As stated in the description, this is supposed to take place somewhere toward the end of season fifteen, but the events have changed. For the purposes of this one shot, Olivia became pregnant in the events of Surrender Benson and ran away soon after she discovered. She's been living on her own throughout her pregnancy, isolating herself from the life she left behind, and this story begins when she goes into labor. So... yep. Here's this. Hope you don't hate it (or me).

The pain rips through you fiercely, starbursting from your core and consuming every inch of you as specks of light dance behind pinched eyelids. You cry out this time, but the sound is restrained, screeching through gritted teeth. You don't open your eyes, even as the agony ebbs back into the awaiting sea, your jaw unclenching as another bead of sweat dribbles down from your temple. You don't want to see them - the glaring white walls. They are too unflinching a reminder of the emptiness in the room. That much is your own fault.

Blood pulses back into colorless knuckles when you slacken your grip on the bedrail and release a shuddery breath. Then another. You know you only have a few moments of reprieve, so you hungrily soak up the precious seconds before they tick away, leaving a swell of nausea in their wake as the rumble of pain begins to build in your center once more.

A vicious cycle.

Just like what has become of your life.

When the pain rocks back against the shore, crashing into you with its violent spray, you arch your back against the bed. A tear leaks from the corner of your eye, and you suspect its provocation is not merely physical. How did you get here? Before long, the single strand of moisture has erupted with reckless abandon, breaking loose the shards of emotion that have congealed against the walls of your throat. It's a defeated cry. You barely recognize it as your own.

The pain retreats once again. But it doesn't. It never really has.

You don't even bother turning your head at the squeal of the iron rings against the curtain rod, all hope for a familiar face extinguished. You know better. The nurse busies herself around you, assessing charts and monitors with detached apathy, and while you find this to be unfit behavior for a labor and delivery nurse, it strikes you as perfectly appropriate that she has been assigned to your case. She manages to poke through your haze of misery, asking something about your contractions, but life intervenes with an emphatic response, another swell of agony tearing through your middle. She tells you you're ready, but you only believe her as it applies to the physical. And even then, you're not completely sold.

But the swarm of doctors file in anyway, like worker bees buzzing around a hive, and they fill the empty spaces of your head with mindless bumbling, words and actions that are just out of reach. A hand touches your arm and you flinch away, jerking your head upward without meeting their eyes. A kind voice tells you that they're going to move you now, but you can't respond because your jaw seems to be permanently locked in resistance to the pain. So you offer a nod, but it doesn't mean you're prepared when you feel them pulling at your legs, manipulating them into the cold stirrups. You turn your head away, pressing into the damp fabric of the pillow, and try not to cry. Try not to let his face enter your mind. Not now. God, please, not right now.

"Ms. Benson, we're going to have you start pushing on the count of three, okay? Ready?"

One.

Two.

The air in the room was far too frigid on your battered skin, as if each laceration supplied a portal for the cold to seep inside and chill you to the bone. The wispy hospital gown was insufficient to help you feel covered, and the growing sensation of exposure made your skin crawl. Drawing in a shaky breath, you curled your fingers around each opposite bicep to muster whatever semblance of warmth and security you could, carefully avoiding the spots where the worst of the burns and bruises abounded.

You jumped at the sound of the door cracking, eliciting a small gasp as the sudden motion tore into your ribs. Frightful eyes turned upward to greet the nurse. She was friendly enough, but she wore that same pitiful smile on her face as she worked. The same rehearsed mask that everyone seemed to have down. The kind that she would surely peel off when she got home, stripping herself of the long day and soaking for hours under the spray of water as she thought about the gruesome case. Your case. And she would remind herself how lucky she was that it wasn't her. And then she would feel clean again.

You knew because you understood. You did the same thing every day. Or you used to.

"Swabs and photos are finished," she tells you, as if you hadn't been present for the whole thing, as if you didn't know the routine by heart, "The doctor ordered a blood test to screen for STDs. Would you like th-"

"Yes."

You cut her off because you know what comes next, and while you can't face the words out loud, there's no question in your mind. The nurse gives you one last smile before she turns to the cabinet behind her, returning a short time later with a loaded tray. Your eyes immediately scan over to the tiny white pills in the cup, your heart leaping as you fight back the rising lump in your throat.

