Title: Rollercoaster, Favourite Ride
Author: ZombieJazz
Fandom: Law & Order: SVU
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law and Order SVU and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The characters of Will (and his family) and Noah have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.
Summary: Elliot has left SVU - and it hits Olivia hard. His departure has some implications for her work life and her personal life. She tries to figure out what it means for her own identity, her new marriage, and her work situation. In the midst of it all, she's also having to navigate new squad members at work and still deal with being the mother of a sick child. This story takes place just several months after the conclusion of Undeserved in my AU series of stories.
Author's Notes: This AU series is for SVU fans and readers who want Olivia to have something that resembles a more normal life outside of work and a family of her own - hopefully somewhat realistically within the canon of SVU. My stories are not EO and never will be. You may want to read some of my other ones for context on the characters in this AU first - though, it's likely fairly self-explanatory on its own too.
WARNING: THIS STORY MIGHT KIND OF BE A SPOILER FOR READERS OF UNDESERVED.
She handed Will more of the dishes from dinner through the serving window to the kitchen.
"I just feel like I'm working at a daycare right now," she told him.
"Daycares are for little kids, Mom," Noah informed her from where he was still picking away at his dinner. He hadn't even touched the meat but at least he seemed almost interested in putting some of the mushrooms and zucchini in his mouth. "You work at a police station, not a daycare."
She gestured at Noah and looked at Will. "Thank you, Noah, exactly my point."
Will sighed and put the dishes in the sink to rinse them off before they'd go in the dishwasher. "It can't be that bad, babe."
"It takes me twice as long to explain to them how to do something as it does to just do it myself," she said. "And they both have these chips on their shoulders. Think they know it all. How they go at some of the interviews." She shook her head in disgust.
"Maybe you need to try to remember what it was like when you started out in special victims," he told her, meeting her eyes and catching the anger there, as she crossed her arms and glared at him. "Babe, com'on. You've been there what? Like 13 … 14 years now? I'm sure you were just as clueless when you walked in the door. I know you were … I've heard stories about some of your gaffes."
She shook her head and crossed her arms tighter.
"You tend to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder there too, Liv. I don't imagine you're a ray of sunshine to work with right now. How …" he glanced at Noah who was back at individually spearing mushrooms halves and deeply contemplating them before putting them in his mouth, "… b-i-t-c-h-y are you being to them."
"Bitchy," Noah said, demonstrating his ever evolving spelling and reading abilities.
"Which one of you gets the swear jar for that?" Liv glared at Will.
Will pulled his wallet out of his pocket and waved a dollar bill in her face before walking over and stuffing it in the jar sitting over on the back windowsill in the kitchen.
"Noah, we don't use that word," she told her son sternly.
"Yeah, especially when talking about Mommy," Will rolled his eyes as he came back to the sink and talking to her through the serving window.
Olivia went and sat back at the table, supervising her son's dinner some more – prepared to do her usual bribes to get him to put some more into his system, and looking at her watch. He needed to not eat for about three hours before taking his chemo pills at bed. With how slowly he was going, bedtime was going to be late that night.
"Maybe it's time for me to move on too," she said. "The captain basically said the same thing to me this morning when I went to talk to him about it."
Will sighed and squeezed the bridge of his nose, getting some of the soapy water there and wiping it away. "Liv, you didn't talk to him – you said the same thing as you keep saying now. It's a daycare. That's not a constructive conversation to have with your boss."
She glanced back up at him. "What am I supposed to say?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. Your role in there is just different now. You're the veteran now – and you aren't a veteran in a room full of veterans. You're the role model for the new guys. You need to start playing that role."
She shook her head. "I just want to do my job. I don't want to be … whatever to them. Their mother?"
"You're a good mom, Mom," Noah told her again.
She smiled genuinely at that. "Thank you, sweets. I'm glad you think so."
Noah nodded vigorously as though to reaffirm his statement.
"See – he thinks you'll be good being the Den Mother," Will teased.
She rolled her eyes. "That's exactly the role I don't want in there."
"You're still just getting used to all the changes," he told her. "It will get better."
She sighed. "I don't know it will. It's just all the same cases over and over again. It never gets any better – and now they're in there thinking that they can make some sort of difference and that anything we do is going to change anything. I'm just so tired."
