Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine…
Olivia loved broken things. Loved that once they were put back together, they were still flawed, but were somehow complete. Whole. Beautiful.
Her mother broke a vase when she was six. She was drunk and stumbling and knocked it off of a table. She cursed, stepped over it and went to her bedroom to pass out. Olivia had watched it all from the couch where she had been sitting quietly reading. Once she could hear snores coming from her mother's room, she picked up every single piece and placed them on the coffee table. Then she found the superglue.
It took hours to fix with her still fat and clumsy fingers, but once she was finished, she just sat back and stared. You could see the cracks and the blossoms and vines didn't always match up, but she was fascinated by the fact that something only hours before that had been lying in pieces on the floor now stood fixed and whole right on the table.
She didn't know why exactly, but she wanted the vase for herself. Instead of placing back on the side table and refilling it with water, which she wasn't completely sure it would actually hold, and flowers, she took it to her room. She pushed her toy box in front of her closet and stood precariously on her tiptoes until she could just reach the top shelf. She pushed the vase back until she could just touch it with her fingertips. When she jumped off of her toy box and looked up, she could no longer see it. But if she stepped back to the foot of her bed and just to the right, there it was. Something that had been broken but was now complete. Whole. Beautiful.
When she was ten, she knocked a picture frame off of the wall as she was running to her bedroom to get as far away as possible from the screaming coming from her mother and some man in the living room. The glass had completely shattered and the top corners with the ornate decoration cracked.
She first picked up all the glass and threw it away. She knew that it was something that was broken and could not be fixed, no matter the amount of superglue she used. She then took the frame into her bedroom and took out her superglue. It was hers because months ago her mother had bought her own when she couldn't find "any fucking superglue in this whole damn place" when the heel on a pair of her shoes had broken.
She was getting better at fixing things. Now there was only the smallest of cracks still visible after she had placed the corners back together. Yes, the frame was still flawed, but it was whole once again. Broken. Beautiful.
She spent days going from store to store around her neighborhood looking for a square of glass to fit in the frame. Javier was placing a large piece of glass in front of his medical supplies that he kept behind the counter when she walked in. She was immediately excited.
She ran the entire two blocks to where he said the hardware store he had purchased it at was. She didn't know what a hardware store was, so she had to pause in front of every window to read what it said. When she finally found it, she was giddy with anticipation.
As she walked in and looked around, she almost forgot what she was looking for. The store was filled with hammers and screwdrivers and drills and superglue and tape and nails and screws and tons of other things that you could use to fix something that was broken. At ten, she had found her nirvana.
She was twelve when she could finally put a name to what she saw in her mother's eyes. Between Serena putting a plate of macaroni and cheese and cold ham in front of her and Serena reaching for the bottle of McCormick's, a light bulb went off. Serena Benson was broken. As she tipped back the glass, sucking down the three fingers she had poured as if they were water, Olivia studied her as if she were a broken vase or the toaster that had gone out just weeks before. There were no visible cracks or tears or shorts in her mother, but there was no denying the fact Serena was broken. This was when Olivia first realized people could be broken too, torn apart on the inside, but walk around whole. Flawed yet complete. Broken. Beautiful.
Throughout the years, Olivia continued trying to fix everything she found that was broken. She fiddled with the microwave and television set. She rebuilt the shelves that had fallen during one of her mother's stumbling trips to the bedroom. At seventeen, she finally fixed the toaster that had long ago been replaced. She was able to have a television set in her own dorm room her junior year in college because she had fixed one that someone had left on the curb.
Everyone in the SVU squad knew not to throw away anything that was broken because Olivia would make it work, or at least try to no matter how daunting the task. Alex did not know this until after she had worked with the SVU for nearly seven months. She was directed to the lounge area above the squad room in her search of Olivia to go over testimony. There she found her hunched over a computer tower that had been opened up.
"What did you do?" she asked curiously.
"Nothing yet," Olivia mumbled, not bothering to look up. "I'm trying to fix it. Jeffries said it was fried, but I'm just getting to it."
Alex had sat fascinated for almost an hour. Olivia somehow seemed to give her 100% of her attention going over testimony while she never ceased working on the computer. She was even more fascinated when not even a week later she noticed the tower sitting on one of the back desks that patrol officers sometimes used.
She began to take notice after that. Whenever they had down time or Olivia needed to calm down, she would tinker, try to fix that which was broken.
One evening she was visiting in the squad room, she noticed a woman walk in the door and pause as she looked around. When Olivia stood and went to her, she assumed they were friends. What she later realized was that the woman was a rape victim and Olivia had automatically known because she had noticed the broken look in the woman's eyes.
Olivia loved broken things. This Alex was certain of because she knew that Olivia refused to throw anything away that was broken until she was absolutely convinced that it could not be fixed. She also knew this because if you looked close enough Olivia seemed to cling to the victims just as tightly as they did to her.
This realization left Alex with only one question: Would she have to be broken before Olivia would see her?