A/N: An early update turned out to be a pretty popular idea, so here you go, guys! There also seemed to be a little bit of confusion in some of the comments about the intro to chapter 35—RoliviaIsLife hit the nail on the head when she called it a "dream/flashback/surgery-induced hallucination." It was a mixture of all three of those things, heavy on the flashback at first, then turning into more of a nightmare-hallucination brought on by the pain of surgery. That, and I liked the ambiguity and letting y'all decide which parts really happened and which didn't. Liv's memory is shady like that. I don't think this chapter needs a trigger warning. Just super angsty. You know you love it.

My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things
You set it up so well, so carefully
Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things?
You're still the same old girl you used to be

- Eagles, "Lyin' Eyes"

Chapter 36.

Lyin' Eyes

. . .

"Amanda?" Olivia croaked, only one or two of the vowels actually audible. An attempt to raise her head from the pillow was quickly abandoned, another feeble groan taking its place. She felt around for the bed rail, patting along its length as if testing for heat, then gripped near the middle and made to pull herself into a seated position. She got no further than a single stomach crunch before wilting back against the bed, entirely spent. "Manda."

"I'm right here, darlin. Hey." Amanda hurried toward the bed, the impending argument with Dana forgotten. She rested her hands on Olivia's shoulders, discouraging anymore movement, but also wanting to touch, to at least give the impression that she could scoop Olivia up and hold her at any time it was requested. The drugs hadn't worn off completely yet; Olivia didn't even flinch at the sudden contact. Good, let her have the illusion of relaxation for as long as she could. There would be plenty of time for hypervigilance and pathological fear later. "Don't try to get up, okay? You just lie there and rest for now."

Olivia mouthed an okay and tried to moisten her chapped lips with her dry tongue. She winced at the splintered skin she encountered, tucking in her bottom lip protectively and closing her eyes against the pain. It seemed as though she might leave them closed and drift off again, but after a moment she peered up quizzically from the one eye. Under better circumstances it would have been endearing; battered and bruised as she was, it only served as a reminder of how bad off she had been just an hour or two before.

"How you feeling, baby? Still pretty groggy, huh?" Needlessly Amanda smoothed back the hair from Olivia's forehead. The questions were needless too, it was written all over Olivia's face—her whole body, actually—in vivid blacks, yellows, and blues how awful she felt. But Amanda had the irrational urge to keep her talking, as if she were still hypothermic and in danger of slipping into a coma. "They gave you some pretty strong meds. Said you'd probably sleep a lot."

"Why?" Olivia's blinking was slow and out of sync. It required several attempts before she was able to gaze up at Amanda without going cross-eyed. Poor thing didn't even have her glasses, Amanda lamented, flooded with guilt at the realization. There was probably no need for the readers, but it had become such a part of their routine—Olivia searching for one of her million pairs of glasses, Amanda handing over the nearest frames with a wry smile—its absence was upsetting.

A rush of heat went up from Amanda's neck, out from her heart. It wasn't unusual for someone to forget the moments prior to a blackout or medical emergency, especially when they were already traumatized beforehand, but it frightened her to see Olivia so confused. She couldn't handle it if Olivia started crying because she thought Amanda had left her to rot in that hellhole. Surely, Amanda would curl up and die if she had to listen to those horrible sobs again.

"Don't you remember, darlin? You started feeling real bad while the nurse was looking you over. You had a high fever and didn't recognize me. 'Bout gave me a heart attack when you passed out. I thought . . . well, it was just kinda scary." Noticing how far she loomed above her wife, who looked terribly small and vulnerable in her ill-fitting hospital gown, Amanda bent over to rest her elbows on the bed. Delicately she smoothed Olivia's knitted brows and forehead with the pad of her thumb, as if they were no larger than their infant daughter's same features.

"You had a bad infection," she said, gentle enough to be a lullaby. Anything louder or harder seemed like it might shatter Olivia the way a high-pitched note could break crystal. Maybe it would break Amanda too. "They had to do surgery to stop it, but you're gonna be fine. Just gotta take it real easy for a little while and let yourself heal up. Think you can do that for me, pretty darlin?"

