Hi all! Thank you for those amazing reviews. I hope you all enjoyed the first chapter! Here's the second. I apologize for the delay, but remember how you guys used to ask me for longer chapters? Well I kind of got carried away so it's going to take my beta a bit more time to get through them, but I promise they will go up as soon as they're ready.
Chapter 2. Seven Devils II
She opens her eyes and takes in her new surroundings. They are strange and yet oddly familiar all at once. She recognizes it as a room she once considered hers. The set up of the room is still the same, but the drapes are different. The bed is covered in a comforter she doesn't know. The dresser isn't littered with her perfumes and lotions. The closet is no longer filled with her clothes. It is clear that this is no longer her room. The remnants of her are now long gone. She looks around and spots him sitting in the corner.
"A sleeper hold, El. Really?"
"You wouldn't have come back with me if I asked you to, and it was either that or chloroform."
"Why am I here?"
"I want you to stay here for the weekend."
"No."
"I'll pay you."
"I know what you make. You can't afford me."
He pulls out a wad of cash held together by a rubber band and tosses it at her. "Five grand. Count it."
She quickly shifts through the money. "It's not enough."
"What? You charge more than that for a couple of nights?"
She smirks at him. "I'm worth it."
"Well, that at least bought me a night so you can consider it a down payment."
"Fine, I'll cut you a break." She leans back against the pillows and arches one her legs, opening herself up to him suggestively. "So, how do you want to do this?"
"I don't," he answers, then turns and exits the room, closing the door behind him.
"What?" She's off the bed in seconds and tries to follow him, but as she turns the knob to the bedroom door she comes to find that it's locked. "What the hell? Elliot!" she screams. "Let me out of here. Elliot!"
She'd screamed for him for over an hour, but she's been quiet ever since. He guesses the effects of whatever she's been taking has worn off by now, and that she will NOT be in a good mood. He sets down the tray of food and uses a key to open the door. He finds her sitting on the bed, lips pursed.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" she growls.
"Olivia-"
"No! You let me out of here now!"
"I'm sorry, but I can't."
"What do you mean you can't? So help me God, Elliot, if I get out of here, I'm going to have you charged with kidnapping."
"Please, Olivia, we both know that you won't, and we both know why you won't."
"I wouldn't be so smug if I were you. I'm not the same person I was before."
"Yeah, but some things never change. Besides, I paid you. You're mine until the time's up. Isn't that how this works?"
"No. We go by MY RULES, and I'm done with this shit. Let me go!"
"I'm sorry, but I can't."
"You don't have a choice," she answers before she lunges at him, punching him in the face. He recoils quickly and is able to block her future attacks. He grabs her hands and she tries to kick him in the groin, but he sees the kick coming and dodges it. He quickly grabs hold of her and tosses her on the bed before quickly fleeing the room, locking the door behind him. She kicks and bangs against it for awhile, then eventually gives up. He sighs and picks up the tray and takes it back downstairs to the kitchen.
She's not quite sure how long it's been since her last fix, but she knows the effects of the heroine she used in the car have long since worn off and the pain she's kept at bay by being in a near-constant drug induced euphoria is beginning to seep its way back in. She needs to get out. She's tried the windows, but she's too high up to jump. She'd just end up breaking something. That is if she survived the fall. She wants to break the door down but she doubts she can get through it without hurting herself in the process and she's afraid of who might be on the other side. So she sits and waits.
More time passes and she swears it's been hours. She's hot. No. No. She's cold. That's why she's shaking. But her skin is on fire and sweat seems to pour from every pore on her body. But the pain. The pain is by far the worst. It is damn near unbearable. It makes her bones ache and the sheets against her skin feel like needles, but the worst of it. The worst of it seeps into her heart and makes the tears start to flow. It grips it and makes it hard to breathe, and she's had enough. She needs something to take the pain away. Something to make it all go away. This time for good.
She stumbles into the bathroom and searches the medicine cabinet, but he's thought ahead and the cabinet is already empty. She looks below and can only find toilet paper and boxes of tampons, hair supplies; nothing useful until...
She comes across a plastic bag.
And in that bag she finds her savior.