She leaned forward and put some salad on Noah's plate, spooning some of the mango vinaigrette Will had mixed up on top of it for him. "Try to get some greens into you too, sweets, if you aren't going to eat your chicken."
"It's too dry," he told her.
She looked at him sternly. "You haven't even tried it, Noah. Daddy did a nice job on it tonight. Put some of the mango salsa on your fork too and have a bite. It's very good."
He shook his head in firm disagreement but glared at her and put a leaf of the mixed greens into his mouth. She rolled her eyes but patted his free hand to show her appreciation and approval of him at least listening about eating the salad.
She glanced toward Will, who was watching them and still sopping away in the sink. She didn't understand why he basically washed the dishes before putting them into the washer. The biggest explanation she'd ever gotten from him was that this was the first time in his life he'd ever actually had a dishwasher and he wasn't convinced it actually cleaned things properly. But she thought it was kind of ridiculous to wash the dishes before washing the dishes. Really, when Will did the "rinse" of the dishes, they might as well have just put them on the drying rack and away into the cupboards – not into the dishwasher.
"What you do does make a difference," he told her sincerely. "There are hundreds – maybe thousands of victims and families out there who would tell you that. There's other cops and lawyers who'd tell you that. You've got the decorations and certificates upstairs hidden away that tell you that."
She sighed again. "They're just pieces of paper. Pieces of metal."
He shook his head. "They represent real lives that you've had an impact on."
She tapped the table and looked at her son. "Maybe it's time for me to hand in my papers too."
She heard Will clatter in the kitchen and looked up to see him coming out to sit at the table, a towel in hand, drying off. He sat across from her and looked at Noah too for a bit before glancing over at her.
"In two years, after you've done your 20, I will be completely on-board with you getting the hell out of there, if that's what you want. It's not an option right now, Liv. We both know that."
She sighed and shrugged. "It won't be then either. I'm just day-dreaming. A quarter-million in hospital bills. I won't ever be able to get insurance for him anywhere else if I move jobs."
"You don't know that," Will said.
She nodded. "Yes, I do. We both do. Pre-existing medical condition. I'm with NYPD until … I don't know when."
Will sighed hard. "I don't like you being in a job you hate."
She shrugged.
"You used to love your job, Liv. You fought to be there."
She traced her finger on the table. "It's just not the same anymore. There used to be some fun aspects to it. We'd laugh. It's just all so serious now. When what we do is so serious –it's hard for all the spaces between to be serious. Munch and Fin are feeling it too. I can see it. John has basically volunteered to be on permanent midnights for the moment – just to escape it."
"At least that means you're getting a break from them," Will tried. "I like that."
She snorted and gave him a small smile.
"You just need to give it time," he told her again. "Things change. It's part of life. You just need to move beyond Elliot leaving and start to accept the job for what it is now – your new role."
She sighed again. "I didn't want a new role. I would've gone and taken the lieutenant exams if I wanted a new role – and a bigger pay cheque."
"Babe, a lot of people work their jobs for the pay cheque, the benefits and the pension. Maybe you just need to start looking at it more that way for now – stop putting the work and yourself and everyone around you up on such a pedestal."
"How much do you get paid Mom?" Noah asked.
She smiled at him again. "No nearly enough, sweetheart."
"More than allowance?"
"A little bit more than allowance," she nodded.
She looked at Will, though. "The concept of doing this job for just the pay cheque is really depressing."
Will shrugged at her. "There are some semesters where I do it just for the pay cheque. But it always gets better."
She sighed and shook her head. "I could try to transfer somewhere else."
"Liv, you aren't one to run away from problems. Give it some time. Don't make any hasty decisions. The new guy – he's not Elliot but he might be alright. Give him a chance."
"They're kids," she said again. "They're both just kids. It makes me feel old. What the … have I been doing there this long?"
He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "You aren't old."
"You're really old," Noah said.
She snorted and rolled her eyes, examining the ceiling before looking at her son. "Noah, you never tell a girl she's old. It makes her feel bad."
"You aren't a girl," her son told her.
She smiled and raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm not, eh? I think we need to have a review of our boys-and-girls talk then."
"You're a mom," he told her instead.
She nodded. "I am and that means … ?"
Noah thought about it for a moment. "You're a girl but you're a mom."
She smiled and reached out and touched his cheek. "And you're a funny little man," she told him.