(AN- OK, I'm a bad author. I have absolutely no clue how old Elizabeth is- I'm trying to catch up with USA- I'm a recent addict. For all intents and purposes, it's a few years after the divorce, and she's fifteen about to be sixteen. Artistic license and all that. Thanks everyone for the reviews! I'm trying to update weekly.)
Two weeks later
Elliot heard a knock on his door, jolting him awake. He scrambled for some clothes, then walked through his living room. He was shocked to see Kathy and Elizabeth standing there through the peephole and immediatly opened it.
"What's wrong?" Elizabeth wrapped her arms around him, and cried. He smoothed her hair and kissed the top of her head. Her only response was to hug him tighter.
Kathy sighed, and he saw tears in her eyes. "She feels safer with you," she whispered.
"I'm sorry, Mom," Elizabeth said, letting go of her father.
"Why don't you guys come in," Elliot said. He opened the door wider for them, and sat down on his couch with Elizabeth, Kathy choosing a chair across from them.
"She keeps having nightmares. She'll just scream and scream-"
"I'm in the room!" Elizabeth said angrily. Kathy pursed her lips and looked like she was about to snap right back, when Elliot stopped them both.
"Fine," Kathy said, standing up. "Is it okay if she stays here?"
Elliot was dumbfounded. "Uhm-"
"Good. Some of her stuff is in the car." She stalked out the door, slamming it behind her.
Elliot blinked. Elizbeth rolled her eyes and said, "She's mad at me. She's always mad at me."
"What do you mean?"
"She's just snapping at everyone. Being a bitch," she said harshly.
"I HEARD that," Kathy announced from the now-open door, a few plastic bags in her hands. She dumped them at the door, then turned on her heel and headed to her car. Tires squealed as Elliot closed the door softly.
"Your mom is having to work really hard-" he started, before Elizabeth cut him off.
"So? And you didn't? You worked three times as hard as she did, dealing with God knows what, hauled out of the house at least twice a week-" she stopped herself and flopped back down on the couch after grabbing her things.
Elliot sighed and joined her. "So. Nightmares."
Elizabeth curled her legs up under her and played with the drawstring on her pajamas. "Yeah. I'm freaking everyone out. Mom snapped tonight... it was the third time this week I woke everyone up screaming. Kathleen was crying."
Elliot twisted his mouth to the side, thinking. "Maybe you should try talking to someone."
Elizabeth smiled at him, and said sadly, "Who would understand?" He put his arm around her, and she leaned into him.
"When does it end?"
He had no answer for her. He nudged her over, then went to the closet and pulled out a blanket. She scooted over, and he lay back down on the sofa, his daughter in his arms.
He left the light on, Elizabeth noticied. She smiled, and went to sleep. Elliot soon followed.
"You alright?" Olivia asked him as he sat down at his desk, seeing the circles under his eyes and the grim line of his lips. He grimaced, looking at his watch and said, "Wow, you're getting slow. That was a whole minute and a half after I got in the door."
"Smartass."
"Punk."
They settled into the morning routine of paperwork, coffee, and bitching about the paperwork and the coffee. In reality, paperwork was better than cases- paperwork didn't cry.
"Olivia Stabler?" Fin's far too happy voice called out, jarring them out of the stupor three hours of staring at legal jargon had caused.
"The hell?" Olivia and Elliot said at the same time. They both got up and turned to see Fin standing beside a tall, thin young woman with long hair braided into pigtails. Her jeans were torn at the pockets, and her boots were scuffed and scarred from working. Black oval lenses framed green eyes that looked too old for such a young face.
"I'm Olivia Benson and this is my partner Elliot Stabler," she answered.
"Sorry- I got a message from a Doctor Skoda that I was supposed to talk to a somebody Stabler about his daughter, and if I couldn't reach him to talk to Olivia something, but I spilled Coke on the note my assistant took- yeah, so anyway. Hi. I'm Morgan McDonnell. I'm the assistant director of Mountain Laurel," she said genially, with an awful Southern accent. She extended her hand and Olivia shook it, then offered it to Elliot, who shook it carefully.
"Texas?" he asked, and she laughed.
"Never could get rid of my accent. I'm just a good ol' South Texas cowgirl," she replied with a smile. "No idea how I ended up in New York. Too cold if you ask me, but then I spent most of my life thinking sixty degrees was cold. Are you busy now?"
"Actually, a little..." he said regretfully. This was the one shrink that reminded him nothing of Huang or Skoda, which was always a plus. He already seen four that they had suggested, and Elizabeth seemed to take as dim a view of them as he did.
"Don't worry," Fin said quickly. "Olivia Stabler and I can handle it." Olivia rolled her eyes, and to everyone's surprise, actually blushed.
"I'm never going to live this down, you know," she told Morgan, who chuckled. "Nice to meet you," she told Olivia, shaking her hand again.
