An Honest Choice

Title: An Honest Choice
Author: Rosie Cruz
Pairing: Casey/Olivia
Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction. The characters belong to Dick Wolf and NBC. I just like to play with them. The story however is purely a creation of my imagination.

2007 © ROBC. The characters of Olivia Benson, Casey Novak, Elliot Stabler, John Munch, Fin, Cragen and Kathy Stabler belong to Dick Wolf and NBC. The story however is mine. All rights reserved. Copies of this may be printed for personal use only. No part of this story may be reproduced or reused for any other purpose without prior written permission.

Author's Note: Wordy little expository chapter here, but we are definitely coming to an end.

Chapter 17

Friday Night

It had been next to impossible to convince Casey to accompany Olivia home from the hospital. Olivia had enlisted both Josh and Elliot's help and when Casey finally agreed to spend the night just in case anything happened, Olivia could have scaled the building with the positive energy coursing through her. With Olivia's care handled, Elliot left the hospital and returned to work saying something about wanting to make sure the evidence against Olivia's attacker was solid. Now only Casey and Olivia remained in the hospital awaiting Olivia's discharge.

Casey was tired. Her world was upside down and inside out. This morning Olivia had told her she missed her and in the afternoon she had gotten herself clocked over the head with the back of a pistol. Alex was seemingly out of the picture and now Casey had just agreed to go home with Olivia. She sat in the uncomfortable chair provided by the hospital not speaking, just rolling around the events of the day in her head, over and over, trying to make sense of them.

"Casey"

She heard the voice, but refused to open her eyes, not yet ready to deal with anything.

"Casey?"

Breathing out an exasperated sigh, Casey opened her eyes and saw Olivia's anxious ones looking at her.

"Yes?" she responded.

"Thanks for agreeing to come home with me. I really appreciate it."

"You're welcome."

"I just need to be upfront with you, because I don't want there to be any misunderstandings between us."

"Olivia, this has been stressful enough without us getting into something, okay? Let's just get you well and then we can…talk."

"I'm sorry Casey, but I can't wait. I've been stupid for way too long to wait."

Casey straightened up in the chair. She wasn't ready for this. She knew it. She rested her arms on her knees and put her head down.

"Olivia…I just don't think I can do this now."

"Okay, I respect that, but I need you to know something. We don't have to discuss it tonight if you don't want, but I need you to know that I... I want you back, Casey. I made a mistake and I'm going to do everything in my power to show you how much I love you and how much I regret the last few weeks."

Casey couldn't help the tears. She had never cried so much in her life as she had in the last month. Her body felt as if it was zipping down a very fast, very dangerous 50 foot drop on a rickety roller coaster. It was both terrifying and exhilarating. She didn't know what to say, how she should respond, so she said nothing and kept her head down.

"Casey. I love you. I want you – only you."

That broke her resolve. She put her face in her hands, trying to stop the tears. She wanted to scream. A part of her wanted to run, to get away from the force that had been twisting her around like a leaf on the wind tossed this way and that for a month. But another part wanted to soar, wanted to leap into Olivia's arms and just stay there. Mostly, she wanted to stop hurting.

"I'm sorry Casey. I know I hurt you. I know…I can't ever make up for that, but I want…I want to spend the rest of my life trying." Olivia was crying now. "Please Casey…Please let me have the chance. Don't let my stupidity ruin something special."

Casey was speechless. She had wanted to hear those words of regret and apology weeks ago. She had dreamt about it. But she had given up any hope that she would. And now they were being spoken and she wanted to believe Olivia, but she knew it was risky and she wasn't sure she was ready to expose herself again.

Josh walked in briskly and gave the two women a smile before picking up Olivia's chart.

"Okay, the nurse will be in here shortly to discharge you." He looked up and saw two tear stained women with blood shot eyes not looking at each other.

"Everything okay?" he asked tentatively.

"Yeah," said Casey not knowing what else to say.

He hesitated wondering if he should say or do anything. Something was obviously happening here, but Casey had said it was alright, so he wouldn't pry. He secretly hoped they were on their way to finding each other again.

