A/N: What? An update almost before a whole month has passed instead of over a year? This is madness! Once again, thanks to my ever faithful betas: TheTBone and LaeoevanSVU. Please review people, I want to know if anyone is still reading this story! :-) Plus I mean, seriously, you've got to want to know more about Valerie, right? XD
Kathy was asleep in the crook of Elliot's arm, and he relaxed against her steady breathing, ears alert for any sounds from his son. There was no moonlight on her face, but his eyes had adjusted to the dark, so he used the time to memorize all the new lines and rivulets in her skin. Elliot had only just now recognized how much this life had aged her.
He'd been exposed to HIV once, rescuing a victim from a suicide attempt. Liv had to be tested after an old boyfriend ended up in the morgue with AIDs. Point being, they'd faced death before, but it was always something quick, seemingly over before it had really begun. There was no time to think when there was a gun to your face. Your life didn't flash before your eyes. That was a misnomer. There just was or there wasn't, and that was something you just inherently knew when it all came down. But the wait for test results, the nausea and sleeplessness from the preemptive measure pills, the agonizing slowness of the entire process… the HIV scare was worse than any of that stuff he'd ever faced before or since. He didn't even tell Kathy until she confronted him about why he wouldn't make love to her anymore, much less kiss her. She got angry, yelled at him for hiding things from her. Couldn't she see that he was only trying to protect her? What she knew couldn't hurt her. It was the way he dealt with everything in his life. If he couldn't see it, it was over. It was over and it didn't need to be messed with. Nothing could hurt anybody that way, he thought. Nothing.
But what if he'd been wrong all along? What if Elliot's best intentions to save had only destroyed?
He knows so much about both the women in his life, but it's different information. Day. Kathy is fair and light. She's Easter morning spring with his kids in pastels, safekeeping of innocence. Night. Olivia is dark and mysterious. Autumn leaves that change colors without warning, a passageway to another life. He knows the totality of Kathy's past and yet only little pieces of Olivia's; he knows nearly everything about Olivia's present but hardly any of his wife's. He knows how both women sleep, what gets them up every morning. He knows how Kathy likes her coffee and Olivia her tea. Elliot can look at a child and know what either woman will do in response. He knows Olivia's walk, can hear her thoughts in her words or her silences; he knows what riles her up and how to calm her down. He knows Kathy's skin, the full length of her body. He knows the perfect spot to hit during foreplay and the way she likes making love to him, but he has no idea what goes on in her head anymore. Meanwhile, Elliot can look into Olivia's eyes and speak volumes, have a full conversation. Together, they would make a perfect woman, but he can't even keep one of them.
She'd warned him, all those many years ago. He still remembers it now. They were working on this case where a husband had attacked his own wife so he could kill the baby inside her. She'd been having an affair and the baby wasn't his. It had really gotten to Elliot. He'd been pissy with the unit since the start.
Olivia confronted him about it, thinking there was something going on between him and Kathy. But he told her it would almost be easier if one of them was having an affair. "It just never goes away, you know?" He admitted, sitting down beside her on the window ledge in front of the elevators. "Every case a little bit more horrific than the last and I go home. What am I supposed to do, talk about my day at work? 'Honey, today a guy cut a baby out of his wife's stomach. Pass the gravy, please.'?"
She knew exactly what he was getting at, the way she always did. Sometimes he thinks she knows him better than he knows himself. "So you just don't talk at all." He tried to think of a response, but came up with nothing. "That's no solution, Elliot."
"Well," he started, feeling like he needed to justify it, even though he had nothing to prove to her of all people. "One of us has to be able to sleep at night."
He caught Olivia's eyes but couldn't stop thinking of Kathy. "She thinks I'm shutting her out." And that had been all, he thought, but Olivia wasn't going to let him get away with it.
As if to accentuate her point, she got up to leave. "You are." His thoughts stopped. "That's exactly what you do." Her tone was straight, offering him this simple truth. "You keep this up," she continued, "you're going to ruin the best thing you've ever had."
And she'd been right. It wasn't that he didn't want to believe her either, no matter what he does or doesn't understand now. At that time, like this morning, he just didn't know how to change what had already been laid to rest.
If he's done all of this to his wife without even meaning to, what has his unchecked temper done to Olivia? Liv, I'm sorry. Then he prays, Let her hear me.
