Stay
Chapter 36
A/N: Thank you so much for your comments and follows! I really appreciate all of you! Please feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you like about this story or any other thoughts you may have. If you would like to connect via social media, my Instagram/twitter is faceinbud.
Here is Chapter 36. I'm posting this chapter about twenty-four hours after Chapter 35. Please make sure you have read Chapter 35 (and know the verdict) before reading Chapter 36 because obviously, there will be major spoilers here.
Normal trigger warnings apply, including PTSD flashbacks related to sexual assault and a homophobic slur. This one is powerful, you guys. I shed a few tears writing it.
I need to add both a disclaimer that I do not own SVU or its characters and a trigger warning for SVU-related topics. I will try to be more specific when necessary.
Cabot tied up some loose ends at the courthouse and then left as quickly as she could. She began walking down the sidewalk, rain painfully pummeling her reddened and already inflamed joints. Her head spun and her ears rang.
What had just happened? It should have just been a case. Just an ordinary case. Alex may have had a high conviction rate, but she'd obviously lost before. Why was she so upset right now? Why had she refused to shake Kressler's hand? Kressler—the man who had spent months trying to get into her head, trying to get her to break. And the worst part about it was he had succeeded.
She'd never in her life been more prepared for a not guilty verdict. There really wasn't even a minuscule part of her that believed she'd win this case. Had it, then, been about precedent? About getting someone to pay attention to the fact that injuries weren't always external? That pain wasn't always physical? That justice was absolutely not blind, and it never had been?
Or had it been about her?
About Alex, about Pastor Paul, about her parents. About a whole neighborhood of people who took her parents' word over hers simply because the child had a reputation for being "trouble."
For being dirty.
Gross.
Wrong.
How could Alex even begin to develop adequate rebuttal arguments for those things?
At some point, Olivia pulled up beside her in her own car. "Sweetheart."
Alex ignored her.
"Sweetheart, please get in the car," the brunette begged, turning the windshield wipers on to the highest setting and being assaulted by the rainwater coming in through the open window. "We don't—" she wiped some water off of her face. "We don't have to talk. Just let me get you home safe."
The younger woman kept her eyes trained on the back of the head of a man who walked in front of her, and she sped up to match his strides. If she acknowledged Olivia's presence, if she let her devastated blue eyes meet the detective's empathetic orbs, she knew she would have no choice but to get into the car.
Olivia didn't deserve this.
Eventually, someone behind Olivia honked, and the brunette knew she'd run out of time. "Do you need to be alone right now?" she called out to her desperately.
All Alex could offer her was a swift nod. She wanted to thank her, comfort her, reassure her that she knew how to get home safe, ensure the woman she loved that she had her phone and would call if she needed her, but mostly she wanted to tell Olivia that she was okay.
But that would have been a lie. So after the woman she loved did the right thing and told her she'd see her at home, Alex watched her drive away, a sob working its way up her throat. She was overwhelmed by guilt instantly.
Guilt.
The ADA shook her head at the flood of embarrassment, shame, and self-hatred that threatened to drown her, but she didn't have the strength to hold it off for long. Her drill sergeant was back, and he was livid.
"Don't be an embarrassment."
"Focus on what you know is true," she whispered, zeroing in on the compassion she deserved to afford herself. "Focus on what you know is true. My name is Alex. I am an attorney. I am a person." She brushed dripping hair out of her eyes as she turned the corner. "I am a person. Olivia loves me. I love Olivia. I am safe. Safe. I just lost a case. I just lost..."
"No!" she shouted at herself, and, more accurately, her drill-sergeant.
"We're in God's house, Alexandra."
Fuck. "No. No, no, no, no, no." She must have looked like a crazy person, she realized, walking in a storm with no umbrella, all the while angrily talking to herself.
"What are you, a dyke?"
Pastor Paul. He'd crawled up out of the woodwork and found her, meeting her in the darkest moments she'd had in years. "I am a person," she asserted passionately, hoping against hope that it would send him packing, but she knew better. Alex was used to his ghost following her around, lingering, just waiting to strike. If only he really were a ghost. "I am a person, who loves another person. My relationship with Olivia is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I am a person."
"Stop spewing such nonsense, Hurricane Alexandra."
Her father wasn't far behind him, pretending to be concerned, pretending to care about her honor, when Alex had known for a long time, deep down in the recesses of her mind she deliberately never visited, that it had been his doing. There had been a deal. "Focus on what you know is true…."
"I heard you liked me."
Tammy seemed to join hands with Wilbur Cabot and Pastor Paul, the trio laughing at the fool she was making of herself, almost colliding with several pedestrians as she dissected and destroyed all of her drill sergeant's pawns, all of his soldiers. But her drill sergeant had never been on her side. He had been on their side from the very beginning. "I hate you!"
