This is just a little snippet. This chapter gives a glimpse of Elliot and Olivia's current disposition. I plan to pick up the next chapter the minute after Elliot shot Jenna in the final scene of Smoked, and the camera panned out. I've been a huge fan of all things SVU, including fanfic, for years. This is my first attempt at writing. I'd love all feedback... good, bad, or otherwise. Let me know what you think :) ... [Sometimes, I wish I was Dick Wolf, just so I owned these amazing characters.]
Present Day
He had spent what felt like hours trying to get comfortable, before finally giving up and settling on the floor where he found himself now with his pillow and blanket. Elliot hasn't slept in an actual bed for months. It was foolish for him to expect tonight would be any different.
Not that it mattered where he spent the hours of the night, because if recent history was any indication the sleep wouldn't come anyway. His eyes focused on no spot in particular on the ceiling he stayed awake, because even though his memory of the last three years haunted his conscious mind, the ghosts that might appear in his sleep scared him more.
If he knew one thing for certain, it was that he was no longer the man he was before he went under. He used to pride himself as being a man of integrity, whose stubbornness was outweighed only by his resolve to do right by victims and by the people he loved. And when his time spent under tested each of those values, he had failed miserably. Could he really blame himself though? After all, she was the one who motivated him to uphold those principles. She was the one who made him want to be a better cop, a better partner, a better father, a better man. And like the coward he was, he had left her.
If he had known what spending 3 years as that bastard's right-hand man would do to him... that it would make him callous and cold and weak and pitiful and self-doubting and scoop all the life out of him until he was no more than a shell of the man he once had been, he might have chosen differently. He might have stayed. But fear is intoxicating. It drives people to do things they otherwise wouldn't. And love, well love is at the root of all fear. So, when it came to his fear of losing, or worse hurting, the only woman he'd truly ever loved, he had done the one thing he knew how to do best. Run.
The time had come though, for Elliot to face his fear. No doubt the news he delivered would change the course of Olivia's life. Probably, it would break her heart. But he knew she was going to find out eventually, and if anyone was going to be the one to tell her it would be him. He felt responsible, and it was time for him to take responsibility. So, tomorrow morning he would go down to the 1-6, ask for Sergeant Benson, say what needed to be said, and do the opposite of run.
The alarm squealed and Olivia stirred. Opening her eyes just enough to make out the red 4:45 displayed on the clock, yet another night had passed when she didn't get nearly enough sleep. Not that she minded much. For the first time in her 46 years the reality she awoke to was just as great as the best of dreams she had at night.
Olivia Benson was more in love than she'd ever been. Until now, she didn't know life could have so much meaning, so much color. With him, everything was brighter... more vibrant. When she looked down at Noah in his crib, Olivia knew that her life was made up of more than victims and perps. Good guys and bad guys. She knew that no matter how the cards fell at the end of a case, there was love. The love she had for her new son was unlike anything she'd ever experienced. It filled not only the emptiness in her heart resulting from never feeling part of a real family, but it filled voids in her life and her soul that she never even knew existed. And as relentlessly as she fought for victims, she would fight even harder for her little boy.
Sure, there might be something or someone that could make her life even fuller, if she was completely honest with herself. But these days her prerogative was to fool herself just a little. She tried to forget about him. And the pain of the last 3 years. She drowned herself in her work and spent every moment she came up for air completely focused on Noah. After 12 years of self-deception and a few more of blatant foolishness she'd given up hope of having it all, of having him. Not by choice. She had to for herself... and her son.