In the corner of the tray, your eyes catch the label printed on the side of the package, and a swell of dread overtakes you. 89% effective, up to 72 hours after unprotected intercourse. It wasn't news to you. In fact, the thought had weighed in the back of your mind for the better part of your time in captivity. That is, the part of your mind that actually believed there was a chance at survival. You think back to the first time he raped you. Quick and dirty while you cried drunken tears, a temporary release for him. In your own apartment, on your own bed. Nearly four days ago.

The timing was a stretch, having crossed over well into the "safety net" extension of five days instead of three, but a small part of you dared to hope that your age would factor in here. For once, as a blessing instead of a curse. It would be life's cruelest joke: To have entered the world a product of violence, lived an existence plagued by the taunt of barrenness, only to be impregnated by the very act that brought you here. You think you're going to be sick if you think about it for another second, so you don't waste any time before scooping the pill into your mouth and downing it in one swallow.

"Olivia, push!"

Your body trembles from the effort, fists tangling amongst the sheets as you let out a wordless cry. The sticky clumps of hair cling to your face, interlaced with the indistinguishable mixture of sweat and tears. You gasp for air but find that the insurmountable pain robs you of the luxury of a full breath.

"Again!" The voice at your feet demands, and you want to pass out.

"I can't," you sob, head thrashing in protest. A nurse grabs your hand, but you're too consumed by agony to pull away this time.

"Honey, I know it's hard, but you have to push," she chastises, "Do it for your baby."

Your heart tumbles at the thought, another escaped cry plunging from your lips. In all of nine months, you haven't quite been able to discern the meaning behind the flutter in your chest at the thought of the life growing inside you. The one trying to find its way into the world now. But you suspect it's suspended somewhere between love and fear. Whatever it is, it's enough to elicit another torturous strain from you, teeth gritting almost audibly against the pain. But the pressure at your groin is unrelenting.

"Please," you beg breathlessly. And you're not sure what you're begging for or to whom your plea is addressed. The doctors? God? Your baby? Lewis? It makes you shudder with revulsion at your own vulnerability, at your open display of desperation. It reminds you too much of how you got here in the first place, and how jarring a contrast there exists between you and all the women who consider this to mark the most joyous day of their life. Amidst the pain, you marvel at how unfair it is. All of it.

"Again, Olivia. Ready? One, two, three!"

You claw at the underside of your legs, fingers slipping over a film of perspiration as a pinched scream bruises your throat. Chest rising and falling at a rapid pace, you clench your eyes shut and prepare to tear yourself apart once more, but just as you suck in a breath, you feel yourself losing strength, vision blackening around the edges. What's happening? You try to ask, but your voice feels like it's floating somewhere far away, far beyond your reach. The piercing shriek of a monitor calls the doctors into action, a messy blur of arms and faces bustling above you. You blink once. Twice. Each time, the image above you gets more and more hazy, another hundred miles away. On the third blink, you can't open your eyes anymore.

There's movement. You sense that much as you fade in and out of consciousness, clinging to the distant vibration of wheels against smooth tile. Your next moment of semi awareness comes when the vibrations have stopped, and there's a brighter light threatening to penetrate your eyelids. It's too bright and you wish it would stop, but another part of you wonders if this is the infamous light that people talk about when referring to death. It wouldn't surprise you at this rate, but you feel an explosion of fear at the very thought. It hits you all at once, the cruel irony of the predicament. It's almost as if the forces of evil had conspired against you, leading up to this one moment. Essentially, you realize with an acrid bitterness, Lewis is killing you. This can't be right. You weren't supposed to be afraid. If this was death, you wanted no part of it.

One, two, three, you hear, and then you're being moved again. It's not the gentle vibrations of last time, but instead a feeling of weightlessness. Like you're being lifted. As consciousness ebbs and flows in waves, you catch small snippets of the words being tossed back and forth above you.

Mother.

Heart rate.

Crashing.

But none of them slice you quite as deeply as hearing the two simple words that stop your world:

Fetal distress.

