"I...I don't want to make you relive anything. But Liv, I have to know–what happened with Lewis?"
She smiled shakily, eyes sad. "We'd better sit down. It's a long story."
"I'll make some coffee," he offered quickly. In part it was a selfish decision; he wanted a moment to prepare himself, but he also thought that Olivia might appreciate it for the same reason. A short time later they were sitting on the couch, holding hot mugs that neither of them had any interest in drinking. Olivia's legs were tucked up under her, and her eyes were far off as she stared out the window. He had never been able to see so many lines in her face.
"He didn't rape me," she said quietly. For a split second, Elliot felt relief. But as he watched her, saw the quiver in her lips and the ghosts in her eyes; he knew that that didn't make her any less of a victim. He had never seen her so afraid; he had only seen her stoicism crumble a few times over their years together, and never like this. Never with such devastation. What had he done to her?
"Lewis…" Her voice fell, and they were left alone in the darkness. He could feel her pain, feel how it cut and ached and raged inside her. He wanted so much to take it away, even just to share the weight that she carried. He set their coffee mugs down on the table and took her hand instead, determined to give her every bit of support he had in him. She looked up, and smiled weakly at him. "Sorry."
He shook his head, clutching her warm hand. He would wait a thousand years just to be there for her. "Take your time, Liv. As much as you need."
"You'd think it wouldn't be so hard to talk about this. I have a therapist, I've been through court; I've told this story a hundred times." She looked openly at him. "But this is you."
He looked into her eyes, willing her to understand. "Liv, I'm not going to judge you."
She smiled a little. "You were my partner for 12 years. You know me better than anyone, and I just...I don't want you to think I'm weak."
Elliot's heart sank. He could never, not in a million lifetimes, see Olivia as weak. He could see what it cost her to admit that, and shook his head vigorously. "Olivia…You are the strongest person I have ever met. I think you might even be the strongest person in the world." She looked like she wanted to interrupt him, but he held up his hand. "And it's not just the way that you can take down a perp or fire a gun. You've proven that you can handle yourself time and time again, but you have another kind of strength, a kind that is so much more important." He looked at her. "It's your heart, Olivia. You have such a beautiful heart."
"You've had to deal with too much fucking pain in your lifetime, but you still find it in you to get up every day and fight for yourself and for your victims. I can't imagine how much strength it takes to be you. But it gives me hope–you give me hope. So don't you dare worry that I'll ever see you as weak–Liv, you are my strength."
She stared at him with wide, fearful eyes and offered a tiny smile, tightening her grip on his hand. She nodded to herself, closing her eyes, and began to speak. Her voice was halting and brimming with restrained panic. Elliot hated that he was doing this to her; asking her to relive it all.
"When I was with Lewis, he was always in control. Even when I had him handcuffed, even when I had a gun to his head. The whole time, he was playing me. It was just a game to him, from the moment I met him in interrogation to the moment he blew out his brains in front of me."
Olivia stopped and took a breath, getting herself back under control. She began to recount the basic facts of the abduction in her best detached detective's voice. He had started by flashing teenagers and gone on to rape and torture a 60 year old woman at gunpoint for 18 hours. Alice Parker. A brave woman who would have done whatever it took to put him away for good, but died of a heart attack before she got the chance to testify. His lawyer had cast doubt on the DNA samples and forced a mistrial. Lewis had gotten out on bail, and gone to Olivia's apartment that same night.
"Cragen had ordered me to take a few days off. He actually said that if I showed up at work, he would have me arrested. But Brian was supposed to come over, Brian Cassidy...We were dating." Elliot blinked, but didn't say anything. "And then he called and cancelled. And I knew that nobody was coming to save me."
He couldn't help himself; the defeat in her voice was too much for him. He pulled her into his arms, blinded by an overwhelming despair. He should have been there. He should have been there when she needed him. A few heartbeats passed with Olivia in his arms before she released the tense breath she was holding, accepting his comfort for only a single brief moment. She pulled back, collected again.
"It was two days before anyone noticed something was wrong. But…"
"What is it, Liv?"
"When they found my apartment, it was pretty clear what had happened. But they couldn't figure out how Lewis got inside. I still don't know how he did it." She sighed. "That's really why I moved."
Because if he got in so easily the first time, what was to stop him from doing it again? Elliot wished he had been there, he might have been able to figure it out.
"There was no sign of forced entry?"