She quickly tears apart the box and her hands tremble as she fights with the fucking child proof cap on the Tylenol bottle. Finally, she gets it open and tries to shake some into her palm, but the trembling in her hands causes the pills to fall and scatter on the floor, and Fuck It All To Hell. She holds the bottle to her lips and shakes it's contents into her mouth and swallows, but the pain does not subside. So she swallows more.
And More.
And Mo-
"No!" she hears a voice, but does not recognize it. She screams when he knocks the bottle out of her hand. "How much did you take?" the voice asks, but she really doesn't know. All she knows is that it still hurts, and she needs more pills to make the pain go away. She scrambles to pick the pills up off the floor, but he knocks them out of her hand and kicks them out of her grasp.
He pins her down and pulls her into his lap, shoving his hand in her mouth. She chokes and gags until finally the vomit comes up and he is quick to turn her so that she pukes on the floor and not on herself. He watches her with pity in his eyes as she coughs up the pills she's just swallowed and then lays beside it and cries. He picks her up and carries her to the bed and cleans her up while she continues to cry. Soon her tears subside and the exhaustion takes over. He cleans up the bathroom while she sleeps and does another once over of the bathroom, all while cursing himself inwardly for missing the bottle in the first place. When he is done, he leaves some things for her so that she can clean herself up some more when she wakes, then leaves her in silence.
When he returns later he finds her huddled in a corner of the room. She has her knees tucked to her chest and she continues to treble as she rocks back and forth. She has showered and changed into the sweats he left behind for her. Her dress now hangs on the door of his closet. He places a tray on the dresser and heads over to where she is. He tucks a damp tendril of hair behind her ear and caresses her face lovingly.
"I brought you some food. Nothing serious, just some dry cereal and some orange juice."
"Fuck you!" she growls. "You can take your cereal and orange juice and shove it up your ass!" She spits in his face.
He sighs and shakes his head as he uses the back of his hand to wipe away her saliva then heads for the door.
"Why won't you let me go?!" she yells at his retreating form. "Answer me you fucking son of a bitch!" He pauses at the door and simply stares at her. "We both know you never gave a damn about me or what I did with my life before so why now?! WHY! Are you trying to absolve yourself of your guilt so you can feel more like a man? Huh? Catholic guilt eating away at you? Or is it because you just now realized how much of a fucking pansy you really are? Huh? Bitch!"
He loses it. He grabs her forcefully and drags her down the hall.
"What the fuck, Elliot! Let me go!" She yells, but he still continues to pull her down the hall. "Does this make you feel more like a man? Huh? Roughing up a woman half your size. Is that how you get your rocks off now? What? Casey not doing the job for you now? Doesn't have the moves? Or not tight enough for you?"
"Shut up!" He growls. "Shut the fuck up!" Then he opens the door and shoves her inside the room and she freezes when she sees her past come face to face with her present.
She looks around the room at the enchanted forest she painted herself. The words of wisdom and inspiration she inscribed on the walls with her own hand. The collection of toys and dolls she doesn't recognize. Her tear filled eyes finally settle on the tiny body encased in pink sheets she's never seen before.
She walks up to bed and falls to her knees in front of it. She touches her reverently, afraid she may disappear the same way she does in her dreams and drug-induced hallucinations. She pulls back the blanket just a fraction so that she can finally lay eyes on her face. Her tears fall when she sees how beautiful she is.
"She's the reason I'm doing this," Elliot says softly from the other side of the room. "Because I owe it to her to do everything I can to save you."
Olivia touches the soft skin of her daughter's hand and then brushes away the soft wisps of dark hair from her baby's face. It's been two years since she's seen it. It's been two years and three months since she last held her in her arms. She kisses her forehead and inhales her scent. More tears fill her eyes when she finds that it no longer smells of Johnson's baby shampoo. That her baby is not her baby anymore.
The tears continue with fury as the lighting white-hot pain of it all strikes her heart. It steals her breath away and causes her to gasp for air. He lifts her and she tightens her fingers in his T-shirt and screams into his chest. Her sobs consume her and he knows that there is nothing he can do to console her. So he leaves her to deal with her sadness alone on the bed. He closes the door behind him and prays that his daughter will never hear her mother's cries, or feel her mother's pain.
