Also, I claim no knowlegde of our legal system. I look up what I can, and the research is done, but I do not back up what I have written from a legal stand point. However, just because something is wrong does not mean I want it to stay that way. If you catch a boo-boo, please LET ME KNOW!! I will do what I can to [hopefully] fix it, or warn people of the mistake.
Author's Note: This story is based around an original character, or, more honestly, a Mary Sue :o) It is an introductory story to the character so that readers will know a bit more about her and will hopefully be more comfortable with her symbiosis into the SVU Team. However, the background on a case given in this fanfic will be integral to a future fic or, possibly, fics.
Chapter Five: Home, Sweet Home
"Hey, Missus!"
Elle groaned and opened her eyes, momentarily disoriented.
"Hey, you! Time to wake up. You home now, eh?"
She realized that she had fallen asleep on her way home from work. She looked around groggily and recognized her apartment building, slowly falling apart due to old age and maltreatment.
She paid the cabby and got out into the biting cold.
This weather really is ridiculous.
It wasn't much better inside, the heat not working in much of the building. As she passed the broken elevator walking towards the stairs she thought about the case files in her purse. There was no way she'd be able to go over them tonight. She doubted if she'd make it all the way up the stairs without collapsing.
It wasn't the twelve hour workday. That was standard. It was the stress and anxiety that came with a new position in a new division. When she had moved to Homicide from Narc, she'd been edgy and unable to sleep half the time, and close to a coma the rest. Her appetite would come and go, leaving when a healthy diet was available and coming back when fast food was the only convenient cuisine at hand.
As she reached the seventh and final floor of the building she leaned against the frame wall, resting. She closed her eyes to the chipping and stained walls, hideous brown carpet worn down to the wood and nails in some places. She could hear the neighbors a floor down yelling at each other again, and her own next door neighbor's techno-pumping radio. She ignored the rancid smell of animal waste and pushed herself off the wall, suddenly more eager to get home.
She dug her keys out of her purse, but before she could even locate the correct one, the door was unlocked and opened. Her mother's 45 year old Italian nurse, Margarita Manchini, moved to let Elle get past. The welcome heat of the apartment instantly warmed Elle.
"How'd you know I was here?" she asked putting her purse on the table.
"Kids next door were arguing and started throwing stuff out the window. They stopped just a moment after your Taxi pulled up."
She smiled at the nurse. "How is she?"
"She's asleep. Wrote in that journal for fifteen extra minutes tonight."
Elle looked up surprised. "She's written more?"
Rita looked at her sadly. "'Fraid not. She sat there trying to figure out what she was thinking, you know? Trying to find the words."
"Right." Elle said dejectedly. Being unable to say what they were thinking was common enough for Alzheimer's patients, and becoming more common with her mother who'd always been so articulate and outspoken. Now she was shy, timid even, and she could never express herself.
"At least she still tries." Rita added helpfully, cleaning up magazines from the couch.
"Right, right. Of course. Didn't you two get up early this morning?"
"She wanted to see Central Park and the Empire State building today."
Elle looked up in surprise. "What happened?"
"Well, she had a small episode at the top, but it was only for about five minutes. It was while she was looking out over the city."
Elle rubbed her neck. Gwen's episodes had been coming more frequent lately.
"She made it fine after that until we went further down Fifth Ave. We decided to save Central Park for next time."
"Tired?"
"Yes, but she thinks she can handle it better next week, after her appointment."
"I meant you."
Rita looked up. "I was just cleaning up here. Then I'll go to bed."
Elle walked over and took the medical magazines from the nurses grip. "I've got it. You're not our maid, remember. Just go on to bed. I can't see how you're still on your feet."
"Thank you, Miss Seymour." Rita left towards her room and Elle watched her.
"Six months now. You can call me Elle."
"Yes, Miss Seymour."
Elle smiled and shook her head, then focused on cleaning bits of the living room. The rest of the apartment was, as always, almost spotless thanks to Rita's and her own devotion to a clean place to live.
Elle walked over to her mother's bedroom door and opened the crack further. She could see her mother's form breathing on the bed.
She walked in and glanced down at the journal on her mother's desk. Not even a third of the page had been written in her mother's degenerating handwriting, and most of what had been written were facts. The doctor had told her mother that the point of the journal was to help her express herself and remember.
Elle walked further into her mother's room and sat down on the bed. She ran her fingers lightly through her mother's graying crimson hair.
So, she'd had another episode. Gwenyth could rarely recall even the most momentous events in her life, but when a memory came knocking, she'd just stop right then and right there. Stop anything anywhere, no matter what, and just relive it. On a few occasions Elle had been awakened in the middle of the night to find her mother sleep-walking, and talking to people in her dreams. Some of the people, including Elle's two older half sisters, had been dead for years.