"C'mon, I know you like me."
"I don't deserve this, Tammy. I didn't deserve what you did to me. I didn't deserve to be abused, belittled." Her hand, fingers pruny from the incessant rainfall, came up to meet her pale lips as she began to cry. "I didn't deserve to be raped." She was vaguely aware of people staring at her, a tall, beautiful woman walking down the street achingly alone, crying and mumbling incoherently to herself and shooting daggers at anyone audacious enough to even chance a look.
"Don't you like me?"
"I never liked you, Tammy! I liked attention. I liked love. I liked the idea of love. But you…I hate you."
The ghostly figure laughed, just like she'd laughed when—
Alex shook off the memory, knowing what was coming next. This progression of memories hadn't hit her this head-on since the night of the "Great Freak Out", when she'd kissed Olivia for the first time.
"If they didn't believe you after Pastor Paul, what makes you think they'll believe you now?"
"Because I'm telling the truth," she wished she'd said to her second assailant. "Because you're a monster, and I'm a child. I'm a child!"
"No one cares about you."
Alex's posture stiffened somewhat, her eyes lifting upwards. "I care about me." She turned onto the street her and Olivia lived on, squeezing some water out of her hair. "I deserve my own compassion."
"No one is safe."
Her drill sergeant quieted, her hammering heart and heaving shoulders guiding her movements, guiding her processing—until she'd arrived at the only rebuttal that could even begin to address the significance of the moment. It was an accusation. And finally, at last, someone listened.
"You've been lying to me every day of my entire life."
Silence.
There was only silence for many seconds—until a single word lodged itself into her psyche and wouldn't relent until she'd said it out loud.
"Guilty," she spat into the humid air, repeating the word over and over again until the phrase she'd been dreading hearing ever since the moment she met Bryson Mills knocked the wind out of her for the second time in as many hours. Not guilty. She doubled the pace of her walking, her strides becoming wider, angrier, as she shrugged off the deluge of rain as if it weren't even there. Any progress she'd made with herself in the past several minutes washed away at the words, just like the rainbow drawn with sidewalk chalk in front of her disappeared with the ever-increasing in intensity onslaught of the rain.
Not guilty.
Not guilty.
Not—
Guilty. Alex was guilty. Alex failed to secure the conviction. The jury hadn't bought her case. Olivia had been upset when the ADA refused to get in the car. Of course she'd been. Alex was to blame. She was always to blame.
Guilty.
A chilling realization split the early evening, along with a crack of thunder, as Alex Cabot, soaking wet—both from the rain and her own tears—entered the shelter of the apartment complex she'd begun to consider home.
Pastor Paul….
Olivia had made it back to the apartment fairly quickly, despite the Manhattan rush hour traffic. She immediately began pacing in front of the door, anxiously anticipating Alex's return. Wave after wave of worry crashed over her as she tried to predict what was happening in the woman's mind. What could se even do for her when she got home? What would she need? Alex only requested space when her drill sergeant had taken over, but that hadn't happened in months.
The detective found herself hating Father D'Agostino more than she ever had before, and she'd absolutely despised him before. Predators had the tendency to destroy the lives of everyone around them, not just their victims. And to him, maybe Alex was just collateral damage. She certainly was to the priest's defense attorney, who Liv wanted to call up right that instant. But she wouldn't—because the person she loved most in the entire world had asked her not to. And the least the brilliant and wounded woman deserved was to have her boundaries respected.
Alex had become incredibly skilled at setting limits with Olivia, at feeling like she could say "no" and not risk being abandoned, an amazing feat. But when it came to those who didn't invite the prosecutor to share her boundaries, or people like Kressler, who deliberately and actively sought to violate them, she hadn't quite mastered standing up for herself. Liv speculated that it wasn't because the woman felt undeserving of basic human dignity—at least most of the time—but rather it was because she'd been conditioned to fear the consequences.
Standing up to Kressler would only serve to exacerbate her icy reputation at 1 Hogan Place.
Asking Elliot to stop asking questions about their relationship would only make working with SVU more difficult.
Calling up her mother and yelling at her would only infuriate her father, and who knows what would happen then?
Putting her foot down and saying "no" only made her adversaries dig in their heels and demand a "yes."
And Olivia knew Alex wasn't quite ready to resent those who perpetuated this reality in her life. So, instead she resented herself for being unsure of how to push through those fears. Instead she blamed herself for making people dislike her. Instead she just said "yes" because in the end it was easier.
By the time the blonde entered the apartment, her entire body was shaking viscerally. She stopped just beyond the door, finally trying to make eye contact with Olivia, who as always was being more gentle with her than she probably deserved. God, how afraid she must have been, waiting for Alex to arrive—if she'd ever made it through the pouring rain, setting sun, and malevolent city.
