A/N: Thank you for the chapter 17 reviews, everyone. I'm glad the Christmas fun was a hit. And girleffect, I squeed a little when you mentioned that Tilly making Liv feel loved and needed was a way to give Little Olivia the love she never had—that's exactly what I was going for when I wrote Tilly into the Devilishverse. Makes me happy that it came across in this story. :) Unfortunately, the good times are about to hit a major bump, so buckle up, y'all. Strong TW for child abuse /TW in this chapter. I'M SORRY. All I can say is... it wasn't written lightly, and it is important to the plot. Reviews are love.

CHAPTER 18: Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea

. . .

Merry Christmas, Liv (and family)! I hope you're having a wonderful day.

Are we still on for New Year's?

. . .

Several seconds dragged on as Olivia waited for the third message to pop up, but when it didn't come, the ellipsis abruptly disappearing, she sighed again and turned off the screen. She would respond to the texts later, when she wasn't holding her sleeping child in her arms and watching another drive matchbox cars across the rugged terrain of two dog rumps. Maybe if she waited until tomorrow, Alex would get the hint that today was about family (and Beth Anne).

"Who was that, Mommy?" Noah asked, forgetting his big boy status as he did donuts on Frannie's belly with one of the cars. The dog rolled onto her back, luxuriating in the attention as if she were receiving a full-body massage. "Work?"

No matter how innocent the question, it still tugged painfully at Olivia's heart. She loved her job, but the time it took away from her children was something she could never get back. And yet, the work was so interwoven with her soul, so symbiotic to her existence, if removed she feared she might wither up and die. On the rare occasions she allowed herself to weigh the costs, she didn't like the results very much. Her son's resignation to it—that the job came first, even on holidays—only worsened the guilt.

"Nope," Olivia said, and discarded the phone on the couch cushion beside her with exaggerated finality. She grinned broadly at Noah when he eyed her in surprise. "Not today, baby boy."

"Mom."

"Oh, right. Sorry." Olivia cleared her throat, straightened her posture, and assumed a gruff military tone. "Not today, young man."

"You're so weird," Noah said, but he failed to keep a straight face when she retaliated by stretching out her foot and tickling him with her toes. A few moments later he helped her to stand when she tried to get up without disturbing Matilda, and he hurried ahead to sweep his Hot Wheels aside so she wouldn't slip on one as she carried the sleeping toddler back to her bedroom.

Yeah, she thought, and smiled to herself on her way down the hall, the kid was gonna turn out all right.

When Olivia returned to the living room, Noah was seated on the couch, his Christmas haul abandoned in favor of some video game or another on her cell phone. Normally, she limited his time on electronic devices and she didn't like him to use her phone without asking—they had rules about that, ever since he'd taken her old phone to school with him, leaving her without a way to call for help when Amelia and Calvin made their move—but she decided to let it slide for now. It was Christmas.

Just then, as Olivia contemplated joining him on the sofa to see how much cuddle time she could steal under the guise of wanting a video game tutorial, Jesse trotted into the room and declared, "Grammy's mad at you again." And with that update delivered, as dispassionately as a newsy announcing the day's headline on a street corner, the little girl scurried over to claim Noah's racetrack.

"Shit," Olivia mumbled under her breath. Neither of the kids heard it this time, but she felt bad anyway. She felt bad in general, standing there willing herself to go to the kitchen and straighten things out with Beth Anne. Although, what there was to straighten out, she honestly didn't know.

It was Serena all over again—her anger and resentment about so much more than Olivia, but focused solely on her for reasons she didn't quite understand. To Olivia's embarrassment, she realized her stomach hurt like it used to when her mother was on a rampage. She would rather do just about anything than confront Beth Anne right then; she would rather play with her kids and be present for them in a way Serena never had been for her, even on the best days.

Instead, she went to the kitchen. She couldn't leave Amanda to face her angry mother alone. She knew how terrifying that could be.

As she approached the kitchen archway, lingering outside it only for a second—but it was a second too long—she overheard her future mother-in-law say something that took her back nearly forty years on the spot.

"—shouldn't be surprised, with her history of violence. It's a mistake to marry her, Amanda. How can you love someone like that, after all those years with your father?"

. . .

"How can I love someone who was conceived by a monster, Meg?" Serena asked, whispering. So, she wasn't drunk, then. She never remembered to whisper when she'd had one too many.

