Rewrite the Stars
Authors Note: Hi everyone! I deleted the first copy, and I am going back through and re-editing the story so hopefully it makes more sense chronologically. The current year of this story is 2006. So, everything that is marked off FLASHBACK happened prior to 2006. DISCLAIMER: This story is a crossover between Law-and-Order SVU and the Grey's Anatomy universe. This Is an AU fanfiction and deals with mature topics typical of SVU such as depression, anxiety, suicide attempts, child loss, domestic violence, sexual assault, etc. If these things are triggering for you, please click the back button and find a gentler story to read. Please check out the video I made for this story on YouTube! Username teammaddison :) . Please read and review! :)
Chapter 1:
CURRENT TIME
OLIVIA BENSON's POV:
I sit with my head down on my desk, wishing time would just go faster. Wishing for the day to be done. I just want to go home. I want to snuggle up with my baby boy and read him a story. I want something or someone to turn this retched horrible day into something good. I know that can't be put on a baby, especially a 6-month-old, but being around him makes everything better. The bad just melts away. Today marks the anniversary. Three years since we broke up and she went back to her abusive husband. Two years since all contact was lost. Not a single phone call, email, or even social media DM. She went to the court house, had the order of protection lifted, and she left without a trace. All of her clothing and personal items still in the apartment we shared. She walked away with just the clothes on her back, her cell phone, and her purse. She walked away as if the years of dating, and fifteen years of friendship meant nothing to her. She threatened a legal nightmare, and a media shit storm if I or anyone from this office attempted to come after her. She's rich enough. I don't doubt that the threat could become a reality if she really wanted it to. Or if Derek wanted it to. I correct myself in my mind quickly. The only indication is a recent ding on her social security account everytime a paycheck is direct deposited. She hasn't touched that account since the day she walked away. I wish there was a way I could help her. If only….but I don't know what I could do. She hasn't wanted my help in the past. Why would it be any different now?
"Olivia?" I hear her, her voice timid, I look up, surprised. Not sure if I dozed off and dreaming.
"Hi…" I say, slowly. "Addison?" In that split second before I looked up her voice was almost unrecognizable as her own. It's too quiet. Too afraid. Lacking that burst of confidence and superiority. "How are you?" She looks different than I remember. Thinner, though not sickly and I can see the bruise and swelling on her cheekbone that she attempted to cover up with makeup. He's escalating. He never hit her in places that couldn't be hidden by clothing in the past. "Do you need help?"
"I'm sorry. I know you're busy." She apologizes quickly. "I could come back another time…" She offers. She looks lost as she fidgets with her wedding ring. "Just…" She stutters a little, looking around the room at the other detectives uncomfortably as they go about their daily duties, and she realizes that there is nothing private about a conversation in this room. "Uh…." She looks like she is crawling out of her skin as I can almost see her reaching into the back of her mind and pulling out an old memory, trying to find the words. "I ordered pizza and the delivery people messed up the order." When she went back to Derek for the first time, we invented a code. If she ever needs help, she will call me, or text me, or otherwise find me. She would say she ordered pizza. If she's hurt, she'd say they delivery person messed up the order.
"No, now's fine." I say. "I was just about to come off lunch break." I smile at her, trying to appear comforting.
"Need help Liv?" Stabler asks, walking towards us. "Hi Addison, it's nice to see you again." He says, and she smiles weakly up at him. He knows about her situation, he's my partner, he knows everything I do, but he's never made her feel badly about it. He has a certain gentleness to him, that I've rarely seen in people. He hasn't yet hardened his heart to the cruelties of this world.
"Thanks. I just need to speak to Liv for a moment if you can spare her. I know you're both very busy."
"If she's fine I'm fine." He says to her, and then turns to me. "Are you fine? You had your head down, I've only ever seen you with your head down when you get those nasty migraines. I have some aspirin in my desk if you need it."
"How very observant of you." I respond, and he narrows his eyes at me. "I'm fine, it's fine." I say, nodding to Elliot. "Let's go somewhere quieter and talk, okay?" I ask her, and then turn to Stabler again. "I'm taking her into interview room 1, can you cover for me?"