There wasn't much of a choice, as evidenced by Olivia's inability to sit up on her own, but framing it as her decision to make would get quicker results than treating it like a rule to follow. At least that was the theory. Somehow, Olivia had a way of cutting straight through to the heart of the matter, even when she wasn't fully coherent.

"I had surgery?" she asked, staring in disbelief. She raised her hands, turning them front to back, as if they would reveal an incision among the scrapes and scuffs and scars. Finding none, she started to pat herself down, but got no farther than the first broken rib. "Where?"

The question was weak enough, more of a gasp than a spoken word, that it easily went ignored. Amanda would come back to it eventually, just not now, in front of Dana. The woman had stepped away from the bed, rather than approach and make her presence known. Olivia hadn't even caught sight of her yet. She could have drifted toward the doorway and ducked out, with Olivia being none the wiser—it probably would have been better that way. But given the choice between explaining the details of Olivia's emergency surgery or explaining Dana's astonishing return, Amanda had to go with the G-woman on this one.

"Hey, Liv, look here. Look who came to see ya," she said, waving Dana closer, vaguely at first, then more insistently as Dana hesitated. Amanda pointed to the other side of the bed, demanding she take her place there and speak to Olivia.

Too late she remembered what a shock it had been to see the FBI agent come waltzing into the interview room, not guilty of murder, not out on parole or even out of a job. And Amanda didn't have the history with her that Olivia did—the friendship, if that's what you wanted to call it. Why hadn't she kept her mouth shut, at least until Olivia wasn't so dazed and half-asleep, all defenses down? It wasn't a surprise reunion, it was an ambush, and Olivia would probably hate her for it.

"On second thought," she began, about to shoo Dana in the opposite direction. But Olivia had already spotted her guest, at whom she blinked for several moments, eyes growing progressively wider as recognition set in. Her lips formed the name before she spoke it aloud, and she visibly struggled to get it from her brain to her voice box. From wherever she had tucked away her memories of Dana to the surface, where pain was most vivid and monstrously alive. Once it went deep enough, you almost didn't feel it anymore.

"Dana? Dana Lewis?" Olivia swallowed the "I" at the last minute, pronouncing it Lews. She still couldn't say his name all these years and all these traumas later. Perhaps she never would be able to put him fully into words. And what of these new men? What restrictions would she find on her tongue, mind, and body because of those evil fuckers?

Among them, Amanda counted Sondra Vaughn and Declan Murphy. She hadn't gotten the chance to ask Dana what would happen to them now, either. But one thing she knew for certain: they didn't get to just go on living their lives like none of this had happened. If Amanda had to go to Serbia and track down Murphy herself, she would do it.

"In the flesh," said Dana, palms upturned in the manner of a praying televangelist. A soft, sincere smile and a tilt of her head belied the cocky announcement, but she didn't know what to do with her hands when she lowered them, restless fingers fiddling with the bedsheets and tap-tap-tapping the rail. Her sneaker scuffed the linoleum flooring, producing a loud squeak that startled all three of them. "Shit, sorry. How you feeling, honey? Got everything you need, or should I track down a nurse and give her what for?"

Olivia went on staring at Dana, her facial expression too vague to determine if the emotion that finally broke through would be wonderment, confusion or some other response altogether. She cocked her head on the pillow, drawing out the silence for so long it seemed she had forgotten to answer. Amanda cleared her throat, preparing to intervene, but Olivia found her voice again with an incredulous, "Dana?"

"Yeah, guess I've got a lot of explaining to do, don't I?" Dana chuckled to herself a bit indulgently, as if she were being called out by a precocious child and couldn't help being amused. It was the same reaction most people had to Jesse and her blunt interrogation technique. "Last time you saw me, I's on my way to be fitted for an orange jumpsuit. Well, I just can't pull off that look, not with this complexion, so I lit on outta there first chance I got."

