Work Text:
1972
Olivia was almost four years old when she began to suspect for the first time that her mother didn’t behave like other mothers. They were visiting Serena’s friend Miriam and her two-month-old baby Annabel. Miriam had invited them over to ask Serena to be Annabel’s godmother, and she had been talking about how challenging it had been to figure out her baby’s cues, what the different types of crying meant and, thus, what to do about it.
Serena proudly commented that she had managed to train Olivia out of crying, which grabbed her little girl’s attention. It was not often that her mother positively spoke about her, or to her, for that matter, unless it was to read to her from long books with no pictures or to give her instructions or chores, so she wanted to know more.
“All you need to do,” Serena continued, “is after making sure she’s been recently fed, burped, and in a clean diaper, you put her in the crib and leave.”
Miriam frowned in confusion, “Leave?”
“Yes, so you don’t hear the crying,” she added as though it was the most obvious thing in the world to do. “Only for 10 minutes or so… I used to walk up to the roof of my building, smoke one cigarette and then come back down. If she was fussing for no good reason, then she’d have stopped and been asleep by then. In the rare event, there was actually something wrong, then she’d still be crying, and I’d deal with it.”
To Olivia, that sounded like good behaviour, so she smiled proudly and turned to see what Miriam thought of the story, expecting a fond smile from the woman confirming she had done well. She was disconcerted to find a concerned glance instead, her own smile fading at the sight, and she turned her attention back to Annabel’s toys.
~O~
Serena and Olivia arrived at Miriam’s apartment for afternoon tea. It was early Fall, and Annabel was 11 months old. Olivia wasn’t in much of a mood to play with the baby, her shoulder still hurt two days after falling out of bed in the night. But her mother had told her to stop whining and go play and provided a brief explanation to Miriam and her husband Alex about the fall but that her child was fine.
The three adults watched the pre-schooler try to entertain the baby while they drank their coffees before Alex offered up an observation, “You know, football players often walk around with one shoulder up like that when they’ve broken their collar bone.”
Serena’s only response was a disbelieving “Oh”. Despite the fact that she didn’t believe a fall from a bed could result in a broken bone, she couldn’t ignore Alex’s observation and took Olivia to the emergency room on their way home. She found, to her consternation, that her daughter had, in fact, fractured her collarbone falling out of bed. The doctor had strapped the shoulder, recommended pain relief, and asked a few uncomfortable questions about how it had happened, which he had insisted Olivia herself answer before sending them on their way.
1975
Olivia ran through the apartment; it was always a close run thing when she had to use the bathroom while watching TV, a race against whether she could pee quick enough to beat the ad break or her mother’s assumption that her brief absence from the living room was due to her show finishing. If her mother made that assumption, the TV was turned off, or the channel changed, neither of which Olivia had ever successfully negotiated to correct.
Unfortunately, that afternoon, she cut a corner in haste and clipped a vase on the slide table with her elbow. The vase wobbled momentarily and then fell, smashing on the floor.
“Olivia!” her mother exclaimed from the kitchen, blaming the child for the accident, “I’ve told you so many times not to run in the apartment. Turn off that television and come here.”
Her daughter dutifully obeyed and, upon reporting to the kitchen, found a brush and shovel forced into her hands. She swept up the shattered ornament, and after discarding the broken pieces into the trash, she turned back to her mother. Serena had supervised the clean-up, glass of vodka in hand, and after putting down her drink to stash the brush and shovel back under the sink, she pulled a wooden spoon from a drawer. She then grabbed Olivia with her spare hand and pulled her to the dining table so she could sit down in one of the chairs there.
“You broke my vase with your carelessness, so you need to be punished,” said Serena dispassionately.
Olivia had her head down, both fearful of what was to come but also frustrated at her mother’s hypocrisy. It was that last point that loomed largest in her mind, so she risked glancing up through her bangs and queried her mother’s assertion indignantly, “Why? You break stuff all the time stumbling about.”
Serena bristled at the challenge to her authority, “Why, you ungrateful little brat! Put out your hand.” When the child didn’t move, her mother grabbed her by the wrist, pulled up her hand and struck her open palm with the flat side of the wooden spoon. The only thing that was achieved was to convert Olivia's glance into a baleful stare, verging on hate as the girl gritted her teeth against the pain. Serena struck her again, harder this time, pausing to assess the reaction, then again even harder. This pattern continued until about the 8th strike with the spoon, when Serena finally exclaimed, “Cry, damn you!”
Olivia’s mouth opened in surprise, and then gathering her wits about her quickly, she closed her mouth again and screwed her eyes shut to force the welling tears out of her eyes and down her cheeks. “OW!” she exclaimed, her palm was stinging, and while she was delivering the response her mother apparently wanted, it didn’t take much in the way of acting to deliver it. Then Olivia yanked her hand out of her mother’s grasp, threw one final hateful stare at her, and stomped off to her room, slamming the door behind her.
With a satisfied smile, Serena got up, returned the spoon to the drawer, topped up her glass with more vodka and took herself to her room to drink it, ignoring the stormy crying now coming from her daughter’s room.
1977-78
Olivia was excited to go to Annabel’s 6th Birthday party that November. The age gap between herself and her mother’s goddaughter was becoming less relevant as some of their interests merged. Serena had purchased ice skates for the child, and even though Olivia’s birthday was not until February, she was confident that if her mother had purchased skates for Annabel, she was going to purchase them for Olivia as well, so the girls could skate together as they had done on rented skates the previous winter.
