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September 17, 1692
Salem Village Courthouse
Olivia stood defiant before the judge. Despite the weeks, the months, in jail, she was well-groomed and composed. She neither cowered, nor sniveled, nor begged, nor shouted. She simply stood, shoulders back, eyes forward, chin raised. Challenging not only the judge, not only her accusers, but the very concept of being accused.
Elliot sat stone-faced in the crowded gallery. The novelty of the trials waned, but the frenzy remained. He watched Olivia with a heavy heart and a restless soul. He'd thrown her to the wolves. Elliot was surrounded by her staunchest allies. Cragen, Munch, Fin, Kathleen, and a score of women she helped over the last ten or twenty years. Mary Warren was stricken in the face of her supporters.
"Olivia is innocent," Cragen said, half challenge, half lament. "She would never hurt child, nor woman." Anger lit his face. He clearly wanted to hit, punch, slap, shock, strangle, punish, harm Elliot. Cragen would fight every man in the court if they allowed it, but they did not, so he settled for attacking the man who abandoned her in her time of grievous need.
Elliot bowed his head. "I know."
Cragen frowned. It was not the reaction he expected. Elliot did not live on the outskirts. He was a pious, religious man who represented law and order. Cragen knew there was something unspoken and confused between them, but he assumed Elliot chose God and Country over loyalty to Olivia. He did not expect to find him wrecked. "Why did you arrest her?"
Elliot choked on the tears in his throat. "She asked me to."
January 18, 1692
The Outskirts of Salem Village
A new moon hung in the sky, leaving only stars to light the way as a handful of girls gathered in the woods behind the home of the Reverend Parris and his family. They met in a small clearing far enough back from the house that even its outline disappeared into the naked branches of the tall trees between it and them. Young Betty Parris brushed a twig off her shoulder, her breath visible in the cold air and dim starlight. Her cousin, Abigail Williams, stood in the center of the small glen, her cloak loose and her hair free to tumble over her shoulders as she stared up at the sky with bouncing anticipation. Abigail was not the eldest of the group; Ann Putnam Jr. was a year older, and Mary Walcott was seventeen. But Abigail was the boldest. It was her plot to attempt oomancy during the new moon, and she directed the other girls to light their lanterns and mark a pentagram on the ground.
Betty and her schoolmate, Elizabeth Stabler, placed their lanterns on either side of Abigail and sank to their knees. Elizabeth shivered, more of fright than chill, though the midwinter ground was stiff and frozen. Betty grasped her friend's hand as they waited for the remaining two girls to complete the figure of the five-pointed star. Ann and Mary placed their lanterns and sat opposite Betty and Elizabeth. All four raised their eyes to their leader at the apex of the pentagram.
Abigail flung her arms out and spun around, arms flapping as though she might lift off and fly like a bird above the trees. She chanted in a voice unnaturally low and a language neither Betty nor Elizabeth recognized. Finally, she shrieked like a hawk and ended the dizzying dance with a leap into a crouch. Her hands dropped into the dirt, covering her skin up to her elbows. After a moment, she lifted her head to address them. Her flushed cheeks framed wide eyes that were wild in the low light. "Now," she said, both a whisper on the wind and the thunder clap of a shouted incantation at once.
The girls each pulled a glass and an egg from the pockets of their cloaks. They set the glasses in front of their knees, and Abigail rose to fill each one from a painted ceramic pitcher. Once each glass was full, she drank the remaining water and smashed the ceramic on the ground beneath her feet. Elizabeth gasped as the shattered pieces rocketed through the air, and one tiny particle lodged in her left cheek.
"Raise your egg," Abigail intoned, "and with the moon's blessing, crack it into your Venus glass to witness your espoused."
Heightened anticipation and nervous laughter met her words. Divination was a form of sorcery, forbidden in the strictures of their cloistered society. Curiosity was itself a sin, and vanity or pride. Who they married, however, was nearly their only source of status, and though even the eldest was years away from marriage age, they were all old enough to wonder. Abigail dropped again to the ground and nodded for her slight coven to proceed with the spell.
