We own no one but our own people
A/N cowritten by the oh so epically amazing Dee (SVUBahDumTiss on here, LiveSimplyDee in twitter.)
Tucker took a drink of the bourbon placed in front of him as he tried to ignore the sounds of the TV turned on above the bar playing some basketball game.
God he hated TVs in bars. If he owned a bar it would have been void of any jukebox, TV… nothing but the patrons drinking whatever woes they had away and the bartender helping them.
Unfortunately this wasn't only not his bar but it was a cop bar. It hadn't mattered that he retired from IAB and gone back to the more honorable field of hostage negotiation, New Yorks finest still saw him only as a rat, something to ignore until someone got drunk enough to say something to him.
But he didn't mind. He liked being alone while he drank if he was being honest. At least that's what he told himself as he sat on the barstool without someone sitting beside him like… like she used to.
She didn't mind the angry stares thrown his way when they went to cop bars, she didn't mind the drunks slurred insults for some perceived slight. She sat proudly beside him, talking to him, joking with him, giving him permission to take her hand or place a hand on her thigh or wrap his arm around her waist when he walked her out…
Tucker was so lost in his memories that he didn't notice the two uniformed officers come in and sit beside him leaving only a chair between him and the two gentlemen, ignoring the blue eyed captain as they did so. They ordered their drinks and as they waited for the bartender to deliver them they began talking rather jubilantly.
"I can't believe she had it in her…" one of the men, an older grizzled officer in his fifties with a faded scar on his cheek told his drinking buddy, a fairly young black officer with a thick mustache, with a certain awe. "You wanna talk about one hard sum' bitch…"
"I heard he needed twelve stitches," the mustached cop added. "But she didn't fare much better. She damn near busted his head wide open, he pretty much turned her whole face black and blue..."
"Still wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers though," the scarred cop said with a chuckle as he took a drink of his beer.
Beside them Tucker, who was half listening to the tale, rolled his eyes at the crude comment.
The mustached cop laughed, nodding. "I definitely feel you there. I still haven't heard what happened to start all this though, I thought those two were together?"
"Oh they were, for a while actually, something like four months. Benson even allowed to let him come visit her in the station a couple of times too."
All of a sudden the conversation that before was mostly background noise to the seasoned veteran, now required his full attention and required his full attention QUICK.
He whipped his chair towards the pair, his blue eyes wide.
"Benson?" said Tucker gaining their attention. "Olivia Benson, Manhattan SVU? That's the woman you're talking about?"
While the scarred cop looked at him like he had kicked his dog the young officer, who didn't know Tucker had been IAB, nodded before he took a swig.
"Yeah. She worked this guy over good but don't get me wrong she took a fair pounding as well."
Tucker moved quickly to get out his wallet and throw a ten spot on the bar to pay for his drink before he turned back to the storytellers.
"What was the guys name? The officer who hit her, what's his name?"
The young cop opened his mouth to answer but the scarred cop interrupted with a voice like sharp ice. "Why? You gonna go rat him out? You don't even know what started the damn fight."
Tuckers hand curled into a fist but he forced himself not to react how he so desperately wanted to. He wanted to scream that if he hit her he deserved to be 'ratted out' but instead he just channeled the anger into the coldness that the officers he interrogated had grown so used to, letting him know he was not in any capacity playing around.
"Give me his name," he told them in the no nonsense tone he had perfected during his long career at IAB, "and give it to me NOW."
The scarred patrolman glared at him for a moment before he muttered, "Joey Panzetti from the 82nd."
Without another word Tucker raced out of the bar and hailed the first cab he saw, not worrying about the costs it would cost to get from the cop bar to her apartment that was almost ten miles away. It would have been far cheaper to take the subway but the taxi was faster and he needed to get to her right now.
The whole ride he thought about the words the men had spoken in the bar. Someone hit her. Someone actually hit Olivia Benson. Some thug had dared to lay his disgusting hands on her…
Every mile the driver covered his fury grew. That woman had been through more Hells than anyone he had ever met, and someone thought they had the right to even think about harming her, someone who had trusted enough to not only be in a relationship with but had felt secure enough in them to introduce him to her squad…
Tucker wanted to kill him.
