In times of great pain, it was easy for Olivia to forget her strengths. Even in the handful of moments that she thought her life would end, she held onto what made her strong. It was always the faces. The voices. They stayed with her, they fought for her. 

The faces of the people she had helped never faded. They just went... quiet. Their voices in her head, reminding her of what she had done to help them, they slowly but surely fell silent. She saw their faces, their lips moving but no sound. 

She remembered every face, it made her a good cop. Depending on the survivors to remind her of her durability was her downfall. 

She was forgetting it all.

Her eyes drifted over to the orange prescription bottle on her countertop. One of what would likely be hundreds in the future. She wasn't sure if it was a customary action or if her doctors just saw her as depressed, but they had called in a script for an anti-depressant. As soon as she cracked the white pharmacy bag open, she was forced to ask herself if she would ever actually take them.

Would it end the numbness that she felt? Would she even want the numbness to end? She worked in trauma, she knew that feeling numb was the mind and the body's way of protecting itself. The lack of feeling anything at all wasn't so bad. She had expected to feel more emotional pain than she actually did. But now she was left to weigh the pros and the cons. Was feeling nothing at all worse than feeling everything?

The first night, the little purple pill of Sertraline sat in her palm for longer than she'd have liked to admit. The alarm clock next to her bed had flashed from 9:33 to 10:14 and the pill was still in her resting against the ridges of her palm. All she could do was stare at it while the glass of water on her nightstand turned lukewarm. 

Maybe it wouldn't force her to feel the pain that was currently numbed. Maybe she could chase the feelings she had before. The doctor's words bounced between her eardrums for days. 

"The life you had before isn't coming back. You'll have to stop chasing it eventually."

She didn't want to stop chasing it. She never wanted to stop. That would mean she was no longer chasing herself and she desperately wanted herself to come back. The Olivia Benson she knew was wandering in the depths of some deep dark cave somewhere, a mindless placebo in her place. Even auto-pilot became exhausting. 

Could the pills do that? Could they bring her back without awakening the sleeping bomb of negative emotions inside of her? Could it lift the psychological novocaine that was protecting her without breaking her in the process?

By the time the clock had ticked 10:15 that night, she had taken a deep breath and swallowed the pill. 

What the hell, right? 

But three days had passed and she was starting to notice that the medication was changing her. She knew its full effects wouldn't come in for a good two weeks, but the smaller things were becoming apparent.

Memory loss. 

Google had told her it was a common side effect. Forgetfulness in small doses. Where she placed her phone, why she walked into her kitchen, what her last thought was. So short term that if she wasn't sitting in silence all day with nothing but her thoughts, she wouldn't have even noticed. 

For the first time since her diagnosis, she finally felt something. It wasn't from the pills finding a way to unlock her brain and letting her raw emotions flow. It was frustration from the simple fact that she couldn't focus. She couldn't remember what the voices of the victims in her head were saying. Hell, she could barely remember if she had done the simplest things that she had set out to do an hour previous. 

Nothing took her job away from her. Nothing. But cancer and its friends seemed to be stronger than she had anticipated, and the fight hadn't even started yet. The collateral damage of something like a fucking anti-depressant medication to help her through her fight, that was just the beginning. She knew it would be. She couldn't see the future but somehow it seemed so clear of what the path was ahead of her. 

She couldn't forget those voices, she needed them. She couldn't forget those faces, they gave her more reason than anything in the world. She had found one thing in her life that gave her a passion, a passion that most people spent their whole lives waiting to find. How dare it be taken away. How dare it be that the universe decides one day that the wind would blow in a different direction and she would lose the one thing that kept her stronger than ever. She loved her passion. She loved the fact that she could take the pain that boiled inside her and work so damn hard to turn it into something better; something with worth. If she couldn't have that, then why was the pain even there? Why would she crack every bone in her body if it would help her harness that pain and turn it into passion if she couldn't even have that? 

