A/N: I double-spaced the dialogue for easier reading (the format didn't transfer from Word. Blast.) I also changed which daughter, because I'm the author, and... I can. And it worked better for later in the story. Trust me. Thank you so much for all the reviews!
The rain was pouring Saturday night. Olivia, Elliot, Munch, Fin, even Cragen, had nothing to do. It was so cold outside, and the rain so torrential, it seemed not even hardcore perverts wanted to face the weather. They were all going bored out of their minds.
"Scrabble?" Munch asked sarcastically. "Trivial Pursuit?"
"Don't you know how to play any games that don't involve your massive intellect? Like, skills?" Elliot wondered aloud.
"C'mon, a dog wouldn't be out in this," Fin said. "Why are we all here again?"
"Because it isn't dogs we're dealing with," Olivia replied. She was trying to find something meaningful to do. She'd settled on cleaning out her desk. "Good God, this is from August. That was four months ago!"
"Five. It's January, hon," Elliot told her. She rolled her eyes at him and went back to throwing out papers, old candy wrappers, and a few other wrappers she'd rather none of the guys saw.
"Did you hear that?" Cragen asked.
"Hearing things, old man? Fin cracked with a grin.
"No, outside. Sounded like a girl."
"You're making things up. We're all bored out of our skulls. I can't remember a night this quiet," Munch remarked. "We're even nearly out of paperwork."
"I'm going to go look. If nothing else it'll get some fresh air."
No sooner had he put his hand on the door did it burst open, catching everyone by surprise, making them freeze for a moment. The figment of Cragen's imagination.
"What the-"
"Daddy... Daddy- where is he- please- DADDY!"
Everyone instantly sprang into action. Elliot crawled over his desk, scrambling over it rather than take the extra second and a half to walk around it. Olivia wasn't far behind him, as Cragen caught Elliott's youngest daughter.
"He- he- Daddy- I'm sorry- I tried-"
"Sweetheart, sweetheart, hush baby..." he soothed, taken Elizabeth from his captain. Every second of his training seem to disappear as he took in his daughter's face, her bruised face, her wet tangled hair, her bleeding lip. He looked into her eyes, her beautiful blue eyes, his eyes, and wiped the tears he saw there.
"Lizzie, what happened?" Olivia asked, every part of her radiating concern.
It seemed everyone but Elliot knew the answer.
"He... raped me... I tried Daddy, I'm sorry, I tried to do everything you told me, but-" she crumbled once more into tears, curling her knees up against her body, sobbing.
Elliot couldn't say anything. The idea his daughter, his beautiful, perfect daughter could think she had failed him by being so horribly violated left him unable to speak.
Thankfully, Olivia suffered no such impairment.
"It's okay, honey. We're going to take you to the hospital, okay?"
"You mean- for the- no, I don't want to, please! I just want to go home... can't I take a shower? Daddy, take me home, please?"
"Sure, we'll leave now-"
"Elliot!" Olivia said sharply. Her voice, so hard, the voice she usually reserved for people in the interrogation room, seemed to get through to him. He bent down and looked once again at her. This time, he noticed her torn shirt, the black bra strap with the elastic shot, hanging off her shoulder. The blood on her jeans.
"Honey, you might... be hurt. We just need to make sure you're alright, okay?"
"But I don't... they'll touch... Daddy, I just want to go home!"
Olivia once again took the lead as her partner's face lost its composure and told her as gently as possible, "It won't take long. Then you can go home. We just want to be sure you're okay."
"Stay? With me, I mean? Please?"
"Of course, sweetheart..." Elliot told her, gently brushing some of her hair out of her eyes. "Of course I will."
"I mean... Olivia too?"
"Sure, honey. C'mon, let's go, okay?" She extended her hand to help Elizabeth up, expecting her to pull herself up. Elizabeth tried, but her knees buckled, falling against the floor before her father could catch her.
"I've got you. Don't worry, I can carry you..." he said softly, kissing her forehead. She buried her face into his flannel shirt, crying without reserve once more.
"I'm such a- a-," she gasped, sucking in each breath as if it might be her last, "b-b-baby. I didn't even- fight him-"
Every syllable seemed to cause two reactions within him- absolute rage for whoever had done this, and absolute love for his little girl. Olivia helped him gather his daughter in his arms, a stunned Cragen opening the door.
"I'll get the squad car," Munch said. It wasn't often he found himself out of the loop, out of touch, lost without an answer, a solution, but it seemed such a moment had descended.
Elliot sat on the hard hospital waiting chair, his forehead pressed into his hands. He was positive he had memorized every speck of dust on the otherwise white tile floor. The rythmic click of the clock behind him seemed to be like a blow to the head, each one making him want to grab the chair he was standing on and throw it at the blinded window where his partner and Elizabeth were.
He had finally convinced Cragen to stop pacing up and down the hall, which only served as another anxiety-producing irritant. His captain was now sitting in the chair opposite to him, reading some inane magazine. Whether he was actually reading it or flipping pages to give his hands something to do, Elliot couldn't tell.
