Chapter 1/5: The Incident
So I have always wanted a fic where Liv is forced into the car during the Townhouse Incident instead of getting the drop on him like she did. What would have happened to her once her and Joe were away from there (i think we can probably guess from what he already did) etc etc...?
- Anonymous
A Barson prompt where Olivia gets injured, can be in the line of duty or not, you choose and there's angst at her getting hurt/putting herself in situations etc and then needing to be taken care of due to said injury. Feel free to throw plenty of smut and fluff in there once the angst is done.
-Millie_Morris
I've noticed that a lot of people visit the first chapter and not the others. I've figured that maybe this is due to the dark nature of the first chapter? All I can say is that it gets a little better, the whole thing isn't just like this. Thanks!
The distressed ADA watched, from what he perceived to be an impossibly far distance, as Olivia and the other hostages shuffled out from the garden entrance. They huddled together – muscles contracting involuntarily out of fear and a desire to cluster closer under Olivia's protective embrace– in a tragically poetic fashion that would make a still shot seem like a renaissance painting in which she was the focus. This observation did possess a grain of truth, of course, as the eyes of her squad rarely ceased their concerned inspection of her haggard features.
Even though the hardened lawyer would never recover from witnessing the worst-case scenario – the hypothetical images already threatened to invade his external stoicism – Barba couldn't pull his eyes away from Olivia. His colleague. His best friend. She was the first recipient of a joke he found funny enough to repost, she was the colleague that never failed to challenge his intellect, she was… Liv. No title was needed for their relationship, he supposed it was because neither one of them could properly define it even if some arbitrary titles were required. "Colleague" and "best friend" were technically accurate but failed to capture an unspoken and mysterious aspect of their relationship, while "lover" hit too high above the mark. At least, so far.
Barba admonished himself for thinking about the complexities of their relationship when Olivia could be killed in a matter of moments, so he regrouped, and tried his best to listen in on Joe's demands.
Olivia herself, however, couldn't focus. On anything. Other than, of course, her own service weapon. The unforgiving metal of the gun, which felt cool against her neck, invited a losing battle with unwelcome flashbacks. Each breath became more ragged, every movement left her muscles visibly shaking.
She barely remembered convincing Joe, the strung-out hostage-taker, to release the children. But she must have, or at least someone did, because soon the boy was released, and she was standing with only Tess. For all tactical intents and purposes, she was fighting alone. Alone with a rapist who was under life-and-death levels of pressure. Tess, whose legs still shook from her assault, clung to the blue-green fabric of the older woman's shirt for dear life while Olivia's mind went haywire in its attempts to conjure an escape plan.
Deep breaths. Just think. Deep breaths. In and out. In and out. Think!
The soothingly agreeable voice that every hostage negotiator possessed was strongly present when she pleaded for the girl. "Whatever you want, Joe. But why don't we let Tess go, okay? You have me."
"Hell. No." He pressed the gun harder against the back of her skull, sending a message that he was fully intransigent. "I need someone to drive so that you and I can have our own little party in the backseat."
Her throat tightened at the implication, but there was no choice but to keep talking and try to redirect. "I'm just going to tell Tuck –"
"Get in the fucking car!" The power of Joe's irate voice resonated throughout his entire body, causing the gun to move ever so slightly. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough for the snipers to get a clear shot. "GET IN!"
As an experienced NYPD Lieutenant, the direness of the situation was not lost on her. The cover of the car would reduce any sniper opportunities to almost zero, while the movement of the vehicle would further complicate any attempts to neutralize the man. "Joe, you don't have to do this."
"So help me fucking God, I! Will! Kill! You!" His body shook so violently from the volume and force of his demands that even Barba – who was pushed out to the edges of the crowd since he was not NYPD – could hear them clearly. Tess pushed her head further into Olivia's chest, cowering at the sound of her rapist's voice. As Olivia and the girl slowly shuffled forward, Joe regrouped his thoughts and tried to remain calm so he could think clearly. "Okay. Okay. Get in the backseat. Then the girl is going to climb into the driver's seat and follow my directions because I. Am. A. God!"
Barba shuddered with sympathetic adrenaline that coursed through his body, while the pair took a slight step back so Olivia could open the car door. Joe, careful not to let the gun slip, climbed in after both hostages and used his free hand to shut the door.
Joe must have understood the exigence of his situation because the car began to slowly crawl no less than a minute after their entrance into the vehicular prison. Barba, eventually snapping out of his disbelief, located the rest of the squad. They stood in somber and motionless silence, and they hated themselves for it.
Recognizing that the terrified teenager – who was almost catatonic with fear – could be ignored momentarily, Joe kept his aim on Olivia while he tightened the new zip ties to the point where they were almost painfully restrictive. He did the same with her ankles, using a zip tie on each ankle and them binding them with another in the middle.
After double-checking that he properly subdued his most dangerous threat, Joe refocused on commanding Tess. Olivia, unfortunately, came to the realization that she underestimated the paranoid druggie when he started to make deliberate attempts to disrupt any organized attempt to snipe him or storm the vehicle. "Turn here… speed up… slow down…turn around…"
He also removed his jacket from underneath his bulletproof vest – he made a point of redonning the vest immediately afterward – and hung it from the handlebars on the car's interior roof so that he could further limit visibility from the outside-in. Apparently, the tinted windows weren't dark enough protection for his liking.
With no more excess articles of clothing to remove and an unwillingness to risk-taking off the vest again, Joe looked for other sources to cover the backseat window on the driver's side, which Olivia rested against. The rhythmic thumping of her head against the hard glass grounded her as she desperately warded off Lewis flashbacks.