She didn’t mind rented skates that winter, even though she viewed Annabel’s new shiny white skates with envy, confident in the knowledge that she’d get her own pair soon.
On the 7th of February, Olivia awoke and could not completely shake the feeling of trepidation. Her Birthday was never particularly predictable, depending on the ebbs and flows of Serena’s moods and blood alcohol level. But she and Annabel had skated more than usual that winter, so she had remained cautiously hopeful that she was going to receive her own pair of skates that day.
She climbed out of bed, squared her shoulders, painted her smile on and opened her bedroom door. Normally, she’d be excited to find a gift left for her on the dining table for her birthday, it wasn’t something she took for granted, but it took just a single glance to see that the parcel was too small to be ice skates.
Olivia looked up to her mother, she was standing expectantly in the kitchen with a coffee in hand. The girl forced the painted-on smile to remain, “Thank you, Mother,” she commented, pushing to sound grateful even as her shoulders began to droop.
“You have been good with Annabel this winter, so you deserved a little something,” replied her mother. Serena then went to leave Olivia to open the gift alone, but the girl stopped her.
“Mother? I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but…”
“Then don’t,” interrupted Serena.
Olivia sighed and tentatively finished her sentence, “…but you got Annabel ice skates in November, and I had hoped for some, too, given we skate together.”
Serena turned back to her daughter and responded coolly, “Why would I get you skates when the season is almost complete? That makes no sense. Now open your gift and be grateful you even got one.” The woman then turned away again and went back to her room as she had planned.
Olivia’s gift was a summer blouse made of yellow fabric with white daisies on it and a book by Emily Bronte. Olivia never liked daisies after that, nor did she manage to fully escape into a book by any of the Bronte sisters ever again.
1979
Olivia enjoyed the gymnastics classes she had twice a week, but what she didn’t enjoy was waiting on the steps outside the building, usually longer than any of the other children in her class. She was grateful that she had a love of reading in common with her mother and would spend the waiting time reading the latest books she had gotten out of the library. Reading was one of the few hobbies Olivia had that was actually supported rather than just tolerated by her mother.
When Serena did eventually decide to appear after the classes, she was never apologetic for being late even if it was by an hour, and at Olivia’s questioning, would say, “Stop fussing. I was busy and got here, didn't I?”
~O~
At 11 years of age, Olivia was the tallest in her gymnastics class. Her 5’4” tall mother had been an excellent gymnast in her youth; Olivia was clearly going to be taller than her mother by the time she stopped growing and had early indications of an hourglass figure rather than the straight slim gymnast figure of her mother. The disdain her mother blessed her with only grew as she grew taller and shapelier. The almost-teen enjoyed gymnastics for the most part, and she had been reasonably good at it too; the physicality of it was like her preferred choice of martial arts, but her mother had insisted on gymnastics. The difficulty was that recent growth spurts had pushed her into that gangly stage suffered by many tweens and early teens, so pulling her longer limbs in tight enough for some of the tumbling and turning in the air was difficult for her. This is what made the vault her least favourite gymnastics discipline.
Serena had actually shown up for the gymnastics competition Olivia had that day. It turned out that her squad was down to a team of three as one of the girls was unwell, so all three of them had to successfully complete all four disciplines to remain in the competition, where the top three scores from a team of four were normally counted. The rotation had it that their turn on the vault was first, and Olivia was twitchy as she was scheduled to go first. She paced out her run-up and then cast a nervous glance towards her mother, hoping for some moral support before doing her warmup vault. Serena was watching her daughter but made no move to smile or nod in support; she just waited patiently for her to take her turn.
Turning to her coach, Olivia finally received the supportive smile and nod she craved. She took a deep breath and started sprinting towards the springboard. Unfortunately for the tween, someone hadn’t done all the pre-competition checks required, and the springboard slipped backwards under her feet when she hit it, robbing her of much of her forward and upward momentum, and she hit the vault, tumbling over it and landing in a heap on the mat on the other side.
A gasp erupted from the spectators watching, and Olivia’s coach and teammates rushed to her side. As they pulled her to her feet, she nodded to them, breathing heavily, “It’s OK, I’m just winded.”
Serena only went to her daughter’s side once the girl was catching her breath in the waiting area by the apparatus while the springboard was re-secured, and her teammates took turns for their practice vaults. “Are you injured?” the woman asked.
“No,” Olivia replied. She took advantage of her mother’s sober attention for a change. “I hate the vault, is so hard to pull in tight enough to complete the twist and land properly. It scares me,” she admitted in a moment of vulnerability.
“Olivia Margaret Benson, you will get off your bottom when it’s your turn and go do your vault properly. Stop wallowing in self-pity just because you had a little fall,” admonished Serena. The girl looked up at her mother in shock; of all the possible responses she could have given her, that wasn’t one she had expected. The woman continued, “If you don’t do it, I’ll reacquaint you with the wooden spoon when we get home for being a coward.”
Olivia swallowed thickly and nodded before breaking eye contact and returning her attention to the event, tears pricking in her eyes. If it was a choice between facing the vault or that stupid wooden spoon again, then she’d take the vault. When it was her turn, she swallowed a second time and then walked quietly to the top of the runway. This time she didn’t look to anyone for a nod or smile of support; instead, she closed her eyes with her head bowed and drew the necessary courage from somewhere within. When she lifted her head and opened her eyes, her attention remained focused on the obstacle in front of her, and she took off at a run towards the apparatus. Olivia did successfully complete her vault that time; it wasn’t spectacular, but it was acceptable, and her mid-field score was evidence of that.