She shook her head. "None, El. He was just...there."
"Could…" He didn't want to scare her. "Could somebody have let him in?"
"I–" Her face was a picture of horror. "I have no idea who would…"
He shook his head, immediately wishing he could take back his words. "Probably no one, Liv, he could have just stolen your key and made a copy. There could be lots of explanations, don't worry about it." Though he couldn't help but wonder; who else had had a key?
"Yeah...You're right." But she didn't look convinced. "He um...He had me for four days. A lot of it's just a blur…" She shook her head. "He kept me so drugged and drunk. No food, no sleep, just enough water to stay alive...Trying to think was like pulling teeth."
He heard the pained frustration in her voice, and felt a slow, deadly anger flare up inside of him. For Olivia to be treated like that, like absolute garbage instead of the beautiful human being that she was...He realized that his grip on her hand was tightening, and forced himself to breathe.
"What I do remember...He–" Her voice broke, and she took a breath, irritated with herself. "He was a–sadist. There's nothing he likes more than making people...scream." Elliot couldn't feel his face. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. His mind replayed her impossible words over and over again, trying to make sense of them; making people scream making people scream making people scream.
"He burned my–He used cigarette butts and coat hangers, and he branded his initials on to my skin. They're still there." Her hand hovered near her chest for a moment before she pulled it back, remembering herself. The realization of what she meant was almost enough to make him lose it. Rage shook him to the core, burning through his veins, driven to terrifying heights by the venomous pain that he felt for her. Pull yourself together, his own voice ordered him from far away. She needs you to stay strong.
"It was...incredibly painful. I won't deny that, but I could handle it." Her voice was shaking violently. He had never heard her stutter before. "The worst part was watching him. Elliot...There were other women."
He blinked at her, unable to process what she was saying. He made her… "Liv," he gulped. "He made you watch while he raped other women?" Her lips trembled, and he saw the memories glaze her eyes with horror as she nodded.
"Jesus, Liv." The words leapt from his throat before he thought to contain himself. Olivia was the most empathetic person he had ever met, probably the most empathetic person in the world. She felt her victims' pain like it was her own, and it was one of the things he loved best about her: her inability to be apathetic. But Lewis...He had used it to hurt her. He had taken the best of her and turned it against her. Elliot felt sick with grief. His hand shook as he put it over hers, and he squeezed his eyes shut to hold back his poisonous tears.
"There was nothing I could do," she said slowly. "I couldn't even close my eyes without him burning me. I watched her become a victim right in front of me. How do you think she must have felt when she realized that nobody could protect her from being raped? From being murdered, if he felt like it? Her life depended on his sick impulses. The detective who was supposed to catch him was lying duct taped on the floor in front of her, drugged out of her mind and burned all over, utterly useless–"
"Liv," he said insistently. "That's what he wanted. He wanted to prove to you that he was in charge. He wanted you to stop seeing yourself as a capable detective, and start believing that you were his helpless victim. He was trying to break you in."
She looked at him as if she couldn't quite believe it. Eventually, she spoke. "I guess...I'll just never be able to understand how human beings are so disposable to him."
"That's because you're nothing like him."
She didn't really respond, just looked at him. "A lot of the time we spent together, we were just driving around, looking for the 'perfect place.' He wanted to take his time with me."
The words were like knives in Elliot's gut, and he tightened his grip on her hand, as if he could somehow protect her from the past.
"A cop pulled us over, and Lewis killed him. He was just a kid." Her voice ached, but she held steady. "We stopped for supplies...A blow torch, extra duct tape...Finally, we found it. The place he was looking for. A beach house in Long Island."
Olivia stopped talking, visibly lost in memories. She was quiet for a long time, and Elliot worried that he had pushed her too far. He squeezed her hand; you okay? She looked up, as if remembering where she was, and nodded. Her expression quickly transformed with pain.
"He, um…He wanted to humiliate me. He had been giving me so much vodka...I needed to go to the bathroom. Lewis...helped me." She spoke the last two vile words with extreme distaste, as if they were poison.
His grip on her hand tightened, and she winced. "Sorry," he whispered, loosening his hold a fraction but not letting go. "Keep going."
"He handcuffed me to the iron bed frame and went to ditch the car. I tried to get loose, but…" She sounded frustrated with herself.
"You were handcuffed," he reminded her gently, although his insides were burning in outrage.