Betty cracked her egg first, letting the shell fall amongst the fragments of clay on the cold ground. The sliver of egg white glowed in the warm water. Betty scrunched her face up in thoughtful consideration. "He is tall," she said finally, in a quiet voice. Her dropped shoulders betrayed disappointment in the vague and mundane message. Still, her peers all raised their eggs and cracked in turn, Elizabeth last, her hands shaking.
"He is pious," said Ann, "and handsome."
"He is kind," said Mary. "Oh!" She grinned. "He is an artist."
Elizabeth peered into her glass, the egg white dancing in the water. The candlelight flickered across her face as she tried to discern features in the shape of it. She narrowed her eyes and tilted her face, but no angle provided the picture of a tall, pious, handsome, kind, or artistic man. Nor any man at all. She pulled back to look over the rim from above. Her head blocked the light, making the image even murkier. Still, it did not resemble a husband. Or a human. It looked rather like a box. A long box, dark and still as the dead. A terrible thought lodged in her mind. Or for the dead.
Elizabeth screeched and threw away the glass, spilling the water and what remained of the egg onto the ground. The glass cracked in two.
"What did you see?" Betty said, breathless and flushed, her heart beating nearly as hard as her friend's. Elizabeth shook her head, afraid to answer, to speak her vision into truth. She stood and spun, fleeing for the trees, the house, and safety. She heard her friend call after her, and the other girls joining in. She heard three voices calling her name, telling her to come back, to stay quiet, to be safe. Three voices calling her name and one, Abigail's, laughing. Elizabeth ignored them and ran, as fast as she could, all the way home.
February 27, 1692
Stabler Home, Salem Village, Massachusetts
Elliot looked up from the kitchen table. "How is she?"
"Sleeping now." Olivia took a settling breath and slumped against the wall beside him. "I gave her tea. Lavender and valerian root."
Elizabeth was suffering from insomnia, nerves, and a general malaise. There were stirrings in town for weeks, for more than a month. The reverend's daughter and niece were afflicted, prone to fits and ungodly behavior. The local doctor found no physical explanation for the symptoms and diagnosed withcraft, or devilry. Their community was frantic, and Elliot was afeared. Elizabeth, his youngest, was close to the afflicted girls. He told himself her behavior was different, and explainable, but the longer both the afflictions and Elizabeth's symptoms went on, the more disquieted he became. He did not want to seek out the doctor, nor the priest. He'd seen the reverend's fury and wanted nothing to do with it. He wished to protect his child, his family, and, to that end, hid Elizabeth's distress from all. The longer it went on, however, the worse it became, and his middle daughter, Kathleen, beseeched him to consult Olivia.
Olivia was not the first person he met in Salem, but she was the first he remembered. The first person he wanted to know. The first person who mattered. Elliot came to Salem after the death of his wife in childbirth, and with her, his infant son. In New York, every street corner reminded him of what he lost; Salem was meant to be a new beginning. It was smaller, colder, and more conservative, but quieter, simpler, and more conciliatory. It allowed his girls to grow away from the scrutiny of their relatives and the memories of their mother, his wife, and their loss. Still, it was a harsh transition. Without Olivia, they might not have stayed. But with Olivia, it was home.
Elliot and his three daughters were only in town a few months when he found a baby in a drawer. Olivia helped find the child's mother, a young woman, barely more than a girl, held captive with other girls by the nearby harbor. They were kept destitute, forced into prostitution, raped more than once, sometimes by more than one man. Elizabeth, or Ellie as her sisters in suffering called her, was thrown out when she became pregnant and gave birth in the snow. She tried to protect her son, whom she loved regardless of where he came from, and placed him in the drawer with a blanket and a prayer. God led Elliot to the baby, the baby led him to Olivia, and Olivia led him to the mother.
