Some things are better left unsaid.

Olivia can't remember a time when spoken words weren't barbed, more often than not, with ugliness. Hateful criticisms, scornful accusations, the occasional insult just for the hell of it. She can remember her mother, heaving herself up from the kitchen floor, clinging to Olivia's shoulder and muttering obscenities about kids who don't stay in bed when they're told. She can still feel the slim fingers digging into her arm, the manicured nails stinging her skin through her nightshirt.

She remembers the dead weight of her mother after an evening with the bottle that ended with Serena attempting to lullaby her little girl to sleep and blacking out halfway through a pitchy, cracked rendition of Hap Palmer's "Old Rocking Chair."

Dusk covers the valley, stars slowly come into sight…

She can remember the lyrics shakily spilling out of her mother's mouth, floating past her face on a soft, vodka-scented breeze.

Birds chatter among the trees, before…

Before…

G'night Libby.

Sometimes, even now, she'll wake up in the quiet dark of her bedroom and hear Serena Benson's soft snoring in her ear, feel the oppressive weight of her on her chest. It was smothering, but drunken affection is better than none, and she maintains a love-hate relationship with this memory and the woman who made it.

It's maudlin, she realizes, but she knows that lullaby by heart now, though she never heard her mother finish it. She relives that night more than she should, sometimes adjusting history to allow her mother to finish the song before kissing Olivia goodnight and taking herself to the queen sized bed in their apartment's master bedroom. Sometimes she allows the truth to take over, and remembers to let it abbreviate her mother's song and bear down on her ribs for the night.

Small wonder she's learned to carry heavy things by herself.

*

Some things are better left unseen.

Huang is discussing a victim who has chosen to terminate her rapist's unborn child and has made psychological leaps and bounds through her initial recovery. She's not the same, he says, never the same. But healing. Hopeful.

Olivia feels his eyes are on her and makes a conscious, will-driven effort not to react. Not to grab his chin and use brute force to make him look at Huang, who is still speaking about a woman who has taken advantage of a procedure that her own mother couldn't legally procure. Everyone knows Olivia's story, the abominable way in which she was conceived. It shouldn't bother her that Elliot automatically tries to gauge her reaction whenever shit like this comes up. Rapes happen. Pregnancies happen. Abortions happen. It shouldn't bother her. It shouldn't.

It shouldn't, but fuck if it doesn't. She can feel the pity leaking onto her from his gaze and fights an irrational urge to growl at him. It's ironic that two years ago she would have felt overwhelmed with joy at his solicitude and attention; now she catches herself flinching when they unexpectedly make eye contact. She's still not sure which rights as his partner she can retain and which went home with him to Kathy.

Olivia's phone rings and she is grateful for the interruption. Damn Huang anyway, with his calm demeanor and his psychobabble and those eyes that calmly pierce your skull while he quietly presses on. Allow yourself to experience pain in order to heal, he has told her on at least three separate occasions. She's not sure, but the pain may be less from the shit she deals with everyday and more from this infuriatingly self-assured shrink who insists on climbing inside her skull and stirring everything up. She pictures Huang inside her head in cover-alls and galoshes, sloshing his way through the faces of the fuckholes she's dealt with and the victims they've left in their wake. Pain, he states quietly, but it echoes in her skull. Allow yourself the pain.

Warner is on the phone and wants to talk to them about something Very Interesting, and Olivia finds herself absently agreeing to drag herself and her partner down to the morgue. After she hangs up she hears Huang still rambling on, this time about a suspect who is probably experiencing castration anxiety, and pictures him again in his imaginary muck-man outfit. It's enough to bring a small smile to her face.

"Who's that?" Elliot asks, and she hadn't been aware that he'd left the shrink's captive audience to return to their desks.

"Warner. Found something she wants us to see."

"'Kay." He shrugs on his jacket and looks at her expectantly. "Anything funny?"

It isn't until her face tightens into a scowl at his question that she realizes she had still been smiling. "Nothing," she answers.

He seems used to her moods now, and she thinks that he isn't half as affected by them as he should be. And why not? If life is a playground, he's chosen to take his heart and his glove and go home. Which shouldn't matter, she's glad he's got his identity as Devoted Family Man back, and she's used to playing by herself now anyhow. But being happy and becoming resigned are two different things; she's found that her scowl ensures her privacy, which in turn guarantees there will be no more mindfucks from her partner as he struts around the squadroom, wielding his newfound domestic bliss as a favorite subject for all new anecdotes. Sometimes she feels like she's in an episode of "The Twilight Zone," where she's had a dream that everything is different and just when she acclimates, she wakes up to find that not one fucking thing has changed.