"Olivia, you'll need to come back in a few days to remove the stitches, but other than that you're free to go once the nurse completes the paperwork. If you feel any dizziness or nausea, blurry vision, anything out of the ordinary, give me a call. Casey, make sure you wake her every 3 hours."

The charge nurse walked in and he said his goodbyes, looking apprehensively at Casey.

Late Friday Night - Olivia's Apartment

"I guess we never really talked about Alex."

Casey's eyes went wide. That was a surprise way to start a discussion about them. She was sitting on her hands in the big bulky chair in Olivia's living room, noting how uncomfortable she felt in it. Alex had been here. Casey didn't think she would ever feel comfortable here again and she began an internal debate about where this was all going with Olivia and whether it was really a good idea to even be thinking about letting Olivia back into her life.

Olivia was finding it hard to read Casey, something she had never had a problem with before. Even when they had first met and Olivia thought she had no interest in deciphering Casey's emotional state, she had found it easy to do. It had become automatic for her to gauge Casey's state of mind while working on cases together, especially the tough ones. But today, in addition to the difficulties she was having just looking Casey in the eye, seeing the hurt that she had put there, she was finding it hard to get a handle on her.

"Yeah, I guess we never did," said Casey. She was looking down as she acknowledged the truth in Olivia's statement. "To be fair, I was as much a part of why we didn't talk about Alex as you were."

Olivia was starting to think that Casey had the right idea. Sitting on her hands might help suppress this constant urge she had to touch Casey. She was pretty sure that would not be welcome right now, so she interlaced her fingers together, leaning forward, arms resting on her knees. "No Casey, I should have talked about Alex with you. That wasn't your fault. None of this is your fault. It's mine."

"You're wrong," said Casey. "Yes, you left me," she continued with a small painful chuckle, "for her" she finished. "But you can't claim all the responsibility. I didn't want to talk about Alex. It's clear we should have. I'm not sure what, if anything would have changed about what happened, but for what it's worth, I think I made a mistake in not asking you about her." She paused.

Olivia sensed that Casey needed to say this and while she was almost bursting to interrupt, to argue with Casey, to prove her wrong, she held back. She would let Casey finish because she simply could not afford any more mistakes.

"I didn't want to know about the woman that came before me. I knew there had been something between you two. I knew she was important to you. I saw how devastated you were when she came back and left again. In fact that was one of the reasons I tried to distance myself from you." She looked directly at Olivia. "I didn't think you were over her. See, I already knew how dangerous you were. I knew even then that I could easily fall in love with you and we had barely started being friends at that point. There is really no point in falling for someone who is in love with someone else."

She paused reliving for a moment those painful months following Alex's return and disappearance, when she saw how close Olivia had come to being broken. If she had any doubts about the connection between the two women, they had been scattered to the wind the moment Alex walked into her office.

She had been there to see Olivia turn around; hear Olivia whisper, "Alex." Little did she know that in slightly over a year, she would hear Olivia whisper that name again in just that tone and find herself in just the position she vowed she would never be in. Casey returned to the present.

"But I couldn't keep it up forever. I couldn't keep my distance from you. I guess I could have left the job, but by then I really wanted it, just like Branch predicted." She wiped away the stray tear that had streaked down her face.

"You and I grew closer, but there was always this persistent little voice in my head that kept telling me to stop."

"Stop what?" asked Olivia intrigued.

"Stop everything. The friendship we were slowly building, my feelings, my fantasies. Part of me wanted to stop. I knew that I could lose my heart to you and I was afraid that I would and in the end you wouldn't want it, because you were in love with someone else. But one thing I could always do is rationalize. I convinced myself that you were simply not interested in me and never would be, so what harm could come of being friends with you? The only real way I could get hurt is if you wanted to play games with me and I thought I knew you well enough to know that wasn't the case."

Thought? That was past tense, Olivia thought, knowing that this conversation would either save or break her.