"Take your shirt off and hang it up on the window."
While keeping Lewis in mind, especially his proclivity for mood swings and the sudden mood changes from pseudo-altruistic to outright monstrous, Olivia followed the command with a blank look on her face to prevent an outburst. Her attempts at diminishing her emotional presence didn't stop her adrenaline-fueled shaking, however. The shirt was hung with her normally nimble fingers that quaked with fear and were heavily limited in movement due to her plastic restraints.
The attempt to remove the shirt was unsuccessful because of the zip ties, so Joe forced her to sit up so he could do it himself. The scars that littered her abdomen were usually a common cause for embarrassment, but for reasons she did not understand, she felt none. She felt vulnerable and exposed, almost weak, but not embarrassed.
"Holy shit." His initial shock was replaced by a nervous chuckle. "Who the hell did that to you?"
The response to the rhetorical question was the initiation of another Lindstrom-advised breathing exercise, as the previous one wasn't working. Olivia was finally beginning to understand why some vics saw their marring wounds as "battle scars".
Her thoughts became defiant. He did not break me, and neither will you.
The chill of the air on her exposed abdomen – the cold was intensified by the sweat of intense adrenaline – caused her to instinctively cross her arms over her body. This, unfortunately, drew attention to her semi-uncovered breasts.
"How about we settle in for a little show, huh?" Joe reached out to grope her over her bra, which elicited Olivia's reflex to pull away. Her shoulder made contact with the cold window and she shuddered – a combination of the frigid contact and Joe's touch. His reaction to the repulsive look she gave him was predictably not calm. She did not, however, expect him to subconsciously puff his chest as if her reaction was a challenge.
Joe's arms made a wide arc to circumvent the bulge of his vest and his hands reached for his belt. "Take it off."
Tess fearfully and knowingly glanced at the older woman through the rearview mirror as the car continued its trudging along at a medium-fast pace. Olivia didn't notice, however. Her mind was too clouded with panic. "What?" The word came out much more meekly than she would have liked.
"Take. It. Off." He reached for her once more, but Olivia turned away again. The mixture of fear, confusion, and denial about what was about to happen created a disastrous mix in a time where she knew she needed to either fight like hell or stay calm. She pulled at her bindings with no success, which indicated that resisting wasn't really an option.
Olivia Benson, however, was never one to back down. She shook her body, she twisted and jolted, because her years at SVU told her that a rapist would often move on if their potential victim gave them too much trouble. Luckily, Tess was relatively safe as the driver because Joe couldn't physically assault her without disrupting the movement of the car, so Olivia was free to resist without fears of him hurting the teenager.
The anger and frustration emanating from the man were almost tangible. The drugs and the immense pressure from the NYPD worked together to fuel his desire for a release of some sort, and he finished unfastening his belt and loosening his pants just enough for his covered member to be free.
Tired of her frantic rustling, Joe impulsively tore down the blouse that formerly covered the window, and instead put the collar up to Olivia's chin while he tied the sleeves together behind the headrest. The binding fabric was so tight that her survival instinct to focus on inhalation overcame her other instincts to resist – her body went slack as she tried to breathe.
The tied hands weakly tried to untie the knot flutily while Joe pushed down her pants to her ankles and forced her legs up so that he could have access without having to untie her bound feet. Oxygen was precious and hard to come by, so her body involuntarily refused to let her waste any energy especially when the outcome was guaranteed to be grim.
The status of her pants – they were bunched around her ankles because 1) they were characteristically tight and 2) the zip ties prevented their full removal – required that Joe force her legs closer into her chest so that he could access her most sensitive flesh.
He wasted no time in drawing anything out or making it about her – as Lewis surely would have – and Olivia was torn about what to think about his hurry. On one hand, it would be over quickly. However, his rush meant that the assault would occur in the next couple of seconds.
There was one thought that Olivia clung to for sanity, despite her physical position. I will not stop fighting .
She didn't stop fighting when he hooked his thumb around her panties to move them aside as his hands rested on her inner thigh. She didn't stop fighting when he freed his erection from its confines and pumped it to its full hardness. And she certainly didn't stop fighting when he aligned himself and pushed into her, bottoming out on the first stroke.
She did, however, cry. Not a wild cry that turned one's face red – that required being able to breathe frequently and was being performed by Tess as the young girl heard what was happening– but rather the heartbreaking type where red-hot tears streamed down her cheeks slowly as she frantically struggled and rustled her body in defiance. Olivia made no attempt to stop these tears, they were byproducts of her shame. And pain. God, the pain. The flesh near her entrance felt like an elastic band about to snap. Olivia had faced much more torturous agony no more than 2 years ago, but she had never experienced any serious pain of this nature before.
She heard a stifled moan, but she couldn't definitively identify whether it was from the wailing teenager or of her own making. Joe didn't make eye contact – she thought that he perhaps possessed a grain of guilt – and instead watched himself move inside her. The SVU detective of 17 years couldn't bear to move her eyes from the roof of the car, anyway.
The movement of her legs – trying to close and push him off her – and the twiddling of her hands – trying to untie the choking shirt – were beginning to catch up with her. Whether it was the sheer panic or Joe's thrusting actions that had the same effect as knocking the wind out of her, Olivia struggled to draw in any air.
I can't breathe… I can't breathe… I. Can't. Breathe!
The edges of her vision were invaded by a dark-gray fuzziness that blurred anything in the periphery. The closing darkness consumed the rest of her sight, and Olivia felt her chest stop moving as she lost consciousness.
This is the beginning of a 5 (or more) part series so stay tuned to find out what happens!