When he arrived at the familiar building his rage was at a boiling point and it only seemed to cultivate the closer he got to her as he took the far too slow elevator to her floor. Finally he was at her door and he saw nothing but red in front of him. He raised his fist and knocked on the door, his hands trembling as his anger seemed to overtake him.
When the door opened a moment later though and he saw her face, any flames fueling his anger was doused in an icy water.
The bruises weren't as bad as the officers at the bar had said it was, but it still made him speechless when he looked at her.
One of her beautiful brown eyes were a solid black and blue, her jaw had a solid fist shaped bruise on it as well, her lip was split open and he could still see the dried blood over the cut, and there was a bruise on her arm that showed Tucker someone had grabbed her arm.
"What'd he do to you?" asked Tucker softly, still unable to tear his eyes from the bruises.
She shook her head. "Nothing. I'm fine."
"I know you are. You always are…"
"Really, he barely touched me. I'm okay, Ed, I promise."
Realizing he wasn't going away anytime soon, nor could she blame him, she moved out of the way so he could come in and shut the door behind him.
This was the first time they had seen one another since he told her he understood why she was leaving him, a lie if he had ever told one, but it wasn't awkward to be around her. Truth be told walking into her apartment had felt like the most normal thing he had done in almost six months…
Everything looked the same since he had last been here, the only thing really changing was there were now older photos of the boy he had grown to love along with a new photo of her and some good looking Italian guy Tucker assumed was the reason for all this on her mantle. There were two wine glasses on the table, both of them empty along with a near empty bottle of wine showing evidence she had gone on a date with this Panzetti guy.
When Olivia noticed he was staring at the photo of her and her most recent fling she walked over to the picture frame and, not even bothering to take the photo out of the ornate frame, threw it in her trash.
"I take it this made it through the grapevine already," she asked as she went back to her previous spot on the couch where she picked up a well used ice pack and put it against her eye."
"Heard it from two cops in a bar." Tucker walked over and sat beside her on the couch, looking down and seeing her hands bloody and bruised, both defensive and offensive wounds and markings on her hands. "They said you worked him over pretty well."
"That part won't matter… by the morning everyone in the NYPD is gonna know not only the CO of sex crimes and domestic violence got beat by her boyfriend but that the neighbor next door had to rescue her." She reached forward and took a drink of the wine sitting in front of her. "They'll think I'm pathetic."
"No they won't," Tucker assured her. "Those cops in the bar, you know what they talked about mostly? How well you handled yourself against him. That's all anyone is gonna talk about, I promise."
She didn't need to be looking at him for Tucker to see the pain behind the small smile. "It's a nice thought but I've been in this job for a long time and I know people better than that."
The blue eyed captain nodded, unable to look at her as he forced the question he still wasn't sure he wanted the answer to past his lips but he had to ask.
"Did… did he-... Liv-."
"He didn't rape me," she told him rather bluntly without emotions. "And he didn't try either."
"No I- I know that… I mean, did-..." He closed his eyes, licking his suddenly dry lips, speaking so low he could barely hear himself speak. "Was…did- did he ever hit you before?"
He didn't want to know the answer. It was destroying his very soul to see the bruises and marks on her body caused not by some perpetrator but someone she trusted to take care of her.
While she never told him out loud Tucker suspected for a long time, even back when he was merely Olivia's frenemy, that she liked to be taken cared of by the men in her life, to a certain extent.
It was why she had always gone after the macho alpha guys. Stabler, Cassidy, even her partner Amaro was a bit of a hot head who would have protected her.
Then there was Tucker himself; who, while he was soft spoken and shy in regards to the romantic part of the relationship, she knew without a doubt
that she would be protected around her, he would have defended her against anyone or anything who tried to hurt her. He would do what a man was supposed to do and would never falter.
He suspected that she wanted the same from Panzetti, and he made her the same promise the rest of the men in her life promised her; that he would take care of her, and he had betrayed that promise in the worst someone could betray a promise like that.
Olivia finally turned to look at him, something along the lines of anger and confusion wrapped up in clear as crystal signs that he had offended her by simply thinking about the question much less having the gall to ask it.