The child finally risked a glance at her seated mother after she pulled her tracksuit jacket back on, and Serena commented, “I told you that you could do it.”
“Yes, mother,” replied Olivia.
1980
Christmas with Miriam, Alex and Annabel were Olivia's favourite kind of Christmas. It only happened every few years as Miriam and Alex usually travelled to their respective families in the suburbs, but every so often, they’d decide to stay in Manhattan and would invite the Bensons to join them. Those years meant her mother remained at least half sober, for starters, decent Christmas food and a guarantee of a gift, probably more than one too. Like her Birthday, Christmas gifts were never guaranteed, but when they spent it with their friends Serena made at least enough of an effort to not look bad and got her something. And of course, Miriam and Alex always presented her with a gift when they spent the day with them too.
At almost 13, now that she was almost a teenager, Olivia had begun to develop an interest in make-up and clothes. She realised that the sooner she grew up, the sooner she could leave home and get away from her mother, who still didn’t act like other mothers for reasons she really didn’t understand. Looking older gave her more freedom to go where she wanted and when she wanted before she was 18, too. So, given the apparent guarantee of a gift, she’d asked for something rather than leaving it to chance. She had asked for her first make-up set, her first proper real make-up set.
Serena and Olivia arrived at their friend’s home just before noon with a tote bag of gifts, store-bought Christmas cake, and a bottle of wine. Alex took the bag of gifts and popped them under the tree while Miriam dealt with the other items and helped the Bensons out of their jackets. They followed her to the kitchen just as Annabel finished pouring two extra glasses of eggnog.
“I hope it’s spiked,” commented Serena flippantly before focusing on Annabel, “Thank you, dear.”
Miriam frowned in dismay at the idea they would serve spiked eggnog to the girls, “Ahh, no. We made a recipe we could all drink,” she remarked. “Please, go through to Alex in the living room. The food will be ready shortly…”
After Christmas dinner, it was time to sit down together and open the gifts; Olivia was grinning in anticipation and practically vibrating with excitement that she was finally going to receive something she really wanted. Alex was handing out the gifts from the tote bag and found the ones for Annabel and Olivia. Olivia’s smile faded slightly as she noticed the two gift boxes were the same size and shape; Annabel wasn’t old enough for make-up yet, and it looked like her mother had given them both the same thing.
Olivia held the wrapped gift to her chest and glanced up. “Thank you, Mother,” she intoned dutifully as her enthusiasm fizzled.
In the meantime, Annabel ripped open her paper and squealed with excitement, “Face paint!?! I love face paint! Thank you, Serena.”
Serena smiled at the younger child indulgently, “Of course, Annabel. You told me how much you loved it, and I remembered.”
During the conversation, Olivia opened her present and, as she suspected, found the same face paint set. Tears of disappointment pricked in her eyes, and she looked up at her mother again, “I asked for make-up. Why did you get me face paint?”
“You are so ungrateful, Olivia; one year, you’re complaining when I don’t get you the same thing as Annabel. Another year you’re complaining when I do. I can’t win with you!”
“But mother?” Olivia continued to push for an answer.
Serena snapped back, “No daughter of mine is going to wear make-up while living under my roof. So, get those silly ideas out of your head right now.”
Olivia had her answer, and she withdrew into herself to avoid any further attention from Serena. She placed the gift on the floor beside her. A short time later, Alex dropped down in front of her and got her attention with the present from their family, “Hey, kiddo, here’s another one for you.”
Olivia responded with a genuine but watery smile and whispered, “Thank you,” to Alex before looking up to Miriam to do the same. The present turned out to be a small box of assorted chocolates and the latest two books in the series she had been reading through and loving. Her smile widened to something closer to what it had been earlier, and she looked up to Miriam and grinned in thanks; Miriam nodded with her own fond smile as if to say, ‘You’re welcome’ in response.
The rest of the Christmas Day visit went without further incident. Annabel happily played with her new toys, and Olivia curled up with one of her new books while the adults chatted. It was only after the Bensons had left that Miriam found Olivia’s face paint set slid under the couch; she sighed, popped it into her pre-purchased gift stash for Annabel to re-gift to one of her friends sometime, and made a note to herself to pick up something more suitable for her friend’s almost teen to replace the gift for Olivia. While she described Serena as one of her closest school friends, she was seeing less and less of her. The dictates of busy working parent schedules prevented much in the way of visiting, and she was struggling to figure out how to respond to her friend’s continued overindulgence in alcohol at gatherings that seemed to be growing more pronounced as Olivia got older. There also seemed to be something off with the way she treated her daughter too. The child was always nicely dressed, well behaved, and seemed to do well in her schooling and activities, but she often seemed so sad, and Miriam couldn’t recall the last time she had heard Serena speak to Olivia kindly.
1981
Olivia chewed on her bottom lip as she contemplated her homework in the privacy of her own room. It required a conversation with her mother that the woman had managed to deflect before now. The assessment demanded Olivia to complete a brief family tree, including discussing dominant and recessive genes and where Olivia may have inherited characteristics that she saw in herself, such as height, eye colour and hair colour. But all she could do so far was to point out all the ways she was the same or different to her mother, so she wanted more information about her father to see if she was similar to him or if some of her characteristics had come from grandparents or other relatives further back. She squared her shoulders and blew out a breath, determined that at 13, she was going to get some answers this time, and headed out to the living space to where her mother was.
