Chapter 7

"Don?" George Huang looked up in surprise as Cragen tentatively slipped into his office, closing the door behind him. Cragen hesitated, his eyes scanning the room before finally settling on the chair in front of Huang's desk. He took a seat, suddenly wondering why he was here in the first place.

As if sensing his reluctance to talk, Huang spoke first. "I heard about what happened at the hospital."

Cragen finally met his eyes. "I have no idea how to help her. She won't even talk to us."

"How does that make you feel?"

"Don't try to shrink me," Cragen retorted bitterly. He sighed. "I'm sorry, it's just…right now I don't need that. I need to know how to help her, how to get her to talk."

"I don't think she knows who she can trust right now," George acknowledged setting down the file in his hand. "She's afraid to talk."

"What do you mean?" Cragen looked taken aback. "How can she not trust us?"

"Olivia wants to report what happened. Every fiber in her being wants to catch this guy, and she knows that in order to do that, she has to tell someone what happened. But right now, you're too close to her. Elliot's too close to her. She needs someone who won't judge her for what she did or didn't do, and my guess is she doesn't see that in you, in any of you."

"Will she talk to you?" Cragen pleaded, his voice ringing with a desperation he had never heard before.

George met his eyes, knowing the words he wanted to hear, but unable to give them to him. "No," he sighed. "She needs someone outside of this office who can get through to her, someone who can approach her as a friend, but who has the sense of mind to know what to say or ask."

"What about Casey?"

Huang shook his head quickly. "Casey is too involved in this investigation, and she knows that. Casey wants it too much. It will just trigger her defensive mechanisms. Olivia needs someone more objective than that. It has to be someone she knows, but who has enough distance that she feels safe to talk."

"Olivia?" The gentle voice that called out was cheery, but hesitant.

Olivia eyes flew open, every muscle in her body taut with tension. As she pinpointed the now familiar voice, she let herself ease back into her pillow. She rolled over slowly and groaned. "Sara, I really don't want more drugs. I'm fine."

The woman chuckled quietly and tucked back the strawberry blond tendrils that escaped from behind her ear. "Don't worry, I'm not going to keep bugging you about the painkillers. I'm nearing the end of my shift anyway so I'll leave that to the night nurse." Her eyes twinkled.

"Then what do you want?" Olivia allowed her voice to soften slightly.

"You have company."

"Well, tell the guys that I don't want to…" She stopped, catching sight of the figure who stepped through the door. "Jeffries?"

"I'll leave you two ladies alone." Without another word, the nurse slipped out of the room before Olivia could protest further.

"Hey, I heard you had a run in with some creep. I hope you gave him a real kick in the ass for me?"

The beginning of a smile crossed over Olivia's face and Jeffries took that as her cue to take a seat. "Good to see you too. How's life over at Vice?"

Jeffries shrugged. "It's different," she answered cautiously. "My partner doesn't think the world is out to get him, but then again, where's the fun in that?" Olivia started to laugh, but her quiet chuckle turned into a gasp at the stabbing pain in her chest.

"Easy there," Jeffries commented, eyeing the grimace of pain that swept over her face.

"So besides missing Munch's conspiracy theories, how do you like it?" Olivia's voice, although light-hearted had a seriousness to it that cut through the room like a knife.

"I get a hell of a lot more exercise. As soon as anyone finds out I'm a cop, they take off running, but I learned how to deal with someone trying to run from the truth a long time ago."

Olivia nodded slowly, fully aware of the underlying words. "Do you miss it?"

"There's no victim to tear your heart out. And for the first time in a long time, I go home at night when my shift is over, and I'm actually able to sleep," she mused. She was silent for a long time, contemplating her next words carefully. "But there's also something to be said for knowing that what you do every day makes a difference in someone's life, that even though you can't change what happened to them, you can help them to deal with it, to move on with their life." Jeffries looked straight into Olivia's eyes. "You can help bring justice to the world if only you can get them to trust you with the truth."

Olivia looked away, not quite sure how to respond.

"Olivia, what are you afraid of?"

She turned back slowly, and their eyes met for a long time. When Olivia finally spoke, her words were barely above a whisper. "He's taken everything else away from me. I can't let him take my job too."

"Olivia." Jeffries leaned closer, taking her hand. "He only takes away what you let him take away. Now, I know you, and you are not a victim. Don't let him turn you into one. Don't go down without a fight. Tell me what you remember."

Tell me what you remember. Olivia's eyes were panicked. You don't understand, she wanted to scream out. The beginning of a sob caught in her throat. How could she not remember? She had been trained to recognize the details, trained to sense what others would never pick up on. She had walked countless victims through their statements. So why did her mind, her body stubbornly insist on blocking it out?

"Olivia, talk to me, please," Jeffries pleaded.

A solitary tear slowly traced a path down her cheek before she slammed her eyes closed to fight back the rest. "I can't," she admitted softly.

She could see his eyes widening in satisfaction, could see the smirk that spread across his face as she realized how incredibly vulnerable she was to him. Olivia had long since perfected the art of hiding from others. Every day she hid behind an exterior that not even the toughest suspect could penetrate, behind a shield that portrayed her years of hard work and achievement, behind the gun that had become an indefinite fixture on her right hip. But suddenly, she was stripped of all of that and more. Her badge was gone, her gun was gone, even her clothes. There was nothing left but a shattered shell that had once been Detective Olivia Benson. And she had no idea how it had happened.