"Do you really think I would tolerate something like that?" She asked almost in a harsh whisper. "That I would stay with him and forgive ANYONE for putting his hands on me, much less Noah?"
A whole new rage overtook him and a flash of red blinded him.
Olivia's anger at the previous question fell and was replaced by a slight fear as she realized what she had revealed about the attack that she had wanted to keep between her and the cops who, being in Panzettis precinct, let him go with a warning, slipped out .
"He hit Noah?"
Olivia almost jumped at the icy coldness in his tone. She was almost afraid to tell him the truth but nevertheless she nodded.
"Noah was acting rowdy all day," she explained. "He was running around, being loud, not really listening to me, just having one of those days that all kids have…"
Tucker forced himself to listen to the story, keeping his blinding rage chained enough so he could follow the explanation.
He knew all too well about Noah's 'bad days' which like Olivia said came no more and no less than any other child his age. He was no more violent, no more rambunctious than any other four year old hopped up on the seemingly unending energy young children possessed.
When it happened when Tucker was around he usually stayed out of it and let Olivia handle her son until he felt he was in their lives enough where he could discipline the four year old. But he followed Olivia's lead, he did what she felt was appropriate for her son and she decided when he acted up; talking to him and trying to direct his energy into something more positive then running around running into things and yelling loudly.
It may not have been how he thought a child should be disciplined, nor was it how he and his brothers and sisters were either, but Noah was Olivia's son which mean she made the rules and Tucker followed them.
"Joey and I, we were throwing a dinner party this weekend so he brought over some of his mothers wine glasses. He said she brought them over from Italy but anyone could tell they were bought right down the street. Anyway he brought them over and I- I mean I told him to put the damn thing up when he got here!" she explained fiercely as if Tucker had already blamed Noah. "But instead he takes them all out of the bag, unwraps them, and just leaves them on the coffee table. I was in the kitchen getting a bottle of wine and Noah runs into the living room, bumps the table and one of the glasses fall and breaks."
Tears filled her eyes at the memory that she would rather forget, trying to quickly wipe the tears before Tucker could see the tiny offending drops of moisture. "He- he grabbed him by the arm, like he was a little rag doll" she speaks while puffing out air before continuing, "and he hit him, hard, on his little bottom. It wasn't a spanking, Tucker, he did more than spank my son. He left marks on him. He has a bruise in the shape of his hand on his little arm and welps on his-," she wanted to continue but the cry came out first. Neither moved, but she finally continued. "Ed, he tried to beat my son for breaking a $10 wine glass. And Noah, Noah screamed for me and I just stood there, I couldn't even fathom what the hell happened and he did it again and he raised his hand back to hit him again and that's when I realized what was happening."
She took another moment to console herself. "I pushed him away and I tried to grab Noah, and he got mad and came at me and… ten minutes later the cops showed up after my neighbors called but they were friends with Joey and it all got dismissed as a domestic disturbance and they encouraged us to 'work it out'. I told him to take his wine glasses and leave or else I'd kill him, he left and two hours later here you are…"
By the end of her tale, Tucker was now visibly shaken, not in fear, but the wrath had consumed him wholly and unapologetically.
He got up from the couch and made his way to the door without looking at her. He didn't want her to see the pure unadulterated hate storming in his icy blue eyes.
"Ed?" She called to him as she got off the couch. "Ed, don't," she begged. "Please don't, I have it handled."
Her voice was background noise to him. The only thing he could hear was the terrified pained screams the child who would have been his son and that drowned out almost everything else.
"I'll be back," he told her, shocking his own self with how angry his voice was.
"Ed don't!" she tried one last time. "It's over!"
"For you maybe."
Without another word he wrenched open the door and slammed it shut behind him.
Olivia hesitated to run after him as his footsteps faded away. She wants to stop him. She knew she SHOULD stop him. But, surprising even herself, a small barely there smile shone through.
He was going to avenge her, he was going to defend her son.
Ed Jonathon Tucker was going to be one of the only men in her life who made the promise to look out for her and take care of her and would actually keep it.
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