Archive of Our Own

Work Text

Dani shook the pack of cigarettes in her coat pocket anxiously. It had been three weeks since she had puffed one, and she didn't want to break it today. But today, of all days, was a day where she felt like she need one the most. Needed that nicotine to flood her system, make her brain fuzzy, take away a little bit of the pain. She sighed, leaning against the brick wall of her work building, staring up at the sky. She took the white and blue container out, rolling it over and over in her palm. She had texted Benson that she just needed to step out for a quick break. She couldn't be long. They had a case after all, that she was needed for. Of course, it just had to be on today. Of all days. She closed her eyes and flicked the lid of the small box open"Aye, you really shouldn't be smokin those," a man's voice interrupted her thoughts, a thick Brooklyn accent breaking through the wall of angst that had surrounded her. Dani opened her eyes, dropping the pack discretely back into the pocket of her black leather jacket, and glancing over at where the voice had come from. A man, blonde, probably a little more than her own age of twenty six, stood there, hands on his hips. He was wearing a jacket, tan and long, and underneath, a suit and a thin blue tie. And a stupid mustache that Dani figured he was only using to make him look older. His blonde hair was slicked to the side, and he had a young air about him. He was staring at her, eyes going back and forth between the hand in her jacket pocket, and her brown eyes."What are you looking at?" She quipped back. No accent for her. Born and raised in Seattle. She moved away, as soon as she could. She looked him square in his blue eyes. "Really none of your business, what I do or don't do." She wasn't thinking about who he was, or what he was doing outside her place of work--people came there all the time, for all sorts of reasons. She was thinking about how someone had stopped her, stopped her when she was about to break her longest streak yet. But, what he didn't know, what he didn't even think to know, that today, of all days, was not the day to get in Dani Danver's way."Just looking at a woman who wants to put a cancer stick in between her pretty lips," the guy grinned, nodding at her pocket. "No reason to be risking your life for something like that." Dani rolled her eyes, giving him the side eye once more. "Don't you know it's rude, not to mind your damn own business?" She asked flatly, taking the pack out of her pocket simply out of spite, shaking it a couple times, hearing the full pack rattle around. She hadn't even flipped a lucky yet. She hadn't even pulled off the shiny cellophane. So much temptation, in one little rectangular packet. "Woah, woah woah, take it easy," he threw his hands up, as if he were surrendering to her. "Didn't mean to step on any toes," and then he muttered something under his breath that she couldn't quite catch.Dani sighed, shoving the pack back into her pocket. "You've ruined the mood anyways. Congrats," she scoffed, pushing past him, and through the door back into the 16th Precinct, letting the heavy door slam behind her. Of course, it had to be today. Of all fucking days.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dani trudged to her desk, the annoyance clearly displayed on her face. Dani had always worn her emotions like an article of clothing, clear and apparent to all around her. Of course, today was no different, as much as she tried to mask it."Hey, Dani, everyone good?" Amanda pushed back her rolling chair, looking over at Dani as the woman flopped down into her chair. "Yea, fine. Just some prick on the street trying to tell me how to run my life." she rolled her eyes, tapping on the space bar of her keyboard twice, causing the screen to light up. "So, the usual for around here, ya know?" she glanced back over at Amanda Rollings, one of her closest friends since she moved here. Which wasn't saying much, seeing as Dani didn't really "do" close, and by friends she meant every now and then they saw a movie or exchanged books. Texted each other about stupid shit. Nothing all that endearing.Amanda rolled her eyes. "Men. Shocker," she turned back to her own computer, picking up her cellphone and looking at a message that had popped up on the screen. She quickly sighed and swiped it away, only furthering the point of her previous comment. "Anyways, it's good that you're back in. The Boss is almost here, she's going to want a rundown of this morning." Ah yes, this morning. When they had gone to bring in an underage girl found with a very overaged man, one that Amaro had caught, while he was stuck on cop duty. When they were bringing her in, they got shot at. Dani, Amanda, and Fin. "Ah, yea, not too surprised on that one. Should we meet her at the door? Be on top of the ball today?" Dani asked, kicking her feet up on her desk and glancing over at Amanda. It was hard, today of all days, to make effort. Even harder when they were working on a case with kidnapped girls. At least, Fin had ended up getting the shooter and bringing him in. Silver linings. Well. He was in the hospital in the prison, in custody. "Yea, let's go. You got the file?" Amanda called back, already on her way to the hall. Dani held up the manila folder and gave it a small, affirming wave. It was time to get down to business.It wasn't mere minutes that Olivia Benson, their Boss in charge of the Special Victims Unit, came briskly walking into the office, black handbag in the crook of her elbow. "Rollins, Danvers, let's hear the run down," she said, giving them each a nod in greeting. Dani wondered if she remembered what today was, aside from another day of SVU business. She wondered if she remembered all those years ago, a tiny brunette girl, locked away in a cabin in upstate New York. Dani shook her head, clearing out the memories. "The girl we brought in, her name is Luna," Dani nodded, answering Olivia's question. "She's waiting in Interview, whenever we're ready. She looks pretty....shaken up. I'm not sure how willing to talk she is right now." Detective Benson nodded. "Very understandable, she's has quite the morning, and that's only including the stuff we know about. Danvers, I want you in the interview room with me." She gave Dani a look of understanding, and Dani knew for sure that Olivia did remember, she did remember the events of eighteen years ago. Sweat pricked at her palms. "So," Olivia continued, "How did they knew where you were picking her up?" "Amaro," Rollins began, taking a deep breath, "Amaro thinks that they were followed from the moment they picked her up. He was...he was the leading officer on the case." Dani looked down at her feet as Amanda spoke. Nick was a touchy subject around the officer lately, what with his demotion to working the streets. And Dani knew how close Amanda and Nick had been, before. Before all of this happened. Before things started top get messy. "They shot at cops right outside of the station?" An all-too-familiar voice hit Dani's ears and she flinched, turning and looking behind her. "Must have wanted ya to know they're crazy." Dani froze, her eyes traveling past the shiny shoes on the floor all the way up to the man's face. "So you must be my new detective," she heard Olivia say, as she looked up and up, right into the face of the man from outside. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him, closer now. The same exact man. New detective...no. Not this guy. "Dominick Carisi, Jr," he grinned down at Dani, chewing on a piece of gum as he stuck out one of his hands for her to shake, a silver watchband glinting in the lights above them. "You can call me Sonny."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

