A/N: You've all been dying, I know, and I feel awful for taking this long. But I know you will all be grateful for this update as it is very long (8 computer pgs!) and very meaty. We'll get to see Fin and Elliot, Elliot facing Olivia, Olivia facing well... everything! Oh, and I kinda broke the rules in the last giant chunk of this because I could't decide whose POV to put it in, so it fluctuates between Elliot's and Olivia's. But I trust you guys are all inetelligent enough to figure out which thoughts belong to which of our favorite characters. It just didn't feel right to leave the big stuff to just one over the expense of the other. But first, what you're all DESPERATE to know I'm sure: what the heck happened to Olivia? read on. XD

TangoSVU

She can't breathe. She can't breathe. There's anger, not red hot but liquid black, pure and thick coursing through all of her veins, invading her lungs instead of the oxygen she's used to. She's feeding on it. It is not part of her, it is her. She barrels out of the 1-6 like she was just released from a sling shot and there's smoke in her wake. She doesn't know where she's going but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that there's no air around her because she can't breathe, and she can't think about not breathing anyway. She can't think about anything. She's just a ball of energy, plummeting from the sky; a ball of energy that has just exploded, and the only thing left to do is wait around for the crash.

That happens later, much later. She'd gotten the page around eight or so that morning, gone in soon after and set up the room. It's almost sundown now. Her right hand is cut and bruised. She's no doctor, but she thinks she might've fractured a bone. Her clothes are torn randomly, and she's not in her apartment anymore. She can't remember if she ever was. But what she can remember (Asher, she will never forget that name now) haunts her; leaves her terrified.

Only it's a different fear than what she's had to get used to recently. It's not just something "out there", not something abstract, or trapped deep within the recesses of her memories. This is not a fear that will disappear if she's in the right spot, if she turns on enough lights, if she buries herself in work. No, this fear, it has a name, it has a face: hers. It's a fear of herself, and looking down into that water, at her own reflection staring back at her, she knows she's trapped with no way out.

As soon as things have quieted down in the station, Elliot goes looking for her. He wanted to earlier, but Olivia'd kind of left things in shambles. There were kids to calm, parents to reason with, fellow detectives to explain things to (much less a boss), glass to sweep up, a mirror to replace, papers to write. He knew something had to change, something had to break. That's when he decided to approach Fin.

"Hey man," the burly detective grabs Elliot's hand in a common gesture and his voice sounds almost jovial, but both men know now isn't the time. "What's up?"

Elliot shakes his hand, trying to find the right question, the one that will give him the answers he needs. But this person only has some clues, clues that will lead him to the person who does have the answer. "She snapped. I don't know what happened in there, one minute she was fine and the next she was," he sighs and Fin takes up the slack.

"There was nothing you could do about that, Stabler."

"No, I know, but," he stops to pull the man into a nearby empty room. But empty's the wrong word. There are things everywhere: desks, chairs, computers, file cabinets, folders and papers and cords and phones and little lamps even. Souls exist here, in cases old and new, solved and going cold. But there're no actual people in here besides them, and that's what Elliot needs at the moment.

"I know it's not really my business,"

"Then why are you asking?" Fin interrupts.

Elliot twists his hands in front of him while he answers. "I need to know, Fin. Something happened to her and it's, it's breaking her. You saw her today, that's not who she is! And that's not the half of it lately…" he pauses, not knowing how much is his right to share. "I just, need you to help me, so I can help her."

Fin nods, leaning against the wall. "I don't know how much help I'll be,"

"I just need you to tell me what happened," Elliot leaps in, forcing the question from between his lips again. "What happened in the basement?"

"I don't know man!" he semi-shouts. "We were all waiting for our TB shots and the damn nurse was taking forever. Then the alarm went off because of some kind of commotion in the mess hall. I went to her cell but she wasn't there so I got another inmate to take me down. The door was locked and there were so many keys," Fin's voice fades out suddenly as the man gets lost in thought.

"What happened, Fin. Tell me what happened!"

Taking a deep breath, he shakes his head as if ridding himself of the memory. "When I got there, Harris had her on the floor, handcuffed to a back door, and his flap was hanging out. She, she was screaming like she couldn't breathe."