One too many, Olivia scoffed to herself. More like five too many. Ten. Sixty. A million. She looked down at the Oreos arranged into a chocolate-scented smiley face on the big white plate, two tall glasses of milk protruding like antennae on either side of the tray that held the late night snack. No way could she stomach the cookies or the milk now.

It was a stupid idea, anyway. What had made her think Serena would want to spend time with her? She never had in the past fifteen years, and a plateful of her favorite treats wasn't going to change that. Oreos dunked in milk (Olivia had even remembered the forks, so they could jab the tines into the cream filling and not end up with soggy wafers), no matter how delicious, weren't going to magically make her mother love her after all this time. Nothing would.

At least she had a little context for the hatred now. (Context. That was a Serena word. She would be pleased Olivia could use it correctly.) There had been passing references to her father over the years—"He's dead, Olivia," being the most common—but they were enough for her to deduce that her mother hated him too. She had tried to weasel more information out of Serena during a few of her binges, hoping the alcohol would loosen the woman's tongue, but all it had loosed was her anger and, on one particularly bad evening, her fists.

Until that moment, standing outside the cracked open door of her mother's study with a tray of stupidly smiling cookies in her idiot hands, she hadn't known her father was a monster. In Olivia's dreams, her mother often chased her—screaming, throwing, hitting—the closest thing to a boogeyman she had ever known. If Serena Grace Benson considered someone else a monster, then they must be the worst human being on earth. And Olivia was just like him in her mother's eyes.

No wonder she was so unlovable, so despised. God, she couldn't even stand the sight of her own ungainly hands gripping the tray handles. She was some kind of abomination. Like Rosemary's Baby, a movie she'd watched last Halloween. Ironically, it had first been released the year she was born.

Skin crawling with disgust at her very existence, Olivia threw the tray and all its contents to the ground, needing it to be away from her. Everything needed to be far, far away from her.

When the plate and both glasses shattered on the hardwood floor in the hall, splashing milk onto the walls and study door like whitewash, the Oreos vaulting into the air and then skittering like black mice in different directions, Serena cried out in surprise. "What the hell?" she demanded, leaping up from her desk chair. The clattering tray had pushed in the study door, and Olivia stood in full view of the doorway and the mess at her feet. She barely remembered making it, though the milk was seeping into her slippers and her hands were still poised to throw.

"Meg, I'm going to have to call you back. There's been a . . . accident," Serena said, and hung up the phone.

A accident, Olivia thought, unable to suppress a small smile. She had startled Serena into using the wrong article in a sentence. It wasn't much, but it felt like an accomplishment. Finally, she had her mother's attention—boy, did she ever—and she'd grammatically outfoxed the English professor. Outfoxed. That was an Olivia Benson word.

"Olivia Margaret, what in God's name did you do?"

Olivia stood there trembling in her wet socks and the pink satin slippers she liked because they resembled ballet shoes, and suddenly she hated everything.

She hated how her mother overpronounced the vowels in her name; might as well be synonymous with Beelzebub, the way Serena said it. She hated the damn name itself—the kids at school sometimes called her Olive Oyl, because she was tall, lanky, and dark-haired. "Where's Popeye?" they teased, scrunching up one eye and imitating that dumb laugh. "Uck-uck-uck-uck-uck!" And Margaret was an old lady name. (That had been her namesake on the phone. Aunt Meg. Not a real aunt, just a professor friend of her mother's, but the closest thing they had to family outside this two-person hellhole Serena had trapped them in.)

She hated that Serena said things like "what in God's name" though she always told Olivia no such person existed. She hated Oreos, her dumb pink slippers, her inability to stop shaking, and partially cracked study doors that carried private conversations into hallways. But most of all, she hated her mother.

That's right, the feelings are mutual, bitch.

"What the fuck do you care?" Olivia snapped, not exactly sure what was coming out of her mouth until she heard it aloud. It sounded right, she decided. And if not, there was nothing to be done about it now. You made your bed, now lie in it, Liv. (Another bit of motherly wisdom Serena often shared when Olivia asked for help.)

"Excuse me?" Serena looked dumbfounded, but not in a way that suggested shock or hurt feelings. Olivia had never spoken to her like that before, but rather than show surprise—or maybe even concern for her trembling daughter who was covered in milk and surrounded by broken glass—she acted as if there were no reason for such an outburst. And she was pissed about it. "Who do you think you're talking to, young lady? I am your mother, and you will speak to me with respect."

