Title: Hello, Goodbye
Author: ZombieJazz
Fandom: Law & Order: SVU
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law and Order SVU and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The characters of Jack (and his family) have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.
Summary: A shadow from Olivia's past shows up on her doorstep and offers the opportunity for her to take a very different direction in her life. This story exists outside of the universe that my other stories are happening in.
Author's Notes: This AU series is for SVU fans and readers who want Olivia to have something that resembles a more normal life outside of work and a family of her own - hopefully somewhat realistically within the canon of SVU. Most of the chapters will ultimately take place outside of the work environment, so there aren't going to be too many references to cases from the show. But this story would generally be starting in about Season 13/14 of the show. Please let me know what you think and if you distribute elsewhere.
She'd sworn she'd seen the kid still loitering around outside the precinct when she left the night before. She actually kind of felt like he'd been loitering around more than that.
She got the distinct sense she was being watched, and even followed that night. She had told herself she was being paranoid. That the flu and the over-the-counter meds she had in her system just had her a little loopy and her instincts weren't working quite right.
She'd tried to just get on with the work at hand. Though, something about the encounter with the kid just wasn't sitting with her right. The front desk of the station house had told her that the kid had signed in as Jack Lewis. He'd shown a New York driver's licence. But no address or phone number for the guy had been noted – and they'd just sent him up.
She'd run his name through the system, still trying to determine how he knew her. But he hadn't come up attached to any SVU cases. She supposed that didn't mean anything. If he was a victim, it wouldn't be abnormal for his name to have been changed, by his own choice, or maybe there'd been a divorce between his parents. They appreciated when victims reported that – for their own sake, for notification related to the release of their perps – but it was up to them. Lots didn't keep their files up-to-date. So she'd run his name a bit further – thinking maybe he wasn't a victim, maybe he was a perp, or at least someone they thought had been good-as. But nothing had come up there either.
She felt bad she hadn't been able to place him. She actually felt bad that she'd even let him leave about the precinct. Something was clearly up with the kid. He was looking for help – reaching out to her. She should've encouraged him more to give a statement, told him that she couldn't help him unless he talked to her, had him come back into the squad room. But since she wasn't feeling well, she'd just let him leave. Now she might never know what was wrong or even who he was.
She wanted to run his name a bit further even – to get the licence number from the front desk – and continue to widow it down, maybe track down an address or a phone number and check in on him. But work was busy and she just hadn't had the chance yet. Her mind kept going back to it, though.
So now she stood in the deli waiting for her order to be called up. She was looking out the window, mostly thinking about the paperwork she needed to get done that afternoon if she didn't want to be in contempt of court. But as her eyes focused a bit more outside, she swore again, that she saw the kid in the park across the street. She shook her head a bit and squinted her eyes – thinking that the decongestant really was doing a number on her. Maybe after she got that paperwork done, she should really take a day off – sleep and finally get the chance to hopefully sick this thing out of her system. Still, as she stood staring at the figure across the street, he seemed to become aware of her gaze and zipped his hoodie up more and pulled his backwards cap's rim forward and further down to hide his eyes. She shook her head.
After she retrieved her grilled chicken wrap and cup of soup, she looked out the window and the figure was still there. She waited for a moment, moving for the door as there was a group of people coming and going at the same time, and slipped out, looping around and managing to get behind the bench he was sitting on apparently unnoticed. He did seem to have noticed that she wasn't in the deli anymore, though, and his head was moving like he was scanning the street looking for her.
"You know, Jack, following after women isn't very smart," she said from behind him and he seemed to startle a bit and look behind him and up at her. He looked like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar – embarrassed and slightly concerned about what was going to happen next.
"It's probably even stupider to be following after a police officer," she told him. "Some might consider it stalking."
He sputtered a bit. "I'm not stalking you."
"You just happen to be sitting on a bench in the park across the street from the deli I walked to from my precinct?"
He looked down – like he didn't have a good answer for that. But he also wasn't making to move to try to run away from her.
"You left the precinct in an awful hurry yesterday," she said as more of a statement than a question, but she kind of hoped it might be an opening to get him to talk.
He just shrugged, though. "Going in there was a mistake."
"And what's this?"
She heard him let out the smallest sound that could almost be classified as a laugh. He looked up at her again and had a thin, little smile on his face.
"Oh, this is likely a mistake, too," he said.
He didn't look as bad as he had the day before, she noted. Maybe John was right, he really had just been dealing with a flu as well. He'd changed clothes too – and still didn't smell of a homeless person or addict. But she still wanted to get to the bottom of who this kid was and what he wanted from her. It was clearly something. She wasn't accustom to people following after her – unless there was something behind it. Of course, usually there was something bad behind it on the handful of occasions it had happened.