"But how? I thought . . . that girl you killed." Olivia looked to Amanda for confirmation that she wasn't crazy, they had indeed arrested Dana Lewis for murder, they had watched her being escorted from the squad room for what would no doubt be a very long bid. Not just one innocent life, but two. And like a coward, she had hidden her crime, staging the scene so someone else took the blame while she went on living her life as if she weren't a killer, a liar, and a cheat. Imagine. "She was pregnant. You— you brutalized her. You staged a rape."

The accusation hung heavy in the air, like a rain cloud about to give forth. And that word: rape. It was a shock to the system hearing her say it out loud, considering what she'd just gone through. But then, she did say it every day, multiple times a day, at work. That took some of the mystery out of it, some of the power. Whether or not she could admit that it had happened to her this time, though—that remained to be seen.

All traces of amusement and bravado gone, Dana shook her head soberly. "I didn't. That's just how it was supposed to look. We had to make it believable to get me into the prison. Took my share of ass-whoopins while I was in there, those were real enough. But that poor girl's murder was just my cover story, sweet pea. You know your old pal Lewis could never do something like that, dontcha?"

Amanda cringed and Olivia recoiled at the name they both avoided using like it was a curse. There was no way for Dana to know that her own last name would cause such a strong reaction, but it irked Amanda all the same. She wanted to shield Olivia from any further exposure to her attackers, and if that meant obliterating certain names and phrases from her vocabulary—and policing everyone else's—then she would do it.

"How's she supposed to know something like that, when you been lyin' to her all this time?" Amanda asked, reaching across Olivia to grasp the opposite shoulder as if she meant to literally shield her wife from Dana's careless words. She turned a warning look on the agent, making it clear that was her first strike. Maybe the second, if they counted the squealing sneaker. "You had us all fooled, not just her. But she took the brunt of it because you's her friend, and she had to go around feeling like she'd missed it that whole time."

"Missed it?" Dana's gaze was wary, angled low, as if she were facing off with an angry pit bull. A dog that, moments ago, had been happily panting and wagging its tail.

"What you were. A liar. Murderer." Baby-killer. Rape-stager. Amanda continued listing crimes inside her head, growing angrier with each one, until she reached dirty cop, jealous ex, Judas. She lost momentum with those last few, her shoulders sagging underneath the weight of it all. The weight of knowing she was no better, and that she had populated Olivia's world with others of the same ilk. Real ones, not the dress-up kind like Dana. "How's she supposed to believe anything you say now?"

Dana cast a contrite look over Olivia, her frame so diminished under the drab hospital blanket, her hair matted and mangled around her abused face. (They weren't supposed to touch her face, Parker had said. Amanda couldn't decide which was worse—the order itself, the reasoning behind it, or that the men hadn't followed it.) "She's not, I reckon. But I hope she can forgive me and understand that I was just doing my job, it wasn't personal. And it sure doesn't mean I didn't really care about her. 'Cause I did. Do."

The scene unfolded with Olivia watching as if she had happened across a riveting soap opera, possibly in a language she didn't understand. Only after several silent beats did she realize they were waiting on her response, the players in le feuilleton mélo. "Your kids," she said weakly, the furrows in her brow the only thing that stood out from her wan complexion and demeanor. "What about them? And your husband? You just left them to go undercover in prison?"

That last part came out funny, her voice suddenly thick and gummy instead of the thin, cracked shell it had been a second before. It did appear she had trouble swallowing, but it wasn't any wonder with that Victorian collar of bruises around her neck.

"Well, uh, not exactly." Dana glanced at her feet, scuffing the toe of her sneaker on the floor a few times, then catching herself before it squeaked too loudly again. She straightened her posture inside the NYC hoodie, assuming a vaguely military stance, hands behind her back. "I didn't leave them because they don't exist. Never did. I've never been married or had any babies of my own. I'm real glad you have those things, though. If anyone deserves them—"

"I saw their pictures. In your apartment . . . The kids looked like you." Olivia turned to Amanda for confirmation, though the visit to Dana's apartment must have taken place before Amanda's transfer to New York. Unless it was a social call, made before Olivia shared such details with a lower ranking officer. But even then, that didn't sound like her. When had Olivia ever gone on a social call, by herself, to the home of a female friend?