If she didn't have passion, she had nothing. Nothing worthwhile. Everything she ever loved or ever would love had to be rooted in passion. Without it, she was just a shell. 

Within those days of silence and self-reflection, it started to feel like half of the battle was the ability to not give in. If she gave into it all, it would be so easy. Easy wasn't a choice in this fight. Giving in meant giving up. But oh how easy it would be to drift away into blissful ignorance and let the world float behind her in the rearview mirror. Her head could finally rest against her pillow with ease. She wasn't a quitter. She was branded as a survivor at birth. 

If she could just close her eyes, she wouldn't need to be a survivor anymore. She'd never wanted to be one. It made her a good cop, great with victims, but at the end of the day, it made for a lousy life. A difficult life that part of her had asked to live and part of her didn't. She'd picked her line of work, she'd chosen to stay at SVU despite the average tour being less than two years. She would never deny that she had asked for that. But the rest? That wasn't decided by her.

It came down to a choice. Be a survivor.

Or don't. 

Her thoughts stopped mid-way when a knock on her door had pulled her attention. With a little more energy than the days before, she managed to push herself off of the couch and towards the door. "Fin?" she whispered, seeing his familiar face through the peephole. She unlatched the lock on the door and in front of her stood her colleague with a bag of food in his hands. 

"Must be one nasty ass 'cold' you've got in order to be gone for almost two weeks." he grinned, letting himself into her apartment. She shut the door behind him and allowed herself the weakest smile. She hated to admit it, but she appreciated the familiarity. Still, a cloud hung over her head when she realized he still had no clue. 

A cold. Ironic. 

"Well, if I didn't miss work, you wouldn't bring me food. I guess I had to take one for the team," she lightly joked, lazily sauntering back into the apartment. "Who sent you? Cragen or Elliot?" 

"What, I can't drop by to see my friend without prompting? Damn, I see how it is." he chuckled, setting the bag down on her countertop. She stared at him silently, her brows raised with unwavering suspicion. "Fine. It was Cragen. He said that Elliot hadn't talked to you so he sent me, but I brought soup to make up for it." he said, weakly pointing at the bag. She had to admit, even with a nonexistent appetite, the logo of her favorite Vietnamese restaurant on the bag made her mouth water. 

She pulled out a barstool to sit on while he pulled out the two bowls of pho and chopsticks. He slid one of the bowls across the granite in her direction before sitting on the opposite stool. The silence had just begun to turn overwhelming before he spoke first. "We miss you, y'know. You still coming back in a few days?" 

She pondered the question for a brief second. Despite how she usually felt when absent from work, she was actually dreading her return. Most of the time, her leave of absence was forced. Usually, a recommended vacation by Cragen so he wouldn't have to put a suspension in her jacket. She poked the noodles with the chopsticks, trying to pull a satisfiable answer out of her ass as quickly as possible. "I think, yeah."

Fin nodded quietly, playing with his food just as she had been doing. "We all need time off, Liv," he whispered in the rare voice he used to comfort someone. "But you're scaring me half to death. Your last case was pretty cut and dry. You won't talk to Cragen or even Elliot. Casey says she's talked to you a few times but I'm not even sure if she knows what's going on. Not that it's any of our business, but we care about you, baby girl."

They cared about her so much and all she could do was pout into her food. She loved the care they had for her and everyone else in the squad, but it came with guilt. She'd thought it at least a hundred times already, she didn't want to put this on their shoulders. It was heavy enough on her own, she couldn't pass this off for the rest of the squad to help her carry. They didn't deserve that. "I appreciate that, Fin." she stopped, debating on what to say next. How far should she go? Should she spill her guts or keep it locked in once more? "I really do. You're a good friend."

He leaned in closer to her from across the kitchen island. "You're family. We wanna help you, no matter what the problem is. If you don't feel comfortable telling us what's going on inside your head, that's fine. I get it. I just want you to know that whatever it is, we're here for you, Liv. That's what family does. We got your back." 

