A/N: My first serious fic—an attempt to justify Olivia's behavior to myself.
Rating: T
Spoilers: Storm, Wrath, Loss
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Dick Wolf.
Olivia wakes up at dawn, as light begins to seep through the cracks in the blinds. It's Saturday. "Saturday," she says to the empty room. "Two years, one month, eleven days. You're still not here." She gets up, wishing she had to go to work, something to keep her busy, but glad she doesn't. She can't face anyone today.
"Goodbye Olivia. Don't come back."
She shakes her head, peels her clothes off, jumps in the shower. Turns the temperature up all the way and clenches her teeth with grim satisfaction as the water scalds her back. She turns off the shower, wraps herself in a towel. Looks in the mirror, her gaze critical, harsh, unforgiving. "What did you ever see in me?" she asks aloud, derisively. As if anyone who had ever loved her could only be a fool.
She looks at the necklaces, the ones she never takes off. "Fearlessness," she snorts. It seems not quite the right word. Hopelessness, maybe. Indifference to anything that could possibly hurt her. But it's her false courage, hiding her Achilles heel--the delicate yet unbreakable necklace that is everything about her. Her lifeline, her strength, her weakness. She doesn't want anyone to see this window into her soul. So she wears fearlessness instead, like a badge.
"What about the girls?" she asks, begs, demands. "We just forget about them and all they've been through?"
She isn't sure what answer she's expecting. But somehow the decisive "Yes" isn't it.
"This is crap," she says, and walking out of the room takes every ounce of her self-control. What she wants to do is yell, scream, pummel a perp or a federal agent until he begs for mercy.
"I'm failing them. Just like I failed you. Is it retribution, Alex, for flirting with Jackson? I didn't mean it, really. I just wanted to forget for a minute. Forget that I don't know how to be happy without you. I'll make it up to you, I swear. I'll find those girls. I will."
"Olivia," Alex replies, and Olivia gasps in disbelief. She looks up to see Dr. Warner. "I need to talk to you and Elliot. Alone." Olivia nods.
Their case has been taken from them. With their caseload, you'd think it'd be nice to have one off their hands. But it's not. Their computers are gone, there's nothing else for them to do today. Olivia's the last one there. Sitting, staring at her empty desk. She slowly opens the top drawer. Her files are gone, but the picture is still there. The picture she put in a frame but never put on her desk because no one was supposed to know. And so no one knew, just like no one knows now, how close she is to breaking. She stares hard at it in the dim light. As her eyes trace the features, she remembers the taste of lips, ear, neck—her phone rings.
"Detective, what do you have for me?"
"I'm not sure how much I can give you, Jackson," she says cautiously, running her thumb gently over the photo. But she says she'll meet him.
It's 8:30, she needs to leave now if she's going to meet Jackson at 9. She looks around the squad room, hesitates. She really loves her job. She thinks. Before she leaves she sticks the file under her coat.
There's something about this reporter. He's young. Almost naïve, like breaking the big story is about more than just his name on the byline. Like he's doing it for the common good. Like whatever it is he thinks he's doing will make a difference. Like Alex taking on Velez. Olivia thinks she should warn him. Warn him that the glory isn't worth it. That it's not worth the risk. That he could lose everything. But she has the file, she knows the story. The feds, the police commissioner, Cragen, they all tried to take it away. To make her powerless. But she is in control now, and she will find those girls. She won't let them down; she won't lose another piece of herself.
"I want to tell you a story."
Olivia walks to her closet. Most of the hangers are empty. She needs to do laundry. She reaches in and pulls the clothes in the recesses of the closet into view. "No, no, no," she says, flipping through them, wondering why it matters. Her hand rests on a navy suit; the material beneath her fingers feels expensive. She'd forgotten that was here. Or maybe willed herself to not remember. Olivia runs her hand down the sleeve of the jacket. Counts the buttons, rubbing each one with her thumb, like a worry stone. She dips her fingers into the pocket and pulls out a single earring. She stares at it, swallows hard, then drops it back in the pocket and slams the closet door.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Elliot sounds angry, she thinks. She looks at him, wonderingly. He's angry at her, but she doesn't feel annoyed or guilty or proud. She doesn't feel anything.
"Olivia, my office, now." Cragen doesn't sound angry, Olivia muses. "But he probably is."
He's talking. "…by the police commissioner…"
"Captain…" She doesn't have anything to say. Nothing to explain, nothing to justify, nothing to apologize for. But this all seems eerily like a dream, and she needs to speak, to make sure it's not.
"Shut up," he says, and she does, she would have anyway.
He keeps talking, but it's only her own soliloquy she hears. "You'll know, too, when you see it in the news, Alex, won't you? You'll know it was me. Will you be angry? Will you know why I did it? I won't fail you again."
"Dismissed," Cragen finishes. And she leaves, because she's pretty sure that's what she's supposed to do. She thinks Elliot asks her a question. But she has blocked out everything except for her frantic need to make things right.
"We have to go talk to Nikki," she says.