Serena was on the couch, Bloody Mary in hand, her eyes heavy with tiredness from a long day and the effects of the alcohol she had already consumed. Olivia hesitated momentarily as she quickly noticed that it was going to be a bad evening but then threw caution to the wind. If it was already going to be a bad evening, this conversation really couldn’t make it that much worse, could it?
The conversation was opened by Olivia with the following request, “Mom, I need your help with a school assignment.”
“Go and do it yourself, child,” responded Serena, disgruntled at her peace being interrupted.
Olivia tried again, “I will, Mother. I just need a couple of answers first, and then I can go do the rest of it myself.”
“Fine, what do you want?”
The teenager took a deep breath and dived in, “I need to know my father’s name and see a photo of him.”
Serena finally looked directly at her daughter and failed to mask her dislike at all, “No.”
“Not good enough, Mother; I’m 13 and deserve some answers,” retorted Olivia petulantly.
The first response from her mother to that was unhinged cackling. When her behaviour sobered, she stood and moved directly in front of her daughter, a look of absolute fury on her face, “You deserve answers? Fine. I don’t know who your father is, so I can’t give you a name or a photo. They don’t exist.”
Olivia’s heart rate accelerated, and she stepped back from the face of her mother’s fury; a terrible feeling began to form in her gut, “I don’t understand.”
Serena continued moving into Olivia’s space until she had her daughter backed up against a wall, and then she got right in her face, “Your father attacked me from behind, hitting me over the head to incapacitate me, and then he raped me. I never saw his face. Your father was a rapist.” She stepped back then as the shock left her daughter reeling, gasping for breath, tears starting to run down her cheeks. “Happy now?” the woman queried unkindly before she returned to the couch and her drink.
Olivia was frozen, attempting to reconcile the revelation with what she knew about herself. She gave up in the end, concluding that she was half a drunk and half a monster. When asked about it later, she could not remember leaving the living room to drop her forgotten homework back in her bedroom and escaping the apartment with her jacket, wallet, and keys.
She didn’t remember the first six blocks she walked either. It was only when she was walking along a section of the waterfront that she remembered anything at all. She only stopped when a man got in her path determined to have a conversation with her, “Hey, girly.”
Olivia froze, staring at the man and wondering how she got there. He continued, “Whatcha doing out here by yourself?” She turned to run away, but he grabbed her by the arm, “Hey, not so fast!”
She tried to push him away, “Get off me!”
A second, much calmer voice interrupted, “Hi. Is there a problem here?”
The man let Olivia go and held his hands up in surrender. Olivia interjected before he had a chance to say anything, “Yes, I don’t know him, and I want him to leave me alone.”
The new voice belonged to a uniformed police officer, and he stepped between Olivia and the man as he turned to him, “I think the young lady made her wishes quite clear.” After a moment of appraisal, the man turned on his heel and walked away without speaking another word. The officer turned back to Olivia and indicated to the patrol car nearby with his partner in it, “How about we get you safely home, honey?”
Olivia’s petulance came to the forefront again, “I don’t want to go home. My mother hates me.”
“Well, then…” said the officer as he considered the situation. “My name’s Officer Donald Cragen, and my partner over there in the car is Officer Billy Dodds. How about we take you for a hot cocoa, and you can tell us a little more about what you’ve got going on…?” His voice went up at the end of the question, clearly asking a second question, which was what to call her.
“Olivia Benson, and that sounds good, thank you,” replied the teen, a little more friendly than her earlier reply as she was nervous about being left alone.
The two police officers called it in to dispatch and then took Olivia to a nearby diner. There, they both had a coffee and provided Olivia with the promised cocoa. They chatted with her for the better part of an hour, and while she didn’t confess to the specifics of why she’d run off from home, she did tell them she’d had some upsetting news. Eventually, they convinced her that home was probably the best place for her for now but gave her their cards so she could call if she had any problems, and then dropped her off at her apartment building. Serena had passed out on the couch, which pleased Olivia greatly as she didn’t want another conversation with her that evening.
The following day Olivia completed the assignment by comparing herself only to her mother and wrote a note on the assignment about not being able to get information on her father. The note was enough to get her some special allowance and bumped up her grade from barely passing to a B.
1983
Miriam smiled indulgently at Olivia; the teenager had snuck a book into the party and was quietly reading in a corner, ignoring the celebrating going on around her. It wasn’t surprising; the party was a 70th Birthday celebration for Miriam’s mother, and she’d invited the Bensons, given there had always been a friendly relationship between Serena and Miriam’s mother when the two women were growing up, and even Olivia had met the elderly woman on occasion too. Miriam made her way over to the girl, “Hello Olivia, how are you?”
Olivia startled, closed her book, and tried to hide it in a single motion, “Sorry! Hi Miriam.”
“It’s fine, Olivia; read if you want. I realise a 70th birthday party isn’t necessarily your thing,” the woman reassured her.
“Mother said I had to come with her,” shrugged the girl.
Miriam took a moment to engage with her friend’s daughter, “You’re, what, 15 years old now?”
Olivia cleared her throat uncomfortably, looking everywhere but at Miriam, “Umm, it’s actually my 15th Birthday today.”
“Oh,” blanched the woman, now equally uncomfortable. “Of course, it is. I’m sorry that I forgot that, Olivia; I’ve been preoccupied with organising this and didn’t remember the date. Did your mother get you something nice? What are you doing to celebrate?”
Olivia shrugged again, “Coming here is celebrating.”
“You’re not having your own party?” queried Miriam further.
The girl looked puzzled at the question and shook her head no.
