AN: Ok folks, here is the first part of chapter 2. I hope you like it. BTW I'm not sure how long or short it will be, but for the moment I do know there will be a chapter 3.
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Chapter 2a
When you grow up knowing your origins, it's not easy to forget that you might have been a mistake, that you are living on borrowed air and that you were a curse for your mother. One that despite the bitterness you were surrounded in since your childhood you still loved even if on occasion you feel hate and resentment for being the object of her mockery. You can't prevent it, you loved her. She was, after all, your mother and the only family you really had.
And even after rationalizing everything you feel or don't feel, you can't help ask yourself if the one that felt guilty was your mother, after all she was the one who had the final say. She's the one who decided to have you even knowing the consequences. Perhaps she felt guilty for wishing you dead and at the same time for letting you live.
Live or die, either option now that you knew, would have left your mother feeling the same. She didn't have the guts to get rid of something that she didn't want and at the same time had the courage to have you but she had been incapable of treating you, raising you or loving you for what you were...an innocent victim of your father's crime
Not a day goes by that you aren't thankful to the powers that be that despite of everything, you had managed to be where you are at now. It's true, notwithstanding the pain and the shame you managed to triumph over those feelings and used that to drive you to become a better person and do you job better. It also helped you to compensate your mother for giving you life and allowed you to empathize with the victims.
It wasn't an easy job; your mother was an English literature professor at Columbia and even though you never lacked for anything, didn't get luxuries either. Only during the first few years of your life when your mother surprisingly enough cared for you, protected you, nourished you at least until you were old enough to more or less take care of yourself. True, you were only six years old but she had looked after you the best she could before giving in to the bitterness and resentment. Perhaps it had been because as you grew older you looked more and more like your father and reminded her of the reason for your birth.
Nevertheless, you managed to get ahead and become a decorated Detective 2nd grade in one of the toughest divisions of the NYPD, Special Victims Unit. You had served years working and doing your duty as best you could, serving more years than was normal, more years than would have been emotionally healthy, but someone had to do it and you are more than ready to do so and on occasion your need to see justice made you cross the line of what the "law" saw as correct.
You didn't know what it was like to have a life outside of work. Initially when you were a child you had always concentrated your energies in your studies, that and sports kept you distracted from the miserable life that you had at home. Later it had been the college at Sienna, political science and criminal psychology as majors with only one objective in mind, the police academy.
You worked a few years as a beat cop, just enough to get experience and allow you to take the detectives exam. Once it was confirmed that you had passed the exam but before they could assign you, you volunteered to be assigned to SVU. This division was on a voluntary basis and since you had recently were named detective, you had to pass additional psychological exams aside from the norm. Of course they had no way of knowing that it wasn't a ghoulish mind that made you want to be part of SVU in the first place, but the desire to see justice done.
That's why the hours in a day were too few for you if you were trying to solve a case. You invested all your energy into each case as if it were the most important one of your career. And in reality each one was and that is why you felt powerless when you can't find justice for the victims and you promise yourself each day, that you'll do better next time and you never realize that the mere fact that you care at all is making a difference.
It was that desire for justice that made you realize that she was different. True, at first you couldn't help feeling that she was only just another of many ADA's that passed through SVU. The only difference with this one was that she was assigned exclusively to your cases and it wasn't like the other times that it was assigned to who ever was available to take a case. This time they had someone dedicated to you exclusively, that alone made you pay more attention, to notice who she was, what she thought and felt.
At the beginning you weren't sure of her intentions in SVU aside from the apparent political aspirations that she blatantly made clear to. You didn't consider that the blue blood attorney and suits that probably cost more than your monthly rent had enough convictions to last more than a year at SVU. But you were so wrong; perhaps not even she knew how demanding SVU could be. Perhaps not even she was ready for the changes that would come with the experience of working shoulder to shoulder with you trying to solve cases that could touch even the coldest heart.
There is nothing more stupid tan falling in love with someone without even knowing that you were. It was impossible not to be aware how attractive she was and not only that but she was BEAUTIFUL in capital letters. She also exuded a palpable sensuality that could enthrall a room full of people with her presence; after all she didn't become an attorney for nothing. Her self confidence, that arrogance that she carried like a second skin could drive anyone crazy and you weren't immune to her magnetism either.
You had your reservations on her assignment to SVU, you weren't the type to trust easily much less let anyone see who you really were or let them know how you felt. True your personality didn't change much from the implacable detective, Olivia Benson, from the very private woman that you were. Possibly only Stabler, your partner had been let in to occasionally catch a glimpse of the true Olivia and always with some reserve. The world in which you moved in was one in which it was best to keep your life private and far from the madness that working as a police officer in such a tough division such as SVU was necessary to maintain to keep your sanity.