She remembers the rush of adrenaline and affection she felt as she held his naked, squalling newborn son, and she loves all of his kids. But she will pull out her service weapon, she knows she will, if he tells her one more goddamned thing about this baby.

Her coat is on and she's walking towards the door before she realizes that he's not following. "Elliot?" And it sounds more hostile than she intended. The filter between her mind and her mouth has a tear, and she has yet to find the motivation to repair the hole.

There is a second before he responds, and when he finally turns around and walks toward her and the door, she's not sure but she could swear his lips are pursed in a way that makes her think of whiners and tight-asses. As he brushes past her she catches his eye, and the look she gets gives her a stinging feeling in her stomach. She'll remember this later tonight as she stares at the ceiling in her bed. She can remember a whole hell of a lot when it comes to her and Elliot.

The engine is running by the time she gets in the passenger's side of the sedan, and as she catches a glimpse of Elliot's profile she realizes that her chest is tight in a way that has nothing to do with the victim's unborn child, her mother or a butchered lullaby.

There are only so many ways to avoid having a conversation. Elliot has now ignored her attempts at two of them.

"You're great with kids," he offers tentatively, and she fights the urge to slug him.

"Yeah, I know."

Silence. The engine hums to life and she begins to let herself breathe again.

Then.

"Maybe you should start thinking about having kids, and anyway you want to do it I'll support you—"

She cannot cut him off fast enough, and the hurt look on his face only confirms her fear that Elliot believes he has fixed his own life and now considers himself happy enough to fix hers.

The drive is tense, but not because of him. The skin on her face feels like paper mache, like everything that's ever happened to her is written there in wrinkles and rips. The cold air he's turned on is not helping.

Elliot's cell phone rings while they're caught in traffic and she knows the caller is Kathy and that the subject is Eli by the way he tries to mute his voice, like she won't hear the recognizable paternal pride from a foot away if he only talks a little quieter.

"That's great," he is saying, and she wants him to put it on speakerphone so she can apologize to both of them for her lifestyle choices and tell them both to feel free to rub it in. Kathy with her soccer mom hair and four kids and a tan line on her left ring finger. Olivia saw that tan line when Kathy approached her about the divorce papers and thought, even this woman's melanin levels are connected to Elliot.

She likes Kathy, she does. At least, as much as she can reasonably be expected to like someone she doesn't know very well. She remembers Eli's birthday, the panic and the blood and this odd bond she'd ended up forging with Elliot's wife. So yeah, she likes her. But the thing of it is, Kathy always has something Olivia wants, and unless a freak accident takes out Elliot, their five kids, and any other family she has lurking around the area, chances are that Kathy will never be alone. Ever.

This thought first occurred to Olivia over Christmas, as she sat at her desk with Chinese take-out and pondered why she, the only child of an only child, should mind being alone during the holidays. She knows it is her life as it is, that she should be thankful for good health and good friends and be done with it, but as she shoved a mouthful of Chow Mein noodles into her mouth she pictured the Christmas festivities at the Stabler residence in realtime and felt a knot forming the pit of her stomach.

Kathy had invited her over for Christmas this year, and it took Olivia exactly 1.5 seconds to determine that there was no way in hell she would attend. She told Kathy she would try, but Elliot did not marry an idiot and Olivia almost flinched under the scrutiny of her gaze that said, Bullshit. But she was gracious enough when Olivia bowed out by citing work reasons, and after she hung up the phone Olivia thought, She's nice.

But the point of it is, there is one thing Olivia has always wanted, and as after-school special-y as it sounds, she has wished since childhood to have some sort of family. Elliot hated Marsden, and Olivia had to admit she's had over a dozen instances of wanting to cut off contact with him. But it's somebody.

"'Kay. That's fine." Pause. "I will. Bye."

Olivia has something snarky preparing to come out of her mouth – damn that filter! – something along the lines of, What, no 'I love you?' But Elliot turns to her like he's going to say something he doesn't want to say and she holds her tongue.

"Don't feel like you have to—" he begins, and she feels a certainty that if he brings up the kid thing again she will get out of this car and walk across the bridge to the precinct. But he continues, "I know you might not be in the mood, but… when all this is done, Kathy'd like to have you over for dinner with the family."

She feels her eyebrow climb. "She said that?"

"Yeah." Of course.

Neither of the Stablers deserve her animosity, but she finds it much easier to throw it at Elliot and not Mrs. Stabler 2.0, especially when Kathy is being nice. So she nods and looks out the window. "Sounds good," she answers, and she is the very picture of non-committal.