“Ok, well, enjoy your book. And I’ll make sure you get an extra-large piece of cake later when we cut it,” she commented, wrapping up the conversation. As Miriam moved away to talk to other guests, she noticed Olivia return her attention to the book. She frowned in frustration; she noticed the way the girl had evaded answering the question about a gift. She’d also always assumed that Annabel had never been invited to Olivia’s birthday parties because of the age gap between the girls and that Olivia must have had her own circle of friends she wanted to invite. But now she was wondering if it was because there weren’t any gifts or parties at all and that this was yet another example of how Serena didn’t seem to be able to love her own daughter.
~O~
It was early Spring, Easter was coming up, and it was only six weeks since Miriam’s mother’s birthday party. Serena Benson was sitting on the couch, Bloody Mary in hand and some random black and white movie playing on the TV in the background. Olivia was in the kitchen finishing up the dinner dishes she’d made while cooking the evening meal and contemplating the school homework she still had to complete before bed that night. The telephone rang, and Serena picked up the receiver by her elbow, “Hello. Benson residence.”
…
“Hello, Miriam,” she then greeted her friend.
…
Serena then responded, “I’m well, thank you. Yes, and Olivia is fine too. How are you all?” Olivia quietened what she was doing, her ears pricking at the mention of her name, and she paused, moving closer to the doorway to listen to the one side of the conversation she could hear.
…
“No, we’re not available. We have other plans for Easter.” Olivia frowned in puzzlement; they had no plans as far as she was aware, and she would have liked to spend Easter weekend with Annabel and her parents. Serena always behaved like a half-decent parent when they were with them, and Miriam and Alex both seemed interested in what she thought and felt about things.
…
“I really don’t think that’s any of your business,” Serena commented in irritation. The teen couldn’t help but wonder what Miriam was pushing Serena’s buttons on. She decided that she needed to finish the dishes as soon as possible so she could escape back to her room before her mother took out whatever was irritating her on Olivia.
…
Serena then raised her voice in anger, “Love? Why would I show her any love? How can I love something that was conceived by a monster?” Olivia reeled back, tears pricking in her eyes, a hand coming up over her mouth to mask the gasp that escaped her as she heard her mother slam the phone receiver back down.
Olivia Benson suddenly saw her whole life with a new clarity, her mother had never loved her.
…Her…
…Mother…
…Never…
…Loved…
…Her…
The cutting words, lack of support, lack of parties, gifts, or anything other than what was necessary all suddenly made sense. She threw the dishcloth at the sink and bolted for her room. She stopped there only long enough to grab a book, jacket, purse, and keys before she fled the apartment, slamming the door behind her.
“Olivia?” queried Serena from her spot on the couch. At receiving no answer, she shrugged, took another swig of her drink, and turned her attention back to the movie on the TV.
Unlike her previous flee from the apartment, Olivia kept her wits about here this time, much savvier to the dangers of New York than she had been two years early when she had discovered she was the product of rape and had her own close call with a random man. She dug through her purse for the business card Officer Cragen had given her back then and called the number from the first payphone she found. He wasn’t available at his precinct, but the messaging service promised to forward the message promptly.
She then went to the diner, bought herself a hot chocolate and curled up around a book to wait and see if he came. An hour later, Cragen arrived at the diner and slid into the booth opposite Olivia, “Miss Benson, it’s good to see you again.”
Olivia smiled happily at the man, “You came! Oh, you're not in uniform. Did I catch you off shift?”
“No, actually, I’ve been promoted to Detective since we last spoke. So, I get to wear suits instead of a uniform now,” he replied. “So, what can I do for you today, Olivia?”
The teenager chewed at her bottom lip before confessing what had prompted her flight from her home, “I overheard my mother tell her friend on the phone that she has never and could never love me.”
“I see,” the Detective nodded soberly, “And do you know why that is?”
Olivia looked up, her big brown doe eyes boring into Donald Cragen, “I was conceived when my mother was raped by a stranger. She told me the night I ran away when we met.”
“That must have been difficult to hear. How do you feel about it?” asked the Detective.
The girl shrugged, “I dunno.”
“Have you talked to anyone else about this?”
“No,” said Olivia, shaking her head.
Cragen asked one more question, “Can I give you a little advice?” It was only after Olivia nodded that he continued, “Go see your guidance counsellor at school or a therapist at a free mental health clinic or something and talk to them. They can help you work through it and provide you with some tools to help you if you’re having a hard time with it or anything else at home.”
“I thought that’s what I had you for,” queried Olivia with a cheeky smile after she had nodded in agreement with his advice.
After giving her a big grin back, Don replied, “I’m happy to listen any time, but you’re dealing with some big issues here. So, I think you’d be better off in the long run meeting with someone who has proper training to help people deal with stuff like this.
“Makes sense,” concluded the teen. She then moved the conversation on and quizzed the Detective on all the pros and cons of being a cop. Cragen had to censor a lot of what he told her, given he was a homicide detective, but he shared as much as he could before they both finished their hot drinks, and he dropped her off at home again.
1984
Olivia woke on her 16th birthday with the hope that it would go better than the last one. It was one thing to have her birthday come and go with no celebration to mark it, but to be forced to celebrate someone’s else birthday with no acknowledgment of her own milestone did feel like a bit of a gut punch in comparison.
She threw on some clothes and took a moment to prepare herself for the anti-magical mystery tour that was having a birthday in Serena Benson’s household. When she headed out to the kitchen, she found her mother there with a cake box on the table.
“What’s this, Mother?” asked Olivia.