Finally, after what seemed like a million too many years, the door opened and Olivia walked out. She looked shaken, and her eyes wouldn't met his.
"Olivia?" he finally said after she had stood there for a minute without saying anything.
Her throat worked, but nothing came out. Her hand flew to her mouth, then her eyes.
Cragen cleared his throat and said, "I'll just be going home, then." He gave his detectives one last look, and let them continue their staring contest, leaving silently.
"Elliot..."
"Olivia, please just say it."
"She has scar tissue. It's at least a few months old."
His face fell, while he tried to work through what he'd just heard. "It could be from having sex, I mean, she's not-"
His partner reached for his hand as she nearly choked on the words, "The scars are too deep to be from that."
He slowly sank back down into his chair, while his partner could almost hear the gears turning in his head, as he tried to go through all five stages of grief at lightspeed.
"But... how... she-" he stumbled, trying to get his train of thought to stop turning into actual words. He couldn't have spoken what his mind was saying if he wanted to, and given where they were headed, he wasn't sure that was the case.
Olivia watched as his crystalline eyes, so much like his daughter's, flickered back and forth, half-closed, as if he had to concentrate extra hard to make sense of all this. She was absolutely torn. The cold, distant, trained part of her knew that she should stay silent and let him deal with this, to let him process what he had just heard. The man's partner and friend wanted to make this all go away for him and to turn back the clock about five hours, or stop him from putting all the emotion he was feeling in deep freeze.
Moments passed, and if she had been walking by she would have wondered if he had slipped into catatonia. She knew better than to interrupt him, but she couldn't help herself. She sat down in the chair next to him, and laid a hand on his shoulder gently.
"Elliot-" she whispered in a softer voice than he had ever heard before.
"Someone raped my little girl, and I didn't know about it." He whispered for fear of screaming it. Tears nearly flew from his eyes, but he stopped them with a hand, or tried to.
"No," she said forcefully, taking his hand in hers. "No. Don't you dare, Elliot. Don't even try to pretend your daughter's innocence isn't worth crying over." She was careful not to raise her voice, but nothing could have prevented the iron emotion she felt from showing.
"Olivia-" he choked, as he finally let the tears he had been holding back all night down. He covered his face with his hands, sobbing. She wrapped her arms around him, letting him lean against her and put her head on his shoulder.
"It'll be okay. She'll be okay. We've seen it happen. She'll have everything she needs. It'll be okay," she whispered. She must have said it fifty times before he calmed down enough to let her go. He pulled back, wiping his face, and Olivia produced a Kleenex from her pocket. He chuckled as she handed it to him, a smile on her face.
"You know this shirt's dry clean only, and I just let you get snot all over it."
She said it so matter-of-factly, like it was an everyday occurance for her to see him cry and to support him, instead of the other way around, that he had to smile.
"You are unbelievable..."
"Is that a compliment?" She was glad they could fall into this, their comfortable give and take routine.
Before he had a chance to answer, he heard from down the hallway a singularly shrill voice yell, "ELLIOT STABLER!"
He closed his eyes and muttered, "Kathy," just as his ex-wife came running down toward him.
"Where is she? Is she alright? What HAPPENED? Why didn't you CALL me? Why did someone else have to? How-"
"Kathy, calm down, she's okay, she's up getting her rape kit done-" he explained, but she cut him off.
"ALONE? You left her there all by herself?"
"I was with her. She's done, she's probably still taking a shower," Olivia said, trying to step between them before she clawed his eyes out.
"Was Ispeaking to you?" Kathy asked icily, not even looking at her.
Olivia knew that Kathy had thought for years that Elliot had been having an affair with her. She always tried her best to be friendly anyway, but tonight she snapped.
Elliot stared in some mixture of horror, amusement, and disbelief at his partner and ex-wife. Had she really just slapped her? Crap, who was he supposed to defend? I mean, she had been his wife for twenty years years, had four kids with her, but she was totally out of line and Olivia hadn't even done anything-
Fortunately, Olivia spared him the trouble. "Go see your daughter. Fight with him later."
Kathy looked at the two of them wordlessly, her hand up to her cheek, then walked down to the nurse's station to ask which room Elizabeth was in.
As soon as he was relatively sure Kathy couldn't hear, he burst out laughing. All the pent-up tension, the aftermath of his crying jag, and (he had to admit) the out-right hiliarity of what had just happened got to him, and soon it got to Olivia. She cracked a grin and sat cross-legged on the floor.
"I totally didn't mean to do that," she said once he'd stopped.
"The hell you didn't," he said, catching his breath.
"Okay, maybe I wanted to-"
Elliot shook his head. "I never could convince her I wasn't sleeping with you."
Olivia snorted. "I could have. I haven't gotten laid in so long I'm sure the signs of sexual frustration must be obvious."
He blinked, and she laughed. "Is there any kind of response to that that won't get me in trouble?"
"No. So don't try."
"Daddy?" Kathleen asked as she turned the corner, her brother and sister holding both her hands. "Mom never came back to the car-"
Elliot scrambled up and hugged his other children. "Elizabeth's gonna be okay."
"Daddy, what happened?" Dickie asked him, so innocently.