They go running on Tuesdays, out to dinner on Thursdays, and climbing on Sundays. Sometimes Valerie calls on other days to suggest something else: movie, museum, beach day. Olivia's always up for something, however she just doesn't know how to plan it. The only thing she's ever been able to count on before was work, and without it dictating her schedule, she's at a loss.
She has to be careful though, because Valerie's quick to get a one-up on her, like the art gallery that turned into bungee jumping somewhere off the 210 interstate. ("We call them freeways out here, ya know." Valerie always teases.)
"You've gotta loosen up girl!" Valerie shouts, egging Olivia on. "You're always stuck in your head. How is this different from rock climbing?"
"Val," Olivia smirks, "Rock climbing has rocks. This…this is…"
Valerie makes one last check on their clips before grabbing her friend and throwing their combined weight off the platform. "Living!" Then, above Olivia's shrieks of surprise, Val's pun, "Liv is living!"
The blood rushing to her features, the ground so close and then so far, her heart in her stomach and then her throat, Valerie laughing, Olivia laughing. So much laughter.
The adventures are exciting, and Olivia loves this sense of freedom, but it's the smaller moments that make more of an impact on her. Growing up, she was never one of those kids with lots of friends, much less girls who were friends. The few times she got close to somebody, it always ended pretty quickly once she realized she couldn't bring them home to play after school or for sleepovers. In college she was part of a sorority, but she's always been a bit closed-mouthed, and even then she was more concerned with doing everything she could to get into the Academy. And yeah, she and Alex – and later she and Casey – would go out for drinks after cases, but Olivia's never had anything close to this friendship she's got with Valerie.
One night, tongues loose with alcohol, they spoke of years past: college, their 20s, 30s, crossing forty. There was no talk of childhood, as personal choices define volumes on their own.
"My parents are so conservative; I'm not sure how they managed to create me." Valerie laughed, heady. "I don't think I've ever seen them do anything more than hold hands. It took me until after college to really figure out who I was, and I wasn't the typical good-girl-turned-partier either. I've just always had this free spirit spontaneous thing going on. I like to keep moving." Fresh out of college with a useless English Literature degree, she took a journalism job as the California scout for a hunting magazine. That's how she'd ended up as a travel guide. She knew where everything was in California, and if she didn't have a personal connection to the place itself, she knew someone who did. It was that networking that got her in with the VIPs, "And it's been smooth sailing ever since. It's perfect for me. I have no patience for teaching middle-class college brats and can you even imagine how mental I'd be trapped up indoors? People pay me to visit all of these incredible places, and then I get paid more just to write down my opinion about them. Sometimes they even beg me to fit them into my schedule just so they can get some good advertizing out before the peak season."
"Is that how you discovered that outcropping of ours at Joshua Tree?" she asked.
Valerie winked at her. "Gotta keep a few little gems to myself." Then she sighed, the feeling in the room instantly more somber. "I'd go crazy without the traveling. You'd think for an only child, I'd be used to being alone all the time, but it's draining."
"I poured all of myself into work, too," Olivia admitted softly. "I sacrificed everything, without even realizing it."
"It's no wonder we're basically spinsters. Heh. Men could never keep hold of me,"
"And I never let any of them in."
But Valerie shook her head. "Never? With a hottie like yourself? Now that I doubt. There has to be someone. There's always one that makes us who we are whether we gave them permission with a title or not."
Elliot, her heart sobs. His name sits on her lips like a drop of water in the desert. It's all she has, and it is no relief at all.
"Oh honey," Valerie grabs her hand suddenly. "Sorry I asked. Those burns never do heal. I should know."
Wiping the stray tear, Olivia takes another sip of beer. "Did he leave you or vice versa?"
Valerie took her hand back, brushing her hair out of her face. "Neither really, we just…I just…I ruined it before I even knew what I had."
"How so?"
"Ruined my chance. Well, you see, after college…it's just…" Valerie drank her beer dry. "Jack wanted kids. We tried for awhile, but nothing happened. So we went to a specialist and…"
Olivia had to prod her on. She didn't understand how a money issue could counteract the love for a child. But Valerie's skin had gone cold, stiff.
"Turns out my uterus was full of scar tissue. Years before, I'd been involved with my boss. He wasn't married; it wasn't an affair. I just didn't want it to look like favoritism, so I broke it off. Then I discovered I was pregnant…"
"An abortion," Olivia gasped, without even meaning to.
