Another alternate second half of season 15, because I'm an awful person.
Notes: It's a bad story filled with bad things. Don't say I didn't warn you.
1.
Near the start of the new year, a man fresh off two convictions of 25 to life was transferred to Riker's prison. He was a high profile prisoner, his arms and legs shackled as he came inside, but he walked as though it was nothing but an early morning stroll, surveying the yellowed walls and steel bars with interest. He spoke only when spoken to, showed no hint of concern at the prospect of a lifetime in a cage.
Prison, more than almost anywhere else, was a place of hierarchies, and within the first day of his arrival, the local rulers of the roost swaggered over to him in the prison yard. The policy with any new prisoners was to explain - as pointedly as necessary - how exactly things worked. But he watched them approach with eerie indifference, staring at them with the cold empty eyes of a shark. And one by one they quailed, somehow finding themselves turning away.
The guards had all heard his story on the news, and were warned the prisoner could be trouble before he arrived. For a while, they watched him with caution. But they found he was polite and cooperative, a model inmate. Soon they left him alone as well. He made no friends or enemies among the other prisoners, started no fights, made no waves. He spent most of his time alone, seemingly lost in his thoughts. Some of the others laughed, calling him a head case, but a few found themselves uneasy. There was a certain tension in his walk, in his waiting, that reminded them of nothing so much as a tiger in a pit, eyeing the crumbling sides with too much interest.
A month later, he disappeared
The alarm was raised and press conferences were held. A manhunt ensued as tips poured in and cops swept the city. All of it came up empty. It was as though the man was a ghost, a myth made of nightmares and dust.
As the weeks dragged into months, the search was slowly scaled down, then put on the backburner. Wherever he was, he clearly wasn't in New York anymore.
"And I know it doesn't count for much," added Lieutenant Murphy, the man who'd been in charge of the search, "but I doubt you'll ever have to deal with him again. You won and he lost, and he's smart enough not to push his luck by coming back."
The cop who'd brought the man down gave Murphy a small, twisted smile. "If that's what you really think," she said, "you never knew him well enough to catch him."
But for a while, it seemed like he might be right. There was no sign of the man at all, no threats or messages, no crimes with his MO. It was as though the man had disappeared off the face of the earth and everyone seemed to think he was gone for good.
And sometimes in her weakest moments, sometimes in the full dark of night when she lay staring at the ceiling above her bed, exhaustion pulling her towards sleep even as memory kept her awake, sometimes Olivia Benson could almost believe it too.
Almost.
Three months after Lewis disappeared from his prison cell, Olivia paused at her apartment door, struck by a sudden sense of being watched. Her heart beat faster but she didn't let it show, her hand drifting almost casually to the gun at her hip as her eyes scanned the area. The hallway was still and empty. The faint sound of voices filtered through the nearby walls, a mother scolding her child, a man talking over the sound of a television. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Even so, she didn't go inside, looking down the hall once more. She ignored her instincts at her own peril – she'd learned that the hard way last year. Though nowadays, she was never sure if she could really trust her instincts either. There had been too many false alarms, too many bad calls.
And what did she expect? Only months after she'd started at SVU, a man had held a knife to her throat and had told her that he'd always be in her head. And he'd been wrong. He'd been a mere blip in her life, someone who'd made her uneasy for a few days and then been mostly forgotten. She'd looked him up casually a few years ago and found that he'd died of a heart attack in prison, a banal end to a man who'd thought so much of himself.
But after fourteen years on the job, she finally understood. She knew what it meant to have someone in her head. To have every action tainted by someone else, to jump at every noise wondering if the shadow in her nightmares would emerge into life, gun in hand, a cold smile on his face.
She wondered how anyone could live like this. And then she reminded herself she had no choice.
She opened the door and went inside.
The kitchen lights were off when she entered, and that was the first sign that something really was amiss. Power bill be damned, she never let the apartment go completely dark anymore. If someone was waiting for her, she wanted to see them coming. Brian forgot sometimes, but he'd been pretty good about it recently. Beyond that, there was simply a sense of wrongness in the air, some smell or sensation that made her breath quicken, her heart beat even faster.
Instead of bolting like her mind was screaming at her to do, she flipped on the light switch, gun in hand as the apartment was flooded in soft fluorescent light. No one was waiting for her in the shadows. But in the center of the room lay a very still form, face turned away, framed by pieces of a shattered lamp.
Olivia swallowed, her legs carrying her forward almost against her will. She cleared the rest of the apartment before allowing herself to approach the body, trembling with dread.
It was a woman, her face unnaturally pale under the living room lights, her blonde hair glinting against the hardwood floor. It made for an almost painful contrast with the bright red of the blood pooled under her head – it had barely started to dry, a clinical part of Olivia's mind noted. This hadn't happened too long ago. She could see the dent in the skull that had probably been from the fatal blow.
But that wasn't what made Olivia step back, her hands over her mouth, her shoes crunching over glass. The dead woman's features were all too familiar.
Amanda Rollins was lying dead on her living room floor.