Never, to Amanda's knowledge. She didn't much like the implications, not that she thought Olivia would have let anything happen while believing Dana was a married mother of however many nonexistent kids. But that hadn't stopped Alex Cabot from having designs on Olivia, knowing damn well she had a fiancée and three very real children just down the hall. It didn't stop Amanda from obsessing over what Alex had done to make Olivia kick her out, either.

She hated that it still bothered her, even now, when Olivia needed a fully present, fully supportive partner, concerned with nothing other than her well-being. Pushing the paranoia aside, Amanda leaned over and stroked Olivia's forehead with the side of her thumb, so gentle she could have approached a frightened doe. "They were just another part of her undercover persona too, darlin. The kids, the husband. 'Member we thought it was strange no one showed up for her when we made the arrest?"

"Ouch. Thanks for that reminder," Dana said, her attempt at a light laugh dying out almost at once. She sobered quickly, nodding in agreement. "S'true, though. Any family I had to bail me out left this good earth 'bout twenty-five years ago with my mama and daddy. Rest of us aren't really on speaking terms. Y'all were probably the only ones shedding any tears over my trip up the river. Which wasn't fair to you, and I am sorry it had to be that way. Now you see why it's better if I just keep to myself."

"I didn't cry," Olivia said quietly, and the surprising part wasn't the denial itself but how well she executed it. Amanda would have believed Olivia was unaffected by Dana's fake downfall if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes—the hurt and betrayal written all over Olivia's face after her friend was taken away; the self-blame and self-doubt that plagued her work in the weeks that followed; the distrust she'd leveled at everyone, not just Amanda; and yes, a tear or two, always when she thought no one was around to see.

Those three days in hell had taught Olivia how to lie.

Dana nodded as if she understood and accepted it, though she was clearly uncomfortable, struggling to find the appropriate response. Her eyes even looked a bit dewy, if Amanda wasn't mistaken. "Can't say that I blame you," she said, subdued. "I wouldn't be too tore up over someone I thought had killed a pregnant kindergarten teacher, either. If it's any consolation, you helped bring down a major crime ring by putting me away, no matter how unintentionally."

"It's not." Olivia turned to stone, her vulnerability and confusion momentarily lifting, a solid wall of anger erected in its place. She didn't express rage very often, but when she did, it came on fast and hard and looked an awful lot like that. Impenetrable, intractable. Unnervingly sedate. "You lied to me. I held your hand, and you looked me right in the face, and you lied."

"I had to. I was doing my job. You know how it is, Cap—"

"What else did you lie to me about?" Though Olivia's voice lacked strength, she made up for it in point-blank directness. She understood that you couldn't shoot to kill while you were screaming to be heard.

Something in the low, rattlesnake tone told Amanda it was time to intervene. Everyone's emotions were on edge, she should have known better than to initiate this haphazard reunion when the last thing Olivia needed was more people ganging up on her, more reminders of the past. The present was bad enough. "Liv," she said softly, trying to guide Olivia's focus back to her with a gentle nudge from her fingers. Her wife was stubborn and ignored the small cue, refusing to turn her head.

Then all the air went out of the room.

"Were you even raped?" Olivia asked, and one thing she hadn't lost was her steady glare, used so often in extracting the truth from hard-hearted criminals. It was changed, though. She couldn't sustain it quite as long, and the arrogance it required to be really effective had vanished almost completely. She lacked the confidence and conviction. "Or did you make that up too?"

If Olivia had pulled out a knife, stuck it in Dana's gut, and twisted, the agent couldn't have appeared more taken aback than she did right then. She covered her heart, as if shielding it from a second strike of the blade. "I'd never make up a thing like that. That was the worst experience I ever— No, ma'am, I did not make that up. You heard my testimony. I wouldn't say those things, perjure myself on the stand with those . . . hateful words, if they weren't absolutely true."