"I know." She nodded, as if reassuring herself. "When he got back, I tried to get him to take off the cuffs. I told him...that I could give him a struggle." She looked at him as if expecting judgement, but offered none. She had been fighting for her life, and he wouldn't have expected anything less. "He knew what I was trying to do. He got angry...Put my gun in my mouth...And told me that we were playing by his rules now. He wanted me to say it."
"Say...what?"
Olivia took a breath, staring out the window. "I'll do anything," she said in a detached, flat voice. "I want to live."
Elliot's rage roared to life inside him, a caged beast that smashed into him like a tidal wave and left him drowning in his own pain. This was the most powerful anger of his life, and he knew instantly that it would always be a part of him. But he had also never possessed such a desperate need to keep his rage under control, such a sharp knowledge of the pain he would cause if he let himself loose. The two extremes battled for dominance inside of him, leaving him paralyzed, and he could do nothing but hold Olivia's hand in his and struggle to keep breathing.
"When I was interrogating him for the rape of Alice Parker...He got off on telling me the details. The torture that he put her through. How in the beginning, she begged for her life, but by the end...She was begging him to end it. Only later did I realize that he was making me a promise, telling me everything he had was going to do to me."
"But...But he didn't rape you?"
She shook her head, fierce anger mingled with contempt in her gaze. "Maybe he would have, I don't know. But on the last day, the cleaning lady and her daughter came to the house. I was so scared that he would hurt the little girl...I got the iron bar from the bedframe loose, and I beat him." Her last words rang with conviction. "I took his gun and I handcuffed him...But it was still just a game to him."
"Liv...He wasn't in control then. He was handcuffed, you had the gun. How was it a game?"
She shook her head, visibly sickened. "Physically, he was restrained. But he still...He got inside my head." Olivia turned her eyes to his, and he saw her fear; a huge, primal thing that time had done nothing to lessen. "Everything that I try to hide...He knew. He knew about my Dad, he knew about you, he knew...everything. He knew me." She pressed her hands to her temples. "God, why does talking about it make it feel so real?"
He hadn't want her to have to go through this again. "We can take a break, if you want."
"No, no it's fine. I can do this." She met his eyes with determination and took his hand again. She was living through it all again, and her climbing terror was obvious, but she was still determined to get through. It made his heart ache for her.
"Somehow, Lewis knew that I wouldn't shoot him. That I just didn't have it in me. But after what he had done, to so many women…" She looked at him simply. "Maybe I couldn't kill him, but I could beat him. And he wasn't counting on that. Except when I started, I couldn't stop. I just couldn't stop hitting him. I wanted him to hurt, to feel some fraction of the pain he had caused in his miserable lifetime."
"I understand," he said softly, his thumb running across her hand as he held it. "Liv, that's not wrong."
She shook her head, face tense with guilt. She was squeezing his hand so hard it hurt, but he didn't say anything. "It is wrong. I'm a police officer. I beat an unarmed, incapacitated man nearly to death and then I lied about it on the stand. I committed perjury, Elliot."
"Liv," he said in disbelief. "He pushed you to your breaking point. Everybody has one; being a detective doesn't make you immune to that. And if you hadn't lied, you would have lost your badge. Maybe even gone to prison. He would have won–again."
"I just...I couldn't let him take that away from me. I don't know what that makes me...But I do know that he never forgot it. When it was time for his trial, he represented himself. He, uh...He said some disgusting things, but he couldn't get me to admit to it. So when he broke out of prison and took a 12 year old, Amelia, hostage, his first act was to get me to confess to police brutality and perjury on national television."
Olivia's face tightened with the stress of the memory. "The morning he got out, he sent me a video message. He said he missed me...Hours later, I was with him again. I had to go to Amelia, El–" She looked at him, as if begging him to understand. Of course he understood. Her reckless selflessness made him want to scream sometimes, but he knew that it was simply who she was. It didn't matter what it cost her; if a child needed her, she would give it away willingly. She had faced him again; she had walked back into Hell and re-traumatized herself to save a child she had never even met. Olivia was truly the strongest person he knew.
He nodded at her. "I understand, Liv."
"He drove me to an abandoned sawmill. He had her strung up by her hands…" Her voice trailed off as she fell into the horror of the memory. He squeezed her hand, and her eyes lifted up again. "He gave me a choice; He could rape me, or he could rape Amelia. I told him to rape me." She formed the last two words carefully, as if they were in a foreign language. They didn't belong in her mouth.
