The Final Chapter
Nick helped Olivia to her bed when they arrived at her apartment that afternoon. He kept the door half open to make sure he could hear if she was caught in the clutches of a nightmare. He waited and thought as an hour passed, two. Silence - that's all it was.
When the silence worked its way into his soul, Nick stood up and put his head in to where Olivia slept. Her features were relaxed as she slept on her side. There was no sign that she was in the depths of her despair. She was sleeping peacefully. Even as she did, Nick saw one sign that gave away her insecurity. Her hand clutched the sheets near her face tightly.
The nightmares weren't ones that caused her to sit up in alarm, but instead were the ones that kept her asleep, dragging her back in when she was touching the surface of reality. She didn't move.
Nick bowed out, waiting for the days to return to normal again. They would, but he knew it would be a new normal.
One month later
Olivia watched the medical examiner cover Lewis' cold, dead face with the sheet that covered the rest of his body. Part of her felt him ready to sit up and attack her again, but most of her knew that he was gone for good. Her injuries were still healing, her bruises and cuts still throbbing every once and a while. As the body was pushed into the cooled compartment, a tag around his toe with his cowardly name labeling him, Olivia didn't feel the pain at all. She felt the calm around her as the world opened again.
William Lewis was a shriveled, bloodless body, preparing to be put in the ground forever. It was a feeling like nothing she'd ever known. The door made its sound, closing loudly. She didn't jump. She didn't even blink. The injuries healing upon her skin were inflicted by a man who was now a corpse. Nothing of him remained except his shell. His soul had gone to hell. He had taken so much from so many, and now he was where she'd meant to put him all along.
Nobody will miss you.
Olivia repeated it inside her head.
Nobody will mourn you.
And they wouldn't. No one would. The little tug on her jacket brought her back. A child's hand snaked into Olivia's.
"What are you doing?" Emily's voice was playfully curious.
Olivia quickly looked down, then moving her gaze to the doorway. Both Lacy and Nick stood there, solemnly. A smile made its way to Olivia's lips as she looked down at Emily again.
"Letting him go." She whispered as she read the name on the card in front of her one last time.
Emily fell silent, reading the name as best she could. She knew too.
"What are you doing here?"
Emily squeezed her hand as she stared straight ahead. "Making sure you're ok."
The whisper gave Olivia goosebumps. She had to realize that her relationship with Emily would never have been if it weren't for Lewis. He'd mercilessly dragged a little girl into the battle, and now Olivia had another person in her life to help her recover, and vice versa. It made her heart heavy and lifted it all at the same time.
Emily continued to talk as they stood there. It seemed like she had things she needed to ask about. She was still confused.
"Did you kill him?"
Olivia swallowed hard as she stared at the door behind which laid her worst enemy, powerless.
"No." She shook her head. "My partner did."
Emily squeezed her hero's hand. "Why did he choose us?"
The small girl fell into silence after that, letting the question hurtle into oblivion. Olivia's breath caught. She'd asked herself that same question for over a year and she still hadn't found a way to answer it.
"Because he knew we were strong enough to survive." She whispered back as a stray tear dropped from her eye.
Emily's eyes moved to Olivia's as they exchanged a pair of sad smiles.
"He was right, then." The innocence of the child's replied brought a whole new honest reality to the situation.
Olivia had to nod. Lewis had chosen someone, her, who could rebuild her life after he nearly destroyed it instead of taking someone else's life with his wrath. The smile faded to a thin frown. It was hard to believe that any person was meant to go through the things handed to them in life. It was hard to believe that such bad things actually happened in the world.
Olivia took all the courage she had left to reply. "Yeah he was."
She glanced down at Emily.
Nick and Lacy watched from the doorway, in awe of the visible healing they saw between the two.
Olivia knelt down to Emily's level before saying what she needed to.
"I feel bad for what he did." She began slowly. "And I know you do too."
Emily nodded as the tears threatened to spill from her small eyes.
Olivia held both of her hands in her own as she finished. "But none of what happened to me or to you was your fault, ok?"
Emily felt it hit her. She had been thinking she should have done something to help. She should have made it so that Lewis couldn't have hurt Olivia so badly.
"I want you to say that." Olivia continued firmly.
Emily swallowed hard and let a tear leave her eye. "It's not my fault." She trailed off into the quiet surrounding them both.
Olivia nodded, as satisfied as she could be. It was Emily who put herself into Olivia's arms then, holding her tightly. Their embrace lasted for what seemed to have been an eternity, an eternity with no fear or insecurity, no blame or pain. When Olivia let go, she wiped the tears from Emily's cheeks. As if in a consoled daze, Emily reached out and did the same for Olivia. The touch went straight to Olivia's heart. She smiled as she hadn't before.
The silence between them as they held their eyes in one another's allowed them a moment to remember together.
Olivia remembered holding Emily, her head lulling against her raw burns as they awaited their attacker to decide their unknown fate.
