Chapter 3

Making sure she arrived early the next morning, she'd talked to the Captain and ensconced herself at her desk with her coffee before the others arrived. She'd taking the single stitch out herself this morning, leaving only a small mark that she didn't think anyone would notice with her bangs down. Taking the expected and deserved comments about being well-rested and taking time off, she girded herself for the comments about having to ride a desk. Luckily the Captain told everyone for her as he was briefing them on the case being sent over from homicide. "Now that Benson used her vacation to dislocate her wrist, I'm down a detective on the streets. Sorry guys, you guys are up," he said, handing the files to Elliot and Fin.

"What'd you do, Liv? Can't even handle a relaxing day off, what was so exciting that you had to break a bone?" Munch ribbed good-naturedly.

"Hardly exciting, John. I slipped on the ice running in the park. And it's not broken, was just dislocated, they fixed it." She turned the wrist back and forth in the cast as if to prove a point.

Elliot's ears perked up. 'Fell running the park yesterday? She was lying. She'd already had the cast by that point. Why was she lying?' He had a sudden memory flash of her looking at him with shock, pain in her brown eyes. His hand was around her left wrist. He gasped almost audibly, his stomach hit the floor. He suddenly felt almost lightheaded. Remembering his appointment with Huang scheduled for this afternoon, he grabbed Fin and practically pushed him out the door. He couldn't stand to be in the same room as Olivia, so great was his shame.

She was lying to protect him. He deserved to be thrown under a bus and she was protecting him. Things in his memory were starting to fall into place, but he was deliberately keeping from thinking about it, knowing it would be the end of him. He had to keep busy.

Olivia, always aware of what her partner was doing, almost thinking even, noticed his reaction to her lie. He knew she was lying. He could tell she didn't want anyone to know she'd stood there and let someone destroy her completely, emotionally, if not physically. No wonder he couldn't stand to be around her, he was as embarrassed by her actions as he was. His partner couldn't even fight back, couldn't even defend herself, much less him. She turned back to the computer and pounded the keyboard viciously.

Getting up to get a refill on the coffee, she sighed as she fumbled with the sugar packet. John, helpful as ever, opened the packet for her and poured the coffee as she held the cup in her one good hand. He looked at her discreetly as she stirred the coffee. Something was off, he just couldn't put his finger on it. "So, what's up with your partner? What crawled up his ass and died, making life miserable for the rest of us mere mortals?" he asked.

She looked at him, almost even in height. "You know, John, I have no idea. For the first time, I had no idea what the hell is going through his mind." 'Oh, she knew some of it,' she thought. She knew what he thought of her, but she wasn't sure what had made him say those things in the first place.

Across town at the crime scene, Fin and Elliot were wrapping things up as the CSU team was finishing off the details. Looking at his watch and realizing he had only 15 minutes to get across town, he snapped off his gloves and asked Fin, "Can you finish up here? I've got a place a need to be. Cap knows."

"Uh, yeah, sure," Fin mumbled in reply. Seriously, when were Benson and Stabler not causing drama? He wished they would just suck it up and do their job, purposefully not remembering his own share of the drama he'd had in the past few years.

Elliot grabbed a cab towards the Westside, coming to a building he'd been to one other time, during the Gitano case. This time was different, this time he was under duress. He approached the apartment door and silently hoped that his knock went unanswered. His hopes were dashed when the door opened right away. Dr. Huang opened the door for him, welcomed him in, offered him some coffee or tea or water, which he declined, just wanting to get it over with.

"So, Elliot, how come you are here?" the doctor asked.

"Because I am being forced to come here, though I am sure you know that already," Elliot replied.

"Yes, I know. But what I really want to know is why YOU think you are here."

"Because they made me."

"They didn't give you a choice?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"The choice was come get my head shrunk or force my partner to quit."

"Ah, so you chose to come here rather than see Detective Benson leave."

"N-, well, yeah, I guess."

"Why?"

"Because she shouldn't have to quit because of me."

"Why would you be forcing your partner to do anything? Doesn't she have a choice?"

"She said…"

"I know what she said. Why do you think you would be forcing her to?"

"Because it would be because of me, that is the only reason she would leave."

"Is your job easy, Elliot?"

"What does that mean? Of course it's not easy, we see the filth, the worst of the worst harming the innocent. Of course it's not easy, sometimes its torture."

"So why do you assume that the only reason Olivia would quit would be because of you? A bit narcissistic isn't it? To assume that another person's actions are solely because of what you do or don't do?"

He turned to a slightly different topic. "Why would Olivia insist you get therapy?

"I dunno, to get back at me," he said half sarcastically, half angrily.

"Get back at you for what?" Huang replied, baiting him a little for his comment.

