Author's comments: The title is from the song is 'Better Days', by Mae Muller and Polo G.

Better Days

Chapter Two

Part One

Olivia squirmed, swearing to herself she wasn't going to play into this monster's hands.

"You tell him about my past, Wheatley." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "You're so good at talking."

"No, I think he really ought to hear it from you."

Self-righteous creep.

"I don't care." She wished she sounded braver. "I'm not doing this."

"Okay, if you insist." To the side of their back-to-back chairs was a table, and Wheatly now leaned back against it, his arms folded in front of him. "You see, this guy named William Lewis—a low-life rapist and murderer—managed to break into an SVU detective's apartment—Benson's apartment. He—"

She squeezed her eyes shut. "Wait."

That only thing worse than Elliot hearing this story would be to for him to hear it out of this clown's mouth. "Elliot," she said softly.

"It's okay, Liv." She couldn't see him, but his voice had a gentleness that he usually reserved for her alone. "I'm sorry for not asking. I didn't want to intrude."

Wheatley just had to cut in. "See? Now we're getting somewhere with this couple's therapy session."

Olivia sighed, ignoring him. "Lewis got into my apartment, yeah. We never did figure out how. He burned me with keys from the stove. Punched me, tortured me." Elliot's hand grasped hers, and she tried to restrain the tears that wanted to spill. She cleared her throat. "He knocked me out and took me in a series of cars, put me in the trunk. We went to his lawyer's parent's house, and he raped her mom and killed her dad and made me watch."

She could hear some hefty throat-clearing from Elliot, but he didn't speak, just tightened his grip on her hand. She clutched his tighter in return. "Anyway, he drugged me and forced me to drink alcohol until I was woozy. Withheld water."

She kept her eyes clutched tightly closed, not wanting to see the satisfaction in Wheatley's face as he listened to her recount her torture. Why was he doing this? Just to watch Elliot squirm? If that was the entire plan, it was working, because Elliot couldn't sit still in his seat. But he never let go of her hand, and she figured the best way to get through this was to just finish.

"He shot a police officer while I was in the back of an SVU he stole. Then he took me to an empty vacation home on Long Island, where he—" She gulped, unable to finish the sentence.

Wheatley prodded her. "Go on."

She started to mumble. "He tried to—I thought he was going to—"

"Speak up."

Now she wanted to punch Wheatley in the face, because he was reminding her of Lewis when he had verbally poked at her on the stand. "I thought he was going to rape me. He was going to, told me everything he was going to do to me. Then a maid showed up at the door with her granddaughter, and I wrenched the bar off the bed I was handcuffed to. When he came back in, I knocked him out. Then I beat him until I thought he was dead."

Elliot's whisper echoed in the enormous room of the meat-packing plant. "Good for you."

She nodded, as if he could see her. "I walked away with a broken wrist, a concussion, several broken ribs, but I lived. And so did he. There was a trial. It was brutal, but he went to prison."

She went silent, and Elliot ran his thumb over her fist. "I'm so sorry, Liv, I—"

"Oh, wait. There's more," Wheatley cut in.

Olivia sighed. "You're kidding me."

"No, tell him the rest. You needed therapy for years after all this. Elliot, I'm afraid she's never been the same since."

"Can you just shut up, Wheatley?" Even with her chest tightening, she knew she had to finish the story. "Lewis got out. Escaped from prison."

"What?"

It was the first time Elliot had commented this whole time, and his voice startled her. Despite the tension in her muscles, she went on. "He texted me, and then kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl to lure me into an abandoned grainary. Tied me to a table. Climbed on top of me and grabbed me, and this time I knew he was going to finish what he'd started before."

Elliot clutched at her hand so hard that it almost hurt, but she savored the pain because it took her mind off the memories. "But I just gave up at that point, and he got bored. So, he made me play Russian Roulette with my own gun instead. And then he got to the last shot and held the gun to my head." She gasped, "I thought I was going to die."

"Oh, my God, Liv." She could almost see Elliot cringing.