Whatever the hateful words had been, they sent a visible wave of revulsion through Dana now, her entire body shuddering. She touched her neck absently, smoothing her fingers down its length, then snatching her hand away in disgust. Amanda didn't need to read any court transcripts to recognize that reaction. Dana might have lied about many things, but being raped wasn't one of them. Despite her tough exterior, she wore the memories as if they had just happened.

How long ago had it actually been? Was recovery really even possible? After what Amanda had witnessed on that livestream, she just didn't know anymore. But one thing was clear: she had left a deeply traumatized woman behind to clean up her mess at that Jersey port. She should feel guilty for that, but instead it felt like solidarity. Perhaps executing a man like Gus Sandberg and staging a shootout between some other lowlife rapists would give Dana closure. Perhaps the three murders would do the same for Amanda.

That just left Olivia, whose lot in life seemed to be never finding the closure she relentlessly sought. She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head, rejecting Dana's claims. Believing the victim was her creed, even when she had every reason to doubt. When everyone else, Amanda included, had lost faith in someone's story, Olivia held on, held up. It was one of the qualities Amanda loved most about her.

It was gone.

"I don't believe you. Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie. I was so impressed that you'd done your own rape kit. Thought you must be s-so strong, some kind of Wonder Woman. To testify in front of him like that. Even I couldn't . . . " Olivia was no longer speaking to Dana, her eyes and inflection somewhere in the middle distance. For a moment, she didn't seem aware there was anyone else in the room at all. "But you're just as weak as the rest of us, aren't you? Worse, because you pretended to know what it was like. What this was like."

Dana opened her mouth, closed it, stared at the floor and shook her head. She was definitely holding back tears this time, her eyes shiny with moisture, the irises like pennies at the bottom of a fountain. Just the idea of standing there watching her cry made Amanda uncomfortable. Some people weren't meant to show a softer, more emotional side, and Dana Lewis was one of them. "I wasn't pretending. Not about that, any of it. You don't have to believe me, but I do know. What this is like." She sniffed hard, gaze lifting to reveal dry cheeks, dry lashes. No tears in sight. "I know what you went through, Captain, and I am so sorry."

The emotion Dana withheld came flooding out of Olivia all at once. Weakened by her injuries and post-op restrictions, she could only produce a small, breathless sob, but it racked her entire body like a bronchitis cough. It took all of her strength to rise from the pillow, and even then she only made it far enough to prop on her elbows with help from Amanda. Tears flowed freely down both her cheeks. "Get out."

"Liv, baby." Amanda caught herself about to soothe Olivia by gathering and stroking her hair down her back. Hair that didn't exist anymore, just the frazzled ends that lay at her shoulders, coarse and scrubby. Instead she smoothed the hair back from Olivia's forehead, where the long bangs fell stubbornly on either side, getting in the way. They would have to be cut, along with the rest of the ruined mane that, up until a few days ago, had been such a source of pleasure to Amanda and Olivia both—touching it and having it touched.

Amanda wanted to cry too.

"Don't say that. Dana's been a big help to us. I wouldn't have been able to get to you when I did, if not for her. She put her job— herself at risk so I could find you and take you outta that awful place." Amanda shushed her wife lightly as she spoke, hoping to calm her before she exerted herself too much. The doctor had said she was lucky to still have her spleen, and anymore abuse to her fractured ribs might have resulted in a very different outcome. She should be taking it easy now, not getting worked up and putting strain on her abdomen. "We owe her a thank you, not marching orders. Come on now, darlin, hush that crying."

"It's okay," Dana said, back in business mode. She gestured like she was in front of a room full of federal agents, rather than two women who were anything but cops at the moment. It was easier taking charge and giving orders than showing you had feelings, Amanda supposed. Who could hurt you when you were always at the top? "Nobody needs to thank me. I just wish I could've done something sooner, before all—" She caught herself sweeping a hand in Olivia's direction, and immediately cut the gesture off, midair. Before all this. "Well, before they made their move."

"You saw it too, didn't you?"