"Of course." He says, "You'll owe me though."
"Fine, I'll help you catch up on your mountain of paperwork over Chinese takeout this evening." I agree. "By the looks of it we need another paperwork date. It's what? Two months? Three months overdue?" I ask, frowning with fake disappointment at his desk.
"Deal." He says , and I look over to Addison who let out a sound that somewhat resembled a laugh. She knows that we're just teasing each other. She catches herself then and looks serious again. How long has it been since she has been truly happy? I offer my hand to her, and much to my surprise she takes it, and we walk to the interview room together. She sits down on one of the chairs, waiting to speak until I close the miniblinds, and turn off the two-way intercom on the other side of the one-sided glass mirror.
"I'm sorry." She starts off, and she's already crying. "I'm sorry I went back." These words do not mean much to me. How many times has she told me she's sorry in the past, just to heal up from the physical injuries and go right back to him? I'm partially to blame. We were living together. I could have kept her from leaving. I could have put our relationship above my job. I could have risked a lawsuit to make sure she was alive, and okay. I just… I just didn't know what to do. I could have done a lot of things. I will always love her, I will always fight for her, but her dilemma is absolutely exhausting when things never change. She is deeply convinced that she is meant to be with him, and nothing I say or do chances that. I can't spare her the trauma she faces at his hands, especially when she thinks it's what she deserves. Divine retribution.
"I know." I say, it's the only thing I can really think of to say. It's my fault too. After the last time she went back to Derek I pulled away from her. It was right before she cut off all contact. I just… I didn't know how to be around her after she forgave him for what he did.
"I had a good reason."
"You always have a good reason. They're never really good though, are they?" I ask her, and she frowns at me. I sigh, knowing it was too mean, especially with the way we left things. When I haven't seen her in this long and she's coming to me for help. "I'm sorry. That was cruel of me." I try to do the mental gymnastics to figure out how many times she's left him and then gone back to him that I know about. Too many to count. We'd need a mathematician to calculate that sum.
"This time it was." She pouts a little bit, and suddenly she reminds me more of a five-year-old than my rich, accomplished, best friend. We sit in silence for a minute, either speaking as an awkward heaviness fills the air.
"Do you want to tell me about ordering pizza?" I ask finally. I normally always start with this. It seems kinder than starting with 'What did that fucking asshole do to you this time?' I hate that she chose him over me, or anyone else for that matter. She could have been safe. Instead, she refused every offer to help her leave. She refused counseling and all forms of protective custody in hopes of not angering him further. I guess I just hoped that one day she'd have enough, and she'd get her life together. I prayed for this despite the cards being heavily stacked against her, and things rarely working out like that in these cases. I kept my distance through. I was always afraid of making things worse.
"Yeah." She responds numbly, and rambles off a list of ingredients, each ingredient linked to a specific offense. I write each of these things down on the paper, thinking of all of the things he's done in the past. He isolated her from her friends and family. He took her state id, important paperwork, and bank cards. He made her totally and completely reliant on him. Thinking of the last time I saw her before today eats me alive inside. Thinking of the last time we spoke haunts me daily. I should have protected her right? That's why I took this job isn't it? To serve and protect? What a load of BS we're indoctrinated with at the Academy. She takes a deep breath in, and winces in pain. I hadn't realized how shallowly, how deliberately she has been breathing.
"Are you OK?" I ask her. Her face clears. I should have shot him. I have a weapon. I have training. I could have protected her. I wonder if he drugs her? Everytime, she comes back to me she is less and less herself. She used to be so alive when she was with me. Now she looks like a polite version of the walking dead. Her eyes are empty, glossed over.
"I'm fine. It's just… I have a bruised lung. The doctor says it's healing well." She says, as if it's nothing at all to be concerned about. She is so different now. I find it hard to believe that this is the same person who freaked the hell out and forced me to the emergency room when I accidently cut my hand with a sushi knife and wouldn't let her stitch it up. Okay, so she was right, and I needed fifteen stitches, but that was so mild compared to being extremely calm over a bruised lung. Breathing seems more important than not having a scar.