Ellie was weak and ill when they found her, and she died soon after. She had no relations, and the baby, Noah, was to be sent to an orphanage in the city. Instead, Olivia chose to keep him. She lived on the outskirts of Salem, a single woman alone, raised by a single woman alone. Serena was long considered odd. She preferred books to people, and read stories outside the bible like Shakespeare, Cervantes, and poetry. Serena was pretty. She was from a small family with little power or clout but acceptable breeding. Marriage offers were made to her father, but Serena was capricious. She gained a reputation for being difficult and untamed, and one summer she turned up pregnant, unwed, and disgraced. Serena claimed rape, but a conviction required two witnesses, and none came forward. Her father died soon after Olivia's birth, and unable to inherit, she took what she could gather quickly out of the house. Clever and resourceful, Serena restored an abandoned cottage outside of town and raised Olivia alone. She taught her daughter to read, to write, and to distrust men. She taught her daughter to distrust everyone.
"Elizabeth is at an age of transition," Olivia said. "She is testing boundaries, and it spooked her."
"She is not..." He swallowed. "Afflicted? As the others." There was fear in his voice and all over his face. Olivia looked thoughtful.
Serena raised her daughter with fear and anger, but Olivia was curious and forthright. Eager to learn and hungry for connection, she befriended others on the outskirts. The retired constable Cragen provided lessons in how to read evidence, identify clues, and observe people. Impressed by her self-taught skills in herbalism, John Munch introduced her to alchemy and filled her head with politics and other topics normally forbidden to women. She fished in the river with her closest neighbor, a free Black man named Fin, and learned midwifery from Cragen's spinster sister.
Olivia's beauty was preternatural from a young age. Puritan garb hid much, and standardized the rest, but Olivia was comely, and her eyes were startling. Wide, quick, and keenly intelligent, they were always watching, always measuring. It added to a reputation already complicated by her odd, mean mother and the cruel trick of her birth. She had no earthly father, and her hypervigilant eyes, deep brown and flecked with gold in certain light, gave credence to the idea she was part fae, part daemon, or all supernatural. At the least, a practitioner of witchcraft.
Olivia remained an outcast and never married, but through her work, she gained another, brighter reputation as a force for good. After Serena's death, she turned her home into a safe haven. Women and girls came to her for aid, guidance, and protection. She provided care for pregnancy and abortion, education in health and wellness, and assistance in escaping abuse. Olivia had the knowledge to uncover evidence in cases of sexual misconduct and the compassion to guide survivors through recovery. Elliot consulted her often, and in turn, he became known as the marshal who specialized in cases related to women and children, madness and melancholy, and sexual disputes. They worked together for many years, developed a partnership based on trust, and became so close they could communicate without words.
As they did now. Elliot was stiff and pale. Elizabeth wasn't the only one not sleeping. Olivia touched his arm. "When I was Elizabeth's age, I realized I was different. As a small child, I did not understand the whispers, and now I am comfortable with who I am." She had herself. It was sometimes lonely, but better than being defined by a world that feared her. She took a breath. "At that age, I worried." The town chatter of the superstitious said Olivia was marked by the devil, unlovable, irredeemable, and never meant to exist. Elliot placed his hand over hers, and she raised her eyes to meet his. "Elizabeth's mother and brother died, and she lived. It worries her." Elliot's eyes were a storm. Elizabeth was always quiet and thoughtful. Too thoughtful, he worried, too empathetic. She resembled Olivia in that way.
He often wondered if he'd met Olivia a few years earlier, would his wife and son be alive? He had watched her maintain calm and composure in the face of trauma and complication. If Olivia were with her, Kathy and their infant boy might be saved. He'd made peace with the loss long ago, however. Maureen still missed her mother sometimes, but Kathleen was only four when Kathy passed and had few memories. Elizabeth had none. Or none of her own—but what if she was burdened by his and her sisters? What if she felt the absence of her twin? It never occurred to him, and he felt awful. "What can I do?"
