Still more vignettes of Olivia's life post-Surrender Benson. On the things that make up a life: sex, memories, and proper phone manners.

A/N: the references to violence and (consensual) sex get a bit more graphic in this bit, but still nothing terribly explicit. Title and quotes from Mrs. Potter's Lullaby by Counting Crows. Elliot's text is a reference to Rosalita by Bruce Springsteen, which was mentioned before in part two. The bits from the form Olivia fills out are taken from a sexual assault response training at my previous job. The actual form that's given to new clients goes on like that for six pages(!). Yeah, I wouldn't finish it either.

I am so grateful for everyone who has read and commented thus far. I can't honestly say I know when this is coming to an end, but I already have a part four half-completed and I know for sure that is not the end, so there you go!

{Memories are films about ghosts you can never escape}

You knew this whole therapy thing would be difficult.

You did not, however, anticipate that you would think seriously about running out of the office before you even got started. A multi-page form stared up at you, standing in between you and...what? At the heart of it, you were there because you needed a psychological clearance before you could go back to work, and that was the main reason why you weren't downstairs jumping in the first cab, bus, or horse-drawn carriage you came across. You wouldn't be picky as long as it returned you to the safety of home and away from this stack of paper that didn't seem to know when to back the fuck off.

-What sexual or nonsexual acts did the assailant perform?

-In considering the sexual acts performed, is this the first experience you ever had with any of the above?

-Do you feel guilty or ashamed about the assault or about the way you behaved during it?

-Please describe any previous traumatic or extremely stressful events you may have experienced in the past.

You wondered if it would be too flippant to put down 'life, 1968-present' for the latter. God knows there wasn't enough room on the page to list them all individually. Positive attitude, you reminded yourself. Your previous attempt at therapy a few years prior had been hindered by your own cynicism, like a magician at a magic show- what was the point when you already knew all the tricks going on behind the curtain? What could anyone tell you that you couldn't already tell yourself?

That had been a very different time, however. As genuinely traumatic as your 'near miss' at the prison had been, you had never reached the point you were at now, where you were ready to suspend your disbelief and watch as many rabbits being pulled out of hats as it took for you to get some semblance of your old life back.

You are glad that you are already acquainted with your therapist, at least on a professional level. As mortifying as your old home week at the emergency room had been, you needed the reassurance of someone familiar if you were going to voluntarily pour out whatever inside of you passed for a soul these days. What's more, you needed someone who would recognize that you weren't deliberately trying to be difficult, that this was just your sparkling personality (and positive attitude).

An attitude which was being put to the test before the hour had barely even begun. You were focused on your hands in your lap, head down when you heard a phrase that almost made you jump to your feet. "Rape victims-"

"No, nope," you said in the firm voice you typically brought out for defense attorneys trying to put words in your mouth on the stand. "I wasn't raped."

He frowned. "The legal definition of the word covers more than-"

"I'm aware of the definition."

He glanced at the folder in his hand, the one you knew contained a copy of your statement from the hospital. "But in this, you said-"

"I know what I said. I'm telling you that wasn't rape."

Realizing that he was not going to win this one, he stopped arguing semantics and tried a different tactic. "Making that distinction is important to you."

"Yes." This was exactly the kind of shit a stranger wouldn't have gotten away with.

"And why is that?"

"My mother was raped before I was born." Hey, it was the truth, and it was enough for now. "I saw how...she never really recovered, never felt like she could start to heal from it. It haunted her until the day she died."

"You don't want to repeat that in your own life."

Your fingernails dug into the skin of your palm. "You're right. I really don't," you snapped. You hadn't gotten to where you were now just to end up in the same position, like your entire existence had been one big fucked up cycle where nothing you had done had made a goddamn bit of difference. There needed to be some hard line of separation, and you were going to make sure it wasn't crossed no matter what happened, now we're gonna play a game, baby, you've got two choices and it was obvious what you were desperate to prevent, what your choice was going to be, you just keep making this harder for yourself, how fucked up is that, I wonder how far you'd go, and maybe it was fucked up but you weren't going to become her, shut up bitch this is what you wanted, right, you were fucking begging for it but there was never a good choice and he was always going to win but goddamn you weren't giving in now...

