A/N: Yeah, I wrote this because I read over "City Lights" and realized that I never explained how Olivia got shot... so, this is to explain that. Actually, this one doesn't, really, but I'm going to make a sequel, so... yeah. Have fun reading!... please? lol.
Every day while Olivia was in the hospital, I would find some way to interact with her. Stop by after school, tell a nurse to say hi to her for me when she awoke, or even just have John and Fin send my regards. But every time I sat by her bed, it pained me to know that I still had no idea who had put her there.
Because my father never let me read his notes, I knew nothing about the case that put Olivia in the hospital. I didn't know who she had been chasing, who she'd been helping, why she had been the one shot. I wasn't one to get annoyed, but it hurt that my father didn't think enough of me to tell me what was going on.
Actually, it wasn't my father that made me angry. He had never told me about any of his cases, ever. He "didn't want that world touching his baby," as he said to me every time I asked about it. It was more that fact that John wouldn't tell me anything. John always told me things when I asked, to the best of his ability. When I asked about Olivia, all he said was, "It's confidential, Liz."
"You've never said that before," I noted. We were the only ones in the squad room the Saturday when I brought up the subject. Fin and my father were out buying us lunch, and I was glad it was them that had gone, and not John. "Do you think I'm going to leak to the press or something?"
"Nothing like that," he said, seriously, even though I had been kidding. "I just don't think you want to know about this one, okay?"
"I never ask if I don't want to know something," I pointed out.
"Your father would kill me," John said.
"Only if he finds out," I countered.
"Liz, could you drop it, please?" he asked, and for the first time ever he sounded annoyed with me. "I have work to do."
At first, I was surprised at his reaction to my stubborness. Normally, he was used to my constant debates, and even encouraged them. I jumped out of Fin's chair, which I had taken over in his absence, and marched upstairs dramatically, just to make sure the cold shoulder effect got through to him.
I soon found that it was difficult to be angry at John and still hang around at the precinct, because he made me laugh a lot. So, I, more often than not, found myself in Olivia's room at the hospital. I sat and talked with her, and snuck food in to her.
"I don't like the stuff they have here," I told her one day as I slipped her some cookies I stole from home.
"It's not that bad," she protested, but took the cookies anyways.
Unfortunatly, I eventually tried to leak information out from Olivia as well, but got the same effect as with John. Normally, she gave me tidbits of information that I could run with, but for some reason, this case got to her so much that not a word was said about it. It occured to me that she might not want to talk about the person who shot her, but for some reason, I knew that wasn't it.
"Come on, Liv! It's me," I begged, almost ready to get on my knees. I hated seeing her so weak and helpless in that white room, and I wanted more than anything to find out who had put her there. "I'm not going to tell anybody."
"I'm not afraid of you telling anybody," Olivia sighed. "I just can't tell you anything, all right? Can we leave it at that?"
After that, I didn't spend much time with Olivia either.
By that time, I was angry and frusterated at being barracaded frrm any knowledge of what had happened to the woman who was like a sister to me. With John, I had mostly been angry for effect, and because of my strong-will. But now that not one, but two, of my detectives had knocked me out of the loop, I was beginning to get angry. I now had no one to turn to. My father would never tell me anything, he never did, and Fin was just as bad. He saw is son in me and didn't want any perversion getting to my "innocent mind."
It was as if I had two fathers, and a father wasn't what I needed at the moment. I needed John, who had been like that funny uncle who comes by for holidays with uber cool presents and who all the adults in the family think is a nut, or Olivia, who was an older sister and friend who shared everything, or almost everything, with me. Where were they now that I needed them?
Gone. What a wonderful time for them to need to protect me.
Since I couldn't go to the hospital, and still didn't want to face John at the precinct, I was stuck going home. The first day I showed up on the bus, my mother did a double take.
"I'm just not used to seeing you without your father attached," she joked. I forced a laugh and made my way up to my room that I shared with Dickie.
I tried to do my homework, but Dickie had a habit of playing loud music with too much bass and not enough actual melody involved, and I couldn't concentrate.
"Would you turn that off?!" I yelled at him after an hour long pounding headache. He glared at me.
"Jeez, you're a major nag when you don't get your Detective Fix for the day, aren't you?"
I groaned loudly, rolled off my bed, and took my books downstairs.
"How long has he been doing that?" I asked Mom, who was in the kitchen making dinner. To my surprise and annoyance, she laughed.
"Am I going to have to give you the 'come home more often' speech, just like your father?" she teased. I was not in the mood to be teased. I heaved an angsty sigh and swung around on my heels, and stalked off to the study, the only room in the house with a thick enough door to cancel out Dickie's... "music."
I was about to start screaming at the top of my lungs when I found that the desk in the study was covered with papers, but then I realized what one of the notebooks was. It's Dad's, I thought excitedly, dropping my books and closing the door. I rushed over to the desk, picked up the notebook, and felt a pang of guilt, which I promptly ignored as I started reading.
It was hours before my father came home to find me in the corner crying.
"Lizzie?" he said, worriedly, kneeling down next to me. "What's wrong, honey?"
I pointed to his notebook which I had left strewn open on the floor. When he recognized what I was pointing to, his face was half-way between anger and concern.
"You read my notes?" he asked, slowly, but I was sobbing too hard to give anything more than a nodd. "Why, Lizzie? You know you're not supposed to."
"B-because you w-w-wouldn't tell m-me who hurt L-L-Liv!" I stuttered, falling into his chest. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. "I j-just w-wanted to know w-what h-happened to her! N-no one w-would tell me!"
"So you read my notes," Dad sighed, petting my hair to calm me.
"They were so awful, Daddy!" I cried. "How could... Why do people do that, Daddy? Why, why, why?"
Why. It had been all I thought as I was reading his notes. Why were these people going through the heartache and terror? Why would other humans do this to each other? My heart went out to all the victims I'd never even met, until I had no more heart left to give, and I broke. That was how my father found me. Broken and strewn in pieces across the floor.
"Shh, sweetheart," he cooed, rocking me back and forth. "It's gonna be okay. Shhh."
"I'm sorry I read them, Daddy..." I whispered, letting myself go to his swaying. "I'm sorry."
"Do you know why we didn't tell you about Olivia's shooter?" he asked.
"Because you didn't want me to get traumitized?" I asked, sniffing and looking up into his sincere brown eyes.
"Yes, but there's another part to it," he said. "We didn't want you to go out looking for this guy."
"What? Why would I have done that?"
"Because... we think he was a teacher at your school who assaulted some of the girls in your grade."
The words hit me harder than any of the cases I had read about, and yet I didn't cry. I couldn't. My river of tears had run dry, but for some reason, I prayed to God that it would replenish. I needed to cry for the people that this man, who ever he was, had hurt. These were children that I knew, that I spent time with. The girls might have been in my classes. Hell, they might have been my best friends. But I couldn't cry. It had been easier for me to cry for anonymous victims than the ones I spent every day of my young life with. I felt so evil, so wrong.
I felt so broken.
AN: I have a question for you guys. Would you rather I put all of these one-shots about Lizzie into one story, or keep them as a serious of short fics? Would they make sense as one story? Please help in the decision! (By the way, I love you all for reviewing. You rock! SNAPS FOR THE REVIEWERS!.. tehe, I love saying that...)