18 years ago Anna Danielle Danvers sat on a small, blue couch in her grandmother's living room, looking at her shoes. They were black and white, with Buzz Lightyear on the sides. They lit up when she walked. Her father had bought them for her as a present after her parents' divorce was finished, to show her he would still be around. That's what Daddy had promised, kneeling in front of the small girl, explaining they would get to spend one weekend together a month. One weekend. That was so little time, so far apart. That was what the divorce court had decided, they didn't ask the daughter for her input. She would have wanted more time. She would have wanted Daddy and Mom back together, she would have asked cupid to come down and hit them with their arrow again and make all the yelling stop. She would have wanted a happy family again. But her Mom stayed in their home in Seattle, and Daddy moved across the country to New York. This was her weekend to see him.But it was Saturday morning and he wasn't here to pick her up. She had waited at the big bay window of the house that belonged to her grandmother (Grandma had gone to Bridge Club, whatever that was). Her Mom had flown out with her to New York from Seattle, so that she could see her dad. They had done this two times already and he always showed up. He was always on time, never late. His girlfriend, the weird one with the orange hair had shown up in her rusty, blue truck, looking like she had had one too many coffees. Her eyes were all bulgy and weird, and the little girl didn't like it. Her mother hadn't like it either. So she told Anna to stay on the couch and asked the lady to leave. To just leave her and her daughter alone. But the lady, she hadn't listened. They started yelling, louder than anything Anna remembered. The lady had pulled out a big, shiny knife, and she had stabbed Anna's mother, in the stomach. Lots and lots of times. There was so much blood everywhere. Anna had stayed on the couch, looking down at her sneakers, silently crying. The woman threatened her, said if she screamed she would be next. So Anna sat, hands in her lap, the little eight year old listening to her mother's last words, telling her everything would be okay, that it would be just fine. She didn't know what to do. She knew the logical thing was to call 911. That was what people told her to do in emergencies, and this was an emergency. But the lady...her Daddy's girlfriend, had that big knife, and Anna knew if she did the wrong thing, she'd end up on the kitchen floor with her Mom. And she was scared. Really scared. The last time she remembered being this scared...she thought there was a scary monster living in her closet. That was two years ago. And this trumped that, by a lot. So she sat on the couch and waited, waited for the lady to tell her what she wanted her to do next. She hadn't been in the living room for a few minutes but Anna dared not get up or move a muscle. She was too scared that if she moved, she would be killed. She didn't want to die. Her class was supposed to go on a trip to the zoo in two weeks. The Seattle Zoo! That was a big deal. She didn't want to miss it. But she couldn't go now...now cause her Mom couldn't sign her permission slip.She wanted to cry but she was too scared to do it. Suddenly there were footsteps. Anna looked up from her shoes and her Daddy's girlfriend was standing there, holding her blue backpack. It looked really full. "Alright, little one, you and I are going on a road trip. Then your Daddy is going to come get ya, okay?" she grinned this crazy big grin. "I've got your stuff all packed already, so lets go to the car. You've already got your shoes on, so that's good." Anna Danvers got up and followed the lady, who still held the knife. They walked right past her mother's body on the floor, as if she wasn't even there. Anna didn't dare look back.  Anna sat, buckled in, on the passenger side of the truck as they drove quickly along the highway, disappearing up, up, into the trees as they drove. Anna didn't recognize any of her surroundings here, but the trees were nice. She wanted to ask where they were going, but the knife was still in the car. Not for long. After there were no cars on the road, her Daddy's girlfriend rolled down the window and chucked the knife into a ditch. Anna watched it go sailing away. She was a little less scared now. Only a little. "Where are we going?" She asked quietly, looking down at her shoes again, hands in her lap. She was scared to look up at the woman, the woman who hurt her mom. "Well, sweetie, we're going to this big cabin up in the woods. I think you'll like it. Lot's of cute deer. No one to bother us. Then your Daddy will come visit, won't that be nice?" The lady replied, and Anna saw her squeeze the steering wheel out of the corner of her eyes. "Yea," she replied quietly. "I am supposed to see him today. I'm excited to see him, I don't see him a lot." She looked out the window, watching the landscape wiz by. Her Daddy was coming. He would make this all right. Even if he didn't love her Mom any more, he would never ever let anyone hurt her, Anna was pretty sure of that. He would make everything all better again. Then she could go home to Seattle, cause she wasn't really sure she liked New York all that much.  After a while, they stopped at a gas station. "I need to pee," Anna said quietly, looking over at the orange haired lady for the first time. "Can I?" She undid her seatbelt hopefully, ready to slide out of the car. The orange lady looked at the gas pump, then back at that girl, sighing. "Yea, that's fine. Just don't talk to anyone. Just in and out, okay?" Anna nodded, tugging at the winter cap on her head, pulling it snug over her ears. The eight year old walked quietly into the gas station and into the bathroom. She didn't look at the girl behind the register, she didn't look at any of the customers in the store. She wondered if there was a place she could hide here, but she was still scared. What if the lady had another knife? Or what if she hurt her Daddy? She couldn't let that happen. So she went the bathroom, she washed her hands, and she started to walk back out of the store, when she saw the camera. It was up in the corner, and little, with a itty bitty red light blinking. One on, one off, one on, one off. She looked up at the camera and waved, frowning. She watched that little red light blink as she lifted her winter cap off her head and dropped it to the floor. Bread crumbs, for when her grandma came looking. Someone would look for her, right? Then she breezed out the door, long brown hair flowing out behind her, now that it was free from the hat. She was hoping the lady would be too busy to notice it was missing. If she noticed, Anna would have to lie. She had never been a very good liar. Her emotions always had a way of playing on her face.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Date
"You?" Dani asked, raising an eyebrow, looking at his hand, which she was decidedly not shaking. She glanced back over at Liv. "Why is he here?" She asked her Boss, eyes flicking back over towards the man with annoyance. There was no reason for a man like him to be parading around their office. And not today, not today of all days. Today was not the day to be on her bad side."Well, Detective Danvers, remember that request I put in? For an experienced, empathetic detective to join our squad?" Olivia answered, looking Sonny up and down, "I'm guessing this is him." "Yes, M'am," Sonny grinned, "Experienced, as request, and I've got sensitive and moody sides too. Can really rock the whole 'empathy' thing." He shoved his hands back into his pockets, trying to casually play off the fact that the woman from outside, Detective Danvers, hadn't even accepted a handshake. What was her problem exactly? All he had done was try and give her some healthy advise, pretty sure he hadn't overstepped his bounds. He just wanted to make a good impression here, stop bouncing around between jobs."Great," Dani muttered to herself before brushing past them, "Just need to grab a few things from my desk," she called out over her shoulder, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets once more. Not today, not today, not today. She shoved the memories deep into the back of her mind. She had work to do, she could let it out later. This was going to be a long couple months of flashbacks and painful memories, after all. If she didn't get herself straightened out now, she'd be a wreck the next coming weeks. Reaching her desk, she took a deep breath, leaning on the wood. She grabbed an ibuprofen from her drawer and swallowed it with her coffee. Then she grabbed her pen and notepad, turning around and plastering a thin smile on her lips, looking back at Liv. "Let's do this," she muttered to herself, walking forward and towards the interview room.Interview was one of Dani's least and most liked locations at work. It was a delicate balance of like and dislike. On one hand, so many terrible, horrible stories were shared in the small, brick room with one window and a desk, with that one way mirror on the other side. But on the other hand, the room was a beacon of truth. Answers; found. Stories; brought to the light. It was a tangled web, but it was her web. They had the power to find the truth, if they worked hard enough. "Hey Carisi," Olivia called out at the two women headed towards Interview, "You're with us on this one. Follow my lead or you'll be right back through the revolving door, got it?" "Loud and clear," Sonny replied, cracking his knuckles as he followed the women. All he wanted was a chance to prove himself, and this interview, this might be that very chance. He would pull out all the stops, show them that he was worth having around. Dani wasn't so sure she wanted him there, interrupting her balance of like and dislike. Teetering the scales, that one was. But for the sake of her job, she would put up with it, especially right now. She needed Liv to know she could still handle her job during this time of the year. So, politely, Dani held open the door for Sonny, watching him evenly as she did so. But, surprisingly, he held his hands up in protest. When she raised one eyebrow at him, he simply replied, "Ladies first, chivalry ain't dead, ya know?" and gave her a cheesy grin. Dani rolled her eyes at him, but as she turned to enter, she smirked, just ever so slightly. He was still and idiot though.Dani took a seat away from the desk, letting Sonny sit beside Liv this time. Learn the ropes on his first day and what not. She would take notes, speak when she felt needed. She crossed one black pant leg over the other and tucked her pen behind her ear, looking at the young girl in front of her. The girl, Luna, young, Latino, beautiful curly hair, had been brought in by one of the bookies. She was still wearing the same sparkly crop top and a floral skirt that she had been wearing when they scooped her up. Dani wondered if she was cold. She had a feeling she was, but didn't want to say anything. "Liv, give me two seconds, okay?" she said with a small smile and a nod, getting back up out of the room and grabbing one of the blankets they kept in the locker space, for exactly this reason. The large navy square would warm her up, and hopefully help gain some trust. When she quietly entered Interview, Sonny and Liv had already started speaking with her. Liv turned around at the sound of the door and gave her a grim look, nodding her head towards Carisi, who was currently speaking. Dani gently offered her the blanket and a small smile, before sitting back in her seat, watching Sonny as he spoke to the girl, who was wrapping the blanket around her like a shroud. "I want you to get this into your head. That was no warning shot back there. Your Papi green lit your ass, they're going to keep coming for you until they find you," he hit his index finger down on the desk in front of them, causing Luna to jump slightly, her brown eyes widening. Dani's mouth dropped open as she stared at Sonny. What the actual fuck was his plan here? "Here's the thing," he continued on, leaning back in his chair now and crossing his arms over his chest. "I've got a pretty good idea of how this situation is going to go down. You've only got one good option. T-nonimmigrant status for trafficked girls. You get a new name, new identity, and the keys to the United States." He eyed her, picking at one of his nails as he did so. "I can help you with that. I've got some friends in high places, can pull some strings. But you've got to be willing to make a statement for us." Luna looked at him, then at Liv, then back at Dani, her eyes landing on the woman who had given her the blanket. "Is he telling the truth? Can you help?" Dani sighed, tugging at one of her sleeves, before looking in the eyes. "We can help you Luna, but we need you to help us. Work with us, please." While she disagreed with everything that Sonny had just pretended to offer (how would he have the power to get her T status?), they did need Luna to trust them, to help them help her. She'd have it out with him later. All she needed to do now was keep the anger from flashing over her eyes. So she broke her gaze from Luna and picked up her paper, scribbling away fake notes. "Alright everyone, lets give Luna a moment to think and we'll go grab her something to drink, yea?" Olivia suggested. Dani didn't have to be told twice. She nodded, grabbing her notepad and sliding out of the room, before her emotions gave her away to Luna. From outside, she would never hear what Dani said, never hear it when she gave Sonny a piece of her mind. First day there and he already thinks he can run the interview session? And make false promises? When they were out in the hall, Liv sighed. "That was a pretty bold move," She addressed Carisi. "Promising her T status like that, when we both know you don't have the pull." Dani whirled around to face him, the anger finally blazing across her face. "What are you, some kind of immigration lawyer?" Liv's eyes widened, and she looked back and forth between the two. "Working on it. Taking night classes at Fordham Law," he smiled, still chewing that piece of gum in his left cheek. "I did a paper, last term, studying T Non-immigrant status. Luna's a perfect candidate." Dani scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "What, you write one paper and now you're the expert? What do you think is going to happen when she finds out we can't do a damn thing to get her what you promised?" She was angry. Livid. Especially today. That poor girl was probably swooped up from her home, away from her family. "Doesn't matter, cause right now she believes me. And right now, she's talking, she's telling us we need to know," Sonny defended himself. Was this girl always so damn angry? From the moment they had met, it was like she disliked him, for no good reason at all. Dani sighed, pushing back her brown hair from her forehead, shaking her head at him. "That's where you're wrong Sonny, it matters. It matters every time." she dropped her arms to her side and turned back around. "I'm taking a smoke break," she stopped at her desk, grabbing the small blue box, rubbing the cellophane on it nervously. "This time, I don't want any lectures, thanks." The door banged shut behind her, leaving Sonny Carisi Jr thinking about what she had just said.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Outside, Dani tapped the pack anxiously against her thigh, she hadn't even gotten as far as opening the box, pulling off the shiny plastic. Every time she tried, all she could picture was Sonny Carisi’s stupid voice telling her not to stick a cancer stick between her red lips. Her pretty lips, is what he had (annoyingly) said. Stupid. A flirt, for sure. She was quite certain the entire office would confirm that over the next week. Frustrated, she shoved the pack back into her pocket and took out her iPhone, pulling up an unread message from Johnny, her most recent boyfriend. Things were a little on the rocky side of the relationship right now, she had been freezing him out for a bit. All he could talk about recently was how in the future, she’d give up her job and become a housewife and mother. Not exactly Dani’s sort of lifestyle. Not exactly something she would ever be able to do. If she didn't have work, she would lose her mind. Especially during times like these. How could he expect her to sit at home watching children when her mind was itching and she didn't even remember what it was like to have a parent? Not that he could expect her to do anything. He didn't know, about her past. Of course he didn't, that wasn't the point. But she wanted someone to talk to right now, so she pulled up that stupid unread message.
Come on, Dani. How long are ya gonna keep me in the doghouse?
Forever, she thought to herself, but she didn't type it. And she could. Keep him on read forever. It'd be no loss to her. The nice thing about Johnny, though, was that he wasn't in her job field, so she never had to bring work home. And there was no chance of him knowing why today had her so fucked up. She knew he would never spend hours pouring over case files, because he didn't have access to them to begin with. It was an easy, comfortable balance. He didn't ask questions, so she didn't answer them. Ever.Then again, he didn't ask questions. He never seemed to care about who she was, who she used to be, how she got to where she was today. If he was on a game show and the million dollar question was "what town did Dani Danvers grow up in?" he would lose the money right there. Hands down. Because she knew for damn sure he had never asked her about her home life.Dani sighed and thumbed out a quick, easy text. Busy day. Busy week. Maybe drinks later?"It sure didn't take him long to reply. It never did. It was like he was constantly waiting for that little message box to tick to one, for Dani's name to pop up on his screen. Like a Labrador. It was a little weird, honestly. A little too needy for her liking, but at least she knew if she sent out a text it wouldn't just be forever floating out there in the ether, living in the land of no response. He had never kept her on read. So yea, there were a few things she tolerated about Johnny. But did the good really outweigh the bad? She shoved her phone back into her pocket, next to the unopened packet of cigarettes. If he could survive her today, then, maybe, maybe the good won.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Work had always been something that helped Dani make it through the day, especially on days like today. These next few months would be the ones that would be the hardest of the year, and they were, every single year. Every single year at this time, her coworkers all noticed how suddenly passionate the normally laid-back and sarcastic brunette became, throwing herself into cases which an uncharacteristic zeal. Today was going to be no different, even if she had to interact with the man who had royally gotten on her bad side. If that was what Liv wanted her to do, she would do it. So she found Liv, Fin, Amanda, and Sonny as soon as she came back inside (nicotine craving still unfulfilled), hoping for good news. "So, get anything while I was gone?" She asked, sliding up beside them, fingertips hanging just inside the front lips of her jean pockets. "Burst the case wide open?" "I got the location of the house she's workin out of," Sonny said with a nod, mostly addressing Liv as he spoke. "Think it's good intell. Who do we get a warrant from?" He seemed just as hyped to find some work to do as Dani felt on the inside."Hold your horses, Carisi, you've got nothing. We've already busted houses before, and we got nothing for it," Liv cut him off with a shake of her head. "There's something bigger going on here, and we need to get to the bottom of it instead of just busting another house. I want to put a complete end to this." Dani knew this one was personal for her. She had adopted the son of one of the girls who had been killed by this prostitution ring."What if," Amanda suggested, finger tapping at her chin, "We did a bust on the house, but also with a UC inside? Someone they don't recognize who can get the details before we make the bust?" It was a good suggestion, Dani nodded to show her agreement. The academy had been putting out a ton of high quality UCs lately. They could be useful."Alright, send me in," Sonny volunteered, hoping that if he was able to succeed at this, it'd cement his place on the squad. Things were still a little too frosty for his liking. "They've never seen my face before, to them I'll be just another John looking for some action." Dani rolled her eyes. Something about his eagerness dug under her skin and bit down. He was too happy. He reminded her of a puppy, leaping up for attention. "No," Liv shot down his suggestion immediately. "First, let's send in someone they do recognize. Someone they know has a pretty heavy grudge against SVU. And someone we know well enough to trust." Dani saw the frown on Sonny's face after the last remark and felt just the tiniest bit bad for finding him annoying. He was on his first day after all. A tad over eager, but trying to earn his place. But all thoughts of that were chased away as Liv suggested they recruit Nick Amaro to help the team. "I'll call Nick and explain the job," Liv said, finished with the conversation. "The rest of you can return to your work while I go meet DA Barba and get other details sorted out," she looked down at her phone as she spoke, tapping away a message. Dani didn't need further information or orders to return to her desk, she just did it. Sitting down, she tapped a couple keys and opened her computer back up. Her email inbox had one message left unread. Opening the screen, she saw it was an email from her brother with a news website link it in. The subject was "Hey Sis, we made the news again!" Dani put her head in her hands for a moment, taking a deep breath. Of course Freddie had sent her some stupid fucking news article. As much as she loved him, he could be annoying as all hell. That's just how little brothers were. Freddie Danvers was 21, an adult in college, and Dani knew very well that bringing the traumatic situation of their childhood back up to her was his way of coping. He couldn't keep it all bottled up. He needed to release his thoughts out into the open air and let someone hear them. He needed to ask questions. He needed to understand. He had only been three at the time, so of course he didn't remember all of it. But he remembered what had come afterwords. He had lived it, right along side her.She started to drag the email into the trash bin, but hesitated, and in that moment, the curiosity got the better of her. She tapped the link twice, the story pulling up on her screen in front of her. Eighteenth Anniversary of the Tragic Danvers Murder-Kidnapping. Ways to Keep Your Children Safe! read the big, bold title. And beneath it was a picture of young Dani and young Freddie sitting on a bench, looking somber inside the courthouse while a trial went on behind the big set of wooden doors. She remembered that photo being taken. It had been plastered everywhere during the court case. She looked like a wildling, hair dangling down to her knees, bags beneath her eyes from being unable to sleep. Not evening wanting to read further, she clicked the little red 'X' button, the screen in front of her disappearing. She pulled her phone out from her pocket and typed up a quick message to her brother.
Funny email. Miss you. x
And she hit send, knowing he was probably in class right now, or playing basketball with his friends. What she did know was that it was nearly time for her shift to be over, and there was a bar across the street from her brownstone that was calling her name. She needed a drink, and she needed it badly. But first, she needed to get out of these clothes.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty days ago
Anna woke up in the same bed she had slept in for the past ten days. It wasn't her bed, it didn't have her stuffed animals. And she didn't like it one bit. But she didn't have a choice though, because the mean lady with the weapons was still there and she had killed her mom and she didn't even know where she was, just that it was up in a forest somewhere, somewhere she didn't recognize one bit. Her Daddy was supposed to be coming for her. That's what the lady had said over and over again, but he still hadn't shown up yet. So she was alone and scared and she didn't like it one bit.She didn't understand where she was or why she was here. She didn't understand why her dad wasn't there with her. She wanted to see him. Wanted to see her little brother. She wanted to be literally anywhere else than where she was right in that moment. But there was no way for her to get away. There were woods everywhere. And any smart kid knew that in woods there were bears. Anna didn't really want to see a bear in real life. Then again, maybe he would be a friendly bear and help lead her out of the trees and back to her grandma's house. It didn't seem likely though.Every day was the same for her. She would get up. The scary lady would give her breakfast. She would watch tv on a grainy old boxy tv that the cabin had. She would draw for a little while. And then she would get fed dinner and she would go back to sleep. She never got to leave, she never got to do much of anything, except eat and watch tv. And tv got boring once the growup shows came on. Once, the news had come on and she thought she saw a picture of herself, but the lady had switched it off too quickly for her to know for sure.But this day, things started off differently. The lady, her Daddy’s girlfriend, crouched down in front of her, looking her in the eyes. Anna thought her eyes were weirdly red, but didn’t comment on it. She was scared to say anything around her, anything at all. She was scared if she opened her mouth she would wind up dead. That a knife would come out and jam into her stomach."Alright, Anna, I need to go into town quick to get some more food for us," The lady said, looking her intensely in the eyes, nodding as she spoke, causing the little girl to mimic her, nodding back. "That way, we can keep eating until your Dad gets here, which should be soon if he paid attention to the things I left behind for him.""Left behind?" the little girl whispered. "Like a treasure map? With pirates?" Her eyes went wide at the thought, even though she was afraid. She had always loved pirates. Sailing the seas in a big boat sounded like the kind of adventure she would be interested in. First bears, now pirates. If the lady hadn't hurt her mom, this may have even been fun. "Exactly like a treasure map," the lady smiled, revealing a row of yellow teeth and foul breath. "But if we don't want to spoil the surprise at the end of the map, you need to stay hidden away in here until he shows up, okay? Just watch the cartoons until I get back." The little girl nodded, her long, tangled strands of brown hair tumbling about her shoulders as she did so. This just reminded the woman she needed to pick up a hairbrush for her. Couldn't have her looking like a ruffian if they were ever spotted. That wouldn't bode well for anyone involved.And then the lady left, and Anna was really, truly alone. She didn't know for how long. When she heard the car drive completely away, she opened the front door and stepped outside. The air was crisp and cold and it cut against her sweater with every gust of breeze. The trees around her were mostly pine trees, tall and green. The earth looked untouched by people. The cabin they were in seemed to be the only thing for miles. She stared out into that woods and she wondered if it was safer to run, or safer to stay. She didn't know where she was, she didn't know these woods. She didn't know how to get home, or how to find a place to call for help. But she did know that her Daddy was coming for her. The lady had left a treasure map, and her Daddy was a smart man. He would find a way to get to her. So instead of making a break for it, tearing out into the wilderness to survive or die, she turned around and went back inside, sat on the couch, and watched tv until the lady returned. She thought back to that moment many times in the next coming weeks. About how she should have ran. About how if she had died in the woods, maybe it would have been for the best.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Day
The trip Dani had made home was a quick one. She had showered and changed into a pair of black skinny jeans and a low cut, flowy grey tank top, pulling on a pair of black combat boots and a leather jacket as her final touches. She wasn't looking to impress anyone, but if she was able to get some free drinks, that'd be a bonus. It helped that she lived close to work, too. The time it took her to get there from home was minuscule. And she could walk to the bar from her apartment and not had to waste money on a cab. It was an overall good deal for herself. Plus, that way Amanda could come visit her once she finished up for the day, too. When she got there, Dani ordered a Long Island, paired with a shot of rum that she immediately downed, feeling the burn of the liquor hot on her throat, chasing away the thoughts of her past, pushing them far behind her, right where they belonged. All she wanted now was some alcohol to erase her bad day, and for Amanda to come join her in her escapades. Then she would all it a night, go home and drink some water, and be ready to go the next day for work. Surely things would be ramping up with this case they had in front of them. It was the perfect time for Dani to throw herself all in to her work.But first she would throw herself all into drinking. Probably end up at home, crying, but that was fine. She had had plenty of nights like those. Surely there were more to come. She took a long swig of the Long Island Iced Tea, enjoying the lemonadey flavor, enjoying how she couldn't taste the copious amounts of liquor she was swallowing at that moment. After she swallowed the liquid she looked up at the bartender and requested another shot. He obliged, pouring out the silver liquid into the small glass for her. She took it from him with a flirtatious grin, then knocked the shot back, swallowing it all in one quick go. She licked her lips as she looked back at the man behind the bar, with his muscly arms and sandy redish hair. He was cute, enough, for the night. She would flirt with him enough to get a free drink or two, and maybe make out with him in the parking lot if Johnny bailed. Which, seeing as he hadn't texted her since earlier that day, odds were pretty likely. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do. It was definitely the wrong thing to do. But she needed to do everything she could to not feel anything. She slipped her phone out of her pocket and looked down at the messages. Still radio silence from Johnny. She pulled up their message conversation, staring at the screen for a moment, then started to type a message, before she stopped herself. He wasn't the person she needed here right now. She closed the message and opened up her strand with Amanda.Hey, I'm down at the Black Rose if you want to come meet me. Drinking away the pain or whatever. She sent the message quickly, then took another sip of her drink. Sure, Amanda didn't know all the details of her past, didn't need to. But she did know a little something about drinking away the pain. She felt confident that Amanda wouldn't say no. Suddenly her phone buzzed with a new message. She drank the rest of the Long Island and motioned for another round as she looked at her phone.
Not sure, Dani. Been a long day...
She frowned at Amanda's response, which was an abnormal one. Usually, Amanda would be right there by her side, even if it was just to make sure she didn't hurt herself.Taking another shot, she let the booze fuel her message that she rapidly typed, then retyped to avoid any spelling mistakes the liquor had made.
Come on, Amanda. We all need to relax. You and I can play a game ;)
A fun game. A betting game. The kind the two girls always wound up playing at whatever bar they wound up at. Each would make a "bet", aka say a phrase that they thought would come true. Then the one who made the bet would take a drink. The other person would drink if they also thought it was a valid bet. They only used six shots, and the one with the most left 'lost.' Honestly it was mostly just an excuse to drink.
Fine, I'll be there. Don't get too much of a headstart without me.
Amanda's response came quick, as Dani knew it would. She smiled over at the bartender who slid another drink her way. She laughed at him, the booze already making her head fuzzy to the point where she knew she wasn't making the best of choices. But everything would be fine, as long as she didn't think about the events of eighteen years past.Amanda dropped in a drink later, to see Dani leaning over the bar chatting animatedly with the man behind the bar who was barely staring at her eyes and mostly staring down her shirt. Amanda sighed, feeling a little sorry for the guy who had requested to tag along and join them at the bar. She looked over her shoulder at Sonny Carisi, who had asked to come with. Team bonding or something. He was going to regret this, she was pretty sure. "Apologies in advance," Amanda muttered to him, marching over towards the bar and pulling Dani back into her seat. "I see you started without me," she drawled.Dani propped her elbow up on the bar. "Just a few," she laughed, sliding a shot towards Amanda. "I see you brought a friend," her gaze flickered over to Sonny, and actually gave him a grin. He looked at her with surprise for a moment, before he grinned back. "Hi Sonny," She practically purred, "Come to drink with your office mates?" She grabbed another shot from the array in front of her, handing it to him, a little bit of liquid sloshing over the sides as she took his hand and wrapped his fingers around the glass. "Smart choice."He looked down at her, this woman who had seemed to treat him with so much spite earlier that day, who had acted as if she hated the fact he was around. She was now the one smiling up at him and buying him drinks, looking as happy as can be that he was there with them. He took the drink and gave her a nod of thanks. Dani returned to her barstool perch beside Amanda, showcasing her array of shots. "Alright, I've prepared the playing field. The match has been set. Are we playing against one another, or is Carisi making this a threesome?" She winked over at the guy, a blush flooding across his cheeks causing her to laugh."I'll just watch the two of ya, for now," he said, pulling up a stool to sit beside them, giving the bartender a nod in greeting. The guy back there seemed less enthusiastic that there was another guy there now, but still served the beer that Sonny requested. "Same rules as always?" Dani asked Amanda, holding a shot in one of her thin hands, raising an eyebrow to the woman who was both her teammate and opponent in this situation. "Same rules," Amanda agreed, and then the two clinked their glasses together. Amanda made the first bet. "I bet that Mr Bartender here gives you his number," she drank her shot. Dani shook her head but downed hers as well, grin on her face."That was an easy one," Dani said, as they each picked up their next glass. "I bet that Nick tries to call you tonight, and that you answer it," she knocked back her shot as she dared Amanda to say she wouldn't answer. Bravely, the blonde held onto her shot, slim smile on her lips."You know I won't answer it, you basically just gave yourself a drink," Amanda laughed. Dani shook her head, the look on her face saying she didn't believe Amanda for a second, which was good because Amanda was lying through her teeth. "I bet that Johnny doesn't show up next time you ask him to meet up at a bar, again." Dani winced. That one hit hard. Both of the women drank. Carisi shook his head and excused himself from the game for a moment, getting up and making his way to the restroom. Dani watched him go, her eyes trailing his body through the crowd. "Alright," she picked up her next drink, almost missing as she went to grab it, fully intoxicated at this point. Her head was like a fishbowl, underwater and blurry. "I bet that I can get Carisi to make out with me tonight," she grinned and knocked back the shot. Amanda shook her head, but took her shot as well."Well," she tagged on, picking up another drink quickly, countering her previous statement, "I'll raise, and say if you do, you fall for him," she drank the shot evenly, looking at Dani's blanched face the entire time. The brunette set her shot down on the table, hard enough for some of the drink to spill over."You're joking," she challenged Amanda, who simply shook her empty shot glass at her, as Carisi made his was back and sat on the stool behind them. Dani nearly fell off her seat and he placed a hand on her lower back to steady her. Her gaze flicked to him, then back to Amanda, eyes narrowing. "I'll raise your raise, I bet you I don't. And I'll prove it," she downed a shot, slamming the glass back to the wooden bar. Amanda crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head, smirking. "I'd like to see you try. I've always been a bettin girl, you know that Danvers. How often do I lose?" "Hope you're ready to start," Dani quipped back, nearly falling off her stool again. She stood up, turning to the bartender, "Can I close my tab?" He obliged, handing her a receipt to sign, and then her own copy. As Amanda had bet, his number was scribbled on there. She shook her head and shoved the receipt in her bag. "I should head home," she slurred, stepping backwards and bumping into Carisi's knee. She whirled around, nearly falling again, causing Amanda to let out a tipsy laugh, the alcohol also hitting her, as Dani practically fell into Sonny's lap, the man's eyes wide as he reached out to stabilize her. "Careful, doll," he said, helping her standing up straight, standing beside her. "I think ya heading home is a good plan right now, we've got a big day of work tomorrow." His look of concern made her a little upset. She could handle herself, she was just fine."Yea, yea, I'll walk up a couple blocks and be there," she laughed, pushing against his shoulders lightly. She turned to Amanda and pulled her into a hug. "Thanks for coming out, babe.""Any time, Dani. You know I've got your back," Amanda returned her hug, then let her go. "But hey, don't you have a bet to finish before you leave?" She grinned, nodding towards Carisi. She asked this at the same time as Sonny spoke up, "Wait, walk home? No, no, no, that's not going to happen. I'll drive ya," he offered to Dani. "A woman like you, in this condition? I can't let ya walk home alone in the dark like this. A lotta pricks out there, we all know that too well." He held out a hand for Dani to take. Dani rolled her eyes, but took his hands, his feeling large and warm as it wrapped over hers. "I'll keep you updated," Dani said to Amanda, now feeling like she couldn't go through with it. Here he was, being so nice to her, for no reason. She hadn't been friendly to him at all. She'd been the exact opposite, but she couldn't let herself think about why she had acted that way. She was doing so well at pushing away the bad thoughts. So well. She couldn't let them back into her now. She squeezed Sonny's hand, pulling close to him as he weeded them through the crowd. As they made it to the door, he shrugged off his jacket, wrapping it over her bare shoulders."Here, wouldn't want you to get cold," he whispered to her, and she could feel his breath against her ear. She stopped turning to look up at him. "Why are you doing this?" She asked, him, point blank, though her words didn't come out as sharp or direct as she would have liked. But they were words, which was a plus. "Why are you being so nice to me? I'm not a nice person." He looked down her and there was almost a sadness in his eyes."Cause I know what it's like," he replied, "To not be treated all that nice, a lot. I don't want anyone else to feel that way, doll. Especially not someone who looks like she's already hurtin." He squeezed her hand, and pulled her out of the door of the bar and into the cold. The wind hit her like a punch to the gut and she stopped, letting go of his hand and leaning against the wall, taking deep breaths. Maybe, maybe she had had too much to drink. He stopped leaning against the wall beside her, studying her closely. "Yea, let's get ya home." She looked over at him, and in that moment, she did it. She turned to him, cupping his head in her hands, and she pressed her lips to his. She wouldn't remember it in the morning. Hopefully he wouldn't acknowledge it. But she did it, one small kiss, soft and sweet. Like butterfly wings on his lips, and she tasted like vanilla. She pulled away before he could try and kiss her back. "Take me home," she said softly as she pulled away.He looked at her and took her hand once more, leading her wobbling body towards his car. He opened the door for her, tucked her in, and made sure her seat belt was fastened. By the time he had made it to the driver's side and turned on the car, she was fast asleep, head leaning against the window. He sighed, reaching over and rifling through her purse until he found a wallet, not wanting to wake her. He looked at her wallet, glancing down at her ID, reading the name on it. A name he recognized, and not just because it was that of a coworker. He looked from the ID, over to the girl sleeping in his car. And then it clicked.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seventeen Years, ten months, and eighteen days ago
Young Anna was watching TV when it happened. The lady came storming in from the room she wasn't allowed to go in, presumably her bedroom, ranting and raving and her hair all a mess of tangled knots. She was literally foaming at the mouth. She came running at Anna and grabbed her by the arm, yanking her off the couch as the young girl cried out, the sudden wrenching shooting pain up her arm as the skin on her wrist twisted and burned."Stop!" She cried out, "That hurts! You're hurting me!" Tears started to stream down her face as the mean lady yanked her downstairs, into the basement of the cabin, where it was dark, and where Anna was pretty sure there were spiders. She did not like spiders. They were scary and crawly and they had weird hair and she did not like them one bit."Shut the fuck up, you little brat!" The lady screeched, tumbling her down the last four stairs so Anna landed in a pile at the foot of them, sobbing. The lady pulled duck tape from her back pocket and tore off a piece, wrapping it over Anna's mouth. "There. Quiet. Much fucking better," the lady muttered to herself, glaring down at the child. This whole thing was starting to get so damn annoying, the girl's father still hadn't shown up or even tried to contact her. So she was going to have to make things a little more....desperate.The basement was nothing but a concrete block with several foundation poles. In the center of the square room was a manhole cover, leading down to the sewage below. Against the right walls were a washer and dryer. The only light came from a small, dangling bulb that she turned on with a yank on a silver chain; there were no windows.She dragged the muffled crying girl, who was limp like a ragdoll, over towards a foundation pole in the middle of the cement room. Holding the girls arms up, she wrapped the girls wrists to the pole with the duck tape, making sure they were nice and tight. Perfect. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and flipped it open. It was time to make a little film. One her day would certainly see. One that everyone would see, and know that she meant fucking business. A sickening smirk slid over the woman's chapped lips. Oh yes, they would know she meant business alright.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dani didn't really remember getting home. She didn't remember the man who carried her so effortlessly up the stairs, or how he made her drink at least a bottle of water so that she wouldn't be too dehydrated in the morning. She didn't remember how gently he had tucked her in to her bed and left her to rest. What she did recognize when she woke up in the morning was the smell of bacon, toast, eggs, the sizzle of something on a hot pan. She sat straight up in bed, then immediately let out a groan of pain as her dull headache hit. It was light, but it was still there. She looked at her bedside table, and there was a glass of water with ice cubes in it. She reached over cautiously and sipped out of it, staring nervously at the doorway. Who was on the other side? Who was in her kitchen, cooking breakfast food? Who had helped her into her comfiest pajamas? She glanced at the empty mattress beside her. It didn't look slept in.She slid out of bed quietly, and put on her warm slippers, white and fuzzy, a gift from an ex some time ago. She kept them for the comfort, not for the memories. Carefully, she cracked open the door from her bedroom that led out into the hall, then out to the kitchen and living room. She heard a man humming softly to himself, a song she didn't recognize. She brushed backed her hair, sure it looked snarly and terrible, sure that she had bags under her eyes right now. Might as well face the music. Might as well terrify this man who had come home with her - though she was confident she hadn't slept with him. She would have remembered something like that.She stepped around the corner, into the sunlight that beamed through the kitchen windows. "Hey look," She started, speaking to the mans back. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants that hung ever so loosely around his hips, grey, and a white t-shirt. "Thanks for cooking or whatever but you gotta go-" the last word caught tight in her throat. The man turned, putting a piece of crispy bacon between his lips as he leaned against her kitchen counter. Sonny Carisi. Was standing in her kitchen. Making her breakfast. Wearing pajamas. For the first time in a long time, she was dumbstruck. How the hell? "What..What are you doing here?" she asked finally, still just standing there in the middle of her living space, staring at him.Sonny grinned, crewing on the bacon and swallowing. "Don't you remember? Ya invited me home, were begging me to sleep in your bed, but being the gentleman I am, obviously I said no. I slept on the couch." He stared at her shocked face for a moment before laughing. "I'm just yankin your chain, none of that happened. You did fall asleep in my car though, while I was drivin ya home. So I carried you upstairs, put you to bed, and by then it was pretty damn late so I crashed on your couch. Hope that's alright. Just didn't feel good about leaving your door unlocked on my way out. Figured cooking breakfast might make up for taking up your space."Dani stared at him, still open mouthed. Still speechless. Finally she just shook her head and sat down at her kitchen island, as he set down a plate in front of her, eggs over easy, bacon, buttered toast. He slid a glass of water her way as well. The food looked annoyingly good. Dani had never been much of a good cook. Having food made for her, first thing in the morning, wasn't the worst thing she had ever woken up to. Still, this made work awkward. He had slept in her house. She didn't like people coming into her space. Johnny had never even been there, she only ever went to his place if they were going to spend the night together. And here was a man, a man who she had only met a day before, standing in her kitchen like he had always been there. He seemed like he could find anything in the kitchen, like he had organized her cupboards himself. And it made her all sorts of uncomfortable. To make matters worse, her phone chimed. She grabbed it off the charger on the kitchen counter (he must have plugged it in for her), and Johnny's name appeared on the screen. She flipped it over, setting it back on the counter. She didn't really want anything to do with him today. He had bailed again last night, not the first time in a long string of times where he had bailed out on evenings out. As far as she was considering things, he was back in the doghouse. One more strike and she'd consider him out all together. She didn't need him around, not really. His benefit was his attentiveness, and that had been wavering recently. That and he could handle her crazy. He could handle her moodswings, the way she wouldn't go into basements ever, even if it meant ditching restaurants or clubs for a different venue."Thanks," she said finally, after eating her eggs. "I appreciate it, really. Where'd you learn to cook like this?" she motioned down at the food with her fork."Oh, my Ma and I have always cooked together. She's always said any man worth his salt knows his way around the kitchen," he smiled as he spoke, his eyes drifting away as if he was in a completely different place, and she watched as his memories tugged at him for a moment. "Anyways, I took that to heart. Always loved cooking, especially cooking for others." He smiled over at her, watching her eat. "Finish up, then we can head to work. I just gotta grab a change of clothes out of my car." He nodded towards the doorway. "You care a spare change of clothes everywhere you go?" She raised an eyebrow at him, mockingly, but in a friendly way. Banter. She was joking with him. This caught Sonny off guard. "Yea, well, ya know. Gotta be prepared for anything," He shrugged, hands in the pockets of his sweats. "I'll be right back, you take your time getting ready." She watched him walk out of the kitchen, slipping on his jacket that was hanging by her front door, like it, too, had always been there. He looked like he belonged in her apartment, and it was unsettling. She watched him walk out the door, then threw the rest of her breakfast in the garbage. She needed to shower if she was going to be heading into work on time.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"Go on in," Dani told Sonny when he parked behind their place of work. She held up her unopened pack of cigarettes, shaking it a couple times to intend she was going to take a smoke break before heading in. Really, she just didn't want people to see them heading in together, especially not Amanda. She was pretty sure Amanda probably didn't remember their bet from last night, but, better safe than sorry. She didn't need him knowing that, though. He had been nice enough for now, so she would take away a day of not being completely shitty to him.She looked down at her phone and saw an unread message from Johnny. Without opening it, she could see the beginnings of an apology text. Whatever. Who needed him, anyways? There were plenty of men in New York, she didn't have to waste her time waiting on some loser who couldn't keep a date and wanted her to be a housewife. She never expected Johnny to be around long term, hell, she didn't do long term. She just short, chaotic, and then cut off. So this wouldn't be any different. Dani had never been one to do relationships anyways. She broke things down when they got too good, because if she didn't destroy them herself, the odds were they would get destroyed by the universe eventually. That was Murphy's Law, right? Anything that could happen, would. She knew that far too well. Might as well have called it Dani's Law. She sighed, swiping away the message and clearing out her screen. Some good old fashioned ghosting would give him the hint. And if it didn't she would type something up later about how it wasn't working for her anymore. She shoved the cigarettes back into the pocket of her navy blue suede jacket, followed by her phone, glancing at her watch as she did so. She should probably head inside before people thought she was late. Surely, they'd have work to do today. Nick should have been making the meeting with Joaquin today and then they would make the bust.She sighed, looking out at the street, watching the cars speed by for a moment, before collecting herself and heading back inside. If anything, she had paperwork to get caught up on. Maybe she could go speak with Luna, work on building the trust a little more. Dani was good at that, building trust between kids who had been taken from their families. Yea, sure, maybe it was hard for her. But she was damn good at it. And there weren't a lot of things Dani knew she was that good at. Walking briskly into the office, she saw Amanda already at her desk, typing away, and as she got closer, she could see the bags under her friend's eyes. She wasn't the only one who had suffered the wrath of last night's expedition, and as sad as it was, Dani was slightly comforted by that. "Morning," She greeted, and as she walked by, Amanda held up a white coffee cup for her, Dani's name clearly scribbled on the side in sharpie. Dani grabbed it swiftly, sitting down in her desk and taking a big gulp of the hot liquid. Caramel mocha, one extra pump of caramel. Just how she liked. She let out a "Mmmm," of satisfaction, looking at Amanda with a grin of thanks. Amanda knew her too well, knowing that to function, Dani would need a large cup of her favourite brew. "So, any news on the bust?" Dani asked, looking over at Amanda once more, kicking her feet up on the corner of her desk as she leaned far, far back in her chair. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Sonny Carisi, see that he was staring right at her. His gaze was practically boring into her, like hot metal on her skin, but she didn't dare turn to look. To shake off the shiver running down her spine, she tugged uncomfortably at the sleeve of her white button up. "Nah, Nick is supposed to do the meet later this afternoon, then the bust tonight," Amanda shrugged, finishing up a quick email and hitting 'send,' before turning to face Dani. "So it'll probably be more desk work until tonight. Or prepping for the bust, going over blueprints, the whole deal." Dani nodded in understanding. "I think it's a solid plan. Gains trust, and that'll get us intel down the road. And we can save some girls tonight." She added at the end, thinking of how true that statement really was. Yea, the intel would be good. It'd help them in the longrun, but tonight they also had the chance to change some lives. Bring some girls home, who may have been missing for years. And as she said it, she realized how much she needed a win like that. Something to keep her grounded this month, remind her that that life was behind her, too. She couldn't change her own past, but she could change the future for these kids."Yup, going to be a long night," Amanda nodded, sipping out of her own coffee cup before tossing the empty container into a nearby recycling. "Better get anything done you need to before this evening because we'll be out for a while, no time for phone calls or anything," Amanda gave her a knowing look, questioning if Dani would be calling Johnny any time today.Dani shook her head, no. "Ehh, there won't be anything to worry about there. That's all done with," she explained as much as she could without actually explaining. She gave Amanda a knowing glance. Johnny wasn't going to be around to be a problem, not anymore. Amanda nodded, turning back to her desk. She knew enough to know when Dani was done talking, and this morning, the signs were clear.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The rest of Dani's day was spent at her desk, following up on old case reports, answering emails, typing up various itemized lists. The plan had been set for them, they were all getting their gear on at 7, vests and everything, and then they would bust the house. Joaquin would try and escape, and then they'd see if he took Nick's bait or not. Hopefully he'd fall hook, line, and sinker. As Dani was working on a response to an email from someone down in Processing regarding evidence she had dropped off last month, an IM popped up in her lower right hand corner. Dominic Carisi Jr has sent you a message! the little glowing bar read. Rolling her eyes, Dani sighed and clicked it, opening up the chat.So, who does Rollins think you should be calling tonight? the IM read. Dani started typing and then stopped. Did she owe him an answer? No, not really. Her relationships outside of work were none of his business, even if he did crash on her couch after driving her home from a bar last night. Just an ex, who I won't be calling she finally typed back, hitting send before she could talk herself out of it. Telling him that much wasn't really giving him too much personal information, right? Everyone had exes. It wasn't like she was the only person in the world ever told not to call someone they weren't with anymore. Speaking of....She pulled out her phone, rapidfire typing a message out to Johnny, nothing too detailed, the usual 'it's not you it's me,' BS that people fed whenever they just weren't that into someone anymore. She hit send quickly, turning her phone on silent and tossing it into her desk drawer. There, that was done with too. One less thing she had to work on later, one less distraction tonight when she needed to be on her a-game.gotcha was Carisi's almost immediate response to her message, already waiting there for her when she looked back up to her computer. She was about to hit the close button on the message when another appeared and stopped her. Must not be a very smart guy then. Followed by a smiley face. She shook her head, but smiled a little bit to herself, glancing over her shoulder to meet his gaze. When he looked up at her, she shook her head at him, but still kept the smile on her lips. Okay, so maybe he wasn't the most annoying person she had ever met. The van ride to the house was quiet, everyone seemingly thinking over what was going to go down tonight at this house. There could only really be two outcomes, Dani rationalized. There was the good outcome, where everyone left alive and the bait was taken. And there was the bad outcome where their guy wasn't even there and people got hurt. It was easier for her to think of things in black and white terms sometimes. That way, she was able to separate her emotions from the job. Things either were or they weren't, and when there were only two options it was a lot easier to know what she needed to do. In this case, for example, she needed to make sure everyone got out of there alive.The next moments were a blur. One of the men dressed in all black, holding an assault weapon, kicked down the door, he and his teammates filtering into the white, broken down house. Dani, Sonny, and Amanda followed in suit, pistols raised. As the filed through the house, Dani checked the first room; empty, except for a washer, dryer, and pile of clothes. The second room, not so much. Four beds filled the warmly lit room, each occupied by a screaming girl, none of which could have been more than sixteen, holding up pillows in front of themselves like shields. \"Hey, hey, you're okay," Dani called out, her voice sounding as if it weren't entirely herself. She put her gun in it's holster, holding up her hands, then extending one out in peace. "You're okay, we're here to help." The girls, one a brunette, two blondes, and a girl with red hair all stared at her, blinking, tears forming at their eyes. "Let's get you out of here," she said softly, extending a hand towards the one with the fiery hair. Cautiously, the girl extended her hand out, grasping Dani's, and suddenly she was lurching off the bed, wrapping Dani in a hug, sobbing. Dani froze for a moment, remembering what this moment had been like for her, years ago. Slowly, she began to run a hand over the young girl's hair soothingly. "You're okay," she said again softly. "You're all okay."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seventeen years, nine months, and twenty two days ago
The young girl stood in the basement, right handcuffed to a water pipe, standing on her very tip toes, trying to see out of the slit of a window. The majority of it was covered with black paper, but the bottom portion had started to peel away. She thought she might just be able to see the outside world if she angled herself just right, but the handcuffs only had so much give before they started to tear at the flesh of her wrist. So she gave up, sliding back down to the floor in a heap, letting the tears slide down her face. She was going to die down here, she was pretty sure of it. There was no way she could escape, not with her hand cuffed tightly to that pole. The lady upstairs was the only one with the key, and Anna was pretty sure that she wasn't going to be letting her go any time soon.Ever since the lady had dragged her down her to film that video on her phone, for whatever reason she needed (Anna didn't really understand the purpose), the lady hadn't let her back upstairs. The ducktape had gone away but it had been replaced with hard metal handcuffs. The only thing she could really reach was a gross old toilet in the corner near where she was chained, for which she was grateful. There wasn't much to do down there in her dark little prison, except sit and wonder why her Daddy wasn't coming to get her, the way the lady had told her he would. Anna could see the lady was upset about the change of plans, too. Maybe she didn't really want to keep Anna prisoner. Maybe she didn't have the choice. Anna hadn't been quite taught yet that people were the worst. She hadn't yet been hardened to the outside world and found that anyone who could hurt you, would hurt you. The time would come, though. She would learn.So she sat down there, waiting, wondering. Feeling the most lonely she had ever felt in her life. After all, if no one was coming to find her, no one must care about her. Right? That was how it felt, certainly. Abandonment seared at her soul, leaving burn marks on her heart. She wanted to be free again, she wanted her little brother again (even though she used to feel like he was the most annoying thing on the planet). She wanted her bed and her stuffed animals and her dad. And she wanted her mom to not be dead.Sometimes her mom came to her in her dreams, telling her that everything was going to be okay, telling her that she raised a strong daughter and that if she just kept going, she would pull through. Sometimes the dreams turned to nightmares where the blood started to spill out her mothers stomach, coating the long, white dress she was wearing, her face rotting away into just bone. But other times, her mother curled up next to her where she lay on the floor, wrapping herself around her daughter like a blanket, singing her lullabies and reminding her that she was loved. Those dreams would haunt her long after she left the basement. Those dreams would follow her around for as long as she lived. She wished she had fought back more. Maybe if she had told the guy behind the counter at the gas station that she had been kidnapped then maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't be here right now. Or maybe if she had taken that chance to run, out into the woods, into the unknown, she would have found a road and been able to find a town, and a town where she could have maybe found the police. There were a lot of maybes, and a lot of wishes she had left floating in her mind. There wasn't much for her to do down there except for think. Sometimes, when the lady upstairs would turn on the TV, she could hear the shows she was listening to. Whenever the news came on, the TV went off, though Anna wasn't sure why. Some days she thought maybe the lady had lost her mind. Anna would draw out stories in the dust on the floor to pass the time, telling herself epic tales of superheros and princesses and trips out to the ocean where the water was so blue you could see the little fish everywhere. She got incredibly good at telling stories, even if they were only to herself. Her tales became so vivid sometimes she thought she saw shadows of dragons on the walls or hear the clanging of swords together, echoing around the little basement rooms. Some days she thought maybe she was losing her mind.The only time she ever saw the lady was when she brought her food down, once a day. A big meal for her to eat, save for later, do whatever she wanted really. The food was good, really good. Sometimes she had mac and cheese, other days she got chicken. There were veggies as green as she remembered trees being. She would get bottles of water every now and then, too. So she wasn't starving, she didn't thirst for liquids, but she wasn't doing well, either. She started to develop a cough from all the grim down there, always getting in her lungs. It felt like her eyes were always watering. She felt so dirty and gross and her hair was always in tangles and she couldn't get them out, no matter how long she tried to weave her fingers through the knots. All her work only ever seemed to make it worse.The only time the lady ever spoke to her was when she would come downstairs, a newspaper in hand, and make her hold it so she could take a picture. One day Anna finally got up the courage to ask her why she had to keep taking these photos. It took a second for her mouth to make the words, tongue heavy with disuse. The lady looked down at her and then laughed. "Because I need to prove you're not dead," was her dry response. That was the only interaction she ever had. She was worried she would learn how to speak. Some days she would lay there at night and wonder what she had done to deserve this. She wasn't very old. Who could she have angered so greatly that this was no happening to her? She cursed the Gods and the Universe and whatever else she could think of for doing this to her, for doing this to her family. She cried until there were no tears left, and then she cried more. After all, there was nothing else for her to do.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Day
"Danvers, Carisi is with you on this one," Liv began laying out orders once they were back at the precinct. They would need to get these girls talking if they wanted to keep the ball rolling. They wouldn't have a lot of opportunity if none of them would speak up. "Let him see what 'sympathetic' really looks like, please," Liv grabbed Dani by the arm as she walked by. Dani nodded with understanding. "Ready Dani?" Sonny called from one of the doors, holding two cups of coffee. "Got ya a hot one, figured its going to be a long night," he held the cup out to her as she approached. It may have been black coffee, softened only with cream and sugar, but the thought behind it was nice enough, she supposed. "Thanks," she murmured as she took a sip of the hot liquid, practically begging for the caffeine to hit her system quickly. "What's your poison?" She asked, nodding towards the cup in his other hand. "Oh this? This ain't for me, figured the kid in there might like something homey. It's chocolate milk," he explained, holding it towards her so she could see. "Maybe it's a dumb idea, but I'm always more willing to talk when someone gives me comfort food." "It's not a stupid idea," she said, looking up at him. "I think it's a good one. Also, I'm making note to give you homemade soup some day so I can get you to spill all of your secrets to me," she grinned as she opened the door, sauntering by him, leaving him to watch her wake for a moment, before quickly following her into the interrogation room. She sure was something different, but the kind of different that only kept him intrigued. Plus, given what he had discovered about her last night when he looked at her license, everything about her made so much more sense.Inside the room, by herself, sat a small girl. Blonde, thin, and pale as winter snow. She looked up at them, almost like a deer in headlights. Dani knew that feeling, all too well. She could remember sitting on the other side of the table before, as she slid into place. She recognized her as one of the girls from the room she had entered. "Hey there, my name is Detective Danvers, this is Detective Carisi. We're here to help you." She tried her best to offer the girl a smile, but she was fairly confident that it came out more grim than intended. "Here, I brought some chocolate milk," Sonny offered, setting the cup down and sliding it a little closer to the young girl as a peace offering. As he did so, Dani studied the girl, watching for signs of acceptance. The girl's mouth hardened into a thin line. "I don't want that. I'm not a child. I'm not talking to you, I'm waiting for my lawyer to come," she said firmly, though there was a slight waver in her voice. "I know you want to believe it," Dani spoke resting her hands on the silver table in front of them, "But Joaquin probably isn't sending one for you. He's downtown right now, and he's speaking with the police. He's telling them that he didn't have any clue that you were turning tricks out of your room with the other girls," she shook her head sadly, a couple strands of brown waves falling from her ponytail as she did so. "Now I don't think that's true. You can't be...what? More than fourteen? I don't believe that you got into this life by yourself. Tell us what he did to you, how you got into this mess. We can help you," she met the girl's gaze, hoping to all hope that she would listen, that they hadn't brainwashed her so much that she wouldn't even save herself.The blonde girl stared at her for a moment, unmoving, not speaking. There was a little quiver on her lower lip as she eyes Dani, thinking. Finally, she spoke again. "I don't need your help. Any of you." Dani sighed, shaking her head, fighting the urge to sink down in her chair. Obviously, it wasn't the girl's fault she was so caught up in this. But that didn't make it any less frustrating."No?" Sonny spoke up, leaning forward and reaching into the breast pocket of his green shirt, pulling out something small and black. "Well, we got your phone in the raid..." he looked at the screen, before setting the small, black phone on the metal table and sliding it towards her. "You might not need our help, but what about your daughter?" Dani looked down at the lit up screen on, the closeup of a baby, small, eyes closed, the tiniest of fingers curled up, illuminated the background. Dani studied Missy in front of them, as she cautiously reached out, picking up the phone in shaking hands, staring at the image of her baby girl on the screen. "We raided a house last May," Dani began, "There were children inside. We got them out." She looked Missy in the eyes, shaking her head. "There were no babies in that house tonight, no kids. But right there," she pointed at the phone, "Is your baby. So tell us, Missy. Where is she? We can get her out safely, too. Or do our damnedest trying." Missy looked upward for a moment, blinking away tears that were trying to come out of her blue eyes. With a sigh, she looked back at them, then tentatively reached forward, picked up the glass of chocolate milk and took a sip.Dani looked over at Sonny, a small grin quirking at the edges of her lips as he met her gaze. Turning back to the young girl, Dani asked if she might want some food. Missy nodded eagerly, still drinking from the cup. "Great, we'll go get some for you, okay? Just stay right here, we'll be right back." Sonny reached forward and picked the phone back up, even though Missy seemed reluctant to allow so. They couldn't really have her in a room alone with a cellphone. The two detectives stood up and Sonny grabbed the door, holding it open for her so they could exit together. Dani glanced back over at Missy before she stepped out, offering her a small smile. Surprisingly enough, the blonde smiled back.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Outside the room, Sonny raised his hand up in the air in her direction. "Great job, I think we got this one in the bag. The food stuff? The chocolate milk? Comfort, love it," he grinned at her. Dani rolled her eyes, but raised her hand and gave him a highfive, the crack of their palms smacking together echoing down the hall. "Well, I figured she could use something nice, something that reminded of her home, if she can remember where that was." Dani's mind, for only a second, jolted back to eating mac and cheese on a tattered couch, when she was let up from the basement for a small reprieve. She blinked, turning away. That wasn't the kind of intrusive thoughts she needed with her right now, not when she was trying to negotiate. "Well, I'm going to go make her a sandwich or something, whatever I kind find in the break room I guess," Dani shrugged, putting her hands into her back pockets and looking up at Sonny. "Are you going to head back in there?" She nodded towards the door they had just come from."Yea, think I will," Sonny replied, crossing his arms over his chest. "Chat a little more with her about her kid, see if I can get anything," he grinned over at her, his eyes locking onto hers. "Seriously though, that was some good thinking in there. I think we made some real headway in getting her to talk." Dani smiled back at him, her lips pressed together into a thin line. "Yea, well, it's what I do, ya know?" she shrugged, then turned away, heading for the break room, feeling him watch her as she walked away. It was what she did, it was always what she did, especially with victims who were held captive. She always found ways to connect with them, without really giving up why she knew so much what it was like. It was what made her such an asset to the team, what made her skill set so versatile. And she enjoyed it. If she could bring more kids home, she was going to do anything in her power to do so. Each one they brought home made living her life the way she did, slightly more bearable.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seventeen years, eight months, and two days ago