And suddenly you were back to reality, head buried in your shaking hands. You looked up hesitantly and there was no doubt that you had been talking aloud. "Fuck, I didn't...shit, I'm sorry, I don't know what to say. I'm sorry."

He tells you that you have to let yourself feel it, that it's the only way to heal.

Feel it. Right. Yeah.

{I woke up in mid-afternoon because that's when it all hurts the most}

Now that Brian was back to working most nights, your life was starting to settle into a nice little dysfunctional pattern.

He always left well before the summer sun had gone down, but still your first order of business was turning all the lamps on in preparation for the darkness. If you had been out while he left, you would make the rounds with your gun cocked at the ready until you were convinced you were alone.

All that only took twenty minutes or so at your most paranoid, meaning you had a lot of remaining hours to fill up, and sleep was not a viable option. For the first time in possibly ever, you wondered why you didn't have more hobbies. Cooking was a non-starter unless you found a book of odorless recipes. Anything creative was out due to your complete lack of talent and your apathy toward crafts. They reminded you too much of your mother, how she fancied herself as some sort of artist but never actually completed anything once she remembered that drinking took a lot less effort.

Unfortunately for you, drinking wasn't an option because of practical considerations. As soon as you had finished your nightly sweep of the apartment, the bathroom door was closed, not to be opened again until you were no longer alone. This obviously presented some challenges. You had plenty of previous experience from being trapped in a car for hours on stakeouts, but this was getting a little ridiculous. You were a grown woman (middle aged, you could hear Elliot's voice reminding you), and you shouldn't be terrified by so much as taking a single step past a doorway. And yet here you were.

Remembering something isn't going to cause it to happen again, your therapist had said. Memories themselves aren't dangerous. You felt like this must be very easy to say for someone who hadn't spent any time in your head, who didn't remember feeling the porcelain of the sink digging into your back and the coldness of a gun against skin damp with sweat and blood and who knows what the hell else and you're so fucking *easy*, fuck, I wasn't even fucking trying there and you're shaking and god no it won't stop...

The door would stay closed.

{I know that I have to get out because I have been there before}

Another item on your nightly schedule was meltdown time which, amazingly, was just what the name implied. You had made a deal with yourself, that in exchange for holding your shit together all day you would have an appointed hour to let yourself break apart. When that time came, you would curl up on the couch or collapse on the bed and just sob, pulling your knees toward your chest in a fetal position and rocking back and forth slightly in an instinctive attempt to comfort yourself. Sometimes you screamed, voice drowned out by loud music and a pillow pressed to your face to keep the neighbors from complaining. Sometimes you channeled your inner Elliot and found things to smash.

It was what had always gotten you through before. You cried and you raged and then the mask went back on and life moved forward. There was no other way you would have survived that whole page of 'traumatic or extremely stressful events' that made up your life. You would say you were a shark, forced to keep moving or die, but you were pretty sure that even sharks slept regularly.

Even without sleep, you might as well have been swimming circles in a goldfish bowl for all the progress you were making. Sharks weren't meant to be in bowls. It had been five weeks and six days since you came home from the hospital and you were going to suffocate and drown if you couldn't break free of this thing you were trapped in. Six fucking weeks! It was time. You can't put recovery on a timeline, Dr. Lindstrom had said. It's not a linear process and it doesn't follow a schedule. And that was great- for normal people. Not you. You didn't have the luxury of time to go back and forth through thirty stages of grief and self pity and complete fucking helplessness. You were a shark, and sharks didn't stay in one place long enough to get hurt. They attacked and then disappeared back into the depths before anyone had time to discover their weaknesses.

