Title: Welcome Home

Author: ZombieJazz

Fandom: Law & Order: SVU

Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law and Order SVU and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The characters of Jack and Benji have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.

Summary: Olivia continues to work at establishing her family and learning how to navigate motherhood while still serving with SVU. There's lots of challenges for her ahead as she adjusts to the changes in her life, surmounts new situations and legal troubles for her and her adopted children, and tries to find some time and space for herself in it all too. This is the sequel to Hello, Goodbye.

Author's Notes: This AU series is for SVU fans and readers who want Olivia to have something that resembles a more normal life outside of work and a family of her own - hopefully somewhat realistically within the canon of SVU. Most of the chapters will ultimately take place outside of the work environment, so there aren't going to be too many references to cases from the show. But this story would generally be starting in about Season 15 of the show. Please let me know what you think and if you distribute elsewhere.

"How'd it go?" Nick asked as she returned to the squad room. Munch and Fin had held back. They'd both taken the verdict hard. They needed time to talk – nor not talk – and decompress before returning to the precinct.

Olivia shrugged. "She got off," she said and then muttered. "It was a boy. Not a rapist." She could see the way Nick was looking at her. Concern creased his brow. She sighed. "You know how we've talked about how having kids changes this job? How having a daughter changes the way you interact with cases?"

Nick nodded and returned a small shrug. "Yea," he mumbled.

"Boys change it too. Jack's changed it a lot for me. A lot of the times I see some of our perps and wonder how I can make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. How I can be sure he grew up knowing right from wrong and respecting women. How even though I know he's a good boy, how can I be sure he isn't going to end up like one of these men that walks through our squad room. And, I hate that I often end up thinking about him when dealing with perps. Worrying about him then. But this case …" she shook her head. "It was reminder just how much boys and young men can become victims too. How we can end up thinking of them as the perps. How so many aspects of society has trained us to fear them unless they look and act a certain way. My son wears the baggy clothes and the hoodies. He wanders around the streets after dark with his skateboard and headphones blaring in his ears. I'm sure he's ended up walking behind women in the dark and they're senses have perked up about him being there."

"He's not black or Hispanic," Nick offered.

Olivia sighed as she took a seat at her desk and looked to her computer, trying to distract herself from the thoughts going through her head.

"I know," she acknowledged. "It's just … he's been victimized before and sometimes I feel like … he has these traits in him that make that apparent."

She glanced at Nick and saw acknowledgement in his face. As many walls as Jack had around him, he also let his guard down in ways that didn't make sense because he wanted to fit in and wanted to be normal.

"Sometimes I worry he's going to be revictimized because of it," she said. "This case just … reminded me how easily that can happen. And how much managing any of it is really out of my control."

"He's 19, Liv," Nick said. "He's not exactly a little boy. He's not Ben. It's not your responsibility to manage it all at this point."

She sighed and looked at her partner. "He's not exactly a little boy," she agreed, "but he's not exactly a grown-up either. He still needs help and guidance to get there. And, he didn't have a man in his life during some pretty important years in his development. Some days that's what feels so dangerous about these kids anymore. All these college kids. Some days I feel like it's gotten worse over my time here. We have all these children in adults bodies, bombarded with adult things for years. Unlimited access to all of this filth and deviance at their fingertips that they don't even see that way half the time they're so desensitized to it. These smartphones and laptops and tablets. The kids are just always plugged in. SnapChat and Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. Sometimes I think they don't even see each other as people anymore. It's all just words and pixels on a screen. They don't know how to interact with people and society anymore. It's all just … something to Tweet about."

"Jack tweets?" Nick offered. She knew it was a small tease. He was trying to get her to calm down and distracted. But she wasn't sure she wanted to be.

She shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think so. I pay for his phone. So the rule is that I'm allowed to touch his phone. But he's more technologically literate than me. Benji's more technologically literate than me. You should see him when he gets his hands on my phone or Jack's Xbox. It's like he was born to do it."

Nick gave he a small nod. "Yeah. Zara's the same way," he acknowledged. "It's a little frightening."

Olivia sighed. "Yeah, exactly. So I've talked to him about Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all of it. I've expressed my concerns – both as a parent and as a cop. He … humors me and listens. Sort of. But if he's signed up and just has it hidden on the phone. Or just does it from his laptop. I don't know. It's like you said. He's 19. I can only control him and impose rules on him so much."