As soon as Fin and Olivia walked away, Olivia smacking him for another whispered "Olivia Stabler", Morgan turned her thousand-watt smile on Elliot again. "Wanna go out to lunch? I've got my boss's credit card."
Elliot accepted, and as he went to get his coat, he noticed Olivia giving the woman a look that would have peeled paint. She quickly looked down when she noticed he had seen her face, and pretended to ignore Fin teasing her.
"Did I just hear the words Olivia Stabler?" Munch asked as Elliot and Morgan walked out the front doors. They both laughed as they heard Olivia's emphatic "NO."
"Methinks the lady doth protest too much," Morgan said under her breath as she unlocked her car door. Elliot pulled the handle, but it was still locked. She leaned over the console and unlocked it, explaining as he got in that she'd had this car since she started college.
"I've kicked the crap out of this car," she said. "Neither of the front blinkers work and only the back right window rolls down. And I need gas."
"Turn right on your way out," he said as he put on his seatbelt. "So, what's the deal with Mountain Laurel?" he asked. "I've have looked at so many treatment programs, I've kinda lost count." She pulled out of the parking lot and in the direction of the nearest gas station.
"Trust me, I know the feeling. Well, I was fresh out of grad school in Texas when I found the place- my dad knows another shrink up here. It's a residential treatment facility for survivors of rape or sexual assault. Basically a ten dollar word for nut house." When he flinched at her brusque choice of words, she pulled up the sleeve of the hand on the steering wheel with her free one. Her forearm was covered in scars, with three diagonal gashes, white with age and raised, running across her wrist. "I say that with great affection. Spent most of my youth trying to avoid them.
"Mountain Laurel is unique in that we only treat rape victims. Some of our clients are sent to us fresh out of the hospital, some months, years or even decades later. Self-injury, eating disorders, sexual disorders, borderline personality disorder, depression with PTSD, flashbacks- you name it, we got it. We use a mixture of conditional behaviour modification- do you know what that is?" she asked, realizing she had slipped into what she called "shrink speak".
When Elliot shook his head, mildly fascinated by the horrible, deep lines on her skin, she went on, "It's basically using cause and effect in simple situations that we set up to teach broader, more complex psychological constructs. We combine that with your run of the mill psychotherapy. It works pretty well."
"Sounds like you have some personal experience," he said. She shrugged and looked fixedly ahead. She pulled into the gas station and parked her car, coming to a stop smoothly. She stepped out of the car, popped the tank, and slid her card into the reader. He got out of the car and stood beside her as she pumped gas into her dilapidated little sedan.
"I was raped when I was eight by my grandfather. Tried to kill myself when I was eleven. My mom attempted suicide when I was fourteen and I found her. Started cutting after that, tried to kill myself a few more times. Spent about half my life anorexic, screwed my chances for having kids. Fifteen years of therapy, eight psychotropic drugs and lots of friends later, here I am."
She said this efficiently, not void of emotion, but without any distress either. She spoke with the same feeling as she did when describing her car- a broken down little thing that had served her well.
"I'm sorry," Elliot said, not knowing what else to say. He usually saw victims cry after telling stories like that. Morgan shrugged and pulled the nozzle from her car and replaced it, twisting the gas cap on with her other hand.
"Don't be. He's dead now, I'm happy to say. He'll get his due."
Elliot blinked. This was the first rape survivor he believed when he heard her say she felt she was over it now, and told her as much when they were in the car again. She shook her head, saying, "You never get over it all the way. I still have bad days- nightmares about it when I'm stressed out, days it's all I can do to eat half a PopTart and getting out of bed seems impossible. You deal with it. That's what I teach my girls- it's a lot easier to deal with once you stop trying to pretend you can be normal again, that you'll get your old life back. This is your life now, and it comes with its own blessings."
"Blessings?" he asked incredulously.
"Blessings," she repeated. "You'll hear that speech later. I spent three years in grad school perfecting it, and I need time to do it justice." Elliot digested this for a moment, and she let silence fall in the car for a few moments.
"Do you have any idea where I'm going? Because I don't."
"Oh, uhm..." he said quickly, looking around for a street sign. "If you turn around and take the second left back there, there's a steakhouse."
"Sweet," she said, taking a quick right turn at the next light to cut through a parking lot. "So tell me about your daughter."
"You know it's illegal to do that," he remarked. She smirked and rolled her eyes.
"Sure do. Nice try, by the way."
"I don't like psychologists."
"Good, me neither. My bachelour's is in special education and my master's in social work. No more a shrink than you are. Bad experience?"
"I was reviewed a while back because of something I said that I shouldn't have."
"Spilled the beans, did he?"
"She. And it was crap."
"What'd you say?" When he hesitated, she said, "Hon, I've either heard of it or lived it myself. You won't surprise me."
"Told a doc they sent in to make sure none of us were crazy that I thought of how I could get away with killing rapists."
