A/N: Awhile back I got some requests for an Amanda nightmare fic, and I finally gave in. Plus, it's October and I'm all about the spoopy. TRIGGER WARNING! Graphic nightmare images, references to rape, major character death within a dream TRIGGER WARNING! The Devil You Know & Idle Hands are referenced heavily throughout this one. Helps if you've read them. As usual, it ties in with the third installment I'm working on.
Special thanks to sheepish123 & Amilyn for their feedback. You ladies are the best.
You can't save her.
It's the thing sitting on Olivia's chest. It's transparent and opaque black at the same time; it's about the size of a small child, though its head—if that is what the thing on its ?shoulders? can be called—is much too large, as if it has retained water and swollen to fit a much larger body; and it is speaking to me.
The voice gurgles and gushes, forming not actual words but a death rattle. I remember the first time I heard one, twenty-five years old, a rookie, though it wasn't an encounter on the job, surprisingly. I'd gone to visit my grandfather, who was dying of cancer in a hospice facility. The man who used to bounce me on his knee while he played a rollicking tune on the harmonic couldn't even take a breath to say goodbye. And that sound, sweet Lord. The name is misleading—it's not a rattle, it's a surging of liquid, like bathwater being sucked down a small drain, or a loose bowel movement expelled after a mad dash for the toilet. It's grime and shit and death backing up in the system. Cancer spreading.
That's how the thing sounds, and it's got Olivia by the throat. It's jamming something into her mouth with a rhythmic motion I recognize immediately, but refuse to identify. I told her I would never let that happen to her again. I'm a liar. I forced William Lewis into her life, dangling her like a piece of meat in front of a hungry lion. (It should've been me he kidnapped, burned, stuck his fingers inside of, forever changed, forever haunted. Not her. Me.) I got there too late to save her from Calvin Arliss, wandering around that abandoned warehouse like a goddamn idiot while he was in the next room creaming her breasts. (You can tell yourself it happened before you got there, Mandy Jo, but you know that's bullshit.) And I dragged her along to the Catskills for a little murder and retraumatization—and rape threats, oh my!—just because I wanted her attention.
(Wanted her.)
Well, you sure as shit got it, gurgles the child-thing, which has no mouth or other distinguishable features, though I can see it looking straight at me from its edematous head. It bounces gleefully on Olivia's chest, jouncing her into the mattress the way he must have, and I realize now that she's lying on that rickety old iron frame bed the Mangler violated her on. Her fingernails are gunmetal gray. A yellow rag in her mouth. Bloodless cheeks, but her breasts are a violent shade of red. And now I've got her, it says. Sorry 'bout your luck, Detective. Should've put your money on a faster horse. Or at least a live one.
I don't know what that means, until it looks down with its eyeless face at Olivia's still chest. And I see. Oh God, she isn't breathing. Oh, Jesus!
I run towards her, but the harder I push, the farther away she retreats. I have endurance, stamina—at least I always thought so. At sixteen, lithe and quick as lightning, I was track star of Loganville High and broke records that, far's I know, I still hold today. No one could catch me. Not the boys, not the girls. Not my daddy's fists or my mama's needy grasp, like a desperate, clinging vine. In Atlanta, they knew who to send if a perp was a flight risk. "Sic 'im, Mandy," the boys in the squad would say, like I was an attack dog they were turning loose. And when I almost always returned with the guy in cuffs: "Good girl." Everything short of a pat on the head—and sometimes that too, the patronizing assholes.
But at forty, I'm flagging. I'm already so winded that if I need to give Olivia mouth-to-mouth, I won't have the breath to do it; I won't have the energy for chest compressions. Frantically, I try to remember the lyrics or even just the melody to "Sweet Home Alabama," the song I used to keep time when I resuscitated her before. All I hear is that terrible burbling from the child-thing's nonexistent throat. It drowns out every other sound and thought, filling my ears with a steady rush, as if I'm standing outside Anna Ruby Falls in Helen, Georgia, the site of one of a few—and definitely the final—Rollins family vacations.