Olivia steps out of the steam filled bathroom and she attempts to towel her hair dry. Her long tresses now touch the center of her back, enhanced by the extensions sewn into her head. She sits Indian style on the bed, clothed only in the short terrycloth bath robe that gapes open, exposing the plane between her breasts and her stomach. She stares out the window and the sparse amount of stars that litter the night sky. She remembers when they used to make love under the moon's heavy glow. Long nights when she and her daughter would count the sparkly little specks in an effort to lull her baby to sleep. Back when the bed she sits on was their bed.
The house, their home.
His daughter, their daughter.
Back when she had a family.
A life worth living.
It all seems like such a lifetime ago.
The creak of the door opening startles her out of her reverie and Elliot enters with a tray full of food.
"Brought you something to eat. You must be starving. You've been asleep for awhile."
"Yeah," she answers. She's not sure how long she's slept. She knows it was dark when her tears had subsided and she had finally succumbed to her own exhaustion. The sun had kissed the horizon when she had awoken once again and darkness had fallen when she had stepped out of her shower.
"Fourteen hours to be exact," Elliot supplies.
"I guess I was tired."
"Yeah. I brought you some fettuccini alfredo from Donatello's. Covered in parm, just how you like it."
She smirks. She'd become extremely picky during her pregnancy, but always craved the creamy cheesy deliciousness of alfredo. It took him forever to find a restaurant that made it just right. Not too milky. Not too thick and cheesy. Not too strong. Rich. Succulent. She can't remember the number of places he'd gone through until he came across Donatello's nearly ten blocks away from their Queens home and, after one particularly bad hormonal fit, he had learned to never forget the parmesan cheese. By the fifth month he'd had her new dietary menu down pat.
"Thanks," she says and tries to muster up a decent smile to give him. "How long have I been here?" She remembers days passing. Long nights and even longer days. Vomiting until she swore her insides were going to explode. Even when she had nothing left. Cold sweats and pain. Pain she thought would never end. Pain she still feels in this moment.
"About a week."
"Elliot, why am I here?"
"Because I couldn't just sit back and let you kill yourself. Not after everything we've been through."
"But why now? It's been over two years since- Since you made it clear that you don't care anymore. So why now?"
"I didn't know how bad you'd gotten."
"After you divorced me and took custody of our daughter you made it clear that I don't matter to you anymore. So why care now?" She questions again with an edge to her voice as she tries to keep her anger under control.
"Because one day she's going to find out about you, and I can't tell her that I did nothing to help you. That I just let you die without a second thought. I can't just let you die this way, Liv."
The use of her old nickname reminds her of a time that is nothing more than a distant memory. A piece of who she used to be. A person she is no more. She laughs self deprecatingly. "So that's it. You don't care whether or not I die, just as long as you can say you did what you could to help so that you can absolve yourself of your own guilt. You know you're so full of shit, Stabler."
"Olivia."
"Save it! You took her from me! You took her in the worst possible way!"
"I had to-"
"No, you didn't! You didn't and you know it. You did it to hurt me. Taking her away from me should have never been an option!"
"You put her life in danger!"
"Accidentally! I would never purposely do anything to hurt her."
"You became careless and reckless with her. I had to step in and protect my daughter."
Tears fall from her eyes. "She was my daughter too."
He sighs. This conversation was going nowhere fast. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out another wad of cash. "I'm not sure if it's enough, but it's all that I can afford. Hopefully it will keep Xavier off your back."
She takes the money from him and shifts through it quickly. "You're right. It's not enough. You're about a ten grand short, but I'll take it. You can't afford me on what you make anyway, and don't worry about Xavier. I know how to handle him. Where'd you get all this money anyway?"
"Don't worry about it. Casey's going to kill me, but Olivia, I want you to take the money and get yourself some help. You're so much better than this."
"Where is she anyway?"
"I surprised her with a week at the spa for her birthday."
"El-"
"Liv, at the rate you're going you'll be dead by the end of the year."
She smiles sadly. "That's the plan."