"I felt so foolish. I wasn't some stupid high school drop-out or college kid with no life plan. I wasn't naïvely thinking if I gave him sex he'd love me. Birth control is so much more common place now. I didn't know where to get it, and even if I had, I would've been too scared to ask. It just wasn't the right time for a baby then; the right man. I figured I'd have more chances later.
"I'd never told Jack about it. It ripped him apart. Said he didn't even know who I was anymore. We stopped talking. You can get through anything as long as you keep talking. But it was too late for us." She wrung her hands together, trying to stop their shaking, and then Val was crying. Olivia wasn't even sure she realized it. "Those clinics lie to you. Say it's relatively painless, that it's not a baby yet, just a fetus, that there aren't any long-term effects, that you can still have other children later." Her eyes darkened, and Valerie lost herself to the memory. "They used some sort of tiny vacuum. I can still hear the sound, like suction cups. It wasn't what I thought it'd be. I didn't mean to look. It was like a limp baby doll, only broken up. They don't tell you they pull them out in pieces, crush the skull. I could see all her perfect little fingers. I would've named her Abby."
Suddenly, something shook Valerie from her monologue and she jumped up towards the kitchen. "But enough of my blubbering. Looks like both of us need another brew!"
The topic left Olivia taciturn. If abortion had been an option in '68, would Serena still have kept her? Olivia's always been careful about some form of birth control, but how much of that was just luck of the draw? If she had been in Val's position, would she have done the same thing? Even knowing how much she wants a child now, she doesn't know that answer. A part of her says no way, just because of that desire, but another part says absolutely, because she'd grown up knowing she was unplanned and unloved with no father to speak of, and that is just too painful a thing to put on any child. It's a wonder her mother hadn't died years before she did.
Olivia had watched people do it more times than she could count. There were lots of different options for reactions and there was no way to accurately predict which one the person would have, so you had to prepare yourself for any of them. There was denial, numbness, anger, regret, grief, disbelief, and some that you couldn't even begin to touch the surface of in just one word. Regardless, every reaction was intense: the weeping unhinged, the screeches piercing, the words unrelenting, the strength immeasurable, the fury unstoppable, the thoughts unconquerable, the facts useless. Sometimes the person stormed away, others tried to break through the plexi-glass to reach their loved one. Still yet, some would grab onto you with such force it was like you were the only thing holding them together anymore.
You think you know, see, having watched so many people go through it, what you would do in the same situation, but you don't. Her I.D. had been in her pocketbook, and yet Olivia still had to go identify the body. Yes, the body. By the time she saw it, it wasn't a person anymore, it was just… a body. Just another dead piece of skin and bones to add to the long list of ones she'd seen in her lifetime. She remembers her heart was beating too slow – because surely she should be feeling at least a bit apprehensive? – as she stood in front of the mirror facing the darkness inside. The cop with her whom she didn't know – he was from another unit, homicide, in a part of town she normally didn't deal with – reached up to rap the window and alert the M.E. to their presence, but she beat him to it out of habit. The lights shone, and the hands that belonged to the forever faceless M.E. pulled back the white sheet. Olivia couldn't understand the point of the white sheet. Why? What did the white mean? What did it matter? White couldn't erase the blood stains, the wounds left permanently on the body, couldn't bring back the innocence lost, couldn't alleviate the sins of the person beneath. Beneath the sheet was the face of a woman, Serena Benson. "That's her," she spoke flatly, then turned on her heel and left without even a glance to the detective. But she'd lied. It wasn't Olivia's mother beneath that sheet. Her mother had left years ago. Olivia wasn't being cold and she wasn't in denial. She was calm, not hysterical. She couldn't be anything except indifferent. It was the only reaction, only emotion left when it came to this woman in Olivia's life.
"I still can't get over you hauling ass with the po-po," Valerie mused, coming back from the kitchen with cold ones and interrupting Olivia's thoughts. "Especially in New York City. How'd you ever live to tell about it, much less escape? You should totally write a book. Or dictate one to me and I'll write it for you! Always wanted to get the inside scoop…"
"I'm not saying that. Some people are saying that. They're selling a lot of books."
"I should write a book," she'd spurted sarcastically. But he didn't take it that way.