"So we became friends." Casey looked down again, trying to regain her composure. "And I stopped fearing you. I stopped thinking about how my heart would break if I fell in love with you, because I convinced myself that it was impossible for me to get hurt. It was all one-sided, you see. It was all me and I could control me. I let myself enjoy your company without the fear and found myself falling even faster. But it was okay because it was my problem, not yours and I could handle it. And then you showed up at my apartment and asked me out to dinner."

Olivia's head was down, silent tears falling on the wooden floor.

"But that was okay too, because friends do that. And then it became a regular thing, but friends do that too. When I started looking forward to Friday nights and then Wednesday lunches, I knew I was in trouble."

Olivia wiped her eyes hurriedly as Casey continued.

"When I was with you I couldn't think about anything but you, but when you went home, when you weren't with me, I thought about other things like Alex. How did you feel about her? Did you do this with her? What if she came back? That…was the question that stuck out and kept coming back. What if Alex walked back into your life?"

She chuckled to herself mockingly thinking about how stupid she had been.

"I knew the answer to that. You would go to her. Despite what we were developing, despite how quickly I was falling, despite me, you would go to her. I had to question my sanity after a while, the craziness of what I was doing was so clear to me and yet, when you walked into a room, all those thoughts, all of my doubts just disappeared. You were like some sort of magic potion that caused the doubts to vanish, as if they had never been.

"It was easy to be with you. You made me feel good. You made me feel alive and confident and strong. I still had doubts, but it felt too good to be with you and the more time we spent together the less time I had to think about that question.

"One day, I just told myself that if she hadn't come back by now, she wouldn't. It was liberating and I prayed that I was right. I never asked you about Alex because I really didn't want to know. I probably should have. Maybe if I had, I wouldn't have gotten so far gone on you that I couldn't pull back." She gave Olivia a weak smile.

"Do you want to know about me and Alex?" Olivia's head was still down. This was the single most important conversation she would ever have and she felt so ill-prepared.

"I don't know."

"I think I need you to know."

Casey sat back in the chair, wanting to relax a little. Did she need to know? Olivia heard her out, so she may as well reciprocate. Having made a decision, she thought she would most likely regret, Casey leaned forward again. She was tense and her body was beginning to ache. She was still uncomfortable in the chair. Ache inside, ache outside, what's the difference?

"Okay," she said placing her head in her hands as she leaned forward, trying desperately to prepare herself for the pain. She heard Olivia's strangled sob and looked up. Olivia was now leaning back on the sofa, eyes closed, tears streaming down her face.

"Are you sure you need me to know?" asked Casey.

"Yes," Olivia managed to whisper. She wiped her eyes angrily. Abruptly she rose from the couch, walking past Casey and toward her bedroom. Casey sat stunned, unsure of what she was supposed to do. She didn't think she could follow Olivia into that room, but she didn't have to. Olivia came out a few seconds later carrying a box of Kleenex. She set it on the coffee table.

"I just…" she started, resuming her position on the couch. "I just hate hurting you."

"Then don't," shot back Casey. She started to get up and saw Olivia straighten up and bounce off the couch. They stood face to face.

"I don't feel like…:" Casey stopped. Looking into Olivia's swollen red eyes, traces of tears streaked on her lovely face, she knew she had to listen. Whatever else happened, whether they moved on from here or not, she needed to hear what Olivia had to say. Slowly she sat back down.

"Okay," she said. "I'll listen." Olivia lowered herself back onto the couch, leaning forward this time.

"But I need you to understand that this might not end the way you want it to Olivia. I can't…" she glanced up watery brown eyes meeting her gaze before she looked down again and continued: "I can't guarantee that I'll still want to stay after you finish." The impact of her words was immediate, a muffled sob could be heard coming from Olivia, but Casey did not look up.

After a moment's silence, she heard Olivia's raw voice begin.

