Author's note; Christina. That's all I have to say, I owe you so much for reading this while I write, giving me ideas, conspiring with me, all of that. You're amazing. At the end there are two lines from songs in italics. The first line is from 'What Makes You Stay' &Deana Carter, and the second is from 'When You Love Someone' – Brian Adams, they say it better than I ever could, so, I added them in there.
For All of This;
Two.
"Look, Olivia, I don't know what's going on between you and Elliot, and as long as it's not interfering here, as your boss, I don't have to know. He comes in here the other day asking if I notice anything different about you, and then you come in today asking for a transfer?" Olivia wasn't looking at him, and he could tell that this was not easy. "So now, I get involved."
"This isn't about Elliot," she lied and he knew it.
"The hell it isn't." He leaned forward in his chair, daring her.
"If this was about Elliot, then why would I be asking for another department? Why wouldn't I just ask to switch with Munch or Fin? Wouldn't that make more sense?" Her hands were shaking, and she wondered if he could tell.
"What's going on, Olivia?" He wanted to believe that it was something good, that they were sharing a bed or breakfasts and dinners and dating and that this wasn't the rage that Olivia's eyes were holding.
"I'm asking you," her voice was soft, "please, I need to get out of here."
One night, after one more child, one more victim, one more perp, she realized that it didn't sting as much as it used to. Everyone was the same, regardless of their differences, regardless of the circumstances. One person had taken it upon themselves to permanently damage someone else, and it didn't bother her as much as it used to.
This wasn't doing it anymore. This wasn't going to save her, she was no longer hidden behind it and within it, but now she stood exposed with her numbed feelings, exposed and at a crossroad of who she could become.
Her whole life had been a battle of who she wasn't, never a fight for who she was.
She joined SVU for a variety of reasons, the greatest being that if she saw the violence everyday, if she saw the effects of it and the pain it caused, then she would never be tempted to commit it. If she put herself in a place in which she could convey her violence in a way in which it helped others, she would not only save them, but also herself.
She had her father in her. Half of her, sometimes more, sometimes less, and she fought each day against that which she had inherited from him, fought the nature versus nurture debate each day, and when she joined SVU she had this hope that as long as she was on this side of the violence, she wouldn't be tempted to do it. When she felt their pain, when she opened herself up to the empathy, she wouldn't want to do that to anyone.
But, she didn't feel it anymore. And now, with her father's genes dulled and silenced for the time being, now that she was at the end of her rope, abandoned by someone who she thought needed her, she felt her mother come through her, only, she knew, she told herself, she made herself believe, that it was not like that.
She was not like that.
"Fine," Cragen pushed the words through.
"Fine?" She was scared that he would let her go, up until this moment it made so much sense, but standing on the edge of what could be, she realized that this could be it.
Six years, and what did she have to show for it? Nothing. She could prove that violence did not end. That it was always there in some form, but it was not over, it was not close to being over. Six years, and nothing was different. Six years and she hadn't changed the world. She hadn't made people better or things better. She had watched children be raped, murdered, fathers violate their daughters, mothers murder their sons – and for what? The violence was still there, out there in and in her and she had made small steps at helping it, but she had not done anything to render it changed.
"Fine, Olivia, I can't make you stay here. But, before I get you transferred I want a reason. A good reason as to why I'm about to give up one of my best detectives."
"You just have to trust that I need this. That it's important and I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't."
"Wouldn't be asking what?" Elliot stood in the doorway, his voice an unwelcomed addition to the conversation, and Olivia sunk deep in her chair, not wanting the confrontation. Cragen let out a deep sigh, lowering his head, and Elliot looked back and forth between he and Olivia, suddenly nervous. "What?"
"I'm transferring." The words were one last blow, pushing him back up against the door because he knew that he couldn't hold himself up.
"You're what?" Maybe he hadn't heard her right.
"Transferring out of Special Victims. I'm done." She never looked at him. Elliot looked to Cragen for an answer, but he had none.
"You're done?" His voice wasn't argumentative, it was broken, detached, lost.
"Um, maybe I should give you two a minute. Olivia, you can explain yourself." He was their friend when he left them alone, closing his door behind him to give the two a moment of privacy.
"You're leaving me?" Elliot's words pushed themselves out, gaining a life of their own, and he looked away, the red rising to his cheeks, embarrassed by them.
"This isn't about you. This isn't about anyone, I just need a change, I can't do this anymore," her voice was soft and scratchy.
"Like hell it isn't about anyone, you think I'm stupid, Olivia?" He would have yelled if he had the energy, but he was falling into a period of insomnia, the circles under his eyes telling his secret.