Footage Found in Gas Station Leads to DNA Testing

A grainy, black and white image pulls up on the screen in front of me. The TV screen is small, the video footage, smaller. I am sitting in the back area of a gas station, watching the footage that lead to the most recent break in the Danvers murder/kidnapping case. A gas station clerk sits with me, fidgeting nervously as if she is the one who had done something wrong. I asked her about it, and she just shrugged, looked down at her hands, struggling to find words for a moment.

"I guess I feel responsible. Like if I had paid better attention to the news or something, I would have recognized her face, known she was missing. I feel like I could have done something, but I just didn't know any better." She looks at me again, this look of remorse on her face. She's only nineteen, and she's already learned the weight of guilt, even if this tragedy truly wasn't her fault. That sort of thing is easy when the kidnapping a child and murder of her mother is involved. There's guilt everywhere. Everyone feels it.

Seeing this video, it's hard to really make out exactly what happens. A small girl enters, uses the restroom, and comes back out. She looks like she's heading for the exit, but then she stops and does something really mysterious. She frowns and waves sadly up at the camera. At least, it looks an awful lot like a frown, but it's hard to really tell for sure with the grainy video. And then, she does the key thing that's helped the investigation. She reaches up, she takes the fluffy winter cap off of her head, and drops it to the ground.

She makes no attempt to talk to the gas station clerk, she makes no attempt to get attention, makes no attempt to run. We don't know why, though we are assuming she was under extreme duress. If we fast forward on the video clip, which I have the clerk do, we see her, the same girl sitting next to me, get up from behind the counter and go to use the restroom herself. But something catches her eye. It's the hat on the floor. She picks it up and looks around, even going so far as to check outside. If you match the inside security footage with the outdoor footage, the vehicle that the girl had came out of was long gone.

So the gas station clerk places the hat in lost in found, thinking maybe they'll come back for it. It's chilly out, she thinks. But then again, it's just a hat, so maybe it'll just sit there for a few months until it's donated. That's the usual procedure for lost items like this, the clerk tells me. They sit there waiting to be donated or sometimes, sometimes the owner comes back.

Or until it becomes the next big clue in a kidnapping case. By this point, I'm sure you've guessed that the little girl in the footage is Anna Danielle Danvers, the missing girl. We don't know why she left her hat there, but we do know it was hers. Detectives have reported that their case lead them to this gas station by the tracking of credit card usage and a lucky camera spotting a license plate. So when they saw this footage from that fateful day, they knew they had to see the hat.

And on that hat, there was hairs, long brown strands from the child's head. They were tested and were a match. 100%. This hat belonged to the Danvers' girl. So she was alive, at least, a couple months ago when this footage was filmed. This is the first hint the case has had in months. If anyone has any clues as to where this missing girl may be, please contact your local police.

This is Margo Docket, reporting from BTL news, your local station for the latest updates. Thank you, and goodnight.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

They did have one small lead, the fact that all of the girls they had saved had an app on their phones called QuickRide. It wasn't much to go off of, but with no one talking, it would have to do. Rollins and Finn went down to their main office to assess the situation, and found out this wasn't the first time scumbags were using a rideshare service to move young girls around. That lead them to a guy named Little Tino, stuck away in Attica. Rafael and Liv went up there to source him out. All of that, left Dani running paperwork back at the precinct. The girls were being released. Dani had given Missy a encouraging pat on the shoulder as she walked by. She was reluctant to let them go, but it had been 48 hours and they weren't planning on issuing any arrests, so, they had to. Missy had given her a small smile as she left. "Thanks for the food," the girl had said, in that same airy voice she spoke in during their interview.And then Dani finished her work for the day, signing off by sending an email to her younger brother, who had forwarded over his report on his college grades (she was helping front his education due to the lack of parental figures in their lives). His report was good, and she was proud of him. Dani was always proud of her younger brother, and she knew he knew that, but he kept sending over the grades anyways. He would have a good future ahead of him, when he finished his law degree.She signed out of her computer and waved goodbye to the other detectives. Tomorrow would be another big day, she was certain. She always felt apprehensive when big cases, ones that ran deep, were in the process of being solved. And it helped take her mind off of the rest of the events that had happened, all those years ago. Not that she enjoyed having cases to work, no, that wasn't it. She never wanted there to be victims. But she did appreciate staying busy. She met eyes with Sonny and gave him a small nod, before she disappeared out of the door and into the night. No bars for her tonight, nothing waiting for her but her book to read at home.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dani was sitting at her desk, replying to additional emails and filing another report on a case from last month, when she heard the sound of Olivia's chair being pushed back with force, her boss's heels hitting the floor as she walked quickly into the room where all of their desks were situated. "I just got word, Little Tino just got shanked in prison. Do we still have eyes on Joaquin?" she asked, directing her question to Finn, who quickly picked up his phone, dialing Nick's number.At the same time, Amanda hung up the phone call she was on, shaking her head and standing up, approaching Liv. "That was Bellevue, the guy who shot us, Diego? He's been hit too. He's gone." She explained. Then Sonny stood up, setting his cellphone down, approaching the two women. Nervously, Dani stood up too, heading towards them. "When it rains, it bleeds," Sonny said, anger in his voice. "Missy, the girl, she was found shot in the head. In a car with a John, he's dead too." "They're snipping off all of the loose ends," Dani breathed, her heart thudding. Just yesterday, Missy had been safe, in custody with them. Now, the girl who had liked chocolate milk, ate all of her mac and cheese....dead. "Alright, all of you, go, Bellevue, Attica, the scene of the shooting, I want eyes on everything," Liv ordered, pulling her phone out of her pocket. "I'm going home to make sure Noah is okay." Dani understood that. Liv's adopted son had been the child of a raped, stolen girl too, and it would make sense if they wanted to hit home to the team that was after whatever gang was running this operation.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dani and Sonny had been at Missy's scene. It was terrible. Dani had to take a few moments, standing there, staring at the car, the body removed but blood still spattered against the window. The guy who had been with her was just another perv trying to get it, but he was dead now too. And somebody was going to have to explain to his family why he was dead, and what he had been doing right before he had gotten shot. The entire thing was a shit situation. "We should have forced her to stay," Dani muttered to herself, shaking her head as she fired off a text to Liv that the guy with her didn't seem to have any connection to their case, wrong place, wrong time. She looked up and saw that Sonny was looking at her. "What?" She asked him, her words coming out pretty harsh, even for her. "Nothing, you just seem upset," he shrugged. "Anything I can do?" "Yea, I am upset," she shook her head at him, a look of disbelief on her face. "We could have saved that girl. She was with us. She was in our office, safe, and now she's in a body bag. We should have-" she stopped, biting her lip and putting her hands on her hips, turning around for a moment and looking away, blinking to stop the tears which were threatening her eyes. Then she turned around, shaking her head, "We should have done more.""Well, we can do more now. We can bring the info we have back, put more work in, and find the son of a bitch who did this. Sure, we can't put him six feet under, but we can set him sixty years back if we do it right," Sonny said, glancing back at the car. "It's a shame, it is, Dani, I get that. But we can't fix what already happened. We can just sure as hell make sure it doesn't happen again." Dani blinked at him for a moment, annoyed. How did he know what to say? How did he have the ability to say the things that she needed to hear, even if she didn't know she needed to hear them until they were said? It bewildered her. "Can you just drive us back? Liv is ready for the report." She looked down at her phone then headed back towards their squad car, sitting in the passenger seat and staring out of the window. She didn't want to talk on this drive, she just needed a minute. A minute to not think, a minute to not interact with Sonny Carisi.Moments later, Sonny was sitting in the driver's seat, putting on his seatbelt, starting the car. He didn't try to speak. She didn't feel him looking at her. He let her have her moment alone, as he drove them back to where they belonged.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Gathering in front of a cork board with various photos and strings were Amanda, Dani, Sonny, Fin, and DA Barba, watching Olivia present the findings to them all, bringing them all on the same page. Thankfully, her son was okay, but whoever they were up against had decided to rope him into this one too. Playing dirty, Dani's least preferred type of bad guy."Alright," Liv said, tapping the first, lower left hand photo of a Latino man, a giant red X drawn over his face with Expo marker. "Diego Ramirez. Deceased. Given a hot shot while at Bellevue." Beside his photo was that of Ellie Porter, the woman who had started this all. An X highlighted her profile, too. "Missy Brooks, was executed, along with a John who was unrelated to the incident." Liv then tapped the photo of the young blonde girl, and Dani's heart squeezed tightly in her chest. She still believed they could have done more. That somehow, they had failed her. The X only made things even more apparent to her now."And that," Liv tapped the one photo without a brilliant, red X. "Brings us to Little Tino. He's in critical condition, but he's alive." She let out a sigh, looking at the photo for a moment before turning to her team. "He's still in surgery. He was shivved nine times. He might be our only tie left if he makes it out.""Don't forget Noah and Lucy," Amanda piped up, one hand on her hip, index finger tapping angrily against her belt. "A shooter opened up at that playground, we all know it wasn't by accident." Liv took a deep breath at this, unable to look the blonde in the eyes. It was almost as if she couldn't bring herself to believe it had truly happened to her son. That he was being put in danger because of all of this, because they were trying to do some good for those girls, and their children, too. Why was one child's life any more precious than the other? They were equally important. "Are you okay, Liv?" Rafael asked, face frowning with concern. He had known her long enough to recognize she was far from 'okay' with anything which was going on right now. "We should..." He paused for a moment, testing if this was the appropriate thing to say. "We should get them both out of the city," he finished after a moments thought.Liv waived him off. "There's already a detail on the both of them. And we've already picked up Luna," she said, referencing the last girl from the house raid. "What we need to focus on now is finding out who ordered these hits. We start with Joaquin." "I think we know how this started," Sonny said suddenly. "I mean, Amaro meets with with Joaquin. Less than an hour later, knives out?" Sonny scoffed. "Somehow, someway, he got that message to his boss."Dani shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. "We had his phone tapped, we would have known if he reached out to him. He was under surveillance the entire morning. It's not really possible for him to have made contact." She looked at Sonny with a shrug, almost feeling bad for disagreeing with him."Alright, alright," she looked calmly at Amanda and Dani. "I want one of you to reach out to Nick. Have him set up a meeting with Joaquin. Get the details. When they get together, bring them both in." An uncomfortable silence filled the room as for a second, no one spoke. But Dani knew that wouldn't last for long. Not with Amanda Rollins in the room."You want us to arrest Nick?" She asked, eyebrow raising in question, not believing the words she was hearing. Nick was one of their own. Rafael shook his sadly, looking at Amanda, then Liv. "It has to look good. Really good. There can't be any doubts." Liv nodded, understanding. She knew the weight of what they were about to do. "Alright then, anything else?" The DA asked, rubbing at his forehead for a second, as if he were under great stress. From behind him, Sonny walked up to the cork board, studying the remaining photographs. Dani couldn't help but wish Sonny had shaved the mustache. Why was that what she was thinking over right now? Why did that specific idea come to her mind?"Missy," Sonny said after a second, tapping her photo twice with his index finger. "She was killed in Richmond Hill in a John's car." He turned around to face the rest of them. "That's not too close to here. I'm wondering how she got there. Ya know? How about we talk to QuickRide?" He suggested, referencing back to the app service. Liv paused for a moment, thinking. "How about we do," she said finally. "Dani, Sonny, with me." Dani nodded, standing up taller. It was time to get back out there and get to the bottom of this.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seventeen Years, One Month, and Three Hours ago
Anna stared at the tiny crack of sunlight coming in beneath the black paper. Dust danced through the tiny beam, swirling and twisting if she twitched, causing a change in the air flow. This was her entertainment these days, down there in the dark.She felt sick, all the time. Like breathing was difficult. Like there was never enough oxygen for her, and whatever she took into her lungs was coated in something. Her lungs felt like their were minuscule in comparison to the rest of her. She used to feel dirty, skin covered in dust and hair a mess of knots, but she had lost that concern months ago. Living in the dark will do that. Her food had become less and less extravagant, and the woman came less and less often. Anna was wondering if one day she would never come back at all. Sometimes, she wouldn't mind if that was the outcome. There were days that dragged on eternally, feeling like months and years all in one twenty-four hour time span. It could be easier just to drift away into the void of nothingness. Perhaps these were dark feelings for an eight year old (maybe she was nine now? She didn't know) to have, but most eight year olds weren't held in captivity in a basement. Nothingness was an easy exit. Suddenly, a shadow shifted in front of the sunlight, causing Anna's gaze to jerk back up. She squinted, trying to make out what shape was covering her small slice of heavenly light, but the contrast was too great. Yet, she could have sworn she saw a set of large eyes, peering in at her.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

