Author's Note: Hello again! As usual, I might start this author's note by saying "so I had this random idea...", but truth be told, I am not the first person to think of changing perspectives. It bothered me that I never got to show "the other side" as I imagined it in "Normality", but now that I have attempted it, I have say I'm not 100% sold on this narrative voice, because it's a character we never really got to know. This will remain a one-time attempt only, and as the idea came to me while reading Miss lucyspencer's story, here's a shout-out to her and some shameless advertising for her story, not that it needs it. ;) As always, I get super excited about even the shortest, anonymous comments, so feel free to tell me what you think and thanks in advance.

Disclaimer: As usual, I own nothing and I am not making any profit from this. Characters belong to the show "Law and Order: SVU". Story belongs to me.

Words in my Head

"Damn, aren't you cold?" It was pretty rude as far as greetings went, but he couldn't hold back from stating the obvious, not when she was sitting on a sidewalk bench that was barely dry in the middle of November.

"No." She was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular, hardly taking notice of his arrival.

"Okay then…"

"A little."

"Yeah, you know what might help with that? Actually buttoning your coat all the way" he suggested as casually as he could manage.

"Smartass." She gave him a small smile, and he was relieved to see that she was returning slowly from wherever she had been, that he wasn't intruding. All the same, she wasn't moving an inch, and she obviously couldn't button up her coat now that he had told her to do it. It looked like they weren't going anywhere. "You could just say 'hello' for a change."

He wiped across the bench once, removing a couple of sticky leaves, before sitting down reluctantly on the edge of the cold wood beside her. "You could have just waited inside." He should have been on time. It wasn't like he picked her up all the time, so when he did, the one time he got off work on time, he should have been on time. Fuck.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I didn't want to."

"Right" he replied, deciding to keep a sarcastic "that explains it" to himself.

"I just needed a moment" she said quietly, as if talking to herself. "To think."

He nodded uncertainly, pushing the immediate follow-up interrogation from his mind. "You okay?" That simple question itself was pretty daring, at least ever since that time he hadn't been satisfied with a plain "yes" and she had gone on this huge rant about how all she wanted was to be treated normally for five minutes, and that there was no point in bothering to ask because how on earth was he expecting her to feel?

She drew her coat tighter around herself, crossing her arms. "I will be."

Did that mean she wanted to talk about it, or not? He was still figuring this stuff out, but if there was one thing he'd learned, it was that it was better, that it was pure self-preservation, to err on the side of caution. "Just checking. How was therapy?"

"Exhausting."

"Yeah?" His mind instantly produced images of her crying in front of Dr. Mindreader, pouring her heart out to him, piecing the story of what had happened to her back together. He was fully aware that in all likelihood, she didn't actually spend all her therapy hours tearfully recounting what that bastard had done to her. From what little she told him, a lot of it seemed to be about coping and such, and a lot of that seemed to be about putting a load of work into their apartment, agonizing over decisions such as whether they should repaint the walls this one shade of white or this other shade with a fancy name that also looked just white to him. Still, she had to be talking to someone about what had happened, and she seemed to trust this Dr. Mindreader guy for whatever reason. That was good enough for him. He could accept that she wasn't talking to him, not about this, not ever, as long as she was talking to someone. Was she, though?

That someone definitely wasn't him. And sometimes, it was good this way, it was like an area he could just "hand off" to someone else, that wasn't somewhere he could help. If he couldn't help in this area, he didn't have to know the right things to say and it was enough for him to just be there. At the same time, that was the problem: He wanted to help, yet for some reason that probably had a hell of a lot to do with shame and fear, she couldn't trust him. And although she had every right not to, and it probably wasn't personal, and he knew he needed to give her space, there was something personal in that. Great job making it all about you, he thought.

They had fallen silent, and as the silence grew, broken only by the sound of cars going by, wind rustling the leaves overhead and sending some more flying, the pressure to say something good grew. Something sensible, the right thing, not just anything. He glanced over at her furtively. Her expression was blank again, her lips pressed together in a thin line. Sometimes, he wished he could simply read her mind, that they didn't need this ugly business of words between them. Then again, maybe it was a good thing he couldn't.

"Sounds tough" he offered unhelpfully.

"Hm-mmh."

"Do you…do you feel like it's helping?"

"Yes" she said quickly, as if he had asked her whether she had coffee at work this morning.

It was supposed to be about what she needed from him now, but it wasn't like she spelled that out on paper for him. He was trying to give her a sense of control, because that was what you were supposed to do, and maybe a little because it was easy to tell himself that when he didn't know what else to do. He actually rarely walked into the trap of starting a fight by telling her to do anything. Instead, he tried to do things for her, little things together with her, tried to accept things as they were and reassure her that she could do this. And sometimes, he felt like she was trying to reward him for trying so hard, giving him pieces of whatever she could give. Even if that entailed being well, hiding the bad stuff as much as possible. He noticed this the most whenever in this performance of theirs, this play of goodness, she got the details wrong. Her words and her behaviour were sometimes mismatched, somehow delayed, out of sync with what was going on at the moment, although he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Something was missing. It was like she was trying to convince herself and everyone else of something.