"You can under your roof," Nick offered.

Olivia shrugged. "He doesn't live under my roof. He's just there on weekends. And you can only … badger them and discipline them so much before you're just pushing them away. And I don't want to do that either."

"Maybe camp will have made a lot of that stuff better?" Nick said.

"I hope so," Olivia said and started clicking into her email to see what she'd missed since the last time she checked it on her phone. Some days it felt like it was a never-ending stream being blasted out of a fire hose. "I know I'm glad that he's had a few months with out that phone and Internet at his fingertips. I'm hoping that … just being with other kids who share his interests and doing things he enjoys will have helped with some of the other things too."

"Not sure it has?"

She shrugged again. "It's hard to tell when I get to talk to him by phone and Skype for 15-20 minutes at a time and have to split that with Benji wanting to tell him about what every second of our thrilling lives has looked like since the last time we talked."

Nick offered her a small laugh at that and she shot him a smile.

"I think he's had a good time," she allowed. "I do hear pride and confidence in his voice when he's talked about the skate park project and some of the activities he's gotten to do there and responsibilities he's had. So … I'm hopeful that will come with him home and we'll be able to transfer and maintain it in his daily life."

"Hoping you end up with a man coming home rather than a boy?"

Olivia snorted and rolled her eyes. "I didn't place that lofty of responsibility on Skate Camp. Maybe if I'd sent him to Boot Camp for the summer. But that likely would've traumatized him. Burly men screaming at him? I don't think that would've helped his progress."

Nick gave her another little smile.

She nodded at her screen. "His ears must be burning." She saw Nick give her a questioning look. "An email just popped in from him." She clicked into it. "He sent some of his pictures and videos. You want to see?"

Nick shook his head at her with a touch of mocking but rolled his chair over. "Maybe he could sense you needed one of these today. You like getting them too much."

Olivia shrugged. "It's a nice break from the usual bullshit we're dealing with."

She scrolled through the photos slowly to let Nick take a look. By her standards she was moving a little fast, but she knew she'd go back and take a closer look at them when Nick wasn't looking over her shoulder.

The photos weren't too different from what he'd been sending her the rest of the summer. Photos of the lake and deer. Kids zipping through different parts of the skate park they had at the camp. Cabins and campfires and usually smiling faces or silly poses. She knew that one of the smiling faces and thumbs up or whatever hand signs where being shot at the camera was coming from whoever the visiting 'pro' was that week – but there were only a handful of professional skateboarder that Olivia could identify by face and she didn't appear as though Tony Hawk had spent anytime at Skate Camp that summer. What she could recognize were the sunrises and sunsets and night skies. The photos of the murals and artwork and decals painted on skateboard decks and the sides of ramps and cabins. Projects that it looked like Jack had become just as involved in helping with as he had with building and maintaining the skate park. But out of all the pictures Jack had sent over the summer, he was usually the photographer and he was rarely in the shots. She hoped that he had a collection of photos of himself too, though, and that maybe he just hadn't thought she'd be interested in looking at him. She wanted him to have happy memories he could hold on to. She thought he did. She got the sense he'd connected with some of the other counselors and that he was well-liked among the campers. At least that was her hope.

She reached the video and clicked on it to begin to play. Sometimes the videos were silly. One time Jack had sent one of him and another counselor doing a skit at the campfire. The video was dark but she could hear his voice and see his silhouetted figure – and he really was being funny. Another time he'd sent her video of the kids being pushed down the dock and launched into the lake, some of them doing harrowing flips and turns in the air before falling into the water. When Jack had gone he'd managed to spread his arms out like superman while flying through the air. It looked pretty impressive until he hit the water in a giant belly flop. The camera had then shown how red his chest was when he'd gotten out of the lake with other kids pointing at it and laughing. There was random bits of kids making skateboards and learning to play guitar and rubbing sticks together to start a fire. Some showed boys and girls ranging from ages looking like they shouldn't even be allowed to be at a sleep-away camp yet to teenagers that had fuller beards than what her 19-year-old son could grow on his baby face. The kids rolled through the different ramps and courses at the camp executing tricks with ease or entirely wiping out to cheers and "ooooooh" "ouch!" "gnarly" in the background. Kids laying next to fun boxes and rails and banks and little inclines as skaters flew over top of them. In each one her son had the kids smiling and waving at the camera and saying "Hi Mom" before doing their bone crunching and bruising feats (usually without any visibly injuries occurring). She wasn't sure the kids knew they were saying hi to her or they thought they were waving to their own mothers. There was even a video of Jack flying down the zip line and dangling from the camp's rope course high above the ground based on the shots he insisted on taking from his harness.

