Title: Undeserved

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 Will (and his family) and Noah have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.

Summary: The bad hand Olivia's been dealt continues - this time with real implications for her son. She and Will, along with the help of her work colleagues, work at navigating the devastating news and the new developments it brings to their lives.

Author's Notes: If you don't know the background on Olivia's pregnancy and the father of her son, to get some context for this chapter, you might want to check out another one of my stories, Changes. 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. Her relationship with Elliot is that of partner and protective older brother and colleague. It won't devolve from that - they aren't ever going to get together in this series. If you're an E/O shipper, you likely won't enjoy these stories. The timeline is a little loose and since most of the stories ultimately takes place outside of the work environment, there aren't too many references to cases from the show. But this series would generally be starting in about Season 12/13 of the show. It assumes Elliot hasn't left SVU yet. Please let me know what you think and if you distribute elsewhere.

Noah had been babbling at her most of their trip home. Beyond acting a little tired, he didn't seem to be feeling much effect from the drugs yet that afternoon – and he was instead telling her about his day, which sounded much more exciting than her's.

There'd been an ice cream social happening for the kids at the hospital so he'd gotten to go over to that after his treatment. They'd had about a thousand toppings to choose from and more flavours, he'd told her. But he'd picked strawberry with real strawberries in it and he'd gotten chocolate syrup, whipped cream, chocolate chips, sprinkles and even more strawberries on it. She could actually see why he'd been excited about that. Will's choice apparently had been much less sophisticated.

"He just got sherbet," Noah had told her and wrinkled up his nose, "without nothing."

His day had gotten even more exciting when he got to go to Will's office. Will's office was always exciting to Noah. It had a vending machine down the hall that "you can see things and pick". That always fascinated her son. You could give him permission for a treat and he'd still stand in front of it humming and ha-ing about what he was going to get for about five minutes – there were just so many options and he'd carefully weigh each one before coming back and dragging one of them down to put in the bills in for him. He'd gotten peanut butter cups that day because, "Will said I could even though I had ice cream."

The awesomeness of small, dinghy university office was made even better in her son's eyes because of the sheer number of toys Will had there – action figures, board game pieces, playing cards, stress balls of all shapes and Rubik's cubes of sizes and geometrics that she hadn't known existed until she him. The infrequency at which Noah actually spent any time in Will's office meant that going in there was about the equivalent of entering a new toy store and being told he could have the run of the place. Liv didn't know how Will managed to get any work done when he took the boy there – or even when he wasn't there, considering the amount of clutter and distraction he had in his space.

But the icing on the cake for the day for Noah was that one of Will's grad students had shown him a "magic track" - how to type 'hello' into a calculator. Noah was proud of this new-found knowledge – and his ability to spell the word, which he'd already dictated for her alphabetically and numerically several times – and he was itching to get home and show her the trick himself, despite her telling him she didn't think they had a calculator in the apartment. Who did have calculators anymore anyways? For all the math she ever did, she could do it on some app on her phone. She'd told him they might have to wait until Will got home for him to show her this "magic trick". He'd have a calculator at his place, right?

She'd been so absorbed listening to her son, as they made the walk hand-in-hand from the subway back to the building, that it wasn't until the man sitting on the steps in front stood up and made a move towards him that her mind realized who it was.

She pulled Noah's arm back towards her harder than she'd meant to and started dragging him down the street the way they'd come. "Mom," he'd protested.

Her mind was reeling on how to get out of this encounter and how to shelter her son from it. She stopped in front of another building, and shuffled him up onto the first step, partially hidden from view by the banister.

"You stay right here," she told him sternly. "Don't move."

Her son was watching her with wide eyes and she walked quickly towards the man following after them. She glanced back at Noah, and held out her hand for the man to stop walking. They were still about 10 metres away from where she'd left the boy.

"Olivia," the man said and held out his hand to touch her shoulder.

She jerked away before he could. "You don't touch me, Kurt," she said louder than she'd wanted to. She glanced back at Noah again. "What do you want?" she asked more quietly.

"Oh, com'on, Liv," he huffed. "You're the one that got in touch with me."

"Three months ago, Kurt," she spat. "More than three months ago."

She regretted that she'd tried to reach him but at this point she hadn't really expected to hear from him in any capacity, let alone have him sitting on her doorstep.

