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aries-rising-on-an-aquarius-tide · 2 years ago

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A/N: I know it's been a long time, and some of you decided that Evocations was over for you before we rounded the final curve ... but I am still determined to finish it, bc Cabenson deserves it. This story means something to me, even though Cabenson isn't canonically endgame. So, here's the next piece. There's not too much left to cover past this, so hopefully I can do the rest of it justice, too.

Rating: 14+

Spoilers: Scorched Earth, Lost Reputation, Above Suspicion

Trigger/content warnings: references to Domestic Abuse/Violence (M/F), alcohol, Domestic Homicide including graphic description of a crime scene, nausea and vomiting

Evocations: XXV

They say you can never start over the way it was, but for just a little while, they beat the odds. Somehow, it was 2002 again, with Alex in Olivia's bed at the end of the day, it was joints shared on the roof in each others' arms, talking about their years spent apart. There were no rough edges, no fighting. Just fucking, laughter, good food, and solid sleep.

When the world once again shifted beneath Olivia's feet, for the first time it was not Alexandra who left her.

Elliot disappears as though twelve years together evaporated into the aether. No words, no phone call, not a post-it note or a 'kiss my ass' to dream on. At the end of the day that she finds out from Cragen, she walks into her apartment to find Alex making dinner.

"Elliot quit," she tells the blonde, hands fisting her hips in an attempt to push the tremble in her voice down her arms and back into her body.

Alexandra stopped dicing just shy of severing a fingertip in surprise. Biting her lip in dismay at the emotion on Liv's face, she wiped her hands and came around to the brunette, enveloping her in a hard hug, which lasted a long time.

Alex tried what she could to dispel the dark cloud that Stabler's ghost wrapped around Liv; she pulled out every trick she knew from all their stuttered years, making time for wine nights, for trying new restaurants, for black & white film festivals. They were still happy together, but the blonde knew that something inside Olivia was broken, something that all the quality time in the world was never going to fix.

Not everyone's heart is made whole by the love of just one soulmate. Part of the identity Liv had carved out of herself was made to fit into Elliot Stabler, and his absence took up as much space as his presence ever had.

Stabler had been Liv's anchor, and now Alex knew that Olivia was adrift at sea.

Throughout 2012, ADA coverage was a three-way split for SVU between Cabot, Novak and Cutter. When one of them was handling a sex crimes case, the others were handed cases in other departments. Late that year, Alex got a call telling her to meet a client at the hospital.

A pack of bustling ER nurses parted to reveal a battered middle-aged woman who looked like she had lost a battle with the not-so-jolly Green Giant. For a moment, from a distance, she looked so much like Olivia that Alexandra's heart jumped.

"Hi," she says quietly when she gets within speaking distance. "I'm ADA Alex Cabot. What's your name?"

The scared brunette looked at Alex, but the gaze was hollow. "Betty," she answers through swollen lips, "Betty Bluestone."

When Alexandra gets home that night, she is poised to start telling Liv about Betty's DV case. But the apartment is dark and silent. A ripple of discontent passes through the blonde for the first time since she returned, and she is immediately uneasy. She doesn't call, or text - opts, instead, to open a bottle of wine and order in something to eat.

Hours later, Olivia finds her swaddled in the heavy throw blanket, asleep in front of some flickering old movie. There is unfinished wine and cold Chinese on the coffee table. The brunette shakes the ADA awake, unaware of all the words that come rushing up out of the sleepy blonde's mind about the beaten woman who looks like her.

Before Alex can form any of them, Liv tells her, "Cragen's been accused of murder."

They fight with each other, but only in their heads. Olivia dives into saving Cragen, which Alex understands, as Cragen is really the only father Liv has ever known. Alex doesn't budge from the Bluestone case, which Olivia won't forgive.

It makes the Autumn longer, and colder. They don't have much time for just each other - they are ships in the night, passing like ghosts, hulking and silent. Over the weeks, Betty becomes the surrogate for Alex's protection and concern: she checks in constantly, arranges shelter, makes sure there is no contact with Mitch, and preps Betty for court until both their voices crack.

Liv goes to war for Cragen; her years at SVU, and Elliott's abandonment both tangled up in her battle plans. She learns the hard lesson that parental figures are never faultless. She refuses to lose another part of what has made SVU her home.

In the end, both battles are lost.

"Mitch, no. Leave her alone, let's just go home."

Alex is numb with the cold on the stone steps of the courthouse. Her ears lift at the sound of Betty's plaintive voice.

