Tension Point
II
Author's Note: Well, reviewer Odakota (a very nice reviewer by the way. Made Heron's feathers ruffle in sheer ecstasy reading those wonderfully kind reviews) suggested that Heron make this a chaptered work, and, Heron is more than willing to comply. So, she hopes you enjoy reading more of this George/Alex fiction, as she is enjoying writing it. Since the last chapter was primarily in George Huang's POV, maybe Heron will write this chapter from Alex Cabot's POV. Well, we'll just see where inspiration goes, eh?
By the way, Odakota, thank you so much for your reviews. They give new definition to the 'warm fuzzies'!
There were a lot of jokes about lawyers out there, most if not all of them portraying lawyers as heartless, sharks, focused only on winning and not on the feelings or cares of the people around them. Problem was, Alex Cabot didn't fit the stereotype. The Adam White case was hitting her hard, and deeply. It was sucking dry her reserve of emotional strength, but she wasn't allowed to let on that prosecuting the pedophile was making her sick.
Every case that came her way made her sick, because even if she won the argument in court, did that bring back the murder victims? Did it undo the rapes? Did it make everything okay, like the trauma had never happened, and did it un-ruin lives? No, no, no, it didn't. Even when she won, she lost, because it was her job to make everything right, and making everything right was beyond her capabilities.
It was Friday, and she'd just been taken off the case for medical leave. Adam White hadn't liked it when she'd attacked his personality and intelligence in the courtroom, trying to get him to blow a hole in his own story, and he'd body-checked her in the corridor, which had sent her toppling into a marble bench before she hit the floor. She had a concussion, a split lip, and several other various bruises she didn't care to name, so her second-chair had taken over the rest of the case for the day.
George Huang had sat with her in the corridor as they waited for the jury verdict. He'd even held an ice-pack to the sore lump on her head and helped her dab the blood from her lip with a paper towel procured from one of the restrooms.
He held her hand when Adam White was declared not guilty, and walked out of the courtroom a free man.
"Alex, I'm so sorry," George told her as a smirking Adam White sneered at them on his way out. "I didn't know my advice would make him react like this, and, I'm sorry you lost the case. If you need anything…"
"George, it's just a bump on the head. I'll be fine, really," she assured him, standing from the bench and taking control of the cold pack. "I'll just go home for now, and then we'll see about re-trying White later, with stronger evidence." He looked about to protest, but she waved him off and walked out to her car, the only sound following her being the tired click of her two-inch heels and the gentle swish of her nylon leggings.
Some would say that it's purely a woman's cure-all, chocolate ice cream and soap opera re-runs before a silly movie while wearing one's oldest and most well-worn pajamas, but if so many women used this method, it had to have some effectiveness. Actually, there was scientific basis in the correlations between stressed women and chocolate sales. Chocolate stimulates the part of the woman's brain that is also stimulated by sex – the pleasure part – so, in short, and not to be crude, but it's a little pick-me-up without the trouble of having a man around.
And it was working just fine for Alex Cabot, until the window by her fire escape was broken and entered. Hearing the noise, she set her ice cream on the end table by her couch and made to leave – she wasn't about to play hero if there was a burglar in her apartment – but she never got the chance to get to the door. Strong arms pinned her to her living room wall, and hot breath whooshed by her ear as her assailant leaned in to talk to her.
"Hi honey, miss me?"
She knew that voice, that poisoned honey wine and red velvet voice. A voice that could send shivers up a woman's spine if she didn't know him, and could send shivers up a woman's spine if she did, though the shivers being good or bad depended on the given situation. In this case, it was a bad thing. A very bad thing.
That voice belonged to Adam White.
"Aren't I a little old for your tastes?" Alex spat, resigned to the fate that probably awaited her. She was being attacked by a rapist. He was probably going to rape her, but that didn't mean she had to be happy about it.
And she wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was afraid. She was terrified. She knew White was going to hurt her, most likely going to sexually assault her, and possibly going to kill her. She wasn't ready to die, nowhere near so, but unless he changed their positions, fighting wasn't possible.
