A/N: Yeah, I'm a bitch. There's no other way to put it. I have no writer's dedication. I write when there's inspiration and when I don't have inspiration, I read. Or just watch TV. Or there's grad school, which is hard enough without coming back after being gone for a year as a student missionary, which semi-explains my absence. But not. But I realize anyone that has stuck this out with me deserves a shit-tone of ice cream with rainbow sprinkles so here it is: 9 pages of goodness for you. I know how this story will end and I have most of the next chapter for Liv written, but damn Elliot will not speak to me about how to get him from here to the resolution of the ending I have planned. So if anyone can help me out with that (is it possible to kick characters in the balls for being jerks? Because that's what I want to do), I'd appreciate it. But you've waited long enough - Parallels and Tangents!
Elliot:
He doesn't know what he's doing here. All he knows is that he has to try. But still, here is the better question. At least he made an appointment this time, rather than just rushing in on her again. Olivia's the only one he never has to call, or arrange something with. She takes him how he is, where he is, no matter when or what he is. That's something he should be able to say about his wife and only his wife, but it's not. And he loves Kathy, dammit he loves her. He would die for her. He would give anything he's ever had to support her and his kids, and he doesn't know why that's not enough. He doesn't understand where everything went wrong.
Isn't that the million dollar question, he mused. But perhaps the better question, could it be fixed?
And that question just led him here. He figured, if Kathy couldn't explain it to him, and Olivia couldn't help him through it, that only left one other option.
"Elliot, come in."
"Uh, thanks." He's twisting his hands, a nervous habit, only because he can't help remembering the last time he was in this office with bloody knuckles and almost as much confusion. But much less anger this time. Now, there is only doubt, misunderstanding, sadness, no, more than that, it's just brokenness.
Elliot could feel her eyes on him. "I don't know how to do this,"
"Do what?"
"This…therapy shit."
Hendrix didn't even sigh or seem to take offense. "Well, you chose to come here today, so you must have some reason to try it."
I don't have anything else left to try, he thought, but couldn't bring himself to say it. "I just, I want my life back."
"Where did it go?"
With her, the words squeeze his throat until he can't breathe. "I did everything I could to keep things together, and one by one, they've all broken apart."
"What's fallen apart?"
"My marriage, my kids, my job…" My purpose. It's the things he holds back that kills him, so he throws out any other words that come to him, as if he could rush ahead of the oncoming train and still make it out alive. "I just need someone to tell me what to do to fix it, because I've done everything I can think of and it hasn't worked."
"What is it you're hoping to get back to, Elliot?"
Back to before she left.
"Back to when Kathy and I loved each other, when we were all our kids needed. Back to when kids were kids and the world couldn't hurt them, back to when me and…" Liv could save the world.
He hadn't cut himself off soon enough, and Hendrix latched onto the fact. "When you and who what?" She leaned forward slightly, and for some reason it pissed him off. He'll give her Kathy, he'll give her the kids, hell he'll even give her pieces of his parents and his childhood, but he can't give anyone Olivia. They are the only ones that understand their world.
"Look," he barked. "If I can just figure out where things went wrong, I can get them back."
"People change, Elliot, and it's not necessarily good or bad, it just is. Your wife's not who she was twenty years ago. Kids have to grow up and become their own person. Not even you are the same from when I met you just three years ago. Sometimes people change without us, and that can be the scariest part, but it doesn't mean they don't still care about us or that they no longer need us."
"But what if they don't need you?" He blurted out. "What if protecting them was your job, and the one time you couldn't do it, they were hurt beyond repair," and then she left.
"You can't protect everyone. You can love them and care for them, but the world will still hurt them, and all that matters is that you stick beside them."
"I did! I, did." The rest of it comes out in a whisper because something inside him still won't believe it. "I wasn't the one who left." His mom left him, so did his father. Kathy left. Maureen left. Kathleen left. Dickie wanted to and Lizzie pretended like she wouldn't. Eli would go too as soon as he grew old enough to realize no one could stop him.
He'd never thought about that, not until Olivia left. But Eli was more Olivia's than his, and he had never thought she'd leave, either.
"Elliot," Hendrix says just as softly, "Did you ever think that sometimes, people have to leave to heal themselves?"
He puts his fists to his eyes to force the tears to stay in, because even if that's so, if he'd done his job right, she wouldn't have needed to heal in the first place.
XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx
Olivia:
"I can't believe you made me watch that stupid movie." Olivia huffs, bursting through the door behind Valerie and plopping herself onto the couch.
Laughing, Valerie locks the door, puts her keys on the hook and swats Olivia's feet off the cushions. "What is your problem? I thought it was a riot!"