The top story on the eleven o'clock news was a huge kiddie porn bust. You could see Nick and Amanda rushing around behind the reporter, all their obnoxious sexual tension temporarily forgotten, lives racing forward as yours inched along. The urge to be out there with them, where you belonged, was so strong that you almost reached toward the screen as if you could just step through it and take up your place.

Soon.

{The lovesick rejections that accompany the company I keep}

Elliot usually called sometime after midnight. You had offhandedly mentioned what nights Brian was working, and he had apparently taken notice. When he had called two nights in a row, it was obvious he was trying to check up on you, no matter what he said about retirement having done nothing to curb his insomniac tendencies. You assured him that you were completely fine, honestly, but you never specifically told him not to call and he knew this was Liv-speak for you are what gets me through the night but I will die before I say that aloud, please don't make me say it.

Besides, you're pretty sure the timing of these calls had less to do with when he happened to be awake and everything to do with when the wife happened to be asleep. Your late night socializing had been one of the first casualties of his move back home. Now, you always thought Kathy was quite a tolerant person, all things considered, but her husband being on the phone with someone else at 3 AM evidently surpassed the limits of said tolerance.

"It's not enough that you're with her 16 hours a day? What can you possibly have left to talk about?" you had heard her shouting on the other end of the line before you hung up, deciding that this was probably not a conversation you wanted to be a party to. This was definitely why polygamy died out, you were sure of it. Much too difficult. You had no ill will toward Kathy- quite the opposite. She was clearly a better woman than you, because you were pretty sure you would only last a week or so before kicking his ass to the curb if you had to live with the guy. Ten days, tops. But even with you having zero desire to usurp her place in his life, there was no escaping the unspoken negotiations that had gone on between you and her with every move he made. It was a delicate dance, handing him over to another woman and a world you would never be a part of, having to rely on blind faith that he would eventually return. You didn't even want to imagine how complicated it would get if you threw sex (or prairie dresses) into the mix.

After that you stopped calling, out of respect for Kathy and the recognition that you were sharing once again, that he was no longer yours at all hours of the day and night. You waited for him to be the one to seek you out, and he kept the TV off so it would be more believable as a work-related discussion if the lady of the house happened to walk in on him again.

There was no using that as an excuse now, of course, and your attitude toward the whole situation had shifted in Elliot's absence. You didn't think she knew you were in contact with him again and you really didn't care if or how he explained it to her. That was his problem. You always had a sense that they fought about you much more than he would ever let on, and you had spent far too long already feeling guilty about interfering in the marriage of a guy you had never even kissed. You were done spending time dealing with the emotional fallout of this 'affair' when you hadn't even gotten a few decent fucks out of it.

That didn't mean that you didn't get a tiny thrill every night when the phone rang, knowing that he was putting his ass on the line and he had decided you were worth the risk anyway. Even now, when all you were doing was mumbling sleepily to each other over the sound of an old Seinfeld episode- it meant something to him. What exactly, you couldn't begin to guess, but something.

You were gazing through the window at a sky that would be light in a few short hours, listening to him breathe on the other end of the line, and you heard the sniffing sound that meant he was about to doze off on you. "Go to sleep."

He insisted he was awake, but you knew it was all for your benefit. "I'm falling asleep too," you lied.

"Nahyourenot," he murmured, because he would argue with you whether he was asleep, comatose, or dead and buried.

"I am and I'm hanging up."

"Nope."

"Goodnight, El."

Click.

Thank you, you mouthed to the glowing screen.

{I can bleed as well as anyone but I need someone to help me sleep}

When Brian finally walked through the door in the morning, you kissed him hello and then sprinted down the hall to end your self-inflicted bathroom exile. You deliberately took your time in the bathtub, both because you really fucking needed a way to decompress after enduring another night and because the longer you waited, the more likely it was that he would decide to go to bed by the time you emerged. It was much easier to play it that way than to sit around willing your eyes to stay open and making not so subtle hints about how he should get some sleep. Your ultimate goal, of course, was to get him to go to bed so you could do the same thing. When he asked, you would assure him that you were sleeping at nights, absolutely. If he pressed you on the subject, you would point out that according to your doctor, you were supposed to be getting plenty of rest and he was the one who wanted you to take it easy in the first place, no? (He had no good response for that one).