"But...He didn't."
She shook her head, and he held her hand just a little tighter. "When I decided not to struggle, he got bored. But...Honestly, it doesn't make sense to me that he would give up that easily. He had all the leverage; surely he could have found a way to make me fight back?"
"Yeah," Elliot said, equally confused. "I mean, I'm glad that he didn't, but...After all the other women, why not you?"
"That's the question, isn't it? I'm exactly his type; older, educated, cultured. What stopped him?"
"Maybe…" Elliot muttered. "Maybe he was afraid of you. Going after you twice, everything that he did...It's almost like he was trying to prove to himself that he was really in control of you. But when it came around to the actual act, he just couldn't do it.
She looked at him, mouth open. "You think...He did have me for four days before he tried anything," she conceded. "You really think that he was afraid of me? I thought…"
"I know that you thought he was in control, but that's only because he was trying so hard to make it that way. I think that you had a power over him. Liv, you're so self-possessed. Always the detective. From what I've heard, he has to be in control, and you didn't make anything easy for him. You stayed in control of yourself. Maybe his obsession with you...I think he was trying to prove to himself that he could break anyone, even you. But when it came down to it, he couldn't."
He felt her shaking, and hesitated before wrapping his arms around her again. "Liv," he whispered into her hair, voice shaking with a million things he wanted to say. At last, he settled on the most important one. "You're stronger than he was." She turned her face to his, shining with tears. He dropped his head with a sigh, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "You are the strongest, bravest, most selfless person in the world. He saw you for that, and it threatened him. He tried to break you, but he didn't. You beat him."
His hand stroked her hair gently as she buried her face in his shirt, letting out a shuddering sigh.
"I really hope that's true," she whispered in a choked voice.
"It is," he insisted, pulling back so that she would look at him. "Olivia, you won." His own eyes were burning with emotion, and a few of his tears fell. He watched as she blinked at him in confusion, her lips pressed tightly together. She seemed to convulse, clapping a hand to her mouth, eyelids drooping under the weight of colossal tears. Great, shaking sobs wracked her body. She held her hands like she didn't know what to do with them, and he brought her close, his own silent tears joining hers.
"Elliot," she choked out. "Elliot, I'm sorry."
"Why are you sorry?" His crying was not so silent anymore.
Her face contorted again with pain. "I'm sorry I ever doubted you. You're my partner. You would–you would never just leave like that. I should have known, I should have checked hospitals–"
Elliot had pressed his lips to hers before he knew what he was doing, and they were both frozen in shock at the intimacy of the kiss he had unwittingly initiated. The feel or her trembling mouth on his was so distracting, but he didn't want to frighten her or take advantage of her vulnerability. Several terrifyingly intimate moments passed before he made his decision. He moved his lips with hesitant care, giving her the gentlest kiss he had in him. It only lasted for a moment before he pulled away and looked at her, hoping that she could forgive his trespass. Elliot had only been thinking of comforting her, but as Olivia stared up at him with wide eyes, he felt a very real fear. Had he just ruined their relationship? He looked into her with warm, desperate eyes, trying to communicate that his intentions had at least been honorable. She was still crying, but he had shocked her into silence. Every second that passed was an eternity, and finally she looked down.
"I haven't even finished," she muttered to herself. "This is one hell of a story, huh?"
He nodded, relief flooding him. He thanked God that she had decided to let it pass; he didn't think he could even breathe without her in his life. Olivia pulled back a little ways from him so that he could no longer feel her warm breath on his skin. There was distance again.
She sighed, a ragged, shaking sigh, and spat out the bitter words. "When he got bored trying to rape me, he made me play Russian Roulette. After everything I had survived, I was going to die at my own hands. I didn't know how much I needed to live until I put the gun to my head." She closed her eyes. "I pulled the trigger three times. On the last round, Lewis pointed the gun at me and told me to say goodbye. Then he switched hands and killed himself."
"Why?" He had known that Lewis had killed himself, but he hadn't imagined it happening when he held all the power.
"I don't know why his life was worth so little to him, but he used it to frame me for his murder. He switched hands, he held the gun at the right angle and distance; even his last words were for a jury's benefit. I had told Amelia to look away, so nobody but me knew the truth. And after I had confessed to police brutality and perjury...Who was going to believe me?"