Serena rolled her eyes, “It’s a cake, obviously.”
“You got me a Birthday cake?” queried the teen cautiously.
“Yes. I thought you might like to have some cake with me. Open it.”
Serena grabbed a knife and a couple of cake forks and plates. Olivia opened the box and gasped in surprise. The cake was beautiful – chocolate citrus by the looks of it, a rich chocolate sponge layered with sweet cream and tart orange syrup. It was the right size for eight people, with eight piles of piped cream spread around the edge, each decorated with an orange segment, and chocolate hail covering the middle area of the top. She commented accordingly, “Wow, it's so pretty mother.”
Olivia cut two slices neatly between the piped cream. That left six slices for them to share over the next few days, and then mother and daughter sat down to eat.
“Thank you! It tastes really good, too,” commented Olivia after taking a few mouthfuls.
Serena replied, “Don’t use ‘really’, Olivia; find a better descriptive word. But I’m pleased the cake is good. I’m serving some of it this evening.”
And there it was… Olivia’s stomach dropped, realising it was too good to be true. She had forgotten about Serena’s little dinner party on her birthday that she had been told to leave the house for. Pre-prepared entrees from a restaurant half a block away, and then as it turns out, a slice of cake for dessert. She asked for a little more information, “Who is coming?”
“Miriam and Alex, and Robert and Josie,” responded the teen’s mother, in between mouthfuls of cake.
Olivia did some quick maths and nodded to herself. “OK, so five people, including you. That’ll leave one piece left for me when I get home later.”
Serena’s responding grunt was non-committal, and the pair of them finished the cake in silence before Olivia washed up the few dishes and popped the rest of the cake in the fridge for later.
Later that evening, after Olivia had kept herself occupied with a trip to the mall, some tutoring at the library and her favourite burger at the local diner where she lingered with her latest book, she arrived back home around 9.30 pm. The diner owner had offered her a complimentary ice cream sundae after hearing it was Olivia’s birthday, but she turned it down, anticipating the final slice of the gorgeous flavourful cake she had that morning.
Serena was on the couch, drink in hand and a movie playing on the tv. She looked up when Olivia entered the apartment. The teen stopped and observed her mother for a moment, “So, did you have a nice evening, Mother?”
“Yes, I did, dear. Miriam was surprised you weren’t home and sent you her regards,” replied Serena.
“Thanks,” muttered Olivia in response, not able to muster up a polite response when it was Serena’s fault that she wasn’t at home in the first place. She dropped her bag down on one of the dining chairs and was pleasantly surprised to find that the dinner party dishes had been done already. She uncharitably assumed that Miriam and/or Josie had done them before they left, but she was grateful for not having to do dishes for a dinner party she wasn’t invited to. She pulled open the fridge looking for the cake. There was nothing there, so she called out, “Where’s the last piece of the cake, Mother?”
The response came back quickly, “There isn’t any.”
Olivia scrunched her nose up in disbelief, closed the fridge and walked back to where her mother was sitting, “There should have been one piece left; where did it go?”
Serena sighed dramatically, “Robert liked it and asked for a second slice, so I gave it to him.”
“But it was my Birthday cake; you knew I was looking forward to that last slice when I got home,” Olivia questioned further, upset and disappointed.
Her mother’s disdain became apparent, “I couldn’t be rude to a guest. You didn’t need it; you had a slice this morning. Go to bed, child.”
Olivia sighed, concluded the conversation was over and turning, grabbed her bag and headed to her room. As she flopped down on her bed, she wished she’d had that ice cream sundae after all.
~O~
Olivia Benson had two choices, she could spend the summer day in the apartment, or she could go to the University campus with her mother, make the most of the library or read in the sunshine on the University lawn, which felt a lot safer than doing the same by herself in Central Park. She chose the latter and demurely walked a step behind her mother all the way to campus.
The 16-year-old had just settled down on a picnic rug to re-read Romeo and Juliet in the sun when someone stepped up close to her and blocked her sunlight. She slid the sunglasses down her nose to stare up at the person, “Excuse me? You’re blocking my sun.”
The person turned out to be a young man, and he flopped down next to her, “But I got your attention, didn’t I.”
Olivia rolled her eyes, “Whatever.” She then pushed her sunglasses back up her nose and turned her attention back to her book.
“So, what’s a pretty girl like you doing reading heavy English literature like that?” asked the young man, not giving up.
The girl looked back at him, “Seriously? I would hardly describe Romeo and Juliet as heavy English literature.”
The young man gave her the biggest flirty smile, and Olivia had to admit it was a pretty nice smile, in addition to the fact his boldness was starting to work on her. “That’s true,” he remarked. He held out his hand for her to shake it, “I’m Burton Lowe, and you are?”
“Olivia Benson,” she replied, taking the proffered hand.
Burton’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, “Benson? As in Professor Serena Benson? What, are you her little sister or something?”
“Or something,” remarked Olivia dryly. “You can stop with the one-liners now; you have my attention.”
The young man laughed freely and nodded in agreement. He then spent the next couple of hours encouraging and pushing Olivia’s intellect with an in-depth discussion of many aspects of English literature. It turned out he was one of Serena’s final-year students taking a couple of summer papers to get ahead. But Olivia held her own with him, having been exposed to the same literature since before she could read it herself. He finished that first afternoon with a treat from a nearby ice cream store for her.