But the one that had really made her stomach turn was the clip of a hike that looked calm and pretty enough. It had ended at a fairly spectacular waterfall – or at least watersteps and rockslides – formation that apparently the counseling staff took great pleasure in hiking out to and jumping off of on their days off. She could've done without having to watch that. She thought her heart had nearly jumped up her throat as she realized what her son was about to do and then had watched the shaky camera as he made his drop and then the extended bubbles of the rushing water on the video until he finally popped back up to the surface and she could hear his voice again. Logically she knew he was obviously fine – he was sending her the video. But the mother's mind was cursing that these kids were doing this. It was just asking for someone to get hurt or die. She'd expressed that to him in a scolding email and again the next time she talked to him. She stopped getting as interesting of videos after that. Instead they were things like this, which she supposed was interesting in its own right but not quite as fun to watch – at least for her.

The camera mounted to the front of a skateboard, she got a foot-level view of the skater navigating their deck through the skate park. She assumed the skater was Jack. And, she assumed that because the camera was strapped to the nose of the skateboard, he wasn't attempting any tricks beyond what she recognized as a couple of ollies and one grind across a ledge. But there was none of his usual fancy foot work. The balance was likely off with the extra bulk on the skateboard. She was actually sort of glad he wasn't trying tricks. As heavy duty as the camera she bought him was, she wasn't sure it would endure a failed kickflip or being landed on, run over by wheels or sent skidding down a ramp. So instead she just got a bumpy view of a skateboard's nose riding around a park.

"That the park thing he built?" Nick asked.

Olivia shrugged. "I assume so."

"Can't see much of it from this angle," he muttered.

She scrolled back up, leaving the video running – she didn't think they'd be missing much. "Well, that's it too," she said and jabbed her finger at the one photo. "Or at least part of it."

Nick examined it, leaning a bit more forward in his chair. "Doesn't really look like a ramp, does it?" he asked after several seconds.

"It's a street course," she said. "It's not really supposed to have ramps. It has banks and rails," she added, pointing again to some of the elements on the course that she could recognize. "And a snake run. Apparently that was really challenging to make when they were having to do it with wood."

Nick gave a little snort at her getting into the specifics and just gave her another look. She glanced at him but just gave him her own face and went back to looking at her son's photos before scrolling back down to watch the end of the video.

"What?" she said.

Nick shrugged. "Nothing." He watched the video for a moment too. "So are you excited about getting to see this thing?"

Olivia shrugged. "As excited as I can be about seeing a skateboard park."

Nick let out a real laugh at that and he looked at him again.

"I'm excited to see something that Jack's really proud of," she provided instead. "I know he's worked really hard on it."

Nick gave her a small nod. "So how many days are you spending out at the camp?"

Olivia made a small noise at that and let out a sigh. "Well, the family weekend is two nights. But I think we'll only be there for the one. I really don't know how Benji's going to handle flying across the country and then getting in a car for another two hours to drive to this place. So I'll see how he's doing. How I'm doing. I think we'll likely just stay in a hotel that night and drive out in the morning."

"This camp's only two hours from L.A.?" Nick asked surprised.

"Fresno," she said flatly.

Nick examined her for a moment as he thought on that. "That direct?"

Olivia shook her head. "I wish. We've got a layover in L.A."

Nick made a face. "That is going to be a long day."

She nodded. "I know. I just hope Benji likes the plane and doesn't throw a fit when we have to catch the connection and not want to get back on. And I just hope I can get through the airport fast enough too."

"LAX?" Nick asked. She nodded. "They're always delayed."

She sighed but shrugged. "That might work in our favor. The layover is only an hour and I thought we'd likely end up missing our connection and having to wait anyways."