I snuck a couple beers from the cooler and got drunk for the first time, during that trip; Kim ran off with some boy she'd just met, and came skipping back to the campgrounds a day later, covered in hickeys and declaring her love for . . . what's-his-face (he left without a goodbye an hour afterwards, when Mean Dean Rollins got through giving his daddy what for). As for Mama, she came away with a busted lip and a grapefruit-sized bruise on her back that time, souvenirs of her daughters' unruly behavior, which Daddy blamed on her. I hate waterfalls.
Give her back! I scream up at the nasty child-thing. It's peering at me over an outcropping of rock at the top of the falls. I can't see Liv anymore, but I know it has her because it's snickering at me, a plop-squish sound like the mud puddles I jumped in as a kid, the soft earth trying to suck the galoshes off my feet. This water is brown too, but I don't want to think about why. I go on shouting at the thing to give Olivia back to me—she's mine!—until I'm so hoarse I can only rasp her name.
You want her, little sister? asks the creature, and I see that it has grown to the size of a man. He's large and grotesquely misshapen, his arms an unnatural length, clublike. One is much skinnier than the other and hooked at the end. Tire iron, I think, but he is as featureless as the child-thing, and I can't be sure. It doesn't matter anyway, because he uses his feet to kick an object over the cliff. Here, you can have 'er.
Once you've seen a body drop from any sort of significant height, whether suicide jumper or someone already dead, it's not something you soon forget. Yes, there's the meaty thwap, the dull crunch, when they hit; but there's a particular noise before that—the heft of them in the air, the lunatic whoosh of freefall, or maybe it's just the sound of horror rushing like blood in your ears. It jerks your guts up into your stomach, turns to your legs to jelly. That's how I feel watching her fall.
LIV! I cry it out (her sweet name, the one I'm meant to keep saying for the rest of my life) as I run, knowing I'm already too late. This time I reach her, stumbling over rocks and branches, splashing through the murky water till I'm at her side. She landed on the embankment, and I hold out hope that this will be one of those miraculous close calls we can discuss later, amazed we survived, like when she single-handedly rescued me from plummeting to my death, or when I put a bullet between the Mangler's eyes (and two in his rotten core of a heart) just millimeters from her head, her heart. You hear stories like that a lot—people living through the worst experiences imaginable. If anyone is strong enough to do that, it's Olivia Benson. She's done it before.
But the moment I turn her over, my hope is gone. My hope and her eyes. Her beautiful brown eyes, always so kind and compassionate, have been removed by a crude hand, exposing the optic nerves and watery, pink tissue shot through with red spider veins. I've seen this before, that gruesome night in the Catskills, when we found Meredith's body and the old couple who lived next door. Never did figure out what he did with their eyes.
He ate them, answers Olivia, dead in my arms. The eyeless, staring sockets blink at me, and that's what finally snaps my sanity in two.
As I hear him barreling towards me from behind, pawing and snorting like an angry bull, I begin to scream—
Gigi nudged harder at Amanda's hand. It had been twitching around erratically for the past few seconds, the blonde woman's head tossing back and forth on the pillow as she mumbled and made small, kittenish sounds low in her throat. Olivia was usually the one who behaved this way, while Amanda slept like a rock. But Gigi had smelled the fear—a smoky sort of tang, like mesquite, and bold red in color—coming off Amanda before bedtime, and she knew there would be trouble.
The nudges didn't seem to be working the way they did for Olivia. Of course, it had taken Gigi a while to teach her owner the proper response to her wet, prodding nose. Now, she seldom needed to use the technique, unless she was in want of petting—and with two adults and three children to choose from, affection was never in short supply for the golden retriever.
The next step, in the event of a nightmare, was to lick the dreamer's face, something she should only do to wake her humans. (Although Amanda let her do it whenever Olivia's back was turned.) After that, she would pull the covers off with her teeth and bark if necessary.
Just as the dog neared her face, Amanda's eyes popped open, her muscles jerking like she was one of those puppets whose limbs all sprang up in unison when you pulled a string at the bottom. She lay there gasping for breath, orienting herself in the room, on the bed, just an arm's reach away from Olivia.
