Before...", she paused, "Before I could give in".

Olivia wiped a tear that insisted to roam down her right cheek, noticing Amanda's distant gaze fixed on spot somewhere down the table. For a few moments the two women just sat silently once again by that poorly lit corner, reminiscing on the weight of everything that had been shared and on the even heavier burden of the words that hadn't been said but hung in between them in the quiet air that surrounded.

"So you see", Olivia broke the silence, "I understand how you feel about putting yourself in that position, but it wasn't your fault, just like it wasn't my fault that I was sexually assaulted - regardless of the fact I 'walked into the situation knowingly'. I am not comparing what happened to me to what Patton did to you. But I understand the blame, and the shame, the guilt. That 'if only I hadn't been so stupid, if only I had fought harder' feeling. And that's why I'm telling you that you need help. It doesn't just go away, Amanda, you know it".

"Yeah", she agreed meekly, "It doesn't just go away. As much as I want it to. It wasn't even a brutal or traumatizing experience, you know? What you just told me...", she widened her eyes and gestured her hands in circular motions, "Sounds terrifying. But what happened to me...", Amanda paused and re elaborated her words, noticing the expression on Olivia's face, "I mean, I know it wasn't my fault, you're right - I might have to repeat that to myself a thousand times before it really sinks in - but it shouldn't have become such a big thing for me".

"You mean to tell me the rape shouldn't have traumatized you so much because it wasn't as violent as the ones we see on the job? Or because you weren't as threatened as I was when I was assaulted?", Olivia raised one eyebrow, "You are stubborn, Rollins".

Amanda sighed, smiling bitterly at herself.

"I've been told that before", the blonde nodded, finishing her bottle of beer.

"You know just as well as I do that the nature of the attack doesn't matter. You still clutched your gun every time you heard a noise, didn't you? You flinched when someone tried to touch you?", Amanda closed her eyes, stomach turning as she vividly recalled the days that followed her rape, "I bet there were moments when you were paralyzed, your mind going back to that place, that place of vulnerability, weren't there? You felt the urge to vomit or run away when the mere mention of Patton's name was made, aren't I right? And you dreamed more than once that you blew the bastard's brain off, and you probably woke up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat, and it took you some time to realize it wasn't his blood, isn't it true?", Olivia's voice was smooth, somehow soothing despite of all the things she was saying.

"Yes", Amanda muttered, "Yes to all".

"Your pain and your fear is valid. Please don't dismiss yourself like that. It doesn't matter the circumstances, you were attacked. And you need help moving forward from that. This whole new incident might have turned out to be an opportunity for you to access all those things you had ignored back then. You have an opportunity here, Amanda. Let me help you help yourself", her hands were again on top of Amanda's, but now the detective didn't move away from the physical contact.

"I just...", she raised her head up, her watery blue eyes meeting up with Olivia's bright brown ones, piercing them with her stare, "I don't wanna be seen as a victim, or feel like one. But mostly, I don't wanna see myself as a victim. I don't wanna be seen as if I am someone broken and lost who needs to be mended and saved. As if I couldn't save myself. I couldn't handle that. Feeling weak and vulnerable".

"No one sees you that way. I know I don't", she smiled softly, "But that's why you need help, to accept that you were the victim of a terrible crime, but that it doesn't define you and that it doesn't mean that you are just a victim, you are a survivor. You need help to stop being so afraid of all that. To be able to save yourself".

Olivia pressed Amanda's palms gently in between hers, brushing her thumbs to the back of the woman's hands.

"Okay, Liv", the detective wiped a tear and smiled - the first sincere smile she had given in quite sometime, "You have me convinced. I will go to that appointment and try to find a good shrink for myself", she paused, scratching her head, "And thank you for sharing the story about your assault with me. It means a lot to me that you trusted me enough to share such a heavy story, and from so long ago too. I'm so sorry you had to go through that".

"I'm sorry for what you had to go through as well. I'm just glad justice was finally done", the sergeant nodded, "Do you want another beer or can I ask for the check?".

"Actually...", Amanda smiled, "I was thinking about the chef's steak. If it isn't already too late for you, of course".

"The chef's steak sounds great", Olivia smiled back before saying "we'll take the steak" to the waitress that stood by the table near theirs.

"Liv?"

"What is it?"

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. That I had been raped. I should have told you, at least when the whole thing with Reese blew up", the blonde said, lowering her head.

"It's okay, you didn't have to tell me. Thank you for telling me now", she remarked, making Amanda realize this was the first time she had actually directly told Olivia what had happened. The only person who had heard the details was Barba, and that was because she thought she would have to testify. But in that moment it became crystal clear that the first person to hear it all should have been Olivia, not the A.D.A.

"No, thank you for bringing me here tonight. I needed it", she replied, carefully adding, "Can I tell you what happened five years ago?".