"I loved Alex. I don't know how, or why or even when it happened. It just did. We worked together every day. We became friends. We shared things. But I never told her how I felt. I had my reasons but whatever the reasons, I never told her and I had no idea how she felt about me. I knew she cared, but beyond that and the friendship we shared, I had no idea if she felt the same. And then Velez came into our world and picked it apart. Alex disappeared. I missed her. That was one of the few times that I started to really hate my job, hate life in general. I went through the motions, kept coming to work, but I was aware of very little. I was angry at you for replacing her, but mostly I was angry at myself for not saying anything, for letting life pass me by. I became convinced that I had just blown my one chance at a little bit of happiness and I hated myself. I beat myself up over not being able to protect her and for not having the guts to say something to her. And then you came into my life and I had something else to beat myself up over: my utter and total inability to be nice to you because you weren't Alex. I knew that was wrong."

She leaned back on the couch, unsurprised by the fact that she was finding everything in her apartment uncomfortable including the fucking couch. She continued.

"But to my surprise it became a little easier every day. Elliot helped. He knew how I felt about her, so occasionally we'd talk. We wondered where she was, what she was doing, if she thought about us. And then she came back. That whole period was kind of confusing to me. I was so hopeful, but…" She leaned forward again becoming really annoyed with the couch.

"There were disappointments too. Alex told me she was seeing some guy at the insurance company where she worked. I didn't know what to do with that," she frowned.

"I didn't know what to feel. I mean, I felt happy that she was back, but I wasn't sure what it meant. I felt like I should be doing something, but I didn't know what, so I just worked at trying to keep her safe. If you won that trial, I thought she could come back and everything would be the way it was. Except that I would do things right this time. I thought she would want that. But then she disappeared again. She didn't say goodbye that time."

Casey sat listening. She tried to lean back once more and found it bearable. She thought it would hurt to listen to Olivia talk about Alex, but it had not so far. The story made sense in a really strange way. Olivia continued:

"Elliot told me to let it go. That she was dead. It took me awhile, but I came around, I guess, to his way of thinking. She was dead – at least to me. Once I let go of that, I found that I enjoyed my job again, helping and protecting people, giving them justice. In fact, it really helped to focus on others, the victims, and forget about myself, so I did. I convinced myself that I would never know love. When you think that way, you don't expect to fall so hopelessly in love that you forget all the pain you have ever experienced." She was smiling now.

"But that happened, almost without me realizing it until it was too late to try and fight it. You didn't scare me Casey because I didn't think that I would fall in love with you. I didn't think I would fall in love with anybody. I just let myself enjoy you and it was wonderful. You made me feel so different than what I was used to feeling. I felt good with you. I had never felt that before, this feeling of just…plain…good. I don't know how else to explain it." She shook her head.

"I was engrossed by it. I didn't understand it, but I got a taste of it and I just couldn't stop wanting it. That's why I kept showing up at your place on Friday nights and inventing excuses to see you. I would spend time with you and try to take in all this goodness I felt with you and hold onto to it. But…I could never recreate it when I was alone. The closest I came was when I thought about you. So I thought about you a lot. It made me happy. You were like a drug I couldn't get enough of. I didn't figure myself out until the night I kissed you goodnight."

"On the cheek," said Casey surprised that she had spoken out loud.

Olivia looked at her. "Yes, on the cheek." She smiled. "That was not where I wanted to kiss you by the way."

"Me neither," answered Casey.

"Good to know," said Olivia clearing her throat before continuing. "That was such a crazy time. I usually put things in boxes. I knew I was attracted to you from that first day I met you, but I separated that from my feelings for you. At the time those feelings were all tangled up in my anger over losing Alex. So after we started spending all this time together, I wasn't surprised that those feelings of attraction came out in full force. But I still thought that love wasn't for me, so I let them have free rein, never once connecting them to all of these other things I was starting to feel for you. They were kind of still separate for me."

"Until that night?" Casey asked, intrigued. They had never really talked about this, always just taking cautious baby steps in their relationship, but never examining how they had arrived at the next stage, content to enjoy the arrival itself.

"Yes, until that night. Because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that night, that all this good feeling that I associated with you would be increased to the nth degree if I kissed you like I wanted to. After that night, there was no ignoring the connection. That was hard."