"And then he shot himself. Knowing that I'd have to defend myself against accusations that I murdered him. But the bottom line is, he's dead now, and I survived and didn't go to jail or lose my job for his death."

She heard all the air leaving Elliot's lungs in a grateful sigh. But his hand still clutched hers, as if he couldn't bear the thought of losing that touch after hearing her ordeal. "Liv, I'm so sorry I wasn't here for you."

"It's okay, El. I made it through without you."

She hadn't meant it to sound callous, but it came out that way, and she immediately regretted saying it at a moment that could be one of their last.

"Well," Wheatley perked up. "Now that you know how much you've let her down, Elliot, you get to helplessly watch as she suffers even more because of you."

Elliot's tone took on an edge of desperation. "C'mon, Wheatley. You won—you humiliated both of us in front of each other. Just let her go and do what you want with me."

"Nope. You know I can't, Elliot." Olivia flinched as Wheatley cut the duct tape that bound her arms to the chair, leaving her hands zip-tied together behind her back. He yanked her out of her seat, and with the help of one of his thugs, thrust her toward a meat hook hanging in front of Elliot. She tried to control her trembling as Wheatley bent down and zip-tied her ankles together.

They flipped her upside down and she shrieked and flailed, feeling more out of control than she ever had. They lifted her up until they managed to catch the zip-ties around her ankles on the meat hook. Now she was hanging upside down, and Wheatley stood watching her while she swung.

Part Two

Elliot opened his mouth to shout out at Wheatley to stop, but the words wouldn't come out. Why bother, when nothing he said would make a difference? He knew this was as much a battle of psychology as anything else, but he couldn't think with the woman he loved hanging upside down on a meat hook.

I love her.

Why was this new to his fragile psyche? And why had it taken such a traumatic even to help him admit his true feelings, if only to himself?

Olivia's involuntary swinging prevented them from being able to lock eyes, but he still tried to mouth the words, "It's okay" to her.

But things were far from okay, and Wheatley retrieving a twelve-inch Bowie knife nailed that point home. He used the knife to cut Olivia's shirt down the front, and Elliot couldn't keep his feelings inside anymore.

"Stop, Wheatley! Just stop!"

But the guy just smirked, evil reflecting from his dark eyes. Olivia closed her eyes and pursed her lips while Wheatley cut through the rest of her shirt until she was topless, and then he started sawing at her pants, and then her bra. Olivia flinched with every slice, and Elliot prayed Wheatley wouldn't let the blade sink into her skin.

Finally, all the clothing that remained on Olivia's body were her powder blue panties, and when Wheatley sliced them off with one swipe of the knife, Olivia began to cry.

Wheatley relished her pain, starting in on her with a sarcastic tone. "Ah, is that upsetting to you? Bet you wish Elliot had never come back from Italy now, huh?"

She shook her head, her hair floating below her, her hands still bound behind her. Wheatley grabbed her bare breasts, making slow circles on her nipples with his thumbs, and Elliot lunged forward, causing his chair to scrape against the floor, but he barely moved forward an inch and nearly tipped over.

Wheatley slid his hand up her torso until he reached her naked crotch, tousling her pubic hairs a little before planting his fingers right on her fold. She whimpered slightly but quickly stiffened up.

"I'm going to kill you, Wheatley," Elliot said.

Wheatley ignored him and said to one of his goons. "Feel this. It's really soft."

His lackey touched her next and gave an approving nod. "It is. Maybe later we could—"

"Oh, no, no, no." Wheatley wagged a finger. "We are not rapists here. We're more sophisticated than that. "Tony, bring me the prod."

Wheatley soon had a long, skinny device in his hand, and Elliot knew exactly what it was. As soon as Wheatley held the end of the electric prod to Olivia's belly, she began to pant, seemingly anticipating the pain.

"Goddamit, Wheatley, stop this now!" Elliot begged. "What do you want from me? I'll leave you alone. I'll even help you out. Richard, please. I can make sure your operations are never touched by the NYPD ever again. Let's work together."

