Okay, so the first part is still a little un-SVU. But I promise I've put something worthwhile at the end!!

Olivia

Monday, February 5

After a morning of interviewing high school students, trying to figure out whether or not an underage student was sleeping with her teacher, I was ready to go home. They had been facetious at best, most of them using our interview as a chance to vent about the school policies that they didn't approve of. Fin, who I had partnered with while Elliot was stuck at a trial, had suggested that we go out to get lunch to take a break. I was going to just check my messages, but when I got in, I found Rick Thomas talking to Cragen.

"Is everything okay with Christine?" I asked him.

"I don't think so. She and I had planned to go out for lunch, but then said you guys had called her in and that she wouldn't be able to make it. I figured she could use some support after whatever it was that she was doing here, so I came to meet her. But I've been talking to Captain Cragen who says that no one had any plans to talk to Christine at all."

"Do you know anything about this, Liv?" Cragen asked me.

I shook my head. I'd been working on different cases, and after seeing her at Christmas, I had been under the impression that she was doing better and stopped worrying.

"Are you sure you said she'd be here?"

"Yeah. She said one of you had called her in about her statement."

I went over to my desk and opened my drawer where I was still keeping her file. No one had called her, no one had even looked at the file. I had a knot growing in my stomach.

"How's her behaviour been over the past few weeks?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I've barely seen her. She's been drinking a lot."

I glanced over at Fin and Cragen who hadn't said anything. "Something's not right here, Captain. She's the most organized person I've ever met; I can't see her making a mistake like this."

"What do you want to do?"

"Track her down, make sure she's okay?"

This wasn't a request that he would normally comply with, but he had felt just as guilty as us when we had declared the case cold. "Okay. You and Fin find out what's going on. Let me know as soon as you find something."

I tried to call her home phone and her cell phone. I called the senator's office, only to have them report that she had told them she was going out of town for a couple of days.

"You're thinking she did something to herself?" Fin asked me as we got in the car.

"I don't know," I murmured. "I thought she's was doing okay."

"Now you're not so sure?"

"We've seen it too many times for me to not check it out." Over the years we had found too many victims who tried- sometimes successfully- to kill themselves when the pressure of the investigation and the post-traumatic stress got to be too much. Christine was particularly stubborn and particularly insistent that she was fine. We drove over to her building, mostly in silence. The building was much closer to being completed, but judging by the names on the buzzer, only a couple of people had already moved in.

"Excuse me," I asked the doorman who had been helpful the past couple of times I'd been there. "Do you happen to know if Christine Weber is home?"

"Actually, she called down a couple of hours ago to request that her buzzer be temporarily disabled."

"Is that a common request?"

"Not at all. Especially from Ms. Webber."

Fin and I exchanged glances. Something definitely wasn't right. "Do you have a spare copy of her keys?"

"Is she in some kind of trouble?"

"We really need to see her," I told him.

"I'm sorry, I can't just-"

"We're NYPD," Fin jumped in, flashing his shield.

"Certainly, officers," he replied politely. He went into a back office and re-re-emerged with her set of keys. "I trust you'll return them when you're finished?"

"Absolutely," I shouted back to him, already on my way to the elevator. I noticed as we passed the other units, names had begun to appear on the doors. Christine's door still simply had a number. I knocked hard.

"Christine?" I called. "It's detective Benson." I knocked harder. I tried yelling again, but when nothing worked, I unlocked the door and tried to open it. The door was dead bolted.

"I was really hoping I wasn't going to have to do this," I told Fin. I hurled my shoulder into the door, breaking the bolts and sending the door flying open.

Her place was deathly quiet. Perfectly organized, as usual, with a recycling bin full of empty liquor bottles beside the door. I made a mental note of that, and continued down the hall, Fin following closely behind me.

"Christine? Are you in here?" I looked in the first door, which contained an empty washroom. I did the same for the second door, an empty study with her laptop hooked up. At the end of the hall was the master bedroom. I pounded on the door, called out her name, then opened it.

