I can't really explain where this story came from. . . ideas from Closure, Doubt, Confrontation and probably a couple of others definitely helped. I am still writing Ever the Same, but I wanted to get this out while the idea was still strong in my mind. Not quite a shipper fic. . . a more realistic take on what I think would happen if Elliot and Olivia did get together.

As always, all reviews are greatly appreciated and suggestions are more than welcome :). And I don't own anything. :(

Olivia

Tuesday, December 5th

A beeping woke me out of the sleep I had drifted into. My heart pounded as I quickly scanned my bedroom. Phone? No, that wasn't ringing. Buzzer? No. Alarm system? Fire Alarm? Pager. Yes, it sounded like my pager. But louder. There were two of them going off.

Then it all came back to me.

The body beside me stirred, then reached over to stop the beeping on his own pager. Without turning on the lights, I kept the blanket covering me and found my clothes on the floor beside me. I quickly pulled them on and tiptoes into the washroom. I don't know what I was hoping for. That he would somehow forget that he was in my apartment? My bed? That I had just slept with him? I steadied myself by holding onto the sink and took a couple of deep breaths. Once I had calmed myself enough, I washed my face, pulled back my hair, and threw on enough makeup to feel acceptable, and went back into the bedroom. I could handle this in the traditional grown-up way- pretending nothing had ever happened.

"Nineteen year old rape victim," he said without looking up at me. He looped his tie around his neck before continuing. "Mercy hospital. Cragen wants us there now. Munch and Fin are going to check out the crime scene."

"Let's go."

He nodded, then finally he looked up. "Should we talk about this?"

"We both know the case comes first El. We'll deal with our personal lives later."

"Her name's Christine Webber," the uniform who met us at the hospital informed me. "She's a student at Columbia. She was walking home when she was attacked."

"Who brought her in?"

"Friend of hers. Rick Thomas, a grad student at Columbia."

"He was there when she was attacked?"

"Found her just after the attacker took off. She's in exam four whenever you want to see her, but there's been a backlog tonight. It's going to be awhile."

"Where's her friend?" Elliot asked.

"He's in there with her. Anything else?"

"I'll let you know if there's anything else, thanks." He looked over at me. "Does that sound a little strange? Her friend just happened to be going by after she was attacked?"

I nodded. "I'll talk to her, send him out to talk to you." We got to her room, and I knocked gently before poking my head in, even though the door was open.

"Are you Christine?" I asked.

She nodded. She was a very pretty girl with long brown hair that had been pulled back into a low ponytail. Her brown eyes had a look in them I couldn't quite place. She wasn't sitting on the exam table, but instead was on the chair beside it with her legs pulled into her chest. She was wearing a hospital gown with bags containing her clothing sitting beside her. She had been wearing some kind of suit, and you could still see the makeup she had been wearing. She had been coming from somewhere formal.

"I'm detective Benson," I said, sitting down in the chair closest to her. "I'm really sorry about the delay. How long have you been waiting?"

She looked up at the clock on the wall. "An hour and a half."

"Is there someone I can call for you? A friend maybe?"

She shook her head. "I don't want anyone knowing."

"What about family?"

She shook her head again. "I don't have any."

"In the city, you mean?"

"At all. I, um, I don't have any relatives. Both my parents were only children. My parents died last year."

Immediately I recognized the look I had been in her eyes. She was alone. No family at all. A feeling I had known all too well over the past few years.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

She shrugged. "It's not your fault." She looked over at the frosted window, then back at me. "Look, detective, I really appreciate you coming out here, and I'm really sorry if I've cause you any trouble by coming here, but I just want to go home."

"Why did you come here then?" I didn't care about her waking me up or dragging me out here. I didn't want to just let this go. Let her go home, shower, and regret it for the rest of her life.

"When Rick found me, he hailed a cab and brought me. I didn't really know what was going on. I just want to go home. I can't deal with this right now."

"Christine," I said softly, leaning forward and touching her forearm. She flinched and her body tensed up. I took my hand off of her but didn't move back. "I've been doing this for almost ten years now. And I can tell you that if you leave here today, you will regret it."

She shook her head. "I can't have anyone finding out about this."

"No one will know anything that you don't want them to. You've got the control here," I assured her.

"How will it work. . . if I do press charges?"

"We'll do an exam, take your statement, and you get to go on with your life. When we find him, we'll have you come in to ID him, and most likely testify at a trial."

"If."

"If?"

"If you find him. I know the statistics aren't in my favour here."

"Those odds go way up if you stick around for the exam." She wrapped her arms around herself. "I promise, I'll stay with you through the whole thing. And I will do everything in my power to make sure that whoever did this pays for what he did."

"And no one will find out about this?"

"No one that you don't tell."

