Unfortunately, just like the rest of you, I don't own any of the lovely (and sometimes not so lovely) characters on Law & Order: SVU. However, I do like to enjoy them as if they were my own.
This story will eventually end up EO down the road. But we have a bit to do before we can get there. I'm hoping to make this a long one.
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It was a peaceful night in Manhattan. The daytime before it had lacked a single cloud and had surrounded the city in a blanket of clear blues. Olivia Benson rested on her couch in her apartment on one of those rare days when they had managed to not catch a case. Though, however peaceful the night may have been, Olivia's mind was anything but. She used work to keep her mind busy; to keep it occupied amongst other women's attacks rather than her own.
Just seven months ago, Olivia had found herself undercover in the women's prison by the name of Sealview. She was there to catch a guard who had been forcing themself onto the inmates and raping them. Just because they were criminals did not mean their foreheads had been stamped with the words "I am a criminal. Do what you want with me. I deserve it." She found justice for these women. She could vividly remember the moment when she had read him the Miranda. The women cheered while she had felt nothing more than relief and satisfaction that Lowell Harris was going to prison.
The only thing that was of any bother to Olivia was that she received no justice for herself. She knew that it was her choice that she had not reported the attack in the basement. She wanted no one, no one, to know that she had been unable to fight Harris off and that without Fin's prompt arrival she would have been unable to prevent herself from being raped.
With therapy she had begun to improve. She couldn't pretend that the trauma had gone away, that she wasn't still suffering from flashbacks, or that the nightmares had stopped. But, yes, there was a lot of improvement. Olivia couldn't remember the last time she had slept through the night. Ever since Sealview, every night, she had nightmares. They were so vivid and so real that she sometimes woke up too afraid to even open her eyes in fear that she was still in the basement. Sometimes the dreams weren't merely the memory of what Harris had done to her. Sometimes in her nightmares Fin wouldn't come. She would be waiting so hopefully for Fin to bust through the door and stop Harris, but he never did and Harris would rape her right where she was cuffed to the door. She would pull at the cuffs so hard that it drew blood from her wrists. She would scream loudly and pray that someone heard her, but no one ever did.
And then, sometimes, in her dreams Elliot would be the one to save her. He would burst through the door and slam Harris to the ground and beat him to an unconscious, bloody mess for what he had done to her. Elliot would come over to her, unlock the cuffs, and pull her into his strong and muscled arms. There was no one in the world that Olivia trusted more than Elliot. There was also no one that she loved more than Elliot. She had tried to fool herself for so long into thinking that she only loved him like a best friend. She truly realized it when she had been driving Kathy to her appointment and the drunk driver had plowed straight into her car. Olivia Benson was never jealous of Kathy and Elliot's relationship. She knew that their marriage was full of so many bumps and patches like sandpaper, and that was something that Olivia would never want. However, what Olivia was jealous of Kathy for was the fact that she had given birth to Elliot Stabler's child. Olivia wanted a child, but having no husband or even a boyfriend and then being rejected for adoption made it very clear that unless something changed she was never going to be a mother. Olivia could see no man more perfect to have a child with than Elliot, and now with he and Kathy getting back together and now having little Eli, she knew that it was impossible.
She had tried to go on dates, but most times she was called out on a case, and after what happened at Sealview she would cancel. Olivia was scared at the thought of being alone with a man, and she couldn't even begin to imagine herself trying to have sex. Lowell Harris had ruined her life. She didn't regret catching him for what he had done to the other women, but Olivia couldn't help but wish she had never gone undercover. It had been her idea and Cragen had even advised her not to do it. She wanted to know why she hadn't just listened to him. Her determination to save and help victims had always been strong. More than once she had found herself far too involved in a case to be considered neither healthy nor professional.
Olivia's thoughts were interrupted by a loud knock on her apartment door. She slowly lifted herself from the couch. Her sock-clad feet dragged across the floor with each step. She apprehensively looked through the peephole to see just who was bothering her this late at night. Dean Porter? Why was Dean Porter from the FBI at her door? She unlocked the chain before turning the door knob and opening the door to reveal the man whom she hadn't seen since her undercover stint in Oregon.
"Dean?" Olivia asked, eying him and the folder resting in his hands with a look of inquiry.
