Chapter 7

"My god, Olivia, what happened to your back?" he said in a quiet voice, a little stunned.

She wrinkled her brow, confused as to what he was talking about. When she remembered, she froze, her heart sank.

"My shirt, Amaro. Come on!" she demanded. He still hadn't made a move.

"But Liv…."

"NOW." She lifted her arm awkwardly and tried to shove it into the t-shirt on her own, grunting with the pain.

He still hadn't moved; she knew he was still staring at her back, but her other option was to turn around and let him see her without a shirt on.

"They're old scars, Nick. You can only see them now because of the cold. Please," she pleaded, "the shirt." He finally pulled the t-shirt out far enough so she could fit her arm into it, then she shrugged it down. He stared at her back until the shirt covered it. The image was seared into his brain: her olive skin, smooth and taut over the sinewy muscles of her back, marred by a pink scar, on her mid-back, two distinct lines connected by a loop on the end. There were two images, one stronger than the other, as if the second was a shadow of the first. She was right, it was old. The lines were pink because she was cold, but they were pale and faded, not angry and red like new injuries.

She turned around, finally fully clothed. "Thank you," she said, not making eye contact. Her hair was still dripping, leaving dark grey spots on the lighter grey of her NYPD tshirt. Nick still hadn't moved.

"Olivia…" he said. She closed her eyes; he wasn't going to drop it.

"It was a long time ago, Nick. They are usually not even visible. Don't worry about it."

"Olivia…" he said in a pleading voice. She pursed her lips and closed her eyes with a sigh. "I've taken the same forensics classes you have. Those were made with a wire, with force." Seeing it in photos is never like seeing it in real life. It must have been excruciatingly painful when they were fresh.

"Amaro, it was over 30 years ago, just drop it." She was rubbing her hair with a towel, avoiding his eyes.

"Olivia, how old are you?" he demanded.

"39" she replied. "Nick…"

"Over 30 years ago? You were 8?"

"I was 7. I don't really want to talk about it."

"You don't want to talk about it?" he said incredulous.

She spun around and hissed at him, looking around to make sure no one else was in the locker room. "No, why would I?"

"Because…because I'm your partner."

"Just because you are my partner doesn't mean I have to tell you all my dirty laundry, Amaro."

"Look, if you tell me I might be able to help."

"Nick, it was 30 years ago. I don't need your help," she said firmly.

"Oh no?" he said, picking up the wet shoulder brace still sitting on the bench. "Then put on that by yourself," he said, tossing at her, wide to her left. She tried to grab it and failed, the brace landing softly on the floor.

She bent down to pick up the brace, blowing out the breath she'd been holding. "You're right, I'm sorry. Thank you for your help."

She sat down on the bench and tried to reattach the wet brace. The wet straps slipped through her fingers as she fumbled to attach it properly. He reached over to help her, sitting next to her. The wet straps were already soaking through into the old cotton of her shirt.

"Uh, it's kind of wet, you sure…"

"Yeah, it'll dry… Listen, Nick…."

"It's okay, you don't need to say anything."

"No, listen. It was April, nine months before my 8th birthday. My mom had finished the better part of a bottle of vodka and I had asked her if she would take me to the park. It was before I learned to just leave her alone when she'd been drinking. I don't know what set her off. I mean, now I know the timing was bad but I don't know what exactly it was that made her snap. She just grabbed the first thing she saw, which was an old wire clothes hanger sitting on the counter. It was the only time she ever…It wasn't like she beat me.

"Except she did," he said. Nick sat next to her, his face in his hands. "My god, Liv. Seven? Zara's almost 6 and she's still practically a toddler."

"You don't even notice them unless you know to look for them usually, but with the cold and the wet…" She shrugged. "I stopped worrying about making sure clothes covered them long ago because you can't usually see them… Nick, listen, right now you make a total of three people on this planet who know that story. I'd like to keep it that way."

"Of course. Of course," he stammered. Then, "Liv, can I ask? Who's the third?"

"What?" she asked.

"You, me, who's the third person?"

"Ah…Stabler," she said quietly, looking him in the eye, wondering if he would understand what it meant that Elliot Stabler, the man who had left her without a word, who had essentially abandoned her, was the only other person who knew that.

He nodded. He was dying to ask if Haden knew. He had to have seen her back, didn't he? He had to believe her though, she probably wasn't in the habit of telling guys she'd been dating for a month something that she claimed only one other person on the planet knew. Plus, the fact that they were dating wasn't really an open topic of conversation.

He looked at his partner, the woman who until 5 minutes ago he was convinced was invincible. He thought she looked tired all of a sudden. "Liv..I…I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring up old…bad…stuff."

Olivia reached and adjusted the straps on the brace. "Its okay, Nick. Can we just pretend that the last 20 minutes never happened?" she asked.

"Gladly."

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Olivia made it through the rest of the day somehow. She never really got completely warm, her wet hair and the wet brace soaking through her t-shirt never truly allowed it. At some point in the early evening, Nick snuck out, disappearing somewhere for 15 minutes or so. He came back with a large latte, the fancy kind from the expensive coffee shop down the block. He handed it to Olivia without a word, but with a small smile and raised eyebrow. She took it from him, understanding that he was apologizing for the stunt with the keys, for seeing her without a shirt on, for dredging up her past, for everything. "Ohhhh," she moaned quietly. "I needed this." She cupped her hands around the cup for warmth. In their weird way, they had just completed an entire conversation including apologizes and forgiveness, appreciation and understanding.

She was due in court the next morning at 8am sharp and was dying to get home in time to get a reasonable amount of sleep. The thought of trying to cram her arm into a suit in the morning had her dreading the whole day. She wrapped things up at around 10pm and walked out with Fin.

Getting into her suit the next morning took her an additional 25 minutes of contorting her body, but she eventually did. He headed to court in a cab, thinking about the lunch she and David had planned, something that they could rarely get away with.

Back uptown at the 1-6, Rollins and Amaro were researching a couple of leads. Munch and Fin were tracking down a witness. Cragen had been called down to 1PP to answer questions about their progress on the prostitution ring case. Rollins and Amaro agreed that they felt like teenagers left at home alone for the first time.

Out on the sidewalk in front of the 1-6, Elliot Stabler stood nervously shifting from foot to foot. He was trying to get up the nerve to go inside his old workplace, a building he never thought he would volunteer to enter ever again. He needed to see Olivia Benson. He didn't want to talk to her on the phone. His options were trying at work or stalking her outside her building. 'Only for that woman would he go back into that building,' he thought, 'only for her.' He thought of her dark eyes smiling at him, making a quip over a cup of coffee as she had a hundred times and his heart ached a little bit. He sucked in a deep breath and took a step.

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