I own no one but my own people
A/N Shout out to 'The Dark Passenger' who gave me some really helpful advice with this story
Olivia struggled to remain awake while she waited for Calvin to wake up from the anastethia the doctor had given him to take the exam. Her eyes were battling to stay open while her head constantly was nodding down before she snapped it back up again. She was determined to stay awake for him.
Her whole body felt heavy with fatigue. She hadn't had a good night's sleep since Calvin had been stolen from her. The chair she had sat in was the most comfortable thing she had ever sat in and a yawn escaped her but she was too far exhausted to even make an effort to cover it up or mask it.
Olivia's head snapped down for a brief moment before she willed it up once more, her eyes remaining on Calvin who was still sleeping peacefully. For one brief moment she considered just closing her eyes and resting in the chair that was growing more and more comfortable by the second for five minutes. Not long. Just long enough to get some much needed shut eye.
She had just laid her head back when she heard someone walk into the room. A familiar comforting scent filled her senses and she couldn't help but let out a moan as she opened one wary eye and turned towards the most incredible sight she had ever laid eyes on.
"Thought you could use this," said Elliot as he handed her a large coffee with two creams and three sugars.
Wordlessly Olivia took the Styrofoam cup filled with the light brown creamy coffee. She took a long much needed sip and groaned as she allowed the warmth to fill her up, the hot liquid caressing every inch of her throat it touched.
The coffee worked its magic quickly. While she wasn't ready and willing to run any marathons she did feel more wide awake then before Elliot had walked in and handed her the nectar of the Gods.
She turned to him and gave him a tired smile, taking another long heavenly drink. "Thank you," whispered Olivia as she gave him a soft smile.
Elliot returned the grin although his was much smaller and reserved then hers and Olivia wasn't exactly beaming herself. "You're very welcome."
Olivia said nothing as he pulled up another chair and sat beside her, his eyes also never leaving Calvin's unconscious form as he spoke his next haunting words. "We still got another ten victims to get through interviewing much less tracking them down. Thirty seven in all, including Calvin and that's not even including the murdered victims." Elliot paused and shook his head. "The youngest one was five…"
Waves of guilt crashed down heavily onto Olivia's head making it impossible to breathe. She looked down at the floor and felt a red hot blush creep to the surface of her skin. She had forgotten there were other victims involved, not just Calvin. Some who had been there for years at a time instead of the three days Calvin had been gone. But other children, other victims, had been raped and beaten and abused just as much as he had for a much longer basis yet here she sat ignoring all of them and only concentrating on Calvin.
"I'm sorry." Her apology was faint and soft spoken. She was unable to meet his eyes afraid of what she was sure she would see in his; anger, or worst, disgust. "I should have helped you interview them."
Elliot looked at her like she had suddenly grown three heads. His brow was high and his lips parted momentarily before he gained the power of speech back from his shock. "Liv, Calvin was kidnapped, you were almost raped and murdered, which by the way you still need to see someone about."
"Elliot I'm fine," she protested but Elliot acted as if he didn't hear her.
"He was raped, abused, molested; he was attacked in front of you, one of those bastards gave him a STD… Olivia, I'm more concerned over the fact you would feel bad about not leaving his side then you helping me, Munch, and Fin interview the rest of the victims. You're the only family Calvin has. He needs you to be there with him to get through this."
"I know." Olivia sighed and turned towards Calvin, wincing as her eyes fell on the heavy bruising on his face as if the fist that caused the ugly marks had hit her as well. "I just feel like I should be doing something more, you know? Usually with… with survivors," Olivia couldn't stand to hear the V word associated with Calvin. Not yet. "I'm-."
Elliot knew what she was going to say before the words had even formed in her mind and had no problem interrupting her once more. "You're off investigating their case and interrogating their perp and calling them once a day to update the parents and collecting evidence while you leave the mom and dad to the emotional care. But you can't be the cop now, Liv. You gotta be the mom."
"But I don't know how to be a mom!" she protested as tears stung her eyes. She turned towards Elliot who was looking down at her with a mixture of strange sense of pity and confusion. "Okay I don't know how to be anything other than a cop! I don't know what to do to make him feel better except recite back what they taught me in SVU training twelve years ago and that isn't working with him! He's hurting and I don't know what to do to make him feel better and I'm failing at being a mother towards him!"
Elliot took a long pause as he looked over at his best friend and partner. He hated how she was struggling with something that came natural to her, no matter how much she protested it didn't. He thought long and hard about his next sentence, carefully choosing the right words to say before he blurted out something that would offend her.