Olivia was smitten. Burton asked for and valued her opinion, incorporating some of the ideas she expressed into his assessment essays, and she loved every minute of it. He took her to a cheap little Italian restaurant one day for lunch and a cheap little Chinese restaurant the following week. In between those dates he treated her with trinkets he found in thrift stores, mix tapes he made, and he read to her from Keats and Byron while they cuddled on a picnic rug on the University lawn. However, the icing on the cake for her was when he’d show her his marked essays, and there were glowing comments from Serena on her ideas in them. For the first time in her life, she felt like she was loved and important to someone, and to top it off, she felt smug when she got positive feedback from her mother via Burton’s essays.
It was late summer when Olivia lost her virginity to Burton. She made up a story about a sleepover with a friend, which allowed her to sneak off to his shared apartment for the night. Fully aware of the cost an unplanned pregnancy could have on someone’s life, she insisted on protection, bringing condoms, and Burton readily agreed to use them. In contrast, she believed Burton when he said the Sarah his roommate mentioned was his roommate’s girlfriend and had nothing to do with him. So, it was weird that she’d left a phone message for him, and he encouraged a speculative conversation, suggesting that maybe she was trying to organise a surprise party for him or something.
It was in the afterglow that Burton pulled a small jewellery box from his bedside unit and proposed to her with an antique ring he found thrifting. They made love twice more that night. Olivia was flying high – marriage at 17 meant she could escape her mother by leaving home earlier than she’d thought and to a man who appeared to adore her. It was all her dreams coming true.
But some dreams have a bad habit of twisting into nightmares, and it was less than 24 hours before Olivia was dragged back down to earth.
~O~
Olivia delayed her arrival at home until after she thought her mother had left for work. Unfortunately for her, with the summer semester complete, Serena had no classes, little marking to do and had decided on a late start.
The teenager had a brilliant smile on her face as she went inside, not able to take her eyes off the ring. It wasn’t until Serena’s hand snaked out and grabbed her wrist that she even realised her mother was home and had been sitting in the living room. “What the hell is that?” asked the older woman roughly.
“It’s none of your business,” retorted Olivia as she attempted, and failed, to snatch her arm back.
Serena snapped back, “You’re underage and my daughter, so it is definitely my business. Who is he?”
“No! I’m not telling you anything!” Olivia could smell the alcohol on her mother’s breath; either she was still drunk from the night before, or she had started early that day. She successfully pulled her arm away from her mother on the second try.
“Is that an engagement ring? Is that where you were last night? With a boy?” queried Serena.
“He’s not a boy; he’s a man!”
“You’re 16, Olivia! You’re a child,” thundered her mother.
“I’m a woman.”
Serena slapped her daughter, “You’re a slut.” She turned away from the girl and picked up a vodka bottle on the side table, refilling her glass.
The teen retorted, “And you’re a bitch!”
The older woman stumbled in shock at the visceral rage emanating from her daughter, dropping the bottle. It smashed at her feet. “How dare you!” she whispered back, rage filling her.
Olivia tried to justify her actions, “You’ve never loved me, but Burton, he loves me. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes. I’m going to get out of this house… I’m going to get away from you!”
“Burton? Burton Lowe? As in, my student, Burton Lowe?” Olivia nodded to her mother before the woman continued, “Then you’re a gullible fool, Olivia Benson, and I thought I raised you better than that.” Olivia snorted in disgust; with her mother’s drinking, she had practically raised herself at times. Serena put the boot in to finish, “He has a girlfriend, Olivia, his own age. Her name is Sarah, and I’ve seen him with her on campus in situations that make their relationship status abundantly clear to anyone with eyes.”
“No! You’re lying! I HATE YOU!!” screamed the teenager.
Serena bent down and picked up the neck portion of the bottle, and with her temper flaring again, she pointed the jagged broken end at her daughter, “You ungrateful little idiot. You are going to take that ring off right now and break up with him today, or I AM GOING TO CUT IT OFF YOUR FINGER!”
Olivia screamed, “NO!” at her mother again, took a step forward and kicked her firmly in the abdomen. Serena stumbled back but didn’t fall, and her daughter stepped forward a second time to kick again. The second kick sent her flying back against a wall, and she slid down it to the floor, groaning. Olivia looked on in sudden horror at what she’d done. She took a tentative forward and then second-guessed the decision; she turned and bolted from the apartment.
~O~
Detective Donald Cragen arrived at the diner where he had occasionally met Olivia Benson to find the teenager almost hysterical, “Olivia! What happened?”
Between sobbing gasps of breath, Olivia managed to get out a few words, “I kicked her! I kicked her, and she fell. And I think she’s hurt, but I don’t know because I ran.”
“Breathe, honey. Are you talking about your mother? Tell me why you kicked her,” queried the detective.
The words tumbled out of the teenager before she could censor them, “She was trying to get the engagement ring off my finger, and she told me I was a slut, and she told me that I had to break up with him, and… and… I finally have something good in my life, someone who loves me, and she’s trying to ruin it!”
The crying had returned in earnest again then, so Don just put a supportive hand on the teen’s shoulder while he tried to process all the information she had just blurted out and what he could or should do about any of it. Aside from an apparent physical altercation with her mother, what the hell was a 16-year-old doing getting engaged!?! He decided he needed a little more information before he could decide what to do, “Olivia, that’s a lot, but firstly I wanted to say congratulations on our engagement. Can you tell me about your fiancé? Where did you meet him?”
Olivia swallowed thickly as she tried to gain control of her emotions, “I met him at the University; he’s one of my mother’s students. He asks my advice about literature and puts my ideas in his assignments, and my mother likes my ideas and gives good comments when she marks them. He reads with me, takes me out for food, and gives me little presents. And last night, he asked me to marry him.”