He's startled by her confession. "Olivia, why?"
"Because I don't have her, and without her I don't have anything to live for and I'm tired of living a loveless life. Besides. Who would miss me?"
"I would."
"Hard to believe when you cut me from your life two years ago and replaced me with my ex best friend."
"Olivia I…" he doesn't know what to say to that because from the looks of things she's 100% right. He decides to change tactics. "I never thought you would give up. I expected you to fight me tooth and nail-"
"With what? After I paid my lawyer I had nothing. I didn't have a job. I was living in a motel for God's sake. I had no case to get visitations let alone get her back, so I gave up, because I had already been beaten."
"I never thought you would become this," he whispers and shakes his head as his own tears spring to his eyes. "Olivia, if I had known."
"You'd what? Wasn't this what you wanted?"
He doesn't know what to say, because although this is not what he wanted for her, he did want to punish her. He did want to hurt her, break her, and he did. "I'm sorry, Liv. I'm so sorry."
"Sorry doesn't change anything. This is who I am now, and this is how I'll die."
"You don't have to end your life this way. You don't have to die."
"Why shouldn't I?
"Because I still love you."
"Don't say that. Don't say it when we both know that you don't mean it."
"I do mean it."
"Prove it."
His thinks for a moment and then his lips are on hers a second later. He tangles his fingers in her hair and holds her mouth to his. His tongue traces her lips and he can taste the salt of her tears. She pulls at his clothes and he lets her take his shirt off. His jeans are the next to go. He pushes the robe off her shoulders and exposes her slender frame. He leans her back and tucks her underneath him, and his kisses bruise her heart. He trails them down her neck and then her breast. Just as he is about to enter her she flips him and settles over him. She pulls her hair to one side and she's the vision of a dream.
She's his dream.
He awakes the next morning when his daughter's voice awakens his senses. He looks beside him and she is gone. Her dress no longer hangs on the door to his closet. The food remains untouched and the money he'd given her lays fanned out on the table beside him. He doesn't need to count it to know its all there.
"Daddy!" she calls.
"Hey baby girl, what's up?" he asks and pulls her to sit on the edge of the bed beside him.
"The faiwy came to my woom!"
"Yea? What did she look like?"
"She was vewy pwetty."
"Really? I wish I saw her."
"She gimme dis," the little girl says and holds the gold chain up for him to see.
He immediately recognizes it.
He holds the tiny pendant in his hand and reads the inscription.
Fearlessness.
"Isn't it pwetty Daddy?"
"It's beautiful."
"Is it?"
Both sets of blue eyes look up to see Casey standing in the doorway.
"Mommy you're back!"
Casey pulls the little girl up into her arms and kisses her lovingly on the cheek. "Why don't you head downstairs and watch some cartoons and I'll be there in a minute to make you breakfast."
"Ok!"
Casey puts the little girl down and waits until she's out of earshot before she turns angry eyes towards Elliot. "Clinic should be open by now. Be sure to ask them if they have anything that cures being an asshole in addition to whatever shot you need."
Weeks later she once again she stares at herself in the mirror and she doesn't recognize the woman reflected back at her. Her skin is paler than she's ever seen. Stained by green and yellow bruises. Faint reminders of the beating she received from Xavier when she returned six days later than he intended and empty handed. Her hair is long and stringy. She's sure she can count every bone in her body through her skin, and grate cheese on her ribs. She's not the woman she was meant to be. She's not the cop she fought tooth and nail to become. She's the mother she thought she'd never be. She was better than this, and she'd be damned if she let her pain and disappointment become her.
She takes the scissors in her hand and begins to cut away the pain and heart ache. The disappointment falls at her feet, and then she begins on the self-loathing. She picks up the clippers and shaves away what is left of the pathetic person she'd allowed herself to become. When she is done she stares at herself in the mirror. Now with a bald head, she says hello to the new Olivia Benson. Completely reborn and made anew.
So when I first wrote this story this is where the story ended. I continued writing, but I do understand that this story is WAY out there. So let me know if I should quit while I'm ahead or if I should continue posting. As always thank you for the support!
Music Credits: Seven Devils-Florence and the Machine