Despite the elaborate maneuvers it took to get to this point, you slept much better on these days than you did when he was home at night. The dreams didn't go away, but opening your eyes to see the July afternoon sun beaming down on you through the blinds was comforting in a way that darkness just couldn't be. It also made it much easier to identify who was next to you. This was the longest you had ever gone sharing a bed with someone on a daily basis, so waking up next to somebody only inches away from you was startling even under the best of circumstances. You had also never really been a snuggler, far too used to taking up as much space as you wanted, and lately anything that made you feel pinned down or restrained scared the hell out of you for obvious reasons.

Your solution to this, developed after a few sleepless nights of trial and error for both of you, was to sleep clutching one of those big body pillows in front of you like a shield. Problem solved and everyone slept happily ever after- or not. As much as you were skittish about being too close to someone when you woke up, you also found yourself inevitably trying to move closer to him while you were asleep, giant pillow and all. In the interest of not smothering the poor guy when you ended up sprawled out halfway on top of him, you started curling up on the bed almost horizontally with your head resting on his thigh. "You're going to fuck up your back that way," he predicted, but it was actually strangely comfortable, close but not unbearably so. For you, at least. You know you are taking over his bed and his apartment and his life and you wonder if it's possible that he resents you for it even more than you yourself already do.

As you fall asleep, you think about how you have a good thing here, and maybe he loves you, and good things don't last.

{The price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings}

And then one day, you were sick.

It started with a dizzy, nauseous feeling. This was already a daily occurrence for you, but that day it moved from the usual anxiety-fueled dry heaving to the kind that forces you to clutch the toilet bowl like it's a dear old friend.

"How do you even have anything in your stomach? You don't eat," Brian pointed out, having called in to work in order to keep an eye on you (and point out the obvious).

"How the hell should I know?" You were grateful he was there to save you from puking in the kitchen sink due to the whole irrational bathroom phobia thing, but this wasn't the time to get into another fight about what you were or weren't eating, not when you'd already used up your one food-related argument for the day.

He refrained from making any more stupid observations and stayed up with you for the rest of the night, watching muted replays of baseball games on TV and rubbing your back when you complained that the lower third of it felt like it was on fire. It was enough to make you feel guilty for blowing up at him that morning when you smelled bread burning in the toaster because what, are you not capable of keeping an eye on something for thirty fucking seconds, is it really that hard for you, am I just supposed to sit here all day and try to ignore that it smells like you're fucking torching something in here? You had even stormed out just to prove how angry you were, hearing him shout that you could go to hell as you slammed the door, and you decided not to give him the satisfaction of knowing that it was a very tempting offer. Hell had to be better than sitting on concrete stairs for an hour and swearing to yourself until you decided to go back because you really fucking needed a drink to forget about this shit.

By the next morning you were actually feeling a bit better- probably because Brian had been right and there just wasn't anything left to throw up, as appealing as that thought was. You had made a big show out of eating (unburned) toast and were sipping Gatorade on the couch, intent on peeling the label off of the bottle in one piece, when the landline phone started ringing.

"Go," he said into the receiver, his standard way of answering that you tried to wean him off of before you started finding it strangely endearing. "Who? No shit? No. Really? Serious? Wow. Uh, yeah, I guess, I can ask her?" He set the phone down, looking like he had gotten a call from beyond the grave. "Elliot?"

"Is on the phone?" you finished for him, hoping you looked sufficiently shocked at this and not like someone who had seen your supposedly AWOL ex-partner just two days earlier. "Give me that."

You marched into the bedroom and shut the door behind you before you held the phone up to your ear. "What the hell are you doing calling me here?" you hissed.

"I kept trying your cell last night and you weren't answering."