She was lying on the bed, curled into a ball, her dog beside her sticking his nose in her back, trying to wake her up. In the month and a half since I had seen her, she had gone from healthy looking to overly skinny. Her skin was abnormally pale and clammy to the touch. I reached out to feel her pulse.

"She's barely breathing," I told Fin. "Call a bus." He pulled out his cell phone to call and I desperately searched through her bedside table for any sign of pills. There was no blood, no cuts on her wrist. I went around to the other side of the bed to check the bedside table and found an empty bottle of vodka. I heard Fin talking to the dispatcher.

"Alcohol poisoning," I told him. He repeated this into the phone, then snapped it shut and came over to check her out himself. He checked her pulse and struggled to lift her.

"It'll save them time trying to get up here," he explained. I ran ahead to open the doors for him. He got her into the elevator and we made it down before she stopped breathing completely. I pressed the emergency stop button to make sure that the elevator didn't shut and rolled her over to start CPR. Fin ran out and quickly returned with the ambulance. They got her onto the stretcher without a problem and quickly put a mask over her mouth to breathe for her.

"Are you going to ride with her?" Fin asked.

"Yeah," I told him, following the paramedics in. "Call Cragen and let him know where we are then meet me there."

"How is she?" I asked the doctor who finally emerged from the curtain where she had been taken in.

"Are you her sister?" she asked me.

"I found her," I explained, showing her my badge. "Is she okay?"

"She's lucky. A couple more minutes and she would be in a body bag. They're pumping her stomach right now. But she's certainly not okay."

"Why? What's wrong with her?"

"She's dehydrated, malnourished, and exhausted. Her electrolytes are completely unbalanced, swollen glands, irregular heartbeat, and there's what looks like acid damage to her throat and teeth."

"Christine's bulimic?"

"I don't think so. There were no scrapes on her knuckles. Her chart said that she was admitted twice in December?"

"She was attacked."

"Then you can check with her, but my bet, detective, is that she has one hell of a case of post-traumatic stress disorder."

"Anything on her tox screen?"

"Nothing other than the alcohol."

"Can I see her?"

"I'll let you know when they're done with her. She may be out of it for awhile. Have you contacted her family?"

I shook my head. "There's no family to contact."

I thanked the doctor, then went back to my seat outside the room she was in. Fin and Cragen came charging in.

"Is she okay?" Fin asked me.

"She's alive. They're going to tell me when I can see her."

"Did she take anything?"

"No. She just nearly drank herself to death."

"Fin, can you call Munch and let him know where I've gone?" he asked. I didn't say anything, but raised my eyebrows. Cragen wasn't the type to account for his whereabouts to anyone, nor to get someone to make his phone calls for him. At first it looked like Fin was going to say something to that effect, then seemed to change his mind and slipped away. Cragen took a seat beside me.

"You doing okay?" he asked quietly, both of us staring at the wall ahead of us.

"I'm fine. I found her. She's going to be fine."

"But are you?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You've gotten pretty close to the victim. And this kind of situation-"

"This has nothing to do with my mother," I told him firmly.

"Okay," he told me, standing up. "You're going to stick around here for awhile?"

"Yeah, I'm going to wait for her to wake up."

"Give me a call whenever you find out."

"Will do." He started walking off before I called his name.

"Yeah?" he asked, turning around.

"Thanks." I didn't have to say what for. He understood. He smiled and kept walking. I didn't have to specify that I was grateful that he had thought enough to know that this situation might stir up memories I would prefer unstirred. I didn't have to tell him I was thankful that he would ask, when he knew I wouldn't say anything if anything was wrong. And I didn't have to thank him for coming down under the guise of checking on Christine, when he had come down to the hospital to make sure I was okay.

Christine

There was a beeping. A loud beeping. A beeping that felt like it pierced my eardrums and drilled straight through my brain. I tried to open my eyes, only to find that the light around me was blinding. My head throbbed. My mouth was dry, my throat was sore, and when I tried to scratch my nose, I discovered that my right arm was restrained. I looked up to find that two IV bags fed into the tube that was stuck under my skin, surrounded by a purple bruise, and there was a blood pressure cuff around my arm that squeezed me intermittently.