When they had arrived at the Quick Ride headquarters, it was clear something was amiss. Someone had torn the place apart, and the boss wasn't having any of it. He didn't want police involvement, didn't want to antagonize whoever had destroyed his place of work any further. His wife hadn't been all that happy either, requesting vehemently that they leave and not bother them any further. So when they couldn't get any more leads, Liv played another card. She decided they would bring in Joaquin, and Nick. Cuff Nick right in front of the guy, so he doesn't think their old partner had been doing him dirty. It was a smart play, and there was a reason Olivia Benson was in charge. Dani stood behind a sheet of one way glass, watching Liv and Sonni interrogate Joaquin, taking notes on a notepad of any answers he gave and any weird responses he had during any of the questions. She had never seen Sonny raise his voice the way he was when he had told Joaquin to shut up. It was startling. But was even more startling was when Liv leaned in close, whispering so that Dani couldn't hear what was being said. She tried to read the woman's lips, but they were moving to quickly for her to comprehend. Whatever was said, though, she could tell rattled Joaquin. The way his left eye twitched, she knew. She had never seen Liv get so up close and personal, and she had seen Liv do a lot of things. But Joaquin and whoever he worked for had decided to target the woman's son, so it made sense that she responded so viciously.The good news of the matter was Little Tino was alive, while critical. When Liv and Fin went down to see him, they got even more information from his mother. Selena. The woman's name was hanging over their department. She worked for whoever was running this whole thing. She broke in the girls. So now they just had to set a trap.The plan was pretty simple. They had rented out some slightly skeevy hotel room in Queens, at the Richmond Hill Motor Lodge. Sonny was going to be the alleged John. He wore a brown plaid button down, and Dani could see he through the small crack in the closet door, where she was hiding. With his hair slicked back and that mustache growing on his upper lip, he did look every part the weird guy ordering a young girl to his motel.There was a small knock at the door and Dani stepped back a little bit, so no one would see her watching. She heard Sonny open the door, "Hey, hi, you must be Carmen," she could practically hear the grin in his voice, but he didn't sound at all like himself. His tone of voice was completely different. Softer. Almost powdery. "Gosh, you're so pretty." She heard the door to the motel shut, the lock flipped and latched. She dared to step forward again and peek through the small crack in the door. A girl stood there. She couldn't have been more than fifteen at the most. She had wild curls in her hair, natural, and it was a beautiful dark brown. She wore a pink crop top and a short, snake skin skirt. She didn't look like she belonged, not in those clothes and not in this room. Dani felt a surge of protectiveness heat through her just looking at her. That was the hardest part of this job. And the best, when they were able to help. "So," she heard Sonny say. "What are you going to do for me?" "Erm, just whatever you want. A-a massage is two hundred," The girl, Carmen, replied. Dani could see her hold up two fingers to indicate the two hundred. She looked timid, scared. Dani could feel for her. "Psh, a massage?" Sonny scoffed, hands on his hips. "That's..you're joking right? I didn't call you for a massage.The girl started to get scared, visibly shaking. "Just, just tell me what you want," she said, putting her hands up in self defense, as Sonny strode towards her, grabbing her wrists. "That's more like it," Sonny growled at her, his voice sounding even further from his normal tone. It almost scared Dani, and she knew he was acting. She couldn't imagine the terror that must course through the body of the young girl in the room. Every bone in her body wanted to jump out and tell her it wasn't real. "That's nice, I like it when they struggle." he growled.The girl let out a shriek, trying to run away from him, each step difficult in her too-high heels. "No, no, no, no" Sonny said, following her and blocking the door. "You're not leaving until I get what I called for. The girl whirled, running. Dani thought for a moment she would run right in to her closet, but Sonny lunged forward, blocking that too. She dashed into the bathroom, trying to throw the door shut behind her, but his strong arm blocked it. Dani couldn't see them any further from her line of sight. But she could still hear."I like it rough." Sonny said, pointedly. "That's what I want." She could practically picture him jabbing his index finger towards her. "If you can't do that, you go back and you find me someone who can. Cause this shit ain't what I'm paying for, Baby. Yea, you get out your phone and you call. You call someone. Right. Now.""Selena?" Dani could hear the girl say into the phone, presumably to the woman they were looking for. It wouldn't be long now.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------And it wasn't. It was only five, maybe ten minutes more of standing in that dark closet before a sharp rap came from the heavy motel door. Dani peeked out the slit in the door again, watching as Sonny opened the door and immediately threw his hands up into the air. "Woah, woah, woah," he said, as a man stepped into the room, pistol raised. Dani's heart lurched for a moment, before she remembered herself, her job, and where she was."I don't want trouble," Sonny continued. "I just wanted a different girl, not the virgin Maria here," he nodded towards the bathroom, where Carmen still stood. Another woman entered the room, speaking rapid Spanish and heading straight towards Carmen, a pressed look on her face. "You know what, we really don't have to do this," Sonny said, shaking his head, hands still up above his head. "No, no" the woman, Selena said as she shook her head, arms crossed over her chest. "That's not howit works. You hurt my girl, you need to pay." "Okay, okay, of course, m'am, I can pay," Sonny replied, reaching for his back pocket as if to grab a wallet. "And you can lower the gun, we're all friends here." Sonny leaned forward, putting his wallet on a side table. As he did so, Fin burst through the front door, tackling the guy with the pistol. Dani burst out of the closet, gun raised, as Amanda did the same. "Hands up," Dani shouted, pointing her gun at Selena, eyes narrowed, as she stood beside Sonny. Try as she might, she didn't want to make this personal.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seventeen years, twenty seven days, and sixteen hours ago The young girl hadn’t taken her eyes off that slit in the window since she thought she had seen something looking down at her. She would have bet her life on the fact something was there...but she had yet to see the eyes again. She had yet to see anything move out there besides the sunlight and the dust the filtered through it. No eyes, no person. No one but Anna alone, in that basement space.She was pretty sure it hadn’t been the woman. She didn’t recognize the eyes - she was pretty sure she would have recognized those eyes. They were the only ones she had seen in a long time. And she hasn’t heard her moving around a lot upstairs lately, hasn't had her stop by to take any pictures or bring any food or water. As if on queue, her stomach growled. She looked at the small plate of food she had been saving over the past few days - bread and some pieces of potatoes. She broke off a small piece of bread and nibbled at it. She had stopped worrying about if it was stale or not...a long time ago. She had lost track of days, months. All she had was time between food now. Water was easy enough - condensation would form on the pipe beside her and she could lick it off.Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she hadn’t seen anything out there at all. Maybe it had just been her poor mind playing tricks on her in the dark, sending her rays of false hope. That was the thought that scared her the most.It had been so long since she had seen anyone besides the woman who took her away. Would she even remember what other people looked like? Did she really remember what her family looked like? She had to squeeze her eyes shut tightly to try and picture them. Was that really what they looked like? She didn’t know. She didn’t know when she would see her dad again, or her baby brother. And she was scared. She didn’t want to die down here, not really. She wanted to be outside, in that sunlight. She wanted to walk again, want her wrist not to be chained to a pipe. For the first time in a long time, she cried herself to sleep, curled up in a small ball next to her plate of food.——————————————————————————————————————What Anna didn’t know was that there had been someone, looking through down at her. Another kid, son of a hunter, had stumbled upon their cabin while scoping out the woods for a good hunting spot with his dad. They had split up for a moment, and that’s when the kid, Miles, had spotted the roof poking through some leaves. Something shiny and dark green in the foliage. So of course, he had to figure out what it was.Curiosity did not kill this cat. In fact, this was probably the best thing which could have happened for Anna. As Miles creeped around the cabin, trying to figure out if it was abandoned or not, he saw her, through that small sheet in the window. And he had gone to tell his dad, immediately. He was certain, there was a girl down there, chained to a pipe. Maybe he wasn't old enough to remember Anna in the news - maybe he didn't even watch the news. But he could describe her well enough to his dad, and his dad knew who it must be, almost instantly. It was such a good thing Miles thought to look, and Miles thought to tell his dad. And his dad, in turn, had told the police. This was the first possible break in the case in months. It rejuvenated their hope in finding this potential missing girl. Mr. Nidal was almost positive it was her, based on the descriptions his son had given. Each of them gave statements to the police, to the FBI. This was a game changer.So while Anna sat in that basement, crying herself to sleep, the police had rented out a nearby cabin - as close as they could get, without getting suspicious. The last thing they wanted was to alert her captor. The last thing they wanted was for her to end up dead. If they could take this whole thing by surprise, they could probably get whoever had taken her, and get her back safely.They had been staking out the place for a few days now, watching the comings and goings of the woman inside. They were pretty sure they had gotten down her patterns. Right now, she should be inside, taking a nap. So right now, they gathered at the foot of the hill, and planned their ambush.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dani stood outside the glass window into the interrogation room (one way glass, of course), watching Amanda and Liv talk with Selena. Or attempt to talk with her. She kept insisting that all she knew was her girl had a date, then called her screaming scared for her life five minutes later. And, of course, it wasn't long until the lawyer showed up. With cases like these, it was inevitable, they always did. Not to protect Selena - but to protect whoever she worked for. Whoever she worked for didn't care about Selena, not really. They cared about the information she had on them, the information she could provide to the police. Moments later, her boss and Amanda were walking out of the room, letting Selena have a minute alone with the bald headed man who would be her mouthpiece. "Those guys are the lowest of the low," Dani muttered to them, looking through the glass and watching the two figures mouth's move, even though she couldn't hear what was being said. "You saw the way she looked when he walked in," Amanda said, her lips pressed into a thin line, clearly pissed off. "She's terrified of him. Terrified of who sent him.""She works for those pimps," Liv said with a shake of her head. "And that means she had to have known about Ellie. She had to. Just like she had to know about the fourteen year old girl, Missy, who is now laying in the morgue with a bullet in her skull.""She's become someone horrible...but she must have..." Dani sighed, shaking her head. "She would have been one of those girls, when she was young. Taken from her home and everything she knew." The words were hard for her to say, sticking to her throat like glue, but they had to be said. "Dani, that's who she was, not who she is. She's become a victimizer," Liv pointed out. "We have to build a case against her, and we have to do it fast." She turned away from the window to not look at the woman any further. "Where's Luna?" "She's in the bunk room," Amanda replied, but Liv was already walking away. "We'll get her down here." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dani, Liv, and Sonny sat in a larger, conference-style room with Luna, who was on a couch near the wall, sipping out of a soda can using a straw. While her eyes were still red, she looked far less afraid than last time, which gave Dani a sprig of hope. Until the raven-haired girl put down the drink and spoke. "How's my application for T-Status going?" Dani's heart sunk.She turned to Sonny, a rather bitter look on her face, eyebrow raised as if to say Yea, how is that going?"I'm working on it," he said after a beat, lips pressed into a thin line. His eyes drifted to Dani for a moment, and she shook her head at him. He sighed, getting up from his perch on the large table and moving to sit on the couch beside Luna. "Hey, let me show you something quick..." he paused, taking a photo out of his suit jacket pocket. "Do you know her?" It was a image of Selena from when they had brought her in. It wasn't flattering, to say the least.Luna looked to Dani, who nodded and gave her a small smile of encouragement. "Everyone knows Selena," she spit out after a moment. "She is the one who is in charge of us all." The girl managed to roll her eyes at that comment, too, clearly distasteful of the woman. That was good, that was something she would talk on. "So she's your enforcer?" Dani asked, cocking her head to the side to show Luna she was curious, wanting to understand the situation better."Si," Luna replied with a nod and another roll of her eyes. "But now just because she works for them, she thinks she is better than the rest of us. She used to be just like us, but she forgets that." Luna paused, chin quavering as she took in a breath, a difficult one. Dani could see the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. "She tells me this is all my fault. She says I am a whore. She ask me, how could I be so stupid?" Luna had to pause for a moment as she sniffed in another difficult breath. At this, Dani got up. She had been leaning against the table, but now she grabbed one of the chairs and brought it over, sitting closer to Luna, providing her with courage and comfort. The girl looked up and smiled at her, even though the tears were bubbling, threatening to come out. "In our village, my home, Vargas, every girl knew it could happen to them," Luna finally continued. "So I did what my mother said to do. I never wore any makeup, so they didn't think I was pretty, I tried to look ugly. Never any dresses, just pants. Nada. And then when the Narcos come, you hide." Dani reached out and gave the girl's trembling hand a squeeze, before letting go and putting her hands back in her lap. She could feel Sonny's eyes on her, studying her interactions, how they were working.A tear slipped down Luna's cheek and she shook her head, taking a moment to try and recompose herself. "One day they came and I hid. I was hiding with my kitten and she ran away....I climbed out after her to go get her, and they got me. They took me away. They took me to her, to Selena." She was speaking now with her eyes shut, as if it were too painful to look at any of them as she relived the moments."Luna..." Sonny said, pausing for a moment and licking his lower lip. "If you don't mind me asking, why did you call it our village?"Luna shook her head for a moment, curly hair tossing over her shoulders as she pressed her fingers to her lips. After a moment of silence, she spoke again. "Selena was one of the first girls taken...everybody in our hometown knew her story. That she was at the market one day, shopping with her mother. And she let go of her mama's hand. For one second. Just one. And that was it. And we all knew she got taken to Tenancingo." She paused for a moment, chin jutting out, as she breathed in deeply. "The same place I got taken."Liv and Dani exchanged a glance and Dani nodded. She had heard that name before. "Thank you, Luna," she said, earnestly, after a moment. "We appreciate everything you've told us. It's going to help, I promise." They got the girl, who was still teary eyed, an escort back to the bunk. After all, they had a district attorney to meet with.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"Tenancingo," ADA Rafael Barba spoke from one of their planning rooms as he looked at a screen of video before all of them, "Is the epicenter for sex trafficking in Mexico. This is not the first time I have dealt with a case from there, and it probably won't be the last, unfortunately. Pimping is their main industry, import and export." He turned to look at Liv, and she nodded for him to continue. He clicked a small device in his hand, the video changing from a view on a map, to a view of an overhead shot of the village, where small houses, shacks and trailer homes really, were lined up, row upon row. "It's a very poor village, as you can see here. There is not space to flourish or grow, it's just shack on shack on shack. Except." He clicked his device again, zooming in on a lavish, green area with large houses and pools. "These mansions, right here." The slides continued to click through, giving them clear images of what they were now dealing with. "These mansions are five stories high, each. Full lawns and gardens, turreted gates to keep intruders out," Barba continued to explain. Dani had always enjoyed working with him, he got it. Some people in law were in it for the money. Not him. "I did a little digging on my end too," Amanda pipped up. "I spoke with a federal task force who has been looking into this. They told me that the traffickers there make so much money and build these lavish houses, just to keep the mothers and children there. With a few guards, too.""Children of kidnapped girls," Dani pointed out sardonically, crossing her arms over her chest. It didn't matter how fancy of a place it was, it was blood money, and those kids belonged to the poor women and girls they were pimping out. It made her blood boil, thinking about it all. Maybe she was a bit close to this, as Liv had asked her earlier, but that didn't make her want to stop fighting. She could remember what it was like the day someone saved her, brought her back to that moment if she dwelled too long. She had all but given up on the idea that she could have hippieness again."Great, so they got mansions down in Mexico. How exactly does that help us take down this squad of losers here?" Finn asked, bringing them all back to the main point of this meeting. He could always be relied on for that. "Oh don't worry, I'm getting to that," Barba said with a nod, turning back to the screen once more. In front of her, Dani could see Sonny practically in rapture listening to the ADA speak. It made sense, it was what he wanted to do someday, after all. SVU was a stepping stone for him, not a life. Sometimes she had to remind herself of that when new people came in."The task force sent down there was able to actually ID three of the owners," Barba explained. "Now this is where it gets interesting. The first," now she stood from his perch on the edge of the table, moving up to tap the screen next to the first face of a man with a short, black beard, "Was shot to death last year, in Tijuana. Now the second," a new face appeared on screen, this man equally young, equally gruff looking. "He is a respected member of the town council. And the third is who they claim is actually somewhere inside the United States, possibly New York. He's the tie to getting the girls here. His name is Teodoro Juarez, age 35." Dani nearly spit out her coffee as the image appeared on screen before them, at the same time Liv looked at the screen and muttered, "Son of a bitch." "Am I missing something here?" Barba turned back to all of them, a curious look on his face. There was clearly a piece to the puzzle that he hadn't been privy too quite yet. But how could he? He knew all the details they knew, but he didn't know the faces of people they had met, people they had questioned. But Dani did, Dani recognized that face right away, and so did the others."That's Angel," Sonny said nodding towards the screen, body tight like he wanted to pace around but there wasn't quite enough space for him to do so. He shook his head as he stared at the screen, as if that could dismiss some of the pent up energy. "He must have vandalized his own office once we started poking around and asking questions."Dani turned to Barba, brow creased with concern. "To us, Teodoro Juarez is Angel Perez, the owner of the ride share app," she explained to him, trying to fill in the blanks. "It's the same service the girls use when they're being sent out."Barba nodded, understanding the bigger picture now. "So he's not just transporting, he's trafficking too. What a great guy." "Yea, but there's no way any of these girls will testify to that." Dani looked to Sonny and Liv, "You've seen them, they're terrified. Angel's ruthless, he wouldn't blink at hurting them or their families. They would be afraid of what would happen next. They're already afraid. And to top it off, they have their children held hostage." "Wait a minute..." Liv said, shaking her head, musing over her thoughts as she looked at Dani. Dani, the woman, who had once been a girl she had saved all those years ago. "That might be our way in." She looked to all of them now, not wanting Dani to sense where her own memories were trailing. "These girls may have given up on themselves. But what about their babies? Barba, does the task force have eyes on the grounds right now?" Liv asked, moving around the table to stand in front of them all, ready to present her plan. "Yep, eyes and boots. And in the air too," Barba confirmed with a curt nod, ready to hear what Liv was thinking. They all knew, when she got going like this, that a solid idea was about to come through. And they could all use a bit of that right now."Alright, so they can tell us how many kids are there, hidden in Angel's mother's house?" Liv asked, eyes lit with fire. "And preferably, who they are?" Barba nodded in response. "There we go. That's our in."--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Liv and Amanda went to go speak with Selena, see what they could get her to work with. With pictures of her son, proof that he was alive and well, they had a pretty good feeling that she would be willing to help them out. Dani was staying behind on this one, finishing up some paperwork at her desk before suiting up with Finn and Sonny to go finish what they had started."Hey," Sonny said, sliding into his desk behind her, his eyes weighing on her with an intensity which made her shoulders want to crumble under the sheer pressure of his gaze. "Everything okay?" He asked, still watching her closely. Sonny was starting to piece together the information he had discovered the other night, but now he wanted answers. But he wanted to get them willingly, not something he had to pry out of her. "Yea?" She asked, curly hair tied back in a messy ponytail, brushing low between her shoulder blades. She didn't turn to look at him, but he could see her shoulder tighten only slightly as he spoke to her. "Why wouldn't I be?" The question rolled off her tongue so casually, there was no way for Sonny to know it made her tongue feel like sandpaper and ashes."Well you just seemed like you got a little...intense, back there in the meeting. Talking about those kids," he drawled, and this, this finally got a reaction out of her. Her pen froze and she turned, slowly to look at him. He noticed, not for the first time, a hollow sense of fear in her eyes, like a cornered animal, and the bags that clung beneath them. She seemed perpetually tired, perpetually affected by the weight of the entire world. He wished there was something he could do to let Atlas set down the globe, but he just didn't know how."I think you're reading in a little too deeply for someone who just met me this week," she said after a moment of staring at him, but he still noticed the way her hands white-knuckled the edge of her chair as she watched him. "I just care about my job, ok? That's it." She punctuated her words sharply, before she turned back around. But Sonny didn't think he was reading too deeply into this, quite the contrary. He knew exactly who Dani was, and who she pretended she wasn't. Sure, maybe he didn't know her personally, not yet, even if he wanted to. But he knew her past. Everyone did, really. She was a name that had graced TV screens and newspaper headlines everywhere. It was no wonder that she went by her middle name.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seventeen years, twenty five days, and thirteen hours ago
There was a bang upstairs, she knew it. A bang that didn't sound familiar. She sat up, hazy, fuzzy, not quite understanding what was going on. Her lips were dry, cracked even, and her stomach hurt to think about - she hadn't had anything to eat in the last day or so. Honestly, she was losing track of days, of time. She didn't understand what was going on, but she knew that someone else was upstairs. Someone unfamiliar.That got her nerves running. Heart pounding, skin scrawling like there were bugs all over it. Even with nothing in her stomach, bile felt like it was about to rise up and overtake her. Anxiety rose up in her stomach like a wild, screaming monster. Like she was an animal in a cage. Of sorts, she was.That's when the shouting started. Screaming, banging. Loud deep voices and doors being slammed into walls, likely slamming doorknobs into plaster, maybe breaking on wood. It was like a dark cloud blinding Anna's eyes, like all that remained was terror - her own personal hell. This had to be a dream. It had to be. She wished she could press her hands to her eyes and pound the dream out, wake herself up. She would have screamed even, if she had known better what was going on up the stairs in the first floor of the house, if she had known people had finally come to save her. To bring her home. To reunite her with the family she was trying so desperately to remember. But she didn't know, so she bunched herself up as tightly as she could and she wished for it all to stop, for the screaming to fade. For her family to be with her again. She even wished to be dead, because that would mean all of this was finally over and done with. She wouldn't have to measure time between meals or wonder if no one was ever coming back for her again. She didn't want to live like this, because it wasn't really living. It was just existing. And she was so tired. She felt so weak and helpless, skin tight on her bones. Wrists so small she maybe could have gotten out of her restraints if she had enough energy to try.Suddenly, the door at the top of the stairs shot open, light filtering down, dust floating in the air. She blinked, jolting back, not prepared for such a violent action on the thing that kept the woman out. But it wasn't a woman up there, it was a man, a man in dark pants and a thick vest and he had a gun. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out but a hiss. Was this it? Was this truly her final moments? But he lowered the gun as he saw her. "Hey," he said quietly, raising one gloved hand up, then the other, showing he wasn't here to hurt her. "Is there anyone else down here with you?" She shook her head twice, then tried backing up again, or at least as far as she could still stuck to this pipe. "Okay. Okay that's good. I'm going to be right back, but I'm not going anywhere, okay? I'll be right back and we're going to get you out of here."Out of here. The words ran over and over in her head on an unending loop. She didn't even hear the man on his walkie talkie or the other footsteps upstairs. Then there was another shadow in the door and Anna looked up, her eyes landing on a woman. Not The Woman, but another one. Younger. Brunette. And she was looking right back at her."Hi there, my name is Olivia," she said quietly, slowly making her way down the stairs. "Do you mind if I come help you out of there?" When Anna didn't answer, too stunned into silence, she continued moving forward until she could sit on the ground near her, the fabric of her vest, which Anna would later learn stopped bullets, crinkling. "Here," she said, reaching towards her wrist. "Let's get you out of there. And then we're going to get out of here, too. To somewhere much nicer." Anna looked up at her and nodded. Maybe it was true. Maybe this wasn't a dream and she wouldn't wake up and she wouldn't still be alone in this basement slowly starving. Maybe this was finally the end of it all. Officer Olivia Benson helped extract her from the basement, and helped her up the stairs. Anna refused to be carried. She scrambled her way up on tingling feet that hardly wanted to cooperate. But she did it, herself. She didn't want this nice, new lady to think she was completely incapable. At the top of the stairs, she saw the door open out to the woods. Without a second thought, she dashed for it, wanting to see the sky. Wanting to feel fresh air on her skin. Wanting to not have walls around her.Outside, she saw the woman. She froze in her tracks, as the woman, currently in the back of a white and black car with flashing lights, began to scream. Anna couldn't hear what she was screaming through the glass window of the vehicle, nor did she particularly care to. She blinked, looking at the woman who had ruined her life. She would probably remember her face forever, could pick her out in a crowd, even if she wished she would never see her again, not as long as she lived. "Let's go this way," Olivia said, suddenly beside her, steering her towards an ambulance. "There are some nice doctors here, who want to make sure you're okay. And then we are going to talk, just a little, so I can make sure you're alright too. Does that sound okay?" This time Anna nodded yes in response. That did sound find. It sounded pretty good, all things considered.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Day
"It's time, let's go," was all Olivia had to say to launch Dani out of her desk. The had five witnesses and a signed statement. They were going to get this guy, and for real this time. They had a whole squad ready to go, Fin and Amanda on one end of the drive, Olivia, Sonny, and Dani on the other, swat agents in heavy gear around them. On the call of "Police! Don't move!" They pushed in, pistols raised, towards Angel and the woman he had with them, the two of them freezing on the path towards their car while Olivia ordered other agents to go around back and make sure no one else got out. It was all going really well, really well until Fin started reading the man his rights.That's when all hell started to go down. Angel started to threaten Olivia and the baby she was adopting. Olivia took a step back, mouth wide, as Dani stepped forward beside her, strength in numbers. Angel suddenly thrust his shoulder back, knocking Fin away from him and away from his hands before the cuffs were on. He reached into his waistband and Dani saw a flash of silver and a barrel pointed towards her.There was a shot and she flinched, before realizing it was Fin who had pulled the trigger, Angel slumping against his car, red pooling on the front of his white shirt. The woman behind them started to scream and cry hysterically and Dani wondered, not for the first nor the last time, how women could love men like this. Men who sold other women. Men who profited on the bodies of others. Men who kidnapped. She would never fully understand it, no matter how many times she would see it again going forward. But it was over, at least, she thought to herself as she stared at the officers who came to take Angel's body away. And now they could reunite children with their mothers. Even with the death, this was the part that made it all worth it.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------Back at the office, Dani draped her navy jacket over the back of her chair and ran a hand through her messy hair. It had been a long day. A long week. She could use a hot bath that lasted an hour and filled the room with scents of lavender. Who was she kidding - she didn't like lavender nor did she particularly like baths. Yet, it sounded good after today. Half of her wanted to just dumb herself into her chair and pass out right there. "Getting out of here?" Sonny's always cheerful voice crackled into her ears. She glanced over at him, sliding so her back was no longer facing away from him. He still wore his jacket but looked like he had packed up and was ready to go, looked just as tired as she was."Yea," she said with a shrug. "Are you? Everyone else has already rolled out," she nodded towards Benson's shut door and Amanda's empty desk. If she had been smart she would have gotten out sooner, but now here she was, begrudgingly talking to her coworker, her coworker who was annoyingly nice but also felt like he had to voice an opinion on everything. And who made her breakfast. She absentmindly reached into the pocket of her leather jacket, fingertips tapping along the edge of her cigarette pack, stress dipping away from her even as she just touched it. She was still keeping her latest streak going, but sometimes it felt good just to touch it. "Yea, I'm about to get out of here. I just wanted to see if you needed a ride or anything, it's not out of the way for me, really," he seemed almost...nervous, as he spoke. Which was just slightly enduring. Only slightly. Still mostly annoying because, well, it was Sonny. And he always managed to annoy her one way or another. But the offer was nice, all the same, and she nodded finally, rolling her eyes as she did so."Yea, sure, that's fine. Let's get out of here then, before I fall asleep at my desk," she slung her bag lazily over her shoulder and headed for the door, not waiting to see if Sonny would follow. If he truly wanted to give her a ride home, he would follow, right? That was pretty sound logic on it, she thought at least. And she was right - he slipped into the elevator with her a second before the doors were about to close. "Nice," she muttered. "Almost missed it, that would've been a shame." "Why are you so snarky all the time?" He asked, standing beside her as the elevator slowly brought them to the bottom floor. "I'm not even doing anything. All I did was offer ya a ride home then get in the elevator. You don't need to be so defensive all the time." He turned slightly to look at her, daring her not to answer. Even it had only been a few days since they met, he felt fairly certain Dani Danvers wasn't the kind to back down from a challenge, and certainly not one issued by him.Dani was taken aback by his question. It wasn't that she didn't know she was a little sharp around the edges. She was fully aware. She just never was really called out on it. Ever. That was just Dani being...Dani. She had pretty damn good reasons to be guarded and abrasive and just generally not a people person. But here Carisi was, just saying it out loud, to her face. Her face which had promptly turned the shade of a ripe, red tomato as embarrassment flooded her system. She pressed her lips into a thin line, eyes narrowing. "You don't know anything about me," she said, turning in the elevator to face him, just the two of them now riding quietly down. The space was quickly becoming too small and too dimly lit for her. "No, but I do know whatever's going on in that pretty little head of yours is no reason to be hostile towards people who are just trying to help," Sonny countered, and Dani realized how he was about a head and a half taller than she was in that moment, as he leaned over her frame, his body practically reclined again the elevator wall. And all she could do was think about the fact he had called her pretty. Well, called her head pretty. She hated that word buzzed around inside of her, unprovoked. She scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest and forcing herself to lean away from him. "You might change your mind if you actually new." The words were out before she could stop them and she froze. It was challenging him to ask. And she didn't really want to tell him. She didn't know him. She hadn't even told Amanda, her closest friend for a person who really had none. "Alright, that may be true," Sonny shrugged. "But that would require you to tell me something. That a can you're ready to open?" He asked her. Another challenge. "Fine," she said, weighing what details she could tell him without giving her entire life story away. "There's a Pad Thai place near mine. You hungry?" "Sure," he said, shifting back to face forward as the doors to the elevator slid open. "I'm starving anyways. Let's get going." He passed her, hands in his jacket pockets, leaving her in his dust in the dark elevator. She barely had time to slip out before the doors slid shut, locking her inside. As she stepped out into the night air, her phone began to buzz in her pocket. She pulled the small, black square from her jeans and looked down at the illuminated screen. The number, blaring UNKNOWN in large, white letters across screen, stared back up at her. She clicked the answer button and raised the phone to her ear. "Hello?" she asked, trailing slowly behind Carisi as he stomped towards his car. The phone was silent on the other end, so she asked her greeting one more time. Nothing. And then, slowly, a musical tune like a merry-go-round began to play in the background, followed by a mechanical laughing cackle. "Hello?" Dani asked one more time, not particularly caring where this was headed. Every now and then she got a prank call. Suddenly, the line went dead. She frowned, looking at her phone, before tucking it in her pocket and looking up, to find Sonny standing on the passenger side of his car, door held open for her."Who was that?" he asked, sounding casually inquisitive moreso than actually caring."Not sure," she shrugged, wanting to forget about the call altogether. "Must have been spam."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dani nodded at the shop owner sitting in the back office of the Pad Thai restaurant, Bow Thai, where he always sat with the door open and ready to look out. She ate there all the time, especially when it was rainy or snowy, and she would definitely consider herself a regular here. He nodded back, pointing at Sonny and wiggling his eyebrows, to which she sharply shook her head, no. This was not that kind of dinner. Simply friends, colleagues really, eating together after a long day of work.They tucked into her normal corner booth, one on either side knees almost close enough to bump together underneath the wooden table. Sonny picked up the menu, but Dani didn't need it. She came here often enough that she knew what she wanted without thinking about it too hard, she had different orders for different days depending on the level of 'shitty' things had been. She slurped on her Tom Yum soup while they waited for their main courses to arrive. “So,” Sonny said casually, sipping on the light beer he had ordered (after all this was an excuse for him to unwind after the day they had, too). He set the cup down, on a coaster. He looked at her expectantly but didn’t speak any further. “So?” She asked, flicking her gaze away from her food only for a second to meet his gaze, challenging, before dipping her spoon back in and slurping on another spoonful. “Isn’t this supposed to be some grand opportunity where you get to tell me why you’re allowed to treat people the way you do?” He smirked slightly, leaning back on his side of the booth, one arm running along the top edge as if he sat here all the time. Like this was actually his local place, not hers. A flicker of irritation colored her eyes and he noticed it too. Dani rolled her eyes. “Maybe, or maybe it’s an excuse to get someone to drive me to my favorite Thai place,” she shrugged, taking another spoonful and making a sound of satisfaction as the hot liquid coated her tongue. “Anyone ever tell you you should shave your mustache ?” She changed the subject quickly with a soft insult. As she often did.Sonny frowned for a second, “No, no one has ever told me that - and hey, stop changing the subject will ya?” Even over the few days they had worked together, it hadn’t been hard to pick up on her habits. She donned the same armor every day, after all. His life was being a detective, and he was going to school to be a lawyer. If he wasn't able to read someone like her, he would have even bigger problems. Dani smirked slightly at how her distraction had sunk in before he realized it, sitting back as she finished her soup, looking over at her coworker. "I need to start by saying something," she paused for a moment, studying him, pressing her lips into a fine line. "You think you know something about me, but you don't. It's fine that you assume, almost everyone does," she shrugged, as this were simply just another fact of life. "But I want you to recognize that you don't know me. You know pretty much nothing about me, other than ideas you're trying to piece together based on how I work. So tell me, what do you think you know?" She stared at him, unlinking.Sonny was slightly taken off guard, not expecting that to be the first thing she told him. "Um, well. I know you're good at your job," he said, scratching at his neck. Obviously, there were other things he was starting to piece together about her but he didn't exactly want to drop that information right then. Someone like her...he was pretty sure she would bolt."That's surface level shit," Dani rolled her eyes. "Obviously I'm good at my job, we wouldn't be working together if I wasn't.""Well hold on, let me explain myself," Sonny said, sitting up now as if he were in a debate. "You are good at your job. So am I, but you're on some other level. You knew what that girl needed without even thinking, the things she needed to open up to us. But you don't just do it to get people to talk, you're doing it because you really care about what they're going through and you know what can make it better. That's something special.""And that's it?" Dani raised an eyebrow at him as her bowl of Pad Thai was set down in front of her. She began to eat as she studied him closely. Ball was in his court after all. He shrugged so she let out a sigh. "Gotta get a better read on me, Detective," she smirked and something in his stomach flip flopped. He ignored it by digging into his own plate of food. "My parents got divorced when I was really young. Like bad divorced. Opposite sides of the country because even that isn't far enough divorced." She tossed out there casually, lobbing it like a baseball. "Okay," Carisi shrugged. "I mean, a lot of parents get divorced. I can't say I relate, because mine are still together. But, I can't imagine how I'd be if they weren't. My family is very close. Very, very close. You know the type, Italian Catholic," he explained, in-between bites. "I'm named after my dad, hence the 'Jr,' which I guess is kind of self explanatory. My parents are like soulmates. And they're both great cooks." He didn't mean to ramble, but he started doing it anyways."Glad you can't relate," she deadpanned. "But my brother and I lived with it basically since he was born. So. That's the environment I grew up in. Lots of time as an unaccompanied minor on airplanes. Lots of time wondering if they loved you and that's why you had to fly back and forth, or if it was just because it annoyed the other one to have to keep going to the airport." She looked down as she spoke, dancing around the bigger problem from her childhood, the gaping hole that was her abduction. The trial that followed. The news articles and harassments, book and TV offers that she declined for years. The things that really made her hard around the edges, the things that made her not trust opening up to anyone at all. "My mom is dead," she said quietly, still not looking up at him. "Happened a long time ago, still sucks though." Sonny paused at that, staring at her. She could feel the weight of his eyes piecing into her as she took another bite of food, chewing slowly, savoring the flavors she loved so much. "I'm sorry," he said, because he wasn't really sure what else to say to news that like. In his head, he was doing the calculations. If he was right about who she was, that only added another confirmation. But he didn't want to say anything. That was her story to decide to tell, not his to force out."That's what everyone says, doesn't change anything about the situation though," Dani shrugged, then winced, realizing how her words sounded. She knew she had just told him something heavy. Granted he had asked to hear it, but that didn't mean she needed to lash out. "Sorry. It just isn't a great topic for me. Family stuff in general isn't great for me. We are not close. I'm close to my brother, I guess. But no one else really. And that's fine. It just...you know, it isn't great. Makes it hard to trust anyone." That was a safe way to say it. Compared to all the things she could say. His knee bumped hers and she nearly jumped out of her own skin. She had to force herself not to recoil. She didn't like touch either, being touched, anything she didn't initiate herself. But she forced herself to sit there, like her therapist told her to. Friends were allowed to do this. It was okay. She also hated that she even used the word 'friend' in his regard. She still hardly knew him. She didn't even know if she wanted to know him. Yet, here they were at her favorite Thai place, sharing one of her secret, safe spaces that she had built for herself. She didn't even take dates here. Or anyone. There was a momentary piece of panic within her, that someone now knew where she lived, where she ate. That meant people could find her. But she took a deep breath and focused on the fact that she was okay. She needed to sink into that fact and live in it. She was fine. This was fine. She felt her fingertips brush over the square of her cigarettes in her pocket. "I'm sorry," Sonny said again, still not really sure what else he could say. He usually felt like he had a good grasp on what to say, but not in this moment. In this moment, he felt like his was struggling to fight against the current that was Dani Danvers, a woman he had met only days ago but felt somehow hugely pivotal in his life. He didn’t know why. It just felt like soon he would. She slurped her noodles loudly, also unsure of where to go from here. She didn’t want to share more but also hadn’t shared anything with anyone but her therapist in the longest time. Not even her brother knew the full extent of what she felt or went through. "Yea, well," she said after a moment. "It is what it is. None of us gets to decide who comes into our lives, or who goes out of it." Sonny nodded, mulling her words over.She was right, of course. She certainly hadn't chosen for him to come stumbling into her office, much less to lecture her outside beforehand. Nor had he chosen to meet her at a bar after work, and see her ID before driving her home. Neither of them had picked to meet each other, yet here they were. Fate had a funny way of doing that, sometimes.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"Hey Dani, come look at this," Carisi called from where he stood, leaning against a table, watching he news in front of him. Dani froze, staring at him, not looking at the tv. "What's with these girls?" He shook his head. "First their idolized as a kid, then sexualized as a teen, and every time it leads to bad news.""Yea, that's Tensley Evans," She said, eyes still unmoving. Finally Sonny seemed to feel the weight of her eyes on him and he turned, meeting her gaze, noticing how her hair seemed more unruly and wild than usual, curls busting out all around her face."What? What are you staring at?" he asked, looking from her to the TV."You shaved," she said, pointing one finger slowly at his face. "You...look like an entirely different human." She cut herself off before making an unnecessary compliment, but he looked good. There was something about his face, now with no mustache, that looked nicer. Handsome, even, not that she'd get caught dead saying that."Yea, some girl who seems to be following me around suggested I get rid of it," Sonny quipped, standing up to face her, nearly toe-to-toe. Their eyes locked for a moment, before Dani rolled hers, heading quickly over to her desk, tucking her head down under her curls so no one would see the pink on her cheeks.Ever since their dinner together, he seemed to be able to do that to her. Out quip her, get her lost in thought, embarrassment coloring her face, sometimes accompanied by a smile but usually by annoyance.