"Say goodbye," she got up from the chair and faced Elliot, and she didn't want to see the wall of tears his eyes had built. "Just, say goodbye, Elliot." She didn't know how her voice didn't crack, and Elliot shook his head.
"We've seen it all, Olivia, look at us –"
"And for what? For every one we put away there are 10 more. Don't kid yourself into thinking that this matters."
Elliot swallowed hard. She was feeding him his suspicions, reading like a booklet on alcoholism, her eyes bloodshot, her attitude falling apart, what she loved before, what she was passionate about was now another thing to add to her list, another thing to make her take that drink.
"It does, Olivia, and you know it." He looked her over slowly, but she didn't budge, "or, you did." This was fear. The faith had gone from her eyes, leaving them as hollow as the day she came, like a child who had just had their innocence stolen for the first time, like a mother or father who had to watch.
"Goodbye, Elliot." She walked out of the door, pushing past him, and faintly, as if his senses were tuned to it, he could hear her start going through her drawers, cleaning out what used to be her life.
&&&&&
Her life sat a box in her living room, old pictures she put on her desk to make herself feel like someone else was there, old pens and papers and candy bars.
When you can fit your life in a box, that's when you pour half of the bottle of whiskey into your glass. When the pieces and parts of your life can fit into a tiny brown box, that is when you realize that everything you have is nothing at all.
That is when you realize that in that box one thing cannot fit, but he is gone and what you had is gone and that is when you take a drink.
A slow drink, her lips parting to take in the sweet surrender and she takes the liquid slowly, needing to feel the pain just a little to remind herself that she is still alive.
She places her drink down and reaches into the box, pulling out a pile of articles, some old, their paper aged in browns and tans, and she leafs through them, realizing that her small achievements were just that, small.
But, for a moment she takes in the people on the pages, the people she may have saved, the people she could have rescued. For a moment, in their names printed boldly in the pages, she saw her purpose.
Scared she let the papers fall from her hands, scattering around the floor beside her, one coming apart from the rest.
It was her mother's obituary, the quick story of her mother's life and death in 150 words. She didn't want to write it, she remembers, but Elliot made her, and she hated him for it. Olivia reaches for the little strip of paper, takes it into her hands for a brief moment, not letting her eyes scan over the words, and then she places the paper in her glass of whiskey, letting the ink of her mother's life fade into her drink.
The paper gets thin, soggy, floating down as Olivia pushed it deeper until her fingers come in contact with the alcohol. This was her mother's life, this drug that took her mother away from her, and Olivia stopped for a minute as she realized that it was taking her away from her, too.
But she still didn't want to think that it was an issue. She knew what she was doing, with each drink she knew she was giving herself over to statistics.
Her hand cupped the glass and she brought the drink, complete with her mother's fading, destroyed 150 word paraphrased life, to her lips and took a quick drink, thankful that the alcohol had dissolved the taste, among other things.
Her eyes caught one of the articles, it started off with her name, "Olivia Benson of the Manhattan Special Victims Unit, and her partner, Detective Elliot Stabler…"
Her throat burned, she put the glass down, and she realized that what had been her life was no longer. Everything that had defined her living was gone, and this, she realized, looking to her box of pieces, was death.
From within the papers stuck a corner, glossy with colors, and Olivia reached hesitantly for the picture, knowing what she was about to see – everything and nothing, that which she had just lost.
The picture is from when they first started together, six years ago. Elliot had insisted on bonding, insisting that it was important and they had to work at being able to know exactly what the other was thinking. She, of course, did not object, because his reasons were sound, his intentions clear.
So, a trip to Coney Island landed them on a roller coaster that Olivia had to convince him to ride, and when it was over Elliot bought her the picture, his face was red, his mouth open, screaming, and Olivia was laughing, her eyes, her mouth, all of her.
As her fingers ran over the edges she could hear him, hear his voice in her memory, telling her that every time she thought against jumping in front of a bullet for him, remember that he rode this for her, screamed the whole way scared of the old wooden "death trap", as he called it, but he rode it none the less, because she asked him, because she wanted to.
Because when she was six years old her mother took her to that same rollercoaster, stood at the bottom with her, her hands sweating and smelling of alcohol, her eyes bloodshot, her life bruised, and she told Olivia that she could ride alone, that she wasn't about to die for her.
Olivia had left that out. Olivia didn't tell him that. Olivia cried, told him it was from the wind against her eyes, but she knew, inside, that it was because for the first time in her life she felt like someone had her. Like someone would die for her.