"Horror films aren't riots; they're ridiculous pop culture fluff, and a total waste of time." Olivia rolls her eyes. "And money. You owe me fifteen bucks. I'll forfeit the cost of the popcorn."
Valerie looks at her, incredulous. "Seriously? You're about to argue semantics with me?" Valerie pokes her arm, causing Olivia to bat at her hands and fall back against the arm of the couch with a shout.
"Stop!" Olivia tried to act annoyed, but she couldn't keep the laugh at bay.
"Girl, how many times do I have to tell you to loosen up? You can't be serious all the time or you'd slit your wrist. You need fun things in life just as much as anything else. God, I have no idea how you survived NYC with that attitude."
"Oh stop it. What's fun about sharks and giant squid?"
"You're incorrigible." Valerie replies, taking off her shoes. "And it was an octopus. What's more, the whole point of movies is to suspend reality for a short time and just let yourself be taken by the story. I thought it was a decent B films, but obviously you couldn't let go of control. I bet you never read anything other than biographies either."
"You keep teasing me and I'm just going to leave without trying any of this famous garlic pasta of yours. Besides, I read other things." Olivia scowls half-heartedly.
Valerie glares at her from the kitchen cabinets. "Prove it!"
"I…love dystopian novels." Olivia lets out suddenly, as if expecting the aforementioned books to smash on top of her head.
"You're lying." Valerie plops the pot onto the stove and motions for Olivia to hand her the lighter.
Olivia throws her hands up. "Honest to God. 1984, Fahrenheit 451, the Uglies Series; I must've read The Hunger Games at least three times in a row. It was torture waiting for the sequel and now you've just reminded me that I'm still waiting for the third, so thanks a lot."
Valerie snorts. "Well I'll be. You can surprise me after all!" She throws the dish towel into the sink and begins walking down the hallway. "Want to get the ingredients down from the shelf? I'm going to see if Diana wants any pasta while I'm making."
Olivia hears Valerie knock on her roommate's door a few times, but when she doesn't get an answer, her footsteps pad further down the hall. Olivia measures water into the pot and sets it on the stove to boil. Then as she's bending in her search for items in the disorganized refrigerator, she hears Valerie scream out. "Liv!"
She's never heard Val sound like that before, not even when she slipped while rock-climbing. Olivia untangles her arm from the fridge and hurries to the backroom, halting abruptly to take in the unexpected event before her eyes.
It was oddly bi-color. White of the tile, white walls, white porcelain, white skin and then suddenly red, red, red. Impossibly bright and dark simultaneously. She blinks and there's a third color: blinding silver. Valerie grabs onto her arm for balance and then the reflex of years on the job clicks in. She kicks the razor blade across the floor, pulls the girl's body flat while watching her head and reaches the left hand into the air, her own fingers now becoming red, red, red against the wound. "Valerie, hand me a towel and then call a bus." Olivia looks up briefly. Valerie's trembling by the doorway, her left hand frozen in front of her mouth. "Valerie!" Olivia shouts, breaking her stupor with a jolt. "Hand me a towel and then call a bus."
"A…a…what?"
"911 goddamn it. Give me the towel!" Later, she will feel bad for yelling at Val like this, but right now she's just hoping Diana has a later at all.
Val returns with the cell phone by her ear. "Yes, my friend's putting pressure on it. Ok." Then to Olivia. "They're coming."
"Good. Any changes in mood lately? Did she seem suicidal?"
"No. She got a new job last week. She was really excited."
"Did something happen to upset her?"
"I don't know. She wasn't here when I got home last night and I think she was still sleeping when I left this morning."
"Has she hurt herself before?" It was too hard to check for old scars with only one hand.
"I don't know!" She's crying.
"Okay, Val, okay. I'm sorry. It's alright. She'll be alright." Olivia can't keep one alive and comfort the other one. "I need you to do something for me. Can you pull it together enough to do that?"
Val nods enthusiastically, desperate for something to do.
"Ok. I need you to turn the stove off and then go outside to guide the EMT's to your apartment. It'll be faster if they don't have to search, ok?"
"Ok." She says, quick to avert her eyes and disappear.
Wiping her forehead with a sigh, Olivia turns her attention back to the girl. But girl wasn't really the right word. She was only about ten years younger than they were. "Diana, Diana can you hear me?" The blood flow seemed to be slowing, but she couldn't take the risk of getting a closer look underneath the towel. She checks the pulse in her right hand, noticing a solid black ring on the middle finger. They're not always significant, but if being a detective teaches you nothing else, it's the more details the better. The girl's eyes flutter as she begins to regain consciousness. "Diana, the ambulance is on its way; you'll be okay."