Olivia snorted in disgust. Fifteen years of playing the good girl, the dutiful daughter, were collapsing in on her like an imploding building. Fifteen years of choking down Serena's bullshit because a drunk mom was better than no mom, and maybe the booze made her unable to love. But no, it couldn't be blamed on the alcohol anymore. Olivia had heard it with her own two ears. She was the poison in the bloodstream.

"Some mother. You think you don't drop things when you're stumbling around blind drunk? I clean up your messes all the time, Mom. I've picked glass out of your forehead and washed barf out of your hair." Olivia grabbed a hank of her hair and showed it to Serena. (So different. So dark.) "Remember the time you pissed yourself, and I had to wipe it up and change your clothes like you were a goddamn baby? Oh wait, you probably don't. You were hitting the sauce pretty hard that night."

That had done it. Serena was staring at her with such a wounded expression, Olivia's heart began to ache. She'd thought she would stop, if only her mother would show some kind of emotion other than contempt. But she was wrong.

"I'm surprised you even know who my father is," Olivia spat, frightened by her own meanness and how good it felt to hurt someone else. She had stopped trembling. Her mother, on the other hand, quaked from head to foot. "You sure you didn't just get wasted, bring him home and screw him in the living room, then forget who he was the next day?"

Something shifted in the air during the silence that followed. Olivia couldn't place what it was, but the sensation reminded her of those letters that flipped over to display location names and flight times on the departure board at airports. A great shuffling, much confusion, and in a blink, everything had changed.

She heaved a weary sigh and knelt down to gather up the glass shards and the crumbly Oreos that hadn't rolled out of sight. Someone had to clean the mess up and judging by the dead look in her mother's pallid eyes, she would be no help. It was a little frightening, that look, as if she were staring right through Olivia. Tonight was going to be a vodka-straight-from-the-bottle kind of night. Better to get out before it started.

No sooner had the thought formed in Olivia's mind than she felt it yanked away by a hand jerking her upright by the hair. She didn't have time to cry out in pain or fear. The slap came too fast. It always did, but Serena had never pulled her hair like that before. She had never hit Olivia while sober, either. She hit much, much harder without the alcohol slowing her reflexes.

Speechless, Olivia clutched her cheek and stumbled back a step, barely noticing the sliver of glass that pierced her heel through the soft pink slippers. She was too frightened by her mother's face. Something was very wrong with it. The eyes weren't just dead, they were practically absent altogether. She didn't even blink and she was breathing funny, heaving, as if she'd run a long distance, as if she were swelling in size. There were long strands of brown hair cobwebbed around her fingers.

"M-Mommy?" Olivia whispered, unaware of the regression. Sometimes, when Serena was passed out cold, Olivia still called her "Mommy," longing to go back to a time when she had been loved and cherished—a time that didn't exist. Sometimes she still crawled into bed with Serena and pulled the woman's limp, lifeless arms around her.

There was nothing limp or lifeless about the arms as they reached out for Olivia now. She spun on her heel, driving the glass deep—that finally made her shriek, a steel jolt shooting up her leg—and trying to flee into the hall. When she heard the crunch, she wasn't sure if it was Serena's heavy, hard-soled clogs stepping on broken glass or her own skull hitting the wall outside the study. The shove from behind had propelled her through the doorway and headfirst into the exposed brick. She might have blacked out when she hit the floor, but it couldn't have been for very long, because the next thing she knew, Serena stood above her in a sea of stars.

"Mom," Olivia whimpered, beginning to cry. She hated to do that, but no matter how hard she tried to hold back tears, they always came. It was weak and stupid; it was what her mother did whenever she was drunk and remorseful.

"Don't you ever—" Serena punctuated each word with a slap, the opposite hand fisted into the front of Olivia's nightgown, holding her up to receive the blows. "Not ever. You are mine, do you hear me? Not that monster's. You— you— monster!"

The ringing in Olivia's ears drowned out some of the screaming, but not all. She tasted blood on her lips, hot and rancid, but couldn't tell if she'd bitten herself during the fall or if it was a result of being smacked across the face. Her head hurt badly, and it was difficult to think with Serena on top of her, screaming about monsters and hitting so hard, so fast. She knew she needed to get away—that her mother was not her mother right then—but the more she clawed at the fist clenching her nightgown, the higher it moved, the tighter it grasped.

And then it was around her neck, both hands squeezing, thumbs pressed against her windpipe. Wildly, Olivia thought of an old Hitchcock movie she'd seen where Grace Kelly was being strangled on a desktop, her hand reaching out into the void. That same void was in Serena's eyes as she choked Olivia.