"Honestly?" Something kept him poking at this point today.

She scowled. "Well, it's not like I'm a broken car and I go in there, walk out and I'm fixed."

"I know that" he replied, irritated that she gave him so little credit. She was quick to misunderstand. He supposed that made sense, too. "You know I didn't mean it like that."

"Then why does everyone keep asking like that?"

"I've never asked you, not since the first session."

"No, you actually haven't" she admitted grudgingly.

"Have you ever considered that people might actually care?" He rubbed his forehead where his hairline was, beyond denial, receding, his skin prickling in the cold.

"It's none of their business. This should be private."

"Look, I get that it's hard, having everyone know –or think they know-" he corrected himself quickly, seeing her open her mouth in objection. "-what you've been through and-"

"They don't know!"

"Right, but I mean there's people who are way too interested, and then there's legitimate concern from people who know you well and who just want to ask how you're doing, if you're getting support." Who didn't have a clue what else to say.

"Well, they better stop holding their breath."

"It's not like that."

"Like what?"

"Like they just want to hear you're all better now."

"That's exactly what it's like." She brushed a strand of hair away from where it had stuck to her lipstick.

He didn't know what to reply to that. Sometimes, it was like out of all the words in the world, there were only wrong things to say that would upset her more, no matter what. She hated being in that "survivor category" where people told her how strong she was almost as much as she hated being in the "victim" category. She couldn't stand it if he mentioned it, but they also couldn't act like nothing had happened.

There were good days, too. Things were getting better, sort of. Sometimes, it was like the performance was becoming more real. She seemed less jumpy to him now than at the very beginning, more able to sit through something, even if it was only five minutes of breaking news on TV, without spacing out. He wondered if she saw all that improvement too, but the answer to this sincere question scared him. Because if he asked it, she might take it as criticism and try once again to manage his expectations, or go all catastrophic on him and obsess over this crazy idea of how the fact that things would never be the same somehow meant that they couldn't be in a relationship, because life was now officially doomed forever. She was quick to put all this deep hidden meaning into his words that wasn't actually there. Worse, she could say "no". But even then, he could argue with that. The worst possible outcome would be for her to say "yes" but clearly not mean it, because then, it would all be a lie. What if she wasn't getting better, but in fact, he had just grown used to her not being well? It was the fear that secretly, shamefully made him thankful for night shifts, because then he wouldn't have to wake up next to her wondering if she had really slept through the night, or if he had simply failed to notice her restlessness and nightmares because his sleeping self didn't give a fuck anymore. It was the ambivalence of wanting to be with her at all times, of worrying about her and feeling guilty over being away so much, while at the same time, being relieved when he had an excuse to get away from her.

It wasn't that he needed the old Olivia back, or that he was only with her to be there for her, but watching her struggle day after day after day felt like continuously walking into barbwire. He wanted so desperately to take some of that pain away, but the problem was that two people didn't actually halve the pain, they increased it. So he kept track of the evidence of her improvement, because he had to believe in it, and he knew she could do it, and he had to be the hopeful one here because after all, all this shit hadn't happened to him. And if he had just come over that day like he had said he would… No, that train of thought led nowhere good.

Sometimes, lately, they had managed to have a normal conversation and it wasn't exactly like anyone forgot what had happened, but they could be talking about a random thing like a bad restaurant they had been to and joke about it, and he didn't need to constantly be wondering if the word "hot plate" was a trigger, and she didn't shut him down or mentally check out of the conversation. Or he could rant about work without feeling like he was just bothering her with his own, comparatively minor problems that he had no right to complain about. That had to be a big deal, all things considered. Of course, the next minute, one of them could be called into work, or a letter from the DA's office could come for her and ruin it all. Theirs was a fragile peace.

"Liv, I know you're fighting so hard all the time-"

"Do you now?"

Great, he had walked right into that one. If looks could kill… "I mean I imagine that's what it must be like."

"Do me a favour and stop imagining it, okay?" she requested coldly.

Okay, enough of this empathy thing. Textbooks were so wrong about that, it didn't fly well with Liv. (And wow, the betrayal it would be to her if she knew that he had been looking at victimology textbooks again on account of her.) All you got for it was frostiness, which made her the victim –which, of course, she was- and him the idiotic, insensitive boyfriend. He would catch himself having terrible thoughts sometimes, thoughts like "why does she have to be such a bitch?", although he knew why, and that it had everything to do with PTSD, a sense of vulnerability and ongoing stressors. You needed a certain callousness to hold it together. But he wasn't Lewis. He wasn't a police officer, either, and this wasn't a case, this was his girlfriend's life, which had changed fundamentally over the course of four days. And sometimes, he wanted to "rescue" her, and sometimes, he wanted to run away, and neither of those options was particularly helpful. She was surviving, he told himself over and over again, and that was what mattered. He didn't want to join in the pity parade that defined everything else as "ruined". He tried to remember different times with her when good things hadn't taken so much effort, but everything had been different before, even things as simple as a lazy Sunday morning in bed. "Hey, I'm not the enemy here. I'm on your side, babe."