All at once, your internal debate about fear versus love is quashed into oblivion as your heart leaps at the threat. Desperately, you fight the oncoming waves of darkness that threaten to pull you under again, urging yourself to stay awake. Alive. If not for yourself, for the life that holds to yours, clinging to you for all hope of existence. Panic overtakes you as you feel yourself slipping despite the fight. The sounds are getting further and further away, just like your strength. Your clarity. And inevitably, your baby.

If you had the strength to cry, you would do it now. Unreservedly, unabashedly. You would scream your tearful pleas to the powers that be, begging to save the one thing that suddenly matters more than anything else in the world. More than your own life. You would purge yourself of endless apologies, emptying all your words of love to the son you're almost certainly leaving behind. You would tell him how sorry you are for being afraid of him. Tell him that you realize now that he is the sun and the moon, and not a cursed reflection of the monster that comprised half his DNA. You would tell him how, now, you would do anything to change the last nine months, but nothing to change having him. He is yours, not his. He is all yours and you love him more than words could ever explain. Somewhere deep inside you, you always have.

In your last moments of fleeting lucidity, a collage of nursery colors and baby books flash before your eyes. Until this very moment, you had been painfully apathetic to all of it. You would do anything to have those moments now. Disheartened, you realize you never even decided on a name. Elliot. Johnathan. Noah. Nicholas. The mantra of options dances before you eyelids as you slip into the final stages of darkness, all sound zipping out of your awareness. With your final breath of life, you hope that he, no matter his name, will enter the world feeling all the love you can throw into the void.

And then your world forfeits to nothingness.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

It's the steady rhythm of the heart monitor that pulls you back from the sea of blackness, easing you onto the shore with gentle hands. One second passes to another, each bringing the gift of increasing clarity as your senses begin settling in around you. Your sense of touch is next, your nerves prickling with familiarity at the plush fabric against your cheek, the sharp line feeding into your veins, the vague roughness of a calloused hand beneath your fingers. The last one tips your balance, a brief flash of fear radiating from your chest at the unsuspected touch. But much to your surprise, your heart settles beneath your ribs, instinctively trusting of the presence in the room, though you can't yet put your finger on it.

You suck in a deep breath and revel at the feel of fresh oxygen in your lungs - a commodity of which you had been deprived during-

The thought stops you short, reeling back the memories with jarring ferocity. Your baby. The complications. The blackout. Instantly, your heart rate picks up speed, evident in the increasing beeps from the monitor that had lulled you back to awareness. Suddenly, the grip on your hand releases, only to reappear at your forehead, pushing away at damp strands of hair.

"Olivia, hey," the voices beckons to you, and your heart seizes, mouth going dry.

Almost involuntarily, your eyes flutter open, pupils straining against the harsh hospital lighting. Above you, the silhouette of a face offers you a mild reprieve from the blinding whiteness, and as you squint your eyes, a pair of familiar brown eyes come into focus.

"Nick," you croak, wincing at the stab of pain that comes with speaking.

He brushes his thumb once more across your forehead, flashing a smile that appears to be barely contained. It radiates with relief.

"Hey, Liv. I'm here," he whispers, the unmistakable glisten of tears in his eye, "I'm here."

The shock is enough to overwhelm your senses into speechlessness, enough to momentarily make you forget what it was that made you run all those months ago in the first place. For a moment, you simply stare back into the comfort of your family as you grapple for words that escape you.

"How...?" You manage, and he slides his hand into yours once more.

"You still have me on file as your next of kin," he explains, running his fingertips over the back of your hand, "They called me as soon as things went south. I got here as fast as I could."

His words summon a stab of pain, both physical and emotional, as flashes of your ordeal come rushing back to you. Where was your baby? How long has it been? He said he had gotten there as fast he could, but it's at least a few hour's drive from his place in the city to your local hospital upstate.

"My baby," you whisper, voice welling with untamed emotion, "Please, where is... Is he okay?"

You shake with fear, unshed tears glistening at your brims. You are almost too afraid to hear the answer, and it occurs to you how wild it is that so much can change in less than a day's time. Nick's mouth twitches at the corners, his hand gripping tighter to yours.

"He's perfect," he smiles, and relief floods into your veins like a euphoric high. It's all you can do to keep from sobbing as the first tear spills down your cheek and drops onto your papery gown with a splash.

"Where is he? I want to see him," You repeat, attempting to push yourself up but falling back with a cry of pain as your abdomen screams in protest.