Olivia raised her chin. "Love her. As she is." Elizabeth was scared by her vision. She worried it betrayed a truth, her deepest fear realized, that she was not meant to be here. That she should have died with her brother and mother, and that her father and sisters and neighbors and God himself hated her for not being dead. Olivia understood. She knew what it was to be the reminder of everything taken away.
"I do," Elliot said with deep conviction. "I love her."
Olivia's sharp eyes took in his sorrow for Elizabeth's pain and his earnest desire to wash away all the worry, to wrap his child in a blanket of security and affection, and hold the whole world away. She smiled warmly. "I know."
A charged moment passed between them. Olivia's lips parted in a tiny gasp, and she withdrew her hand. Elliot moved to the table to pour two mugs of fermented cider as Olivia settled her nerves. He placed one beside Olivia and lifted the other to his lips. "They are pursuing formal charges against Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osbourne," he said after sipping.
Olivia pursed her lips. "I want to talk to the accusers."
"You believe them?" Elliot's tone and the height of his eyebrows showed clear surprise. Despite her reputation, Olivia's skills were practical and practiced, and she was generally more skeptical than he was.
"No," she said with the certainty he expected. "Those women are disfavored." It made them targets, easy to accuse. She looked up. "However, something happened to those girls." It might be innocent, as with his daughter, or sinister, as they well knew. "Speaking it helped Elizabeth."
Elliot's heart pounded. Olivia's empathy, inquisitiveness, and instinct to shelter and defend were her best qualities. And also, they put her in danger. He placed the mug down and stepped closer. "You are different." She frowned, and he swallowed a sigh. She was the best person he knew, and he loved her, truly, just as she is. But the town's rumblings about witchcraft frightened him. "Stay away from this mystery, Olivia, please. Stay safe."
She did not answer, but he saw her determination in the set of her shoulders and the strength of her jaw. His eyes washed over her body as he moved in closer still. Tension rolled off her in waves. Elliot reached his hands to her waist. His fingers brushed the layers of fabric, and in the heat of the moment, he closed the space between them without thought for consequence. He grasped her waist tightly, held steady like a rock, an anchor, a buttress. Desire filled her belly in response to the pressure of his grip. Her eyes flickered up to meet his, and she found her desire mirrored, aching, flooding, overcoming.
"Stay." Elliot's breath was warm on her skin. "Please, stay."
"You know my answer."
April 19, 1692
The Outskirts of Salem Village
Elliot ran through the forest, breathless and dizzy with his heart pounding in his ears, the sound of Olivia's impending doom chasing them. She ignored his warnings, his arguments, his pleas, to pursue what she understood to be the truth. She inserted herself into the narrative of the hysteria, and now it turned on her. Olivia Benson joined the long list of accused witches, and Elliot Stabler was tasked with catching her. And he intended to. But not to serve the warrant. Fuck the warrant.
He found her in the clearing by the bend in the little river that wound its way through the woods between the main town and the outskirts where she lived. It was where they came to work through cases or their children's troubles or sometimes just to talk about nothing or anything. Sometimes they simply sat in each other's company. Sometimes she wet her feet in the water. Sometimes she let her hair down. Sometimes she let him touch it. It was their place.
"Blessed be the father." She turned at the grateful intonation, her eyes big and bright, a tremble in her breath. She was relieved. She was waiting for him. Elliot stepped up beside her. His fingers twitched with his desire to wrap her into his arms and never let go, but he settled for a hand on her elbow. "Come, Maureen is waiting to get you out of the city. You, Elizabeth, and Noah."
Olivia shook her head and pulled away. "I cannot flee with them."
Elliot huffed. He raised the warrant. "This paper demands you be held for questioning, under suspicion of witchcraft."
"I am innocent."
"The jails are full of innocents!" Elliot flung his arms wide. His voice boomed in the secluded space, and a wind blew through the leaves of the trees as if in response.
"That is why I cannot leave," Olivia said in a much quieter, but equally driven tone. Elliot shook his head and reached out in entreaty; she grasped his hand between hers. "They say evil has come to Salem. It has, but not where they are looking". She raised her eyes, the gold in them glowing in the soft light of dusk. It was late afternoon when he ran from the courthouse; he found her at twilight. Slowly, Olivia let go of his hand and plucked the warrant away from him. "This is evidence of evil."