"Can I come in? I have something I need to discuss with you about a case that I was hoping you would be able to help me with," he replied, his tone serious.
Olivia nodded her head and opened the door wider for Dean's entrance. "Have a seat," she said gesturing to the old couch.
A spring squeaked in the couch as they both sat down. She was aware that her couch needed replaced but she didn't have the time or the money on a cop's hours and salary.
"What is this about?" Olivia asked quickly, breaking the silence that surrounded them.
"In Pennsylvania, there's a large women's prison. We have more than reason to believe that the inmates are being sold for human trafficking. They pick women who have no family and write up a death certificate and claim to cremate them since no one will be looking for a body. We found a few of these women when we've caught people trafficking them. They were killed to keep the silence and it's very obvious what happened to them. They were completely unclothed, beaten and endured severe sexual trauma from being used as a sex slave. We've also found large sums of money going through the prison's records," Dean explained to her.
"What do you want my help for with?" she asked, wondering just where he was going with this. It was already strange enough that an FBI agent had come to her.
"I would like you to go undercover as an inmate," he replied causing Olivia's veins to freeze in mid-flow and her eyes to grow wide.
"Isn't there some female at the bureau that can do this?" she asked incredulously, willing the memories of Harris to leave her brain.
"We need someone who has experience with this type of crime… And we, uh, we need someone who looks good, physically, for this."
Olivia blushed lightly at Dean's words. It wasn't often that she got compliments, no matter how small, on her looks from the male population aside from the perps they pulled off of the streets and threw in the interrogation room.
"You'll be good for this," he assured her. "You'll have backup. I'll be going under as a guard."
She felt like this was Sealview all over again. Olivia felt almost as if she needed to prove that she wasn't afraid not only to those around her, but also to herself. If she could come out of this undercover assignment fine, she knew it would make her recovery so much easier.
Olivia sighed before replying, "Alright, I'll do it."
"Good. Now we need to go over the details and your profile." He opened the manila folder, and Olivia knew all too well that it was her profile; her knew identity that she was going to become for however long it took to catch the bastards that were selling women as property. "No one, absolutely no one, is to know where you are. You're captain will know why you're gone, but not where. Agent Huang created this profile," he said finally handing it to her.
Silence ensued once again as she began to read.
Name: Rose Lewison. Age: 40. Birth date: 3/27/1968. Birth place: Cleveland, Ohio. Marital Status: Not married. Mother: Cynthia Lewison, born Cynthia West (Deceased: liver failure) Father: Jim Lewison (Deceased: killed in war) Siblings: none. Other relations: Uncle: John Lewison (Deceased: heart attack) Crime Committed: Caught with illegal substances.
Raised by her mother only. Father was killed in Vietnam War. Cynthia was so distraught over the death of Jim that she used alcohol to forget and was constantly drunk. She was an angry drunk and took it out on Rose. Rose suffers from depression and has very low self-esteem. As an adult, Rose began using drugs to forget the abuse from her mother. She has never had a serious, long-term relationship. She has had numerous boyfriends short-term who also were heavy drug users and most of them dealers.
Olivia couldn't help but find certain similarities between herself and her new alias that she was to become. Olivia had no father, and it felt like she had no mother either because she was always drunk. At one point in her own life she had been very depressed and had some self-esteem issues. But her feelings of depression disappeared as did any lowered feelings of self-esteem as she had gotten older and moved on with her life away from her mother. She too has never had a serious, long-term relationship. The fiancé she'd had when she was sixteen was truly only a way to escape her mother.
Noticing that Olivia had finished reading, Dean continued explaining the assignment. "We leave the day after tomorrow. You're not even to tell any of your co-workers that you're leaving. Your captain will tell them you had to take an emergency leave for a sick friend who lives out of state. This is a very important assignment, and can potentially be very dangerous."
"Oh, I know," Olivia mumbled under her breath, Sealview creeping into her thoughts once again.
"What?" Dean asked not knowing what she had just said.
"Oh, nothing… It's nothing," she replied quickly averting her eyes to the floor.