But you never know quite how to balance both, that was the reason why you didn't have a love life, not even a sporadic relationship. And you weren't averse to finding yourself attracted to another woman. If occasionally you preferred to have a one night stand with a man it was just because it was less complicated; men rarely wanted anything serious and those that did soon found out that your life was not truly yours unless you wanted it to be. And apparently you didn't want it that way, and they would stop calling while you had already forgotten about them when they did try to call.
It wasn't easy forgetting Olivia Benson, you could keep your heart under lock and key but you are just one of those special women that don't need to exert themselves to be noticed for people to know how marvelous you are. One of those women that don't even realize how beautiful they really are, the kind that forget they are attractive and that either man or woman, it didn't matter who, would die to have by their side.
Perhaps that is why it took you by surprise when you found out that the attraction that you felt for Alex Cabot was much more than an objective admiration of a beautiful woman. It was small things, her smile that she rarely displayed and when she did it was in an odd way that would make you feel special; the eyes that made you want to lose yourself in their blue depths and would make you ask yourself time and again what was so special about her that you wanted to spend more time with her?
This and many other questions went through your mind during those nights that you managed to make it back to your lonely apartment. You let yourself think about the reason why you felt protective of her; you would ask yourself if being in a world dominated by men and being the only women on the team if it was normal to close ranks or if it was something else, something you refused to see, that you feared would be out of your control.
The months passed and turned into years, and each case you handled, every moment you spent by her side made you realize that what you felt for her was not just simple admiration; that it wasn't just a physical attraction to the imposing personality that was Alex Cabot. That in reality your feelings for her were more than just friendly professional companionship and that made you feel trapped; you couldn't help want to be by her side, spend time with her, be close to her and touch her even if only by accident. You thought you could control your emotions, the feelings that each day grew stronger. How wrong you were, you could be an expert at hiding your emotions, but against her you had no defense.
That need was your downfall; you couldn't help it, seeing her every day began to be a sweet torture. At times you could see Alex behave a certain way that made you feel that perhaps you weren't the only one that felt that way. But at other times you couldn't be sure if it was only your fevered desire that made you think there was more than could be seen a first sight.
How many times did you spend time together outside of the precinct over lunch or drinks after a difficult day or celebrating a victory; hours in her office preparing for trial…those and every moment spent at her side you felt the sexual tension build. You weren't a detective for nothing and you did the logical thing, looked for clues, evidence that without really accepting you wanted to find, something that would maybe and just maybe tell you it wasn't one-sided.
When the cases got to be too much for both of you, each so gruesome and taxing enough to drive you insane, and you would both seek comfort in each other, looking to redeem errors that usually weren't even yours but it felt like they were. Failures that reinforced the connection that joined you and that you didn't dare name.
One that was destroyed without you being able to stop it. Your hope died that night outside of O'Malleys, in that split second when you saw her life escape between your fingers. At that moment you forgot your reservations and the love you felt for her could be heard in your anguished pleas, but it was too late, she was dead, at least to the world.
You couldn't believe what was before you as she stepped out of the black SVU, alive. Her name escaped from your lips in reverence, like a plea, your eyes could not hide your pain, your desolation; you wanted to say so many things. You wanted to hug her against you and never let her go. But you held back, your eyes locked with hers; trying to convey your feelings, too make her understand what she really meant to you. You saw her leave and your heart broke in a million pieces.
How do you repair a heart that never healed, you ask yourself? You hear Casey's surprised reaction and you turn to see what's going on, and there in front of you is...more beautiful than you remembered and once again her named escaped your lips with veneration and need and you devour her completely with all your being.
You thought you had gotten over her leaving; you thought you had made peace with that lost opportunity. But nothing prepared you for the pain and sadness that you heard in her voice when she talked about her life in the WPP. Your desire had never died, that need to wrap her up in your arms and protect her came over you like a vengeance and it became evident than ever before.
You listened to her words with eyes flooded with tears and sorrow; each word that she said was like a dagger in your heart; for the love that you knew you couldn't quench and would never be returned. Hearing her speak of that good man that would hug her during the night made you want to scream and confess your love to her; to ask her to give you an opportunity, a hope, but you knew that it wouldn't be fair for either of you, no matter how painful.
Justice would have been made if she had been able to stay after the man that tried to kill her had been convicted. Instead you heard from Agent Hammond that once again she had been ripped from your life without you being able to say goodbye, without you being able to confess the truth, your truth to her.
The truth hurts, you had been following the Velez case closely, you knew he had died in prison, you knew that Connor's had been extradited to Ireland to be prosecuted there for his crimes and you knew that Alex was back. But she never responded to your messages, she never visited the precinct nor gave any signs that she wanted to have any contact with anyone that she had worked with for nearly five years of her life, people that had mourned for her when they thought her dead. She was back, but you never imagined that it would for the price of a broken heart.
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