Elliot stares at her with disbelief. "You have lost your mind," he enunciates slowly.
Yes, she acknowledges. Last night Nikki was bleeding out on the sidewalk. Olivia pressed her hand against the little girl's shoulder. "Stay with me, sweetie, stay with me." The ambulance came and took her to the hospital but they never saw her again. Olivia was covered in blood, and when she woke up, drenched in sweat, she went into the bathroom, washed her hands for what seemed like hours. "Two years, one month, nine days. You're not here."
Yes, she acknowledges. Instead she says, "Elliot, she's a traumatized 8-year-old girl. We know how to talk to her."
Elliot doesn't say anything, but he gets the car keys.
Olivia walks into the kitchen, wearing jeans and a sweater, from the drawer. She puts some coffee on. Then turns it off. "We'll have tea instead. You like tea." Olivia doesn't like Earl Grey so much, but it's Alex's favorite. She lets it steep. Breakfast—Alex always eats breakfast. Olivia opens the fridge. There's a little orange juice—gone bad. She opens a cupboard. Some canned soup, vegetables. Next. Square bottle, smooth amber liquid. She shouldn't. Alex wouldn't like it, would she? Maybe just a little. Just a little. Olivia tips the glass down her throat. "Ah, Old Number 7…Okay, just one more, a toast—to you." She puts the glass down, and drinks her Earl Grey.
"You shouldn't have come. They'll be checking my visitor log."
"I used my undercover alias," she says.
"It's still risky," he admonishes.
In jail. He's in jail because of her. She had wanted to fix things, she had wanted to make everything right, and now an innocent man was in jail because of her. She thought of Plummer. The first innocent man she had sent to prison. Was she going to kill Jackson too? Was it all inevitable?
"And you think it matters!" the voices in her head snicker. "You thought you were brave, protecting the public, protecting those little girls. But you couldn't even protect the woman you love." And nothing can change that.
"I had to see you," she says urgently. "I want you to talk. I want you to tell them it was me."
"No," he says, adamantly. "I chose to write this story, and I accept responsibility for what I've written."
"Give them my name, Jackson," she demands, her voice thick with desperation.
"There's no freedom without a free press," he says. "Goodbye Olivia. Don't come back." He gets up and walks away, leaving her still holding the phone.
"Screw your principles," she shouts, while yet sitting silently in her despair. "Don't you understand? You're young, you can write, you can make a difference."
Olivia swallows the bile in her throat. She goes home to her empty apartment, more barren than any eight-by-ten cell.
"That's what Jackson didn't know," Olivia says as she opens the door onto the roof of her building. "That he didn't have to throw his life away. That jail would be no worse for me than this hell."
She looks over the edge. She's fifteen stories up, looking down at the city, at her world. She's amazed how removed she feels up here. How she could stay up here forever, and the city wouldn't stop, life would keep on going. She shivers because it's cold. She's not wearing a jacket.
The cold air hits them when Olivia pulls her through the doorway, shutting the door behind them. "What are we doing up here?" Alex asks, shivering a little. Olivia looks out at the bright lights of the city at night. Cars going by below, and further away, a string of traffic, recognizable only as a row of headlights. Lighted windows of office and apartment buildings, punctuated by a few black squares where people are trying to save energy or have gone to bed.
"It's pretty up here at night…" she tries again, waiting for her companion to speak.
Olivia takes her hand. "I come up here sometimes to think."
Alex nods. "What do you think about?" she asks, a hint of apprehension in her voice, as if she's not sure she wants to know.
Olivia speaks quietly. "Cases, mostly. You know, the perps, the victims…jumping." Alex's expression is unreadable, but she swallows hard and squeezes Olivia's hand a little tighter. Olivia quickly smiles, to tell her it was a joke. Just a joke.
"But also about you," she says, and Alex smiles a little. Olivia touches Alex's cheek, then leans in and gently kisses her. It's cold, but as their soft breath mingles, Olivia feels warm to the tips of her toes.
She is staring intently at a spot on the sidewalk. There's nothing special about it, but Olivia looks at it as though it's her redeemer. As if it could save her. The traffic is still going by, but she no longer sees it. The noises of the city are muffled, as though suddenly submerged. The great flood, coming to destroy the filth and destruction and everything.
"Alex, please," she begs, as she has begged so many times before. "I just…can't…not anymore."
She wrestles for a few moments with her indecision, her opposing desires, as if at any moment her conflicted soul will cleave her body in two. Her heart is pounding and she's breathing heavily, pleading, "Please, Alex, please."
She feels a little dizzy, looking down like that, and she thinks how easy it would be to lose her balance. Almost accidental. "How long?" And the way Alex didn't say anything, but just nodded, reading Olivia's thoughts. Almost accidental. And Alex's smile when she gave Olivia the necklace. She reaches up and touches it. And she steps away from the ledge, as she has done so many times before. "Okay, Alex, not today." She backs away, toward the staircase. "Not today, not today, not today."
She steps inside her apartment and closes the door. "Two years, one month, eleven days. Where are you, Alex? I need you."