The captain was curled on her side, back to Amanda, as it had been the past two nights—ever since that fight they had about inviting family for the holidays. Olivia was all for it; Amanda not so much. Obviously, Olivia had never experienced a fun old-fashioned Rollins Thanksgiving, which typically involved prolific swearing, incessant chain smoking, and at least one drunken brawl on the front lawn (more at Christmas, if the gift exchange went south). Amanda had held out stubbornly, refusing to apologize first, but she'd underestimated her girlfriend's staying power. It turned out that Olivia could be every bit as pigheaded as Amanda herself when it came to "winning" an argument.
After that dream, being the last woman standing didn't have the same appeal. In fact, as the disturbing imagery returned to Amanda in bright, lurid flashes—those empty pink sockets, opening and closing like greedy toothless mouths, like the dying lips of a hospice patient taking a final breath—she wanted only to be certain that the images were false, and to be comforted by her strong-willed captain.
Without pausing to think it through or talk herself out of it, she rolled over, propped up on her elbow, and gave Olivia's shoulder a gentle shake. "Liv, you awake?" she whispered, knowing full well that Olivia was
(dead to the world)
deeply asleep. The digital clock on the nightstand displayed 3:07 AM in vivid red, a color that inexplicably reminded her of scorch marks. "Darlin'. Hey."
Gigi trotted to the opposite side of the bed, agitated by the attempts to disturb Olivia's sleep. That was her job, and only during a night terror. The next morning, Olivia would always be tired and cranky from lack of rest. If Amanda woke her up now, she would definitely be in a bad mood later on. The golden pranced her front paws and whined.
"Shh, it's okay, girl." Amanda flapped a hand at the dog, trying to calm her down. But as she did so, her own anxiousness began to rise. Olivia wasn't responding to the touch at her shoulder, even when Amanda shook it a bit harder, nor did she stir as Gigi stood on hind legs at the edge of the bed and pushed Amanda's hand away with her snout.
Something was wrong.
You can't save her, said a strange, squelching voice—like a small animal flattened by a tire, instantaneous and irrevocable—in the back of her mind.
Pedaling free of the covers, Amanda got to her knees and frantically rolled Olivia onto her back. Nothing. "Liv," she gasped, taking the captain by the upper arms for another firm shake. Her head lolled against her shoulder, reminding Amanda of the limp, dangling heads of Mr. and Mrs. Cline, the old couple murdered by Thaddeus Orion. They had looked like the top-heavy blossoms of sunflowers, drooping on wilted stems, those silver-haired, eyeless corpses. "Olivia!"
Don't do this to me, Amanda thought, unaware of the tune that drifted up from her subconscious, but suddenly unable to stop replaying the lyrics in her head:
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, I'm coming home to you . . .
A sharp, distressed bark from Gigi finally did the trick, breaking whatever nocturnal spell Olivia had been under. She gave a feeble moan, visibly struggling to emerge from the dense, sticky fog of slumber. Her eyes opened last, and in the sliver of moonlight that crept through a slat in the blinds, Amanda was convinced the sockets were empty and pink as raw hamburger.
(He ate them.)
Then Olivia blinked, and Amanda caught a glimpse of confused brown eyes squinting up at her. "'Manda? S'wrong, I have a bad dream?" she asked in a thick and groggy voice, sounding a bit drugged. She was so genuinely baffled, all of her formidable Captain Benson defenses down, it broke Amanda's heart a little. Seldom did Olivia get to relax and let that part of herself go, to just be at peace. And now it was over.
"No, honey. I . . . " Amanda bit down on her lower lip, trying to hold back the emotions welling up inside of her. She was being ridiculous, about to burst into tears over nothing—a dream. Albeit a terrible one, and frighteningly realistic, but still. Most of the worst parts—the parts that were more memory than random neurons firing in the brain—hadn't even happened to her; they were things she'd witnessed or arrived upon after the fact. Amanda Jo Rollins would always be a watcher, destined to stand by and observe as someone she loved was horribly mistreated.
