A/N: Finally we have some of our answers, but there's still more to be revealed in time. Hope you enjoy!
Olivia felt like she was going to be sick. Everything was crashing down around her. Mark knew. He knew everything and she wondered for how long. And now Kathy knew, and Cragen was holding them here when all she really wanted to do was run. She wanted to go pick up Chelsea from school and just… leave. Drive out of Manhattan, head west. Maybe never come back.
She'd just opened the door to one of the interrogation rooms and Mark stepped in when Cragen touched her on the shoulder.
"She'll be with you in a minute," Cragen said to Mark. "Make yourself comfortable."
Then he shut the door on Mark and pulled Olivia aside into the observation room.
"Captain, I can explain," Olivia said, though she wasn't really sure how she could when she didn't fully understand it herself.
"I hope so," Cragen said. "Your partner practically assaulted your husband, and his wife was nearly in tears. What is going on here, Liv?"
"Short version, I filed for divorce," Olivia said.
"Well that's good, because I hate that man," Cragen said, jabbing his thumb toward the two-way mirror.
"You and pretty much everyone else apparently," Olivia said.
"Did he threaten you?" Cragen asked. "Is that why Elliot charged at him like that?"
Olivia took a deep breath and closed her eyes. It couldn't get much worse if he knew the truth, could it?
"Chelsea isn't Mark's daughter," Olivia said. "She's Elliot's."
When she opened her eyes Cragen was staring at her open-mouthed.
"You two had a relationship before you became partners?" he asked. "And you didn't disclose the second I introduced you?"
"Relationship is a bit of a stretch, Captain," Olivia said. "We didn't even know each other's names until you introduced us."
"But everything was… consensual?" Cragen asked.
"Of course," Olivia said. "You know Elliot as well as I do. Of course it was."
"Just checking, with our line of work and all," Cragen said. "And old douche canoe in there found out?"
"I don't know how," Olivia said. "The only people that knew, or that I thought knew until about 10 minutes ago were me, Elliot, and Elliot's mother. But apparently Mark knows, or he's known for a while."
"And Kathy didn't know?" Cragen asked.
"No," Olivia said. Then more to herself than to him she said, "I don't know what we're going to do."
Cragen took her hands in his.
"Olivia, we are your squad and we have your back, in whatever way you need it," he said. "Go in there and get your answers and any way you need support after, I'm here, Munch and Fin are here, and I think you already know this but Elliot would likely kill for you, and I have a sneaking suspicion you'd do the same for him. Whatever you find out in that room, whatever goes on in there, you're not alone when you come back out here, understood?"
Olivia bit down on the tip of her tongue and nodded.
"I'll give you some time," Cragen said, releasing her hand and going back to the bullpen.
She took another deep breath before opening the door to interrogation, trying to convince herself it was just another scumbag behind those doors who she could rattle until he confessed.
The bastard was sitting in one of the chairs, leaning on the back legs with a sickening smirk on his face, and she wanted to slap it off of him.
"So how long, Mark?" Olivia asked, circling the table. "How long have you known?"
"How long have I known what?" Mark asked. "That Chelsea wasn't my daughter or that you were banging your partner?"
"We weren't 'banging'," Olivia said. "It was one night about nine years ago."
"Right, and I'm supposed to believe that's how you just happened to become a cop," Mark said. "Happened to work your way up to SVU. Sure is twisted, isn't it? A sex crimes detective sleeping her way to a position in that very unit. Don't try to tell me he didn't put in a good word to get you assigned and then have him all to himself. Or does he share you with the wannabe rap star and the old Jew too? Maybe even your Captain?"
"ENOUGH," Olivia yelled, slamming her hands down on the table. "I don't owe you any kind of explanation, but I didn't even know Elliot's name until I got assigned here on my merit and nothing else."
"C'mon, Livvy," he said using his nickname for her, one she never liked anyway. "I'm not that stupid. It runs in your blood. Look at what happened to your mother. And you just went out and repeated the cycle. And Chelsea probably will too."
"Keep her name out of your mouth," Olivia said, stepping closer to him. "My mother was raped. I might have made a poor decision, but Elliot didn't rape me. And nothing like that will happen to Chelsea. I'll make sure of it."