Then I remembered the drinks. And then I realized where I was. Startled, I started to try and pull myself out of bed, only to find myself too weak. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. It became harder to breathe. Terror took over.

"I wouldn't try getting up," a male voice came from beside me. A man that I remembered seeing around the police station when I had gone to give my statement. All of that seemed like a lifetime ago. He was older, bald, slightly pudgy. "You're probably too weak to do anything other than hurt yourself. He stood up and came towards me. He picked up a glass with a straw on the table beside me and brought it to my lips. "Drink slowly."

I was beyond humiliated.

"Thanks," I finally managed to say. "What happened?"

"Detective Benson found you. You had alcohol poisoning; you nearly died. I came in on my way home from work to get her to go get something to eat since she hadn't left your side all day."

"How did she find me?" I croaked.

"Your friend came by the station. Apparently you told him that you were coming to see us. Now, I need you to listen to me." I wasn't in much of a position to fight. He looked at me sternly, but his eyes were soft. "You are headed down a very dangerous road. You got damn lucky today. And I know that there's been no one here to tell you this. My detectives aren't allowed to say anything to you, but I'm in charge; I make the rules here. You need help. I'm not suggesting. I'm not making a recommendation. I'm saying you need it."

"I'm fine," I insisted softly.

"Fine? You think that being in the hospital is fine? That drinking so much that your respiratory system came minutes away from shutting down is fine? That needing a machine to breathe for you and your stomach pumped is fine? That not sleeping, eating, or keeping yourself hydrated is fine? I know that what's happened to you isn't fair. I know that it isn't right that we had to stop investigating. But that doesn't mean that it's okay for you to throw your life away."

"I'm doing what I can."

"This is beyond what you can do. You can't deal with all this yourself, and no one expects you to be able to. I have been working with this squad a long time, long enough to know that you can't make it on your own. I've been sober for 20 years and I still can't do it on my own. So I'm going to make a call right now. You get to choose where. I can call victim's services, I can our department psychiatrist, I can call up my own AA sponsor to drag you to a meeting, or I can call upstairs to psych because you're posing one hell of a danger to yourself."

There it was. The moment I had been unknowingly waiting for. The moment when I didn't have any choice but to get help. The help that I didn't want to get, but understood that I needed. The help that might be my only way of getting out of this alive.

"The psychiatrist, he's covered by doctor-patient confidentiality?"

"Always."

I nodded. I couldn't ask him for help. I could ask him to make the call. But I nodded, to let him know that that was what he should do.

"I'll call him," he said softly. "His name's George Huang. He'll make sure you get what you need."

I closed my eyes and tried to swallow hard. An unfamiliar feeling flickered in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't pain, or nervousness, or fear.

It was hope.

Tuesday, February 20

On my way up to Senator Martin's office, I felt my cell phone vibrate. I pulled it out to find I had missed a call, but Rick had left me a message. He had missed my call earlier, but he wanted to confirm that he was leaving soon to come and meet me at the office. I had agreed to go out to dinner with him in the hopes of starting to go back to life as "normal".

A week and a half had passed since I was released from the hospital. Although I hadn't really started regular counselling, I had met with the SVU psychiatrist twice. I was trying with little pieces, baby steps. I had finally accepted a sleeping pill, and had gotten a few hours of sleep a couple of nights. As a result, the day didn't seem quite as daunting. Quite, of course, being a completely relative term. I had started being able to eat little amounts without immediately feeling sick. I had gone back to classes right away, but without the tranquilizing effects of alcohol, the work suddenly seemed a lot harder, and came with the memories and thoughts that I couldn't push away. So I found myself going to Senator Martin's office, long after everyone should have gone home, but probably a good hour before Nicholas actually would leave, to talk to him about leaving.

"Christine," he said, looking up when I came in, a smile slicing across his face. "I was so sorry to hear you had strep throat. Are you feeling better?"