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Carisi, Danvers, you're up," Olivia called, Dani's head instantly shooting up from her computer screen in attention. "Got the star turned hit and run coming in stat, want you to running this one. She's accusing Nick of being inappropriate during her arrest." Dani scoffed and Olivia gave her a look. "Room one, I'll be watching from my office."Dani began to look for her things, notepad, pen, getting herself ready, as she watched an officer lead a literal TV Star, her mother, and her lawyer into their office. She turned and met Sonny's eyes and he nodded, signaling he was ready. Together the two of them made their way in, greeting the group and sitting down on the opposite side of the metal table from them."Tensley Evans, nice to meet you, I'm Detective Danvers," she greeted just as she would anyone else in there."Detective Carisi," Sonny said. "My niece is a huge fan of yours. She'll be real jealous when I tell her we met," he grinned cheekily, in that way he often did when he was playing nice."What, you want an autograph or something?" The young twenty-something scoffed, rolling her eyes. Instantly Dani felt as if she had met hundreds of girls just like Tensley before - albeit less famous. They were the girls she had always been able to pick out in school. The ones that seemed effortlessly popular, but actually put a shitload of time into it. The ones who secretly really cared about being liked."Can we talk about what we're actually here for?" Mrs. Evans interjected. "My daughter shouldn't be going to prison, she needs help. Mental help. She's not going to get that behind bars.""Well, Ma'am, she was getting that before she took her car and ditched her rehab center," Carisi pointed out."I want you all to realize how serious these charges are," Dani said, lacing her fingers together and placing her hands on the table. "Drunk driving, for the fourth time. Not to mention fleeing the scene and falsely accusing an officer. This isn't something that just goes away because you want it to." She looked the mother dead in the eye at that point."Wait, talk to me not her!" Tensley interjected. "And why do you all just assume I'm lying.""Well, because you are," Sonny pointed out flatly. "Ever heard of dashcam footage? All police cars have it. It's actually a really common thing to pretend to not know it exists." He and Dani locked eyes for a moment and she gave him a practically imperceptible nod and Tensley began to stammer."Alright, alright," the lawyer cut in, adjusting his small, round glasses. "My client was in a very agitated state. Maybe she misinterpreted the officer. It could be an honest mistake.""Excuse me!" her mother cut in now. "My daughter is not a liar. If she said this happened, then it did!" She pointed sharply at her daughter with the last three words."Donna, please stop," the lawyer asked, as calmly as he could muster. Dani couldn't imagine the amount of patience he had to put up with these two. Being in the same room with them made her want to quit on the spot."H-hey mom, I don't feel very well," Tensley said, and Dani noticed her fingers were shaking as her mother rushed over to her, urging her daughter to breathe. Her breaths were quicker than they should, shallow. Dani looked to Sonny and gave him a pointed gaze."Alright Mrs. Evans, how about you come with me and we'll find a glass for her, yea?" he suggested amicably, standing up from his chair, hands on his hips. Dani felt a sharp pang of annoyance as she caught Tensley watching him, but pushed it down.Her mother began to object, but Tensley cut her off. "Mom, it's not my nerves okay? It's my blood sugar. I need a power bar or something, please." She batted her lashes at her mother, and the woman melted like butter. Dani sat back in her seat, waiting for the woman to leave the room."Tensley, let's talk about the night of the crash a little bit, alright?" Dani said, picking up her notebook and looking through it for a moment. "You left rehab without telling anyone. Why?""I...I had to just get out of there," she began quietly, looking down at her hands, trying to stop the shaking. "You wouldn't understand.""What I do understand is you are on probation," Dani replied evenly. "And a part of that probation is 60 days in a rehab facility. That wasn't optional. You can't just decide you want to leave. So help me understand what happened." She leaned forward now, meeting Tensley's gaze."I can't go back, really. Please. I can't," Tensley said, looking now between Dani and her lawyer, seeming truly agitated. "And you're not going to understand. It doesn't matter what I say. Whatever I do, he'll just twist it around. It's what he always does." She blinked away tears. They seemed real - Dani had seen a lot of fake ones in her time."Okay, Tensley, who's he?" She asked, pushing further."I'm sorry I can't say. Please don't make me say." Again, she looked back and forth between the two other adults in the room, picking nervously at her cuticles as she did so."But we can't help you if you don't," Dani said empathetically. "If something more is going on here, we want to help however we can. But without details, there's not a lot to go off of."Tensley nodded, taking a deep breath. "Okay. Okay, yea. The Psych Director. His name is Jim Durrant. But...he's just going to say I'm lying." She looked away now, eyes going glassy as if she were in some other place completely, and not sitting here safely in their office. Dani recognized that look, and she couldn't let her slip away just yet."Deny what, Tensley?" She asked, leaning forward, trying to meet the young woman's eyes."At first...he was just really nice. I thought that was cool. If I was going to be stuck somewhere, at least it was with someone nice. He listened, and I could lay down on the couch in his office whenever I was getting overwhelmed and stressed out but.." she paused, rolling her eyes and taking another shaky breath. "I should have known what he really wanted. You'd think I'd know better than that by now. How all men are." She looked up at Dani and began to tell her the story of what happened in the rehab center.Unfortunately, the trip to the rehab center didn't lead to exactly what they thought it would. In fact, they found out that Tensley had actually had a sexual interaction with a minor...and ended up back in cuffs by that night.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"I agree with Carisi," Dani said, standing up from the desk she was leaning against. "If this Producer of hers, Brubeck, did this to her that many times, then there's no way he's stopped. After all, it's not like he's slowed down on producing teen films. He's getting older but those girls are all staying the same age each year. Tensley might be outside of the time frame for charges in NYC, but that doesn't mean it's not happening right now to someone who isn't.""Really, Danvers, you want to go on a fishing trip with the new guy?" DA Barba asked her, eyes widening slightly. He had respect for Dani - she was very no bullshit. This didn't seem like a trail she'd just go waltzing down without proof."Barba," Liv cut in sharply. "I think they have a point. Why don't we pursue two tracks? You can keep going down the Tensley trail while we check out this one." She looked to Dani and nodded. "Get the details on whatever his next casting party in town will be and we'll go there.""Already got it," Dani said, holding up her phone. "He tweets incessently. He's in town this weekend casting for his new musical movie special or whatever. Called Junior Prom. Wonder how old you have to be to get a ticket into that one, huh?"-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The music was pounding in Dani's skull before they even flashed their badges at the security guarding the hotel penthouse pool. "Wow, this is...exactly what I expected it would be," she said, wrinkling her nose and she, Amanda, Nick (who was suddenly just back as if he had never left in the first place), and Sonny all walked into the party, flanked by a squad of uniformed officers."Yea I'd say I see at least 15 underage girls right now," Amanda said, her and Dani's eyes locking."Sonny and I have IDs if you want to get Brubeck," Dani said, nodding to Sonny to head left as she went right around the pool. She began asking anyone with a cup of something suspicious looking for an ID, checking everyone with clear alcoholic beverages, even IDing the pervy old men for the hell of it. But it all checked out, as annoying as that was."Anything?" Dani asked Sonny, as she was practically shoved into him by some young goof of a boy pushing past to jump into the deep end of the pool. She braced herself against his chest before the area behind her cleared and she backed up. "Cause my side was dry.""Nothing here either, other than a bunch of fucking creeps," he sighed, shaking his head. "I can't believe it. I could have sworn we were going down the right trail.""I don't think you're wrong," Dani said, surprising herself, and him as well apparently as his eyebrows rose. "I think you're right. This place is nothing short of disgusting. Just because he's managed to wise up on how to cover his tracks, doesn't mean there's not a trail there. We just have to know where to look. Which means we get to dig into a ton of research, but I would bet somethings there.""You, of all people, believe me?" Carisi grinned, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Nah, don't buy it." He enjoyed watching the way his comments made her roll her eyes, made her look anywhere but him, knowing if they made eye contact she'd start to smile. "Cmon, let's go find Rollins and Amaro and see if they got anything. Then we can hit the books." He nodded towards the tent where the two had gone. Dani felt confident that they wouldn't have gotten him to admit anything. She hated that she wound up being right.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Together, Amanda and Dani laid out the long history of teen stars who turned into adult burnouts to Barba, as the two of them, Nick, Sonny, and Liv all gathered in his office. From drug abuse to armed robbery to porn, the list of what these young girls fell into when they reached adulthood grew longer and longer. Each one of them were stars curated by Adam Brubeck. Likely, they all went to his parties."But none of them ever pressed charges, or came forward to say anything happened there?" Barba asked, and the room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop."Actually," Sonny cleared his throat, holding up a folder. "He was almost once, in LA." He stepped towards the other two detectives and the lawyer, holding out a manila folder. Dani looked at him questioningly, reaching for the folder. "I have an ex. She's LAPD," he explained with a shrug, not catching the sour look that covered her face for only a moment. "She told me that an actress named Amber Forbes drowned at one of his skeezy pool parties in Beverly Hills. This was nine years ago and she was only fifteen, but the M.E ruled it an accident. But ecstasy and alcohol were both found in her system during the autopsy. The police questioned Brubeck and his high end lawyer friend, and Brody Clark, the actor kid from the pool who gave Rollins directions, was on that witness list too.""So we talk to Brody then," Dani said, crossing her arms over her chest before looking to Liv for approval.Her boss nodded. "Talk to the kid. See what he knows. He's showing up in too many places for just a coincidence now." Dani nodded, scooping up the folders and tucking them back into their appropriate folders as the others filled out of the room. Everyone except for Carisi, who reached to help her slide the pictures where they needed to be, fingers brushing only slightly."So, girlfriend?" Dani asked quietly, looking up through a ring of curls to meet his gaze as she closed a folder and put a paperclip on it to be sure it wouldn't open."Ex girlfriend," Sonny pointed back, shoving his hands into his pockets and eyeing her. "Why, you jealous?" He asked playfully as she tucked the folders under her arms."You wish I was," She scoffed, quipping back as she brushed past him, heading for the door."You know I do," he joked back. She was pretty sure it was a joke. It had to be a joke. Really. It couldn't be anything but.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Later that week, Dani sat in Barba's office with the rest of her team, watching a reel of videos shot by Brubeck, of young, underage girls as he made them so all sorts of weird movements while he focused in and out on certain body parts. This was a gross end to a horrible week. Tensley tried to commit suicide, wound up back in rehab, and they found out the young actor Brody was sleeping with the lawyer."Okay, that's pretty horrible, but is there anyone under age who is still within the statute of limitations?" Barba asked, clicking a remote to turn the video off. They had all had enough of that for one day."He's smarter than we imagined he would be," Dani said, shaking her head. "He made sure all of his movies were filmed in Montana, Pennsylvania, Washington...all states with a consent age of 16," she sighed, shaking her head as she leaned against the wall behind her."They all have the mistake of age defense, too," Carisi said, gesturing with his hand. "So he could sleep with one of these girls then claim he thought she was sixteen." There was annoyance and anger in his voice as he talked about that shithead of a producer."So he's just been playing the system ever since Amber died," Amanda said with a sigh. "He knew that people would catch on if any other whispers started happening so he moved his operations to states that made it harder.""So what? We just give up and let this guy keep getting away with this shit?" Nick asked, brow furrowing in anger. "We can't just throw in the towel like that, not on this guy!""We won't," Liv said, standing up from her spot on the plush couch. "He's responsible for Amber's death. He's hurt countless others. We're not about to roll over and let him get away with this one." There was a fire in her eyes, one Dani recognized, one that told her Liv wouldn't give this up until Brubeck was behind bars.
a
"And yet," Barba said, standing now as well. "He's managed to snake through the grass state by state, just toeing the line. He's been absolutely meticulous with his record keeping. The DOB of every girl is listed at the start of each video clip." He began to flip through the binder of DVDs in front of him, listing the states one by one. "Pennsylvania, again, again, Montana." Then he stopped, pulling out a shiny disk. "Winnipeg Nights. This one. What is it? Who watched this one?""I did," Amanda said, grimacing. "It's not much of an audition film though...it's practically foreplay. It's...worse than the others we just saw." Her brow furrowed, lines creasing between her eyebrows."Was it shot in Canada?" Barba asked, looking between them all with a need for an answer. His eyes landed on Dani, so she spoke. “They did film the audition there, Barba, but he never ended up making the movie. That disc is all we’ve got.” She gestures towards the disc as she spoke. “They only auditioned the one girl. Her name is Maude Peterson, but she was 16 at the time.”Liv stood up and slowly walked towards Barba, the two exchanging a look, before she turned to face her team, eyes wider than usual. “Okay, Nick, Amanda, I need you two to get on a plane to Winnipeg right now. Find Maude and talk to this girl. How did she get this audition? Find out if there was ever a script at all. And importantly how far he got with her.”“Why does that matter?” Carisi asked, looking up at Liv from his seat at the table. “The age of consent in Canada is still 16.”Barba spoke directly to Carisi this time, the sound of a potential win highlighting his voice. “If the film was never made and he managed to get lucky up there, then we just got lucky too. Carisi, Danvers, better get ready to call his lawyer because we’re going to bring this guy in.”————————————————————————————————————————————They got him for sexual tourism. Maybe it wasn’t for everything. Maybe it wasn’t for murder. But they got him, the feds arrested him, and he’d serve 30 years in prison.The quartet of detectives sat watching a special Tensley did on TV when Liv came rushing by. Noah, her son, was in the ER and she didn’t know why. The room fell silent as their boss went running away.It was only a few hours later into the evening when they got the call. A young woman had been stabbed in the park, attempted rape and assault as well. Just when they had thought it was time to go home, the work never ended.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The weeks went by as they often did, continuing to bring up memories of Dani's past as she rolled over some of the worst days of her life. Each one brought a new memory to the surface, one she had to keep bottled down while she did her work. It was the first week of November when things started to really take a turn for her mentally. November had been when she was found in the cabin. Hunting season for upstate New York. She had never been a fan of hunting, but she treasured it all the same, because it was probably the only reason she was alive.They got the call about a girl's body found in a park early on the morning of November 2nd. Dani's stomach dropped sharply, but she had to pull herself together. No one in the office, not Rollins, not Carisi, not Amaro, not Fin, knew what November was to her. None of them would except a flat explanation that this case of all cases put her on edge for no reason.The car ride with Carisi to the site at the park was quiet, and there was an ambulance already there when they pulled up, police officers surrounding it as a little girl was wheeled in on a stretcher, oxygen mask over her face. Dani thought her heart might be thumping so loud it'd break right through her skin and out onto the ground in front of them. The two of them walked up to an office standing next to his squad car and Dani put on a neutral face."A bird watcher found her?" Carisi asked the cop as they arrived. "What was the scene like?" He wore a dark suit with a blue button up and a tie with small white dots on it. He was comfortable, even in the brisk fall weather. Dani wore a leather jacket over a white button up and kept her hands shoved in her pockets."Yea, she's still here for interview. Girl was covered in leaves, has obvious head trauma. She was stabbed a few times, looks like she's maybe about ten years old but didn't have an ID or phone or anything so we don't know for sure," the office explained as they watched the young girl disappear into the back of the bus."It's a Sunday, so she's not missing school but a lot of families go to church today. Has an amber alert popped up matching her description?" Dani asked, not taking her eyes off of the girl until the doors shut and the ambulance drove away. Someone had to know she was gone. Someone would have noticed."Nothing yet," the cop said, shaking his head. "You think her parents would have noticed." The words hit her in the chest, a punch each.Carisi scoffed, "Yea, well, unless her parents are the ones who left her here." Dani knew that could be true - it could always be true. There was no end to the ways people could be cruel to each other, especially to children. She knew firsthand. But she had a gut feeling this time that it wasn't the case. She couldn't well say that out loud, as she didn't have proof. If just didn't seem to fit."Why don't you go interview the witness and I'll go check the scene," Dani suggested dryly, not engaging in his comment and making her way towards the yellow crime scene tape without waiting on a response. She had seen hundreds of scenes before, thousands even potentially, but this one she assessed with a laser focus. There was blood on the matted leaves and the ground had an imprint where the girl's body had been. There was blood there too, likely from the stab wounds. Most noticeably, there was no weapon left behind. Though that wasn't always surprising in cases like these. More often than not, assaulters took their weapon with them. It was just going to be their job to find it. She waited, studying the spot, until Sonny joined her outside of the yellow tape."Get anything?" She asked, when he stepped up beside her, hands in his pockets. She didn't look up, but kept combing the ground with her eyes, looking for anything else that might be out of place."A lot of information about birds that I didn't need," he said with a roll of his eyes. "But she had pictures. They're blurry, they definitely don't really show anything. But you can tell it's a big person." He shrugged. "Doesn't look like there's much over here either, does it?""Nope," she replied, the 'p' popping off her lips pointedly as she did, clearly annoyed though Carisi couldn't begin to guess why.His phone began to ring in his pocket. "One sec, it's Amanda," he said to her, holding the phone up and turning away, not seeing the further look of annoyance that passed over her face. "Hey Rollins," he greeted. "Yea, alright, Yea, Danvers and I are still here. Yea I figured the marathon might do that to us. Alright, we'll be ready," he hung up the call, slipping his phone back into his pocket."They're sending cadets from the Academy, and any cop who isn't in the marathon right now," he explained. "The guy we were talking to earlier has been sent to grab us print outs of the photos and artist sketches. There's two other girls that were out here, and they haven't found them either. May take a while. What do we usually do while we wait?" He asked mostly to try and get her conversing with him, try and unlock the spell that seemed to be around her today."We just wait, usually," she replied in a flat tone, finally looking up from the yellow tape. "But there's also a coffee cart around the corner if you want to go grab something quick." She turned, heading that way before he even answered, hands still shoved deep in the pocket of her leather jacket, fingers anxiously running over and over the plastic over her carton of cigarettes.She stopped at the coffee cart and turned over her shoulder, watching Sonny jog up behind her. "Two coffees," she said as he stopped beside her, pulling out her wallet and looking at him. "You want any sugar or anything?""Here, let me get that," he said, pushing her hand and wallet down, pulling his own out with the other hand. "A gentleman never lets a woman pay," he winked at her and she frowned."You think I can't pay for my own coffee?" She asked, raising an eyebrow at him and watching with pleasure as his cheeks grew red and he furrowed his brow."Of course not. But I'm trying to be courteous," he replied, giving a couple bucks over to the vendor and taking the two cups from him, handing one to Dani. "You're my partner. It was a couple bucks. It's not a big deal.""Whatever," she said, taking the cup and sipping the hot liquid. "I can take care of myself." She moved away, sitting down on a bench, trying to breathe deeply and calm her nerves. "Sorry," she said when he sat down. "Thanks for the coffee. I'm just tired." she sipped her drink again and stared out at the trees in front of them. "There's two missing girls out there, and we have to find them.""We will," Carisi said, blowing on his coffee first before sipping. "As soon as that cop gets back with the paperwork we can get a brief ready for those rookies coming to join us. It'll be fine." Knowing what he suspected about her, he could understand why she would potentially be additionally stressed over this case. That girl they found couldn't be much older than she was when she was kidnapped. If Dani was truly who he thought she was."Yea, that's optimistic but you can't know we'll find them," she replied with a shrug. That was just being a realist. They could never promise they'd solve a case, never guarantee they'd find someone missing. She knew that firsthand. She was only lucky she was found - it wasn't policework that did it, it was happenstance."Fair point," Carisi said with a sigh, staring off into the distance. "Hey, look. That cop is back with the fliers, I'm sure he'll have the rookies with him soon. Let's go round up what we have and get ready to start the search, yea?" Dani nodded in agreement, which was good enough for him. He stood up and waited until she was upright beside him before they started forward, side by side.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"Alright, listen up," Dani announced to the group of rookies that gathered around her and Sonny as the fliers were passed around and she held one up high. "Our suspect might live in these woods. If he does, that means he knows it better than any of us will, so be on your toes. He's over six feet tall. Heavy set, bald or balding. He might be wearing an eyepatch and have scaring around his face." She handed the stack of papers she held to a young, blonde cop behind her, letting Sonny take over. The only thing keeping her from rattling right off the edge right now was her ability to focus in on her job and cut all of the other bullshit out. But she knew, deep down, that once they entered that woods it would probably be game over for her. Liv must not have been made aware that she was here and on scene, otherwise her phone would have been blowing up. She probably would have been sent home. She listened as Sonny read off the details of each of the missing girls to the squad of officers, then released them into the woods. Anxiously, she shoved her hands into her pockets, then followed the group and Sonny into the forest. She knew this was really when she should be most useful. She had literally been a captive child in a woods in New York. If anyone could point out oddities, it should be her. This should have been her super bowl. But instead, it was like everything around her went monotone. She could vaguely here Sonny talking to the cops around them, but it was like he was underwater. Even when she glanced his way, the bright blue of his button up looked a shade of grey, as they trudged through the leaves that should have been red and orange, up a hill and further into the forest.Suddenly, something stood out in the stark contrast of her black, white, and grey world. Something that was blue. "What's that?" She asked, freezing in her tracks and nodding towards the object, half obscured by leaves, not even able to make herself take her hands out of the safety of her pockets. Instead, she let Sonny move towards it as she stood, rooted right to the ground in the spot she had first noticed it."A child's backpack," he called back to her, kneeling down over it. "How the hell did you spot that?" She didn't have the time nor the bandwidth to explain to him what the fuck was going on in her brain right now so she simply shrugged, unsure of what other response would possibly be satisfying. He grabbed a tissue, holding it up, and reveiling the name 'Zoe' embroidered in yellow on the front. It was either one hell of a coincidence, or it belonged to one of the girls."Detectives!" The main officer they had been working with in the park, Dani couldn't bring his name to the forefront of her brain in that moment, called out to them, shattering the look they had been exchanging. Dani looked towards him, wide eyed, as he and several other cadets stood on a rocky formation that cropped out into the forest. She blinked, and there was a cabin. She blinked again, and it was back to slate grey stones. "The cadets think they might have found something over here!" He called out to them further, beckoning them to move that way. Dani looked at Sonny, still grey as the rest of the world, and nodded, before trudging that direction. As she and Sonny made it to the base of the rock, she saw the cave, she saw a flight of stairs to a basement, no, just a cave. "They saw someone dash into here, but he's not coming out. We've tried everything," the officer explained, gun drawn and aimed away from them, ready if the mystery man might make any sudden moves."Is he armed?" Sonny asked, drawing his gun as well. Dani still couldn't make herself take her hands out of her pockets as the officer explained he wasn't certain.There was something in Dani that bubbled as she thought about two girls potentially being trapped inside. She could still hear the sound of condensation dripping from pipes as she fell to sleep at night, and wondered what things would haunt those girls' dreams twenty years from now. "Sir we're going to ask you come out with your hands up," she called into the cave, stepping forward. "This is the NYPD. If you don't come out, we are going to have to come in." It was a...mildly empty threat. She sure wasn't planning on going in there any time soon. But someone would, eventually, and they probably would be far more defensive than she was.A man, large, dirty, scraggly, appeared in the entrance of the cave, wielding a large stick. He didn't look like a captor, he looked like a homeless man. Dani took a deep breath. "Guns down," she said to the other two quietly. "He's not going to be any help if he's dead and we still don't know where those girls are." She waited until they sheathed their weapons until she turned back towards the cave. "Can you put the stick on the ground? We don't want anyone to get hurt here. We need you to put that down and come on out.""Get out of there or I'm going to taze you right where you stand!" The younger officer shouted, trying to appear much larger than he was in actuality. The man in the cave entrance started to shout, and took a single step forward before the man fired the little yellow weapon, two cords firing out and latching onto the man. His body began to shake but he didn't drop, as Sonny yelled at the kid to stop. This wasn't going to make anything better. If anything, this would only escalate a situation that no one wanted to see escalate. Yea, there were more of them and they had firepower, but this man was huge, and they were clearly on his turf.The man fell forward and Dani took a deep breath, knowing what she had to do next. She stepped forward, cuffs out in one hand. "Easy now. No one gets hurt. I have to put these on you now, so you can come with us. But we're not going to let anyone do that again, yea?" She said in the most calming voice she could muster. As she stepped forward, suddenly the man whirled around, shoving her backwards, pinning her to a rock with one hand. She blinked, and he was a woman with a knife. She had to blink a few more times before he turned back into a scruffy man from a cave, before the sound came back to her ears, before she realized he was stepping away from her, hands up, responding to whatever it was Sonny was saying, something she couldn't register over the loud ringing and the image of blood on Velcro shoes and a kitchen in New York covered in it. Everything was grey and quiet and buzzing.When she looked over to Sonny, it was like he was in screaming color, like he was a kaleidoscope and color began to bleed off of him into the world around her. He stepped forward, hands on her shoulders, looking down into her eyes. She realized, finally, that he was asking if she was alright, his words finally breaking through the monotone buzz that wrapped her up tight. He looked worried, horrified even. Slowly, she nodded, as she looked down at her hands and saw they were no longer the color of an old silent film. Whatever he had done, he brought the color back.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Liv was at the office when they got the man back. "My office, now," she said, nodding to her employee and Dani nodded, knowing what was coming next. She told Sonny she would be back, feigning not knowing what this conversation was about, then shutting Liv's door behind her."Sit," Liv said, as she wrested against her desk and nodded to the couch along the wall. Dani complied, knowing better than to put up a fight right now. "So, how come you didn't tell me you were putting yourself in an incredibly traumatic and triggering situation wildly near to several anniversaries of similar things happening in her own life?" Her boss asked, cutting straight through the bullshit and right to the point."Because I knew it would wind me up right here in your office," Dani said with a sigh. "Look, Liv, I'm fine. I promise. I appreciate you being here for me through all of this, it means more to me than anything. Really. But my being there today helped find one of the girls' backpacks. It points us in the right direction. No one else noticed it." Yea, maybe half of that was a lie, but at least half was true. And she wasn't ready to give up on the case yet. She needed to see it through to the end. She needed to see those girls be safe, be with their families again. She had seen the parents when she had walked in, frantic and terrified. She knew that at one point, way back when, that had been her father. If she could end that feeling for another family, she needed to do it.Liv looked at her long and slow for a moment. "You sure? Because if you want off the case, I'll pull you off the case. We have plenty of other detectives who can help run this one." She crossed her arms over her chest, staring Dani down like with the iron look of a parent lecturing a child."Scouts honor," Dani replied with a nod. "I want to help, and I get this more than anyone else here. I want to keep helping. I'll be fine. If it makes you feel better, I'll even schedule a debrief therapy meeting." She did not want to do that. Not at all. But if it got Liv to a comfort level that she'd back down a bit, Dani was willing to do what she had to do to get this done."Do," Liv said, nodding, as a knock sounded at the door. Looking over, it was Sonny, Amanda, and Nick. Dani nodded to Liv, before their boss waived them all in. It was time for a lovely group debrief on the case that still had two girls missing. Dani's foot tapped anxiously. Every moment spent in here was another moment those girls weren't at home safe.Dani listened quietly as the trio debriefed them all as she thought about what Liv had said, and thought about what those girls might be going through. It was a lot for her to contemplate. “Dani?” Liv asked, snapping her back to reality. “Do you agree? Can Carisi get him talking?”Dani looked up at Sonny, then to her right where she could see the man from the woods through a pane of one way glass. She looked back to Liv. “Yea. I think so. He got him off me without having to pull any weapons. All he did was talk him down. If anyone can it’ll be him.” She nodded, half to herself, half to her team, trying to put away the thought of Sonny, splashed full of color, bleeding it right into life. She didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about the way the sight of him saving her life brought her senses back.Quietly, she watched the two of them head into the interrogation room, knowing full well that Nick was rather annoyed with her. She didn’t feel bad though, for being honest. She moved to stand by the glass and watched them talking with him. The man, Mr. Dorsey, was clearly mentally ill, the things he was saying was a clear giveaway to that. And yet, just as she had said he would, Sonny got him talking. ————————————————————————————————————————————Dani stayed at the office, circulating amber alerts as Sonny and Amanda went back to the man’s cave. It wasn’t long before they were back, camera in hand. They gathered together to watch it, and it turned out be a home video of the girls. Of how they planned to go out into the woods together and find Glasgoman(which is what they seemed to call the big, scary, Mr. Dorsey). None of this was relayed to them from the one girl that was found.“Rollins, you and I are going to the hospital. Danvers, Carisi, back to the park. Keep in close contact if anything happen,” Liv instructed, sharping a sharp gaze with Dani that clearly read ‘if you need me you call me.’ She nodded, hands in her pockets.They were walking about the park when Dani got the call. Their lead had panned out. They needed to go up river to Spuyten Duyvil park. Nick texted them a picture of some tall columns, overgrown with ivy, to keep a look out for. Dani was silent the whole ride as Sonny attempted to bring up various topics but eventually just turned on the radio.The sun was high and the sky was open as they climbed through the trees, a squad of officers behind them, armed and ready. “There it is,” Dani said, pointing up at the pillars. They would have been beautiful, in a haunting sort of way, if she didn’t have to worry they might find dead girls beneath them. There was vines growing everywhere, but a clear path leading down the hill into a denser part of the forest cut through it all.Down the hill was a building, or what was left of one. Decrepit and falling down, most of what was left was exterior walls, and even those were crumbling and covered in graffiti. There were no windows or doors remaining, and undergrowth sprouted everywhere. The officers began to call for the girls, as Dani’s heart lumped into her throat.She stepped through the doorway behind Sonny, looking around the damp earth. “Hey I’ve got a knife over here,” Sonny called out, motioning for an officer to come bag and tag the potential evidence. “Oh god, and there’s a dead cat over here too.” Dani stepped forward beside him, hand on his shoulder as she peered past, looking at the small, brown tabby with its throat slit. It looked an awful lot like it was from the knife. She could feel a cold sweat begin to cover her body. This was bad. Bad bad bad.She stepped back, stepping towards a further corridor and out the back of the building, which met right against the cool, earthy wall of a hill. She braced herself against the soil and took a deep breath, immediately a familiar scent filling her. It smelled just like the basement all over again. The color by the edges of her vision began to slip away to grey scale.But something back there still seemed to have color. A thicket of branches, pressed against the wall, hiding something carved out where brick met dirt. “Sonny!” She managed to croak out, pulling a flashlight from her pocket, hands shaking as she did so. She stepped forward towards the branches, pulse skyrocketing like it had never done on a job before. She grabbed the branches and pulled them back. They came away just like a door, and she tossed it to the side. Shining her light in, she stumbled backwards. There, on the floor, were the bodies of two girls.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“I’ve got two bodies in here!” Dani screamed, her voice cracking as she did so, but she didn’t care. She crouched down, checking pulse on the first, then the second. They were both still breathing, both still had beating hearts. “Someone call a bus!” she shouted, as Sonny and several other officers poured into the small, carved out space.“Perry?” She asked, kneeling down next to the one with damp blood pooling over her olive green shirt. “Perry, can you hear me? I’m Detective Danvers. I’m here to help.”“H-help?” The young girl choked out. “You can get us out of here?” She sounded frail and in pain. She sounded so familiar. Dani could feel her hands still shaking.“Yes. We’re going to get you out. But Perry I need you to tell me something, ok? Who did this to you?” Dani asked her softly, brushing some hair and leaves away from the young girl’s face.“It was Glasgoman,” she said, voice shaking, fighting to keep her eyes open. “He said he was going to come back. He was going to bleed the devil out of us. But he never came back.”Dani stood up, entire body vibrating. Blood. Knife. Basement. Earth. Damp. She stepped back, pushing through the officers, letting someone else take her place. She needed to get out of there. She needed to breathe. She was silly, thinking she could handle this. Foolish and overly ambitious that this wouldn’t even be a problem for her. She took a deep gulp of air, but it never felt like it was enough. She stumbled away from the entrance, clutching her chest as her stomach dry heaved once, twice, but nothing came up. She let out a sob she didn’t know she was holding in once she was far away enough for no one to hear her. She pressed herself tightly against the cool wall of earth and let it support her as she felt like all of her bones were about to shake apart.“Dani!” Someone’s voice cut through but she couldn’t quite visualize them through the fog. Faintly, she could recognize the feeling of someone holding her wrists as she shook her head side to side, then cupping her cheeks, forcing her to look up as he tried her name again.“Anna!” the voice tried again and suddenly she was shocked back into existence and Sonny Carisi was standing right in front of her. No one had called her that name in so long. Not since she had started going by her middle name instead. How did he know it? How did he know who she was. “Your name is Anna Danielle Danvers,” his whispered quietly. “I know who you are and I know that right now, you feel like you are not safe but I promise you are okay. You have my word on it. Absolutely no one here is going to hurt you.”She looked up at him, feeling like she was completely coming apart at the seems in front of this man she had only known for a month and a half. Without a word, she collapsed into him, wrapping her arms tightly around his torso, squeezing him as he squeezed her back. They stood there like that, in the dark, until her shaking stopped. Until he bled color back into her world once again. It was like he was pulling her back home. The anxious beat of her heart that reminded her he knew who she really was felt far away. Right here, in this moment, she felt more safe than she had in a long time. With his arms around the slim part of her waist, she felt secure, locked in. She didn’t want to move, ever. She wanted to stay here with him for as long as she was allowed. There was the sound of people moving the girls to the awaiting ambulance and Dani stepped back from him slowly, placing her hands on his chest to stabilize her, feeling the fabric of his button up under her cool fingers. “Okay, well….thanks,” she said quietly, shifting her face back into one of composure. “We should get back to work. There’s interviews that need to be done. Someone needs to call Liv.”“Yea, yea I can take care of that,” Sonny stepped back, sounding almost as flustered as she did. Had he really just done that? She had looked so terrified and he couldn’t stop himself, and then he hadn’t wanted to stop himself. It wasn’t like Sonny hadn’t spent plenty of time with plenty of women, but lately it had been nothing that intrigued him. Rather, was something simply to scratch an itch. Dani didn’t feel like that. Dani was intriguing. Dani was dangerous territory. Oh god but now that he had done it, now that he had held her, how could he go back?He watched her walk away towards the way they had come from and ran a hand through his hair, letting out a breath low and slow. This was bad. This was really bad. They worked together. He straightened his tie, suddenly aware it had become disheveled when she was pressed against him. He didn’t know what someone would think if they saw him in the state he was in now. He needed to compose himself before he met her back at the car and before he called his boss.After he hung up the call, he walked back to the car, where Dani stood, arms over her chest as she flipped a carton of cigarettes around in her hand. Her nervous response. “Hey doll, you know those are bad for ya, right?” He asked, a lopsided grind on his face as he shuffled towards her, hands in his pockets.“Yea some guy tried to remind me on the street once. Kind of rude,” she smirked back over at him. She looked completely different than the woman shaking pressed against a wall of dirt. “How’s Liv?”“Good. She wants us to get to the hospital for questioning. She asked if you were alright,” he paused, and she looked up at him, eyes widening just slightly. “I told her you were good, that you were the one to actually find them. So you have nothing to worry about.”“Thank you,” she breathed, looking down at her hands then back up at him. “She would pull me off if she knew I lost it,” she explained. “I can’t believe I lost it.” She kicked the ground, pushing her unopened cigarettes back into her pocket as she did so, then looked back up at him. “I’m not sure how I’m ever really going to repay you for that, honestly. I have a lot of questions, too, but nothing really can come before my undying thanks for you stopping my embarrassing meltdown.”He shook his head, stepping closer to her still until he was throughly inside of her personal bubble. She didn’t know what exactly he was doing when he reached back her, popping open the car door. “Here, chivalry isn’t dead after all. So. Let’s just keep moving.”Dani rolled her eyes and climbed into the car, letting him shut the door behind her. As he climbed into the drivers seat, she turned to look at him, eyes narrowed. “Sonny. Do I need to get on my knees and profess my thanks for you to accept it?”Sonny swallowed hard at the thought of Dani, wide eyes and messy hair, on her knees in front of him. “No, I think that’ll be fine. Seriously, it was nothing. That’s what partners do. Keep each other in line.” He put the car into drive and quickly drove out of there, needing the drive to focus on anything other than that image she had burned into his brain.“Yea, ok,” she said, turning back to face the road. She hated having to thank anyone. She hated that her little meltdown had happened at all. She didn’t like owing someone, partner or not. “Well. To the hospital then,” she said quietly, looking out the window, unsure of what to say. She finally felt like things were okay between the two of them and then he had to go and hug her. Stupid. Silly feelings, silly colors, silly silly silly. ———————————————————————————————————————————“So if we had their Glasglowman in cover but they said he stabbed him after that happened…what’s the actual timeline here?” Dani asked as they all stood in a huddle in the hall outside of Perry’s room. “Or are they covering for someone?”“Yea, it could be some kind of Romeo and Juliet type of thing. Protecting some guy they’ve met,” Carisi agreed with her, nodding along. He had been agreeing with her since the car ride. It was getting a little on her nerves.“Okay, but if that’s what happened then who killed Zoe?” Nick asked, always a calm voice of reason even if he was still annoyed at Dani for taking the new guys side earlier. Nick still considered him new even if it had been a few months.“I…don’t know,” Dani admitted, shaking her head and brushing her hair back from her face. “That’s a good point and I don’t have an answer, Nick.”“Rollins,” Liv said, turning towards the blonde woman. “You went through their phones, socials, all of it? Anything about a possible second party?”“Nothing,” Amanda sighed, shaking her head. “No boys, certainly no boyfriends. No even really any other friends or people of note. Pretty much just everything is back and forth between Mia and Perry. They’re tied at the hip, basically in their own little world.” Going through their texts had been arduous and boring but there was no one else mentioned between the two girls.“I think we need to talk to Zoe again,” Dani said quietly. “Something about that,” she nodded towards Amanda referencing what she had just noted. “Doesn’t sit right to me. I think she’s the key.”Liv looked at her, slow and even. Dani had a read for this kind of thing. Always had. “Okay. Amanda and I will interview her again. Let’s get back the office.”———————————————————————————————————————————————After they made it back, things started coming together rather quickly. Zoe admitted to Liv that she thought Perry might hurt her. That she had before. That the two older girls sometimes for rough with her, even if she never believed that her sister Mia would ever truly hurt her. And then the DNA evidence came in. Only Perry and Mia on the knives. Not even the man from the park. Sonny and Dani started the questioning of Mia shortly after, where Mia cracked and explained how the whole idea had been Perry’s. How Perry had stabbed her sister and made her cover her up in leaves and abandon her.Perry went the route of insanity. Which, realistically, was how Dani was starting to feel. How could she not have noticed that something was wrong from the start? She fell into the fear of kidnapping. Of a situation too similar to her own, and she had missed signs that maybe she could have noticed if she was thinking clearly.It was a few days later when the family court room was filled. Dani found herself attending, sitting right to Sonny, toes tapping anxiously as she waited for the court to start. The things Perry said were crazy, and the judge made sure they knew family court was to be therapeutic, not punitive. Perry was going to Creedmore Physciatric, but something felt wrong. Dani didn’t buy her testimony, but it wasn’t really up to her in the end.“Want to get a drink?” She asked Sonny as they entered the elevator together, letting the doors slide shut behind them, locking them in alone. “Cause I could really use one right now.” If she didn’t get an opportunity to relax she was going to complete melt down. And, it would give her an opportunity to finally ask him how he learned about her. How he discovered her secret. And that was something that she absolutely needed to know. If he could figure it out, so could someone else.Sonny leaned against the wall opposite of her, looking down at his watch then back over at her. “I really would love that if I’m being honest,” he sighed. “But I’ve got a bit of a prior commitment tonight.”Dani’s cheeks flared red. A date. Of course he had a date. It was perfectly logical for someone of his age and complete single-ness to have dinner plans. She just didn’t realize that it would have this heavy of an impact on her. She didn’t expect to give a shit. Dani, on principle, never really gave a shit about anything at all, much less what others did, or who they did. She didn’t expect herself to find that she was suddenly. It was an odd feeling, and she hated it.“Of course,” she replied with a quick nod, looking down at her shoes, then up at the spot next to his head, rather than directly at it. “No worries. I’ll just see you at the office Monday. Or who knows, tomorrow if we get called in.” She cringed internally but didn’t let it display on her face. God damnit she really was falling apart. She blamed it all on the case, the case was ripping her apart inside and out. She probably could use the alone time.“Sorry it’s just…” he paused, scratching the back of head awkwardly. “I have night class. I can’t really skip it. We’re all doing presentations tonight so I have to be there or I…fail the project.”“Oh,” she replied, blinking, then finally meeting his gaze.“But I could meet you after…?” He offered up to her, brow furrowed. “There’s a bar near my school, it’s not too far from my apartment so I walk there sometimes after class. I’m done at 7:30. Does that work for you?” He winced at how hopeful he sounded and made a show of adjusting his watch.“Yea okay,” Dani replied, and he looked up, grinning. “Want to text me the address?” It was a simple gesture, but she knew what she was doing. She wasn't sure if he picked up on it, though.“I don’t have your number,” he said, as Dani simply held out her hand, palm up.“Here, give me your phone,” she said. He placed it into her palm and she quickly entered her name and number. A rare gesture. Dumb. She was being dumb. She shouldn’t be doing this at all. But she was desperate for someone who understood why this case was fucking her up to badly, and no one else but Sonny could do that. “There. Now, text me the address.” She smiled. He did too, as he took the phone back.“Deal. See you at 7:45.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

