A/N: Another chapter, more therapy. I have new ideas, but I wonder how many will come to fruition? Guess we'll find out.

Disclaimer: If they were mine there'd be new episodes this week.


"Anything new to share from this week?" Rebecca asked as Olivia sat in her second therapy session.

Truthfully, in the big picture, no. There was nothing new for Olivia to share. It was just the same shit, different day. Rapists and murderers still roamed the streets. Things between her and Elliot seemed to be getting more complicated. They'd been tense ever since the Memorial body dump, or rather the car ride that preceded it. Mark was being, well, Mark.

"Chelsea seems to be doing a little better going to school and things the last week," Olivia said. "I think coming here on Wednesdays and us having some extra girls' time is something she can look forward to and knowing we'll have this time together makes her feel more at ease."

"That's good," Rebecca said. "You mentioned before Mark is a stickler for routines. If the two of you have run a pretty structured household she might use those types of events as goalposts to get her through the week."

"I'm happy for the time, too," Olivia said. "I'm really thankful that my Captain juggled things around so I could do this."

"How were you able to get the time off?" Rebecca asked.

"It's not time off," Olivia said. "I just adjusted my hours. Elliot took over catching on Wednesday nights for me."

"Does he know why?" Rebecca asked.

"Yeah," Olivia said. "I told him about the family therapy, but mostly that I wanted Chelsea evaluated for bipolar disorder."

"Well, from what I've seen so far," Rebecca said. "I don't think Chelsea has the disorder. Of course we'll keep monitoring her in sessions, but I really think the acting out was change and fear, possibly anxiety, but not bipolar disorder. She doesn't seem to have the other hallmarks of the disease."

Olivia let out a big breath she felt like she'd been holding in for months. She couldn't wait to tell Elliot. She knew he'd been feeling guilty about possibly passing it to her.

"That's good news," Olivia said.

"Even if she had it," Rebecca said. "People with bipolar disorder can live very normal lives on medication. But I understand as a parent, the fewer obstacles you have the more relieved you may feel."

Olivia nodded. She felt some of the tension releasing from her shoulders. Her baby girl was probably just going through a phase, and they were doing this to get help and work through it. This was good.

"Did you do the homework from last week?" Rebecca asked.

This was bad. Yes, she'd done it, but it did nothing but cause confusion the rest of the week. Not to mention Elliot had been short with her since they got out of the car. And he didn't really have the right. It took two to tango and she had some license to figure out how and why he even made it to the dance floor in the first place.

"Yes," Olivia said. "I did."

"And what did you learn?" Rebecca asked.

"He was on the street corner because his wife, fiancee at the time, broke their engagement and left him stranded at a restaurant," Olivia said.

"Does that change how you feel about the events of that night?" Rebecca asked.

"Not really," Olivia said. "I guess it makes me feel better that he didn't really cheat on her if he thought they'd broken up. Still makes me a cheater though. Mark and I were very much together."

"Why does it make you feel better that he's not a cheater?" Rebecca asked. "Why does it bring you more comfort if you're the only cheater in the scenario?"

"Because Elliot is a good person," Olivia said. "He's sometimes a pain in the ass to work with, but he's got all that Catholic morality going for him. He has integrity."

"And you're not? You don't?" Rebecca asked.

"I cheated on my fiancee with a man I didn't even know because we were bored in a motel room waiting to get my tire replaced," Olivia said. "Does that sound like integrity to you?"

"Did you want to break your engagement to Mark after you found out he may never be able to have kids?" Rebecca asked.

It was a slight swerve in the conversation and it caught Olivia off guard.

"What?" she said.

"Did you consider breaking your engagement when you found out you may never have your own children?" Rebecca asked.

Olivia bit the tip of her tongue before continuing.

"Yes," Olivia said. "It was one of the things I was thinking about when I went out driving that night."

"Why were you considering breaking the engagement?" Rebecca said. "What specifically was going through your mind?"