She looked up at me through her thick eyelashes. "I'll do it."

There was a knock at the door and I expected to find a doctor standing there. Instead there was a twenty-something man standing there with two paper cups.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

Christine shook her head. "It's okay." She reached out cautiously for the cup he extended towards her. He was careful not to come to close. When she reached, I could see her arm shaking. She pulled off the top and set it on the table beside her. "Thanks, Rick." She never made eye contact with him.

"I'll, uh, just be in the hall." I looked back at her, who was staring down at her coffee. "Can you walk me through what happened tonight?"

"What. . . exactly do you need to know?"

"We don't have to go into details now," I assured her. "But can you just go over where you were this evening?"

She picked up her cup, held it for a minute, then put it back down. "I had my English class until six. I stayed after to talk to the professor for a little while, so I ended up leaving late. I didn't have time to eat dinner so I picked up a salad from the dining hall and went back to my residence to change."

"Change for what?"

"There was a forum for the future of feminism in the United States. There were a couple of professors, some local politicians, and a couple of activists. It went until. . . I guess about eleven. Afterwards Rick and I and a couple of others decided to go out. We went to, um, Harrigans, it's a couple of blocks from campus. Most people left after a drink, but Rick and I stayed until twelve thirty."

"Were you drinking?"

She nodded. "I had three or four glasses of wine. I didn't think I had had too much. . . I still felt in control."

"Did you feel different after? Sleepy, or like you were moving in slow motion."

She shook her head. "Wait, you think someone. . . someone drugged me?"

"We just have to look at every possibility."

She shook her head again. "No, I felt fine. Rick and I were walking back to my residence when he realized he had forgotten his coat with his key in the pocket back at the bar. He offered to walk me the rest of the way, but the bar would have closed so I told him to go. Campus is safe. They just sent out a report about how their crime rates were the lowest in 15 years. He was gone maybe a minute when someone came up behind me." She put her head in her hands.

"Don't worry, you don't have to talk about that now." She slowly lifted her head and swallowed hard.

"When he was. . . done, he ran off. It was just over like that. Like one second here, next second gone. I wanted to get up, but I was frozen. I was trying to stand up when Rick came back."

"And you came right here?"

She nodded. "And now I've been waiting almost two hours."

"Why don't you get into the bed," I suggested, "and I'll see if I can find you a doctor." She nodded again, but didn't make any move. I slipped out of the room and saw Elliot down the hall talking to Rick. He looked up and I motioned for him to come over.

"How's she doing?" he asked softly.

"She holding it together. Having some doubts about the exam though. I need to get a doctor in here soon."

He nodded. Despite the situation, I was acutely aware of his presence like I had never been before. The smell of him, the bristles that were growing in on his chin, the same ones that had brushed against my skin only hours earlier. I felt my cheeks flame up and I looked away. This was stupid, so incredibly stupid. Not something I should have done. Not something I would have done under normal circumstances.

Not something I could afford to think about while I was working.

"Something she said got me- Rick apparently was gone one minute on either side of the attack."

"You think it could have been him?"

"I don't know, it just doesn't seem right to me. Why did he come back?"

Elliot nodded. "I'll see if he can account for his whereabouts." He looked behind me. "You've got your doctor." I turned around to see a male doctor entering her room. I followed him in and I saw Christine nervously clutching the side of the exam table.

"I'm doctor MacDonald," he said formally to both of us. Christine looked up at him, then over at me fearfully.

"Hold on, this is sexual assault exam," I told him.

He nodded and took a seat on the stool that sat at the bottom of the bed. "Could you put the table up please?"

"No, there should be a female physician doing the exam."

"Look, I don't know if you've noticed, but we're a little short-handed tonight. We only have one female attending on duty and she's in the middle of trying to save a six-year-old who's been shot. So you can wait for her, or you can take me now."

I was prepared to argue about it, but Christine's voice came out in an almost desperate tone. "It's fine. Just get it over with, please."

Looking at her lying there made me want to cry, not something I normally felt at an exam. I nodded, pushed the bed up so she was sitting almost upright, and took a seat right beside her.

"I'll be here the whole time," I assured her. She nodded again, and told me she'd be fine on her own. She followed silently as the doctor swabbed her mouth, took scrapings from underneath her nails, drew blood, and photographed the relatively minor cuts and bruises that covered her body. But the second he started the internal exam, she winced loudly in pain and grabbed my hand hard. She didn't cry.

"I can take you back home now," I offered after the exam was over. The hospital had given her a pair of scrubs to wear home.

She shook her head. "I want to get it over with now."

I nodded, and followed her out of the room, one unsteady step after another. The first of so many steps in a road longer than I was willing to admit to her.

And she faltered. But she didn't fall.