Wars Will Rage (SVU Fanfic)

41

Well, Nicole thought, it doesn't look too bad.

She pulled her tank top down over her midsection before running out to the kitchen.

~•~

"Where's Olivia?"

"I don't know," Elliot told his daughter. "She left early this morning."

"Why?"

"She was mad."

"About what?"

"Liz," Elliot said, almost raising his voice, but then kept it lowered, "we got in a fight. It's okay. She's just blowing off steam. Ever since Nicole's rape, she's been affected too. And we aren't seeing eye-to-eye on it."

Lizzie was already worried about her current living conditions. She finally felt like she had some sort of mother figure. What if she lost it?

"Okay," the young girl said, not satisfied with the answer, but knowing it would have to do. She ran down the stairs thereafter, sensing her father wanted to be left alone.

~•~

"Just please watch over him today," Olivia pleaded.

"I will. Don't worry, Mom."

"Love you, Nicki," Olivia said. "I'll be home later."

They hung up and Nicole returned her attention to the boy crawling around the basement floor. She made sure to put up barriers so he wouldn't get too far. But he was pretty much just crawling around in circles.

Nicole got down on the floor to play with him. "How are you, Mr. Arron Carter?" she cooed at him. She always called him by his first and middle name, and why she did it, she wasn't sure. But she liked to think of it as a special something the two had together. Arron definitely preferred Nicole to the other siblings. They were close even if Arron was still a baby. He giggled at her question, standing up on his chubby little legs, right in front of her. He hadn't quite figured out how to get around once on his feet, but he had been able to stand for some time. He was able to talk a little too, but only basic words such as 'mama', 'dada', 'no', and 'ya'.

Nicole scooted back and started motioning her brother towards her. "Come here," she said sweetly, watching her brother as he tried to figure out how to get there.

After some pure frustration, that Nicole could see in Arron's scrunched up baby face, he plopped down on his bottom and then crawled to his sister. She couldn't help how cute he was being, and swaddled him up in her arms. She really wanted to get him to walk, though, so she got up on her knees and pulled Arron to his feet. She held him up by his hands, lifting him enough to get one foot off the ground and them shifting him so one would move out and land in front of him. She did this a few times, then let him stand alone. Repeating what she did before and crouched down a few feet in front of him.

"Okay, Arron, come here!" she cooed.

Arron, Nicole could tell, would be a smart kid. Smarter than she was, anyways. After looking at his feet, Arron lifted his right foot and took a little step. He took another, but then fell to his butt.

Nicole laughed and crawled back over and helped him back up, repeating the previous steps over and over until finally, Arron was able to walk the couple of feet between himself and Nicole.

The little boy waddled right up to his sister and fell on her in a hug. Nicole cheered for him, then tickled him until he laughed. The laugh was so full of innocence, instantly making Nicole's mood better.

Their moment was interrupted when Nicole's cell rang. It was Olivia. Picking up Arron, she plopped down on the couch, and had Arron lay across her.

"Hey, Momma," Nicole said once she answered.

"Hey, baby. How's it going?"

"Good. Arron's learning to walk finally."

"And I'm missing it? Are you teaching your brother to walk? That's my job!"

"You got him to stand up. And we were just practicing. He can't walk that far right now. A few steps."

"Well, still! That's my last baby!"

Nicole knew her mother wasn't mad. Just yelling at her in a joking way. So Nicole joked back. "As far as you know..."

"I promise you, no more babies."

"Mhm..."

"Nicole! I swear. Arron wasn't even supposed to happen."

"From what I know, none of us were planned. You got pregnant with me in college."

"And I still went through school for you! We wanted a second child, so we wanted Zach, just not at that time. Paige was not really planned. At all. But Arron was really not planned. But we love all of you."

"So is that why you called?"

"No, I just wanted to see how everyone was." Olivia was silent for a moment, then almost nervously asked, "Where's Elliot?"

"He said he got called out on a case."

"Me and him both had the weekend off call. If it was an emergency I would've gotten called in too."

Nicole could sense that that was not a good sign. By telling her mother that Elliot was out, she felt it would cause another argument.

"Well..." Nicole said, unable to come up with a way to save the conversation.

"It's okay, baby. I'll call him. Is everyone else okay, right now?"

"Yeah, we're good. Arron, wanna talk to mommy?"

Nicole held the phone to Arron's ear and Nicole repeated, "it's mommy!"

"Mama!" Arron said into the phone.

"Hi, my baby!"

After a little conversation on the phone, Olivia hung up with her children. Nicole could tell trouble would start. She just hoped it would blow over quickly.

•••

Sorry for my lack of updates. School is over in TWO WEEKS!!!! Trust me, it can't come soon enough! Once I'm out of school I will definitely update more! I hope you guys still like these chapters, I'm trying to pull inspiration from my studying-for-finals brain. Vote and comment!