The agent did a fair job of feigning ignorance, but Amanda's stomach filled with acid when Olivia asked about the video feed. She would probably be asking—or at least wondering—the same thing five, ten years from now. Maybe for the rest of her life. Once something's on the Internet, it never goes away. And once something was in evidence, any number of your colleagues and other members of law enforcement could take a peek. All in the name of gaining a better understanding of what you went through, of course.

"I don't know what—"

"They recorded what they did to me," Olivia gritted, forcing the words out between clenched teeth. If she meant to fight back the tears, she succeeded only in producing twice as many, twice as fast, with the pressure building up inside. Her face was an alarming shade of red, the color of danger signs, stoplights, of sirens and bloodbaths. "They took turns raping me for— for days. It went on forever, and you saw."

"I saw . . . only what was necessary to make informed decisions about the case." Dana's head was at half-mast again, her gaze turned sidelong to Amanda. She had her tells just like everyone else, but it was a good lie. The best she could do under the circumstances, when Olivia wanted the truth more than ever, but desperately needed the comfort of a lie. "Feed wasn't clear enough to make out very much, anyway. Kinda blurry. What's that called—pixelated. And the video lagged. I wouldn't have known it was you if I hadn't been told ahead of time."

If she had left out the last part, maybe it would have gone over more smoothly. But she had oversold it toward the end, and Olivia always spotted the lies that went just a little too far, sounded just a little too good to be true. Even now, her senses dulled by painkillers and anesthesia, her perception skewed by despair and trauma, she was aware of being placated.

"Get out," she repeated, and though a whisper, it resonated throughout the room. When her emotions were too big, particularly her anger, Olivia made them—and herself—very small. For fear of what might burst out of her if she let it, Amanda believed. It was the survival tactic of a little girl whose anger and terror were too dangerous to express. Twins monsters that would wreak untold havoc if unleashed. She would never turn them loose after this.

No sooner had Amanda come to the terrible conclusion than Olivia sat up fully on her own, gathered all the breath her fractured ribs would allow, and released it in what would have been a bellow had she the strength or the voice for it: "I said GET OUT!"

Thin and scratchy, the shout was ineffectual at startling anyone into motion, as Olivia had no doubt hoped it would. When she raised her voice at work, everyone hopped-to. Here, they merely looked stunned and uncomfortable, Amanda's hands coming to her aid, as if she might fly apart with any further rages. Her body didn't have the energy, however, and she collapsed against the bed the next moment, like a rag doll tossed into the corner by a careless child.

"Please make her leave." Olivia curled into a ball on her side, facing Amanda, her back to the FBI agent. She took Amanda's hand and hugged it as desperately to her chest as a lifeline. Tears wetted the back when she buried her face against it, reminding Amanda of Frannie trying to nuzzle under her palm during a thunderstorm. Weeping inconsolably, Olivia begged, trembled, her teeth scraping Amanda's knuckles.

Into the furnace of fire, Amanda thought. It's where she had always assumed she'd go; she just hadn't expected Olivia to end up there with her.

"Please, Amanda. I don't want them— her to see me like this. Please make her go. Oh, please . . . "

"Shh, she's gone. She's gone." Amanda stroked Olivia's cheek, her side, her bunched up knees.

She had always thought the worst agony must be trying to explain their suffering to a child or an animal, who couldn't understand what had befallen them. But she was wrong. You could make up a pretty story for a child—an illness was a curse by an evil witch, a dead loved one just needed to be with God for some higher purpose—and they would believe you. A dog only cared that you were there to love it through the pain.

No explanation or comforting would suffice for a senseless tragedy of this magnitude, visited on a wife and mother who had already been victimized more than her share. More than most. And there was nothing Amanda could say to make it better.

"She's gone," Amanda said again, nodding to Dana as she backed out of the room without making a sound. Poor woman looked shell shocked by the encounter, her eyes wide and sorrowful, but she tipped her head in silent acknowledgement as she slipped out the door. Amanda's place was with Olivia, and Olivia was not up to visitors yet. Any hurt feelings on Dana's part would have to be dealt with on her own for now. "There's no one here, darlin, no one's gonna see. I won't let them."

All that was left were the lies.

. . .