"I should give that bitch a piece of my mind," Mitch Bluestone rumbles back to his wife.

"I just want to go home. I've missed you."

Alexandra's stomach knots at the words that come out of Betty's mouth. She turns just enough to watch the couple continue down the steps in perfect sync, waiting to see if Mitch will throw a snarl back over his shoulder.

Their day in court had been a disaster. Between Mitch's intimidation from the defense table, and his lawyer tearing Betty apart, it had all gone to hell. It had taken an act of divine intervention to keep Cabot from screaming when Betty had apologized meekly after telling the ADA that she and Mitch were going to "try one more time."

She stood in the cold for long minutes after the Bluestones had disappeared from sight, wishing for a joint, wishing for Liv's calm pragmatism, for anything but the emptiness that the defeat had punched into her. Even if she goes home, she knows she won't find relief, because Cragen is still in lockup. Olivia has slept and showered mostly in the cribs at the precinct for weeks, sending errant text messages when she had an extra three seconds in a minute.

So Alex goes to a bar instead, tossing back martinis that make up the largest portion of her meals for the day. By the time a woman makes eyes at her from across the bar, the blonde is four drinks deep, but allows the woman to buy her one more anyway. She stands up to leave when it's empty, and isn't sure if it's the world that's spinning her on her feet, or the Wheel of Fortune.

Perhaps both.

Alex wakes in bed in the apartment, with Olivia shaking her insistently. The dull ache of a hangover is a weight at the blonde's temples as she wonders when her lover got home, and if it means Cragen's charges are dropped.

"Lex," the brunette mumbles again, "Alex. Your phone's ringing."

She reaches to the bedside table, doesn't recognize the number, puts it haphazardly to her ear anyway. "Cabot," she muffles out.

"ADA Alexandra Cabot?" The voice on the line is far too awake for the hour, and Alexandra winces.

"Yes."

"We found your card in the effects at our crime scene. Is a Mrs. Elizabeth Bluestone your client?"

Her blue eyes snap open wide as she sits up in the bed. Olivia is already back to sleep and breathing softly. "Yes. Did she ask for me?"

There is an apologetic pause on the line, then: "Uh, no ma'am. She's dead."

Mitch is arrested and long gone from the scene by the time Alexandra arrives. The one cop car that remains outside has lights but no siren, the blue light illuminating the windows in staggered flashes. The darkened house full of shadows hulked on the lawn in the eerie quiet that follows chaos.

Unlike Olivia, who could flash a badge and push her way in to nearly anywhere, ADA credentials didn't grant Alex much entry. She waited uneasily for someone to fetch the cop in charge so she could get inside, and a younger guy, the one that had called her she presumed, came out to meet her.

"Neighbor called in a Domestic Disturbance," he explained quietly as he lead her into the house, "which escalated to Shots Fired before we even arrived. The husband went quietly enough, but the woman was DOA. We found your card in the pocket of her jeans."

At the end of the hall they turned into the bedroom, and Alex was hit immediately by the tell-tale scents of domestic violence that has reached its climax: sweat, gun powder, and the copper-metal tang of spilled blood. Her stomach lurched, already disquieted by her hangover.

Off the master bedroom there was an ensuite. The light inside it was on, the coroner and a CSI stood near the doorway, trading quiet murmurs between them.

"I don't imagine this was their first fight," the young cop said.

"No," Alex confirmed, her heart racing at the idea of looking inside the bathroom. She took another couple steps forward, then halted again. "Did he say anything?" she asked, "The husband?"

The police officer cleared his throat. The coroner, the CSI, both turned their heads to look at him. "He said . . . he said he wished he'd've had more bullets. Ma'am." He took a breath to tell the tall blonde ADA that she didn't have to go in there, but it was too late - she had closed the distance between herself and the doorway.

Alex swayed on her feet for just a second. Her nostrils flared, heart racing as her pupils dilated with the shock of fight or flight. Blood coated the bathroom tile, parts of the walls, and flecked the porcelain of the fixtures. Betty had dropped where she stood, a freeze-frame of her last moment, eyes wide open and a hole bulls-eyed into her forehead. The blood pooled around her head that had soaked into her dark hair was scattered with bits of brain and scalp and splinters of skull bone.

Mitch had said "I should give that bitch a piece of my mind," earlier that day, but instead had gone home and painted the ensuite with pieces of Betty's.

But the worst part were her eyes.

Not that they were open. Not even that they were dull with the finality of it all.