Elliot's body sinks unknowingly onto the desk in realization. Within a second he's back up again. "Did he rape her?" it comes out accusatory, aggressive, possessive.

"I don't know man!" Fin shouts back in the same tone. The tough, from the streets look the African-American has perfected is failing him. He's frustrated and he's hurt, and in this job especially, having a heart is dangerous. "That's all I saw. Her uniform was still on but I don't know how long he had her down there. She stood up and arrested the prick! Right then and there! I thought she'd be okay. Really," he looks at Elliot, trying to justify his actions. "Really I did. She didn't say anything."

And that's the problem, right there and Elliot knows it. She never said anything. He tosses his next words behind his shoulder without thought, the only form of gratitude he expresses to his co-worker. "Tell the Cap I'm taking the rest of the day off," and now it's just Fin in the pseudo-empty room.

It takes Elliot about an hour and a half and the sun has already set low into the horizon, but he finally finds her beneath a bridge deep in Central Park. And he should be upset with her for all the things she's done lately, for all the things she's put him through just in this one freaking day, but all he can manage to think is how glad he is to find her sitting underneath a bridge instead of finding her dead below one, or even just leaning over the edge of one for that matter.

He approaches her slowly, talking way before he actually reaches her so he doesn't startle her. He's not sure who he's actually found here, come to think of it. Is she still angry? Will she lash out at him? Or has the rage dissipated by now, leaving just her fragile self? Or will she just be her normal self, intelligent beyond words? Which one is she now? Which one is really Olivia for that matter?

He comes to her cautiously, letting her set the pace, treating her like a victim. But she's still his greatest friend. "You trashed your apartment." He utters, unsure if it's a question or a statement. Then, when there's no reaction, he chooses something more light-hearted. "Good thing you don't own a car." He sits down beside her then, still far enough apart so that not even their knees are touching, and resists the urge to push her bangs out of her eyes.

"You'd better be glad Cragen wasn't there to see that, though granted he's heard more about it than he ever wanted to know, I'm sure." Elliot pauses again to study her face, and he can see no traces of the stranger he saw earlier that day, but just like before, he knows he has to make her face it. That's the only way you get through those kinds of things, and he knows she'd turn around and do it back to him in a heartbeat. Less than that, really, it's the way they fit together: one of them pushing and the other shoving back until the boundaries have been redefined and they are both in their rightful place again. "You know, in children his age, it's possible to cause brain damage with that amount of force."

"Shaken baby syndrome." Her voice is quiet; he almost doesn't hear her at all.

"Cragen wants to see you in his office ASAP. At best, this'll get you suspended. They'll probably make you pay to fix the mirror you sucker punched. Takes a lot to break through one of those, by the way." He says, a hint of admiration in his voice before he switches tones. "Oh and the parents might sue." Another pause, and Elliot becomes more serious. "You could lose your job, Olivia." Elliot exclaims, but in his brain that's not what he's most concerned about. The truth is, he's losing her. He fears she's losing herself.

"How are you feeling? Your hand okay?" He asks, but she doesn't even turn or pretend to answer him. He's hitting a wall and he doesn't know how to break through. But he won't stop trying because he knows what happens when you do: you lose them. That's what happened with Kathy, with his kids. He shut them out, or they shut him out. Or both. And now look where they are. But it won't happen now; not here, not today, and certainly not with Olivia. "What happened in there? Liv?" And suddenly she's leaping before he can even finish the shortened version of her name.

"Did you see him?" This is the moment she finally looks into Elliot's eyes, and her lips are quivering something awful, so much she can barely speak. There's a line down her face too, a tear streak – though there's only one streak instead of the multiple some would expect – so wet it's glistening all the way until it disappears past her chin and yet he sees no tears there at all. "I can't get it out of my head."

And then, silence. He's used to city noise surrounding them: cars and trucks and horns and the general bustle of people on the streets. But here, at this time of night, there's nothing. Even the nature sounds are unfamiliar. They've never been here before. Not just this location, but this, this place. He wants to sever the spell, but he can't. Her thoughts shine all over her face, that's how strong her emotions are. So he just waits for her to break through and discover him on the other side, no matter how long it takes.

