Daddy - An SVU fic

72.Going in blind

Chapter 72

...

Five o'clock the next morning, and Olivia's mind was still replaying the day before as she lay in bed. Elliot had gotten home just after nine last night and she pretended to be asleep, not wanting to talk. Now, however, she was wide awake, having just fed baby Fin. Fin went right back to sleep after eating, but she lay in bed, listening to the sound of Elliot breathing until she couldn't take it anymore, and got up to take a shower.

"...how much of this is really about what happened to you?"

All of it.

Honesty, that's what she should have said to Rafael. She should have been honest with herself and him, but she couldn't. Not when he could see so clearly through her. She thought about those words, and she knew from the moment they'd left his mouth that he was right and so did he despite her protests. She felt somehow responsible for the life those girls had been living as if they were connected through the horrors they had lived through. Especially because it had been their "father" who was found with the recordings. She knew all too well what it was like to live through the horrors those children had suffered at that man's hands, only to them, they weren't horrors. They had been conditioned practically since birth, so to them, they were just ordinary days. And now that they were free from it, they didn't understand that being out of that situation was where the real horrors began.

Why hadn't Elliot told her that he was working on this case? Why hadn't he told her about the kids?

She was just so angry inside! She'd talked to those beautiful little girls; they should be excited about so many things in their lives instead of having to go through this, and she wept for them.

A bit later, she was downstairs cleaning when she heard footsteps on the staircase. She turned her head and saw that it was Elliot.

"Honey, you shouldn't be exerting yours-"

"I'm fine... Where were you yesterday?" She asked as she turned her head from him, she still had a bit of a temper that she'd been fighting since yesterday to keep down.

"No good morning?" He grinned.

It was too early for this shit she thought. "Good morning." She said, then without missing a beat, "Where were you yesterday?"

Elliot stopped for a second. "Are you mad at me?" He said, putting his hands lightly on her shoulders.

"Mad at you, mad at Barba, and I bet if I gave it some thought, I'm sure I could find a reason to be mad at Fin and Nick too!"

"Mad and upset,"

She turned her head to look at him, coldly as she got out of his grasp and walked across the room.

Patience already wearing thin, Elliot tried a different approach.

"I know that you; that we didn't exactly part on a good note yesterday morning..."

"What was so important that it took you all day?"

"I know...I know, I just, some issues came up; Why didn't you call if you needed me?"

"Because, I didn't need you," she tried to keep the emotion out of her voice, tried to quell the tears that she felt coming but it was no use. "...but at the same time, it would have been nice if you'd remembered that you have a family here, and a wife that you took a vow to be honest with. Remember that? But instead, you go off and bide your time with that..." She couldn't even think of a word terrible enough to call Samuel Abernathy, and instead, she walked away.

"Liv-" He started, but she had already retreated down the stairs to the basement.

"Liv?" He said upon arriving in the basement where Olivia was at the washer, putting in a load of laundry. "Please don't be that way,"