Title: Survival
Author: vegawriters
Fandom: Law and Order: SVU
Pairing: Olivia/Alex
Rating: General
Timeframe: Missing scene from Ghost
A/N: (1) Once upon a time, a very casual SVU watcher admitted that really, she didn’t like Alex Cabot very much. But then, she started watching SVU regularly and she started at the beginning and by the time Alex said, “Hello, Uncle Bill,” this viewer was in love. (2) I am not yet sure how this fic will develop, or if it will stay a one-shot. Only time will tell.
Disclaimer: If Law and Order BELONGED to me, you think I’d be writing fic? So no. Dick Wolf and his crew own it all, I am just taking Elliot, Olivia, Fin, Munch, Alex, and others, out to play. Now, if Mr. Wolf is looking for someone to write his L&O novel tie-ins … I’m totally there. Just sayin.

Summary: Logically, Alex knew Olivia had to have moved on. New York was a big city and there were plenty of lesbians in the sea and they’d been apart for a long time. But now … now she was back and they were staring at each other and the words “I’m sorry” were somehow the ones that fell from her lips.



Without you, the ground thaws, the rain falls, the grass grows.
Without you, the seeds root, the flowers bloom, the children play.
The stars gleam, the poets dream, the eagles fly, without you.
The earth turns, the sun burns, but I die, without you.
From: Rent (Jonathan Larson)

There were things that only Alexandra Cabot knew about Olivia Benson. Like that Yes I Am was her favorite album and Silent Legacy was her favorite track even though it always made her cry and how she had a secret love for Rob Zombie because it was good workout music and how she said a prayer every morning while she made her coffee. She knew that garlic was a weakness and she loved old style perfumes and that she’d cut her hair short because it was a style she’d never had before and it was something new and different. She knew that in high school her self- destructive tendency had been to sleep with as many guys as she could and that she’d stopped drinking for a while in college because stumbling home from a party, a guy grabbed her and dragged her into an alley. Cops had been patrolling and chased him off and Olivia had run away before they could ask her anything. She knew that the wall around her heart was for protection but that it was merely an illusion and she was just waiting for the right person to see through the façade. She knew Olivia was bisexual but preferred women because there was a sexiness in their strength that wasn’t mirrored in men. She knew Olivia had discovered she was pregnant at fifteen after her very much older boyfriend had dumped her and that she used a fake ID to convince the nurse at the clinic that she was a legal adult. She knew on that day every year, Olivia made a donation to Planned Parenthood and spent time at the children’s shelter in her neighborhood. She knew the details about the abuse Serena Benson had inflicted on her daughter and how Olivia would have married at sixteen if it meant she could have escaped the prison her mother had built. She knew how Olivia could cry with joy at the height of passion and then only hours later quake in terror as her mind ripped her from yet another nightmare. She knew all of these things, but she didn’t know how Olivia would react to her being here tonight.

Logically, Alex knew Olivia had to have moved on. New York was a big city and there were plenty of lesbians in the sea and they’d been apart for a long time. But now … now she was back and they were staring at each other and the words “I’m sorry” were somehow the ones that fell from her lips.

Olivia just stared at her.

She’d changed. She was softer around the edges, her hair longer, and she’d put on a few pounds. It looked good. She looked healthy. She looked tired.

“What’s his name?” She whispered and Alex sighed.

“It doesn’t matter, Olivia.”

“Emily.” Olivia sniffed. “Your name is Emily now.”

Alex winced at the lack of emotion in Olivia’s voice. “Liv …”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, God please don’t ‘Liv’ me, okay? God, you’re sitting there and you are still so fucking beautiful and you have this life now and you’re Emily and you’re dating a claims adjuster and I … I have this fantasy that after this is over you’re going to come back to me and it’ll be like it used to be and I know it isn’t true because even after this is over you’re going to be Emily and you’re going back to your claims adjuster and God …” Her shoulders shook. “God, your life is in danger and all I want to do is drag you onto that bed.”

“Olivia, I’m sorry.”