He looked at her with despair. "That bastard. He wanted to take your career away from you. He wanted you to live out the rest of your life in prison because of him. Liv...He really was obsessed with you."
"I think...I think you might be right."
He smiled softly at her, and she returned it with a small one of her own. "But you got off, Liv. He's dead, and you're alive. You have your life, you have your career, you have Noah…"
"And I have you," she smiled shyly. "I'm glad I lived to see you come back."
"Me, too." He couldn't help the wide smile that was hurting his face. "I honestly thought that you were going to punch my lights out."
She laughed softly, eyes luminous in the velvet night. "I thought about it...But fortunately for you, I like your face too much to mess it up." Olivia smiled laughingly at him, and he felt himself melt in her gaze.
After several long moments, she looked down again. "You probably have some questions, huh?"
"A couple, but I'll try to keep it short." She looked at him, waiting. "First of all, did he rape Amelia?" He hoped to God that she was okay. After everything that Olivia had risked for her, it would be the cruelest sort of fate if Lewis had simply raped her anyways.
"No," she shook her head. "As it turns out, Lewis has no interest in 12 year olds. Just me."
Elliot sighed angrily. "You saved that girl's life."
"It'll never be the same. Lewis murdered her mother, raped her sister, and abducted her." She stared at him in outrage. "How can he feel no remorse for what he's done to them? Amelia was only 12. She's had to learn fear, to grow up too fast, and now she's lost her mother. She'll never be the same."
He nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat. "It's wrong." He didn't know what more he could say.
"Damn right, it's wrong."
They sat in silence for a while before he remembered his other question. "How did he escape from prison?"
Her face fell into a scowl. "Did I forget to mention that he had a bad habit of making important people fall in love with him?" Olivia rolled her eyes. "During my trial, he somehow got the jury's forewoman to fall for him. Four months after he was convicted, she sent him cupcakes spiked with enough drugs to kill a horse. He started having seizures, died a few times...But he came back to life and convinced his guard to take off his cuffs. He raped a nurse and stole her car."
"What–What was wrong with her?" He couldn't believe anybody could be that recklessly stupid. It was insane.
She shook her head. "She wasn't a dumb woman, El. Lewis just...He knows people, and she wasn't the only one who fell for it. His defense attorney for the Alice Parker case–the one who paid his bail–he murdered her father and raped her mother right in front of me. And his prison doctor–Amelia was her daughter, and look what he did to them. He has a long history of going through people like this...It's just his M.O."
He found himself wishing that he could have met Lewis. The detective in him wanted to talk to him, to find out how exactly his sick brain worked. And then the rest of Elliot wanted to kill him.
Then he remembered something that struck him as wrong. "Wait, but nothing bad happened to the forewoman? She helped him break out of prison, and then tried to put you in prison, but she's the only one who got off easy?"
She smiled tiredly. "Life's a bitch."
Elliot sighed, angry. "If Lewis weren't already dead, I would kill him."
"I know," she said quietly.
He swallowed, hesitating. He didn't want to be pushy, but he wanted to hold her. Luckily for him, she made the decision for him and snuggled up against him. At first he forgot to breathe, the memory of her lips flooding his mind, but he relaxed quickly and took her in his arms.
"Olivia," he sighed. "I know that this wasn't easy for you to talk about. So thank you. I wish that I could take back everything that he put you through, I wish that I could take back my coma–but I can't do any of that. You survived him all on your own, and the only thing I can do is promise to be here for you, now and always. We might not work together anymore, Liv, but you'll always be my partner. And if you'll let me, I'll carry this pain with you. I'll do everything that I can to be the partner you deserve."
She tilted her chin to look up at him with honest eyes. "Thank you," Olivia whispered. She smiled gently at him and put her head down on his chest. He heard her sigh softly, and as her breathing deepened, he realized with awe that she had fallen asleep. She felt safe enough to sleep in his arms. He held her closer, closing his eyes. His mind was seized by tortuous images of her story, but he was grounded by her warmth in his arms. She was his port in the storm. He could do this, he could live with this pain, because it meant that they were alive.
...
I'm not going to lie, this was a difficult chapter to write. I hope I did it justice.
As always, thank you for your continued support. I love reading your reviews!
Tomorrow is the premiere of Season 17! I know that a lot of you stopped watching after Elliot left, but I personally am very excited for it. I'll try to make this story follow the current canon storyline, provided nothing *too crazy happens.
xoxo