A/N: A million apologies. My intention was to update every three days not every three months. I'll explain my absence in more detail next chapter (hopefully later today or tomorrow) but I really wanted to get this out ASAP. This is not what I thought the next chapter would be, but Liv woke me up this morning and pushed me in this direction to tell her story. And who am I to argue? (Disclaimer: still not mine)

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Chapter 8: Little Girl Lost

At the bottom of a pit, 'Where were these things coming from,' Olivia wondered, 'and why aren't I seeing them before I fall to the bottom of them?', Liv lay still. Every single part of her was screaming in pain. She wanted to open her eyes, clamber out of yet another one of these godforsaken holes, and seek out the voices in the mist, but no matter how much she tried, the most she could manage was to slit her eyes open. It was just enough to confirm that yes, she was at the bottom of a pit; yes, it's still as misty as ever, probably even more so—the air was practically opaque; and no, there was nobody there to help her.

She was alone. 'As usual,' her mind supplied, unkindly.

Liv prided herself on her independence, a hard-won character trait developed from years of living with an erratically temperamental alcoholic mother. Little Olivia—Livvy, as she had called herself—never knew which face her mother would wear at any time. Would it be the happy face with smiles in her eyes matching the ones on her lips; the face that was always willing to help Livvy do something or show her something? Or would it be the sad face with tears constantly falling over every time those eyes landed on Livvy; the face that told Livvy somehow she made her mommy very sad and Livvy would do whatever she could to make up for it? Or would the face be twisted, from hate, rage, disgust, or alcohol or some combination thereof; the face where the lips sometimes curled in something resembling a smile but the eyes were hard and cruel, and harsh words were spewed out at Livvy, often accompanied by a slap or sometimes a kick or something thrown at Livvy's face? Livvy knew when she saw that face to make herself scarce and to do for herself what she could. It was a lesson learned when she was three and asked for dinner. She never saw the glass in her mother's hand until it hit her right above her right eye. The glass left a scar on her face and in her psyche.

For Livvy, self-preservation meant self-reliance. She became fiercely independent, something that caused no end of problems with meaningful relationships. She couldn't open herself completely, afraid to rely emotionally on anyone but herself for fear of reopening that old wound from childhood. The closest she ever allowed herself to become to anyone else was with Elliot and that had ended up almost ripping it open when he left. So, she retreated back into her hardened exterior, careful to not get that close to her new partner.

But now? Stuck at the bottom of some crazy pitfall in a foggy forest straight out of some horror film? Liv would gladly give up her cherished independence and welcome anybody who could help her get up, get out of the hole and these accursed woods, and get home. She wouldn't even put up a fight on being taken to the hospital. She knew she had some pretty serious injuries judging by the amount of pain she was feeling. Pain that just kept increasing by the second, especially in her head. She must've slammed her head into the ground in one or more of her falls. She peered up through her slitted eyes, judging the depth of this particular hole. It was by far the deepest one yet, and even if she wasn't hurting just about everywhere she figured she would've had a hard time getting out of there without assistance. A trickle of anxiety over her precarious situation coursed through her body. The only thing keeping full-fledged panic at bay was the fact that she had heard the voices of her Captain and of Munch and Fin. She was lost but not alone. They were looking for her. She closed her eyes so she could focus on the sounds of the woods around her, trying to suss out how close her would-be rescuers were. She heard something, 'a sniffle?' and then her whole body began to tingle in anticipation, like some sort of spidey-sense had kicked in, because she knew, somehow, that something was approaching her. She tried to force her eyes open and push some energy into her body to scramble away from this unknown threat, but nothing happened. She couldn't even get her eyes to slit open anymore. It was like they were glued shut. Forget about moving the rest of her body if she couldn't even flicker her eyelids. She could feel her pulse racing but oddly her lungs didn't seem to be working in concert with her heart because her breathing seemed just as steady and controlled as before. This pit must've been an animal trap and now she was about to be dinner for some wounded beast of the forest and she couldn't do a damn thing about it.

The thing was closer now, probably within inches of touching her, and all the hairs on her skin felt like they were standing on end, quivering with the knowledge that this was how it was going to end. She could hear the beast inhale a deep breath and then suddenly, the aforementioned hairs all settled down and her body's spidey-sense reaction ebbed away to be replaced with feelings of safety, security, contentment, happiness, and some other unfamiliar emotion that she couldn't quite label.

'Was that it? Had it been that quick? Was death by mauling usually that merciful? I didn't even feel the bite,' Liv mused to herself. But then she realized she could still feel all the pain she had forgotten about in the wake of this scare, and she realized that she hadn't died, or even been attacked, so why did her body's natural alarm system turn itself off? And then she heard the exhale...she must've heard that same deep release of air a thousand times or more over the course of twelve years.

Elliot was here.

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A/N: Just a little interlude on Liv's side of the veil. She insisted. Longer chapter coming up, obviously, because El's got some 'splaining to do and Liv's still in quite the pickle, medically speaking...