As soon as he had texted her the address, they had quickly engaged in a rapid back and forth of texting, even while he was in class. Her responses consisted primarily of eye-rolls and sarcastic remarks, while his were basically an endless stream of jokes to try and get a laugh. There was something satisfying about seeing the eye-roll emojis pop through, because he could tell she was smiling on the inside, even if she refused to let anyone see it on the outside. Dani had gone home and changed, but didn't stay there long. She wanted to be at the bar early, early enough to wait in her car and watch him walk in. She didn't want to risk being that person who sat at the bar alone and never saw anyone show up. Been there, done that, not interested.She sat in her car, engine turned off, listening to an audiobook, an audio biography of some detective or another who had solved a big case. The details of it weren't overly important to her, or overly relevant. She just needed something to pass the time until he got there. She almost missed him, when he finally did arrive, because he was in a group. That...was an unexpected development. There was a wildly differing array of individuals, all shapes and sizes and ages, and she had barely thought to look their way because she had imagined he would come alone. A silly mistake, apparently. There were two women and three other guys, plus Sonny, so six of them total. Seven if you counted her. She tried not to be nervous about that, a group of such a large size, but even as she told herself not to be, she could feel her palms begin to sweat a little. She knew why strangers made her anxious. What she didn't know was why other people being involved made her annoyed.She sighed and pressed pause on her podcast after about five more minutes passed, as well as two texts from Sonny ('Here now!' and 'Are you still coming?'). They hadn't gotten to the part where the guy actually found the serial killer, but that would have to wait for her drive home. She looked over her outfit again - she had changed into leggings, combat boots (easy to run in), a tight, olive t-shirt, and a leather jacket that was designed to look like she wore a grey hoodie underneath it. Much more casual than what the rest of them were wearing, but again, she was imagining it would be just him. Sonny would never judge her for what she wore, that much she knew. These other people? No idea.Oh well. It would have to do.She got out of her car, locking it behind her and tucking the keys into the pocket of her jacket. She would be fine. This was just her coworker. And half of his classmates, apparently. At a bar she had never been at before. Yea, this would be totally fine. No problems at all. Certainly no anxiety. In her left hand, she palmed the unopened cigarettes.The inside of the bar was dimly lit, crowded, but quiet. The sound that was in the bar was composed of people talking. Overall, the entire thing wasn't what she typically went for, and certainly not what she went for without a drink in hand. She made her way to the bar to get a beer before looking for Sonny. She needed something to occupy her hands, and picking at the label on a brown bottle would have to do. As she slid cash across the bar, she felt a hand clap on her shoulder. She turned to flick it off, and met familiar eyes."Hey!" Sonny grinned, pulling her into a hug. She didn't know what to do, one hand on the bar, holding her drink, while he gave her a quick squeeze, so she stood there stiffly. "I thought you might have changed your mind or, er, fallen asleep or something when you didn't reply. I'm glad you're here." He glanced at her drink. "I've got your next one, ok? Now common, let's get you over to the group."Ah, there it was. The perfect entry. "The group?" She asked him, turning her head quizzically, as her thumbnail subtly found a small lip in the beer bottle label to slip under, pick at, begin to worry away."Oh, yea," he said, scratching the back of his head. "Well, our professor said we all aced the presentation today so everyone wanted to celebrate. I invited them along, I hope that's alright?" It was a statement, but his intonation made it sound like a questionShe rolled her eyes at him, and he decided the real thing was certainly better than just an emoji. "Yea, Sonny, of course it's fine," she said, taking a sip of her drink. Yea, maybe a small white lie would have to do here. She couldn't tell him no, not when he looked so excited. She wasn't about to be the one to burst his bubble, or she would have to hear about it forever. So she let him steer her, hands on both of her shoulders, towards a small circular booth tucked into a back corner. The group she had saw enter with him all sat there, laughing with each other."Hey everyone, this is Dani," Sonny grinned as they finally made it in front of the booth. "Dani, this is everyone. We work together. Had a long, long week, and are very much in need of some time to relax." He gave her a pat on the shoulder before sitting down and indicating she sit next to him on the cool, green leather.Everyone around her gave her a round of hellos and introductions - a lot of names she didn't fully catch. Two of the guys were named John, one was John R and the other John W. The third was named Arturo. The two girls were Susan and Lila. They all seemed friendly enough. Susan sat immediately to Sonny's left, a beautiful redhead, fair skin and a dusting of freckles, and she seemed to know it, too. The first thing Dani noticed was how often she made an excuse to touch Sonny in some way or another. Only two of the three people there were married, and not to each other. Susan definitely had a thing for her partner. She wondered if he even knew.The other dead giveaway was that she called him Dominick, instead of his nickname. And the way she said it was like she was purring. Dani had to fight rolling her eyes every time she did it.The rest of the conversation aside from that was fine. Dani mostly sat in her spot, nodding along and offering an opinion here or there, but never really talking much about herself. She would sit here as long as she had to in order to get everyone to leave so she could finally ask him the questions burning in the back of her brain.The married John was the first to go. She was pretty sure he was John W, but if you put her in a life or death scenario she couldn't say for sure. Lila was shortly after, talking about how she had to pick her girlfriend up from work. After a while, it was just Sonny, Susan, and Dani. And the bar would be closing soon. Dani was itching for this girl to just say her goodbyes and go, but clearly she was waiting for Dani to do the exact same. Too bad she didn't know how much of a stubborn bitch Dani could be. And it wasn't like she was trying to sleep with him. She wanted answers. Pretty important answers. About her general security and wellbeing. So she ordered her fourth beer and sunk into her seat, fully prepared to get a cab home as needed."You going to be able to get home ok, Dani?" Sonny asked her, leaning in close to whisper in her ear when Susan had slipped out to the restroom.Dani laughed, pulling the last of the white label off of the cold bottle. "I don't think either of us should be driving anywhere any time soon. You're lucky you live close." She wished they had gone to her local bar instead, well within walking distance of her own home."Well, I do owe you a favor so I'm pretty sure we are lucky I live so close to this fine establishment," Sonny grinned, leaning back against the booth. He glanced over her, as if to see what she would say."I can crash at your place?" she asked skeptically."Just returning the favor," he said, locking eye contact with her. They held onto the gaze for a little bit too long, too long for normal that's for sure, but maybe too long for drunk gazes too. A favor, obviously, was the only reason he was inviting her back to his place. Absolutely no other potential motives could ever exist. They were both aware of how their knees were touching under the table, though neither said a word about it, and definitely didn't move their legs away."Alright, one condition then," she said, still not breaking the lock on their eyes. "You're going to tell me how you found out." She didn't have to specify on what - even if their current inebriation, they knew what she meant."I think that's a deal I can take," Sonny said, after pretending to mull it over for a moment. "I think you'll find it a lot less exciting once you know." She didn't really care though, she needed the answers. And then she could take some time to make sure no one else would be able to get to those answers ever again.They closed their tabs just as Susan came back from the bathroom. "Oh, Dani, are you headed out?" She asked, voice still sweet as sugar, even though Dani could still read that she meant nothing but. "That's too bad! It was great to meet you, you'll have to come out with us another time." She slid next to Sonny like it was her place to be, like no one ever told her no. That was what irked Dani the most, she thought. That this woman who she had never met was acting like Sonny, her friend, was property. Not a person with his own decisions, but like some prize to be won. It set Dani off, made her want to prove her wrong."Yea, great to meet you too," Dani said, plastering on the most obviously fake smile she had ever done, knowing the woman wouldn't be dumb enough not to catch that. She was a law student after all, she did have brains. Dani watched as the tiniest flinch appeared in the girl's crystal blue eyes. Bingo. "Sonny and I were actually both just heading out. Right Sonny?" She didn't move any closer to him, didn't have to. The words were enough to take Susan down a peg, which was really all she wanted. Perhaps it was a bit vindictive, but Dani on principle didn't really like people like Susan - entitled people, to specify, not just people who liked her friends."Yea, sorry Suze, been a long day. Dani and I are gonna walk. See you in class next week," He gave her a small mock salute, before moving to stand closer by Dani, the two walking out together. Dani looked over her shoulder as they reached the door, giving Susan one small wink before she disappeared into the night.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The two detectives walked side by side down a dimly lit street, lined with cars. It was quiet, just the two of them, to the point where it almost seemed like there was no one else in the city but the two of them. Or maybe that was just the beers fuzzing her brain up a bit. It was comfortable though, walking side by side in the dark. It wasn't often she felt comfortable putting herself in those situations, but with Sonny it was fine. It probably had to do with the time they spent together in high stress situations at work, it naturally made lower stress situations easier, or at least more comfortable."So," She said, glancing up at him with a small side-eye. "You want to walk me through the details of what you've figured out about me, then?" She asked. Her hands were deep in her pockets, trying to keep her fingers warm as they moved through the night. She wondered how far they had to go to get back to his place. He had said it was close, but she had never asked how close exactly.Sonny scratched the back of his head for a moment. "Well, I know your full name, obviously," he said, glancing down at her. "But you've worked that part out." "I have, but you screaming my name into my face like we're in A Streetcar Named Desire kinda did the legwork for me," she bumped him in the side with her elbow. "How did you figure it out? That's what I really want to know.""It's not impressive," He shrugged, turning them left on a road so continue towards a row of brownstones. "Remember the night I drove you to your place?" He waited for her to nod before continuing. "I had to grab your driver's license to get your address, and your name was just right there. No sleuth work or anything interesting. Just trying to be a nice co-worker and stumbled on a discovery. Impressed?"Dani stopped, staring out down the street, thinking it over for a moment. "Fuck," she muttered quietly. "I really need to just go through with the name change already. That's way too easy of a way to pin me down." Granted, most people looked at her ID and didn't actually put the pieces together. But of course a detective, a law student no less, would see that and understand. Sonny stopped a few paces ahead of her, waiting for her to catch up, so she started walking again. "You're right, that's not very impressive." Her tone was flat and sharply sarcastic. That pulled a grin on his lips. "Obviously, you recognized the name," she continued as they came to a stop in front of a tall, brownstone building that must have been renting out apartments."Obviously!" He said with more enthusiasm than expected as he punched a code into the main door, letting the two of them into a mailbox room, then out into a hall with a single elevator. He led the two of them into it, punching in another code for the fourth floor, the elevator closing the two of them inside. "I mean, Dani, come on, you can't pretend you're not someone well known in the...true crime community." He trailed off, scratching at the back of his head awkwardly. "That sounds so corny to say," he glanced over at her, wincing slightly. "Sorry, doll."Dani rolled her eyes. "You think I haven't seen the news articles? The podcasts?" She asked if, scrunching her nose up a bit. "People all over that community are obsessed. I'm surprised they haven't sussed me out yet, if I'm being honest. You've seen what the internet can do these days. There could be people sending me weird obsessive notes in the mail, but I'm not that interesting. I'm not final girl, I'm just a kid who got kidnapped.""And witnessed a murder," Sonny pointed out, as the doors to the elevator finally slid open, to a hall with only two doors. The one on the right was his, the one on the left must have been the other neighbor on this floor. "Of a family member, no less. That would kill me."Dani frowned, not able to explain to him that, yea, it did kill her on the inside to see what happened to her family, before and after the entire ordeal. Even now, she had her little brother traversed the world in different ways than normal people who didn't have absolutely fucked up childhoods. "Yea, but we see that all the time on the job, too. We saw that on our first case together. It is what it is." She explained. She was good at tuning that kind of thing out and getting along as best she needed to.The inside of Sonny's apartment was clean. Certainly cleaner than her own, and she shuddered a little thinking of what state it might have been in when he crashed on her couch. It was a large space, with an open kitchen, a living room with bookshelves filled with everything from law text, to history, to fiction. The kitchen was clean, with smooth, white surfaces, no pots or pans or bowls. Nothing out of place, like her own home often was. It was a nice apartment, though she wasn't certain how lived in it felt. The couch in the living room was a brown leather, and she made her way over to it, sitting down quietly."And you don't have any questions for me?" She asked him finally. "About it?" She knew that was a dangerous thing to ask. If he grilled her on it, then she would know what kind of person he was. But she would also be filled with disappointment that he wasn't actually the person she thought he was. Sure, when they first met she thought he was an asshole, but he had grown on her. Especially after he had shrugged off the first day nerves.He came and sat next to her on the couch, shrugging his jacket off first and hanging it on a hook by the door. "Questions?" he asked, crossing his leg to rest one foot atop the opposite knee. "Why would I ask you about that? I'm sure it was the worst time of your life. You don't need to get into it unless you want to. I'm not going to ask anything." He thought about the different times her name had come up in his classes over the years. There were students who would have probably actually murdered for a free for all question opportunity. But he didn't want to pressure her, not on this, not on anything.She shrugged, leaning back into the couch, visibly more comfortable with that response. And he could see the small smile tugging at her lips as she leaned against the back of the couch, propping up her head with her hand. "So," he asked. "Are you tired? I feel bad, bringing you back here and that's all the story there is to tell." He found he didn't know what to do with himself in that moment, where to put his hands, what to do with his legs. He made sure he had maintained a good distance between the two of them on the couch but somehow with her leaning back, some of that distance had disappeared. He was somehow both comfortable and uncomfortable with her being so near.He had known there was something between them, something brewing, known since the moment he had held her outside that crumbling building. But he didn't know if it was a something she wanted, something she was interested in. He knew where he stood on the topic, this oddly uncomfortable attraction to his infuriating partner."Nah," she shrugged. "Not tired. I could eat, though. Popcorn at the bar really isn't enough for me." She glanced over at him and found he seemed unable to meet her eyes. She found herself wishing she could take away his nerves. To hold his face in her hands and kiss his cheeks and tell him nothing about him made her feel weird or uncomfortable, or scared. That he didn't need to get shy or quiet around her because she liked the person he was. It was jarring, she thought, to think that way. It must have been the alcohol buzz."Pizza?" he asked, moving off the couch and to the kitchen, where he grabbed a delivery flyer off of the fridge. When she nodded, he pulled out his phone and called in an order. After an order for one large pepperoni had been made and he hung up the phone, he turned back to her. As he had made the call, she had gotten off of the shelf and was looking over his bookshelf. "They said it should only be about thirty minutes.""Great," She said, running her fingertips along a few of the spines of the books slowly. Some were old, some were new, but they were all kept in very good condition. She turned to him, a thought popping into her head in the moment. "You know, Sonny. I wasn't exactly planning on not being at home...I don't have anything to sleep in." He looked at her, blinking for a moment as if he hadn't thought of that oversight before he made the offer either. "Yea...that does makes sense, doesn't it?" He said, clearly thinking about the options. "One sec, I think I have something you can use." He disappeared down a dark hallways, presumably towards his bedroom. He was gone longer than she had expected, so she went back to the couch, thumbing through some emails on her phone. When he was finally back, he had changed into pajamas - a pair of low hanging grey sweatpants and a tight, white t-shirt. He held a bundle of fabric in his hands."So here's the thing," he said, handing her the bundle. "I don't think I have...I don't have any pants that would really fit you to sleep in. But here's the thing," he rushed to explain. "I have a t-shirt that's really big so it would probably fit like a nightgown of sorts..."She took the shirt and spread it out, looking at it. It was from his college, and looked big, even for him. She raised an eyebrow, looking up towards him. "Yea, it was from my gran," he explained. "She means well, has no idea what size I wear...bathroom is down the hall to the right if you want to change. Make sure it fits."Dani shrugged, folding the shirt back up and following his directions towards the bathroom to change. The bathroom was much like the rest of his house - clean. The mirror was framed by lights, over a large, black sink. The shower was lined with black as well. It was neat, but still felt unloved. But the soap at the sink smelled like him, so Dani found herself washing her hands. Then, she felt like a fool, so she quickly got on with changing. The shirt did fit as he had explained it likely would, the grey fabric landing about mid-thigh. She would have to be careful moving around, but overall it did the trick.And it smelled like him. It was like being wrapped in a hug of his all over again. She closed her eyes, breathing in deeply through her nose, feeling dizzy, intoxicated even by the scent all around her. She thought of him back in the living room, tight fitted tee, leaning against the counter, and she felt her heart start to race, an uncomfortable beating radiating all the way in-between her thighs. She immediately felt both at the same time, excitement and panic. When she tugged the lip of the t-shirt down lower, even the mere touch of her fingertips against her bare thigh was like electricity jolting through her. Taking a deep breath, she stepped back out of the bathroom. This was about to be a painfully long wait.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Sonny was still there at the kitchen counter, leaning casually against it, tapping away on his phone. He didn't look up when he came in, and she was grateful for that. She didn't know if she could stand to meet his gaze in that moment. She didn't know what she was going to do. She wanted a cold shower and also to be in her own bed where she didn't have to worry about dangerous temptations like Dominick Sonny Carisi Jr. She simultaneously hated and adored him in that moment, as he stood lost in his own little world as he scrolled through something on the small glowing screen.He hadn't asked her any questions. That seemed so small, but it also seemed like everything. Not one soul she had met who knew her past had the self-restraint to not ask. But he had. He had valued her more now than this built up image of her childhood self locked in a basement. He saw her now, older, in some ways braver, certainly more herself than she was back then. And he didn't like her any less for it. In fact, it felt like he liked her more.And that was terrifying. "I think maybe I should get a cab home," she announced, not really directed at him, but not-not directed at him, either. She didn't know what she would do if she stayed, so she had to leave. It wasn't a choice anymore.He looked up towards Dani, or where it sounded like Dani's voice came from. She stood there, glowing almost in the soft light of his apartment. She was wearing the shirt, and it was long, about as long as he had expected, but he hadn't expected the way it would hang on her, how he could see where her thighs started to curve, he could see the blush on her cheeks, one he hadn't imagined. Her lips were parted ever so slightly as she stared over at him, and he wondered why she didn't get closer. She almost looked afraid to get closer.So he did it. He was the one to step towards her, and it was like a wave slowly rolling towards the sand. Like him stepping towards her was part of the natural role of things. Like he had to do it. She didn't step away - Dani Danvers never let anyone see when she was afraid. "Why would you do that?" He asked her quietly, realizing how his own body felt on edge as the space between them closed. "Pizza's not even here yet."She wondered if this is what starfish felt like, adrift and allowing the tide to do the pulling or pushing as it wished to do. She felt like it wasn't her choice in any way, to move, to stay, to do anything. She felt like Sonny's magnetic pull, his gravitational force, made all of those decisions for her, and she was helpless for it. And for the first time in her life, she didn't mind that uncontrolled feeling, the idea of being weightless. She felt safe, here, with him.She opened her mouth to speak, to answer him, but found she couldn't find the right words. So she stood there, looking into his stormy eyes, silently, neither of them willing to look away from the other or break this moment of peace. It was like to tumultuous war agreement. They both knew the other would eventually break it, neither wanted to be the first to do so."So what do you want to do, Dani?" He asked her quietly, deciding he would be the one to give in to her, to wave the white flag and admit he needed to know why she was standing there, cheeks flushed, legs shaking. Why she couldn't bring herself to answer him. He wanted to understand every aspect of her, but right now it seemed increasingly important to do so."Stay," she said quietly, her tongue feeling too large for her mouth, like she had completely lost her competency to speak. She looked at him, hoping he could read all the thoughts going on in her mind, see right behind her façade of a human face and hear her thoughts and feelings. Because it would be horrifying to admit them out loud. She couldn't bring herself to do that. To say that he was the closest thing she had felt to giving a shit about a person in a long, long time. That she didn't feel unsafe about him knowing the truth of her past, but anyone else knowing would be detrimental to her health. That working cases with him felt like she had been doing it for years, not weeks. That she...liked him (ew). She loathed to admit any of these things, say them out loud, lest they become a permanent fixture on reality.And then Sonny took another step towards her and it was like he had become a black hole and she couldn't possibly be expected to stay out of the powerful force dragging her in. She took another step towards him and then suddenly they were nose to nose, chest to chest, and her hands were up against him, she could feel the beating of his heart beneath her palm; it matched her own - short, rapid, staccato beats.It was almost by accident that their lips met. She had been looking down at her palm, trying to understand what the quick beats meant to him, for her. Then she moved her head to look up and his face was simply right there to meet hers. Their noses bumped once, twice, and then their lips were connected, like a tether between worlds.He froze for a moment, when the kiss started, but she brought him back to life with the feeling of her lips moving on his, as her fingers clutched onto his shirt tightly as if she couldn't get close enough to him, as if every portion of them touching already still wasn't enough to satisfy her hunger for him. In the moment where he fully realized the kiss was real and not just in his imagination, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in, walking her backwards until she was flush to the wall and he was flush to her. There was hardly any definition then, where the wall began and they ended.It was like they were going over the edge of a waterfall, but neither bothered to grab the nearby rope to stop it.Kissing Sonny Carisi was like the best and worst thing Dani had ever done, both at the same time. The best, because she had never felt a kiss this good before, a kiss that felt like she understood what to do the entire time. Like it was instinct, but one that she understood. Like she was built to do this. The worst, because she knew nothing ever would replace this feeling. She felt safe and unsafe all at once. Doing a tango with danger. A waltz with woe. But there was nothing woeful about the way his hands found their way under her top. There was no despair in the way his lips bit at her hungrily, and hunger that seemed to match her own, something she once thought to be unmatched. She wasn't certain which one of them pulled his shirt over his head, but somehow, it was gone and now her hands were on bare skin, and it was like she was getting eaten alive from the inside. Her body felt like she was made of fireflies on the inside. "Tell me what you want," he said in one of the few moments when their lips weren't together."You," she said breathily, as her lips found other places to rest, his collar bone, the soft space between his ear and his neck, right below his lips. The way she could feel him shudder beneath her as she spoke was like the best drug in the world, and she could feel him hard against her. She found his lips again, more hungry than before. It was him she wanted, above anything else. She would deal with the repercussions later and get what she wanted right now. He reached for the hem of her underwear and she thought she was a nuclear bomb about to detonate, the pain of wait for the feeling of her fingers the most excruciating thing.Then the doorbell rang and the two sprang apart, like to opposing magnets. She panicked for a moment, unsure of who could be there, almost completely forgetting they had ordered pizza. Sonny looked from the door to her, dazed, as if he had forgotten too. "Um, I'll get that quick," he said, scratching the back of his head, scrambling to grab his shirt off of the floor.She watched him, still pressed against the wall, though more for support now than anything. Watched him put his shirt on and get the pizza from the delivery guy, setting it on the counter, before he turned back to her. "Hungry?" He asked, gesturing towards the pizza boxes."Yea," she replied, not taking her eyes off of him. She was hungry, that was for sure, but the food was not what she was referencing.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"So are we gonna talk about any of that?" Sonny asked while Dani nearly choked mid-bite on a piece of pizza, not expecting him to say anything, much less say anything so soon. As she attempted to swallow the hot bite of cheese and dough she could feel his steady gaze on her the entire time. It was weighty and hot and light all at the same time and it made her cheeks burn red, so she was grateful for the dim lightly around them."Nope," She said after finally finishing the bite. "Unless you wanted to," She looked over to him, one eyebrow raised. She was perfectly fine with sweeping the entire thing under the rug. They had both been drinking, after all. Call it a mistake. Spade a spade or whatever. Nevermind the thought that she likely would have done it sober, too, had never ever wound up in Sonny Carisi's apartment wearing nothing but his overly large shirt."I do, kinda, Dani," he said, setting down his slice of pizza and wiping off his hands on a white paper napkin. Even from across the table from her, she would feel the warmth radiating off of him. Familiarity. He felt very much akin to a sense of home to her, right now, and that made her want to bolt out the front door. Making a person, any person, your home was dangerous dangerous business. That always set up for failure of catastrophic heights. "I mean, hell, what do we even do now?""Sonny, you're acting like we flew to Vegas and got hitched," Dani said with a roll of her eyes, setting the remnants of her slice down on the plate in front of her. Clearly, they were not about to be eating any time soon. "We just..." She trailed off, abruptly, bravado lost as her mind drifted back to that moment, up against his wall, his lips on hers. It was like the simple thought of it cut off all sense of logic within her usually sharp brain. She looked over at him, mouth slightly open as if still prepared to carry on."Yea, nothing to talk about," Sonny rolled his eyes. "That's why you're struck silent right now, right? Because it was nothing?" A small grin tugged at the corner of his lips. Lips that had been on hers maybe ten minutes ago. She begged her brain to stop considering the anatomy of this man's face and simply focus on the task at hand: speaking coherently.Dani stared at him, lips pressed into a thin line. "Fine. We can talk," the word felt like chalk on her tongue, bitter and mushy. "But you get to start then, since you've brought it up." There, turn the tables on him. If he truly wanted to have this conversation, he could be the one to lead it. Dani, on the other hand, would revert to the classic pattern she always did - minimal talking and cold stares. That would get her through whatever the hell this was about to be. It was easiest to slip back into her oldest, safest pattern when it came to delicate matters like the one right in front of her. "So tell me, Sonny, what is it that you wanted to say?"Sonny cleared his voice, not expecting that latest move of hers. Though really, if he thought on it, he should have. She was the queen of hiding behind whatever she could. He linked his hands in front of him, staring down at them for a moment as he thought about what exactly it was that he wanted to say. "Well...I can't say that's exactly what I had planned when I invited you back here. I honestly thought you'd just pass out and I'd wake up with you already gone. Would wonder if I dreamed it or not until you make some sly joke three weeks down the road." He shook his head, looking up towards the ceiling for a moment. "Can't say I wasn't hoping something might happen, though."Dani looked at him, eyes just slightly wider. She blinked once, twice, three times. "Wait," she said, then fell silent. She shook her head, looking down at the pizza then back up at him. "You hoped that something would happen with me staying at your apartment. I swear to good Dominick Carisi Jr if you lied about not having pants that would fit me, so help me..." Her eyes narrowed at him, and he immediately began to shake his head."No, no, I swear Dani that is absolutely not," he sighed, running a hand over his face. "No. That's not the case. I just...it kind of felt inevitable, didn't it?" He looked over at her, hoping that she wasn't about to tell him he was ridiculous. She didn't meet his gaze, instead, she looked away and worked her bottom lip in-between her teeth. And the fact that she couldn't meet his gaze told him all he needed to know - that he was right. "Yea, that's what I thought. See, Dani, we're both detectives, aren't we? So reading people, it's something we get pretty good at. Especially when you work with something every day. So I've noticed the change in how you act around me.""In the way I act? What about you?" She shot back, crossing her arms over her chest. "If anything, you're the one who has been acting different. Taking me to dinner, inviting me out with your friends, hugging me..." She trailed off, knowing very well it wasn't the strongest rebuttal and she was debating someone trying to become a lawyer."You said yes," he pointed out. "To the dinners and the meeting my friends. I only gave the invitation, you had to actually agree." He had her on that, too. "That's not something you do with every new guy in the office, is it?" She felt quite a bit like she was playing a game of chess...and losing.She stared at him for a beat, unable to think of a good response. "No," she said finally, pulling her arms tighter across her chest as if to protect herself. "No, I don't particularly enjoy doing those things with anyone."He nodded. "Yea I gathered that much. But you enjoyed them when you were with me, right?" He had this silly little hopeful grin on his face and she couldn't bare to look at him. She felt her cheeks heat as she looked towards the kitchen. "Yea, that's about what I thought." The grin was still on his lips, wider now, and she could see it through her peripheral. She wished she could wipe it right off of his face. "And Dani, I'm pretty sure you also enjoyed what happened about ten minutes ago. Am I right?"Now her face felt as red as a tomato and she didn't understand why she couldn't just get her reactions under control. She was never like this around anyone, especially not anyone she had ever dated. She was the queen of walls and not letting any one through them, and here they were, piercing right through her barriers. And it was like Sonny could read her like a book. There was a part of her that hated it. Hated every aspect of it. And yet, a small part of her that wanted to take that new feeling and run with it. She shoved that feeling down as deep as she could.But as he looked at her, she knew he could read the answer on her red face. That she had enjoyed those invites, as much as she pretended not to. Being around him made her feel safer. Probably because they were partners and she knew she could trust him to keep her alive, at least up to this point. She looked up and met his gaze, not speaking."Yea, I thought so," he said, smirk still tugging at his lips. She wanted to kiss it away from him, and clenched her fists in her hands to remind herself not to move. "Dani, I don't really wanna beat around the bush here. We're both too smart for that. I like you, Dani Danvers, if me kissing you against the wall over there didn't spell that out for ya." His cheeks were slightly pink now too, in the dim light of a lamp on a nearby table. "I don't really know what happens from here, but I don't want to keep hiding the fact that you intrigue me. As annoying that it is, I like that you challenge me, that you push my way of seeing things.""Sonny," Dani tried to cut him off, but he kept telling her the different things about her that made him smile. "Sonny," she said again, more insistent this time. "Stop, please." She ran one hand through her hair, tugging on it slightly. "I don't...I like you, alright? I'll say that as begrudgingly as I can. I do. But I'm just...I'm not ready to date anyone right now. Especially not someone I work with." Maybe it was a copout. Maybe others would call it 'running from her feelings,' but it didn't change the fact that this was how she felt. She felt like she was defusing a bomb, like if she wasn't careful she might destroy any sort of anything between Sonny and herself. She didn't want to ruin what they already had for the sake of what just might be. The risk/reward factor didn't weigh out for her. She didn't want to lose her friend, her partner...one of the few people she trusted.The look on his face made her want to shrivel up and die on the spot. It was like he'd been shot. It was there for the briefest of moments, then gone, but it was still enough to make her get up from the couch and cross to him. She sat on the small arm of the comfy blue chair he was in and put a hand on either side of his face, making her look at him. There were so many words inside of her that she wished she could say. She wished she could just input a part of him straight into her brain so he could understand everything she was thinking and feeling in that moment."I'm not good at this stuff," She admitted. "I'm really not. I'm usually out the door long before someone even gets the inkling that they might want to bare their soul to me. But look, I'm still sitting here, aren't I?" She searched his eyes for something that said he understood what she was trying to get at. "I didn't run out the door. I'm just...I'm not an easy person Sonny. I'm sure you're well aware of that at this point. I don't...I'm not ready for the meeting of the family or the pictures together or going to HR to disclose or any of that. I'm not ready for that right now, that's a lot for me. But I'm still here, yea?" She didn't know really what that meant - what she wanted out of the two of them. But she did know that she found herself leaning down, first pressing her lips to his softly, then when he returned the gesture, hungrily.She wanted to kiss all the feelings into him. Let him see through her actions what she couldn't say out loud. What she was too scared to breathe out into the world. It seemed like he might let her do just that. Suddenly, his hands were under her knees and an arm around her shoulder and she was lifted into the air. He looked at her, asking her if this was alright. She nodded at him, letting him carry her out of the living room. She wasn't exactly certain where they were headed, but she had a fairly good idea that it was in the direction of his bedroom. She was not saying no to that, not in the slightest. As he carried her, she spent the time trailing kisses up his next, his cheek, his forehead, peppering him with little signs of affection that she couldn't speak. When the door shut behind them, his lips were on hers again, and there was a finality with it that she couldn't say out loud either. That the shutting of that door, the sharp echo it made, and everything that came after...there was no coming back from that, either.