"She tried to get me to talk to her and I wouldn't, so this was her next option."

Huang went on. "Elliot, did something happen between you and Olivia?"

His head sprung up. What do you mean? What did Cragen say?

"Cragen didn't say anything, only that he thought something had gone wrong between you two, but he didn't know what." Inwardly, Huang was preparing himself to hear about a forbidden love affair, a momentary indiscretion, the way Cragen had implied it. He was not expecting the admission that he got.

"We had a…. I said some things. I said some horrible things to her. Things that were not true, should never have been said aloud and things that can never be taken back."

"What did you say?"

Elliot just shook his head. "I accused her of the things that I knew would hurt her the most, that I knew she was afraid of. And…And…I think I did it on purpose. And if that wasn't bad enough, I…"

Huang looked at the man in front of him, he was almost choking on his sobs. "Why would you say such things? You care for Liv, as a friend, as your partner?"

"I don't know. I was angry, I was angry at my wife, at myself, and I took it out on her." His voice was full of anguish.

"Why her?"

"Because she was there, she was trying to help."

"Help with what?"

Elliot found himself telling the doctor about his wife, their marriage, her threat to take his children and leave and how powerless it made him feel.

"You felt weak, like a failure as a husband because of the things Kathy said. Then here comes Olivia, who has never had all of those things. Do you think you turned on her because it made you feel like less of a failure. Despite all your problems, you still had more than she did and in some sick sense you thought you would feel better if you rubbed that in."

Elliot sat across from him, head in his hands. "No! Maybe…" he said softly. "But it didn't work. Now I am a failure as a husband, as a father, as a cop and as a partner and especially as a friend. I tried to protect what little I had left and ending up losing everything."

"Elliot, everything is not lost. You told me you and Kathy talked, are working things through, your children still love you, you decided to take corrective steps to continue to be successful at your job."

"Yes, but I've ruined my partnership. And my friendship. She's not going to get over that. I hurt her, and I hurt her on purpose. I slapped her! I hurt her! She looked at me like she was afraid. Olivia! Afraid. Of me. She isn't afraid of anything!" The doctor tried to cover his shock at that admission. He wasn't expecting violence, not between those two detectives. Luckily for Elliot, he was too wrapped up in his thoughts and didn't notice the look on Huang's face. "Olivia's no fool, she won't put up with that. We're done for."

Huang was calculating in his mind at a frantic rate. That was an issue that they would have to deal with, have to come back to because now was not the time, it was too heady, too fresh.

"Why do you think she insisted you go to therapy? She could have just quit if she didn't want to work with you, or requested a new partner. She'd done it before.

"I dunno."

"Don't you, Elliot?"

"I guess she thought I couldn't handle myself."

"And was she right?"

"Yeah. " Elliot replied, thinking of the words he'd said, the uncontrolled anger with which he had said them. 'My god, what if his anger had been unleashed in front of his children?' "She was." He sat looking at his hands, imagining them slapping one of his children, his little son and then without meaning to he saw his hand gripping Olivia's wrist, heard her take a breath when she saw his hand come to slap her a second time, heard her let out the breath and brace for the slap. Her head swung to the side and she left it there, avoiding eye contact with him. He heard her gasp a little as he felt something in her wrist pop. Then she was gone, pulled away and ducked under his arm.

"Why didn't she fight back, Doc?" he asked after a few minutes of silence.

"Why didn't who fight back?" the doctor replied.

"Olivia. She didn't fight back, didn't yell, didn't take a swing at me. She's got a terrific hook, she knows all my dirty secrets as well as I know hers. She could have fought back physically, or verbally, but she didn't. Why not?"

"Why do you think she didn't, Elliot?" The doctor turned it back on him. Elliot sat and stared at his hands some more, not replying. After a few more minutes, Huang stood and moved towards the kitchen. Returning to the living room and seeing Stabler unmoved from his position on the couch, he touched the man's shoulder.

"Tomorrow? Same time?"

"Uh, yeah, sure." Elliot left the building, called his boss and told him he was heading home and got his assent.

That night Olivia left work at a reasonable hour. The one and only benefit of being stuck at a desk is that there was rarely a reason to stay late. Of course, this being a time when she desperately needed to stay busy, she had plenty of time off.

Heading straight home, not bothering to pick up anything for dinner, she considered her day. She hadn't seen or talked with Elliot at all. Best way to handle this, she thought, was just to pretend nothing had happened. She wouldn't have to face her embarrassment and he hopefully wouldn't bring it up.