Before she could stop herself or at least scold herself, tears welled up uncontrollably in her eyes. She rolled her head, finally looking up at him with a quivering lip. She wanted to register the last few moments on his face before she'd have to change it all. The purity that was bound to drop and shatter. Their friendship, their work relationship, the manner in which he viewed her. It would all change in a matter of seconds, just like her life did. 

"Lymph node-positive invasive ductal carcinoma," she whispered, gulping away the lump in her throat as soon as the words left her lips.

He stared at her with knitted brows for a moment, trying to understand what she was saying. "Carcino—" he stopped, his brows lifting as the realization hit him. That. That was the face she had never wished to see. The hollow emptiness behind his dark eyes that took but a second to overcome his entire face. His jaw had fallen in the process and each moment for her was more agonizing than the last. He shook his head slowly and then all at once, as if he were trying to reverse the last six seconds of his life "No," he breathed.

Her eyes shut as she bit down on her lip to stop an oncoming outward sob. Gulping heavily, she was able to ward off the cry that nearly escaped. With a soft nod, she confirmed his fears. Yeah, that's the one. The one that nobody saw coming. "Cancer?" 

She should've at least expected the speechlessness, but the silence that seeped into her bones was paralyzing. She wanted him to say something, anything at all to break up the charged atmosphere that threatened to fall apart at any given moment. 

Was cancer the hell she was living in? Or was it the fact that every single day, they saw something new and more heinous than the last? It had driven them all far enough to forget that things like cancer even existed. Their radars weren't designed to see the terrible amongst other terror. Was that hell? 

Which was the lesser of two evils? 

The hurt in his eyes was scalding on her skin. In all her years beside him, she had never seen him wear such a grueling expression. Suddenly, pieces of the puzzle clicked for him. Why she was absent, why nobody could get in touch with her, why she refused to talk to someone like Elliot even. She wanted to hide the fact that she was breaking apart. But they did what family was supposed to do; they broke the surface. With a sledgehammer in hand, they had broken her shields apart.

Surely they'd regret it once they saw what was beneath.

The rest of their lunch was painfully quiet which eventually resulted in a loss of appetite. Everything after that was a hazy fog of lost memories. 

Yet, long after he was gone from the apartment, the impression that Fin had left had stayed with her. Her heart was falling to pieces as the sound of his soft-spoken whisper of 'no' had replayed in her head. She heard it on repeat, echoing throughout every room she walked into. As the hours of the night drew onward, the echo changed. She could hear it in all of their voices now. The people who she would eventually have to tell, their voices all spoke the same in her head. 

"No."

If she could choose to hear anything, she would've chosen the sound of her own breathing, since she was entirely certain she wasn't breathing at all. She wanted to hear it, to receive the reassurance that her lungs were still working and her feet were still planted on the ground. 

"No!"

As if it were that easy. To just deny it from the world. Turning a blind eye to the universe and refusing to acknowledge it. She had been there already. Denial was a bitch, but an integral part of the process. 

Although she had tried to push the intrusive thoughts away, the idea of telling Elliot was reaching closer to the surface. She couldn't block it out, especially not now. Not after seeing how it had affected Fin. Elliot would be much worse. Not that Elliot meant more than Fin, but Elliot was her... well, he was her partner. In his own words, for better or for worse.

Did that count in sickness and in health too? 

He was an astronomical part of her life. He was her every day and her every night. He was the face across her desk and the arm that caught her when she fell. She could already picture his face, hear how loud his heart would crack in his chest. The air would no doubt escape his lungs faster than he could breathe it in. Would his world crumble too? Or was that just another part of the raw deal? Her world shatters, his doesn't. 

It was heartbreak waiting to happen and she felt more than responsible. 