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dani woke up slightly dazed and unsure of her surroundings. For a second, her heart began to beat rapidly as she looked around, trying to get a solid stance on where specifically she was. Then, quick as a flash of lightning, it all rushed back to her. The bar, Sonny, him carrying her into his bedroom…her cheeks flushed a deep red. That’s obviously where she still was now.She rolled every so slightly to look over her right shoulder, catching sight of the figure there. Sonny, still asleep, shirtless and breathing deeply, lay by her side. There was an immediate feel of clenching in her chest, panic of doing something out of her norm. Quietly, she grabbed her phone off the nightstand next to her and slid out of the bed, tiptoeing towards the door.Stepping out quietly into the hall, she shut the door behind her then practically sprinted to the kitchen - discreetly of course. In the kitchen she looked around till she spotted a window that looked like it would open without a squeal to wake the entire neighborhood. Upon popping open the window, she found a fire escape just outside, a soft landing of brown metal. Glancing around for a moment before making her full decision, she popped up onto the counter and out of the window, sitting on the little escape in the early morning sun.The air was crisp and she still wore nothing but his shirt, shivering a bit in the morning air. She was thankful that the fire escape lead to the alleyway behind the building so that no one was readily observing her. Out there, alone, with no walls keeping her fenced in, she felt a tiny bit better. A tiny bit less unsafe. It wasn’t specifically that Sonny made her feel this way, but rather the entire situation. When she close her eyes, she could still see the grin on Sonny’s lips before he disappeared between her legs, picture the way his eyes glinted with mischief. She let out a long, slow breath, and wished like hell she had a cigarette. Something to take the edge off.She looked down at her phone, unlocking it to pull up her notifications that had gone without notice given her business of the previous night. Emails, that was usual. A text of a meme from her brother. Three missed calls. She tapped the phone icon, and all it read was three calls, all from the same number, and not one she recognized. She paused for a moment, then tapped on her screen over the number, dialing it back. Holding her phone to her ear, she waited. All she got back was a busy signal.Ending the call, she clicked on her voicemails. Three, all from the mystery number. Each were simply dead air. As if no one were there at all. Weird. It was probably just a telemarketer who didn’t hit the end call button quick enough. Locking her phone again, she set it on the window sill, and leaned on the metal railing next to her, staring down the alley, wondering how exactly she had gotten here.She liked him. Ugh. She didn’t like to even think that in her head. He was annoying, and presumptuous, and a bit of a smart ass know-it-all, but he was also funny, and kind, and looked at her like he genuinely cared about what she said when she spoke, even if it directly contradicted what he was saying. He had gotten under her skin and now she couldn’t figure out how to get him out. Her therapist would say she wasn’t supposed to - that this was what normal people did. Liked other people. Risked potential heartbreak to care about others. It was all just so….ugh.Suddenly, she heard a door open inside of his apartment. She stilled, waiting, listening. “Dani?” She heard Sonny call out quietly as he moved into the living room, the kitchen. When she didn’t answer back, she heard him sigh, then curse a bit under his breath, “Damnit. Damnit, damnit.” Then a small sliding sound.She leaned down, peering in through his kitchen window again to see Sonny, now sitting on the floor against a cabinet, which he had clearly just leaned against and slid down, making the sliding sound. His eyes were shut and he was pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked….deflated?“Sonny?” She whispered, watching his eyes shoot open and look for the sound, only to see his brunette partner awkwardly climb back in through his window off the fire escape. “What are you doing?” She asked quietly, as she dropped off the counter and onto the floor. She was only about a foot away from him now. She crossed her legs, sitting and watching him.He looked at her, then looked away, chuckling and shaking his head. She could see his tongue pushing at the inside of his bottom lip as he thought through something. “I thought you had left,” he admitted finally, still not looking at her. “I thought I had really fucked things up between us. That we would go back to work and you’d frost me out like you did that first week.” It was rare, this vulnerability from him, and she realized she was the one causing it.“It’s not like we went and got hitched in Vegas,” she said quietly, though it had lost a large part of the humor from the night before. He looked truly distraught by the idea she had disappeared in the night, without so much as a goodbye. Granted, to his credit, this was something she did often so it wasn’t an unrealistic thought. He still couldn’t meet her eyes.Quietly, she scooted on her ass over to sit beside him, leaning in to rest her head on his shoulder. A small, wordless gesture, and she felt him freeze for a moment, the muscles all across his chest tensing up. But then, when she didn’t move, he relaxed into the feeling. So she didn’t move, either, until she felt him shift so he could wrap one arm around her waist. “So I didn’t royally fuck this up?” He asked her, turning to look at her, searching her eyes for any sign that something was amiss.A wicked grin lit her face. “Well you royally fucked something, Sonny. But no, we’re fine.” She turned back to stare ahead of them, slowly becoming the one stuck in her own thoughts, taking that battle over from him. Yea, nothing was going to change negatively between them. At least not by her doing. But she still wasn’t so sure he’d be okay with…everything, at the end. She let out a low sigh. “What are we doing?” She asked softly.“What do you mean?” His voice dropped to match her own, soft and gentle, aware he was holding glass and if he dropped it, it would shatter right in front of him.“I’m not ready to date anyone right now.” Especially you, she thought to herself. Sonny was a dangerous thing, a grenade in her hands with the pin already pulled. If she let go, it could explode in her face.“Well doll,” he said, turning and pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. “I kinda think I’m going to date you anyways. And when you are ready, you’ll date me back. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying along the way.” Normally, a statement like that might weird Dani out. But there was nothing about him saying that that read like a weird guy at the bar. Or overly persistent. If anything…he sounded patient. “Does that work for you?” He asked, only further confirming her thoughts. She nodded, unsure if she could speak. Then, she took his face in her hands and guided his lips to hers. She couldn't do anything official yet. It scared her at the idea to do so. Terrified, really. But kissing? Physical stuff? That she could do no problem. She started softly, gently, then opened the kiss to something hungrier so he could understand how okay with that she was. And then she let him take her bent over the kitchen counter.Weeks went by of this as they worked together, but she never asked for him to stop bringing her home and reminding her what it felt like to live for a little bit.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"He was humming," Annie, the girl with straight back hair and said eyes explained from inside the restaurant, as her eyes bore holes into the spot where she had been assaulted. Dani looked around the coffee shop, taking in the dim lighting, the signage that covered the windows. It would be hard for anyone outside to see in, to know anything was wrong."Humming?" Liv asked, glancing up and catching Dani's eyes, then Fin's. Humming was...odd. And certainly a distinguishing factor in this case. Immediately Dani was rolling back in her brain, trying to think if there were any other recent reports that notated humming."It...it was church music," Annie explained quietly. "And then I felt his hand on my neck. I must have passed out or something, I don't remember anything from there.""He put you out Annie. Intentionally," Dani explained softly. "When we got your exam results back, it showed a bruise on your carotid artery. That's what happened." The girl met Dani's gaze, hands pressing deeper into the pockets of her peacoat."You told us yesterday that he was still here when you came to," Fin redirected. "Can you tell us more about that?""Yea, um, he was pulling himself off of me. I remember the smell of the medical gloves near my face," She bit her lower lip, shaking her head and looking down at her feet. "He said 'nice to see you again. Maybe we'll have tea soon.' And then he just...walked out. Like he had never been here at all." She lead the three detectives towards the door. "He ordered me not to look as he left...but I peeked anyways. He went down the street that way," she nodded towards the left. "Then around that second corner. I watched until I couldn't see him anymore. I wanted to make sure he was gone."Dani and Fin exchanged a glance as Liv waved an officer over from down the street. He could have gone anywhere after disappearing around that corner."Wait, wait," Annie said, closing her eyes as if in deep concentration. "I think...yea, I remember. I remember seeing him take off his gloves."Liv's eyes widened, and then she patted a hand on Annie's shoulder supportively. "That could be really important Annie." She passed Annie over to the officer to escort home, before turning to her two employees. "Alright, we're going to call CSU and have them comb the street. Maybe lucks on our side this time and they find those gloves. If they do, we've got trace DNA.""I don't know, Liv," Dani said, getting in the backseat of Fin's brown car. "He stalked her, he wore a condom, and he knew how to make her pass out. I don't think...I don't think this is a first time for this guy. He seems awfully comfortable with the plan. Would he really slip up on something that important?""You're right. He is comfortable," Liv nodded, looking down the street then getting in the car herself. "And that tells me two things. He's not going to stop until we find him and make him...and that eventually, he's going to be comfortable enough to slip up." They just had to hope, for everyone's sake, that this time was the last time. That this time was the time he had made the mistake.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"Guys," Dani jogged into the office at their precinct, holding her phone up in the air, an email from a local school district on the screen. "We might have a problem." She froze when she entered the space, taking in the scene before her. Liv, standing over Amanda's desk, Amanda looking tired, disheveled, and late, Sonny glaring at Amanda's desk from the side of his gaze, and Fin looking overall annoyed. Well, all of that was certainly something to unpack, but maybe not at this exact moment. "I have news, on the case. The guy might still be around. A school counselor reported that a student at a Midtown Magnet High School came and disclosed today that a man choked her out." She looked to Liv in this chaos of her coworkers.Liv looked at her, seriousness in her eyes. "Fin, Danvers, pack up. Let's get down to that school and talk to this girl ASAP."Dani nodded, moving to grab the charcoal grey blazer off the back of her desk chair. She could feel Sonny's eyes on her the entire time, a pressure she had grown more used to as the days and weeks went on. Sure, nothing to disclose there as no one was dating, still. She would like to keep it that way. Still, she did wish there was time to stop and ask him what the hell was going on. She wished she had a chance to talk, just the two of them.Yikes.No, that was not a thought she was trying to have. This was just fun, after all. She wouldn't be catching feelings, she couldn't. So instead, she slipped her blazer on and tapped her left pocket comfortingly, feeling the unopened cigarettes there. "Fin, you want to drive?" She asked, turning to the man she'd be partnered with today."Yea, I got it. Let's roll out," Fin nodded, clapping her on the shoulder as they turned and went out the door.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sitting in front of the girl, listening to her story, wasn't easy. She was young - too young - for any of this. But weren't they always? But...still in grade school...that was painful. It called a lot of memories back, but Dani pushed through them. She had to, for the sake of the case, to keep this guy from doing it again. But it was just like the rest - exact same MO, down the the gloves and the humming.When they made it back to the office, Dani let Fin go inside and she stayed out in the crisp air. She just needed a moment to breathe, to think, to try and put together a next step. But every time she tried to think of it, her mind turned to mist, and she was back in a truck, bumping down a dirt road, a knife in the middle seat beside her. No matter how far she got into that memory, she could never make herself turn to look at the woman driving.She knew what she would see there, anyways."Hey," A voice cut into Dani's mind, and she startled, looking up and two her right. A man stood there, green suede jacket and thick rimmed glasses. "Got a cigarette I can bum?" he nodded towards her right hand, that clutched the unopened pack tightly, bumping it up and down against her hip bone. She hadn't even realized she had taken it out."Oh, yea, yea of course," Dani nodded, peeling the cellophane off, crumping and moving to put it in her pocket."I can take that," the man said, stepping forward and opening his palm towards her. "Trash is right around the corner, no need to carry it around in your pocket. Least I can do if you're lending me a light." His smile was polite and calm, innocent enough.Dani nodded, lips pressed into a thin line. She handed him the clear wrapping, then pulled out a cigarette and handed him that as well. "Don't have a lighter on me, sorry. I just carry these around for luck." Not a full story, but she didn't feel the need to get into it with a complete stranger. Hell, she didn't get into it with friends."Hey," another, more familiar voice, came from the door to the precinct. Dani turned, a smile lighting her face as she saw Sonny standing there, studying the man in front of her closely. That was...cute, she supposed, the idea that he felt protective of her from a stranger in the street. "I'm going to be pulling some OT for VICAP running. Liv approved it already, and I was wondering if you might want to help?""Yea, yea of course," she nodded with a smile. "Have a nice day," she said over her shoulder to the man, letting Sonny hold the door open for her. She brushed against him gently as she walked by, and grinned even wider as she heard him inhale sharply."What's wrong, Sonny?" She asked innocently, as they entered the elevator together, batting her eyelashes at him as if she had no idea what was going on.As soon as the door closed and the cage started moving, Sonny turned to face her, walking her backwards until she was pressed up against the wall. "If we weren't at work right now," he whispered against her lips.Heat ran through her body, electricity sparking from every place his body was pressed against hers. "We're in an elevator, you could always hit the emergency button. We'd be stuck in here, no way in, no way out," she whispered back, taking immense pleasure from the way his eyes darkened."If Liv didn't expect us back upstairs, you know nothing would stop me from doing that," he replied, kissing her hard, fast, fiercely, his teeth raking against her bottom lip. "But we have work to do. A shitbag to catch. And when we do catch him, you and I will have to do some celebrating."Dani nodded, allowing him to step away. She enjoyed watching him step away as much as she had enjoyed watching him step towards her. That vest, paired with the white shirt and thin black tie, made him look taller, leaner. Hot. He looked hot. And she had just crossed a line at work she probably shouldn't have. Internally, she banged her head against a mental wall. She needed to watch herself. She needed to get her shit together. Sonny was a coworker. A fun, attractive, hilarious coworker. But unless she wanted to march on down to HR....she had to get it together.When the doors to the elevator slid open, Dani sauntered by, walking quickly to her desk and sliding into place. She didn't look up as Sonny passed by.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dani and Sonny sat in the same bar that he invited her to the first time with his classmates. They were there again, celebrating some big test they had all passed. And because Sonny was there on a Friday night, of course Dani was, too. He always invited her to come with, and she never said no. She knew exactly how things would go from here - they would walk home together and she would wake up next to him on a Saturday morning.They would spend their weekend together.As they had been now for nearly a month. A whole ass month. It made her stomach flip flop just to consider it. But she didn’t want to go anywhere that wasn’t with him. Together, they had survived the trial of Amanda’s former chief, a girl in a suitcase, weird run-in’s with celebrities, and several other cases. They were becoming a strong duo, well respected for their ability to tactically bounce ideas off one another to get to the bottom of an incident. He was her partner, in every sense.Except the sense that she was willing to put a label on. They still danced around that idea. Well, she danced around that idea…Sonny knew what he wanted. At the bar, they say in the same half circle booth, where she was next to Sonny, his arm slung casually along the back of the booth behind her. She knew it was there, not actually wrapped around her, but close enough in public that it was fine for her. Close enough that it made Susan visibly annoyed, too, which she loved.“Dani?” A voice called from over by the bar, a voice she recognized too closely. The brunette whirled, her curly hair flying over her shoulder as her turned to look towards the bar, eyes widening.Sitting there, a set of frat boys around him, was her younger brother.“Freddie?” Dani slid immediately out of the booth, out of the reach of Sonny, walking quickly over to the bar. This was the last place she expected to see him. The instinct to get to him, but also to run away, was at war within her. She loved her brother, she did. But seeing him was always startling. She would blink and suddenly he’d be that child in the court room again. “What are you doing here?” She asked, as he got up from his barstool and tugged her into a hug. As they came out of it, she tugged him out of earshot of the other boys around him. She didn’t particularly feel the need to have them hear. Not about family manners.“You know, celebrating?” Freddie shrugged, hands in the pockets of his khakis.“Celebrating?” Dani hissed, glancing over her shoulder at the booth where Sonny and several of the others were staring at the two of them. “What are you celebrating on this month of all months?”This entire month was a month she tried to not even consider existing. It was why she went out. Why she distracted people. They had reached the first month that her captor spent in jail. The first month people started writing her letters and try to get her information to the Innocence Project. There was nothing to celebrate here.“You know we handle these things differently, Dani. Don’t rain on my parade just because of that. Come on, let me buy you a beer!” Freddie grinned, trying to get her to do the same.Dani rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. “And also, when did you get the audacity to grow taller than me?” She questioned, realizing how sharply upward she had to look to even speak to him. “That’s simply just not allowed.” She did her best to frown at him, but a small smile tugged at the corner of her lips.Behind her, someone cleared their throat. Dani turned around, blinking, finding Sonny standing there. “Wow, this is a such a good night.” She muttered. This was exactly the ‘meet the family’ type of event she wasn’t comfortable with.“Hey Sonny. This is Freddie. My younger brother,” she nodded to the brunette college kid beside her. “Freddie, this is Sonny, my friend. We work together.” She noticed the small furrow in Sonny’s brow at that word ‘friend,’ but tried to ignore it. There was too much going on right now to think about that.“Nice to meet ya, kid,” Sonny stuck out his hand.“You too!” Freddie shoot his hand enthusiastically. “Anyone who can put up with my sister enough to be considered a friend is good in my book. So you work together? Does that mean you have good stories you can share?”“Tons,” Sonny grinned, and then, as if to prove some strange point, he wrapped an arm around Dani’s shoulders and tugged her close to him. “We’re partners after all, so she has to put up with my shit daily.”“What’s the best story you have?” Her brother asked, cheeky grin on his face as he waved down a bartender and ordered three beers. “I want to hear all the dirt on Dani. She never tells me anything!”“Nothing at all, huh? Well on one of our more recent cases, she stared down some red pill gamer bozo who was trying to shoot me. Didn’t flinch as they did an old fashioned Mexican stand off. He would have shot her too, if it weren’t for Finn, another on of our SVU guys.”“Shit, really?” Dani wondered if Freddie’s eyebrows could get any higher than they were. She rolled her eyes, sipping from the beer a waitress dropped off. It was the only thing she could do to keep her nerves from racing wild. “Dani, you just stood there, staring down the barrel of a gun? Why!”“They were going to shoot Sonny,” she shrugged. “Couldn’t tell them do that. Would be a pretty lousy partner if I stood there and let it happen.”“Kinda sweet when you think about it,” Sonny grinned. “She’s very protective.”“Don’t I know it,” Freddie grinned, swigging from his beer when someone called his name from the bar. “Ah shit, ok I gotta go. We’ve got some bets on the game tonight. Love ya, sis.” He pulled her in and gave his big sister a kiss on the cheek. She wrinkled her nose in faux disgust.When Freddie was gone she turned to face Sonny, one eyebrow raised. “So, just friends huh?” Sonny asked, hands on his hips.Dani sighed. “You know I’m not ready for…all that,” she waved her hand generally in the air. “Sonny. Don’t…don’t do that.” Her hands started to shake, trying to keep control of things. “He’s here celebrating one of the worst months ever…one of the worst…” she shook her head, looking away, lips pressing into a thin line. Sonny tried to stay upset at her. He did. But with that look on her face, this far off image where he knew she was somewhere else entirely…it wasn’t exactly possible. “Come here, doll,” he said, pulling her in tightly, one arm wrapping around her waist, the other cradling her head gently. He could have stood there forever, simply holding her, as the rest of the world faded out around them, until for Sonny, it was just him and her and an empty bar. After a few minutes, the shaking in Dani had felt spreading throughout her body slowly came to a stop. She took a deep breath and stepped back a little. “Okay. I’m good. Thank you,” she nodded curtly up at him, then looked away as her cheeks turned red. He was always saving her in her times of weakness. She was used to being her own knight in shining armor. She both loved it and hated it all at the same time. “Hey Sonny, Dani, come on we’re trying to start dealing the cards!” One of the John’s called from their booth. She was pretty sure it was John W. Pretty sure.Sonny gave her a sheepish look, but the brunette nodded that she was okay. She could handle playing a silly card game with them to buy the time needed until they could leave. Even if it meant sharing space with Susan.The card game was called “Lawyers Against Humanity,” some parody version of the famous card game where all the questions and responses were based on law and legal proceedings. There were some specifically niche responses that Dani didn’t fully understand - because as much exposure as she had thanks to Barba, she would never know what it was like to really be in his shoes. But that was okay. The game was still funny, and it also meant she was a wildcard when it came around to her turn to choose the funniest white card.Things were going fine until John W was in charge of the black card. “Not everyone can make a courtroom sexy, but you know who can? Blank,” John read aloud to the group, then looked away as each person put their cards into the center.Dani went with something she found funny - police men with tear away pants. She grinned to herself at the idea, then waited to hear all the results.John read each more theatrically than the last, and she did get plenty of laughs. Then, he read out “Anna Danvers Rule 34.”Her entire body froze. She saw a wicked grin spread over Susan’s face - but that didn’t make any sense, because there’s no way in hell Sonny would have told anyone. There was no way anyone at this table could know who she was.“What’s Rule 34?” Sonny asked awkwardly, rather away of how still Dani had grown beside him.“If it exists, there’s a porn for it,” Dani replied quickly, keeping her eyes on her cards. She felt like her bones were splintering beneath her skin. She had no idea she was on a card like that. How could she expect to be on a card at all, for anything. She understood the whole point was morbid humor but…to hear it about herself was something else.“You know, I just remembered I told Amanda I’d go for a pre-work run tomorrow morning,” Dani stood up abruptly, throwing a couple bills down on the table for her part of the tab. “It was great to see everyone, but I gotta go.”She turned and walked off, before anyone could say anything, before anyone could stop her. Burying her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, she pulled her hood up and stalked off into the night. She didn’t know where she was going, not really. Her car was parked back at Sonny’s, so she would at least have to start there.Someone had played that card. It wasn’t Sonny, she knew that much. She knew he would never, under any circumstance, make a joke out of her past. So who had? Who knew? Who had figured it out? The questions raced through her mind as quick as the winds of a tornado. Her thoughts were so loud she almost didn’t hear the footsteps behind her or the man calling her name.“Dani, slow down!” Sonny called a fourth time, panting as he came up beside her, grabbing her arm and forcing her to stop. “It wasn’t me, I swear. Doll, I’d…I’d never do that. What happened isn’t funny. I promise-“She cut him off with a roll of her eyes and shake of her head. “Sonny, I know that. I’m perfectly aware that you would never do something like that. But someone did. So either one of your friends actually thinks that’s funny, or one of them has figured out my dirty little secret.” The words spat bitterly from between her lips. “I couldn’t just sit there and pretend I was fine. I couldn’t. Everyone would know by the end of the night if I had tried to laugh it off. I couldn’t.” She crossed her arms over her chest, pulling her wrist from his grasp as she did so. “It’s sick. The idea of it. And this whole month. Sonny, my whole life is warped by these things that happened to me. She had me captive. For a long, long time. Pick a random day of the year and it’s probably a shitty memory for me. You sure that’s the kind of thing you want to get caught up in?” She looked off down the street, unable to look him in the eye anymore. She’d probably start crying if she did. “If I were you, I’d cut and run now and label it as a drunk fling.” A drunk fling that’s lasted weeks, she thought to herself.She didn’t see the look of pain wince across Sonny’s face.“Dani. I’m not going anywhere. You’re not too much or too little. You’re just the right amount of everything,” he placed his hand beneath her chin, turning her back to face him. “I’m not running anywhere. Not unless you’re runnin’ with me.”Dani felt like her heart shattered, falling apart to pieces within her chest. How was he here, so good to her even when she hardly returned the favor? How long would he continue to put up with her bullshit? She stepped forward and kissed him, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, any other way to say it. She had never been good with words. She walked him backwards until his back was pressed flat against the trunk of a tree, her lips pulling hungrily at his. She didn’t want there to be anything separating them.“Dani, Dani, wait,” Sonny said, forcing him to unwind his hands from her. It was painful, pulling away. He held her hands together in front of them. “I know what you’re doing, and it’s okay. If you want to use me to not hurt right now; that’s fine. I won’t say no. Hell, I’ll enjoy it. But I don’t think you really want to have sex with me on a sidewalk right now. I think you want to go back to my place and you want to get some things off of your chest for the first time in a while.” In her pocket, her phone began to buzz. She ignored it. No one, at least no one in a long time, called her bluff so directly. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. But then, she nodded. She let him take her hand, threading their fingers together, and allowed him to walk her back towards his place. The entire time, she wondered how she would share the full story that she had never spoken aloud before.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dani sat, knees tucked to her chest, on the leather couch in Sonny’s living room. He was next to her, close but not so close that she felt smothered. Her hands were shaking, so she kept them tucked tightly against her legs to stop the movement. She didn’t want to speak any of this out loud. The last time she had talked about it, outside of therapy, and truly talked, had been in court. When she didn't have a choice. “Where do I even start?” She murmured. There never seemed like a good place. And in her mind, she lived through every second of the entire thing, all at once. All at the same time.“You don’t have to start anywhere if you don’t want to, Dani. It’s no pressure at all. Not from me. I just don’t want you to feel like you’re drownin’ out there.” Sonny reached out, resting a hand lightly on her knee before withdrawing it. This was never his area of expertise. When they went into interrogation, this was Dani’s forte.Dani closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “I told what I had to for the police. The trial. There were things they never asked me about. My family didn’t let any news talk to me, so no one there got the answers to their questions. So people made things up. Some people think my mom wasn’t my actual mother, that…that Margaret was and she was okay to take me away. That my father deserved it for dating someone so crazy. Children made up nursery rhymes about me. I’ve had to sit here and just take it. And now, card games as well I guess. It doesn’t end.” She blinked, shaking her head. “When does it end?”“I’m not sure it does, doll,” Sonny said, his lips pressing into a thin line. It wasn’t fair, that the world would do this. That people could be so cruel. That what had happened to her was more than just a story he had learned about for school. When Dani looked up at him, her eyes wide and glassy, he thought he might fall apart right there on the couch. “Is there anything you want to talk about? Anything else?” He asked, instead.“I heard the sound of the pipe, sometimes. Of the metal of my cuffs scrapping against it,” she murmured, turning, her gaze going far away. “I hear it in car doors, or when someone bottoms out over a curb. Sometimes when we go to prisons, the sound of the handcuffs rubbing against the table sounds familiar. It’s like it follows me.” She stopped, biting her lower lip.Suddenly, Dani turned and looked at him, shaking her head. “I…I don’t want a good night with you to be about this. Can we just. Go lay together? Go to sleep?”Without needing to ask, Sonny wrapped his arms around her, scooping her up and holding her close. They fit together like two puzzle pieces. Even in the sad moments, they fit.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------When Dani woke up, she blinked, the sunlight drifting through the windows becoming more and more familiar, each day. Around her waist was the familiar weight of Sonny's arm. She danced her fingers gently over his fingers, his wrist.He had watched her fall apart and he never looked away.He told her she could use him, which...she grimaced. A horrifying thought. To use this man, who lay behind her, curved around her like a second skin. It wasn't moments like this that made her feel like she shouldn't be allowed to be happy. Dani knew she wasn't kind, knew she wasn't easy. Sonny...he deserved someone better than her. How long would it be until he realized it?Behind her, he shifted slightly, and Dani could tell he was starting to wake up. She rolled with him, so as he lay flat on his back, she was on her other side, looking up at his handsome face, his strong jaw, his blue eyes that looked back at hers. He was too good for her. Way too good."Mornin' doll," Sonny said sleepily, stifling a yawn. "How long have you been awake?""Not too long," She smiled softly, shifting forward until she was half on top of him. "Long enough to think about how good you were last night. Long enough to think about how I want to repay you." Her eyes glinted like a cats."Repay me?" The sleep in Sonny's voice apparent. "You don't need to repay me, Dani. I was just being a good guy.""I know," Dani shift, pressing a kiss to his cheek, flashing a devilish grin. "Now, let me do the right thing and be a good girl for you." Without another word, she slipped beneath the covers, sliding down his stomach until her head was between his thighs.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