You closed your eyes in frustration because yes, you had four missed calls, two voicemail messages, and a text- «rosie come out tonight»- all from the same number. "I just woke up. It was a long night, okay, so give me a break." In all honesty, you had considered texting back when you checked your phone first thing that morning, but you deliberately decided to make him wait because you suspected that the only reason he kept calling was that he thought you were getting laid. Along with knowing when you couldn't sleep, he also seemed to have an uncanny ability to choose the absolute worst moments to interrupt. And if you didn't pick up right away, he was all too happy to keep calling until the mood was officially killed and you gave in.

He always had known exactly what you had been doing before you answered, you were certain of it, but he would pretend to be completely unaware as he launched into whatever he was using as an excuse to call. Once it was to ask if you thought he should color-code the tabs on old files.

"Why are you calling to ask me this? Could it not wait until morning?" you had snapped.

"Hey, you're the one who answered. If you didn't want to be bothered, you should've turned your phone off."

"You know I can't do that. What if it was an emergency?"

"If it was that urgent, don't you think I'd try your home phone when you didn't pick up your cell?"

You had groaned in exasperation at that. "You know, I would never call you just because I thought you were-"

"You don't need to."

"And why is that?"

"Because you already know I'd always pick up."

So that is what you were up against here. "I hate to disappoint you, El, but you didn't interrupt me having sex last night."

"I know that. Why do you think I'm calling his phone now?"

"I have no idea, but I'm sure you'll tell me," you said with a weary sigh, waiting to be enlightened.

He acted like the answer should have been obvious. "Because after the third try, I knew something had to be wrong. You would've picked up and told me off by then if you were just screwing the idiot."

"The key there is the third try, El, normal people would leave a message and give it a rest," you said, avoiding the implied question of what you were actually doing last night. "Listen, I can't get into this now. He's leaving for work in a few hours and I'll call you then."

"No, I'll come out there," he insisted, clearly still convinced there was something afoot that he needed to see for himself. "Seven?"

"Fine. Now stop calling. I already don't know how I'm going to explain this one."

"Hey, that's not my problem. You're the one who wants me to be your dirty little secret," he said.

"Mmhmm. And I bet you'll tell your wife exactly where you're going."

Pause. "I'll see you later."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

{you can see a million miles tonight but you can't get very far}

When you weren't being sick and miserable or answering harassing calls from a certain ex-partner, you were thinking about sex. Or something resembling it, at least. You were pretty sure this, whatever this was, didn't fall under the traditional definition of the word.

It wasn't one of your absolute top priorities, not like being able to sleep soundly through the night or eat full meals on a regular basis, but goddamn how you missed it. You had already had far less sex in your life than you might have preferred (and not just because of ill-timed phone calls, although those didn't help). Then you finally had an actual relationship, where you actually had the opportunity on a regular basis- and now that was all shot to hell.

Six weeks had elapsed before the idea didn't sound completely revolting. You had done some, well...self-experimentation, curious about whether it was of those things that seemed great in your head but not so much in practice. The first time there was nothing. It wasn't good, it wasn't bad, it was literally just nothing. Even that familiar cold sensation of numbness would've been better than feeling like you weren't even present in your own body, like you were nothing but an outer shell disconnected from anything inside. You ended that first attempt by polishing off an entire bottle of wine, but it still wasn't enough to keep you from smashing it against the kitchen floor once you were finished. At least you sure as hell felt something when you accidentally cut your finger cleaning up the glass.

Amazingly, the second try was worse. Your brain had somehow missed the memo that said you were in total control of the situation and switched into full on panic mode. You tried to talk yourself out of it and keep going but it hurt, oh God it hurt, it shouldn't be like this what the hell am I doing here I can't do this I can't breathe oh shitshitshit. Needless to say, meltdown time came early and another defenseless bottle was sacrificed that afternoon.

The third time you were prepared. You popped a couple of your leftover painkillers beforehand, waiting until you felt your muscles start to loosen up and and your brain went slightly fuzzy. Now you were all warm and relaxed and- fuck, okay, this time you were finally getting somewhere. Better living through chemistry indeed.

