Disclaimer: Olivia, Elliot, and Serena are mine. I wish! No, they're actually Dick Wolf's. Ugh . . . such is life.
Post-Inheritance oneshot. Olivia has a conversation with Serena Benson. It's a bit one-sided. You'll see. Enjoy.
When you told me about my father, even at such a tender age, I understood it on an intellectual level. He'd done something bad to you and you had me. You hated me and could barely bear to look at me because I reminded you of him. I looked like him, acted like him, etc., and that was why you had to drink yourself into forgetting. Maybe you thought that if you hit me hard enough, you could knock him out of me. The world was black and white when I was a child and I entertained that notion many a time. If I could just hold still while you were beating me, maybe this would be the last time. Maybe the blood that gushed from the wounds on my back would be his and I would be truly cleansed of him and all he had given. Maybe then, you would love me.
Now, I know that that isn't true. My father is and always will be a part of me, for better or for worse.
But I'm not like him. Today, we caught a case, one that hit close to home. A man whose father raped his mother and thus he was born. Then he grew up to be a rapist too.
I don't hurt people. You hurt people. I don't. You were raped and you hurt me. Being raped, and myself being the product, was never an excuse. Maybe a reason, but not an excuse. I know that now.
Sometimes I feel like maybe I am like him, that maybe I'm only a cop because it's an outlet for the anger bottled up inside me. But I have friends. Elliot reminds me every day that I'm not like that. He's so good to me, constantly reassuring me what a good person I am. Maybe he's right and maybe he's wrong. But you used to think you could beat my father out of me and you were wrong. You hit me because you didn't want me to be like him.
But I'm not like him. If you'd paid attention, you would have seen. If you'd put away the bottle and spent an hour with me while sober, you would have seen. If you'd sat with me and had an actual conversation, you would have seen.
We could have been close. By all accounts, single mothers are closer with their daughters. All I ever wanted was your love. I was a child, always so eager to please, so eager to do your bidding. That's why I lay down and took it, all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Who am I kidding – what good? The drunk, the drunker, and the drunkest. I would sit with you all night, rubbing your back as you sobbed into your pillow, wondering in my six-year-old mind how I could possibly make you feel any better. Because with your hangovers, as I sat by your bedside and held the bucket while you vomited, also came the excruciating pain that I knew you felt. Drinking gave you oblivion, but the aftereffects gave you clarity.
All my life, all I wanted was you. I dreamed of a mother who would hold me and hug me and kiss me and ask me how my day was. I dreamed of a mother who would take me out to buy a prom dress, meet my first boyfriend, be there for me in the ecstasy of my first kiss and the misery of my first broken heart.
No. The first person who broke my heart was no boy. It was you.
But you know the worst thing? I understand. I understand why you treated me the way you did. The world isn't black and white; it comes in shades of grey. Maybe I would never treat my daughter the way you treated me, but even though you're long gone, a part of my heart still loves my mother. And I'll tell you know what I could never tell you in your lifetime.
I forgive you.
Hope you enjoyed this oneshot. Please review!