On the screen in front of them at work, Dani could see the glasses that were filming Sonny's point of view as he went undercover in some lair where girls were being tricked out by a Madam. Annoyingly, his current vision seemed to be locked on some woman's ass.Because Dani sat in the van with Amanda and Liv, she tried not to react. She sunk back into that familiar RBF, her eyes cold and stony. It wasn't as if they expected any different of her, anyways. And yet...on the inside she was boiling. This was exactly why relationships weren't recommended in her field. Sonny was working, and any inadvertent or intentional gazes were a part of that. And yet...and yet...the jealousy was eating away at her like a child going to town on a tub of ice cream.Finally, she sighed, annoyed, shifting in her seat. "Carisi hasn't moved in twenty minutes, think this is the only view we'll have all night?" Her words were bitter and annoyed, but no different than she always sounded when some UC didn't give them what they needed on a stakeout.Liv glanced at her, nodding in agreement. The same tired annoyance placed across her boss's face, so at least she wasn't alone in that. "I'll get him moving," she agreed, pulling out her phone to shoot off a text. Dani didn't know what it said, didn't have to. All she cared about was that it was said.Part of her wondered if he thought about her while he was on these undercover events, if he knew she was back in the van, watching everything through his eyes. He couldn't be, which also stung a little. This entire scenario wasn't inside her normal boundaries, and she hated it. She never felt this level of discomfort while on the job. She shifted, trying to focus in on what she was doing, not the guy she liked, not her partner, not the one who wasn't supposed to be looking at other women the way he was.On screen, she saw Sonny's phone flash, Liv's text reading boldly "Is that all you're going to look at?" Dani smiled to herself as he quickly tucked the phone away and got up from the chair he'd been perched in. He approached an older woman, the Madam, who had midlength, wavy brown hair and was frantically typing away at a cellphone."Hey, what are we talkin' here?" He asked, arms spreading wide. "Five minutes or five hours? I can't be out all night, I got a wife at home who will be wondering where I am!" If it was one thing Dani had to admit, Sonny was good at the acting portion of the UC gig. Shame he had to be so irritating about it.We're not dating, he can do whatever he wants, she thought to herself, chiding the jealousy within her."Just five minutes, and I promise it'll be worth the wait. They're young, fresh. Very good group of girls," the Madam explained, only taking a moment to look up from her phone.A minute or so later, a blue minivan with tinted windows pulled up in front of the building. "Eyes on the prize," Dani nodded towards it, watching as several girls in small dresses, skirts, and shorts all climbed out. Young. Maybe legal, maybe not. She hated to think about it. Where were their families? Was anyone looking for them, anyone at all? Her father had looked for her, even if he hadn't had much luck."Wait a minute..." Amanda pointed at the screen. "Look. She's familiar." The woman, handler, leading the girls out the car was, in fact, familiar. They had saved her son, a couple months ago. Selena. And already...she was back in the business of hurting others, once again. Dani wondered where her son was now."We have to get them before the get in," Dani nodded, moving towards the van door. "Come on, let's go."Right as Selena was trying to buzz into the building, right as the door opened, Liv announced herself, grabbing Selena from behind and cuffing her, as Dani and Amanda ordered the girls to put their hands up. Fin and Amaro pulled up in a car, lights flashing. So far, it was all a successful bust. They still had to get inside, though."I've got the girls," Dani offered, not ready to go in there, not ready to see Sonny surrounded by other scumbags and pimped out women. Liv nodded at her, and she was certain that everyone thought she wanted to just take care of other girls who were stolen from there homes, other girls who might be feeling the exact same way Dani had felt, back when it was all happening."I have to cuff you guys for now," Dani explained to each girl, looking them in the eyes as she spoke, talking with respect, not as if they were dumb and couldn't understand. "I don't want to, any more than you guys want to be, but until we're back at the station, it's protocol. We've got a van, though, so you'll all be together for the ride over." She tried to smile gently when it felt appropriate, tried to make them understand that she knew they weren't really here by choice. Life had dealt them an equally shitty hand, and she was part of hopefully helping them get a new deal.After the girls were all loaded into one van, she closed the doors and gave the back two taps, letting the officer in the driver's seat know he was good to roll out. As the van drove off, Dani pivoted to find the guys leading men in cuffs out of the building, Liv with the Madam as well. Fin, specifically, was pushing Sonny in front of him. For a moment, he looked up and their eyes locked.He was wearing exactly what she had helped him pick out that morning: a loose, tweed blazer, crisp button up, and his hair was slicked back exactly to Dani's specific styling. He still wore those damn glasses, ones that made him look...annoyingly attractive. She frowned, then looked away. Amanda was still talking to some of the other officers, so she moved over to stand by her friend. She heard the loud sound of a door being shut, and knew Sonny was being carted off. After all, they were going to keep using him for this little charade, so it had to look real."You keep frowning like that and you're going to get wrinkles," Amanda drawled, then gave Dani a small smile. "You all good?""Yea," Dani nodded. "Just another hard night. Ready to head back to the station?"After they had piled back into their car, Dani took a seat next to the window, spending the entire ride back to the station silent as she stared out at the night.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"I'm not a cop!" The woman, the Madam, Martha, in front of them in Liv's office explained. "My daughter, Ariel, she was taken three years ago. I've been following them ever since. I need to see her, I need to buy her back. This is the closest I've ever been." Dani noticed the slight tremble in her hand, as well as the the steady look in her (albeit, watery) eyes. She didn't seem to be lying."So you think she got picked up by traffickers?" Liv asked, moving to stand behind her desk."I know it. I've been tracking her all the way from Toronto. They've had her half way across the country, Minneapolis, Chicago, Buffalo. I've seen ads for her on Craigslist, newspapers, sex ads. They took her here six months ago." The woman responded."So why didn't you contact the NYPD?" Dani asked, head cocked slightly to the side. As much as she wanted to believe her, she needed all the answers first."Toronto police didn't believe me then, why would the police here believe me now?" the woman returned the question with another. "In Toronto, they thought I had something to do with it. Me, selling my own daughter. I would never, ever do that. If they hadn't spent so long questioning me, maybe we would have caught her before she ever left Canada. But here we are.""Alright, why should we believe you then?" Liv asked. "After all, we did just catch you pimping out girls. For all we know, this is just a story to keep us on your good side, to get you out of here."Martha bit her lower lip, looking at her hands, then back up. "Let me show you."------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dani headed towards the elevator after what had turned into a long night. So long, in fact, that it was almost morning. She had a little bit of time left to get some sleep before Barba came in to meet them the next day, and she was going to take advantage of it."Dani, hey! Wait up!" She heard a familiar voice and the sound of jogging behind her. She ignored him, and hit the down button on the elevator, waiting for the cage to arrive. "Hey!" Sonny said, coming to a stop beside her. "You were going to leave without saying goodbye?""Yea, well, it's been a long day and I'd like to make it back to my place before I fall asleep at the wheel," Dani shrugged, stepping into the empty elevator as the doors opened, turning to face him, but not stepping far enough in that he could enter either.He was still wearing the same outfit, hair still exactly how she had done it for him. The only thing missing was the glasses. And, now, there was a newly minted frown on his face, his eyes narrowed. "Your place?" he asked quietly. "I thought we were planning on staying at mine tonight?"Dani sighed, rolling her eyes. "Sonny, I'm tired. I had to spend all night watching you not-so-subtly look at other women. I just need some time to myself, alright? So yes, I'm going to my place. It's not like I'm moving across the country, I'll see you again tomorrow." They locked eyes, and neither said another thing, until the doors slid shut, separating them as the elevator began to move down. Dani let out a breath she didn't realize she had been holding.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dani woke the next morning and felt like she was out of her body. She felt as if she were moving through molasses. Something was wrong. She knew something was wrong. Something felt wrong. She felt like her body would move and her brain would move one step behind it - just slightly out of sync. Just slightly not right. She knew this feeling, knew it well. She knew that it meant the beginning of the end. And it settled under her skin like a layer of spikes, constantly poking her. Sonny. This wouldn't work. They wouldn't work. Something about watching him watch other women...it felt like a bad aftertaste in her mouth that she couldn't get rid of.But it didn't matter what she thought - she had to get to work. He was her partner - the one always assigned to work with Sonny, their personalities balancing each other out. She wouldn't let something like this ruin her work and her ability to do her best job. They needed to finish this case and then she would sort it out later. If she closed her eyes and thought of Sonny, thought of the way he looked at her, something loosened and rattled in her chest. Her mind was telling her this wouldn't work, that something was wrong, that things would break apart as they always did, but her body...her heart (ugh), wanted it to.She shook her head, pulling on her tight black slacks and heels. She didn't have time to consider the possibilities. She had to get to work. She had to sink into the familiar so she could focus on what she knew best. Savings lives.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dani's phone rang as she entered the building. Spam. She hit decline on the call, knowing there was likely a credit card bill coming in due that she needed to deal with. As she was looking down, she nearly walked right into someone's chest. A hand came, naturally, to the small of her back. Dani's instinct was to step away, until she looked up and saw the man looking back down at her."Morning Sonny," she said quietly, with a quick nod. His face looked pulled tight, his eyes searching hers. Like he could see the spikes beneath her skin. Like he could feel her feet ready to run. Guilt spiked in her heart, in a way Dani wasn't used to. She had never felt bad over ending things before - never felt like she was doing something wrong.She hadn't ended things yet. She needed to calm the fuck down."Dani..." her name fell from his lips like petals from a flower. She had to blink, had to look away, or she might kiss him, right there in their place of work."Sleep well?" She asked quietly, stepping back further, creating a forced space between them."No, not really," he said, scratching the back of his head, the button up he wore pulling tight around his chest as he did so. She blinked again, glancing away. "Worst sleep in a while, actually." She blushed. That was her fault, and she knew it. But she had needed time, after how that last outing had went."Sorry," She replied, bitter taste on her tongue. Before he could say another word, she swerved around him, striding quickly towards her desk. Best to spend her time looking at her email until Barba got in and they could get to work.At her desk, she could still feel it, all the same. Eyes, on her back, and her side. Amanda, to her right, studying her closely. Sonny, behind her, watching even closer. She sunk down low in her seat, opening her emails and focusing on nothing else for the next half an hour.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dani sat in silence, staring up at the bulletin board in front of them, listening as everyone explained what Marth had done in attempt to find her own daughter. But her mind couldn't quite focus on what was going on. Other than the fact Barba didn't seem all that on board with the idea of working with Martha. Until, Liv said her name."Dani?" Liv crossed her arms over her chest. "That good with you?" Dani blinked, not knowing what exactly Liv had asked her. But she nodded all the same, short, quick, concise, as if there were no doubt she would do whatever Liv had asked of her.Once Liv turned away and continued debating with Barba, Dani turned to Amanda, shooting her a look, asking what she had just signed up for without speaking."We'll get you some good UC clothes before we head out to interview the rest of the girls," Amanda said pointedly. Dani nodded, lips pressed into a thin line. Of course, she had agreed to be a UC for whatever ideas Liv had swirling around in her brain right now. And if she was going under cover in this environment, she was going to be pretending she was one of their pimp's girls. The thought of the men's hands on her made her grimace, but if it would help save Martha's daughter...she would do it. She sat quietly, for the rest of the meeting, not really absorbing what was going on around her. When Sonny knocked her on the arm, she looked up, focusing once again."We're going out to talk to one of the girls. You good?" He asked, brows furrowed with concern."Yea, yea I'm fine,” she replied quietly, looking down and away. It took all of Sonny’s willpower not to reach his hand under her chin and turn her gently to look at him. “Ok….meet me downstairs and we’ll head over to the safe house yea?” He asked, an unusual sense of anxiousness sliding over him. Something was obviously pretty wrong here. He just didn’t know what, and there wasn’t a lot of time to discuss it right now. But there would be...in the car. Sure, that's where he'd get his answers out of her. Get to the root of what was going on. He was a detective after all - he could figure out the answer to this case. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At first, the card ride was silent, no radio, nothing but the hot air blowing from the vents as the moved along the busy New York streets until they were further out of town. "Alright," Sonny said, turning down the fan, pulling over to park for a second. "Dani. Seriously. I think I know you pretty well at this point. What's wrong. Talk to me, doll. I'm coming apart at the seems over here."Dani could see him in her peripheral vision, and knew if she looked right at him she might fall completely apart. "Nothings wrong, Sonny," she said quietly. "We need to get to the site, we really shouldn't be sitting here. They'll be expecting us." She kept her gaze averted out the window."Come on, doll," Sonny said, reaching over and resting a hand on her thigh. "I know you. I see you. Tell me what's wrong.""I'm just stuck in my head," Dani replied, looking down at his hand, then finally, up towards him. "Watching you with...with those women yesterday, it's gotten to me more than I thought it would." He opened his mouth to speak and she shook her head. "No, no, I know it's part of the job. But think about it. I'm about to go UC at whatever we do next...are you going to be happy with the idea of men having their hands all over me?" She raised an eyebrow at him questioningly.Sonny's brow furrowed as he pictured it. Men who didn't know she was a detective. Men that thought she was for sale. Their eyes, their hands, roving over her body. A frown tore over his lips."Exactly," Dani replied with a nod. "Exactly. Everything going through your mind, I had to think all of that, but it wasn't some imaginary future...it was actually happening. And I'm sorry, but you staring at some chick's ass for like three minutes straight? I mean, fuck, Sonny, you expect me to be all sunshine and roses after all that?" She looked away again, air blowing out hard through her lips."I'm sorry," Sonny replied. "Dani, I'm sorry," he was at a loss for words of what to say. He couldn't go back in time and undo any of it. "I wish there was something I could do to make this better. Would you tell me if there was?""Sure," Dani replied with a noncommittal nod. "But right now I just need some time, ok," she turned back, looking at him through her lashes. "Just some time, please.""Yea, okay. I can do that," Sonny nodded. "For you, I can do that." Dani gave him a small smile, then surged up suddenly, her hands on the console between them, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. It was gentle, and slow, and yet somehow, not long enough. They both knew they had to get moving. All they had was this small moment, and it would have to last.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dani stood in front of the mirror, staring at her reflection. It was her...but it wasn't. She recognized her face, her features. But the outfit, the makeup…none of that was her. Which, she supposed, was the entire point of going under cover. To he unrecognizable. Because the brothel they were going to was having a Super Bowl party. Naturally. Dani sighed, fighting the urge to wipe at her eyes, to pull off the lash extensions. The precinct makeup artist already wasn’t her biggest fan - the last thing she needed was to cause a further problem."Cherry," she said quietly. "My name is Cherry." The name felt foreign and gross on her mouth. Her outfit, all black and tight and small, felt so incredibly un-her. The shorts were extremely high booty-cut, with garters that dropped to mid-thigh. The top was a black leather corset, sucking in her stomach, keeping everything in place. Heels, low and sharp and shiny."We won't put you towards any men there that aren't ours," Liv had said when filling her in on the plan. "I'll be there, and here's the other OCs," she had been handed a set of pictures, all women her age or younger. Pretty. Small. An easy distraction for the men who would be there. "Fin will be there. Sonny is pretending to be the whale looking for Ariel. If we need to push you on someone, it's on to him. Is that fine?""He's my partner," Dani shrugged. "And it's work. It is what it is - if this gets girls back home, you know I'll do what needs to be done." That had always been her mantra - whatever needed to be done, she would do, to ensure their safety. If someone had done that for her back when she was a child, maybe she wouldn't be so fucked in the head now.They all had their parts to play. Dani pulled on a trench coat to cover her bare, exposed legs and went to find the van.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dani stood by Fin, music blaring, other women milling around, flirting with men twice their age. She pretended to laugh and bat her eyes, running a hand lightly down Fin's shoulder. He was wearing a paisley button up and a dark blazer over it. When time allowed, Dani leaned in and whispered into his ear."If you think I'm ever going to let you forget dressing up like this, you're wrong. If I had a camera, this would be going on our company Christmas card for years."Fin rolled his eyes but smiled, leaning in to whisper back. "Yea, you want your outfit on there for years?" It was Dani's turn to roll her eyes, but the two detectives were good enough to make it look like they were flirting the entire time.Timmer's girls had just arrived, so as Dani moved and laughed and danced she kept an eye out for a thin girl with long blonde hair. But she didn't recognize Ariel among them. There were girls she had seen from surveillance, but no blonde."Hey," she heard Sonny say, watching him lazily as he stood up. Tonight, he wore a light button down, white striped with blue, and khakis. His hair was still slicked back, but he had lost the glasses. No need to record when they already had sound and hidden cameras rigged in the house. "Where's my blonde?" he asked Liv. "The one with the big rack. You said she was coming.""We're working on it," Liv assured with a patient nod, a soft smile. "But hey, while you're waiting, why don't you take Cherry? She's one of my best." Then Liv turned, snapping her fingers at Dani. "Cherry. Why don't you take care of this nice man for me?"Dani nodded, fake flirtatious smile plastered on her dark red lips. She shot an appraising grin at Timmer as she passed by him, too. As Sonny sat back down on the chair, legs spread wide, Dani perched on one of his knees, leaning in close to him. The two locked eyes and she saw his darken, pupils dilating.Dani leaned in so her lips brushed against Sonny's ear. "Careful now, you're playing a dangerous game," she breathed out, words quiet and only for him. She felt his hand tighten against her lower back. As much as things felt off between them, as much as Dani was certain this was leading to an untimely end, when she was here, right next to him, it was easy for Dani to pretend they were the only two in the room. She knew, no matter what, Sonny wouldn't let another one of these scumbags here touch her."You're the only one in danger here, doll," Sonny leaned in to whisper back, his breath hot against her skin. Both sat like that for a moment, tense, tension bleeding, before Sonny leaned back into the couch. "Why don't you dance a little for me then, huh?" he asked, voice more bravado now than anything, putting on an act for those around. Deep down, though, Dani knew there was something he was enjoying a little too much about having her all dressed up and just for him.Dani stood up gracefully, turning around so her ass was towards his face. On the one upside of things, the burlesque classes she had taken for a couple weeks in her early, early twenties helped a lot in UC situations like these. On the downside, she knew there were other men watching. Lazily, she ground her hips in dirty circles, waves, snake-like motions. She leaned forward, hips shaking back and forth quickly, causing her thighs and muscles to shake too. She turned back to face Sonny and his eyes were locked on hers, even darker now. As she dropped to a squat between his thighs, she noticed him subtly adjust the front of his pants and she grinned to herself."Timmer," a voice, thick Irish accent, suddenly called out and Dani glanced over her shoulder, freezing for just a second. Quickly, she turned, sitting in Sonny's lap, leaning back against him now. He could see the shift in her, recognized the tension in her frame, and his arms came to wrap protectively around her. "Who are these trespassers?" the man asked. "I don't know them."Even in disguise, even with a shaggy beard and old gangster clothing, Dani would have recognized him anywhere. And because of that, she knew this whole thing had gone tits up. Declan Murphy, NYPD Captain, previously in command of SVU for a short hiatus, had just entered the room.Suddenly, Sonny was standing up, and Dani was pushed to the side, letting out a muffled grunt. "Shut up, bitch," Sonny drawled lazily, stepping towards Declan."Hey!" Declan shouted, eyes narrowed and nostrils flared now, as he looked from Dani, up to Sonny. "You never speak to a lady like that. You're done.""Game hasn't even started yet," Sonny countered, hands on his hips. "Back off.""Well, yours is over," Declan said, turning around and moving to walk away. He didn't know Sonny, realization hitting Dani like a freight train. Didn't know he was undercover. Thought he was just some skeevy guy who had dropped her ass on the floor. And because it was Declan, he had stepped in, because it had happened to her, someone he used to watch over, be responsible for."Who are you? I don't even know you!" Sonny objected to Declan's back, and Dani tried to step forward, tried to get him to shut up and back down, but she wasn't quick enough. Declan's hand came flying, pistol in it, and whipped him right in the face. Sonny dropped backwards, blood already starting to gush out of his nose."Ohmygod," Dani said in a dramatically loud voice, hands flapping up. She dropped to her knees next to Sonny, trying to get a better look. As she was trying to look at him, his groans making her feel smaller and smaller every time, she heard Liv say "Drop the gun." When she glanced up, Declan had a gun on Fin, and Liv a gun on Declan. She froze, again, terrified of what was about to happen.Before anything could wrong, go worse, the door burst open. Amanda, Nick, and a flurry of other officers came in through the door, guns raised. "Hands up and put the guns down!" Amanda shouted, and Dani thought she might never be so happy to see her friend in her life. As she slowly raised her hands, she watched as Declan and Liv were cuffed, guns removed. Then slowly, one by one, every person in the room was placed under arrest. Dani stood up slowly, hands up, and allowed Nick to come to her, to gently take her hands behind her back and place the metal cuffs around her wrist.She would be in a van with Liv, she knew that much. These wouldn't be on long. She met Nick's eyes and he gave her a quick nod. This would all be over soon.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Trenchcoat back on and tightly synched around the waist, Dani entered an interrogation room with Liv and Fin, and most notably, Declan. As soon as the door shut, the room keeping them safe from onlookers, Fin exploded."What the hell are you doing? Pointing a gun in my face? You pistol whipped one of our guys!" He glared at Declan, taking a step towards him but Dani put a hand on his shoulder, keeping him firmly in place."That was my partner, by the way," she fired at Declan. "You just busted his face up and now I gotta listen to him whine for a month.""That mouse job's one of yours? Great," Declan shook his head, accent dropped. "I thought he had just dropped your ass on the floor, thought he was some dumbass!" There was a defensiveness in his voice, protectiveness all the same."Hey, hey! We're not getting into this right now!" Liv objected, raising her hands. "We've got a job to do. We're looking for a trafficked girl! Here," she took out her phone, handing it to Declan. "Do you know her?""One girl?" Declan scoffed. "You realize I'm infiltrated in a ring with hundreds, maybe thousands of girls?" But he took the phone all the same, squinting down at the screen. "Ariel. You're looking for her?" He asked, handing the phone back to Liv, shaking his head. "She's damaged goods. Timmer sold her to Johnny D last week for only $800. Not a very good sign.""Who's Johnny D?" Dani asked, arms crossed over her chest now. The more they looked into this, the deeper the trail seemed to go. All for one girl. Just one. It made her skin prickle that she couldn't save them all, couldn't bring everyone back home. This was just the start of things, the tip of the iceberg."He's deep in the center of this ring. Worst of the worst. I don't even know where his lair is, he's never been willing to show me. He's not going to think twice about killing her, killing anyone. I can't do anything to fix this one Liv, you've already played your hand. He's going to be too nervous, too on the lookout.""Then we're going to go talk to the girls," Dani said with a sigh. "Let me go find Rollins."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The hell they got Ariel out of left chills crawling over Dani's body, like bugs inside her skin. When she closed her eyes, she was still in Johnny D's lair. