Before I begin I would like to explain the premises of the story and what I did. This is a fic based off of the Mumford and Sons' song Little Lion Man, I used a line or a few lines as a more or less prompt for each chapter, the pieces flow together to tell the full story although each should more or less be able to stand on it's own.
My goal in this work is to portray the brokenness of Olivia and Alex, within the context of a long established relationship, and show them helping each other attempt to overcome the adversity they face, stemming both from their careers and other aspects of their lives. They won't be perfect in their methods of handling these things, as none of us are. This isn't meant to be taken as an idealistic relationship in which both partners are dealing with their respective demons in a healthy manner, nor are they necessarily supporting each other in the best way possible. This is, instead, a realistic view of this relationship, in this context, with these challenges.
This work contains a lot of difficult subject matter, more so than the par-for-the-course stuff that nearly always is seen in SVU fics. There will be discussion of suicidal thoughts and actions, self-harm, PTSD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and likely other stuff along that route (TWs will be placed at the beginning of each chapter to describe what topics are brought up in each chapter and to what degree)
Due to the subject matter of this specific fic I WILL be monitoring reviews, although they are still very much welcomed, and I welcome critiques on my portrayal of self-harm, suicide, PTSD and anything else that comes up. I would like to add that I myself have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and would like this to be taken into account when commenting on my portrayal of mental illness, especially anxiety, because certain elements of this story are based upon my own experience, and everyone's experience is different.
Lastly, neither the characters portrayed nor the song lyrics used are of my own creation, they are all property of their respective owners, no copyright infringement intended, and if Dick Wolf taught us anything, it's that you need criminal intent to be guilty of a crime *rim shot* (although, technically, you must intend to do the criminal act, not intend to break the law, but if John Green's crash course on US Copyright Law taught us anything, it's that copyright law is so difficult to understand that I actually can have no idea if what I'm doing qualifies as free use or not.)