No, the worst of it was that instead of looking surprised by the turn of events the night had taken, Betty looked as meek and as cautious as she'd looked when apologizing to Alex after court. There was no righteous indignation, no pleading or regret.

Betty Bluestone looked for all the world as if she had been expecting it.

Betty Bluestone looked relieved.

Alexandra didn't see the long pale grey hallway wall, or recall ducking the crime scene tape as she rushed past the cop watching the front door. The next thing her eyes fixed on was the Bluestones' lawn as she threw up whatever was left of her drinks from earlier that evening. Normally, the ADA would be ashamed of such a rookie move, but Alex was past it that night. She was past all of it, perhaps for the first time in her whole life.

As the cold night air seeped into her skin, she thought of all her years at SVU. She thought of her years on the run - from Wisconsin to other made up lives, of all the people and love lost along the way. Then of Africa, of how anything she did there had been little more than a drip in a giant bucket of war and violence that never ended. Alex thought of Holland, of Knopf the cat, of Sky High, of the children she was probably keeping Olivia from having. There was all that loss, all those endings, all the change and activism that she had wanted to achieve.

And there was Betty, getting cold on the bloody bathroom tile.

It wouldn't do.

Not anymore.

The clean white light from above the stove is the only illumination in the apartment when Olivia gets home the night of the day of Betty Bluestone's death. Cragen is still in lock up. Cassidy had been shot. Her entire world was upside down, and all she wanted was to crawl into Alex's arms and find sleep that wasn't tainted with the impotence of all her efforts.

On the counter across from the semicircle of light was a little dark object that Liv didn't recognize. She stumbled through taking off her shoes as she got closer. Slowly, a faint smile crossed her features as she held the item up into the light, turning it.

It was a set of Nesting dolls, but instead of the traditional Russian doll style, they were painted to look like a female cop in uniform. Liv twisted the doll open to get to the next one, closing the largest and setting it aside. She repeated with the second doll.

The third doll was not a cop.

Liv frowned. The third wooden doll was a likeness of Alex: blonde, court-ready in a formal skirt and jacket combo, her reading glasses on. Then the fourth and fifth dolls went back to cops in uniform. Lastly, even stranger, the tiniest of the dolls was painted as a baby. It was just a tiny, indistinguishable face, swaddled in a white blanket. Olivia used a fingernail to part the seam in the wood and popped it open.

Inside of it was a ring.

Alex's ring.

Olivia had bought it for her for the first birthday they'd spent together after Alexandra's return. It complimented the diamond and rose gold one that the blonde had bought all those years ago.

The finality of it gripped Liv slowly, a tingling numbness that started in her toes and filled her all the way up. It felt familiar, and somehow different all at once.

The Matryoshka doll was Alex's goodbye letter.

Olivia was finally, truly, alone.

TBC

#law and order svu #svu #olivia benson #alex cabot #alexandra cabot #cabenson #evocations #hearteyes4mariska #my writing #wlw ship #f/f ship #nbc svu #captain don cragen #brian cassidy #matryoshka #nesting dolls

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briamichellewrites · 5 months ago

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Mike was in Manhattan with Bria. She was invited to speak about her experience with sexual assault. He joined her because she wasn’t ready to fly by herself. It took them a while to find the building because they were unfamiliar with the city. The address they were given was One Police Plaza. They went to the front desk, where a woman came over to them and asked if she could help them. They had a meeting with Captain Cragen, and she would bring them over to him.

Bria introduced herself and her brother-in-law, Mike. Once introductions were made, they were invited to sit down. Captain Don Cragen assured them that their conversation was confidential and that their information would not be shared with the media. They thanked him. They were then asked if they needed anything, to which they replied no, thank you. Bria then placed her purse on the empty seat beside her.

“My mom raised me to be a lady

And I never kiss and tell.”

Bradford found a demo that Bria made of a song she wrote. He shared it with Dave, Rob, Joe, and Chester. The song was about not compromising her morals and expressed her strict policy against being sexualized, as it was something she was not comfortable with. Bria and Mike were in New York to give a talk to the NYPD about her experience with sexual assault.

He accompanied her because she didn't feel comfortable going alone. How was she doing? It varied from moment to moment. A few days earlier, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She was on medication and was receiving treatment once a week. This diagnosis provided insight into why she was experiencing difficulties, and it also helped him and Mike understand her erratic behavior. At times, they suspected she might be using drugs again because her behavior was not normal.