"Well, we've already established that I like my girls a bit younger than you, but you, Bitch, are going to pay for what you said in that courtroom," he snarled, pressing her harder against the wall before throwing her to the floor and aiming numerous kicks at her abdomen and head. Alex, for the most part, tried to lessen the impact by curling around Adam's foot when it came her way, but the pain was still overwhelming.
Was this how all those little girls felt? Or was he nicer to them because they hadn't pissed him off? Was this how Olivia Benson's mother felt?
Dimly Alex was aware of her phone ringing, of her answering machine picking up and George's voice asking her to please answer her phone and was she alright? Most of her awareness, though, was focused on the pain, and the fact that Adam White had just torn off her sweats and was doing to her what she had prosecuted so many rapists for doing to other women. That didn't matter at the moment though. All she could keep her focus on was the pain.
She was barely conscious as Adam finished, getting off of her, giving her one last cursory kick and spitting one last insult at her before he left the way he came. Then there was the kind of silence that drowned out even the comedic movie she had playing on her television. The calm after the storm. Even the pain seemed a bit less intense.
Alex lay there for what seemed like hours, unsure of much and with no way of telling time. After a while there was a politely gentle knock at her door. When she was incapable of answering, the knocking became more insistent, worried even. It was probably George, thinking that maybe her light concussion had caused her to black out or something.
The door opened with a slam, as though someone on the other side hadn't realized it wasn't locked when they forced it open. Hurried footsteps frantically shuffled her way, and someone was calling her name. It actually was George, though what he had initially thought had happened to her probably wasn't as bad as what had actually happened. Either way, she was glad to see him. She was in too much pain to get herself up off the floor to go to the phone and call for help.
"Alex! Alex, how badly are you hurt?" A significantly more intelligent question than 'are you alright?', most definitely.
"Pretty bad," she finally managed to moan. George was already pouncing on her cordless phone and punching in 911.
"Yes I'm sure that's the address, now could you please send out a crime scene unit and an ambulance?" George snapped at the harried call-taker on the other end of the line. "There's been an assault, and possibly a rape. My friend needs medical attention, now!" The calm, cool, collected forensic psychiatrist was gone, at least temporarily replaced with the panicking friend who had just discovered a loved one in a bad situation.
George answered all the questions he could when the police arrived, police that included Olivia and Elliot, and then rode with Alex when the ambulance arrived, which she was more than a little grateful for.
"Did you see who attacked you?" Olivia asked, as she was also riding along, though this time as the SVU officer and not as a friend. Alex nodded, mouthing one word in reply: 'White'.
George felt more than a little guilty as he held Alex's hand, thinking that maybe it was his fault she'd been attacked. After all, he had been the one to suggest attacking White's character in court; he might not have gotten angry enough to come after Alex otherwise. George had predicted that Adam White would immediately respond to implications that he wasn't smart enough or man enough to cover his tracks or commit his crimes the way he had. After all, men of White's personality disorder type couldn't help but correct what they considered to be misconceptions about their skills. Apparently, White knew about his own personality disorder, at least enough to take George's profile and snap it over his knee. He had managed to bottle the rage until it could serve him effectively.
At the hospital, the nurse made George let go of Alex's hand, only allowing Olivia behind the curtain for the sexual assault exam because Olivia was the detective investigating this crime. Alex then endured a long, uncomfortable exam where a perfect stranger looked at – and swabbed for DNA – a place where no one else had ever been allowed to look, while Olivia took pictures of her other injuries for the evidence files. Then came the morning-after pill, and then the general health examination, and finally, they let George stand by her again.
"That wasn't an enjoyable experience," Alex groused, feeling her stress level pushing the edge of her limits. She was trying to hold back tears by acting grumpy. She wasn't going to cry, not yet at least, and not in front of everyone at the hospital.
"I can imagine not," George replied, sensing that condolences might sever what control Alex was attempting to keep over her emotions. He'd remain conversational for her until they were in a place where she would consider it okay to let the dam break. "How are you feeling now?"
"Like shit," she answered in all honesty. Though not usually given towards profanity, Alex felt like a few swear words here and there were more than warranted. "And maybe a little surprised. Adam White is a pedophile, but he still managed…you know…"
"Pedophiles can sometimes still…function…with people that aren't children," George supplied, trying not to slip too far behind the mask of the detached doctor. Alex might prefer that he speak with as little emotion as possible, to help her stay in control, but he cared too much, damn it, and letting all the feeling bleed away from his voice would have felt like something of a betrayal.
