Surrender Benson

Nick was holding Olivia's hand as the paramedics prodded her skin with needles, trying to get fluids into her deflated veins. She didn't even seem to react to the pain, which scared Nick to the core. Her body seemingly had long since gone numb. One of the men held a flashlight and shined it in her eyes, directing her to look up at him.

"Pupils aren't reacting properly. How many blows to the head did you suffer?"

It angered Nick that someone could act so emotionless toward Olivia. He was asking her if she'd been hit over the head as if he was asking about what she did over the weekend. Her eyes didn't meet Nick's again, but she looked up to answer.

"More than once." She replied softly, a deep swallow following the words that managed to claw their way out of the sand trap within her mouth.

"I think there's a good chance we're dealing with a pretty severe concussion." The second medic answered.

Olivia nodded like she already knew. She did know.

"We're going to just wrap your arms for now - prevent infection." Both paramedics in the vehicle were men, and it made Olivia even more uncomfortable. Nick had to let go of her hand to let them wrap her arm.

"I think - my wrist is broken." She held in a hiss as the wrap extended downward.

"We'll get it X-rayed as soon as we get you to the hospital." The older man answered.

Olivia closed her eyes as they wrapped her arms with soft cloth that felt like sandpaper. The pain brought back the image of Lewis' face in front of hers as he burned her, as he cut her. Nick saw her go back in time. He took her hand and looked up at the paramedic above him to get a look of approval. The man nodded, and Nick leaned into Olivia.

"Liv. Stay here." He said quietly.

Olivia opened her eyes as the wraps on her arms were secured. When the mask for increased oxygen was placed over her head, Olivia's first reaction was to reach up and rip it off. It was restrictive, oppressive.

Nick put his other hand on hers. "You're ok." He repeated in a whisper.

Olivia closed her eyes for the rest of the ride, confident that her partner wouldn't let anything else happen to her.

Brian jogged into the hospital emergency room after receiving the call. He met Munch and Cragen standing alongside Amanda in the room.

"She's not here yet." The captain put a hand out to hopefully calm Brian's frantic soul. He wore panic in his expression.

As if on cue, the doors of the ambulance entrance opened, two paramedics accompanied by Nick rolling a stretcher into the room. The three people waiting in the room turned, frozen with their mouths open. It was as if time had suddenly shifted to half speed.

Brian saw the woman he loved in slow motion, every second of it physically painful. Her arms, though wrapped, were obviously bleeding. The red seeping through the bandages while her arms lay at her side made him sick. The huge gash on her head sent nails through his brain. The mask on her face made it impossible for her to speak to him, but it looked like she wouldn't have been able to get the energy to speak anyways. Her eye was blackened, her lip split. Brian swallowed hard. The look in her dark eyes scared him. They seemed to be begging him to do something.

Using what she had left, Olivia lifted her hand only a little. Brian knew what it meant. He was at her side, her hand in his as she stared up at him. Nick held her other hand as they moved the stretcher beyond the doors of the waiting room. When the paramedics stopped in a large room, unstrapping Olivia. Nick let go of her hand after squeezing it gently.

"You're going to be ok." He whispered, forcing a small smile. Then he stood up straight, putting a supportive hand on Brian's shoulder. The two men had butted heads before, but they had to come together again for a woman that they both cared for deeply.

Brian thanked the detective silently, and Nick left the room. The paramedics left the room after announcing the doctor and nurses would be in as soon as they could. The hospital was jammed, so busy that even in her condition, the paramedics had to get back on the roads without leaving a doctor.

Olivia weakly lifted the oxygen mask off of her face.

"I'm glad you're here." She couldn't hardly whisper. Her body was empty: no food or water for days, the only thing going into her body having been drugs and alcohol.

Brian couldn't even smile. He tried, but he couldn't. When Olivia saw the tear slip from his eyes, her heart broke. He shook his head.

"I'm so sorry." His voice broke more than once. Olivia felt her own tear sliding down the side of her face into her hairline as she lay on her back.

She'd never felt what she was feeling then. She had lived, and now she got another chance to look into the face of the person that had been there for her for all the years she needed him. Lewis had told her she'd never make it out alive, but she had.

Olivia let the emotions go at last, closing her eyes and feeling tear after tear roll down her face. Brian just held her hand, unable to wrap her in the hug he wished he could offer. Olivia didn't say anything else. She opened her swimming eyes and looked at the man she thought she'd never see again. He hadn't run away when the going got tough.

Brian let the next tear fall from his eye as he leaned down to her and gave her a soft kiss. Olivia felt comfort in his kiss, unlike the revulsion she'd experienced with Lewis. Despite the split in her lip, she kissed him back. Her lips trembled against him. When he leaned up a little ways from her face, Brian tenderly put the oxygen mask back over her mouth and nose. She didn't protest, but instead spoke again.

"Don't leave me." Her weak voice came to his ears again.