“For what? For getting shot?” She wiped her cheeks. “For doing what you need to do to survive?”

“How have you survived, Liv?” She set the file aside and moved over to her lover. How did she tell Olivia that when she and Matt were in bed together, she imagined it was Olivia there with her? How did she tell her that alone at night, she sobbed and reached for her pillow and wished she had just one thing to remind her of their time together? How did she tell her that everything, absolutely everything, had been taken from her, including the picture in her wallet from that Christmas party when she’d finally told Olivia she was in love?

“You mean contemplate my endless strings of one night stands? You mean the life I’ve created that is now so solely devoted to catching the low lifes who hurt the innocent that half the time I forget what the inside of my apartment looks like?”

“Olivia…”

“I tried, Alex. I tried. I dated and I screwed and I picked up beautifully beautiful women in dark bars but fuck it all, I couldn’t. I couldn’t because you, goddammit, left me hanging. Part of me wishes you hadn’t told me the truth, that I could have believed you were dead because knowing you were alive … killed me. I never knew when you were going to saunter through those doors and how you’d react and now I do. It’s like nothing ever happened, ever, between us. You’re all about the case and I should be all about the case but all I can think about it you and us and how you’re going to leave me again. How I never should have let myself fall in love,” Olivia caught her breath and her voice hitched up an octave as the tears started to fall, “because you’d leave me.”

“You can’t believe that. Babe, you can’t believe that. Please, look at me. Please.” Silence descended between them and finally Alex stepped over. This was when Olivia’s walls were at their most flimsy. This was when she could get through to her. Gentle arms wrapped around her waist and she held her from behind. “Are you finished?”

A shaky breath. “Yeah.”

“Coming back here … God, Olivia. I have missed you so much. I have lived every single day dreaming of you just barging through the door and telling me I could come home to you. I picked up the phone every day to call you, even though it would get me in so much trouble. I’d get to the last digit and then chicken out and that’s what I did and I’m sorry. I am sorry.”

Tears streamed down Olivia’s cheeks. “This isn’t a good idea, Alex. We can’t … I can’t lose you again. I can’t sit here and watch you … I can’t. What if they take you away from me again?”

“I’m not going anywhere, Olivia.”

“You can’t promise that.” Olivia finally looked at her and Alex saw everything – the anguish of the last few years, the way she’d lost herself in her job, everything. “You can’t promise that the Marshalls won’t whisk you out of here after the trial. You walked through that door and I just …” She pulled away and scrubbed her hands through her hair. “I almost fainted. I knew you were alive and I almost fainted.”

“And what if I never came back, Olivia?” The words were bitter in her mouth, but she had to ask them. “Would you have waited forever?”

“I promised you I would.” Alex felt the air escape her lover’s body and she held her own breath while she listened to Olivia deflate. “As you were driven away from me, I promised myself and I promised you I would wait and I meant it. God, Alex … don’t you get it? You were the first time, ever, I was actually in love, that I understood what it meant to be in love. And that love, that love was ripped away from me and I was left standing in a lot while you drove away and I could do nothing because to do something meant you could die. It was the first time I understood that loving someone means you have to let them be whisked out of your life because it’s better to know they are alive and safe than to have them be in danger when they’re with you. And now you’re back and I don’t know what to do because if I let you near me, I’m gonna fall all over again and if I wake up tomorrow and you’re gone, it’ll kill me. Do you get that? It will kill me.”

“Olivia …”

“Do you love him?”

“Emily does.” Alex hitched her breath. “But I’m not Emily.”

“You are now, Alex.”

“Not here, Olivia.” She came up and stroked her cheeks. “And even if we just …” she paused, her lips inches from Olivia’s. “Why are you fighting me?”

“Because I can’t lose you again.”

“You’ve never lost me.” Like it had been all those years ago, Alex made the first move. She leaned in and kissed her and the walls fell away. “And I’m not leaving you again.”

But Olivia whimpered against her lips even as her hands slid under Alex’s sweater. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

~fin~