"Do you want me to make a full report, or do you just want to document your injuries for the file?" I ask her. I could probably lose my job for this, but for the first year after we broke up, we would meet up for lunch a couple times a week and document any new injuries with both pictures, a statement of what happened, and a detailed injury form. The reports were never filed, at her request. Just kept in a locked drawer in my desk. She digs in her bag for a moment, and pulls out two large manilla folders, handing them to me.
"I need you to take these, I couldn't do them all the time, he would have found out, so I only did the ones that left the worst bruises." She says, quietly. I open the folders to find about sixty incident reports, with pictures stapled. Identical format to the ones we've done. "I found the form online." He almost never allows her to visit the doctors office. I highly doubt she even visited for this latest injury. If this ever goes to trial, we will need all of this evidence against him, and it will be well worth my time and a letter of reprimand in my NYPD file if she could just be safe.
"It's great that you did this. It will really help if you decide to take this to trial." She is quiet for a long time, just watching me flip through the paperwork before saying:
"Today is for the file. We have to fill out a report, even though we won't file it."
"Why don't you want to file Addison?" I ask, without thinking. "He would go to jail and you could be free."
"I'll never be free."
"I firmly disagree." I say. "You're right though, we do have to fill out a report. We haven't done this in a while have we?" I ask, as she strips down, and I begin taking pictures of her numerous injuries. She washes her face, and I carefully include a picture of her bruised cheekbone and blackened eye that was previously hidden by the makeup.
"No." She says quietly.
"Two years." I say. Taking the last picture from the camera and sitting it on the table to develop. "I thought you were dead." My voice cracks, as tears fall down my cheeks, looking at a particularly nasty purple and green bruise on her shoulder.
"I'm sorry Olivia." She says, after she finishes dressing again. She brings her hands to my face, forcing me to look at her in her gentle way. "I'm sorry." She hugs me tightly, and then backs away again. She smells like roses. She hates roses. Even walking past a rosebush is enough to stop her in her tracks and induce vomiting. It's Derek's favorite though. The only soap, shampoo, and deodorant he will allow her to use.
"Why wasn't safety more important to you than that? Why wasn't I more important to you than that?" I ask, vulnerably.
"You were, and that's why I had to leave."
"I don't understand."
"He has a gun." She says quickly. "He has a gun and when he turned up at the house he said if I didn't come with him, he was going to kill you.", she's clearly shaken, though this is the least scary or tragic of the news I've heard lately. I'm not scared of Derek Shepherd.
"I'd like to see him try." I say, forcing a laugh.
"I really came here to tell you to get a protective detail at home, when you go out, and at work. The injury report doesn't really matter, but you needed to know…. He's not playing around Liv. I know he would have done it that day. I had to leave." She is trembling. "I couldn't let anything happen to you. I love you…. I love you so much more than letting him hurt you." She says, not realizing just how much he hurts me everytime she goes back to him and I have to do another one of these reports. She fixes her make up quickly from the extra she always keeps in her bag and gets up walking to the door. I gather everything into the folders and together we walk out of the interview room and to my desk, where I lock the files up, and then move on to the elevator.
"Are you going to be OK getting home?" I ask her.
"I'm fine. I have work in an hour, I'll go straight there." She says. "Please be safe."
"I'll talk to my captain and see what he recommends I do. Addison, what your husband is doing, it's called escalation. This isn't going to get better. It's not going to go away. Let me file the report."
"No….don't do that. I'll be fine." She says, I nod, unable to hide my disappointment as I turn away, but change my mind at the last minute. Just as the elevator doors are about to close, I catch them, walking on the elevator, gently putting my hand against her cheek.
"I love you, and I am going to do everything in my power to prove that to you, I don't know how, but we're going to figure this out together. You are not alone Addison. You need to know that. No matter what he says. I will always be here."
Authors Note:
Thank you to everyone who has read this, the re-written, re-edited, version of Rewrite the Stars chapter 1. I love how this story is so different than some of my other ones, while being the same in some respects as well. PLEASE REVIEW and let me know what you've thought. Thanks!