"You really are more and more like your mother everyday," Mark said, still grinning. "Going to run off every boy that gets close to her? Maybe threaten to castrate them just like Serena. Of course once she thought I got you pregnant she backed off a little. Wonder what she would think of you and your little mini me if she found out that you too got pregnant by some nameless, faceless man, by choice or not?"
Olivia's blood was boiling. He knew exactly where to cut and exactly where to make it hurt. How could she have been so stupid all this time to trust him. To tell him things about her life and childhood. To have married him at all? This wasn't the man she thought she met in college. Had he changed or had she just never seen it? She had to get herself centered. He was just a perp. She knew how to handle perps, she knew what made them tick. She knew things about him too. She could turn this around.
"You know why I found a man to have sex with the night Elliot and I slept together?" Olivia asked. "Because my fiance wasn't man enough to give me what I really wanted. A child."
"I told you we could adopt," Mark said. "In time."
"But I wanted my own baby," Olivia said. "To feel it growing inside me. To have a real man put it there. But you weren't up for the challenge, so I found someone who was. Elliot's more than man enough. Five kids in 11 years. With two different women."
She saw Mark's jaw tighten and she knew she had him there. The cancer had taken his fertility and messed with his testosterone levels for life. He had performance issues, a gut, and a receding hairline. Those things never bothered her when she thought they were in love, but now? As wrong as it felt, if he was going to play on her insecurities then she was going to hit back tenfold.
"So tell me," Olivia said, still circling the table. "When did you find out Chelsea wasn't yours?"
"About two years ago," Mark said, and Olivia bit the inside of her cheek to keep from dropping her jaw. "When she had to get that blood test to see if she had diabetes because she was having those dizzy spells. When the blood panel came back her blood type was A positive. I told the doctor there must have been a mistake because I'm full B and you're full A, so she'd have to be AB, but they told me it was right."
"And you didn't bring this up to me then?" Olivia said. "You just let it fester for two years?"
"Well, it didn't really matter much until you started spending so much time at work," Mark said. "And I was left caring for some bastard child that wasn't even mine."
That sucker punched Olivia right to the gut. She'd heard her mother yell those words in a drunken rage more than once about men she started seeing who, once they found out about Olivia, left because they didn't want to raise another man's child.
"There's more to family than just blood, Mark," she said. "We were going to adopt."
"We were never going to adopt," he said. "That was just some ridiculous thing I told you so that you felt like you had some control over our future when you didn't have any at all."
She wanted to pause there. Ask him what he meant by her not having any control over their future but it wasn't relevant to her current line of questioning, so she decided to circle back to it later, if she remembered.
"And when did you find out Chelsea was Elliot's?" she asked.
"I thought it was odd how interested he was in her," Mark said. "I thought maybe he was a pervert because, sex crimes and all you know. Nobody chooses that unless they're sick in the head. I saw him holding her at the funeral home and I thought that was it. But then at that party that I only agreed to go to because I thought I could catch him doing something perverted and get him thrown off the job or in jail, his mother said something about him having A positive blood."
Olivia looked at him with her signature "you've got to be kidding me" face.
"You knew Chelsea was Elliott's daughter because the three of us all have the second most common blood type of all humans?" Olivia said.
"Oh no, I just had a suspicion she was his daughter after that," Mark said. "I didn't know she was actually his daughter until about half an hour ago outside when I said it and the both of you almost swallowed your tongues."
"So if you don't care to raise Chelsea, and you obviously have no attachment to me either, why threaten to tell Kathy unless I canceled the divorce papers?" she asked.
"Because I was sure his pretty little wife didn't know anything about it," Mark said. "Figured since he screwed with my home life why not screw with him?"
Olivia didn't even know what to say to that. Elliot, Kathy, Bernie, all of them had been nothing but nice at the party. They tried to talk to him, tried to make him feel included, and he repaid them by trying to destroy their lives?
"Plus, you think as a cop that you have all of this control," Mark said. "You think with that badge and gun on your hip that you're invincible. But you don't have any control at all. I do. I convinced your daughter that work was more important to you than she was. I convinced your mother that one little glass of vodka at that wedding we went to wouldn't hurt her after she'd been doing so good with her sobriety. And I was able to convince you to tear up the divorce papers just to save your partner his sainthood in his wife's eyes."
Olivia's gut was rolling again. How could the man she married, the man she slept with, the man she built a home with, be this evil and she never saw it. It was like Burton all over again. And for a fleeting second she wondered what was wrong with Elliot that she hadn't seen yet if she was falling for him, despite her better judgement.