Without warning, Diana reaches her other arm up to flop against Olivia's protective hand. "No, no…" she mumbles.
Olivia readjusts her body to deflect the sudden movements. "It's alright, Diana. Don't move. You're going to be fine."
Luckily for Olivia, this was the moment the EMT's arrived. "Gaping wound in the left wrist. No known history of MDP. Was unconscious at first for an undetermined period, lost about half a liter. She just became combative."
The man looks up at her with questions in his eyes.
"I used to be a cop," she answers simply. Oh, how easy it is to slip into an old skin and pretend it still fits.
"That so?" He says with a hint of suspicion. "Thanks. We'll take it from here."
Following them out through the kitchen, Olivia actually has to stop and laugh. Val had done as she'd asked – the stove was off – however the door to the fridge is still wide open. Time to find Val, but first, she crosses to the sink to wash the blood off her hands once more before it adds itself to the rest of the past's indelible stains.
XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx
"How ya doing?" She sits down next to her in the waiting room and rests her hand on Valerie's shoulder, proffering the hot cup of coffee.
Val shrugs. "Better than she is, I'd gander."
In any other context, that would bring a laugh from them both, but the current mood is too somber.
"Did you get in touch with her family?"
"No." Another shrug. "She told the EMTs she didn't want anybody called. I figured it wasn't my place." Valerie's eye look too lost to even feel the hurt. "I should've seen it. I should've checked on her this morning before I left. She's never out late. I should've,"
"Ssshhh, nobody saw. You did everything you could. She'll pull through this and we'll just help her put the pieces back together wherever she'll let us. It's ok. You did great." Olivia soothes, putting an arm around Val as she swallows her tears.
Just then, the doctor rounds the corner and stops in front of them. "She's asking for you."
They walk into the room; Valerie going closer to the bed and Olivia hanging back. She's hung out with Diana several times, but would definitely put her in the acquaintance circle, so she wasn't sure what her place was in all of this. Diana looks just as dubious. "I can leave," Olivia suggests.
Valerie tries to laugh. "Look, whatever you tell me, she's going to hear anyway. That's like, rule #1 of girl world or something, so you might as well save me the trouble of repeating it." And saying so either makes this the most blasé conversation ever, or the most awkward. Olivia feels like she's been thrown back squarely into the middle school lunch table.
But it works. Diana rotates the black ring. "Remember I told you about Todd? We'd gone on a couple of dates, but I wasn't sure about it. I'd told him from the beginning that I wasn't looking for a…" she purses her lips, searching for the word. "physical relationship…and he'd said he was cool with that. But then he kept pressing, and so finally I told him that…" stops again. Valerie pulls up a chair, grabbing her hand. Diana pulls in a breath. "That I'm asexual."
Valerie's face verifies her confusion. "Asexual? Like worms?"
Crossing the room, Olivia jumps in before Diana can get defensive. "No, worms can become either gender depending on necessity. I, myself, haven't had any interactions with people who identify as asexual so please correct me if I'm wrong, but they've got a big online presence that's been growing the last few years so I've heard about it a little. It's a lack of sexual attraction, right? Asexuals just don't feel the desire or need to have sex."
Diana breathes out a sigh of relief and nods. "Basically. I've known it for several years, since college really, but it obviously makes navigating the dating world rather difficult, so I haven't really tried at all. He seemed worth the risk though…" she drifts off until Valerie nudges her. "I thought, by saying it, it would be the end all, like it would explain everything, make sense of everything for him. It didn't." She puts a tissue up to her nose. "He called me a tease. Said I just hadn't been in a real relationship before. That nobody had ever 'done me right.'" She blows her nose in that can't-breathe-but-don't-want-to-make-a-loud-noise kind of way.
"Diana, did he rape you?" This time she doesn't even feel the old skin slip over her. It is a single vein that has never stopped carting oxygen through her blood; has never stopped being a part of the very foundation of who she is.
The phrase rips Diana apart. She is all snot and salt water, dissilient at the seams. "It doesn't count."
"Like hell it doesn't!" Valerie blurts out, suddenly resembling her old fiery self.
But Diana is resolute. "No, it was true, I'd led him on, I guess. He has a right to demand sex in a relationship."
"It's not a right." Olivia counters. "It's an expectation, and a bad one."
"I went home and I just curled up in a ball on the floor. I couldn't move. For all those years I thought I was broken before discovering Aces, this was the first time I'd actually felt broken. I can't live like that."
