A/N: Thanks for all of the feedback on the last chapter. It was greatly appreciated. The story is going to be a bit dramatic for awhile, so I just thought I'd warn you. :)

While watching her little sisters play in the front yard that day, Olivia looked across the street and saw some people she knew from high school. She wasn't exactly friends with them and they had run with a different crowd, but at that moment Olivia didn't care. She had become accustomed to the frat scene and the bar scene in New York and she had forgotten all about life outside of the city so when one of the girls invited her to a party, Olivia jumped at the chance. She wouldn't know anyone there, but the location was convenient and she hadn't experienced a house party since high school.

Not wanting to show up empty-handed, Olivia brought a bottle of vodka and set it down on a table that was already filled with alcohol. She was used to bartenders or seeing people pretend to be bartenders, but this party didn't have one. Instead, there were people sloppily pouring their own drinks and as the night progressed just as much alcohol would be poured onto the table as was being poured into the cups. There was hip hop music being played instead of the music Olivia was used to, but she didn't mind. It was a new sound and a new experience and Olivia wanted to soak it all in. She danced with a few guys, but stopped when one of them started to become a little too hands on for her liking. She then danced with a really pretty girl, but retreated back to the alcohol table when the song was over. She was having a great time with that girl, but even in her drunken state she remembered she had a girlfriend and she started to feel bad for dancing with someone who wasn't Alex.

In two short hours, Olivia had already consumed more alcohol at that party than she ever did at parties with her boys or at bars with Katrina yet none of it felt like enough for her. She grabbed the bottle of vodka she had brought and started pouring some into a cup. Her motor skills were becoming impaired and she hadn't realized that the little bit of vodka she had planned on pouring turned into an entire cup. Without caring how much she had poured, Olivia began drinking from the cup and didn't stop until all of the contents were gone. The more Olivia drank, the more disinterested she became in everything, so she decided it was time for her to leave the party. It was a chilly September night, but as Olivia was crossing the street in between her acquaintance's house and her house, she came to the conclusion that it was too hot for her to wear clothes. Not wanting to wear them for another second, Olivia stopped in the middle of the street to take off her dress. She pulled the gauzy, sleeveless dress over her head and tossed it into the street, leaving herself in nothing but her bra, panties, and a pair of sandals. The cold air hitting her nearly naked body made Olivia feel free. Like a little girl, Olivia sprawled out on the grass and started giggling. She looked up at the stars and tried to remember things she learned in astronomy, but nothing would come to her. She looked at the fine strands of light brown hair on her arms until she realized something was different about her left arm. There was a patch of hair that was green and moving. That part of her arm began itching so Olivia hurriedly scratched it but the moment she touched her raised left arm, that patch of hair had fallen onto her torso. When she saw it move, Olivia cupped it with her hands and took a closer look.

"It's a caterpillar!" Olivia said excitedly. She loved playing with them as a child and although she was now twenty-one, her love for caterpillars hadn't left. Olivia placed her new insect friend on her forehead and started giggling as its legs started tickling her. Olivia was too excited to keep her new friend a secret, so she decided to show the caterpillar to her little sisters. With the caterpillar in the palm of her hand, Olivia stumbled over to the door and knocked a little louder than usual.

"Mommy!" she shouted.

Unfortunately, instead of Serena it was Peter who answered the door and found his stepdaughter clad in only her bra and panties.

"Daddy!" Olivia said and hugged him tighter than ever. She had never called anyone that before and she had been desperate to for so many years.

"Olivia, sweetheart," Peter said as he calmly as he could. "It's inappropriate for a twenty-one-year-old woman who happens to be my wife's daughter to be pressed against me without any clothes on."

"But I'm your daughter," Olivia said as she looked up at him with a pleading expression on her face. "Tell me I'm your little girl and not his. I don't want to be his little girl."

"Whose little girl?" Peter asked as he sat Olivia down on the couch.

Olivia started shaking. "The man in my dreams. He's coming for me. He thinks I'm his and I am his, but I need you to tell me that I'm not his so he can stop. I need to know that it's going to be okay and this is all going to stop. I need everything to stop."