"Well, you didn't convince Chelsea that work was more important to me than her," Olivia said. "Because she told me about it and I told her the truth. And I absolutely would fight to save Elliott or his family from someone as innately evil as you, even if it meant sacrificing my own happiness. But what on earth do you mean that you convinced my mother to have a glass of vodka at a wedding after she was sober?"
Mark got a big smile on his face and even chuckled.
"Oh yeah, it was right after the blood test and right after you'd started at SVU," Mark said. "We went to that wedding for her old colleague or whatever, and while you were in the bathroom I brought her a vodka tonic in a water glass. Told her she was so much stronger now, she could enjoy her favorite for just one night without getting hooked again. And she believed me."
Olivia saw red, and before she realized it she was at his side, kicking the back legs out from his chair and sending him sprawling to the floor.
"You might as well have pushed her down those subway stairs yourself," Olivia said, feeling the hot tears spring to her eyes. "She was doing so well. She and Chelsea had a bond. Why couldn't you just let her be happy? Let them both be happy."
"Why should they have been?" Mark said, standing up and dusting himself off. "That's the problem with women who don't know their place."
"And where's my place, huh, Mark?" Olivia said, standing up to her full height, thankful she wore boots today so they were almost eye to eye.
"Should be just like Elliot's little wife," Mark said. "Home, taking care of the kids, and waiting for your dear husband to come home, no matter what, or who, he's doing when he's away from you."
"You ever think maybe she wants more too?" Olivia asked, not really knowing why she was defending Kathy. "But maybe she doesn't feel like she has to fight and claw for everything because she at least has a husband who supports her and her choices."
Mark let out another laugh right in her face.
"It really is pathetic how in love with him you are," Mark said. "And I think you're the only one who doesn't have a clue. Maybe except for him. But you're not the one he wants. You're the hit-it-and-quit-it type. He already has a wife. You're just the other woman."
Olivia took another deep breath. She tried to remind herself Mark was a master manipulator, something she hadn't realized until today. But Elliot told her himself that the night they spent together was not pity sex, and she was not some good time side trip. Elliot told her the truth. Elliot did not make her feel weak, or worthless, or incompetent. That was Mark, and he was wrong.
"Screw. You," Olivia said. "You better sign those divorce papers and the termination of parental rights paperwork I'll have sent your way too. Get the rest of your shit out of my apartment and the locks will be changed by this evening."
"Don't you remember, Livvy," Mark said. "The apartment's in my name. So it's you who should have your shit out of there by this evening, unless you want to be arrested for trespassing."
"Fine, whatever," Olivia said. "I'll take the day and Chelsea and I will be out by 6 p.m. Just don't come anywhere near the place while I'm there or I'll have you arrested."
"For what?" Mark asked.
"I'll come up with something," Olivia said. "But don't you ever come near me or my daughter again. You're not a real man and you'll never be one. And we don't need you in our lives. We never did."
Olivia didn't wait for him to add another response. She simply left the interrogation room and didn't look back.
She ran into Cragen in the bullpen.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
"It will be," Olivia said. "I need the day to go move out of my apartment."
"I was just coming to tell you that you and Elliot both have the day today. He and Kathy are on the way out or they just left," Cragen said. "If you need anything, help moving boxes or whatever, you just let us know, okay?"
"Actually there is one thing," Olivia said. "Can you keep Mark occupied for a little bit? I just don't want him following me home and giving me a hard time."
"Sure," Cragen said. "Really, we've got you Liv. Nothing would make me happier than to kick his ass, but in the interest of staying professional, I won't."
"Thanks, Captain," she said.
She watched Cragen disappear into his office and then she headed for the cribs. They should be empty now and she could clear her head before going home and telling her child they had to pack up all their things and move in about 6 hours, and she had no idea where they were going.
Olivia was exhausted, drained, nervous about starting over. But she had a family, one she hadn't even recognized before, here in this precinct. She had Chelsea. She had the things she needed to be happy, and with a little hard work, like everything else in her life, eventually she could make them fall into place.
A/N: Should I go crawl back in that hole or am I still safe? 10 more to go! Sorry if there are typos and stuff. I don't normally proofread because I'm lazy. Then I reread things later and cringe.