I closed the door behind me and sat down at the chair across from his desk. "I am. But I actually need to talk to you about my placement here."

"Is everything okay?"

I sighed. "I appreciate this internship. I don't think that any of you here understand just how much I appreciate this. But unfortunately, with my course load right now, I'm not going to be able to commit myself to the number of hours or the calibre of work that you've come to expect from me.

"Are you resigning?"

"That's not my intention. However, I know space is limited and with my limited availability, I don't think it's fair for me to keep this spot."

He saved whatever he was working on and got up to take a seat beside me. "Christine, you're a freshman. I've been incredibly impressed by how much you've taken on, and you've been a very valuable addition to our staff. If you would be okay with it, I'd like it if you would stay on with us."

"I'd love to, as long as no one is paying for it as a result."

"Don't you worry about it. I appreciate your candour. Is there anything else that we need to deal with?"

I smiled at him. "No. Thank you so much for this, Nicholas. I really appreciate your understanding."

He returned the smile, then put one hand on top of mine. The familiar fear of anyone anywhere around me returned. I felt an icy chill run down my spine. Dr. Huang had assured me this was normal. That this would pass. But to not force myself into uncomfortable situations in order to speed things up. Despite this, I felt myself break into a cold sweat under my jacket. I didn't want to arise any suspicion or make him feel uncomfortable, so I looked down at his hand to figure out some way to get it off of mine.

"Oh, no, what happened to your ring?" I asked, noticing for the first time that the diamond in his the bands that he and Steven had chosen-a fairly ostentatious choice- was missing.

"What do you mean?"

"The diamond's missing."

He laughed. "Christine, we changed our bands months ago."

"When was this?"

"November. For our anniversary."

I shook my head. "See? This is how distracted I've been!" I studied the new band. It was a perfect, plain gold band. Something about this face seemed to click in my head. I looked around the office to find his running clothes set out on the chair in the corner. "You're going out running in this weather?" I asked with a smile.

"Endorphins, baby!" The running clothes- his faded blue Yale sweatshirt, beaten to the point you couldn't make you the name, and black pants that seemed like cotton.

With no drawstring or zipper.

The plain wedding band.

The way he said baby.

"I should get out of here," I said to him, hoping what I thought was the same smile I'd had earlier. "I have dinner plans."

"Certainly," he told me quickly, a certain friendliness missing from his voice. He stood up and pulled the chair back for me. I turned to find myself face-to-face with him

Exactly the same height. And this close, I could smell him. Not a smell I could give a name to, not a smell that I could compare a perfume or a food to, but a smell that I had never noticed on him before, but I certainly had on someone else.

I quickly made my way to the door and kept one hand on the handle. He stayed back. "I need to get going," I told him as calmly as I could. I slowly opened the door, planning on sprinting out as soon as I was out of reach. I pulled it open, only to have it immediately shut tightly. Nicholas had quickly come and blocked me in.

"No, sweetheart," he told me in a firm tone I hadn't heard from him before. The tone confirmed my every suspicion. "I think there's something we need to discuss." His eyes flashed an almost red colour. I felt my heart stop beating, then quickly start up again, much too quickly. I managed to shriek for help before he pushed me against the door, one hand firmly covering my mouth, a knife he had pulled out of nowhere sat closely against my throat. So closely that I was afraid to swallow.

"Now you remember how this works?" he whispered. "Just remember, that if you don't fight me, I'm not going to hurt you." I nodded in agreement, and slowly let his hands fall away from my mouth and throat. I gathered up all my courage, and against all better judgement, took a deep breath in.

"Help!" I managed to wail. Nicholas quickly pressed back towards me.

"That was a mistake," he whispered in my ear, almost tenderly. He kept moving, closer and closer, to the point where the tip of the blade was scratching against my stomach. I willed myself not to say anything.

And then he pushed himself slightly harder, and I felt something warm pooling on my shirt. I looked down to see that his knife was now covered in my blood, and my white blouse was quickly growing a crimson spot.

But that didn't matter. Because then all I could see was blackness.