"That was a long time ago," Olivia said.

"These are the kinds of things you easily forget," Rebecca said, irritating Olivia. She knew the woman was only doing her job, but it didn't sit well with her right now.

"He told me we could adopt, if I wanted," Olivia said. "I'm not against adoption. I still think about it sometimes, that it might be nice to give Chelsea a sibling or two. Something I didn't have growing up. Plus, there are so many children out there who need loving homes. But, I selfishly wanted a child of my own."

"Why is that selfish?" Rebecca asked.

"Because there are so many kids that don't have homes that need them," Olivia said. "And if we couldn't have our own, maybe that was a sign that one of them could have completed our family."

"Why was it so important for you to have a biological child?" Rebecca asked.

Olivia didn't want to answer. The answer hurt. But sitting in silence wasn't a picnic either.

"My father raped my mother when she was in college," Olivia said. "I never met him, they never caught him. Having her rapist's baby changed my mother. She became an alcoholic. She never found a man who wanted to be with a drunk, damaged woman and her bastard daughter. I never had siblings. Her parents disowned her when they found out she was pregnant and not married. We didn't have any family. So she drank, alone. Left me to fend for myself, alone. I guess I just wanted…"

Olivia trailed off. She's not sure why she wanted a child, or why she wanted to risk repeating that cycle.

"You just wanted a family member you could love," Rebecca said. "A blood relative who loved you as much as you loved them."

"Yes," Olivia said. "I wanted the chance to be the mother that my mother wasn't. And it worked, for a time. It even worked on her. She was sober about five years after Chelsea was born. We were closer than we'd ever been. They were closer than I ever expected."

"You said she was sober for five years," Rebecca said. "What happened after that?"

"I guess she relapsed," Olivia said. "If she'd been doing it slowly, I missed it. She showed up at our apartment one afternoon in the summer when Chelsea was about six. I was on vacation, Mark was home. We were trying to figure out what to do with the day when she pounded on the door. Mark answered and she started cursing at him in the hallway. 'You can't have them. Nobody can have them.' She sounded like a raving lunatic."

"What happened next?" Rebecca asked.

"I went to the door to see what was happening, Chelsea had been playing Barbies at the coffee table, and I knew she could see out into the hall what was happening," Olivia said. "My mother had done this before. Same words, same spiel, when I was 16."

"Can you elaborate on that?" Rebecca asked.

"I started dating an older man when I was in high school," Olivia said. "He was one of her students. We bonded over books and music. He was the first man I fell in love with. He proposed to me, told me he'd take me away from her and the abuse. And when I told her I was marrying him and leaving, she was drunk. She said those exact same words to me. She broke her vodka bottle and charged at me with a shard. I put her through the wall, she cut my arm, and we both ended up in the ER."

"What happened to your boyfriend," Rebecca asked.

"After we got patched up at the hospital and they pumped her stomach, she brought me home and made me write him a letter breaking up with him," Olivia said. "She dictated it and I wrote it down. But before I sealed it, I slipped in a few lines about what really happened when I told her about the engagement, thinking he'd find a way to come back to me. But he didn't. He called me on the phone to tell me he was leaving for California and told me to have a nice life."

"So let's go back to the more recent incident," Rebecca said. "How did you handle it?"

"I shut the door so Chelsea couldn't see," Olivia said. "And I tried to calm my mother down in the hallway. But she was ranting about 'him.' I still don't know who she was talking about. But I told her she couldn't show up drunk and let Chelsea see her like that. And if she chose the alcohol over us she couldn't ever come back. She didn't. That was the last time I saw her."

"How did she die?" Rebecca asked.

Olivia had tried to be stoic throughout the entire conversation, but she felt tears springing to her eyes.

"She slipped and fell down the subway steps uptown," Olivia said. "Outside the Velvet Room. She never took the subway, and she was intoxicated at 11 a.m."

"I'm sorry for your loss, Olivia," Rebecca said.