"His little eyes," she speaks, finally, but her voice keeps splitting in that tender way of hers. "So blue and," he can tell she's wracking her brain for the word. "innocent. He, he was terrified, Elliot. Terrified of, of me." She sounds confused. Hurt and lost. Alone. But she's not, she's not. He won't let her be. Then she gasps, "What have I done?" but there's no way to answer her and he knows it. She ends up continuing, staring straight ahead at absolutely nothing. "He was crying. Did you see him?" That question again, but how could he have missed it? That's not the question she's trying to ask, it's just the only one she has right now. "I knocked the table over. I picked him up off the floor by his shoulders. He weighed nothing; I didn't even notice his tiny bones beneath my fingers. I was so angry I didn't even notice. How could I not notice?" she pauses, unsteady beneath all the weight of this reality she's struggling with. But she keeps going, needing to say the words before she can believe it all really happened. Like an alcoholic admitting for the first time that they're addicted, she has to speak every sordid detail to understand it's truth. "I cursed at him, El! He's just a little boy, a victim, and all I did was hurt him. I couldn't even help him." Her voice falls seamlessly. "I can't help anybody anymore."

The ball is in his court now and he grabs it firmly. "That's not true, Olivia. You've helped more people than anybody else in our unit. So this time you screwed up, so what? We all have. It's not the end of the world."

"You said it yourself," she stops him. "I'm probably gonna lose my job." She moves off the bench and out to the water until she's kneeling over the edge, taking her right hand – the knuckles covered in dried blood, Elliot notices – and touching the surface of the water just enough to send a single ripple out into the shadows. "I don't know who that is anymore."

Thinking, he steps beside her, looking past her at her reflection. Her hair is flung every which way, her clothing – a deep red shirt beneath her knee-length black leather jacket, pinstripe slacks in an indistinguishable shade, a plain belt where he expects to find her badge and holster hanging, but he can't see that well – disheveled, her make-up half wiped off and the rest of it hopelessly smudged. Her hand is wavering as it hovers millimeters above the water. The woman he saw today, the woman he's been seeing these past few days; he doesn't recognize her either. But one thing strikes him: Olivia's eyes are dark, unyielding and penetrating straight to his heart even through this weak reflection. And he knows, without a doubt, that his Olivia is in there, somewhere. He just has to find her. He just has to prove it to her. "I do."

Her reaction is instantaneous. "GODDAMNIT!" She smashes her open palm into the water, destroying the image before them. Then she hugs her arms to her chest and lays her forehead on the ground. Her shoulders shake. He knows she's crying.

"Oh Liv," he draws her into his arms and she covers her eyes, pulling her elbows in tight to her body. "I talked to Fin. I, I need you to tell me what happened in the basement. Tell me everything." Elliot frees one of his arms to remove a hand from her face until he's focusing on her eyes. "Liv, you need to tell me what happened."

The crying intensifies momentarily, and he just holds her until they start to diminish. Finally she wipes her nose with a staggering breath and lifts her head slightly. "Jail was unlike anything I've ever seen before, Elliot. There's no respect, no boundaries, no allies. Whatever your C.O. says is the law, whether it would be on the outside or not. They said so many things that an outsider would take as normal, but in there it was sexual harassment. And you just, took it, because if you didn't, it got worse."

But this isn't what he was talking about; this isn't what she most needs to say. "Liv," he tries, but she puts up her hand to stop him, knowing already.

"We were all in the mess hall," and the whole thing starts.

"We were waiting for our TB tests. Parker came over to us and told me to get up." Hang on, I didn't get my shot yet. Olivia hears herself say in her head, so irritated that he'd called her fish yet she still had to respond with C.O. You'll get one later, maybe even two pricks. And it's that way of speaking again, that's only significant in jail. She knew what pricks he meant, everybody did. But how to explain it here on the outside and to Elliot? "People got upset, started yelling at the C.O. for not telling us anything about the outbreak. I'd had my eye on Parker. I was just waiting for it. So when he started yelling at us to sit down and we refused," It took them a long time to sound the alarm. Harris didn't yell over the speaker for everyone to hit the walls until everyone was good and riled up. Why had he waited? Had he wanted them to get out of control? What had she missed?

