A/N: Meant to post this earlier in the day, but I got distracted voting early (YEAH BABY). Sorry about the delay. References to several Little Devils in this chapter, most notably my oft plagiarized classic "In the Night, In the Dark" and "Stalker." I meant to include a little guide in my author's notes pointing y'all to which Devilishverse fic certain chapters derived from, but obviously that plan fell through about 30+ chapters ago, lol. I guess if you're curious, just ask and I can fill you in. TW for talk of abuse, rape, and attempted suicide. /TW


CHAPTER 34: There But for the Grace

. . .

For several seconds, the only sound was the squelch of the sponge at her shoulder, the trickle of water at her back. Why had she suggested a bath? It had seemed like a romantic gesture at the time, but after listening to that story, it felt inappropriate and insensitive.

"I'm sorry," Olivia said, her voice as gentle as a cooing dove, though startling Amanda all the same. The captain squeezed the shoulder she'd just sponged off, and palmed away the droplets riding the waves of Amanda's spine. "I shouldn't have told you like this. I didn't even think about the bathtub connection until I got to that part."

"No, I'm glad you told me. It's just a lot to take in." Amanda reached up and caught Olivia's hand as it gathered the ribbon of wet blonde hair from her shoulder to switch it to the opposite side. She glanced back with an earnest expression, heart in her eyes. "I'm so sorry you went through all that. You were one tough kid."

The "all that" to which Amanda referred consisted of fifteen-year-old Olivia being attacked and strangled nearly to death by her mother, who had basically just admitted moments before to not loving her; not being taken to a hospital to have her injuries treated, though her head was bleeding, her neck deeply bruised (and damned if that didn't make Amanda feel guilty as hell, even if the hickeys were long gone); a few days later, being sexually abused by a complete stranger whom her mother then bedded; and a day after that, finding her mother half-dead of an overdose in their bathtub.

Any one of those traumas alone would be too much for most kids—or adults, for that matter—but Olivia had survived all of them, one right after the other. And so many more. Sometimes Amanda had to stop and marvel at how strong her fiancée truly was, and to mourn Olivia's lost childhood, lost innocence.

"So were you, love," Olivia said, still speaking in a tone as soft as her touch, which she glided up and down the length of Amanda's arms. The term "bathe" could only be applied very loosely to what they had done thus far: soak in hot, soapy bathwater, occasionally trailing it over each other's skin with their fingers. The sponge had already fallen by the wayside, in favor of the long, languid strokes of Olivia's palms.

"Hm?" Amanda was paying attention, although the soothing caresses did make it difficult, especially when they moved to her sides, occasionally coasting along her belly. It was healed now. She still couldn't do sit ups, any type of strenuous exercise or lifting, and she got winded going up a flight of stairs, but Olivia's touch she could handle. (The return to sex had been gradual, almost too tentative for either of them to get off; but now it was getting good again, maybe even better than before. They had crossed the line and survived it. In a way, it was freeing.)

"You said I was a tough kid. But so were you." Olivia wrapped her arms loosely around Amanda's middle, urging her to lean back—which she did—and lightly resting chin to shoulder. "You survived some really horrific stuff too."

"Yeah, and look at what a success story I turned out to be," Amanda said, attempting blitheness but falling short at forced humor. She leaned her head against Olivia's shoulder, gazing up into sad brown eyes. "You did, though. You went through all that and didn't become an addict or a mean, abusive asshole or any of that stuff."

Therapy hadn't quite kicked in yet, it seemed. Amanda still felt like a piece of shit.

"That's debatable," Olivia murmured, her eyes momentarily glazed over as she stared straight ahead at the faucet.

"Huh?"

Head twitching side to side, Olivia shook herself back to reality. "I've been just shy of a drinking problem for years now. I can control it, but . . . if not for you and the kids? I don't know. And I was being careless with my meds. So . . . stupid."

Olivia had never expressly stated why she disliked the word stupid so much, but from the pained look on her face as she said it, Amanda could pretty much guess. That was the expression of someone who had heard that word used against her in the past. And now she associated it with the things Amanda had used against her during their argument—the wine, the pills. Things she had no reason to feel guilty about; Amanda didn't believe for one second that Olivia was near alcoholism or becoming a pill head. As contradictory as it sounded, that just wasn't in her DNA.

It wasn't in her soul.