In the first 48 hours of terror following Noah's initial diagnosis, she'd kept herself up at night Googling and scaring herself even more. She'd seen that some types of leukemia needed bone marrow transplants or even stem cell transplants and that her son's treatments would likely require blood transfusions and even if not, the hospitals liked to have blood on hand in case there was a need for an emergency transfusion. She'd stewed that if Noah needed any of those things and she didn't match. She had no blood ties to turn to as an initial starting points – beyond Simon and that just seemed so messy she didn't want to think about it. Kurt had seemed like the next logical place to go, and in her panicked mind, she'd decided that he had a right to know his child had cancer anyways.

So she'd left messages on his voicemail asking that he call her, she'd call the newspaper asking where he was – Hong Kong, and had sent off several emails until his lack of response resulted in a final note that just said: "Your son has cancer." She still hadn't gotten a reply.

In the end, though, Noah had acute lymphocytic leukemia and didn't need a transplant and her blood type matched his anyways. And, as the weeks passed and she still hadn't heard anything from Kurt she'd come to accept that his lack of interest in playing any part in Noah's life, even acknowledging his existence, really and truly wasn't ever going to happen. She should've known better anyways. Even getting child support out of him involved lawyers.

She'd tried to tell herself over the years that her judgment wasn't so bad that she would've dated such an asshole, that he'd never come across as a bad guy when they had gone out. She tried to convince herself he just wasn't father material – he was married to his job and didn't have time for anything or anyone else in his life, at least not in a meaningful way. But his reaction – or lack there-of – to Noah's illness had sealed it for her. Kurt was a self-centred, arrogant bastard that she'd really prefer to never see again, let alone allow him anywhere near her son.

He placed his hands on his hips and looked at the sky. "How's he doing?"

"He has leukemia. How do you think he's doing?"

"Look, Liv …"

"What do you want Kurt?" She said more forcibly this time.

"Well, to start, I'd like to see him."

She shook her head. "That's not happening."

Kurt had taken the time to see Noah twice in his life. He'd come once when he was four months old after he'd gotten back from an assignment in Afghanistan and then again at about 20 months. He'd miscalculated his son's age at that visit and brought a Happy 2nd Birthday card. Since then there hadn't been any interest in the boy and Olivia's only interactions him had been mostly through their lawyers – expect for the occasional angry telephone call or email from him, which she'd just pass on to her lawyer anyhow.

She knew that from where Noah was peaking around the concrete banister at them and scuffing his feet, he'd just be seeing his mother talking to a man. There was no way he could recognize Kurt or know who he was. She hoped that he wouldn't have a spidey sense about it, telling herself he was just a little boy and he wouldn't put two and two together that easily.

"Liv, he's my son," Kurt said.

She felt her hand come up, she wasn't sure what she had intended to do – slap him, punch him? – but she managed to pull it in at the last second and just point angrily at him.

"No, he is not your son," she hissed at him. "You may have fathered him, but he is NOT your son."

He shook his head at her. "Liv, you can't keep him from me. I have a right to see him."

"Your rights?" She shook her head and rolled her eyes. "What's the sudden interest here Kurt?"

"You called me," he said again.

She crossed her arms across her chest. She didn't know what was up but she was sensing he had an agenda. "I'm not discussing this any further with you, right now. You want to re-open this, your attorney can get in touch with mine. We can go and talk to a judge about your rights – maybe we can talk about you skirting your responsibilities and your child support being in arrears too? How about we add in some discussion about your lack of communication with him? You know what that is after six months, Kurt? Abandonment."

He glared at her. "Are we going to keep playing this game, Olivia?"

She shook her head. "It isn't a game," she said. "It's my life – and it's that little boy's life. I don't know what you're up to. But given the situation right now, I have a feeling there isn't a family court judge in this city that would be handing you the Father of the Year award. So you want to ball? I'll play ball."

His eyes were like nails into her but he started walking down the street towards the subway, but it was also towards Noah.

"You come to my home again and I'll get out a restraining order," Olivia said. "Noah, come here," she held out her hand.

But her son just stood there staring at the man as he got closer to him. He stopped in front of him and looked down at the child.

"Hi Noah," he said with a smile. The boy didn't respond. He flipped opened his shoulder bag and held out a stuffed panda bear for him. "I got this for you."

"You don't take presents from strangers," Noah whispered but his mother was there and grabbed him up and to her chest.

"You've got him trained, Liv," he said to her.

"You don't talk to my son," she spat and stormed back towards their building.

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