"I figured something would happen. I hadn't even shifted my weight towards him, and he wrenched me around to slap the cuffs on me, and when he couldn't get them right he slammed me onto the table. It made me angry, but I just kept thinking about being on the other side, and how many people I've smashed against surfaces myself to arrest them." She shakes her head, bringing herself back into the memory. "But then Parker handed me off to Harris, and he was taking me to the hole." Her voice sounds, well, normal, of all things, he thinks. But none of this is normal, and when she turns to him, her face proves it.

"He was supposed to take me to the hole; he said he was taking me to the hole." She's speaking like a child who is trying to make sense of what happened, even though there is no sense to be made. It's like she feels she has to iterate things exactly as they occurred so that she cannot be blamed. But who could ever blame her for any of this?

"We didn't go to the hole. We went to the basement." Olivia begins to make motions with her hands as her words tumble over each other, one after the other after the other. "My heart started to beat faster, butterflies appeared in my stomach." The hole is over in C-block, what are we doing down here? "But I didn't know what to do. So I said I was sorry. I, I apologized to that, that man." He knows that's not the word she wants to say, but the need for justice in her heart won't let her be mean right now.

"He said we were past apologies, and before I could make sense of what he was talking about, I saw a mattress in front of us." This is where she stops, and for all his life, Elliot wishes he could just take all of this away from her so that she wouldn't have to hurt anymore and he hates this. He hates it, these limits of mortality, of being human and bound by the laws of nature. Being a man, he needs to be able to fix things – especially when it comes to his family, and Olivia may not be a blood relative but she's got his heart and that damn well better make her family – but this is something he just can't fix for her.

There's no way to describe her voice as the stilted words appear, or her face, the pain stark in her eyes. There's a light breeze blowing her hair, and a piece is tickling his nose. That's what he chooses to remember: that slight itch on his nose that he couldn't brush away. It makes the rest of it not hurt so much.

"He grabbed my chin, turned my face towards his and spoke to me real close. I asked him what he wanted; I tried to bargain with him. But it was already too late." She thought she could handle it, that's what she'd told Cragen. She should've been able to handle it, that wasn't who she was – a target, a victim – so what happened? "He threw me down and I started screaming at him to get off me; I screamed for help. It was all I could think to do but nobody could hear me, and even if they could, nobody cared, and he knew that too. He knew everything."

She hates remembering, she'd done everything she could so this wouldn't have to happen. She hates sitting here at the edge of this damn lake and telling Elliot everything. But she's started now and she just can't stop. She's bottled it so deep that the slightest leak has caused a levee to break.

"He picked me up by my waist and grabbed my chin again, pushed me against a big pole." Hmmm, you must like it rough. She couldn't get that voice out of her head. It was always there, egging her on, telling her things were different than they should've been. Yeah, you have a watch on? I'm gonna take my time with you. "He kissed me," but that didn't do the act justice. Hard and sloppy as it was he hadn't just kissed her; he'd swallowed her up, taken everything from her, ripped out her heart. No! Please don't! Don't! Please don't! She kept screaming even though his mouth was over hers, using his tongue to grab the words straight from her throat before they could even touch her lips.

She can feel the mattress pressed up against her face again. "I finally threw myself off the bed when he dropped his belt but he yanked me up beneath my arms. I kicked out only there was nothing to push against and I couldn't get him off balance."

It's like a statement they'd ask for in a squad room, full of details they could use to M.O. the perp. But Olivia's not asking the questions and he's not taking the notes. Elliot doesn't want this play by play. He doesn't want any of this horrible nightmare. He doesn't know how to hold all of this information for her until she's ready to deal with it. He has nowhere to put it with all of his own baggage. But if she doesn't say it all to him now, it will just hang between them forever, a constant barrier. This changes everything for them, and yet it changes nothing.

"He threw me against another pole, face first this time. It hurt." A simple statement, but there's no other way to put it. It physically hurt. A lot. He made sure it did. "He told me to shut up but I couldn't. My voice was all I had left." And it didn't do any good. Often victims admitted to succumbing and being quiet, even the ones that had been in a place where someone could've heard them. They felt guilty. They felt responsible. Olivia'd told victim after victim that by surviving, they'd beat him and that's all that mattered. But from this side that means nothing. She's left with nothing.