"I did," she whispered, and buried her face in her hands to hide the tears that fell.
Olivia was instantly awake. She sat up too fast, startling Gigi, who had been standing at the edge of the mattress, pawing the comforter. The dog leapt onto the bed and tried to lick her cheek, but Olivia brushed her away, focused only on Amanda. The detective's face had crumpled up like Jesse's did when she got scared, which—for the absolutely fearless child—wasn't often. About as often as Amanda broke down crying.
"Oh, sweetie." Olivia cupped a hand behind Amanda's bowed head, stroking the mussed blonde locks that spilled down her shuddering back. She urged Amanda towards her, scooting forward herself when she met with resistance.
"Come here," she said gently, tugging the small woman into her arms. For all of Amanda's enthusiasm in the bedroom, and her many sleepless nights spent holding Olivia into the early morning hours, she sometimes had trouble accepting comfort in return. Olivia understood all too well. It was difficult relinquishing control. A lot like falling without a net. "Come here, shh. I've got you."
After a moment's hesitation, Amanda threw her arms around Olivia, gripping so tightly it made Olivia a little short of breath. She tucked the blonde head under her chin, still cooing soft, reassuring words into its sweetly scented tresses as she trailed her fingers through them. "You wanna tell me what it was about?" she asked when Amanda's deep, stuttering breaths gave way to sniffles and heavy sighs.
"No." Amanda couldn't do that. It was bad enough she had given in to the tears and let the captain baby her—she was supposed to take care of Olivia this way, not vice versa—she would be damned if she'd put such awful images into the other woman's mind. She might have failed to protect Olivia from those sadistic bastards who had assaulted her, and Amanda couldn't shield her from the horrors they encountered daily at work, but she damn well didn't have to contribute to them at home, in the bed they shared, either.
"No," she repeated in a stuffy voice that sounded childish to her own ears. Like a snot-nosed kid that got hurt on the playground. She sniffed loudly and turned her face against the warm skin exposed by the neckline of Olivia's disheveled pajama top. She wished it were possible to wrap up in its soothing, familiar scent. Over her dead body would she ever admit it, but sometimes she picked up one of Olivia's discarded sweaters or t-shirts just to get a whiff. She had missed that smell the last few nights—more than she realized. "It was really bad, Liv. I woke up and thought you were— thought it was still happening . . . "
"It's not, baby. It was just a dream." Olivia dabbed kisses to the top of Amanda's head as she spoke, one palm secured behind it, the other slowly circling the detective's back. She leaned back against the headboard, holding tight to Amanda and taking care not to squash her arm beneath them.
After the dozen or so night terrors Olivia had woken from in the past several months, convinced each time that what she'd experienced in the dreams was one hundred percent real (the fear was, at the very least), all she had wanted was to be held by Amanda, to hear her calm and steadfast reassurance that everything would be okay. Even if wasn't true. "Nothing bad is going to happen to me," she murmured into Amanda's downy hair. The blonde snuggled closer still, draping across Olivia's chest and pressing an ear over her heart. "And nothing bad is going to happen to you. I won't let it."
When the other blonde—Miss Gigi Sheds-a-Lot—settled between Olivia's feet, resting her sweet furry face against one knee and gazing up in grave concern, Olivia added, "Neither will Gigi. Will you, girl?"
With timing so perfect it drew a chuckle from both women, Gigi gave a shrill yawn and stretched forward to lick Amanda fully across the face.
"Ugh, get out of here with that nasty-ass tongue, you jerk." Amanda groaned, pushing the dog's muzzle away lightly, but she patted Gigi on the head to assure her there were no hard feelings. The golden was much more sensitive than Frannie Mae, who would have taken the shove as an invitation to lick again, with gusto.
"Funny, that's not what you say to me," Olivia commented, her delivery so casual it took Amanda a second to catch the joke. When it did sink in, she burst into laughter, her face buried in the soft material of Olivia's top to muffle the sound. It felt good to laugh, the weight of the nightmare gradually fading—and along with it, some of the vividness.