She stared at him open-mouthed. "They wrote you up for THAT? Good God, there's a bunch of assholes who've never worked with rape victims before." She turned her gaze back to the road, looking for the place. "I couldn't do your job. I'd find a way to make sure they all looked like suicides."
"And your job is any better?"
"I don't have to touch the scum that hurt innocent women and little girls. I can do something for them, I can tell them it'll get better- I can SHOW them it does. I can have my happy little revenge fantasies from a safe distance and pretend I'm aiming at every bastard's head when I take my girls target shooting." She shook her head again. "I could have shot my rapist in cold blood, in the dark while he slept in his hospital bed. And smiled." Now, iron will kept the pain and anger out of her voice, but it was a near miss, and Elliot noticied. He liked her.
"So, that's my sob story." Her dark face vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
"Tell me about your daughter."
Elliot swallowed, pursing his lips. "She won't tell me what- what happened."
"There's more to her than what happened to her. What's she like? What does she do?"
She let him think about that for a minute. "Turn here?" she asked. He nodded. She parked the car somewhat inexpertly and hopped out of the car.
"Don't bother locking it. I would love for someone to steal this piece of crap," she said. They started walking towards the restaurant. Morgan cracked her neck, and Elliot winced.
"Keep talking, or I'll snap it the other way."
"She's shy. She's the youngest- her and her twin brother, Dickie. She has two older sisters."
"How does she do in school?"
"She does okay." He paused, remembering this morning. Elizabeth had cried that morning, begged him not to make her go to school. He had let her stay home, leaving her curled up watching movies, with strict instructions to call him if she needed anything. "She doesn't want to go. She's skipped a lot since this happened."
Morgan nodded. "That's normal. It's hard to concentrate," she said. "How old is she?"
"Fifteen. She'll be sixteen in a few months."
"She know how to drive?" She laughed when Elliot shuddered and opened the door for her.
"Don't remind me."
"Alright, so what else? Do the kids live with you?"
Another pause. "That would be a no," she answered for him. They slid into a booth, and Elliot immediatly picked up a menu.
"Dude, it's a steakhouse. Sirloin, rare." She felt, rather than saw, the tension and unease he felt whenever she pressed too hard. She hoped that she could work that out of him, and planned on asking him in a more roundabout way.
He peeked over at her from the menu. "That's disgusting."
"I like my steak to moo at me," she said flippantly. "God, I miss Texas sometimes. Yankees don't know how to do ANYTHING."
"What can I get you two today?" their waiter asked. "Start off with drinks?"
"Just water," Elliot said, still perusing his menu.
"Can I get a virgin pina colada?" Morgan asked. "And if Mr. Well Done here is ready, I'd like the eight-ounce medallion, medium rare." The waiter took her order down, then looked at Elliot, who shook his head to indicate he wasn't ready.
"Virgin?" he asked with a cocked eyebrow. "What are you, Mormon?"
She smiled wickedly. "Actually..."
"Oh, God," he said, laughing. "Open mouth, insert foot."
"Don't worry about it. You'd never know it to look at me."
"We stopped going to church after... after the divorce."
"Catholic?"
"Why?"
"You look guilty." He chuckled and accepted his water from the waiter with a thank you. Morgan took her drinkas well, and popped the cherry in her mouth with relish, stem and all. She pulled the stem out of her mouth, tied into a knot.
"Smartass," he said. "How do you do that?"
"Great skill," she replied with a laugh. "I remember I was bored out of my mind at a date, and I had a cherry shake. I was playing the stem in my mouth, trying to knot it- trust me, he was that dull. It was all I could do not to jump up and yell, 'I GOT IT!'"
"Is your whole family Mormon?"
"Yup. Three wives and all." At his slightly horrified look, she had to chuckle. "No, I'm the only member in my family. And the church doesn't practice polygamy." She thought for a moment, debating whether to ask her next question. "So how's your faith these days?"
"Why is that important?"
"It's not."
He sighed- she had hit a rather sore spot. "Do you ever wonder why God lets bad things happen to innocent people?"
"All the time. I do a lot of volunteer work with disabled people as well... they have such beautiful souls, and spirits. I wonder what they did that God thinks they deserve this life."
"How do you deal with it?"
She drank her virgin thoughtfully for a moment, thinking. "I think God does everything for a reason. I know that He loves His children, and that He hates to see them hurting. But He can't stop people from hurting them- otherwise, where is our free will? It's someone's choice to rape, to hurt, to kill. Their victims, though... I don't know anyone who hasn't thought, 'Why me? Why was I raped? What did I do to deserve this?' But maybe it was me... because I'm strong. And He knew that. He knew I would overcome. I had to believe that. I had to believe I could recover. The ones that don't... maybe they don't believe. Maybe they can't bring themselves to." She shook her head, sadness in her green eyes. "That doesn't always, work though. I just have to trust that I'll know why one day."