Emily remembered it too. She could hear Olivia's voice telling her that everything was going to be ok, and she'd believed her. She had been right. It was ok.
The young child held so still for so long.
"You're such a brave girl." Olivia whispered. It was all she could muster.
Emily's smile flickered across her face. "Just like you."
Nick and Lacy watched in mesmerized quiet, the two in front of them defying every odd they'd ever known.
"Why don't you go on home now? You know I'm only one phone call away - anytime." Olivia stood up again, her hand still around Emily's as they walked towards Nick and Lacy in the doorway.
"Me too." Emily returned. It sent a grin across the sergeant's face.
Lacy gave Olivia a look of gracious gratitude before taking Emily's hand in her own and turning to go. Emily's last gesture was a wave just before disappearing from view. Olivia glanced over at her partner.
"You ok?" He asked softly.
She sighed audibly as her smile fell. "You know I hate it when you ask me that." She sounded tired.
"I know. But someone has to." He carefully replied as he studied her eyes.
Olivia let the words dissipate as she watched him. "I'm going to be ok."
Her partner closed the distance between them and put a hand on her back, reminding her unconsciously of the direction that she was going - forward. She didn't even have to think about it. Olivia just turned to the greatest comfort she found, wrapping her arms around Nick as he did the same to her. Her eyes closed, her head resting on his shoulder as she felt how much life she had been given a chance to live.
Even though I leave, will I go on believing that this time is real - am I lost in this feeling? Like a child passing through, never knowing the reason - Close to home I cannot say - Close to home feeling oh so far away.
He could hear the words she sang to herself silently as he held her. Home. She was home, even though most of the time it didn't feel like it. He reluctantly let her go after quite some time. The soft "thank you" she gave him carried so much in it. It was a thank you for everything he'd done for her.
He watched her disappear from his sight down the hallway. Every time she did, he got anxious he would never see her again.
Even in the light of the cloudless day, the building presented itself ominously. Its hollow chambers refused to cry out, bound to keeping every secret within its concrete vessels. It knew when another knowing its secret approached. The woman it knew peered up at the towering presence in front of her.
Olivia stood with the gravel beneath her feet, unsure of what she was doing. She didn't know how she'd even gotten there. The road home from the morgue had ended up taking her to the building that held the same secret she did. Only it, Lewis, Emily, and she herself knew everything that really happened that one night. They were the only ones who would ever know, and Olivia had come to share it again.
Her heart pounded as she stood rooted to the spot. Her feet began to move alone, taking her further toward the entrance. The walls reflected a chill, even in the heat of the day. Every crack was vaguely familiar to Olivia. She took the directions her unconscious gave her and followed the long row of concrete pillars. Every footstep she took echoed through the emptiness, so full of threats.
She pressed on through the place that held a suspended life - hers. The sounds didn't frighten her. None of it did. Only a few steps further, however, the concrete floor began yielding something that did rattle her. The small stains of deep crimson stood as a permanent marker of the path she'd taken as she'd bled, nearly losing her life.
Goosebumps covered every inch of her skin as she followed the path the blood marked. The stairs led her up to the room where she'd lost nearly everything, her life included. Olivia took each one slowly as she remembered stepping on them the first time, ready to die.
As painful as it was when she surfaced in the room, it was freeing at the same time. Olivia stood in utter silence as she looked around. Nothing was left there, not a mattress, not a weapon. Only a large pool of her own precious blood laid before her, clinging to the floor.
Her breathing remained steady as she took time to remember in serenity. She'd sat in that far corner, awaiting her death. She'd sat there with a little girl, aware that she'd have to give her life to save Emily's.
Olivia scanned the area again. There was the window she'd been cuffed to when he'd burned her so violently. She'd been standing right there as he cut her mercilessly. Yet there she stood, alive. And Lewis was cold and dead.
The setting sun pushed rays through the bars in the windows, projecting shadows on the walls. A chill spread through her as the tranquility of the evening fell around her in the darkest place of her life. The terminal was speaking to her, and she was speaking back, all of it sucked into a vortex of complete silence. Her soul rested uneasily in the secrets of the shadows. They wouldn't ever say anything, though they knew her. They would never tell her secrets. They'd be kept in that place forever, sung in foreign sounds reverberating inaudibly within the abandoned walls.
Olivia stood there feeling a strange sense of security among it that knew her secret well.
The sun continued its journey down the horizon, the night inevitable. She left, unwilling to stay with the shadows at night. She exited the building for the last time. The building rose in her rear view mirror, reminding her that she didn't carry the weight alone. She wasn't at home yet. But that day was coming. Her journey was a long one, not measured in miles, but instead in days, months, years. That journey began as she took the first steps away from the past.
When evening falls and the daylight fading, from within me calls - could I be sleeping? For a moment I stray, then it holds me completely. I am home - I know the way. I am home feeling oh so far away.