"You're mine," Serena said through gritted teeth, her voice low, guttural. (Animalistic, that was a good word for) Her fingers, iron around Olivia's throat. "Mine."

Fighting to remain conscious, Olivia grabbed for her mother's sleeve, tugging frantically, pushing uselessly at the arm inside it. Oh my God, she was about to die on the floor in her nightgown, feet soaked in milk and blood. Who would clean up all the glass and cookies then? Who would take care of Serena?

She reached higher and touched her mother's face just as the darkness took hold. Then, from some great distance, she heard a shrill gasp and ("Oh Jesus, oh honey! Oh my God, Livvy, wake up. Oh, Jesus!") felt her shoulders being shaken roughly. But she was tired and wanted to ("Wake up, Olivia. Please, it's Mommy").

Olivia coughed until her throat not only ached but burned like fire. She thought she might never stop, that the coughing would be what asphyxiated her, rather than her mother's bare hands. They were gone now—and so was Serena, Olivia noted through a veil of tears. She wasn't surprised. Serena left her at every available opportunity in life, why would it be any different in death?

But just as Olivia finally took a whooping breath inward, her lungs gobbling up the oxygen, she saw Serena reappear at the end of the hall, something in her hand. A bottle? A hammer? Whatever it took to finish the job, huh, Ma?

Desperately afraid, Olivia dragged herself backward by her hands. She was on the rowing team at school, and the action wasn't much different from stroke drills. Only, now she kicked out hard with both feet, trying to ward Serena off. "N-no! Puh-please—"

"Stop, Livvy. I'm not going to hurt you," Serena said, her voice several octaves higher than any of her other intonations: the lecture hall drone, the angry mother bark, the drunken slur. She easily sidestepped Olivia's kicks and crouched beside her, setting aside the glass of vodka in her hand. So, that's why she had left—to get a drink.

She flinched back when Olivia jerked away from her approaching hands, which she held up like she was at gunpoint. "I won't hurt you, Livvy. I just want to make sure you're . . . "

Olivia gazed at her, wonderingly. Make sure she was what? Still breathing? Not concussed? A girl, not a monster? (Well, the last was debatable. Those horrible things she had said . . . )

Her mother must have seen it too, because she quickly looked away and picked up the glass, unable to meet Olivia's eye when she handed over the booze.

"I d-don't want th-th-th—" Olivia couldn't make her lips work properly, nor could she stop coughing. Her throat hurt too much to speak anyway, as did her head. She settled for feebly pushing the vodka away, her face turned.

Serena's perplexed expression soon gave way to realization when she glanced at the clear liquid she offered. "It's water, honey," she said softly, placing a palm at the back of Olivia's head and bringing the drink to her lips. "Try to take a sip. Careful. Careful."

Despite the warnings and her mother's tentative assistance lifting the glass—two would forever be missing from the set, from that night on—Olivia still choked on the water, spluttering it everywhere and spilling most of it down her front.

"I'm sorry," she whimpered, when Serena set the glass a safe distance away and studied her with a hard look—at her hair and forehead, her lips and neck, her soaked nightgown and slippers.

Serena suddenly pulled her close, holding her so tight it was painful. Olivia gasped and struggled to get loose, until she realized her mother was hugging, not hurting her. It was an odd sensation; hugs from Serena were few and far between the past couple of years. The taller and more mature Olivia got, the less physical affection her mother seemed to show. Not that there had been much to begin with. She had seldom tugged Olivia halfway into her lap as she did now, and it was unheard of for her to press her face into Olivia's hair and openly weep. But the thing she had never, ever done, for as long as Olivia could remember, was apologize and mean it.

"No, honey, I'm sorry. My God, I'm so sorry I did that to you," Serena cried, smoothing Olivia's hair with long, repetitive strokes. She kissed the top of Olivia's head over and over again, her muffled words not making much sense: "I didn't see you. I couldn't— I thought you were . . . someone else. I'm so sorry."

Olivia started to lean back, to gaze up and ask who Serena had thought she was, but that might break the spell—the one it had taken almost dying to help cast. Instead, she nodded and wrapped both arms around her mother's waist, wondering if she'd ever be able to let go. "I know," she said soothingly, the way Serena talked to other people's children, to her friends when they were upset. "It's not your fault, Mom. You wouldn't hurt me on purpose."

What Olivia had agreed with, she didn't quite know. And she didn't care. Her mother was holding her, was concerned for her, and it was all that mattered.

Until that moment, she had never felt so loved.

. . .