"You should – you know these people."
She what? "No I don't," she'd resisted with a chuckle.
"You do, that's why people move away from you on the sofa, Olivia." People did what? How did he know that? How could he be sure there was any specific reason? "You get inside sex offenders."
She'd paused then, considering his words for a moment. But just a moment, because then the sarcasm came back. "Gee," she'd practically rolled her eyes like the teenager she never had a chance to be. "How nice for me," she muttered before downing the rest of her drink and grabbing up her jacket.
"Well?" he'd asked, but hadn't he already said enough? But he started to follow her, so she answered him.
"Well what?"
"I'm not moving away." He smiled, and she couldn't help smiling back.
"I can see that." So she brushed passed him, a little closer than usual, enough to actually brush him with her rear end. She'd taken him back to her apartment with her. They'd started making out on the couch. It was nice. He wasn't acting strange or holding back or giving too much. He just, was. She'd wanted it; it had been awhile.
He wanted it too, or so he said, but suddenly he stopped and she'd pulled away, walked towards the desk drawer that had never held clothes because she'd been too lazy to move it into the bedroom. "Sex crimes, huh?" It always came back to that, no matter what they said in the beginning.
She'd sighed. "Uh, yeah." Turned back to him, prepared to say goodnight – an underpinning of goodbye included free of charge. But he'd still been kissing her neck, and was now looking into her eyes. "What?" she asked. "You seeing what I see?"
"Yea," he replied, even though she didn't understand how that could be possible, seeing as how he was just a reporter, a wanna-be big-shot. "I mean, you close your eyes, is that it? To have sex?"
But for how observant he'd always been, he had this one all wrong. The picture in front of your eyes was malleable, if you knew how to change it by degrees, if you knew where to look, where to put your focus. It was the picture behind the lids of your eyes – the one permanently printed there like a giant tattoo – that burned when you least expected it. So she denied his claim, without really answering the underlying question. "I have sex with my eyes wide open." That way she could always tell what was coming, could always be the one to control the outcome, or at least, the only one to know what that outcome might look like, behind closed eyes.
He'd taken it as a come on, which it sort of had been, when she thinks about it now, even though that hadn't been her motive then exactly. More kissing; the night looked promising, they'd shared a few more words as their mouths connected. Then his lips touched her neck again, and he was behind her. "Let's pretend," he whispered hot into her ear and her whole body perked up in response. This could be new.
"Pretend what?" she shirked slyly, but in the next instant she wished she hadn't.
"That I'm the guy on the subway."
Her stomach dropped to the bottom floor of the apartment complex. She pushed her hair behind her right ear as she nearly retched. Her first thought was to punch him, but then – as she tried to get away from him so he'd stop touching her – his arms clasped around her waist too tightly. She pulled at them. "Okay, stop it." But he twisted tighter.
"Just for fun," another whisper, but there was nothing sexy about it anymore.
"No, no." That was supposed to be enough, that's what she told the women and children that came into the precinct. "No, really, stop it." Her hands flopped against his, searching for purchase besides her own skin.
"What would you do?" he asked, and that's when she got away, as if to answer him.
"Oh my God!" she'd chosen incredulity and repulsion over the fear, because fear was always the hardest one, but she could feel the panic constricting her heart as she backed away, wiping her fingers across her lips. "Wow. I'm going to go wash my face," she pointed towards her bathroom. "and my hands, and my mouth, and uh, there's the door," this time she pointed as far away from her as she could, still edging into the other room, afraid of facing her back to him. "Uh, make sure you're out," she'd reached the bathroom door, finally. She grabbed it, supported her weight with it. "When I get out of here." She pointed her index finger against the wood and then as she slammed it she'd stated – just for extra emphasis – "gone."
And he had left, as she'd turned the water of the shower up as hot as it would go – an attempt to wash all remains of him away – but he was always there with her, too, even though she'd lived in many different buildings since. Sometimes now, in her dreams – her nightmares, actually – inside her head, the reporter and the corrections officer combined.
"No," Olivia accidentally shouted, resolute. "The things I've seen you can't put into books. Even if you could get it published and heaven forbid convince someone to read it, no one would believe it. People inherently want to think that those things don't happen, or that they only happen to strangers. Truth is, no one's immune."
"Gotta drink to that." Valerie said softly, clinking their bottles together.