Olivia returned, a nearly metallic gleam in her dark eyes, a gleam that promised hell to the man that had put her coworker – and friend – in this position. "We're gonna get this son of a bitch, Alex. You're sure it's White?"
"Yes."
"Then he's going down. For sure this time. There's no way that bastard's getting out of this one."
Olivia stayed just long enough for a little more conversation before she left to file all the paperwork and then arrest White for rape and assault. Alex hailed a nurse for discharge papers after that. As much as people wanted her to stay in the hospital, she couldn't stand staying there if she could walk to leave. Her injuries extended – basically – to deep bruises, but bruises. No bad internal damage, no ribs worse than cracked, and her concussion wasn't of the dangerous variety. She wanted to leave.
"Alex, maybe you should stay for overnight observation," George suggested, supporting most of her weight as she tried to walk.
"I can't stand hospitals," she growled, feeling herself closer to tears than was comfortable. "I need to leave, as soon as I possibly can."
"Then at least stay at my place tonight. I'll take the couch, but I don't think you should be alone in an apartment with a broken window."
Alex agreed to those terms, because, deep down, she didn't think she could handle being alone. The initial terror of White's attack hadn't faded much, and she would probably still be seeing him in dark corners for months at the very least.
It wasn't comfortable to be on this end of Sex Crimes, that was for sure. Alex huddled miserably in the passenger seat of George's car, watching street signs go by, edging grungy streets dimly lit with fading yellow lamps. Bits of debris fluttered in the car-created breeze, and provided a temporary distraction from the disgust that was rearing its ugly head in the back of her mind. She was beginning to understand how rape victims often blamed themselves for their rapes. Rationally she knew that even if she'd fought harder, the same outcome would have occurred, but rationality wasn't a loud voice in her mind.
Vaguely she noticed that the car was no longer moving, and that they had pulled up into the parking lot of an apartment complex. George opened the car door for her, helped her out, shut the door behind her, and then supported her on the walk up to his apartment. The apartment itself, when they managed to get there, was sparsely furnished, the den of a man who was rarely home. A simple black couch adorned the living room, perching lightly on a beige rug over a hardwood floor and accompanied by a matching black floor lamp that proved to be a three-setting type, which George turned to a dim setting.
The psychiatrist and the ADA sat next to one another on the couch, not speaking for a while, but soon, Alex found the silence to be too much to bear alone. She pulled her feet up next to herself on the couch before resting her ear against George's chest, wrapping her arms around his waist. Tentatively he hugged her shoulders, not wanting to press on a bruise.
"I really am sorry this happened to you," George said at last, and that little condolence was all it took for Alex's tension point to snap. She started quietly sobbing into his shirt, finally allowing herself to let go of the tears she'd been holding inside. George gently rubbed her back, encouraging her to get it all out of her system. "Everything's going to be fine," he murmured soothingly. "I'm here, go ahead and cry."
Author's Other Note: Maybe not the best place to end a chapter, but Heron needed to end it here for some reason. Sorry for the week Heron has been on hiatus, she has been visiting her grandparents in between visits to the doctor for ocular diagnostics. Sorry also for the pain in this chapter. Heron is very fond of Alex Cabot as a character, but Heron also tends to torture the characters she respects. Besides, in case Heron forgot to tag this story under 'Angst/Romance', this ain't supposed to be pretty.
And did no one else notice that Heron has been calling Dr. George Huang an FBI forensic psychologist? He's actually a psychiatrist. Oops. Sorry about that one too.
By the way, this whole story is best read while listening to the Dixie Chicks' 'Easy Silence'. Listen to the song and see if you see what Heron means. And do tell Heron just how much you hate her now for what she did to Alex, and for creating Adam White, and all that. Things will be resolved, but the ending probably won't be happy. Maybe it will be. Who knows?
For some reason, 'depth' and 'realism' may not be such a nice thing in this chapter. Heron appreciates any reviews you feel like dropping, no matter what they contain. Bye, for now. goes off to cry over sad chapter