"That is going to be a long day," Nick repeated again.

Olivia shrugged. "It was going to be just as long if we took the stop over in Denver or Salt Lake."

Nick made a face at those choice too. "You might've been better just driving from L.A.," he suggested.

"I thought about that," she acknowledged. "But it'd be five hours then and I really didn't want to do that."

Nick snorted like that was a ridiculous statement given what he knew of the rest of her travel plans. "But you're driving back down and flying out of LAX on the way back?"

"San Diego," she said flatly. She wasn't sure she wanted to hear Nick's commentary on vacations with preschoolers again. Clearly he'd had a bad experience with Zara.

"So you've really decided to do that?" he asked at her with some disbelief in a tone that she still almost related to Elliot. That he knew better tone and she was just out of her league and should listen to him if she knew what was good for her. She hated that tone. "You're going to drive the whole coast?"

She nodded without even looking at him. "That's the plan," was all she provided.

"You're brave," he said. "To do that with a four-year-old."

"I'm sure other people have done it with a four-year-old and survived," she said flippantly. For what she dealt with daily on the job, she was pretty sure she could handle her little boy in a car.

"Maybe four-year-olds who are used to car rides," Nick said – still in that tone.

"He's going to be fine, Nick," she groaned at him. "It's not like I'm going to have him in the car for hours on end. There's lots of things I'd like to stop and do. We aren't on a schedule. We'll get there when we get there. I'll see how the boys are doing and just … play it by ear."

"Zara whines just to DC," he provided.

"Benji is not Zara," she said. She liked Nick's daughter a lot. But she could be a little high maintenance. And, she'd never say it to Nick, but with the separation and the animosity between her parents, they'd been catering to her as they tried to win her affections and to create some sort of happiness in all the chaos. The result though was that the little girl was becoming a little spoiled. Even in the limited amount of time Olivia interacted with her, she saw it. She'd definitely seen it the couple times over the summer they'd gotten the kids together to play. Nick doted on her in a way that was a little too accommodating as far as Olivia was concerned. Or at the very least, it was a very different parenting style than she'd adopted with her boys. And, it wasn't one she particularly wanted to emulate. "And I've bought him a few surprises to keep him entertained and distracted on the flight and in the car. He's going to be fine."

"Unless those things involve a screen, you are going to be hearing 'Are we there yet?' every five minutes," he said. "Getting Zara that fucking iPad mini has been the only thing that has made ferrying her back-and-forth to Maria's bearable."

Olivia snorted and gave him a look. "He's four. He's not getting an iPad mini. He doesn't need screen time to be distracted. And we've been practicing. He's going to be fine," she stressed again in an attempt to end it.

"Practicing?" Nick said with some humor. "To the Catskills and Montauk?"

"Both are more than three hour trips," Olivia pressed back to him, "and he was fine. Benji is better behaved than you think."

"He sure doesn't sit still when he's in here," Nick said.

Olivia sighed. "It's different when he's transfixed by something. The train. The subway. The bus. I'm sure a plane. He's going to be fine."

"And a car?"

"He was fine in a car when we went to the Catskills. And, if he's having trouble sitting still in the car, we'll get out of the car," she said again. "We're driving a tourist route, Nick. There's things to stop and see and do. There's things I want to see and do. And for the boys to see and do."

Nick just gave her a look like she was still setting herself up for disaster.

"Nick," she sighed and held up her hand to just get him to stop. "I couldn't tell you the last time I took vacation time … and the last time I took vacation days and actually went on a vacation?" She shook her head. "Neither of the boys have ever been on a vacation. I'm looking forward to this. I'm looking forward to sharing it with them. They are going to be fine because they are looking forward to it too. And if they're not – tell me 'I told you so' when I get back. I don't want to hear anymore about it now. The flight and the car are booked. I'm doing this. The Pacific Coast Highway is what my first family vacation is going to look like. OK?"

Just a note for fans of the Olivia/WIll/Noah AU, I posted a O/S (that might turn into a two-shot) called Therapy. it deals with the therapist scene from Wednesday's Child. It has some Rollercoaster spoilers in it. But I've gone in and italics the paragraphs with the main spoilers, so you should still be able to mostly enjoy the story without being spoiled, if you're worried about that and still want to check it out.