"Darlin', huh-uh." Amanda reached up to rest a hand at the back of Olivia's head. Her hair was held up by a hairpin, dry except for a few loose strands that clung to her damp chest and shoulders in graceful curlicues, like filigree. "That's not who you are. If I made you feel that way with what I said—"

"That's not it. I mean, that's not why I told you about what happened with my mother." Olivia nibbled her bottom lip for a moment, pensive and maybe a little fretful. "I just . . . think you should know what you're getting into with me. Because I know what it's like to worry that someone you love is going to hurt herself, and I don't want that for you. I would never do that to you or our children.

"And when you saw your name in my journal . . . I just needed to talk to you. I had so many things I wanted to say, and I thought writing them to you would help me sort it all out. But I couldn't think clearly because of the wine and the—" She formed a vague shape underwater with her hands, then pressed them flat against Amanda's belly. "The words wouldn't come. Then I fell asleep. It must have looked awful when you found me like that. I'm so sorry, my love."

It had looked awful, and in the weeks since, Amanda had twice woken from a recurring nightmare—the same one she'd had months earlier: trying to rescue Olivia from some grotesque humanoid creature (the first was Orion; the second, Calvin; and Amanda herself was the third), watching her fall from a cliff, reaching her to find she was already dead, eyes gone. She hadn't roused Olivia these past two times. Hadn't wanted to explain why she was crying. And now she wanted to bring it up even less. Olivia felt bad enough as it was.

"It just freaked me out at first, when I couldn't get you to wake up," Amanda said, her fingers drifting past the bun to trail idly along the nape of Olivia's neck. She felt a small shudder work its way through the warm, stalwart frame behind her, and she smiled in spite of herself. "I figured out pretty quick that you were breathing, and it was fine after that. Everything turned out okay, darlin'. Quit worrying that pretty head."

Olivia sniffed in amusement, or that was how it sounded, until she reached up to wipe at her cheeks with the back of her wrist. But if there had been any tears, they were gone when Amanda looked up. "I really am sorry," said the captain, turning her face towards Amanda and placing the softest of kisses on the apple of one cheek. "It won't happen again."

"I know." Amanda turned a little more and caught the lips on their second descent, fingers sifting into lush locks as she drew Olivia in for a deep, longing kiss that left them both sighing. Only once they had parted and she gazed into Olivia's honest, open eyes did Amanda decide to tell the story.

She wanted to tell Olivia all her stories, she found, quite without warning.

"I've kinda been through that before," she said, beginning more tentatively than she would have preferred. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, a habit she was starting to pick up from Olivia. Whether or not it helped, she wasn't sure, though it did give her a moment to gather her thoughts. "Finding someone like that."

"Who, sweetheart?" Olivia asked the question as if she already knew the answer, but her face was a study in patience and concern. She stroked the backs of her fingers along Amanda's jawline, waiting, soothing. She made it so easy.

"Mama." Who else, Amanda thought, swallowing hard. She hadn't gotten any better at talking about traumatic experiences or her feelings yet. It would take time to learn, of course, as most new endeavors did, but she doubted it would ever come as second nature to her, this sharing. "I was really young, maybe seven or eight, so it's not a real clear memory."

Olivia nodded. "Of course."

"Seven, I think. Yeah, 'cause it was right after Kimmie's fourth birthday. I remember she'd gotten this doll she was carrying with her when we—" A lump had formed in the back of Amanda's throat and she gulped it down, cutting short that part of the preface. She was just stalling, anyway. "Mama and Daddy'd been having a big fight downstairs. I can still hear the things they were screamin' at each other. 'You screwed my best friend, you sonuvabitch.' 'Your best friend's an even bigger lyin' whore than you.'"

"Jesus." Olivia looped an arm around Amanda, combing her bangs aside as an excuse to continue stroking her forehead. Eventually she rested her palm there, as if checking Amanda for a fever.

"That was before the fights got really bad. They mostly just yelled and threw things back then. He didn't start whalin' on her and . . . " Amanda looked up from beneath Olivia's soft, warm hand, into her soft, warm eyes, and she couldn't finish the sentence. About how she used to hear her daddy raping her crying, injured mother in the next room. About how she did nothing to stop it.

Olivia didn't need to know that—not when she'd been forced to watch an old woman be raped; to listen as a teenage girl went through the same hell. Not when she'd been groped and degraded in front of a little girl who grew up to do the very same thing to her; not when Calvin had jacked off into her breasts while Amanda was in the next room.

Doing nothing.