Elliot nodded. "That is why I will not serve it."
"That is why you must." Elliot’s nostrils flared. Olivia's eyes shone. "I am one of many."
"Not to me. To me, you are everything." He shook his head. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes wild. "Olivia." His breath hitched. "Olivia, I love you."
She lowered her eyes and moved away. "Rebecca Nurse is benevolent." She spoke softly, but clearly. "Dorothy Good is a child."
He followed after her, unwilling to let her out of arm's length. "You cannot save them from inside the prison."
Olivia paused in a circle of moonlight to read the arrest warrant. It was signed by a quorum of men, but the list of accusers started with the name Mary Warren, the Proctors' serving girl. Olivia swallowed a sigh. She spoke with Mary days ago, pressed her for answers as she had all the accusers, those with whom she was granted an audience. The girl was twisted into knots. A modest personality, powerless and frightened, and thus easily swayed. Olivia listened and heard the story beneath the surface. She was trapped. By the work, the men, the girls, the hysteria, the mess. After speaking with Olivia and others, Mary had recanted, which called the other girls' testimony into question, too. And then Mary found herself accused, and did what she had to do to survive it.
Olivia shook her head. "Mary Warren was repeatedly abused by her master."
Elliot frowned. "John Proctor is accused of witchcraft." Proctor was perhaps not the most well-liked in the village, but he was well-known and generally respected as a God-fearing businessman before the accusations. He was one of the first to speak out against them, one of the first to call spectral evidence into question. From Elliot's perspective, John spoke out to protect his wife, and in response, he was accused and arrested. Olivia raised her chin in defiance. Elliot's frown deepened. "It is his right—"
Olivia rounded on him, her face red with ire. "To beat her? Threaten her? Assault her?" She spat each accusation at him in swift succession.
"No!" Olivia flinched at the ferocity of his response. Elliot fell back with an anguished sigh. "I told you to stay away." His voice was barely a whisper, and tears filled his eyes.
"I told you I could not." The words hung in the air between them. Elliot's chin trembled. "The accused are innocent of witchcraft. The accusers are suffering under a spell." Somewhere in between was the truth. "They are, we are, all of us, victims." The town was as trapped as Mary and all the others. "I cannot abandon them." She shook her head. "I will not."
Elliot closed his eyes and took a few ragged breaths. He forced his tears to stay and opened his eyes to find hers. His beautiful Olivia, more than a woman, a force of nature. A summer storm. A holy star. He was bewitched. "You will die for a village of people who never accepted you!"
Olivia lowered her eyes. "If that is the verdict."
Elliot ripped the warrant from her hand. "Before all this, they believed you a witch." Her fate was sealed before she took in her first breath. Shunned from infancy, her suffering was invisible. "They used you, and now they will use it against you."
"I cannot run." She pressed her hands to his cheeks, pulled his eyes to hers. "Elliot." A tear slipped from his eye and fell wet against her fingers. "I was born to this. For this I was made."
"I will save you." His hands closed over hers, his words a promise. A vow. "Against your will if I must."
Olivia gently shook her head. She turned into his hand, which lay gently on her cheek, and brushed her lips to his palm. "You are a good man." Her hands dropped, and she turned back toward the river.
Elliot lunged forward and lifted her up into his arms with a crazed intent to carry her out of the village, out of the state, off the world if he could. He pulled her close, flush against his chest. Olivia did not struggle. She watched with her head tilted and her eyes as wide and dark as the sky. The wail started deep in his belly and clawed its way out of his throat. He saw stars and fell to his knees, sobbing, still holding her cradled in his arms. She brushed the back of his neck as he wept. Minutes, or a lifetime later, he settled back on the ground and let her go.