"Why?"

Olivia laughed lightly. "Because after that realization all I could think about was kissing you and how wonderful you made me feel and how I wanted to always feel that and how I had never, ever felt it. And..." she chuckled. "For the first time I started to understand a little bit why people do irrational things when they're in love. Because a few days later, I found myself going to watch you practice softball and if Cragen hadn't called with an assignment, I would not have had a good excuse to be there, except that I needed to see you again more than anything. That was irrational and I'm not usually an irrational person."

She inhaled and looked around the dark room, afraid to look at Casey. She had done it. She had just laid out her heart, leaving it open, exposed and vulnerable.

Casey's heart was thumping wildly. God, was there a chance for them?

"You made me want things I never knew I wanted," said Olivia.

"Like what?"

"A life"

Olivia's answer came instinctually, without thought. It was automatic. "I don't think I was really living before I met you. I was existing. I was surviving, but I wasn't living. For the first time in my life I wanted to feel good things, because I liked feeling good! When I was with you, I didn't think about how much I didn't deserve this good feeling. You…just…make it so….easy to want to feel this good without all the fucking baggage I've been carrying around. I've always felt like I should pay for everything I put my mother through, for the evil of my father, but somehow you made me not want to feel like that. I…I'm not explaining this very well." She ran her hands through her hair, refusing to meet Casey's eyes.

"I'd say you're doing fine, detective," said Casey softly.

Olivia's head shot up. "You haven't called me that since…Alex came back."

"What, detective? I haven't?" Casey looked confused.

"No. It was always Detective Benson." She was smiling. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Casey responded recognizing Olivia's relief at the small sign of normalcy that had returned to their interactions.

Casey couldn't help the question she posed next.

"Why, Olivia? Why did you…?" She was unable to finish.

"Because I'm an idiot!" Olivia said as she stood up and started pacing; walking from the window to the couch and back again. Finally she sat down.

"When Alex came back it was like a miracle…like a raised from the dead miracle. And this time, there didn't seem to be any confusion on her part, no guy she was seeing. It was clear that she wanted me. At first I didn't really know what to do with that. The only sure emotion I could recognize was relief, but I was confused by the rest of it, so I concentrated on the relief and…and I…mistook it for something else. I didn't want to hurt you, but you seemed so ready to just…go….relinquish your claim. I didn't know what to do. In one room was Alex, the person who I had loved from afar, who had occupied so many of my nightly thoughts and dreams before I met you. In the other was you, holding an overnight bag and telling me you shouldn't be here and I took the easy way out. I was paralyzed. I knew you deserved some kind of answer from me about where you stood, but I didn't even know where I stood, so I let you go."

Olivia covered her face with her hand. "Afterward I told myself that I let you go because I didn't think you deserved my uncertainty. I was such a coward." She paused trying to organize the jumble of thoughts in her head.

"Once the initial relief faded, all I felt was more confusion, but everyone was happy that she came back - a hero's welcome. I found it easier to join in everyone's happiness, then to think about you and having to make a choice because Alex had made it clear that she came back for me and that was a very powerful aphrodisiac. It was like one of my fantasies from the time we worked together coming true. I was back there again in a weird way re-living it, the way I imagined it should have gone. You made it easy. You didn't even make me break-up with you. You just gave me my key, asked for yours and told me to be gone by the time you came back."

"I'm sorry I didn't fight for you," said Casey realizing that they had both made mistakes in this. "I guess I acted the way I did because I always imagined it would end that way; that Alex would come back, and I would be out of the picture. When it happened, it hurt like hell. I knew it would and I guess I just played my part. I told Jordan that I didn't like coming in second. I guess I felt hurt by that, so I told myself that I wouldn't fight for someone who only thought of me as the consolation prize."

"I never thought that." Olivia got up and walked towards the windows. "I was just so fucking busy trying to deal with my past, that I lost sight of what was right in front of me." She turned around and made her way to the couch again. "I want to tell you some things about my time with Alex, but if this is getting to be too much, just let me know."