Peter had no idea what to tell his stepdaughter. There had been traumatic events in his life—as there were in everyone's lives—but none of it came anywhere near what Olivia was experiencing. Over the past month, his feelings about Olivia had changed. He had gone from loving her as one of his own to feeling as if she was causing a divide between him as his wife. Peter had nothing against spoiling their children, but he couldn't stand the way Serena babied Olivia and acted as if she could do no wrong. Fortunately, he didn't have to say anything to her. When Brittany and Ashley ran into the living room, Olivia's spirits were quickly lifted.

"Olivia's home!" Ashley said excitedly as she jumped onto the couch so she could sit close to her.

"What do you have?" Brittany asked.

"A caterpillar," Olivia responded in the same excited tone as her eight and ten-year-old sisters.

"Cool!" Brittany told her as she got closer to Olivia. "Can I hold it?"

"Okay," Olivia said hesitantly. "But be careful. We don't want to hurt our new friend."

Brittany and Ashley put their hands together so the caterpillar could crawl from one of their hands to the other. The more it crawled, the more the girls started to giggle.

"It's tickling me," eight-year-old Ashley said. "Olivia, I learned in school last week that caterpillars turn into butterflies. Is this one going to turn into a butterfly?"

"A beautiful butterfly," Olivia told her. "We'll see it flying around the yard someday and it'll have colorful wings."

"You know everything," Ashley said to Olivia with an adoring look in her eyes. "I want to be just like you when I grow up."

"No, you don't," Peter said as he came back down the stairs with Serena. Olivia's eyes nearly bulged. She had no idea he had even left.

"Girls, go to bed," Serena told them. "It's already midnight."

"But it's the weekend," Brittany reminded her. "We don't have a bedtime on the weekend."

"I want to stay with Olivia," Ashley pleaded. "I never get to see her anymore."

"Because she's always passed out on the floor of some frat house," Peter muttered and Serena just glared at him.

"Come on, girls. Time for bed," Serena said as pleasantly as possible even though she was furious with her husband.

"Okay," Ashley said glumly.

"And put that caterpillar outside," Peter demanded. "I don't want you girls getting some type of disease from it."

"You need to chill," Olivia told him. "It's a harmless insect."

Her words had no effect on him and her sisters had to let go of their new insect friend. Before going upstairs, Ashley opened the front door and released the caterpillar into the front yard.

Peter didn't want to deal with Olivia's drunkenness so he decided to go upstairs to their bedroom while Serena stayed in the living room with her daughter.

"Where is your dress?" Serena asked.

Olivia just shrugged. "I think it's in the street. It was really hot outside and I couldn't wear that thing anymore."

"Do you do this often?" she asked.

"Do what?"

"Take your clothes off in public," Serena responded.

"I don't know," Olivia told her. "I think I just take them off for Alex."

"How much did you drink tonight?"

"Why does it matter?" Olivia asked. "And why are you asking me so many questions? I'm a mature, responsible adult. I can take care of myself."

"Go put your pajamas on," Serena insisted. "We're going to have a talk when you come back down."

"Yes, master," Olivia said. She slowly made her way up the stairs, holding on to the rail the entire time.

"Are you okay?" Serena asked.

"I'm fine," Olivia said from the top of the staircase. "Why is this so high? Is it to elevate us from what's down below? So whoever is upstairs could look down and say something amazing like, 'I am Olivia and this is my kingdom.'"

"Olivia Lorraine!"

"Okay, I'm going!"

Olivia grabbed a pair of pajama shorts and one of her old softball shirts from her drawer and then attempted to put them on. The first time she tried to put on her shorts, she put both of her legs inside the same opening and fell down in the process. It took her another five minutes to wiggle herself out. The third attempt was successful and, to celebrate, Olivia pulled out the 'emergency' flask she kept in her purse. Alex and Abbie were unaware of it, but Olivia and her friends from school kept an emergency flask with them at all times just in case they wanted to create an instant drinking game. Within a couple of minutes, the flask had been emptied and Olivia felt as if she was finally ready to go downstairs to talk to her mom.

As she was about to open her bedroom door, she heard her mom and her stepdad mention her name. They were angry and it was the first time she had ever heard them argue with each other. She wanted to intervene, but she couldn't get herself down the stairs, so she quietly opened the door and crawled over to the top of the staircase, completely out of sight from her mom and Peter.

"The girl needs therapy, Serena," Peter told her.

"There's nothing wrong with her," Serena responded. "She's just having fun. If she were a guy, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. You would chock it up to her just being a typical college guy and living her glory days. I'm not going to allow you to even suggest that to her. Olivia is a perfectly normal twenty-one-year-old."