Nick lays a gentle hand on your shoulder, easing you back against the mattress.

"Hey, hey, relax," he soothes, "You get to see him soon, I promise."

Scoping out the source of pain, you lift the sheet and push your gown aside, just enough to reveal the red-stained bandages along the lower line of your stomach.

"There were some complications," Nick answered your confusion without prompting, "They had to do an emergency C-section. By the sound of it, Liv, you barely pulled through."

You consider this for a moment, your eyes wide and distant. When you meet his eyes again, the concern is back.

"But he's okay, right?" You confirm, and he almost chuckles at your insistence.

"Yes," he promises, "He's fine."

Deciding he was telling the truth, you relax your shoulders and settle into the mattress, attempting to process the disorienting series of events. After a few minutes of pin-drop silence, Nick speaks up from your bedside again.

"Your baby..." He begins, eyes fixing on yours, "He's...?"

You nod. His question doesn't require further vocalization. Nick knows enough to put the pieces together. His gaze betray this much as tears threaten their appearance for a second time.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He squeezes your hand emphatically, careful to keep from bordering on accusational, "Why did you disappear like that? I would have been there through it all, I would have helped you. We all would have."

But you simply shake your head.

"I was scared," you tell him, hoping it would be enough to pardon an eight month absence, but knowing it never could be, "When I found out, I didn't... I didn't know what I wanted. It felt like the walls were closing in, so I did the only thing I know how to do."

His eyes lower at your words, heartbreak apparent in the meekness of his touch.

"You ran."

Another minute of silence passes. Neither one of you can find words to fill in the devastating gap of time.

You press your fingertips to the cool glass that separates you from the nursery of sleeping infants. Four rows deep, lines of tiny plastic cribs fill the volume of the room, each containing a different miracle. Different colors, stories, backgrounds. But your eyes only see one.

From behind the cruel barrier, your chest aches with longing. To touch, to hold, to smell. Despite the distance, you already feel so connected to the tiny life behind the glass, the fragile bundle of blankets and warmth that puffs in and out with each passing second. You have never witnessed a more beautiful function of human life.

The fear in the pit of your stomach isn't gone. Like the eye of a storm, its presence lingers in the shape of promise, of wreckage to come. When your eyes trace over the delicate lines of your son's face, even from a distance your mind taunts you with suggestive recognition. The sloped nose and wide jaw ring true with your conjured image of personified fear. When he finally opens his eyes, you're sure you will find tiny flecks of golden dust among the inevitable brown. Your heart thuds against your chest, and you close your eyes against the defeat that knocks on your door. You've spent the last eight months on your own, struggling through the worst depression you've ever felt. You've broken and shattered a million times over, and frankly you feel unequipped for the task at hand.

You feel so close to your mother for the first time in your life. This fear, this crippling, paralyzing ache in your chest... It's everything she felt in all the years she lived with you. The very thought is enough to have you close to packing your bags and running. Again. Far, far away, where you can't be hurt and more importantly, where you can't hurt him. The fear that trumps all is the fear of becoming to this precious, perfect child what your mother was to you.

A slight movement stops you mid thought, all attention zeroing in on your child's tiny mouth as it stretches open into a yawn. You watch as its tiny muscles twitch around the mouth and eyes, adjusting to the new sensations of life on Earth. Without realizing that you have been crying, you feel the hot tear drops splash onto your lap as you break down in the empty hall, alone in your wheelchair. The simple gesture from the infant has brought you to your knees. As you slide your fingers across the glass, you recall the words of the woman who had arisen in you as you took what you had thought to be your last breath. The mother. This baby - wonderful and perfect and full of life that you gave - does not belong to the monster whose actions had summoned him into this world. He is no more like William Lewis than what you are to your father. One look is all it takes to see the worlds, the galaxies, that separate the two.

Life has never come at you in expected ways. It's always curveballs and lemons, dodging bullets and running away. Every good thing that you've ever latched onto has been ripped away, one way or another, arriving at your doorstep like ticket to the promised land and leaving you broken like a city left in flames. It is with this realization, and a cynical twist of irony, that you allow yourself to hope that this might work out. That the one delivery that comes dressed as your worst nightmare might turn out to be your wildest dream.