Casey was touched by Olivia's concern.

"I'm fine," she said sitting up as she had grown uncomfortable in the chair again. Olivia gave her a pained smiled and almost…almost reached for her. Casey saw it. She saw Olivia's hand start to make its way tentatively to hers and then turn back slowly. She wanted to reciprocate, but it was too soon. Olivia walked back to the window and continued.

"I wasn't myself during that time, but I can't blame that on Alex. I was kind of empty inside. The only emotion I was capable of feeling was relief that Alex was back, but beyond that there was nothing. Alex asked me if she could stay and I said yes, but I didn't really feel anything. She told me that our relationship had to remain secret and I felt nothing. I told her okay. She told me she had to date guys to avoid any uncomfortable questions and I felt nothing. I didn't allow myself to think or feel anything. Then you showed up at O'Malley's and I saw you dancing with some guy. His hands were all over you and the way you two were moving, the familiarity of it, drove me absolutely insane."

"Josh?"

"Yeah, I went from feeling nothing to feeling this insane irrational jealousy. And then I felt angry. I argued with Elliot a lot. He finally just asked me why I was putting myself and you through this when it was so painfully obvious I was still in love with you. But I just got more and more irrational. I checked to see if Josh had a record, pulled his credit report, got a hold of his school transcript. I even saw him at the hospital and drilled him. I wanted to shoot him," she said smiling into the window. She walked back to the couch and sat again.

"I realized then what a monumental mistake I had made in hurting the one true thing in my life…you. It's over between me and Alex. I told her last night. I loved Alex once. After she disappeared into Witness Protection, I thought that given the chance we could have really had something. I know now that that was a fantasy. We're not meant to be together. Maybe, if I hadn't met you, I would have been content with what we could have had, but not now."

"How did that go? Last night I mean?"

"What?"

Casey frowned. She didn't want to seem callous or cold, but hearing Olivia talk about her relationship with Alex had helped. She needed to hear about its demise before she could determine if she could get past the insecurity she had always felt when it came to Alex: that Alex was better than she was, smarter, more beautiful, and had more of a claim on Olivia's heart. She knew the minute she agreed to come here that she was considering Olivia's offer. What she didn't know was if there was anything Olivia could say or do to convince her that it was over with Alex. She didn't know why that was important to her, but it was.

"What did you say to her?"

Olivia looked around trying to decide how to proceed.

"I just told her it wasn't working out. She asked me why. I told her because she wasn't you."

Casey couldn't help the smile that came to her face as she thought of the irony of that response. After all, she had spent a good part of her first year at SVU getting over not being Alex.

It was a good talk and Casey felt better afterwards. She managed to get Olivia to sleep by telling her that she needed time to think and consider everything they had said to each other. She didn't sleep much that night. She made sure to wake Olivia regularly throughout the night, but Olivia's couch was as uncomfortable as the big bulky chair had been and too many thoughts were percolating in her head. Slowly she came to the realization that she would give them a second chance. It would be hard, but she didn't feel like she could do anything else. Olivia had always been her main weakness. Things would be different this time. They could not pick up where they had left off. There had been too much hurt for that. If they were going to try and reestablish a relationship, they would need to start at the beginning. Most importantly, Casey thought, she would need to be absolutely sure of Olivia before she opened her heart again.

She looked at the clock and thought she should look in on Olivia one last time. Olivia had been tossing and turning all night and had managed to kick the covers completely off the bed. Casey bent down to pick them up off the floor and covered her.

"Casey"

"I'm here. Do you need anything?" Casey whispered.

But there was no response. Olivia was still asleep. Casey couldn't help the smile that came to her face. Feeling like she did not have the energy to do anything else, she lifted the covers and lay down next to Olivia, one hand placed protectively on Olivia's back. She lay there thinking about how much she had lost in the last month and where she was now. She smiled again beginning to feel the stirrings of hope that maybe, perhaps, her and Liv would get through this. With those thoughts twirling in her head, she fell into a soundless sleep.