“Last night?”
“I stayed overnight with him. My mother thought I was at a sleepover with a friend, but she figured it out this morning,” replied the teen.
Don gently asked another question, a lot hung on the answer, so he was careful in his demeanour, “Olivia, how old is your fiancé?”
“He’s 21,” she responded quietly before rapidly adding, “But I haven’t done anything I didn’t want to!”
Donald Cragen contemplated the legal ramifications of what she’d just disclosed to him and decided he was going to need backup for starters, “OK, hang on honey, I’m going to make a quick call.” Olivia confirmed she’d heard him with a nod, and he walked away from her to use the payphone in the corner of the diner.
In a slightly unorthodox move, the Detective didn’t call a social worker, another cop, or a lawyer. He called a law student he met a few times, a young woman by the name of Simone Bryce. She specialised in family law with an emphasis on protecting the needs of the child, and she had an affinity for working with teens even though she was still studying. Olivia needed to know she had options that didn’t involve getting married as a minor, and she also needed help navigating the system if her mother wanted to press charges against Olivia for assault or her fiancé for statutory rape.
Once Simone had arrived at the diner and developed a rapport with the teenager, Donald Cragen left them to it and visited Serena Benson. While he wildly disapproved of the woman’s parenting for the most part, she did have a point in not wanting her teenage daughter to have a relationship with a tertiary student five years older than her. He discovered that she was not injured in the altercation with her daughter and then extracted a promise from the woman that she would not press charges against either of the young people involved. That promise was, of course, provisional on convincing Olivia she needed to break up with the now named fiancé Burton Lowe, so he fed the information back to Simone and stepped back from the case. Simone, for her part, helped Olivia navigate the situation and the rest of her schooling before she could leave home to attend Siena College. It was over ten years before Donald Cragen saw Olivia Benson again.
2000
On the morning of the 7th of February 2000, Olivia Benson stepped off the elevator in the 1-6 and made her way to the SVU squad room. She had contemplated taking the day off but decided in the end that she’d spent far too many of her birthdays on her own and that she’d rather spend it with her colleagues instead. She pushed through the doors and was met with delighted smiles and cheers of “Happy Birthday” from Elliot, Brian, John, and Monique; even the captain shot her a grin from his office before disappearing into the break room.
“Wow, I should have a Birthday more often!” she exclaimed, both loving and hating the attention.
Elliot grabbed Olivia by the wrist and pulled her towards the break room, “Come on, before we set fire to the joint, Cap must have lit the candles by now.”
Olivia froze in the doorway of the break room; her gaze was drawn to a large round cake in the middle of one of the tables with more candles than she cared to count, all lit and flickering brightly. The writing on the cake exclaimed, ‘Happy Birthday, Olivia!’ in piped frosting, with frosting flowers decorating the edges as well. She looked up at her captain standing behind the table and found a proud smile on his face. The rest of her colleagues pushed her on and followed her into the room as Elliot led them all in a raucous chorus of the ‘Happy Birthday’ song.
After she blew out the candles, Olivia looked at the cake in wonder, and Elliot sidled up next to her, asking quietly, “What is it?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a Birthday cake with my name on it before,” responded Olivia, without taking her eyes off the confection even for a moment. Elliot’s smile flickered a little as he regarded his partner; the thought was disquieting, and then glanced to his captain who confirmed he had also heard the comment with a resigned shrug. Both men added it to the list of reasons why he didn’t like Serena Benson.
Most of the squad drifted back to their desks after their second breakfast of cake, leaving Olivia and Elliot to tidy up the break room. “So, did you want to put another cake slice away for yourself for later? If we leave it here in the break room, the unis will clean up the rest of it in no time,” asked Elliot.
Olivia glanced up at him, confused, “I can do that?”
Elliot shrugged, “Why not? It’s your cake. You can do what you like with it. Although…” and his grin developed a cheeky edge to it, “…if you do decide you want to smash some of it into my face for setting this up, then I draw the line at cleaning the mess up.”
He was rewarded with a full belly laugh from Olivia before she eyed the cake speculatively again. “Cut two slices and stash them so we can have them when we get back later,” she eventually responded with a conspiratorial grin.
“Done,” he replied and did as she asked.
When they went back to the desks, Elliot grabbed Olivia’s attention again, “I have something else for you too.” And he pulled a small, wrapped present from his pocket.
“You got me a present?” she asked. This fuss over her Birthday was entirely unexpected, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Elliot replied like it was the most obvious decision in the world, “Yeah, you deserve it.”
Olivia took the gift from his hands and found it contained a small jewellery box once she removed the wrapping paper. She commented, “A small box? I hear nice things sometimes come in small boxes.”
“Open it,” grinned Elliot.
Olivia opened the box and found a necklace inside. The pendant hanging from the chain was rectangularly shaped and had the word ‘FEARLESSNESS’ embossed into it. “Oh, Elliot, it’s beautiful.”
“You’re the most fearless person I know, Liv. And like I said, you deserve it,” he shrugged with a fond smile.
She smiled shyly back at him, “I think I like small boxes now.”
Olivia then pulled the necklace from the box as Elliot came around behind her. She handed it to him, and he undid the clasp and hung it around her neck. He moved back around in front of her to see how it looked. “Perfect,” he said as he smiled at her fondly again.
Olivia blushed as an unfamiliar but warm and loved feeling wrapped around her; her eyes shone with happy tears as she stared back at her partner, “Thank you, Elliot.”