"Liv," he began slowly, "you can't think that you don't know how to be a mom because you are all he has and you KNOW that little boy loves you and you love him and that is exactly the reason why you won't fail. You love him too much. You can't be in cop mode right now; you HAVE to be in mom mode for Calvin. Telling him that you're gonna get your perp because the DNA matched isn't gonna make him feel any better if it comes from you. But…" Elliot thought for a long moment before an idea came into his head. He nodded towards the television. "What's a movie that's playing on the movie channels right now you normally wouldn't let him watch?"
"That stupid new racing movie just came on HBO but-."
"So when he wakes up ask if he wants to watch it with him."
"Elliot, that trash marketed as a movie is full of-!"
"Violence and language and it make's males view women as nothing more than sexual objects," Elliot finished as if it were a well rehearsed line in a play. "Yes I know about the horrors of 'Burning Tires 5' as you've preached it to the whole squad for several weeks when it first came out in theatres AND when it came out on Blu Ray AND when Calvin first asked if he could watch it. But don't you think watching a movie he couldn't before with your permission much less you offering up the movie as a suggestion."
Olivia sighed as she rubbed the back of her neck. "Elliot, I don't-."
"This won't solve all your problems, Liv. Not even remotely close. But it's a start."
She opened her mouth to protest against his words but before she could Calvin emitted a low groan from the bed interrupting her. Olivia whipped around to face him and held his hand. His hazel eyes slowly blinked open and turned towards Olivia.
She gave him a soft grin and moved the hair from his eyes. "Hey, sweetie." Her voice was faint and soft. "The doctor said everything went well, they got what they needed and you did real well. You can just sit back and rest okay?"
Calvin nodded and leaned back in the bed; exhaustion and weariness heavy in his features.
"You tired, Calvin?" asked Elliot with the same amount of kindness that Olivia had displayed in her tone.
Calvin looked over and noticed for ht first time Elliot was there with him. The young boy swallowed hard as he scooted away from the bed, eyeing Elliot with an untrusting and almost frightened gaze.
Olivia noticed the fear long before Elliot did. "Calvin, sweetie, you okay?"
"I'm fine." His voice trembled when he spoke and he looked down at the blanket desperately avoiding Eliot's gaze, as soft as it was.
"You sure?" asked Elliot and Calvin took a shuddering breath as Elliot's words fell on his ears.
Olivia swallowed hard before she looked over at Elliot and him to her. A silent plea passed from Olivia to Elliot who understood it immediately. He gave her a comforting smile and nodded before he stood up from the chair.
"I'm gonna get going now, okay?" he announced and both adults could see the sigh of relief Calvin exhaled. Olivia nodded and wordlessly mouthed 'thank you' to her partner who gave her a shrug as if to say 'don't worry about it.' Without another word he turned tail and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
Calvin finally turned back to Olivia who gave him an understanding smile. "You okay?"
Calvin nodded and ran a hand through his brown locks and shrugged. "I'm fine."
"You sure?"
Calvin nodded again and Olivia nodded n acceptance of his short answer and leaned back in the chair. "You hungry? I could get the nurse to bring you up something again.
"No. I just wanna like sit and relax. But…" he trailed off and looked down at the blanket, picking at the same lose thread as before.
"But what, Calvin?" asked Olivia.
"Would… would you mind staying with me?" he muttered as if he was ashamed of his request.
Olivia was silent for a moment before she finally spoke to his request. "Calvin, look at me." He did but not before wiping the tears from his eyes. Olivia tactfully ignored them. "I am going to stay right here until you tell me otherwise okay? I'm not going anywhere."
A thin smile cracked through and he nodded in acceptance before he leaned back in his bed. Olivia reached behind him and made it so he was sitting up but still leaning against the soft pillow. She looked down at the remote next to him, holding back a groan as she picked up the remote. "You wanna watch a little TV or do you just want some peace and quiet?"
"TV's cool," Calvin answered with a shrug. Olivia turned it on and quickly put it on the guide and hurried to the Movie stations and began to flip through them. She groaned when she saw that 'Burning Tires 5', that had received only one and a half stars, had just started a minute and a half ago.
She looked down at Calvin who didn't look remotely excited that the movie was on, having been told far too many times to count that he was not, under any circumstances imaginable, to watch that movie. She could flip past it and he would care less.
Olivia sighed as she closed her eyes, her tongue running against her lower lip. She forced herself to speak the words that would bring him a minute miniscule small amount of comfort to a very small degree but would bring her excruciating unbearable auditable and visual pain. "Do… do you wanna watch Burning Tires 5?" she willed herself to say, already cringing at the title. "It just started like two minutes ago."
Calvin's hazel eyes grew wide with shock and doubt as he turned towards Olivia. "But I thought you didn't want me to see that movie?"
Olivia shrugged. "Circumstances change."
For a brief dazzling moment his face lit up with a smile that almost reminded Olivia of the boy who she had grown accustomed to seeing these last few months. Happy and getting happier every day until the morning Richie Cason had darkened their doorway.