"Is everything alright?" she tried. "Usually people come into our squad room when they have something to say. Did something happen to you?"
He just shook his head and shrugged. "Doesn't something happen to all of us?"
She raised her eyebrows at him. "Well, my squad generally deals with rape and other sex crimes."
He shook his head at her. "I wasn't raped."
"Were you assaulted?"
He made that sound again. "I wasn't assaulted."
"Then why were you in our squad room?"
He shrugged – but he still wasn't trying to get away from her.
"Maybe you should come back to the precinct with me," she said. "We can talk a bit more about it there."
He shook his head and looked down the street. "Nah, I've got to be somewhere in a bit."
"Standing outside my office waiting for me to leave work?"
He looked up at her again and gave her another thin smile. "Nah, not tonight."
"Oh, but tomorrow?"
He shook his head again. "No. I'm done. I'll leave you alone. Sorry."
"You're done what?"
He shrugged. "Checking you out, I guess."
She looked at him a bit more closely – her cop instincts upping again. "Checking me out? That's also not the smartest thing to say to a cop, Jack."
He ran his eyes up and down her again. "You know my name." She nodded. "Because I left it at the front desk at check-in. I really wouldn't be very smart if I was up to no good and I left my name with the police."
"You wouldn't be the first one," she told him.
That little smile painted across his face again. It seemed so fucking familiar. It was driving her crazy she couldn't place him. The fucking decongestant. What was she missing?
"I'm not that stupid," he said.
"So what are you up to then?"
His lips pulled back into a bigger smile and he shook his head at her. "I told you, checking you out."
"I'm not much for playing games, Jack," she said. "I'm really considering taking you in."
"For what?" He asked and gave her a look.
"I guess we'll start with stalking."
He gave her another look and jerked his head back a bit. "Com'on. I was nowhere near you. You approached me."
"Where else have you been nowhere near me over the past 24 hours?"
He shrugged. "The city isn't that big."
"It's pretty big."
He nearly rolled his eyes. "Whatever. You have my name. I'm sure you can figure it all out."
She examined him some more. Who the hell was this kid? He didn't seem to care she was a cop. He actually seemed comfortable talking to her. There was just something about him too. His looks. His mannerisms. Why was he so fucking familiar?
"I already ran you through the system," she told him.
He looked up at her. "Really?"
"You aren't in the system – not under Jack Lewis."
He shrugged. "I guess I'm not too much of a bad ass then, right?"
"So then what are you Jack Lewis? Who are you?"
He looked up and examined her some more – like he was really having to consider those questions. She almost expected to get some sort of existential answer back from him. But instead, he put his one elbow on the back of the bench and rested his head on his hand, rubbing his eyebrow and watching her.
"Ah, I'm Jay Lewis' son," he said finally, like it had taken him a lot to get that out of his mouth. "I think you … dated him back in college."
She did a bit of a double-take as that sunk in.
"Oh … wow …," she managed to get out, as she looked at the kid more. His facial structure. The dimples in his cheeks. The hazel eyes and the light-brown hair. "Wow … do ever look like your dad …"
It just fell into place. He did look like his dad. In fact, he was probably about as near of a spitting image of Jay as he could get. But she hadn't thought about Jay – nor seen him in years. Still, that must've been where she recognized the kid. Fuck – even that coy smile he had been giving her – it was so Jay.
The kid gave a small nod. "Yeah, I get that a lot."
Her and Jay had been hot-and-heavy in college. She didn't know she'd call it love. But it was definitely lust – and just goold ol' college fun. They'd had a lot of fun together. Jay was just a nice guy. Smart. Funny. Popular but still engaged in his studies. He'd had this shyness about him but this ability to seemingly connect with everyone and anyone. It seemed like everyone knew him on their small campus at Siena College. He was handsome and fit. He'd played on the lacrosse team and had been studying economics and management and had all these big plans about getting out of his small-town farming life and making it big on Wall Street. She'd actually thought the city would likely corrupt some of his charm. But if this kid was sitting here, she figured, there was a chance that Jay had managed to chase his dreams and the money.
She'd lost touch with Jay, though. She'd actually been the one who'd broken it off. Her and Jay had nearly been inseparable for most of her third-year of schooling after having met during all the Rush Week events. Pub nights, parties, Friday night football, meeting each other after classes, overnights in each other's dingy dorm beds, she'd even spent Thanksgiving with his family that year. But it'd come to a halt after she'd had a pregnancy scare. That time of being late, followed by a false-positive test, a visit to the doctor's office for an official exam and test and then finally getting her period had brought things into stark perspective for her about what she wanted out of her life at the time, and where she thought she should be going. It didn't include being a mother.