Even her floor was dusty she noticed. She was at her apartment so little and because of her lack of walking on the floor it was collecting dust. If that much dust was on the floor, then she didn't even want to know how much dust was collecting on the rest of her apartment. The precinct had become her home even more so since Sealview. The cribs felt safer to sleep in with all of the cops near her. Olivia knew it was silly to be afraid, but because of Harris she had begun to doubt her ability to protect herself.
"I'll pick you up Saturday morning at six am along with two other agents who will be overseeing the case. We'll drive to Pennsylvania and then you'll be taken to the court, sentenced, and then taken to the Havencrest women's prison," Dean said breaking the silence that had overtaken the air. He then stood up from the couch stretching out his legs a bit. "Ok, well I'm going to go so you can rest up for this. Thank you for doing this. The bureau is very happy to have your services."
Olivia forced a slight, closed-mouth smile as a response to his words. She followed him to the door; shutting it once he had gone. Olivia leaned into the door with her back against it. She released a sigh from inside her that presented itself as having been bottled up for far too long as she shut her eyes and leaned her head against the door as well. She gave herself a minute to simply compose herself being, at the current moment, unable to do much else.
Why had she agreed to do it? Why? Was she truly ready for this?
Olivia slowly opened her eyes and pulled herself from the door. She took in the sight of her apartment. It rarely changed other than the occasional wall decoration and she had finally bought a new television just a little over a year ago; a small, modernized flat screen to replace her old, bulky one. She found there was no need to change her living space as she was hardly ever there to actually live in it. But at the present time, as she stared into it, the space before her seemed something of a safe haven. She would have one more day within it before having to leave and who knew how long it could be before she returned. However, there was something, someone, else that she would have trouble leaving behind far more than her dusty, outdated apartment.
Elliot. Her mind was stuck on the name. And along with the name came his face, and with that his entire being. She didn't want to leave him behind in Manhattan. If she had to go, she wanted to take him with her. But she knew that it wasn't going to happen. She was going to leave and Elliot would not even know where she went or even that she had been planning to go somewhere. He would simply walk into the precinct expecting her to arrive, but she never would.
Olivia knew that Elliot would be confused and would demand to know exactly where she went. But no one would know, nor could they tell him if they did. She knew that he would be hurt by the fact she hadn't even told him in confidence. She also knew that it would be just as hard for her as it was for him. She was dying to tell him and he would be dying to know, but she just couldn't tell him. Olivia realized she was wasting her time in wondering about what to do in the case of Elliot. She wasn't telling. For now she was going to sleep. She figured she wouldn't get much before she woke up from a nightmare complements of Lowell Harris. She had tried sleeping pills, and even that couldn't help her.
She trudged her way into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Once she was satisfied that they were clean she rinsed her mouth. Afterwards, she looked at her face in the mirror. She noticed she was looking very tired and worn out these days. And she saw, to her horror, a few new, slight wrinkles that had developed from the stress. Brushing it off, she headed over to her bed that was already unmade as it was just something she never bothered to do. She climbed in and attempted to find a comfortable spot beneath the sheets. She wondered how much trouble she would have getting comfortable in one of the prison cots if she couldn't even get comfortable in her own bed. She remembered how uncomfortable the cots at Sealview had been.
Sleep came just a few minutes later. It wasn't that she had trouble getting to sleep; it was that she had trouble staying asleep. Each time she fell asleep, merely an hour later, she would find herself waking up shaking, sweating, and out of breath. Nevertheless, she always at least tried to sleep knowing that she would require every moment of it that she could grasp while the rest floated right through her fingertips.
The next thing that Olivia knew was Harris cuffing her to the door of the basement. She yanked her arms wildly against the metal restraints screaming for help and begging Harris not to as he pulled down the orange pants of the inmate jumpsuit. He pried her legs open and placed himself between them, his knees bruising the flesh of her inner thighs. Harris thrust himself forcefully inside of Olivia bringing a horrific scream of pain from her.
Olivia bolted upright in bed. The scream she let out had not been contained to her dream. Sweat was beaded on her forehead and her nightshirt clung to her skin. She began trying to regulate her breathing as she wiped strands of her damp hair from her face. She only hoped that she would be able to control the nightmares while undercover. If not, things could go terribly wrong.
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So, what did you think? I hope that it was at least somewhat enjoyable and that I'll see you back again for chapter two when Elliot finds out that his partner is gone.
xoxo
~Liv