"Well, it didn't get worse until I got a little older," she said, and that was true enough. The rest could be dealt with in therapy. "But that night was pretty bad. Then Kimmie woke up and had to pee. I always tried to keep her quiet when they were like that, but she had to go so bad she started cryin'. Daddy had stormed out already, so I figured it'd be okay . . . "

Amanda felt Olivia's muscles tense around her, preparing for what she must already know was coming. The captain would have been nineteen at the time of Amanda's story. Already well-versed in the various and sundry ways your parents could fuck you up for life.

"She was scared to walk through the dark hallway by herself, so I went with her." Amanda captured Olivia's free hand beneath the water, kneading absently at the knuckles, the palm, between the fingers. When she realized it was the hand that had needed stitches several weeks earlier, she released it instantly. "Sorry."

"Didn't hurt. Go on."

There was no pressure in the prompting, just a genuine desire to listen, to console. It was the way Olivia spoke to victims, but Amanda found she didn't mind. Her fiancée didn't hold the victims like this, stroking their foreheads, touching a light kiss to their cheeks. Her heart didn't beat in time with theirs, each rise and fall of her chest reminding them to breathe. And she couldn't be there later, to put them back together when they fell apart.

"We got to the bathroom, and I opened the door . . . " In her mind's eye, Amanda saw the darkened door swing wide into bright light and streets of blood. It had actually been the cobalt blue floor tiles, with crimson streamlets soaking into the grout, forming an expanding network that had looked like a roadway to her seven-year-old mind. "Mama was passed out on the floor. There was so much blood. Maybe I remember more than there actually was, 'cause I was little. The way rooms and stuff look bigger when you're a kid? But it seemed like a lot. Kimmie got scared and dropped her new doll in it."

This time the flash was an image of Kim's naked baby doll, its bald head and cloth body covered in blood, plastic blue eyes blinking up at her. Not long after that, Amanda's aversion to dolls had made itself known. She'd loaded up the trash can with the corpses of Raggedy Ann and Andy, Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite, and a generic Cabbage Patch stolen from her cousin. Kim, right at her heels as usual, had dragged each doll to safety and littered her entire bed with them. Poor kid had slept in a mosh pit of dolls for months afterwards.

"She slashed her wrists?" Olivia asked, gently keeping the narrative on track, flowing. Once you stopped or got distracted, it was twice as hard to start again. And sometimes having the blanks filled in helped, when the words were too painful to speak aloud yourself. "Your mama."

"Yeah, um—" Amanda cleared her throat, blinking hard. Hearing Olivia's soft, sympathetic voice say mama was almost too much. "She . . . she used one of Daddy's razors. I think it was mostly for show. She didn't cut very deep. If she'd done it right, she would've bled out before he found her. That's what she wanted—him to come back and find her, so he'd hafta rescue her and feel sorry for her."

Olivia tucked in her bottom lip, the top one pursed delicately, pensively. She was choosing her words with care, as she did whenever a subject was especially sensitive or dicey. Whenever her response could be used against her. "And instead you had to do it," she provided, massaging Amanda's forehead with just her fingertips. "You were so little. That must have been really scary. I can see how that would make you angry at her."

"Didn't it make you angry at your mama?" Amanda gazed up wonderingly. The captain didn't have many positive things to say about her mother, but when she did speak of the deceased woman, it was seldom with acrimony. Moments ago she had described the horrific abuse she'd suffered at the hands of Serena, and yet she still didn't harbor the intense anger that Amanda felt for her own mother, who had never done anything worse than spank her.

"It mostly made me feel guilty," Olivia said, after a lengthy pause, a lick of her lips. "And sad. I thought it was my fault. That she hated me so much, she'd rather be dead than be my mother. I tried even harder to be perfect for her after that, but I met Daniel soon after, and . . . well, you know how that turned out."

Amanda nodded grimly. She hadn't forgotten Olivia's revelation about her first serious boyfriend, fiancé, and statutory rapist; Amanda had big plans for him, now that she was back to her old self, at least mobility-wise. "Yeah. God, baby, I'm so sorry."

"We were talking about you, love," Olivia whispered in Amanda's ear, hand cupped around her forehead again. It reminded Amanda vaguely of church, of prayer circles with hands laid upon the sick and the sinner alike, in hopes of healing, of forgiveness.

And here were the baptismal waters surrounding them. Amanda had lost faith in most of those practices long ago, but just the thought brought her comfort. The woman holding her always brought her so much comfort. "I get what you mean about blamin' yourself. I didn't understand what Mama had done for a while, but when I figured it out, I thought she did it because Kim and I were bad. She made us go to bed early that night because of the fight, and I'd gotten into trouble that day at school. Guess I got it into my head that it was all connected somehow."