She was barely 21 – just starting her final year of her degree. She had big plans. She wanted to get into the police academy after she finished her degree. She wanted to be a cop with the NYPD. She wanted to climb the ranks. None of that included having to tote around some baby and to put her career ambitions on hold – if not completely throw them out the window. But at the same time, it had shown her how differently her and Jay had perceived their relationship. She was just having fun. She was being a college kid – having a boyfriend, going out drinking, having sex, hitting up parties with her sorority sisters, cheering on the home teams. She wasn't thinking anything serious.
Jay, though, had made clear in that limbo period that he was committed, that he was thinking long-term, that he wanted a family. She just couldn't do that. She couldn't take making that kind of commitment at that time in her life – even thinking about it had terrified her. So she'd broken it off.
It was sort of funny looking back now. If she'd only known then that she'd be almost 44, single and the prospects of ever having a family growing dimmer and dimmer with each month and year. She'd basically accepted that it likely just wasn't going to happen for her. She should've put more time and effort into that in her 20s – even her 30s. But she'd been so focused on her career and so leery of letting anyone in with her job and her life, letting those walls down for anyone.
She'd still dated. She still thought about having a family of her own. But she'd mostly just looked at dates as an escape from work for a while. Nothing ever worked out as long-term. Most of the men would go running when they found out what she did. Or she'd go running from them after they stayed because of the creep-factor involved in their interest in her job.
It was hard to imagine that if she had been pregnant, or if her and Jay had stayed together and married and started a family, she likely would've had a child this age. A kid that was clearly at least 20 – maybe even a little older; the age she would've been when she was busy planning this other life that she was now living and wondering what the hell she was doing and what she'd given up to have it and why giving up any of that had been worth it. It made her feel kind of old. It also hit her with a kind of sadness – that almost scared her with the intensity and suddenness of it.
But, even knowing who this kid was now, it really didn't explain why Jack was following her around – or maybe even more creepily, why he'd even know who the hell she was. She couldn't imagine that Jay would be talking about an ex-girlfriend with his children – especially, when he'd clearly found a wife to have a family with. Especially, when she knew she'd hurt Jay and probably left him a little heartbroken at the time. It just didn't make sense that this kid knew who she was.
"How's your dad doing?" she asked.
The kid looked at her again and seemed to consider the answer. "Umm. He's dead," Jack said. "He died almost three years ago. A farming accident."
She felt another wave of sadness hit her at that statement. Jay would've been her age – so he couldn't have been more than maybe 41 when he died, far too young. And, he'd left a family – or at least a child – to live the rest of their lives without him. Jay had been such a nice guy and so full of life. It was hard to imagine he was dead, even though she hadn't seen him since graduation, and they really hadn't spoken since she'd pulled the plug on their relationship.
"Oh, I'm sorry for your loss, Jack," she managed to get out, and continued to examine the young man. He just nodded, though, like he'd long ago come to terms with his grief in that regard.
"Dad, he used to talk about you a lot," he said, though. "Umm…" he fumbled around, lifting his ass off the bench and pulling something out of his back pocket. He handed it to her.
She gave him a questioning look and unfolded what she thought was a tattered piece of paper at first, but it turned out to be a creased and aged photograph. On it a 20-year-old vision of herself stared back at her, all smiles, while a sweaty and dirty looking but glowing Jay had his arm around her shoulder.
She hadn't seen the picture in years, though, she supposed she might have a copy of her own buried somewhere in her college boxes off in storage. But looking at it took her back all those years to the sidelines of the lacrosse field after the home-opener. Jay was co-captain that year and so proud to have that honour – and his team had just won. He'd come over for a kiss and picture before he went to get showered and changed and they headed off to a kegger. It was one of those all-out parties that always happen early in the academic year, while everyone still isn't buckling down to their studies quite yet. She could still remember parts of that night – now that this picture was in front of her. They'd spent most of it out in the backyard of Jay's frat house. Drinking, laughing, music blaring and just happy – excited about the year ahead of them and all the seemingly endless possibilities that still lay before them.
"I kept that from dad's things," Jack offered and she glanced at him from the photo. "He just looks … happy there. And, ah, I saw you on the television a while ago … at some press conference. I guess I kind of thought … no one would've told you about dad, and that maybe you should know."