"Normal is walking home in nothing but her underwear? Normal is her telling me that there's some man after her? By denying there's a problem, all you're doing is enabling her."

"You don't know what she's gone through," Serena insisted.

"Which is why she needs psychiatric help. For your sake, I don't want her to be a statistic. She's killing herself, Serena, or at the very least she's trying to drink her problems away."

"For my sake?" Serena asked. "Don't you mean our sake?"

"I can't love her," Peter admitted, which made Olivia start to cry from her position on the staircase. "I used to love Olivia like she were my own daughter, but she's not that peppy teenage girl who used to go to Yankees games with me. She's on a downward spiral and she's dragging everyone in this family down with her. I don't even want the girls around her. Ashley and Brittany are at such an impressionable age. They worship Olivia like a goddess and they want to be just like her. They want to listen to the music she does and dress the way she does. What if they want to pick up on her other habits? She's sexually promiscuous, she has a drinking problem, she has no respect for anyone including herself, and you let her get away with everything. Not only do you let her get away with everything, but you want everyone else to. We're all practically walking on eggshells every time she's around. We have to watch what we say so we don't anger Olivia, but Olivia can say anything she wants without worrying who she'll offend. I loved her, Serena. I really did, but over the past two months she's changed and I can't be around her. I hate to say it, but I wish she would just stay in New York. Unless she changes, I don't want her here anymore."

Olivia wanted to go downstairs and speak on her own behalf, but she was unable to move from her spot by the staircase. She started feeling even worse than before. Her eyes wanted to close, but every time she closed them she felt the room start to spin. The spinning became faster and faster until Olivia couldn't take it anymore.

"Mommy!" she screamed. She wanted to scream again, but she was having difficulty breathing.

"Liv!" Serena said as she ran up the stairs. "Sweetheart, what's wrong?"

Olivia tried to answer, but she couldn't. Her heart was beating faster and she felt her eyes start to shut again. She wanted to force herself to throw up in hopes that it'd make her feel better, but she knew she was beyond that point. This was something Olivia had never experienced before and she didn't know what to do. Serena shouted at Peter to call 911 while she stayed with her daughter, trying everything she could to keep Olivia from blacking out. She had seen a girl in this condition once before when she was in high school and that girl never pulled through. She knew she had to stay positive, but Olivia looked like she was worse off than that girl.

The ride to the hospital felt like an eternity, but Serena was by her daughter's side the whole time. Olivia had lost consciousness and the doctor had told Serena that Olivia's odds weren't in her favor. She made Peter stay home with the girls while she sat alone in the waiting room. She wanted to be by Olivia's side while she was in her room but she couldn't look at her twenty-one-year-old connected to so many tubes and machines. All of the milestones of Olivia's life started to flash before Serena's eyes. She remembered her taking her first steps, saying her first word, pretending to be Wonder Woman, wearing make-up for the first time, coming home and announcing that she was the only freshman to make the varsity softball team, learning how to drive and all the narrowly avoided accidents, arguing over her revealing homecoming dress, and her 18th birthday when she learned where she had come from. That's when she realized exactly when everything had changed for her daughter. As time went on, it had gotten harder for Olivia to deal with how she was conceived, but Serena had just dismissed her self-destructive behavior as nothing more than her daughter trying to have fun.

Still not bothering to call anyone, Serena went over to Olivia's bedside and held the hand of her daughter's nearly lifeless body. The doctor had told Serena what Olivia's blood alcohol content was, but there was no way she'd ever tell Olivia because if Olivia pulled through she'd just brag to the guys about how she managed to have such a high BAC and survive the whole thing or she'd use it as a personal challenge to try to top it.

"Olivia Lorraine Benson, how can you be so smart and so stupid at the same time?" Serena asked even though she had a feeling Olivia couldn't hear her. "I want you to wake up now, Liv. Seeing you like this makes me remember the times you were in elementary school and you pretended to be asleep when I'd wake you up for school. I hope you're just pretending right now. Wake up, Liv. Wake up. You can't leave me, Olivia, and you can't leave Alex."

Alex. She still had to tell Alex, but she had no idea how. Regardless, she had to think of something because she knew Alex was the first person her daughter would want to see when she wakes up. When her daughter wakes up, not if she wakes up, Serena reminded herself. My little girl is going to be just fine. She's way too stubborn to go out like this.