"You're not broken. You're a survivor and you will move past this, in time. Confronting him can help give you a sense of closure. Have you told the police?"
Diana chokes out a halted laugh. "I came into his apartment willingly; I didn't say no..."
"Did you say yes?" The only response is the sound of her sobs. "Then it was rape." Olivia prods softly and Valerie enthusiastically nods her agreement.
"I already showered,"
Her voice is gentle - fleece blanket soft. It's only from years of the same story in a hundred different versions that allows Olivia to process it properly. "I've made cases on less. It's early enough there's probably trace evidence everywhere, your place and his."
Valerie's light bulb goes off. "Olivia's a cop! She's done tons of cases like this. She can help!"
"Uh, I…" the hopeful look in Diana's eyes is more than she can bear. "I don't have any jurisdiction in California, and I haven't been on the job for over a year." And just like that, the hope is gone, which somehow hits Olivia even worse. "But I can stay with you through the process, make sure things go as smoothly as possible, okay?"
And it is not what she wants to do, not at all, it is, in fact, the very last place she wants to be period, but she never has been able to look a victim in the eyes and give up.
XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx
She is so sick to her stomach before leaving her house the next morning that she actually throws up while trying to brush her teeth. Then she's in the kitchen because she needs something to rinse the taste of bile out of her mouth, but all she has in the fridge is orange juice and just the thought of the acidity leaking into her stomach almost makes her ill again. So instead, she unwraps a piece of spearmint gum and forces her feet to move, crossing the threshold that pretends to hold safety within its gates.
And for how much the idea has panicked her, helping Diana through the reporting process is actually, fucking easy. It's so much less complicated compared to dealing with perps, and really all she had to do was hold Diana's hand and ask a few appropriate questions or express a few of Diana's concerns to the male detectives. The protective mama lion comes without thought because it is always straightforward to care for others. The case probably wasn't going to go to trial; the ADA seemed to think they could get a plea deal that Olivia thought was letting the guy off the hook but that Diana was happy with, because even though it didn't include jail time, he did have to plead guilty. Sometimes acknowledgement is all people need to heal.
That's what she's thinking about, later, as she is preparing to leave Diana in the capable hands of people trained in aftercare – the part Olivia has never truly been a part of (even when she's stayed in touch with the victims) because there was always somebody else to process, someone else to convict – how admission is perhaps the most important step in the healing route, when the Psychologist pulls her into the hallway.
"It'll take time, of course, but I think she'll move past this quite well." Olivia starts, but the woman interrupts her.
"Look, I hope I'm not being too forward here, but I've been doing this for over twenty years, so I know better than to ignore my instincts. Here's my card. I'd love to set up a time to sit down and talk with you. I think it would really help you process whatever is causing all those emotions roiling underneath the surface."
It catches Olivia completely off-guard. It wasn't even the last thing she had expected, because she'd never expected it in the least. "I," she laughs nervously and she hates it; she wants to rip the sound out of the air and force it back down her throat like a sword-eater at the fair, no matter the damage it does on its way down. Quick, say something on a different topic that doesn't sound evasive… she thinks, but there is nothing besides the want for the right words to come.
Olivia's eyes are glued to the name tag pinned to the collar of the woman's casual brown blazer – Alexandra – and she suddenly flashes back to Alex doing the hardest thing by leaving her entire life behind, only to come back with a renewed fire and strength rather than the diminished spirit one would anticipate from such circumstances. Then she's caught remembering the time when things only seemed hopeless on occasion instead of permanently overwhelming, like she could never get her head above water; the time when her partnership with Elliot was the least confusing and most consistent part of her life; the time before she felt so…so…empty. And not empty like having an empty gas tank that just needs to be filled, empty like a black hole has sucked all of the air out of her soul and only left the false ribs behind to hold up this ghost of a frame.
"No obligation, you can do with it what you will, but I'd like for you to at least consider my offer." She's still holding the card out but Olivia can't move. Nine-tenths of the time, you hand out your business card without a second thought, knowing the person won't ever use the connection but doing your duty to make sure the opportunity is there. But this was the other tenth of the time, when you know this card could be the only thing between the person continuing to destroy themselves, or taking the first steps into freedom. And she'd been on the other side too many times to be stupid enough to reject that kind of offer.
"Okay," she answered, finally bridging the two inch gap between their hands, making sure their fingers don't touch, and giving the most painful half-smile of her life because she can't bring herself to say "thank you" when there is so much risk involved.
Alexandra smiles with both rows of teeth, "Letting go of the denial is often the hardest part," she imparts as she steps past her down the hallway.
It's all Olivia can do to stay standing.