"Olivia, please."

Olivia's eyes flew open, blocking out the image that assaulted her. She spoke slowly, searching for a way to explain the lapse in her memory. "I can't remember," she stammered, her words filled with guilt and an emotion she had fought for years to strip from every victim she had encountered…shame.

"I…I don't know how I got there," she elaborated quietly. "I just remember waking up and realizing I was handcuffed to a bed."

"That's okay, Olivia," Jeffries encouraged her softly. "Do you know where you were?"

She shook her head side to side.

It was dark, the only light filtering in from between the slats of a boarded up window, the only sounds--a faint humming, and of course the sound she dreaded the most, of soft footsteps approaching from behind her.

Olivia fought to steady her words. "It was dark and quiet, maybe a basement."

With textured concrete walls that dripped with condensation on one side and did nothing to muffle her cries, her screams. With wooden beams and electrical cables running overhead that melted away as she fought him off.

"Olivia, you're doing great." Jeffries watched her with a helplessness she couldn't control. She took a deep breath, dreading the reaction to the words she knew she had to ask. "Were you alone?"

Olivia's shoulders stiffened instantaneously. "No, he was standing over me, and I couldn't get away."

He had towered above her, a thick, cheap cologne mixed with sweat her only indication of his presence. She could still see his eyes--cold, calculating, and something else…satisfaction churning in their icy depths.

Olivia realized that Jeffries was waiting for her to continue. She ducked her head slightly. "My clothes, they were gone, but I couldn't remember what had happened to them." Tears sprang to her eyes.

Jeffries could hear her trying to decide how much to elaborate and swallowed hard. "It's okay, Olivia. I know. Elliot told me how he found you."

Elliot told me how he found you. Olivia froze. "What do you mean…how Elliot found me?"

Jeffries stared back at her, surprised. "You didn't know? Olivia, Elliot pulled you out of his apartment." The stricken, shocked look on Olivia's face was all the answer she needed. Jeffries cursed to herself inwardly as she saw her retreat.

"I…I can't do this anymore." Olivia pulled her hand free and started to turn away.

"Olivia? Olivia, you have to talk to me," Jeffries pressed.

"No, I don't have to talk to anyone. I'm fine. Nothing happened," she snapped.

"Olivia, do you know who did this to you?"

"Please, just go away." Olivia sat up and struggled to swing her legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the stabbing pain that assaulted her from every direction. The questions were swirling around her, tearing her apart, forcing her to relive every moment of terror. She swallowed hard. She had tried to convince herself that she could just hide from it, that as long as she didn't talk, it could be like her entire childhood. If she kept to herself, no one would ever know the truth. As long as she didn't say it out loud, it was as if it didn't exist. But Elliot had seen her. He had seen her barely dressed, bruised, and broken--crumpled on his floor like a victim. She couldn't hide from that.

"Olivia, was it Elliot?"

She stopped dead in her tracks and turned back to Jeffries incredulously. "You think Elliot did this to me?" she demanded angrily. Her fists clenched instinctively. If it weren't for the pain that coursed through her body, Olivia would have lashed out at her. "Elliot would never do this to me!" Her retort was sharp and biting.

"Then talk to me," Jeffries pleaded with her. "Because Olivia, that's what people are going to say if you don't tell me the truth."

Olivia whipped her head around, her body poised at the edge of the bed, every muscle in her body trembling with exertion. With a vigor her body couldn't seem to muster, her eyes flashed daggers, challenging the woman who stood before her to question her partner's dedication again. When their eyes met, Olivia let herself melt back into the bed in resignation as she realized that all the walls she had painstakingly carved around her shattered core were now imprisoning the one man who wanted nothing more than to protect her. "It wasn't Elliot," she acknowledged quietly. "I just didn't want him to think I couldn't protect myself."

"Olivia, he knows that." Jeffries pulled herself closer in order to meet her at eye level. "This isn't your fault."

"You don't understand." The tears trickling down her face blurred her vision, but did nothing to erase the words that haunted her. I can't do this anymore. I can't keep looking over my shoulder making sure you're okay…I need to know that you can do your job without waiting for me to come to the rescue.

"A couple months ago Elliot and I were working a case. The perp attacked me with a knife, and a boy died because Elliot tried to save me. Monique, the things he said…" she trailed off, biting her lip. "He was right." She laughed mirthlessly. "I can't even protect myself. How the hell am I supposed to protect him?"

Jeffries was silent for a long time, the full weight of her words sinking in. Olivia was afraid of losing her job, of losing her partner, and with a bitterness that still stung five years later, Jeffries knew why. "Olivia, you know that he didn't mean that."

"I thought I did, but now I'm not so sure."

"Olivia, what happened that day is not your fault, and what happened to you now isn't either. But you do have the power to stop it from happening to someone else. We can't do anything to help if you don't tell us what happened." As much as she tried to hold them back, Jeffries could feel herself fighting back her own tears. The eyes that stared back at her were filled with something that Jeffries had hoped to never see again. They were haunted--filled with despair, fear, and above all regret.