What did that mean? She was unusually cheerful. Mike told him that she could sleep for four hours and not be tired. What did “unusually cheerful” mean? Dave took a moment to think of how to describe it before speaking."

"It means being unusually happy and energetic. I'm trying to think of an example. It's four in the morning, and she wakes Mike up because she just wrote a new song and she wants him to listen to it. She is just super excited and can't wait. The first time we noticed it, we suspected she was on something because she was just super energetic. We searched her room and purse—after getting her permission—but we didn't find anything. Once you see it, you suspect she's using drugs again."

When they learned more about mania, they realized that's what it was. Mania could be mistaken for drug use. Mike called it a "sober high" because that's what it reminded him of. Didn't her father have bipolar disorder? Yes, he did. He was hospitalized for suicidal ideation. Everything he knew about the situation was what Mike told him.

Her mother found out that he had stopped taking his medication, but she had no idea. He was put back on his medication, but it was unclear whether it helped. They were on their way home from the hospital when they were hit by a car. Sadly, that was the accident that killed them.

"They were struck by a driver fleeing from the police. Their car ignited, and both sustained serious burns. They were hospitalized for an unknown period of time before passing away. Bria's diagnosis is probably genetic. Her father wasn't diagnosed until he was in his forties."

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time," Bradford said.

“Yeah, it’s poetically ironic. His hospitalization was intended to save his life, but he ended up losing it when he least expected.”

That was the definition of irony: Bria didn't grieve until she got to rehab. She only visited them at the hospital once. All the other times, she was high on heroin. She beat herself up for not being there for them before they died. It took a long time for her to forgive herself.

Bria was emotionally drained. When they got back to the hotel room, Mike asked if he could hug her.

"Yeah," she replied.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. To say he was proud of her was an understatement. She did an amazing job talking about a really tough subject. Mike then asked if she wanted to go out to dinner or order room service. She wanted to order room service, so she grabbed the menu and sat down to look through it.

I'm so exhausted. Mike and I have decided to stay for two more days to explore the city as tourists. Can I message you later when I'm not about to fall asleep? – Bria

Of course, take your time. I'm here when you're ready to talk. - Brad

She put her phone back on the table after reading his reply. Everything looked delicious! It was hard to choose. Mike let her take her time looking through the different options. She ordered gluten-free pasta with a diet Coke. That sounded good. After she ate, she was going to take a bath. He might need to make sure she didn’t fall asleep.

He would sit and keep her company. Who was she talking to? Brad. He was just making sure she made it to New York. Ever since she returned from rehab, he was there helping her out. He wanted to make her his girlfriend, but not until she was ready. Until then, he was happy being her friend. Jason informed her that he was dating a guy he met through another guy from one of his classes. His name was Jack. He let him know before they got serious that he was married.

He and his wife were in an open marriage. Jack asked him questions about why they had that arrangement. He was gay, even though he was in love with his wife. Did she know? Oh, yeah. She was one of the first people he told. How did he meet her? Her family was friends with his family. They grew up together.

Their parents always joked about her marrying either him or his brother. They were one hundred percent honest with each other. Where was she? She was back home in LA. He pulled up a picture of her on his phone and showed it to him. He was gay, though he had to admit she was gorgeous! If he saw her on the street, he would have to take a second look. Jason agreed. She was more beautiful in real life, both in looks and personality.

Bria felt relaxed as she soaked in the warm water and bubbles. Mike brought in a chair for her because sitting on the floor was not comfortable. The bathtub was huge, about the size of the one she had at home. She felt like a child in a Jacuzzi, and Mike laughed. She tied her hair up into a bun to keep it from getting wet.

“I just realised that if you and Dave get married, he will be my brother-in-law.”

“We might have to separate you two”, he joked.

“Or keep him from kidnapping Princess.”

He chuckled. They weren't ready to discuss marriage yet, but he knew it would happen eventually. Dave had expressed his desire to spend the rest of his life with him, and he could picture them raising children together through adoption or surrogacy.

He imagined his parents would be delighted to have grandchildren to spoil, and he could picture Muto being strict yet loving, just like he was as a father. It was easy to picture him playing on the floor with their children. Perhaps they would get engaged in a year or two.

She used the water to wash her face, finding solace in its embrace. How was she feeling? She could have stayed in there forever. He chuckled once more. After half an hour, she emerged, and he respectfully gave her privacy to get dressed.

@zoeykaytesmom @feelingsofaithless @alina-dixon

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