Disclaimer (supposedly in first chapter) Please, folks, do not think the message is to imflict pain as a way of coping; it takes a long time to quit, a toll on the people you love, and it does not improve the state of things.

Credit Dick Wolf with what is Dick Wolf's and me with what is mine.

Bedbugs

"...but who can decide what they dream, and dream I do..."

She looked around. She couldn't be back here—but yes, here was Annelisse, sipping hot cocoa from a cup identical to the one Olivia found in her own small palms on the first day of the dissection unit. She lifted the plastic cup to her lips and winced as the band aids rubbed against her wrists. Setting the mug down, she told Anna to go inside as she loosened her watch and rolled up her sleeves. Carefully tearing off the adhesive, Olivia peeked under the bandage. There was nothing there—the unbroken skin, free of any scars, with healthy veins rising above the smooth surface of her slender wrists. Olivia shrugged. That was fine. She gulped the last of her drink, tossed the empty cup in the trash, and walked in the classroom. To her surprise, it didn't smell of formaldehyde.
"Ah, Miss Benson, welcome, I thought you would be late," Mr. Zwinel greeted her at the door as she took her seat at the front of the alphabetically arranged class and the bell rang.
"Sorry" she murmured, glancing up at the board. Where he usually had listed the name of the creature to be dissected were simply the words "phylum" "scientific name" and "common name" written on the ancient blackboard in chalk.
"Today, we are going to have a slight change of plans. We were going to dissect a frog today' however, because of an error ordering them, we have been forced to procure another animal." He walked over to the board and wrote under "phylum" "Chordata"; under "scientific name" "Homo Sapiens", and as he raised his left hand to scribe to common name, he paused, looking at Olivia, smiling. "Olivia Benson," he wrote in eerie red chalk.
Panic gripped her in a tight fist around her ribs, but she remained calm and still on the outside. She trusted her teacher completely; this had to be a joke. The next thing she knew, she was at her lab desk, silver scissors in her right hand. Annelisse sat across from her, looking on, interested. Zwinel stood at the end of the short table, watching eagerly. Not realizing what she was doing, Olivia cut a line along her vein up to the base of her hand, then pushed the skin back. It was exactly like any other dissection—all the blood and fluids had been drained. She felt nothing but her right thumb and middle finger operating the scissors, seeing the gleaming metal flash in the reflection of Zwinel's glasses. She looked to him for approval. He nodded proudly, smiling, not saying a word. She screamed.

She woke up panting, still screaming. Her alarm clock screamed with her until it registered in her poor mind and was hurled across the room, its batteries spilling out. That had been the most terrible nightmare she'd had. She gazed at her wrists, rubbing the dull purple marks that would remain there until she died. She knew Huang had noticed them, but she'd never told anyone but that counselor. She'd give anything to undo the scars—not only were they hideous, but they were a constant reminder of how she could never be truly happy.
Olivia heard a sharp knocking at her door. "Olivia?" she heard a familiar voice, disguised by agitation, say.
Muttering to herself about how one could never have a nightmare all by oneself and cursing the jerk behind the door, she donned her blue fuzzy bathrobe over her matching nightgown, and, stuffing her gun in her pocket, ambled over to the door, peered through the peephole, cursed at the top of her sleepy lungs, and opened the door to a suddenly humbled partner.
"What?" she asked in the crankiest voice she could muster.
"Sorry. I heard the scream, the thud, and I..." He faltered for the second time in six hours.
"How the hell'd you get over here?"
"I kept thinking about you. I came over after about two. I got by the doorman with the badge...Sorry," he offered, embarrassed. "Is everything all right?"
"I'm fine," she told him, embarrassed as well, turning red quickly. "I let those bedbugs get into my dreams," she explained, smiling apologetically.
"Ok," he said. They hugged. Olivia, though she hated to admit it, loved the feeling of someone to hug after such a mess. But it was too soon after Kathy's death to think of anything further.
"See you at the precinct in a couple hours," she suggested.
"Ok," he replied, scruffing her bed hair playfully, then headed down the stairs.
She smiled after him, walked over to the stove, and made a cup of coffee. She'd had enough hot cocoa for a while.