"Sweetie," Olivia sighed, hugging her around the shoulders and rocking her side to side ever so slightly.

"Thought I'd done pretty good calling 911 when we found her like that. But she wasn't happy to see me at the hospital and when they finally let her come home, she didn't leave her room for a whole week." Amanda exhaled with a small huff, recalling a detail of the story that she'd forgotten due to disuse. "Her friend cooked all this food and brought it over to us, like Mama had died or somethin'. Come to think of it, she was probably the woman my daddy was screwing. One of them, anyway."

Allowing the conclusion to sink in, they sat in silence for a moment, not even the water daring to stir. Then Olivia breathed a soft, "Wow."

"No wonder your mom has a hard time believing a partner can be faithful," she added. And though it went unspoken and there was no accusation in Olivia's tone, Amanda heard the rest anyway: No wonder you do, too.

"Yeah, he messed her up pretty good. She probably would've tried to kill herself again, except he made her believe she couldn't. He yelled it at her a lot after that. How she was 'too stupid to even get that right.' Eventually, she just . . . "

Amanda shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished. She knew her mother had sustained severe psychological damage from years of Dean's abuse—Beth Anne hadn't just woken up one day and decided to let her husband beat her; he had broken her down bit by bit, pushing her to accept more and more, until he had full control—but it was easier to be angry with her than to feel pity. Amanda had pitied her for years and it didn't change a damn thing.

"When somebody says those things to you enough, you kinda start to believe they're true," Olivia said, confirming what Amanda had already suspected. The captain had her reasons for hating the word stupid.

"Your mama?"

"Mm."

Taking Olivia by the wrist, Amanda lowered that hand to her lips and kissed the palm before splaying it open on her chest. "Well, she was wrong, whatever she said. You're perfect, remember? Trust me, I know these things."

"I do trust you," Olivia said, a meaningful weight to the words as she notched her thumb and index finger to Amanda's chin, tilting it up for another soft kiss on the lips. With her free hand, she scooped up some of the tepid bathwater and spilled it down Amanda's front. "This bath, however, is not quite so perfect anymore. Why don't we slip into something a little . . . less revealing and see what's on Netflix? Or we can keep talking."

The captain had been extremely patient about letting Amanda decide when to bring up her past, how much she was willing to share, and not pressing for more. Two suicide attempts seemed like plenty for one night. They had the next thirty or forty years together to discuss their childhood traumas.

"Olivia Margaret Benson, did you just Netflix and chill me?" she asked, in her most scandalized Southern belle voice. The one that always earned her a smile—and sometimes a roll of the eyes—from her pretty bride-to-be.

This time she got a squint and pursed lips, but there was a twitch at the corners of the mouth that gave Olivia away. "That means sex, right?"

"Yes, darlin'." Amanda patted Olivia's wrist with the indulgence of one congratulating their grandmother for learning how to send a text message.

Olivia retaliated with a light splash of the bathwater, creating a miniature tidal wave that broke against Amanda's chest. "Then yes. I'm gonna Netflix and chill your brains out."

. . .

1/30/21

"I'm gonna Netflix and chill your brains out." She cracks me up sometimes. And, dear Lord, she wasn't exaggerating. The filthy things that woman did to me . . . I'm still walking funny, let's just put it that way. I don't know what I unleashed, but it's sexy and exhilarating and a little bit scary. Fuck.

Okay, time to get serious. My next appointment is in three days, and if I don't write something down soon, I'll probably sit there staring at Hanover like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel again.

That talk with Liv got me thinking about all the stuff I heard (and saw) during Mama and Daddy's fights. Her throwing dishes and figurines—glass things that didn't even belong to him, because she was too scared to break his stuff. Him shoving her into the wall so hard it knocked down all the picture frames. And the sex right after.

Sometimes she would beg him to stop, other times not. Those other times she sounded like she enjoyed it. How's a kid supposed to make sense of that? Fighting and fucking, fucking and fighting. No wonder Kim and I are so messed up.

I don't know what any of that means or why it suddenly seems important. I'm not even sure I'll mention it in therapy. Maybe I'll start off with something simpler, like compulsive gambling or my insane jealousy and irrational anger. Ha ha.

Case in point: Still bugs me that I don't know what kind of pass Alex made at Olivia. A kiss? A touch? And if so, where and for how long? I'm trying to let it go.

Maybe I will mention that to Hanover.

P.S. Sometimes I wonder how many Rollins kids are really out there. You tellin' me my daddy slept with anything in a skirt and there's not a few extra little Deans and Deanies running around Loganville? Come on now.

. . .