Of course, you had a willing live victim to experiment on as well. You had become fascinated by this new and foreign concept, the idea that someone coming that close to you didn't automatically equal pain, and you needed to reassure yourself of this by testing your theory over and over. Where for weeks you had drawn the line at kissing, your boundaries had suddenly expanded to include anything that could be done while you were still completely dressed. As long as you had your protective armor, even if it was nothing more than the tank top and yoga pants that doubled as your come hither signal, you were borderline insatiable.

Luckily for you, your boyfriend was a very, very patient guy. For whatever else he might have done that served to piss you off on a daily basis, he never once tried to push you past your self-imposed limits, even though you knew that your imitation of a 16 year old trying to save her virginity for prom night was probably getting irritating (at the very least).

It was also fortunate that you both had a sense of humor about the whole thing. Yesterday you had been texting back and forth throughout the day, the messages getting progressively more suggestive until you pretty much jumped him when he walked through the door, determined not to let go until you were a completely satisfied customer.

"Liv. Shit. Help me out here?" he asked after quite some time had elapsed, shifting underneath you to emphasize his point.

"Nuh-uh," you mumbled, nosing at a spot behind his ear. "My turn. You wait."

He was starting to get whiny, and you were having more and more trouble keeping a straight face. "It's...fuck, it's been your turn. Twice. C'mon."

"You promised me," you insisted, kissing him to end the discussion and rocking your hips into his once, twice, doing your best to ignore whatever the hell was going on with him. "Goddamnit, did...what...did you...?"

"Hey, I warned you! You left me no choice. What was I supposed to do?" He at least had the good sense to sound apologetic, you gave him that much.

You let your forehead rest against the pillow. "'s cheating," you said before glancing over at him and realizing you weren't the only one struggling not to crack up. It was a battle neither of you were going to win, so you gave in and let it overtake you both. You held on to each other and laughed, the kind of laughter where eventually you're just laughing for the hell of it because you can't remember what exactly was so funny in the first place. The two of you used to do that from time to time, laugh hysterically at things that weren't even that amusing just to escape all the shit in your daily lives, but that was before and you had started to wonder when (or if) anything would feel that completely hilarious again.

By the time he had gotten up and came back, you had finally managed to settle down and were sitting perched on the foot of the bed, pulling your hair up in a messy ponytail. He sat down next to you and you nudged his knees apart, shifting over until you were sitting in between them to try and make your intentions obvious. "You don't have to, you know."

"Oh, I know I don't," you scoffed, the tone of your voice light to try and reassure him that seriously, you were okay. No way in hell were you going to risk fucking up all the progress the two of you had made so far with anything you weren't absolutely sure about.

He smirked. "You get what I'm saying. I don't want you to feel obligated."

You laughed sharply, the corners of your mouth twisting upward. "When have I ever felt obligated?" He didn't get a chance to respond before you continued, raising an eyebrow. "Was I supposed to? Have I been missing something all this time?"

"Man, you are so stubborn-" he said, but the way he looked at you made it clear that he wasn't going to complain.

"You should probably be very careful about what you say next," you warned. "Or better yet, just stop talking altogether."

"I can do that."

{One last light to turn out and one last bell to ring}

"Liv..."

"Mmm?"

"Don't think I don't notice what you're doing."

"What am I doing?"

He swatted at your hand, turning away from you to sit at the edge of the bed. "Down, woman, down! I've only got a few hours to sleep before I have to haul my ass back out there. You're done."

"Ohhh, so I'm obligated, but you're free to go when you please? I see how this double standard works here." You pushed yourself up into a sitting position, laughing softly. "Get me a drink while you're up?"

"Only because I'm hoping you'll drink yourself to sleep and get off me."

"You're ridiculous." You shook your head as he walked out of the room, reaching over for your phone when you saw the blinking light.

«I could have called you but I didn't»

«that was big of you. Truly.»

«you're welcome»

«go to sleep, el»