She needed no other conformation as she selected the channel it was on and immediately winced as she saw a over sexed hot young blonde actress, no older then eighteen, dressed in what would make a Brazilian bikini seem old fashioned holding a white make shift flag high in the air, the two expensive custom non obtainable cars roared in front of her while a large loud collection of hot scantily clothed extras and actors in their late teens, early twenties surrounded the two cars on three sides and lined the road.
"Cool," Calvin breathed and Olivia winced once more as she looked over at him, his eyes wide and glued to the screen.
Well at least he's watching the cars Olivia thought to herself, unable to stop thinking how much liquor the directors and producers must have shoved down the flag girl's throat to make her consent to this role.
With the overly dramatic drop of the white flag the two cars sped off with a roar and Olivia turned back to the movie and leaned back in her chair, a smile gracing her lips.
An hour later Olivia was about ready to fall asleep again. The coffee Elliot had given her was long gone and even Calvin could sense that she was struggling to stay awake to a movie that not only she detested for multiple reasons but held no interest for her in any way, shape or form.
Calvin was about to press the call signal to ask a nurse to go get her a cup of coffee when a loud crash erupted right outside his door followed by screaming and shouting; very familiar screaming and shouting. Olivia's eyes snapped open as she heard something metal being thrown against the outside wall.
"Stay here!" ordered Olivia as she got up from her seat. She was about to run out of the room when she stopped, turning back around towards a frightened Calvin. Olivia swallowed hard and closed her eyes. Wordlessly she sat back down in her chair. "I'm sorry," she whispered faintly as guilt crashed down heavy onto her. "I won't leave you. I promise."
Calvin swallowed hard as he nodded and turned his attention back to the screen although his eyes frequently darted over to Olivia's who was doing the same thing with the window in his room. Calvin had just looked back at the TV, which was now showing a high speed police chase but the two lead cars had no intentions on stopping for the slow overweight police, when Olivia saw what caused the disruption and she had to bite the inside of her cheek not to scream out in anger and had to grip the chair she was sitting in so tight her knuckles turned white to stop her from getting out of the chair and storming out of the room and up towards the scene.
"Get your fucking hands off me!" the vile woman that had caused the disruption shouted just as Calvin let out a loud "cool" when one of the cars did an impractical triple barrel roll over the police cars and still land right side up and continued on with the race at full speed, not a single dent in the car nor did it stop the racer from making out with his barely legal girlfriend in the passenger seat while he copped a feel of her massively huge breast, although the flip did somehow manage to make both police cars explode in a gigantic ball of flames that never even touched the race car.
Luckily the sounds from the movie and Calvin himself along with the thick glass that was designed to block out most normal noises muted the woman's voice just enough so Calvin didn't recognize it in it's entirely although in the back of his mind that voice did sound very familiar…
He shrugged it off as an irate nurse and turned back to his movie but Olivia couldn't tear her eyes from the two guards trying to get the skinny blonde woman away from the door, her blue eyes bloodshot and full of rage, her thin blonde hair half in half out of the pony tail and looked like it hadn't seen a brush in days.
She wore black boots made from a cheap fabric, tight black pajama pants, her ribs stuck out against a stained white wife beater and a dirty oversized men's dark green army coat completed the ensemble. As thin and frail as she was however, she was still putting up a hell of a fight against the two bulky security guards. The woman turned and looked directly at Olivia, glaring cruelly and furiously at her. As if she had never held more hate for anyone else then she held for Olivia right then
"You bitch!" she screamed as she tried to break the guards hold and come crashing through the window to attack the detective, her voice once again muffled by the glass and the pounding rap music from the movie. "You hurt him! You hurt him, you lying bitch!"
Olivia swallowed hard as a Doctor ran up to her and stuck a needle full of a clear liquid, Olivia assumed it was a sedative, into her neck and the woman rolled her eyes to the back of her head before collapsing into the Doctors waiting arms.
Calvin turned to look just as the woman was laid down on the floor and one of the guards blocked her from Calvin's sight. "Who was that?" asked Calvin as he craned his neck to get a better look at the woman.
Olivia got up from her chair and walked over to the blinds and closed them so the scene was no longer visible to either them or the people outside.
Her voice trembled unmercifully. "It's no one," Beads of sweat rolled down her brow as she walked back over to him and sat down. "Let's just enjoy the movie okay?"
She forced a smile that appeared more like a grimace than anything else as she turned her attention back to the movie, no longer paying any attention what so ever to the horrible acting or action scenes on the screen. One thought screamed louder than all the rest. One thought she knew would bring more pain and suffering onto Calvin. One thought she was sure would never darken the forefront of her mind again.
Vivian Arliss had come back…
Please Review and Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers and Happy Thursday to the rest of the world :-)