Some, but not all.
"Yeah, well you've seen what she does with hers. You start doin' that, I'm cutting you off, Cap'n." Amanda smiled to herself, Olivia's snicker of laughter shimmying through her and wisping at the hair on top of her head. It gave her a little shiver, and she didn't object when Olivia hugged her tight and pulled the covers around her shoulders. "I'm sorry," she said after a moment, face tilted up towards her captain searchingly.
Olivia glanced down with mild surprise, her dark eyes glittering intently in the moonlight. "What for? I'm glad you woke me up. Don't ever let me sleep through something like that, Amanda. We clear?"
"Yeah, but that's not what I— well, I mean yes, I'm sorry for that too." Amanda huffed in frustration, wishing she could start over. It was no wonder she didn't apologize often. She sucked at it. "But I was talking about the other day. That . . . dust-up we had. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. I know you're just trying to help. I'm sorry I told you to butt out."
That had hurt, Olivia couldn't deny it. But the look on Amanda's face when she said it—the same look victim's sometimes gave Olivia when she pushed a little too hard, asked a little more of them than they were willing to give—had been the worst part. It always made her feel like a lousy cop, and this time was worse, because it also made her feel like a lousy girlfriend. She had tried to give Amanda space since then, avoiding behavior that might be perceived as clingy or overbearing. Butting out.
Just one night of it proved too much. She'd cried herself to sleep the first night, wanting so badly to turn and reach for Amanda, but fearing rejection more than she feared her lonely side of the bed; on the second night—this current one—she had solved the problem with an extra glass of wine or two before bedtime. It didn't satisfy the loneliness, but it had put her to sleep quickly and efficiently enough that she still felt its seductive pull towards the deep and dreamless, towards sweet burgundy tide . . .
Olivia blinked hard a few times, forcing her eyes wide, and inhaling deeply through her nose. "No, you were right. They're your family, not mine," she said, resuming the strokes to Amanda's hair and on down her back. "I shouldn't have suggested inviting them. I'm sorry I brought it up. If you say it's a bad idea, I believe you."
Well, if Amanda hadn't already felt like the world's biggest heel, she sure as hell did now. Family was a sensitive topic for both of them, but at least she had one to complain about. Olivia had grown up yearning for something Amanda took for granted every day, something she was born into because her parents wanted her. Screwed up though they might be, she had their acceptance—and if she picked up the phone to invite them for Thanksgiving, they would be there. Problems and all.
She sensed there was a small part of Olivia that envied her that, despite how flawed and complicated the relationships were. There was certainly a big part of Amanda that wished she had better to offer. "Nah, don't apologize. You didn't do anything wrong," she said, and gave Olivia a squeeze around the middle. "I just got sand in my craw when it comes to family and holidays. There's a lot of history there."
"Maybe you'll tell me about it sometime soon." Olivia swept Amanda's bangs aside with her fingertip, looping them behind one ear. She would have forgone sleep and listened right then, but it wasn't the time to press for details. That's what had gotten them here in the first place.
Gently, she leaned in and kissed Amanda on the forehead. "The history, that is. Not your . . . craw."
"Maybe, yeah." Amanda craned her neck, catching a second kiss square on the mouth. She put a little extra smack into it when their lips parted. "Admit it, you love my craw."
"You're disgusting." Olivia pecked her on the lips three more times, in quick succession. Then one last time, warmly. "I love you."
"I love you more. Go back to sleep."
"You sure you don't want to tell me what the dream was about?" Olivia asked as they were settling more comfortably onto the pillows, one blonde snug at her side, an arm and a leg hooked around her; the other, who had long ago accepted that she couldn't sleep between them when they cuddled, lay at their feet.
Amanda glanced up, tempted. But Olivia's drowsy eyes and the alarm clock, with its scorch marks that now blazed 3:15 out there in the dark, stayed her—and just like that, the impulse was gone. She yawned hugely and loudly. Another day . . . maybe when she had that talk with Olivia about her family . . .
"Sleep, darlin'," she said.
And they did.
. . .
THE END