"There wasn't a part of his body that wasn't smashed up against mine." And even though it doesn't make sense, she doesn't remember the feel of his boner against her ass. Instead she can feel his breath hot against her ear. Haha, yeah I love this. "He laughed."And all she did was scream even though her throat was already so raw it throbbed.

"Then he stepped back, saying he was gonna make me more comfortable, and undid one of the cuffs." The left one, because he had assumed she was right-handed and thus it would be her weaker hand. Maybe so, but that was where he'd made his mistake. She'd elbowed him in the nose and immediately turned around to punch him in the face with her right. Then she pushed off the pole and her feet were beneath her. "I ran and hid behind some boxes out of the light." She should've gotten away, she should've been free but she hadn't hit him hard enough. She hadn't done enough! She'd failed herself.

You little bitch. But she wasn't little. She was a cop and maybe that meant that she was a bitch, 'cause she knew sometimes she was. But she wasn't little, she wasn't helpless. She worked out. She could beat him on the streets any day. She could kick his sorry little ass into next year just by thinking about it. At least, she could've, if she'd been Detective Benson, damn Olivia Serena Benson. But she'd been Kat then. Katrina Ray Lewis and she couldn't save herself. She'd panicked. She hadn't acted like a cop at all.

Like a child he could rescue he sees her there in his mind: crouching in a dark corner, trying to steady her breathing, calming her tears, crossing her arms across her body in an attempt to hug away the hurt, a million thoughts rushing through her head and yet not processing any one of them. That's what's happening to him now. He's thinking a million things and still nothing makes sense. None of this story makes sense to him. He can't piece it together with the woman he sees in front of him, the woman who has sweat and bled beside him for all these years, tougher than any other partner he's ever had or known and ever will, inside and out. But in this story she is unfamiliar to him, someone other than herself; she is damaged, defeated, victimized.

She's living it, in her mind as she spills out the story. She remembers a case they had once with a serial rapist, and one of his victims had been a schizophrenic. When they interviewed her in the hospital, she'd freaked out. Dr. Hendrix said it was because schizophrenics experience everything all over again when you make them retell it, or even when they just remember it. She hadn't understood that then, but she's starting to now. She's thinking it must've been like this: all the sensations again – not just the ones shooting spikes inside her body but the cement cold at her back as it seeps through her thin orange uniform, the wood crate beside her ragged up against her hands, the grit inside her mouth and beneath her fingernails, the stale smell in her nose that doesn't smell like death because she's smelled plenty of that in her life but still somehow gives her the essence of it – everywhere, all the emotions rushing back through her veins, the thoughts piling inside of her mind. She doesn't know how to do this anymore, but just like then, she doesn't know how to make it stop.

You wanna play games, huh? No, she doesn't. She never wanted to play this game at all, ever, that's why she's been skirting around it her whole life. "He wracked his baton against a chain link fence just the way a child would use a stick during recess. It was all just a game to him."Good, because I know 'em all.

She was afraid. She didn't have enough time to find a way out. She had to figure out what to do; she had to make some choices, now, before it was too late. You have two choices, you can come out now and make it up to me, A crash; it makes her jump. He's getting closer. Or I can tell them that you tried to escape and I had to use necessary force. Hmm. It's not a laugh, it's more a sound of preemptive victory but she doesn't understand why he doesn't yell it from the top of his lungs if it is. And you ended up dead. She'd like that, actually, to not have to live through this, or at least not afterwards. The longer I have to wait, the harder it's gonna be. You wanna play hide and seek, huh? Okay, but when I find you, you're it.

There's a mantra in her head, fervent, unrelenting. Don't find me, don't find me, don't find me. I'm not here, don't find me, don't find me, don't find me. More noises and suddenly there's light shining bright in her face. It's not the light at the end of the tunnel though, she isn't free; it's the train running her over.

Hello. He breathes, looking down at her. He's smiling. Smiling at her like he has all the time in the world, like she is the only thing he wants. But she doesn't feel wanted. She feels violated. "He found me," Guess who's ass is mine now?

She has to try again. Okay, okay you win. And she gets up, puts her hands towards him defensively, like a dog showing their belly to the Alpha male.