Pushing herself up from the floor she grabbed her glass and ran into the kitchen, the tears on her face not processed against everything else that was running through her mind, and she dumped the whiskey out into the sink, dropping the glass in after it and then running back to her bathroom, bending over and throwing the cabinet doors under the sink open and reaching in for the bottles she had hidden, and in this moment she remembered being 10 years old, walking in and seeing her mother rooting under the bathroom sink for another bottle of that which sustained her, and it was in this second Olivia had realized that she had become her mother. She had been so scared and determined not to be her father, that when Elliot had left her, had taken time for himself to figure himself out she coped the only way she knew how – they only way that she had ever been taught.
And she fell to the bathroom floor, not wanting to understand anymore.
&&&&&
He had to believe in her now.
He had to take this as a simple act of their faith and he had to believe that this was something that would not break them, that would build them instead.
He turns the corner to her apartment with his cell phone in his hand, all that's running through his mind is her voice, soft and lacking words, drowning in her sobs. In his other hand he's sorting out his keys, looking for the one to her apartment, and in a scared desperation he finds himself moving faster, his feet starting to run, his mind starting to swirl.
This is what he did. He knew her life, knew of all the people who didn't need her, and he was one more now, another name on her list of millions, another one lost in her pool of thousands.
He wondered if the rest of them felt their heart, this strong and quick, when they thought that they were about to lose her.
"Olivia!" He is startled by her, standing still a few feet before him, her arms crossed over her chest, pulling herself inward.
She doesn't answer him, her head goes to him slowly, her eyes saying finally, and when he gets closer he can see that she is shaking, her mascara running trails down her cheeks, and he doesn't know whether or not to hug her, to take her into his arms, because he doesn't know if that's okay. If he was the only number she knew or if she was the only number she wanted to dial.
Without thinking he drops his cell phone and keys, freeing his hands to take inventory of her pieces, to touch her face, run a hand around to the back of her head, down her neck, to run his fingers over her arms, over the bruises he's left her with, and then down her waist, to her stomach.
"Jesus," he mutters the name softly, a prayer, a thanks, for her being in one piece, at least physically.
She isn't moving, aside from her body shaking, her eyes letting her tears fall, and Elliot can tell that she is numb, that she is suffering from this and he wants to think that he knows how to fix this, but in him, with all the parts of him that have been shaken recently, he can feel that he doesn't know how.
"I&I shut the door," she stammers, softly, admitting, without saying the precise words, that she had to lock herself out of her apartment, out of the liquor cabinet that is her home.
"Okay, that's okay." He gives her a soft nod, and then, against all his judgment, he pulls her in for a hug, which she does not return, but he doesn't care, because he has to feel her breathing to erase the fear of all the possibilities in which he could have found her. "It's freezing out here, come on, let's go back inside," Elliot bends down to pick up his phone and keys, slipping the phone into his pocket, and then turning to Olivia expectantly. "Olivia, come on," but she doesn't move.
"This isn't my life." She is shaken by her newfound reality, and Elliot swallows hard.
"Tonite it is," is all that he says, heading towards the door, and in a moment she follows in step behind him.
He stops when he walks into her apartment, Olivia still behind him, and he is caught off guard by what he sees, by the smell, by the box of things that were once in her desk now scattered about her floor.
"Okay." He takes a deep breath after the hesitation and walks in farther, Olivia closing the door behind them. "Okay." He turns to find her walking slowly to the couch, as if in a trance, and she sets herself down in the middle slowly, leaning back and looking ahead, her eyes hollow and lost.
For all of this, for all of the things she tried not to become, here she was.
"Under the sink, in the bathroom," she tells him, her voice soft, and Elliot feels himself fall, letting this overtake him as he heads back to the bathroom, crouching down to the cabinet under the sink, looking to the bottles lined up.
"Jesus Christ, Olivia." As he is pulling the vodka and the whiskey and the rum from under the sink, each bottle serves to remind him that he left her, that he wasn't here for this, that he didn't see this soon enough, that he was too caught up in everything else to realize what he was doing to the one person who actually wanted to be there.
With each bottled he mourned their friendship. With 5 bottles in his arms he walked slowly, sullenly, a funeral precession out from the bathroom, a lump in his throat, his eyes burning with the threat of tears.
He wasn't mad, he couldn't be. The guilt, the sorrow, it occupied every inch of him and left no room for any other emotion. He wanted to make this better, he had the overwhelming urge to protect her, but he knew, at the same time, that he was clueless.