She then turned on the monitor next to the bed, and grabbed the smaller radio, putting it into her jacket pocket. Gwenyth might need her in the middle of the night, scared and lonely, and Elle took no chances.
Leaving the door open, a safety precaution that had long since become habit, she walked out into the hallway and turned up the thermostat. Her mother always seemed to get chills in the night no matter how hot it was.
She heard Rita call out a goodnight to her, and abruptly became overwhelmed with claustrophobia, unable to answer. The walls seemed to tighten, her apartment looked like a prison, and sweat formed on her forehead. Elle became dizzy, nauseated, and scared breathless. She swayed slightly, but firmed her grip on the wall and took out her inhaler, taking deep breaths once allowed.
These attacks had become more and more frequent as her mother deteriorated in front of her eyes. Her doctor said the stress had something to do with her sudden claustrophobia and asthma, and told her that moving her mother into a hospital or home would do her health and sanity wonders. As a psychologist she would have agreed, but this was her mother she would be talking about, not a patient, victim or suspect. Her mother was not going to a home just because she caused Elle little stress.
She quickly walked towards the front door, heading for the roof, and pushing her doctor's advice to the farthest corner of her mind.
* * * * *
Elle shivered in her leather jacket, and stared at the city's perfect brisk night. The jacket, once upon a time her father's, had been a deep burgundy color. It had seen better days and now looked as if all the color had seeped of it.
Like my mother, Elle thought grimly, seeing her mother's pale face so glad to see someone she thought was just a roommate.
Despite being reminded many times that Ellandra was her daughter, Gwenyth hadn't recognized her kid in more than a month. She remembered little things about Elle's life: her personality, her job, sometimes remembered her boyfriend. But it was getting harder and harder for her mother to remember people who were not always and constantly in her life. And Elle was always at work.
All the life and memories just seeping away, like god-damn water colors, she thought bitterly, feeling a lump in her throat. Or sidewalk chalk in the night rain.
Well, not all of the memories had vanished. Before Rita had come Elle had sometimes walked in to speak to Gwenyth and had found her standing in front of the closet, or the bed, or the window. Sometimes she'd walk in the house and find her standing in the middle of the kitchen or in the living room. Her episodes.
Just standing, not really gazing, but remembering. Remembering things that held no significance to her, no significance to the woman she had become, but to the woman she had once been. Memories of her playing with her daughters, memories of a husband that had loved her once. Memories of a life she no longer knew as her own.
And for those rare moments her life seemed to have purpose, seemed to be happy again. For those times when the good memories came back, she would be the woman Elle had known most of her life. The amazing woman Elle had looked up to and found strength in.
But even in those moments, even when she had the memories and the face of Gwenyth Seymour, she was utterly unreachable to Elle. Elle could not talk to her or reach out for her, because the moment she broke her mother's attention, the memories slipped away.
Her mother, the woman who would remember her, hold and love her, was hidden cruelly inside this vacant version of her older self, hidden from view. She was inside watching the home videos of her memories, but she could not see Elle standing behind screen.
Memories about Elle's two twin sisters that had been ten years older than herself. Memories of the once loving and true Ernest Seymour, and a very young, very innocent Elle.
Once the lights went on and the screen went up, her mother would stare at Elle with a confused lost expression that Elle had come to hate.
She shivered in the cold. There were good times still. Her mother treated Elle just like one would treat a best friend, always wanting to go walking and visiting places.
But maybe it was best that Gwen did not remember her daughter, because Elle was so inaccessible for most of the time, always pulling so many hours and shifts, and even when she came home she'd still be working on profiles and other work she'd brought with her. In addition to when she wasn't working on work, she'd be reading her college texts and trying for her MA.
Elle looked out over the horizon, seeing the heart of New York city from her rooftop. She often wondered if there really were other people on Earth, or if maybe they were all just there in the backdrop of her life. Like extras on a movie set. No actual purpose other than to make the sets busy. The extras of life were there to make everything seem less lonely.
Then again, if her job showed her anything, it was that everyone had this kind of ultra-depressing sorrow and unending grief in their lives. In New York City it was sometimes hard to see people as more than a huge moving entity, one large group, just another thing you pass on the way to work or while your out shopping. But as a cop working with people's minds and psyhces she would be the refuge for some of these people, these hollow things that no one has the insight to see are just like them.
She took one last glance at the skyline, something that never changed but never dulled, and started back towards her apartment. She'd wake up early to get a head start on the files. She wanted to know every last inch of that damn Weekend Raper case before she went in tomorrow morning.
THE END