"She never treated me the way a mother should treat her child," Olivia said.

"But you loved her anyway," Rebecca said.

"I did," Olivia said.

"How did you react when you heard the news?" Rebecca asked.

"My Captain called me into his office," she said. "The uniforms from the scene came to tell me in person. I know I ran out of the office after handling them and threw up on the roof of the precinct."

"Did you take some time for yourself?" Rebecca asked? "Take the day?"

"Not exactly," Olivia said. "Elliot found me on the roof. He took me out for coffee and helped me pick Chelsea up from school. He was a big help. Made dinner for us so I didn't have to. He even helped me explain death to Chelsea, in his own Catholic way. But it did make things easier."

"And how did Mark react when you told him?" Rebecca asked.

"He wasn't surprised it ended the way it did," she said. "They never got along, even when she was sober. She never approved of my taste in older men. He made most of the arrangements for the funeral, attended all the services, but otherwise didn't say much about it."

Rebecca pursed her lips, took a few notes, but didn't say anything.

"Let's circle back," Rebecca said, finally. "You said you were considering breaking your engagement the night you met Elliot. He thought his fiancee had broken up with him. We know what ensued after. You didn't end up breaking your engagement with Mark. Why?"

"I was still trying to decide if it was a good idea," Olivia said. "Plus, I'd been feeling sick, which I found out later was from the pregnancy. I just hadn't found the right way or time to do it."

"Do you know why Elliot ended up getting back together with his fiancee?" Rebecca asked.

"For his kids," Olivia said. "He had a toddler and she was pregnant with their second. He told her if she didn't want to marry him for the two of them, to marry him so the kids could have a stable life."

"And when Mark found out you were pregnant, why didn't you break the engagement then?" Rebecca asked.

"Because he thought she was our miracle baby," Olivia said. "He was happy for once. Excited about an unplanned change. I couldn't take that away from him."

"Even if it wasn't what you wanted?" Rebecca asked.

"It was what I wanted," Olivia said. "For my child to grow up with two married parents who loved her."

"Does Mark love Chelsea?" Rebecca asked.

"Of course he does," Olivia said. "He's been doing most of the caregiving since I made detective, and especially since I made SVU. He cares about her a lot."

"But does he love her?" Rebecca asked. "I care about my patient's well-being. You care about your victims. But care isn't always love. Does he love her?"

"As much as he can love anybody," Olivia said. "He didn't grow up in a very loving household. There wasn't abuse or anything, but it was mostly boys and there was hardly any affection."

"Does Mark love you?" Rebecca asked.

The question startled Olivia. Did Mark love her? She always thought so. He just didn't express love the same way everyone else did.

"I mean, again, as much as he can love anybody," Olivia said.

"Can you define love for me?" Rebecca asked. "To you, what are the hallmarks of the emotion?"

"Well, trust and loyalty are big parts of it. Someone coming into your life and staying, even when things get difficult," Olivia said. "Listening to what someone has to say. Trying to cheer them up when they're hurting. Sacrificing your own comfort to help them. Comforting them when they need it. Showing up even when you don't have to. Enjoying their company, their personality. Sharing things about yourself that you wouldn't share with other people."

"Our time is almost up again for the week," Rebecca said. "I want you to think about your definition of love. Really think about it and determine the people in your life who you love the way you think someone should be loved. You don't have to write it down. We don't have to go over it. I just want you to think about who you truly love in this world, and who might truly love you back."

Olivia gulped and nodded, because there were only two names currently at the top of that list, and neither one of them was her husband.

Chelsea and Elliot. Those were the first two names to come to mind.


A/N: As the fans say "DUN DUN". Reviews make my day! Thanks to Maddi who informed me that BPD isn't an abbreviation for bipolar disorder. I've updated all the chapters (or at least I hope I did. I don't always see my changes reflected when I make updates) to remove that! Now I think we can see why I'm not adding that part into the storyline!