"I won't." He replied quietly. He added the phrase that he knew he meant. "I promise."

Nick arrived back in the waiting room where Fin now joined the three other members of the team. They turned to look at him with agonizingly curious faces, craving information.

"Is she ok?" Amanda was exasperated. The brief glimpse she'd had of Olivia had been enough to scare her, and not enough to convince her that she was ok.

Nick didn't answer right away. "She will be." He thought it the safest way to reply.

"Her wrist is broken - she has a lot of -" he stopped, his voice wavering too much for him to continue. He didn't know how to say it. Olivia's body was a crime scene, a surface littered with burns and cuts.

"- he burned her. He used a knife too." Nick changed the sentence so that it was possible for him to form words.

"And she killed Lewis?" Cragen jumped in.

Fin and Nick both pictured the pulp of a man that had been rolled out of the house.

"She beat the hell out of him - but he was alive when they took him to Bellevue." Fin took over speaking, seeing what a toll it took on Nick.

Munch swallowed in an attempt to settle the burning in his chest. It felt like someone had reached in and tore at his heart. "So what now?" He spoke up.

Captain Cragen took a deep breath. "We wait."

Brian stayed by Olivia's side while the doctor and nurses cleaned the burns and cuts on her arms and face. He held her hand as nurse took her blood, Olivia propped up on the table with a bandage on her head. And though broke his heart, he stayed by her side when she experienced what she had to for standard procedure.

The rape kit alone took two hours, two grueling, destructive hours. Brian could tell by the grimaces and awful looks she was trying to hide that it hurt her physically and mentally more than she could say. He didn't even know if Lewis had gone that far, and he wasn't going to ask. Olivia would tell him when she wanted him to know.

The tough hours wound down into the dark night. The only time in four hours that Brian let go of Olivia's hand was when she had to be X-rayed for broken ribs and her wrist. He watched, floating on a bubble of numbed pain. His mind had acted on its own, shutting down everything in him to feel nothing. It helped, but would crumble eventually. He was sure that Olivia's body had done the same thing.

The examination finished with a wrap placed around her torso to keep her cracked ribs in place. Her arm was set in a removable cast to hold her wrist still. The burns and cuts in her arms were neatly bandaged with tiny, individual white bandages to hold them together to heal. The deeper ones were stitched up and bandaged as well.

Olivia was sitting up on the table as Brian stood next to her again. She gave him a look of exhaustion and desperation. Those eyes were the ones he'd looked into every day for the past two years, but something in them had changed. Of course they had changed. She'd been subjected to the worst kind of pain there was - degradation.

Olivia, feeling so violated, did not speak unless asked to answer the doctor's questions. There was nothing she wouldn't do to get herself out from under the watchful eye of people who didn't even know her. Anything except go back to that house, that man.

"Olivia." Brian squeezed her hand when he saw she wasn't listening to the doctor as she spoke to the both of them.

"Sorry." She mumbled.

The doctor shook her head. "That's alright." She glanced at her clipboard. "With your fractured ribs and concussion, we'd like to keep you overnight, just to be safe."

Olivia felt her heart fall farther into the abyss of her broken body. "Ok." She replied, not loud enough to be called a whisper.

"I'll have one of the nurses take you upstairs."

Brian sensed Olivia's discomfort. "No. I can do it." He jumped in.

The doctor paused a moment, but nodded. "I'll bring in a wheelchair." She disappeared, and then came back in with the item she'd promised.

"To room 340. Elevators are just around the corner." She put a hand on Olivia's shoulder silently before leaving without another word.

Brian put an arm around Olivia as he helped her down from the table and into the chair.

"Thank you." She was still so quiet.

He wheeled her into the elevator, neither of them saying anything. Their ride up to the third floor was silent. Olivia's body throbbed from the prodding she'd been through while images flashed in her mind. She wouldn't be sleeping at all.

Brian watched her from above her, seeing only her head and the wounds on her arms that tortured him. He wished it could be him. He wished he could take that agony away from her.

Olivia held in her lap the bag of fluids that fed into her system as the elevator doors opened and Brian took her down the hall toward where her room was. The room was as dreary as any hospital room. Brian stopped and took a moment to look up and around him.

Olivia got out of the chair herself.

"Whoa - hey let me help."

She didn't accept his hand of assistance, but instead she hugged him as tightly as she could with one arm. Brian was surprised at first, but wrapped his arms around her, wary of hurting her. Olivia couldn't cry anymore, but if she had been able to, she would have.

"I'm going to be ok." She whispered in his ear. And Brian believed her.

He nodded gently against her as her cheek rested on his. "I know." Another tear of his fell onto her shoulder. "I'm just glad you're still here."

she paused to swallow before saying the words she thought she might never get to say. Her whisper was smooth. "I love you."

And as Brian held her, he too realized that he still had her to love, to hold. "I love you too, Liv."