As the days past, Elliot and Olivia slowly regained their working relationship but not the closeness that made them so good at their job. She didn't share anything with him and he didn't push her. He found her even-keeled and behaving as if nothing had happened; Elliot went along with it. He'd continued his sessions with Huang, twice a week for the foreseeable future and as much as he hated to admit it, they were helping. Things looks better at home and better at work, with the exception of his relationship with his partner. Huang had not brought her up. He'd worked through most of that day, their fight. The only thing he still didn't understand is why Olivia hadn't fought back.

Olivia's cast came off 10 days later. Relieved to be back on active duty, she fell back into a more regular routine. Working her erratic, but routine for her, hours. She was sleeping poorly and drinking more coffee and didn't have much appetite, but she was happy to be back working. She just wasn't happy to be home. She found herself skipping meals while by herself. It just didn't seem worth the effort when it was just her. She ran, or went to the gym and grabbed a snack. She ate all she wanted when she was with others, but when left on her own she felt herself sliding into complacency. Truth be told, she wasn't really bothered by it. By the end of the third week after the fight, she could tell she'd lost some weight, her clothes fit differently. She shrugged it off and told herself to take better care of herself. But that night, again, she wandered home late, ran in the park and went to bed without eating. One more meal wouldn't matter, plus the sandwich she'd had for lunch had been more than enough for one meal.

In the end, it was a case from work that shook her from her stupor, just as those at work were starting to wonder about the weight loss. She hadn't had much to extra weight to lose, but she'd always had some curves. Those were quickly losing their shape. The call had come in mid-day, a woman had called the police reporting getting beaten up and then had called to retract her complaint. The uniforms had already been dispatched and the site they'd found coupled with the woman's insistence that they leave had led one of the rookies to call SVU to see what they could do.

Elliot had been in court all day testifying for a rape case, so Fin and Olivia had taken the call. The woman was shaken, but determined to be rid of the detectives. She had clearly been beaten. She had a black eye, three stitches over her cheekbone, a broken tooth, a swollen lip and bruising on her arms and neck that looked like fingerprints. She'd denied being raped, said she just gotten hit a few times. Seeing that a male detective wasn't going to make as much headway as a sympathetic female ear, Fin slipped away into the back room as Olivia talked with the victim. She repeated the events, the words, the actions of her husband, the man who was supposed to love her.

"Why did you stay, when he's done this to you before? You have a good job, you have money, what made you stay? Olivia asked, both out of curiosity and because she needed to know if there were threats.

"That day? Or in general?" The woman shrugged and went on without an answer. "I don't know really. I don't know why I didn't run yesterday, there was nothing to stop me. He wasn't holding me anymore, just stood there with his hand up as if he was waiting to hit me. I guess I thought….I guess…."

"Go on," Olivia encouraged her.

"I guess I thought that he was my husband, he was my best friend. If he could say nasty things about me, and hit me because of it, then it was probably true. I thought that if he, of all people, thought I needed to be hit, then I probably deserved it." She hung her head. "Crazy, right?"

"No, honey" Olivia replied in a choked, thin voice. "You're not crazy. Incorrect, yes, but not crazy. People use violence in a lot of ways, the main one as a form of control. You NEVER deserve such treatment, no one has the right to do that to you, understand?"

The younger woman nodded and listened to Olivia explain the process. Yes, she had a place to stay, no she didn't fear for her life at this time, etc.

After wrapping up the details, Fin and Olivia headed back to their car. Olivia was uncharacteristically quiet. Fin looked at her. Her cheek bones were a little more prominent, but she looked good, just preoccupied. She was running what the woman had said over and over in her mind, as if it was a hard candy to be savored.

The conclusion she reached was the same every time and it made her a little sick to acknowledge it. She had stood there and let Elliot say those things about her, accuse her and dredge up her past. She had let him slap her twice and squeeze her wrist hard enough to dislocate it. He had done all of those things and she hadn't run.

She hadn't run because she had believed him. She hadn't hit back because she believed him. She believed she truly was all of those things, she was alone because she deserved to be, she didn't know how to have true relationships, she was the wicked spawn of a drunken mother and a violent father and if he thought she should be slapped for it, then he, who knew all her secrets and knew her better than anyone, was right.

Sitting in the passenger seat quietly running this through her mind, she began to feel sick. Speaking up suddenly, she told Fin she wasn't feeling well and asked him to drop her off at her apartment.

He looked at her again through squinted eyes and said "Yeah, of course. You allright, Liv?" Whereas during his first investigation she had looked well, with color in her cheeks, now she looked pale, almost green and was shrugged down into the seat. He figured it must be some weird bug, to come on so fast for no reason. He pulled to a stop and barely had the car into park before Olivia was halfway out the door. She stood grabbing her keys and waved him off, giving him the signal that she would call him later. As he drove off, she turned into the small alley between her building and it's neighbor and promptly vomited her lunch onto the ground.