"Baby, you're dripping," Liv said more to herself than to Alex, searching for the younger woman's eyes in the midst of stormy, unfocused, and wild pupils, which darted around the room before delicate eyelids closed forcefully around them as the woman winced, both at the pain that hit her as she re-entered her body and the kindness with which Olivia spoke to her as she stepped forward, reaching out hesitantly. "Can I help you dry off?"
Cabot held her back with an extended palm. The last thing she needed right now was to be enveloped in Olivia's warmth. It was time to process these emotions, to be angry, to figure out what she was actually feeling, and even though keeping the concerned detective at arm's length was likely insensitive—for one—and maladaptive—for two—all she was currently able to consciously compute was that Liv, who had instantaneously responded to her request for distance, would calm her prematurely. She needed to be in the dark place, and the scariest part about it was she didn't know if that was her drill sergeant speaking or her own intuition. "I need space, Olivia," she explained quietly, wincing at the pain of rejection on the love of her life's features. "I just...can't. I can't handle your kindness and your compassion right now. I need to be mad." The older woman nodded. Whatever she needed. "In what world is that man not guilty?"
"You don't know what they were thinking. It could have been a technicality. Getting twelve people to arrive at a unanimous decision is just…" Olivia trailed off. "I mean, they deliberated for three days. Someone must have held on for a while."
Alex shook her head, appreciating the challenge, as she slid off her waterlogged heels and squeezed her drenched hair onto the welcome rug. "I polled the jury. You saw it! They didn't believe the boys. Probably thought they were gay and projecting or some dumb shit like that."
The brunette sensed that the lawyer was just waiting to be provoked. She needed to be mad, she'd said. "Sounds like an opinion you've heard before."
It worked. Alex crossed her arms over her chest and laughed mirthlessly. "God, why must you make everything about me?"
She took a cautious step forward, careful not to box the other woman in. "Because attorney Alex would have calmly shaken her opponent's hand and comforted the vics. I saw the light leave your eyes, Al. Countertransference isn't uncommon for survivors who work with survivors."
Though her chest still heaved, the attorney's voice softened. "It's never happened before."
"Because you never let it before. You had all the hurt buried deep down inside you, and now it's at the surface."
Alex shook her head, biting her lip and hugging her trembling form. "It's my fault."
"Hey." Though Olivia so deeply wanted to give the woman an outlet for her anger, she just couldn't continue to let her go down this path. "Focus on what you know is true. Think about your rebuttal arguments."
She'd been doing that since the moment she left the courthouse, and it wasn't working. She couldn't even do that right. "I can't," she sniffled, allowing Olivia to approach her. Cabot ached to launch herself into the woman's waiting arms, but she knew if she didn't let herself be this vulnerable, this raw, this enraged, it would—hopefully—be an eternity before she arrived at that place again.
The older woman nodded encouragingly at her. "I'm right here. Just try."
Alex had already made her choice. "I need a bath."
Watching her eyes tear up again, Liv couldn't control the lift of her arm as it once again sought to comfort the blonde. "Baby—"
"Please don't touch me right now, Olivia. I'm really upset." Again, as if some unseen force had taken over the detective's body, her arm fell of its own accord at the request.
Alex's phone rang. "Alex Cabot."
Olivia knew this storm would be temporary, but that it would also be significant. That in order to start anew, all the darkness inside of her partner needed to be exposed and dug out, a painful process, but a necessary one.
"Hi, Cleo." Liv studied Alex as she listened. "Yes, I'm sorry for the delay in getting back to you." The prosecutor nodded at the voice on the phone, turning away from Olivia. "I'll have the paperwork drawn up by Monday morning." When she hung up, she looked directly at the woman she loved, and it was obvious that she longed to ignore the darkness that was bubbling to the surface. Still, however, Alex refused to step even incrementally closer to her, and so Liv followed her lead as she spoke. "That was Cleo Conrad. I'm doing the right thing this time and making a deal in the Karzai case. He'll get twenty-five years. Veeda doesn't have to testify. Case closed."
"Sweetheart, not every case—"
"I should have made a deal, Olivia! But I didn't. Because somehow, I was seeking justice for my own assault. In what way is human Alex helpful here? That monster got off, and I let him! It's my fault!" Benson opened her mouth to rebut the other woman's claim, but no words came out. Was there anything she could say in this moment to help a person who desperately didn't want to be comforted? "You have nothing to say, Liv, and that's because you know it's true."
She walked into the bedroom, immediately slamming the door behind her.
She needed to be alone.
A/N: Thank you for reading! Things will be getting better soon, and in the next chapter, we will start seeing the light.
Love always,
Gabby