That's more like it. Come here. He motions with his head. Easy, she pleads."There's a hit to my stomach with his baton, and then one to the back of my knees that forces me down." And that's to let you know who's in charge. But he wasn't in charge, he couldn't be. "I jabbed him in his crotch and took off again." She knows this is her last chance to do something, to get away. Like Bambi charging across the field, she gives it all she's got. But she's in plain sight and the hunter always wins: the door's locked and she has no place else to go.

In his head, Elliot is categorizing the bruises: the bad one on her cheek that make-up can't even fully cover now much less in the beginning, the cut above her eye, the welts on her hand, the other ones he's sure the clothes are covering because she hasn't worn anything but sweaters and turtlenecks lately. He wants to kiss the pain away, move the blood to other parts of her body where she needs it more, like her heart, to help her recover from all of the sin in this God-forsaken world.

"I pounded my palm against the window as I twisted the handle, but I couldn't get it open."

Shut up! "He punched me and I fell. My right hand was still on the doorknob but he grabbed it so he could cuff it to the bars on top of the door. I was sitting on the floor against it, with one arm over my head and the other pushing against him." Shut up! "I couldn't move." You bite me, and you're dead. Grunting. "I kept shouting, trying to resist but he had my head and," She can't say it, but Elliot knows, somehow. He grabs her hand – not gently, not briefly, but tightly, fiercely – and tries to pull her out the other side.

Only there's nowhere to go but here. Just here. This is the moment she can't get rid of, this is the moment that made the case, this is the moment that has ruined her life: his calloused fingers on her face, the smell of him striding straight up her nostrils, the view of his package directly before her eyes – what he's trying to shove into her mouth.

Shut up! And she's crying now. This is the end and she knows it. She closes her eyes…

And Elliot's there, somehow, moving her hair from the cage of her lashes. She looks up at him, blinks. "What it must've been like for her," and she trails off the end of the sentence that was already incomplete.

It's a fragment he can't follow. "For who? Ashley?" she shakes her head and he's confused. She looks at their entwined fingers until she can't tell which are hers and which are his, until the lines blur and this world fades back into the past.

"All I could think about was my mom," she cries, and there it is in this wide open space between them. It's out; what all of this comes back to, the thing that has haunted her her entire life, the whole reason she's here today, right now, the whole reason she ever put herself in that situation, the whole reason she ever took this damn job to begin with, the whole reason she was born at all and is alive today: Serena was raped, and now nearly forty years later, Olivia is about to be too.

Words pass over her as the air suddenly moves. The world goes on even though she's still stuck in the moment. Let her go now! It's Elliot. No, no, that's not right. It should've been Elliot, but he'd already tried to get information out of the prison inmates. He couldn't go in, he would've been ID'd. They'd sent her in with Fin instead. It's Fin. Gotta be.

Get the hell out of here! Harris. He will still get his way.

Then a strange interplay occurs, one she can't follow even though she knows it's between Fin and Harris. Police, move away from her, move away! She's trying to escape! And you had to drop your pants to stop her?

Harris has backed away. Fin has his baton against Harris' neck. They are both standing over her as she sits there on the floor, rivers of tears down her cheeks. And it's like the fog clears.

"Fin showed up, pulled him away from me." This is not who she is. She does not belong on that floor. She is supposed to be beside Fin, beside her partner, arresting the perps. And there is a perp right in front of her who needs to be taken in. "I stood."

Lowell Harris, you're under arrest for raping Ashley Tyler.

Fin again: and the attempted murder of a police officer.

This catches Harris' attention. He looks at her, realizing, seemingly for the first time, just what he's done. You're a cop?

This is when the anger comes. This is when Olivia Serena Benson returns. This is when she faces him. Who's the bitch now?

"And then it was over." She finishes, her eyes now dry, her throat still raw even though nearly everything she's said in the past hour has not risen past a whisper.

"But it's not over." Elliot states.

She won't give in. "He's in jail now, just awaiting trial."

"He victimized you, Olivia," Elliot cries out, exasperated. "And you need to face that. It doesn't matter if he's in jail for what he did to Ashley Tyler or not. For you, nothing's over."

She swallows, staring back into the water. "It has to be." A breath, once again with the illusion of a soul that's withering before him. "I need it to be." And all he can do there on that bench in the middle of the night at Central Park is to hold her so that the emptiness she feels inside won't let her float away from him.