She can hear him set the bottles on the counter, and the noise is deafening, she shudders, the tears in her eyes no longer able to spill, frozen by her numb emotions.
"Um, Liv," he heads into the living room, standing amongst the scattered pieces of her on the floor, scattered parts of them, and he sees the picture from all those years ago, the glimpse he catches long enough, and he goes back to her. "Olivia&"
"Over the microwave." She cuts him off, and he is shaking now as he walks into the kitchen, opening the cabinet over the microwave to find a couple bottles of beer, and he removes them, setting them on the counter with the rest of what he has found.
Instead of going back out he turns back to the oven, walks over slowly, and pulls the door back. Falling back, his legs giving out on him, he calls to her, "and in the oven."
"And in the oven," she repeats quietly.
After a moment, when he trusts his legs again, he pushes himself up, gathering the 3 bottles of vodka and one bottle of red wine, and places them with the others, their contents all half empty at best, their lids all tightened back on with force and regret.
"Olivia," he is scared, and she can tell.
He sees her before him, a fragmented part of what she used to be, and he realizes that he's began to pace, that he's running his hands through his short hair, scratching nervously at the back of his neck.
Tonite isn't about all he has lost, but rather, all he has found.
"Olivia, I need your gun." She isn't expecting the words, and her head shoots up immediately, looking at him as though he has just spoken another language. "I know you brought it home, where is it?" He looks at her, he doesn't blink, doesn't breath, doesn't pretend that there aren't tears in his eyes.
With her broken before him, what she has been doing set out before him, plain and clear for him to see, he realizes that he has never missed anything or anyone as much as he misses her at that instant.
"You need to give it to me." His voice shakes, cracks, and Olivia's lips come together, shaking as she turns away from him, pulling her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around herself.
He falls to the floor, exhausted and beaten, and before he can comprehend what he is doing the picture of both of them from the rollercoaster so many years ago is in his hand.
"I was so scared, the wood looked like it wouldn't hold Dickie's hampster, and you wanted me to ride it with you, and I was freaking out," he paused, swallowing the regret of the memory, "but when we were on there, you were so happy, you couldn't stop laughing and for a few minutes, while the ride lasted, I knew that this was going to work."
"I thought so too. You were the first person to ride it with me," she admits for the first time after a long pause, her voice muffled against her legs.
This isn't in his head anymore, this isn't in his heart or his memory, but this is taking over all of him, he is hurting, burning, aching.
There are no words between them, and in the silence Elliot finds himself moving to her, dropping the picture back to the ground and in the next second he is curled up next to her on the couch, pulling her into his arms, holding her, holding her against him physically as a substitute for that which he cannot hold.
"Stay with me, okay? Talk to me, make me understand this." He reaches out to her, speaking softly as he rests his chin on the top of her head, and he can feel that she is embarrassed, he can feel that it took every piece of her to call him, to admit this to him, to let him see her secrets.
Olivia Benson, once indescructable, has crumbled. Broken. Fallen apart.
She hates that she needs him when he never needed her, she hates that he is all that she has, but in his arms, pressed to him, breathing in time with him, she knows that she can't move away, that she isn't strong enough, because tonite she is at the end of a road she promised she would never take.
He doesn't need her like her mother didn't need her, like no one has ever needed her, but she gives into this tonite because admitting to this is more powerful, better, than falling into who she really could be.
"I guess I'm no better than she was. I guess all the stuff I told myself, I guess I've been lying to myself, too, everyone else does and then I just fall into it too, I guess…" she trails off, erupting in sobs, and Elliot pulls her closer still, willing her flesh to mold with his, willing her pain to dissolve into his, willing himself to take this on for her.
"I want to tell you that I'm sorry, Olivia," he whispers, and she wants to tell him that she doesn't care because regardless of how she got here, here she is none the less.
He clenches his jaw when he feels her hands clawing at his shirt, pulling through to his skin, when he realizes that she is trying to hold on to him, to keep him there.
"It's okay." His voice shakes and is not strong and assuring, but broken and scared, but she doesn't care, she can feel him, for the first time in months, when she doesn't even know herself she can feel him, and without letting herself think of everything else, she falls into him. She lets herself need him.
"Elliot," there is more to say, but she collapses in silence, and he pulls away, but her hands cling to him, grabbing for him. He holds her away from him, out at an arms length, and makes her lock eyes with him.
What makes you stay, when the world falls apart?
"Yeah, Liv, yeah," his voice is thick with emotion, and he pulls her back to him. "Yeah, I'm here."
you'd risk it all & no matter what may come, when you love someone
&&&&&
tbc.