"I know." She closed her eyes briefly, taking a deep breath and opening them again. Her mood had shifted in an instant. "I just don't want you to…"

"To what?"

"I don't know."

He ran his hand down his face, rubbing his eyes. "Look, I'm not trying to assume shit, all I'm saying is: You can talk to me. Okay?"

"Got it. Thanks."

"Okay. Ready to go home?"

She shook her head slowly, watching a woman who had dropped her cell phone on the sidewalk trying to piece it back together. "I can't."

"Go home? Why?"

"Talk. We've been over that, Bri. It's better for both of us."

"And you're making that decision for both of us."

"Yes. I am."

There was something deeply unsettling about this idea of hers that if he knew, it would somehow change everything more fundamentally than it had already been changed. He understood why she couldn't talk to him about the details, why it was something too horrible to put into words and she didn't want to be looking at him, telling him out loud, reliving it. He had no desire to put her through that and no right to ask it, even though she would have to retell the whole story in court, anyway. But what if the other thing was true, that thing about how talking about it could hurt both of them? Because that could only mean that there had to be things that were even worse than he already knew, things that were beyond his wildest imagination, and at this point, there was nothing that was beyond imagining. Maybe she had a totally unrealistic picture of what he had pieced together, based on Lewis' MO, her injuries at the time, the scars on her body, the way she flinched at certain words, sounds or touches, the things he had seen at her old apartment even after all the important stuff had been taken into evidence, the nightmares, the interviews… Physically, not much was left to the imagination there. But there were these other things he hadn't quite put together, things to do with what Lewis had done to her in other ways. There were random details from these blurry, terrifying days, like the way she had beaten Lewis rather than shot him, or the dead tone of Nick's voice when he had called him, telling him they had found her, and the pause before the word "hurt". It was these fragments of knowledge that weren't a coherent story yet, individual words or images that haunted him at night. Knowing the truth, however horrible, couldn't be worse than the things his brain did with the congealed blood on the carpet, with the words "heated keys", "branding", "duct tape", "forcibly ingested alcohol", "tortured his victims", and "no no no no don't".

"Bri?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm so tired." It was true, he could see that, as much as it was covered by flawless make-up.

"Me too." This was not the time to get into the deep stuff. All he wanted was to go home, open a beer and not think about any of this. He took one hand out of his jacket pocket, where he had been trying to warm it up, and offered it to her. She took it, her icy fingers curling around his. "Things will get less tiring."

"And you know that how, exactly?"

"I know shit. I'm a cop."

"Always the optimist."

"That's me."The optimist who knew that one day, this would all be gone, them and their play acted life, all of it.

"Hope you're right."

"I always am."

"Sure you are." The corners of her mouth were twitching ever so slightly as she gave him her best raised eyebrows 'honestly, Brian?' look, the same look that could also mean 'really, this is what you're planning to wear' or 'give me that, now', depending on context. Then, she leaned against him, her head coming to rest on his shoulder.

I love you. The words were right there; he could hear himself saying them in his head like so many times before, but his tongue refused to move. He couldn't bring himself to ruin this weird moment of closeness on a public bench outside her therapist's office. I love you. For the longest time, he hadn't quite known himself, hadn't been sure if this was love or desperation, fear at the prospect of losing her or actually wanting to be with her, but lately, he had found himself thinking, hoping, planning. Wondering if this apartment was for good, for real, to stay, rather than just an escape born of necessity. Worrying about her, missing her touch, taking note of every little positive thing, every smile or bad joke. Feeling grateful for a second chance, a third chance, really. He loved her, as much as she drove him crazy. Life was too short and he wasn't too cool to care anymore, they weren't kids who were fooling around, this was it. This was as real as things got for people like them. He would do anything to make things right, but he didn't know how. This wasn't the kind of situation that existed in any dating script. There wasn't room for that script in the world of William Lewis. Any romantic sentiment seemed inappropriate, wrong, like he was pushing something on her when he least wanted her to feel pressured. Saying "I love you" wasn't something either of them really did at the best of times, but saying it now would have felt like "I love you because you're not dead", like just one more huge thing he would be dumping on her shoulders. It would send her running for sure. She might feel a false need to break things off with him if she couldn't say it back. She might not feel it. Worst of all, she might disappear again. This was the thing that everything seemed to revolve around these days: He couldn't lose her again, not in any way. So he kept his quiet.

Maybe actually saying things out loud just wasn't their thing.