Suddenly, the newly familiar sensation of forgetting something struck her. Why had she walked into her bedroom? She glanced around the room, growing more frustrated than the previous second. She racked her brain, begging for it to just give her the answer; the stupidly basic question of why the hell she was standing at the foot of her bed, and the inconsequential answer. hadn't she earned that? Just one fucking answer?  

Her fists clenched at her hips, she was tired of forgetting. The voices of the people she had saved were turning into the soft sympathetic whispers of the people she loved. They were spinning around her, overlapping one another. 

Her head whipped around, spotting the bottle on her bedside table. A flare of rage swarmed her veins. Those stupid fucking pills. Those stupid fucking tumors. The stupid fucking memory loss. Before she knew it, her fist gripped the bottle and flung it across the wall and a horrendous roar ripped from her lungs, taking all of her oxygen with it. As the plastic met the plaster, the orange shards of the bottle fell to the floor, clattering along with the dozen violet-hued pills. 

"A broken string of pearls drops to the floor at the same time the drops of rain will fall to the ground. But I am not infinite as the pattern repeats."

Like fucking pearls.

The voices of her friends inside of her head became louder as she sunk to her knees, not even trying to conceal the tears that were falling. Vicious sobs errupted from within her, but the swarming sound of disappointment and sympathy only grew. 

Casey looked as if she had gone numb. Cragen had searched for some deeper meaning when she asked for a vacation, as if the answer was in her face somewhere, he just had to look in the right place. Just another piece of Fin had broken off into himself, another fatality of a fraction of his soul. The rest would only get worse. Huang would try to stay professional while hiding his sadness, he was the shrink but she could read him easily enough by now. Munch wouldn't show it but he'd shed a tear behind closed doors where nobody could hear or see. Melinda would be shattered on a different level, knowing the scientific side of what Olivia was up against. Once Cragen knew, he'd feel guilty for not being able to protect her from something like this, as if she were one of his own children.

Then Elliot. 

God, she wanted to throw up. If she hadn't been clutching her chest with her fist, she could have. Elliot would undoubtedly shatter the rest of her yet-unbroken self. The remainder of the light would go out of his eyes; the light he had worked so hard to keep shining within himself. She knew him, she knew that he'd start to panic and his anger and sadness would coalesce into a volatile mixture. His unpredictability would take over, just as it always did. Would anger win? His fist hitting the ground and shattering it into a thousand pieces? Or would he fall silent, his own tears streaming as all of the words in the English dictionary would suddenly become so far out of reach? 

All while each of them quietly whispered their denial into the silence. "No," But the silence would grow louder while it swallowed her whole. She would break so many people. 

"No," "No,"  "No," "No,"

With tears still wet in her eyes, she conjured the strength to crawl over the mess of shredded plastic and pills. One by one, she separated them, careful not to cut herself until her palm held the answer she was looking for. So many answers within each compressed tablet.

Forgetting, oh how easy it could be if she allowed it. Maybe the memory loss was the only way to burn the image of destruction out of her mind. The tears, the whispers, the shredded souls that she would take with her. Go away.

She made her way back to sitting on the edge of her bed, dropping the fist full of pills on the side table. With one left remaining in her hand, she stopped to stare down at it. Her eyes scanned over the engravings that meant absolutely nothing to her. Someone, somewhere out there knew exactly how the little purple pill worked and had memorized every millisecond of action it would take upon her neurons. 

She didn't want this. No.

Yes. She did. 

The voices were arguing and she wasn't sure who was winning. She didn't care. The voices of the people she had saved were clashing loudly against the voices of those who had saved her. None of it mattered anymore. She wanted silence.

She grabbed the glass of water and swallowed it down. 

Her head hit the pillow as she rolled into bed, her splayed auburn hair contrasting with the whiteness of the sheet. The realization had dawned on her, born from never-ending exhaustion and wrenching heartache.

Maybe, just maybe, forgetting wasn't such a bad thing. 

Forgetting was easy; painless. 

It wasn't bad at all. 

Forgetting would solve everything.