Wheatley smiled at Elliot, and then returned his gaze to Olivia's pink fleshy abdomen. "Nah. I've come this far. I have to do it now. I'm dying to see it."

As soon as he pulled the trigger, Olivia jolted, yelling out in agony. Her body writhed and folded, and her yelping turned into a scream the longer he held the device against her skin. Finally, he withdrew it, and Elliot could see black marks on her pale stomach.

"Liv! Dammit Wheatley! You better hope to God I never make it out of here…"

"That's the plan, Elliot."

Elliot returned his attention to Olivia, who was letting out a series of soft moans. "Liv, I'm so sorry," he said out loud. "Just hold on."

Part Three

The blood rushed to Olivia's head, making it hard for her to see. Her ankles already ached horribly from the pressure of the zip tie digging into them. But she soon forgot about the pain in her feet when the first shock made her body lurch uncontrollably. She blanked out on everything around her in those moments, focusing only on the sole locus of unbearable burning on her sensitive belly.

When it finally ended, after what felt like minutes, she barely heard Elliot's voice. But she held onto the sound of him as if he was a life raft in a sea of dark waves. Tears fell in reverse, strolling down her forehead and wetting her hair. Trembling, her only thoughts were of bracing herself against the inevitable next shock.

This time he pressed the cattle prod against her chest, carefully avoiding her breasts. She could only guess that he was saving the most satisfying torture for last. She hyperventilated, bracing herself. When the shock wracked her sternum with searing pain, her own howling voice echoed in her ears, which were beginning to fill with a pressure from the blood pooling in her head.

She'd heard about such torture methods from people she'd known that had served in Iraq. What did they say? A human could survive for a day or so when hung upside-down? Or was it a few hours? Hard to remember with her brain so compressed.

She barely noticed when Wheatley withdrew the prod from her skin, her main focus now getting enough air into her lungs. She felt as if an elephant was sitting on her chest, and she took short, deep breaths in a weak attempt to fill them with enough oxygen.

"I can't breathe," she managed to whisper.

"Liv," Elliot said. "Take deeper breaths."

The advice was hardly helpful, although she knew he was just trying to comfort her. He better not tell me to hang in there.

Wheatley pressed the prod against her spine, and when it clicked on, she thought this must be what it was like to be struck like lightning. With all her organs resting on her lungs, she didn't even have enough strength to yell out in pain this time. Her body arched, and she spaced out until he withdrew the prod, and then she began to spin.

"Ah, God," she murmured. "Dizzy."

Gotta get more air.

When she started to feel nauseous and things started to go dark, she knew she had to take the pressure off her crowded lungs, even if only for a few seconds. With her last bits of strength, she bent forward at the waist, trying to lift her torso up enough to lighten the load on her chest. For a few seconds it worked, and she got a few good gulps of air, but then she lost her strength again and collapsed until she was solidly upside down once more.

She caught glimpses of Elliot while she spun around, and he looked as if he was hurting even worse than her. She didn't blame him for what was happening to her. But it was hard to think at all while she was like this. She felt an inferno rising up in her cheeks at the sight of Wheatley holding his torture implement, and it wasn't just from the blood pooling in her face.

Her fleeting thoughts didn't last long once he steadied her for his next assault. When she saw what he had in mind, she started gasping for air even harder than before. One of his goons approached her with a small bucket of water and drizzled it down her spine.

She nearly lost the world to darkness when the fear gripped her, and her vision dimmed to a pinprick barely large enough for her to hear Elliot's roaring voice. "No!"

She panted through flared nostrils. "I can't…I can't breathe…"

But her voice wasn't even a whisper, and she couldn't help but realize that nobody cared, except for the helpless, bound man who had once been her partner.

Wheatley pressed the end of the cold wand against her spine once more, and then everything stopped. A stillness gripped her, as if the hand of an angel had reached down to calm her flailing body. She closed her eyes and listened to the silence, accepting whatever fate would befall her.

I love you Elliot. And Noah, I will always love you.

A brief bolt of electric current punched her like a thunderbolt, and then the world went black.