Title: Numbed

Author: ArtemisEyes14

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: I got an iPod for Christmas. Which is nice, but I didn't get the SVU characters. Which means that they are still Dick Wolf's. Stupid Santa. Wait, I just realized that I mentioned a brand in my disclaimer! Wow, totally defeats its purpose. I don't own iPod either, Apple does. Or Heineken, btw. So there you go.

A/N: WOW! I have never had so much feedback in my life! 13 reviews so far for only 854 words! My self esteem has skyrocketed! Hehe. Well, all I can say is, keep it up, you guys ROCK!

Brittany/ catnamedzane: I tried to separate them, I don't know why it didn't copy in from Word. I'm trying something different this chapter, we'll just have to see if it works!

Alex: Thanks! I do like punctuation. As for your question, Elliot calls her that sometimes (e.x., Inheritance: they catch the guy but Olivia's like still beating him up kind of and Elliot goes "Liv. We got him" in a fruitless attempt to calm her down- I just saw that one last night.), but I was just trying to break up the shes and the Olivias. Otherwise it sounds funny.

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Brian Cassidy. Brian Cassidy. The words had been echoing in Olivia's head since Giselle first uttered them, and continued to do so as she flopped down on the couch in her small Manhattan apartment and poured herself a drink. Brian Cassidy. A father? Well, stepfather, but it still didn't make sense to her. That meant he was married. To whom, she wondered? The last time Olivia had spoken with Brian, he was still in SVU. He was still so young, so naive, following John Munch around like a puppy. Olivia chuckled to herself, remembering how Brian used to mess up all the technical terms of the SVU, like frottage, or necrophilia.

Olivia threw her head back as she finished off her glass of champagne. She rarely treated herself to more than beer, but it had been a long day, she needed quality alcohol. Actually, the champagne was really cheap, far from quality. After all, she was only a cop. But it made her feel better about herself. That is, she wasn't downing Heinekens; she was downing nice, bubbly alcohol in a pretty glass. She needed that. Whatever she was drinking, she could only hope it would block out the less pleasant memories of Brian.

But alcohol was never reliable, Olivia thought. Look what it had done to her mother. And so those memories still slipped through, the ones that didn't make her chuckle. The night they had spent together. How she had broken her rule. How cold she had been to him. Elliot's advice; how he had known about she and Brian right off the bat. And more so, how cold Brian had been to her, even when she was sweet to him. How badly he had taken it when she told him it wasn't personal.

No one had really said anything when Cassidy left. Jeffries just took over his spot as Munch's partner; Cragen simply told them he had transferred to narcotics. There was never a why involved. The squad understood without it being spoken. Brian had never been meant for Special Victims. He wasn't up to it. The emotion of it all was bound to take a toll on him at some point. One day it did, and he just disappeared into thin air.

Olivia realized what she was doing once she had finished her fifth or sixth glass of champagne. She set the glass down next to the bottle on her coffee table and pulled the red chenille throw closer around her. That's where all this had began, anyway. She and Brian had gotten drunk, and the alcohol it had done just what all the doctors say it does, and just what it was meant to do. Lowered their inhibitions. They didn't think about the consequences of spending the night together. Thank god Olivia had gotten called in that night, so it ended where it did.

Not that it ever ended, really. In fact, just thinking about it now, it was still going on, wasn't it?

Olivia glanced at her watch. It was 11:45, roughly. Her watch, her big silver watch. Brian had brought that watch to her at work, when she had left it behind that night after they -

Was everything going to remind her of Cassidy now? She hadn't thought about him in years, now he'd resurfaced and even checking the time culminated in another thought about Brian? It wasn't even as if she had loved him.

This thought brought Olivia to another internal question. Should she be reassigned, not handle Giselle's case? If her watch, her champagne made her think of Brian, certainly seeing his daughter would. And Giselle deserved compassion, and caring, and everything they train cops to give rape victims. Not Olivia's personal problems. Brian wasn't even a part of this case. 'No,' she thought to herself, 'I can handle this case. I've done it a hundred times. I'm strong. The victims come first.'

Come to think of it, actually, Olivia had seen Brian since he left the unit, at a couple of police functions. She'd watched him from afar, but never dared to talk to him, always remembering how they had last left it. She had seen him once with a pretty redhead. That's right, Olivia remembered, because she had been` surprised at herself for letting out the green eyed monster. A pretty redhead who looked a lot like Giselle Kennedy. But Olivia never in her wildest dreams would have thought that woman was Brian's wife.

It was nearly twelve. Olivia had been so tired earlier, now the thought of going to sleep almost repulsed her. But she had to get up early, get Giselle's rape kit results from the lab. Which didn't seem promising, as the girl's attacker wore a condom. And she had to fill Elliot in on the details of the case so far, since he had left early yesterday for Elizabeth's piano recital. And then she had to go to Sacred Heart and talk to some of Giselle's teachers. So she had to go to sleep. She had to.

Olivia got up off the couch and turned off her CD player, which, call her crazy, was playing Enrique Iglesias' new CD, at, she realized, a considerably louder volume than she had noticed. She was surprised she hadn't gotten any threatening phone calls from her neighbors yet. She stumbled towards her bed, inadvertently knocking into the screen that separated her living room from her bedroom. She crawled under the sheets, set her gun on the shelf above the bed, and flicked off the light. She sighed to herself. Man, was her head going to hurt in the morning.

Tbc!