Title: Time and Chance
Author: Demelza
Written: May 2004
Disclaimer: Special Victims Unit, its character, and so forth, do not belong to me, they belong to Dick Wolf and co. All original characters are the authors creation.
Rating: R
Warnings: Deals with child abuse, has violence.
Category: Olivia angst.
Summary: A case hits too close to home for Olivia.
Thanks: My especial thanks to Jill for being my beta, support person in everything I do/write, and being my Sis. I love ya girly. :)

She breathed, at last. Her mind clouded, no thought made sense, not even the most significant ones.

It had been like this going on three days now. Not just her mind, though, but the whole damn job.

Wasn't some part of it supposed to make sense?

Huang would've argued that reasoning, stating sometimes there are no reasons why something happened the way it did.

She didn't, couldn't, buy that.

Not after the things she'd seen.

She never expected the job to get any easier, even though a greater part of her wished it would at times. Especially during the days like the ones she'd been struggling through this week.

beat

The girl had been eight years old, trapped into thinking what was being done to her was simply kids being exactly that: kids.

It wasn't just fondling. It wasn't boys being boys.

It was a clear cut case of sexual abuse, and everyone had turned a blind eye, refusing to see the situation for what it really was.

Just fondling, one teacher said. Kids being what they are, another told the detectives tonight.

At least, until someone wound up dead.

beat

Now, it was the detectives' job to build the two sides of the case. They had to find out what the murder victim had done to invoke his murderer to stab him to death. Then there were the reasons behind the murder. Why had this once innocent little girl taken to the brutal act of murder? Why?

There was evidence to gather, eyewitness testimonies, the confession from the murderer herself.

Only eight years old.

beat

'Any son of a bitch touches my daughters like he did her, I'd help them kill him,' Elliot had earlier confessed to Olivia as they worked through the final revisions to their reports.

She heard, but was powerless to reply. She felt the same way he did about most of the cases they handled, especially when it came to the children. This case was as much the same as the others, as they were different to one another. Too many similarities, too many differences. One thing in common.

Abuse.

'The sick bastards won't stop until society realizes TV, the internet and all other menial sources are powering these jerk offs to act the way they do,' Munch had stated at the start of the case.

And, he was right.

Not in every case though, John. Not in every case.

An afterthought, and she cursed herself. It was the truth. Everything he said was.

Or, at least, in today's "society" it was factual. It wasn't the start of the abuse, but it did give more power to the abusers than they'd had before.

beat

"You calling it a night yet Liv?"

Olivia slowly looked up, having been staring down at the picture of the tomboyish, blue eyed, blonde eight year old girl in the open folder in front of her.

"You go on," she said after a moment, "I'm heading out soon."

"Promise?" Elliot asked, his deep, soulful, blue eyes gazing back at her.

Finally, she gave a final nod. "Couple notes to sort, I'm finished and out of here."

"See ya tomorrow then," he said then.

"Yeah," she murmured. "Bye."

And he was gone.

So was she, at least in her mind's sense.

Her eyes went back to the picture of the little girl. She had a hard time believing this sweet natured little girl was a killer.

'No one believed me,' young Danielle had cried when they'd first talked to her at her home. 'They said he didn't know what he was doing.'

That doesn't make it right, Olivia had thought.

'I asked him to stop, I keeped begging him to!' she shouted, crying in her helpless mother's arms.

Someone was supposed to believe her.

'Where the hell were the adults?' Cragen had asked the detectives.

Disbelieving there was anything wrong going on.

'He w-wouldn't stop,' Danielle cried, her eyes intently locked on Olivia's tearfilled gaze. 'Every day I begged him to just stop, but he wouldn't, he wouldn't leave me alone!'

beat

She was driving now, driving out of the city. Headed to the one place she knew that was the source of all her pain.

'You headed home?' Cragen asked not so long ago as she'd handed him her and Elliot's final report.

'Coney Island,' she'd politely replied, hoping he wouldn't ask the how's and why's. No one else knew, so how could she tell him?

'Take care out on the road,' he had replied with a smile.

Yeah, she would.

She had to.

beat

It took her a while to get to, and find, the brick and roughcast home her trip was intent in finding, but when she finally found the three bedroom home, she pulled her car into the drive way and sat there, the engine running, the lights off.

She sat, listening to the silver sedan's gentle hum. The car barely made a noise, and that in part Olivia was glad of. It made what she was here for that much easier.

Her gaze shifted from the front door to the car in front of her. From the ill-lit street lamp overhead, she could see the little doll that sat up back against the dark red car's rear window.

It just sat there, staring back at her with its eyes open wide.

A near mute child's cry came from inside the house and her chest tightened as her gaze shifted to the front bedroom's window.

No thought, she turned the ignition off and watched as a dark figure moved around in the room against the dull light from the hallway.

The child's cries grew louder, and Olivia felt like her throat was starting to close.

Too fast, too tight. She could barely breathe.

Reaching for her off-duty gun in the passenger seat, she checked the clip before placing the gun back at her hip; the safety was off.

She wasn't going to let him get away with what he'd done.

Not any more.

beat

She pounded her fist on the door, waiting, her heart racing in her chest.

The child's crying grew quiet amongst the still hour of midnight.

Footsteps sounded, next, and the porch light lit up.

A dark figure, a man's, appeared on the other side of the glass paned door, and she swallowed as he unlatched the safety chain and turned the deadbolt.

His face, she recognized as he pulled the door open, had barely changed a bit, apart from a few lines on his forehead. He was, otherwise, the same man she always remembered.

"What do you want" he asked, his voice rough. It had changed, damaged by the cigarettes she could always remember him puffing on.

Still, she had to be sure.

"Calvin Donalds?" Olivia heard herself ask.

"Yes?"

"My name's Olivia Benson," she said, pausing briefly, waiting. "I think you know who I am."

He huffed. "Then, love, you think wrong," he replied, that all too familiar squint in his eyes as he spoke.

She shook her head. "You're wrong, you sick bastard."

Something triggered in his mind, she knew, and he closed the door in her face. Olivia was quick though, she put her right foot forward and stopped the door from closing in full. "Get lost!" he shouted, that same fury in his eyes that she'd seen a thousand times before in her adolescent years.

Only, now? He didn't have the power over her he did back then for all those months.

She removed her gun from her belt, her gaze locked on his, her right hand holding her gun, while her left held the door open. "I won't let you get away with what you did," she told him.

Soft whimpering.

The other room.

"You bastard," Olivia whispered, and by the time the words came out, her finger had squeezed the trigger and Calvin was on the floor, gasping for his last breaths of air. She moved forward, the gun still in her hand, and looked down at him.

"Stop," he begged, his voice raspy.

"Stop?" she questioned, "Like you did, every time I asked you to?" No answer, just a pleading from him with only his eyes. "No." She shook her head, "Like hell," she replied. She lifted the gun, and then, once again, with it aimed at his face, she pulled the trigger.