Olivia shifted in his lap, turning to face him, tipped his head up, and covered his mouth with a deep kiss. Elliot returned it eagerly, desperately, and they fell as one into the moss and dirt, the leaves crackling under their weight, passionately linked as they drove away all the remaining boundaries. The physical were flung to the side with their clothing, the mental stomped out by a decade of unspoken desires, the emotional answered the siren's call of imminent danger, and the spiritual awakened to a foundational truth. They were always meant to be one.
Elliot woke to the sound of the river. Olivia wore a shift and her bodice, loose from their exertions. Her feet were bare, and her hair free to tumble over her shoulders and down her back. She looked like an angel.
Olivia turned, as if she sensed him watching. He held his breath. "Take them and go."
He asked her to marry him the first year. She said he was still mourning and laughed it off. He didn't understand. Remarriage was natural. She would be an excellent mother to his daughters. He longed to be a father to her son. It took three more times before she explained.
"I am ungodly."
Elliot thought it was ridiculous. She spent her life helping. She protected children, cared for the sick, lifted the downtrodden, and attacked the unknown with ferocity. But her mind was set.
"I will not allow the pollution of my soul to ruin you or your children. I will love you all my days, but I will not marry you."
Elliot shook his head. "I am staying. Arresting you will allow me cover."
"Elliot—"
He grasped her hands and drew them to his chest. "You will not leave the victims. I will not leave you." After a long moment, she nodded acceptance. "I have family in New York. Maureen will bring Elizabeth and Noah to them. They will be safe from this madness."
"Thank you." Her lip trembled. She wanted to say more, but there were no words. Elliot understood the story within the silence.
"He is yours," he said. He is ours, she heard.
She took a breath. "What of Kathleen?"
"She requested to stay." Olivia frowned. "To mind me. She believes I will die of starvation if she is not here to keep me fed."
Despite everything, a bright smile broke out across Olivia's face. "Is she wrong?"
"Perhaps not."
They laughed together. It was good.
"We will protect her." She will go, Olivia thought, if she were the one to ask her. Elliot nodded.
Olivia pulled away, and they dressed for the day. For the arrest. Olivia pulled her hair into her bonnet and knelt to wash her face in the river. As she stared at her reflection, Elliot's visage appeared in the water behind her. They shared a smile, small and kind and for them alone. She stood and turned to look at him directly. His eyes were as blue as the water. She pressed a hand over his heart. They were the only people in the whole of existence.
"It is time."
September 17, 1696
Stabler Home, Queens, New York
Abigail twisted her hands together. She stood on the steps of a precipice. Rather, she stood on the steps of the Stabler family home, but it was an allegory. The family inside had no reason to accept her and every reason to reject her presence. The harm she'd done followed her from Salem despite her best efforts. Redemption would not open the door. Nor atonement. But Abigail did not seek either.
She sought validity. Understanding. Truth. Perhaps acceptance. Perception. Acknowledgment.
She wanted to be seen.
The door opened to reveal a child. A boy, early teens, with dark hair and bright blue eyes. Abigail swallowed. "I would like to see—" She stumbled over the word 'goody,' going out of favor and somewhat more rapidly in New York. "Missus Stabler. If she's available."
The boy made a face. If there was one thing he was fully and completely so very over that he never wanted to hear the word again, it was 'goody' and all the implications thereof. He waved her inside; however, all the while calculating the ways and means to destroy her.
"You're Noah."
"Yes," said the boy.
"I'm Abigail." She shrugged, chagrinned. "Abigail Williams."
Noah waved an impatient hand. "Come in then."
Abigail entered the home. It was smaller than the homes in Salem, but the family utilized space in clever ways. She spied Kathleen in the kitchen, but she was too distracted to notice her tentative wave.
"Who is it, love?" The airy voice of Olivia Stabler trickled down from above.
"Someone lost," Noah said.
Olivia's eyes washed over the girl. "...Abigail?" Abigail looked up. Olivia stood at the top of a staircase with a toddler at her hip. "What are you doing here?"
Abigail worried her lip. "I have nothing."
Olivia tilted her head. "You have your self."