Chapter Text
It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t even raped. Not even close. There were women in her line of work that had seen worse, much worse. Yet he chose her.
God, why her?
Why did she have to bear this burden?
Why did he choose her out of all the women at Sealview?
Why does she get to live after it all?
What has she done to deserve life rather than death?
Counseling was supposed to help, to be a place where she can get the necessary tools to help deal with it.
Except she wasn’t quite sure what it was yet.
Guilt had riddled her since February. Seven months of drowning, compartmentalizing, telling herself that what she faced wasn’t like the others, that her trauma wasn’t rape. The whispers of her words to Melinda sat in her throat when the ME asked about the basement, if that’s what Lowell Harris did to her.
“It was the closest I’ve ever come.”
That day she couldn’t bear to label her as a victim in that sense. What happened at Sealview didn’t match the reality of the cases SVU caught. Yes, she was forced into the basement against her will. Yes, she was shoved on a mattress and then chased like a caged animal. Yes, he cuffed her to the door as she screamed and begged for anyone to come save her.
Still, despite what anyone on the squad thought, what her therapist told her, what the facts said, Olivia Benson could not call herself a victim of rape.
However, he took something from her that day, something she’s spent the better part of a year trying to find again.
Her sense of stability? Gone.
Her peace of mind? Nonexistent.
Her purpose? Unclear.
The second she ran and hid in that basement, some ounce of hope rushing through her that there had to be some way out, Harris had the opportunity to kill her. In a moment where she didn’t just feel powerless but was powerless, he could have cuffed her to the door before firing a shot to end the story. Write it off as an escaped inmate, tell the inmates and the other COs how dangerous she was.
Fin would have brought the truth to light, exposed his fabricated lie and smear a decorated officer if it meant justice for Liv. NYPD would have pressed charges, demanding reform, change, within state corrections. She couldn’t think of a soul close to her that would let the truth of Lowell Harris go down without a fight.
But all that was another universe, a universe she may have wished more than once to live in as it was better than whatever hell she was barely existing in.
Why her?
Why does she deserve to be here?
She lost track of how much time she spent in therapy the last seven months talking in circles about it. And like all circles, every conversation dragged her back to point A. There were no revelations, no steps forward or backward, nothing to shake her back into existing.
Group therapy was supposed to help address her anxiety from sexual assault. (The one label she did feel comfortable with.) It was supposed to get her out of the circle. Being able to share what she was going through with other women—survivors—felt like a promising step toward healing.
Yet every time she sat in there, listening to what felt like the same stories and being told to “remember to breathe”, that drowning feeling continued to silently waterboard her. Breathing felt exhausting. Remembering it felt just as exhausting. Living felt like something she was doing out of obligation to others rather than out of desire for herself.
When the group therapist then told them all to keep a journal while they were here, Olivia had to bite back a laugh.
The request was small that first week—write about one thing that made them feel alive, something that their abuser had not taken yet. It didn’t have to be profound or the cure for their pain. It just had to be honest.
Olivia spent the better part of a week staring at that blank page.
First was in her apartment, tapping her fountain pen against the lined pages while hoping for inspiration. Next was at the precinct on a slow day. Then the cribs. Then her bed. Then at the kitchen counter as she was getting ready to leave for her next session.
Finally, it came to her at a coffee shop in the West Village, an unexpected pit stop as her creamer at her apartment had spoiled and six-dollar coffee was better than no coffee at all.
Being there that morning felt different. Whereas the squad walked on glass around her, fearing when she might break, nobody here knew what had happened to her. No one knew her name, knew her past. No one called her brave or strong.
All she got to be for those six minutes was Olivia.
A sweet college student took her order—a small, hot hazelnut coffee to-go. The white cup passed over the pick-up counter, a message in permanent marker scribbled on the side.
Have a beautiful day :)
The corner of her mouth pulled up, humming something like a laugh before tugging her purse over her shoulder and heading toward the door. With one foot out the door and the bell above it still swinging with a faint echo of a chime, the sweet taste stopped her.
Coffee didn’t normally stop her dead in her tracks like this. A cup from Elliot made her breathe a bit easier after a long interview. An impromptu run paid for by Cragen pushed her to keep going on dead days.
This?
This felt different.
Like life.
Like something small had managed to reach her before the numbness swallowed her whole.
Without missing a beat, Olivia doubled back to the counter and asked for something to write with. Her hand tugged a napkin out of the dispenser by the cream and sugar. Clicking the pen with her thumb, she wrote:
1. Hazelnut coffee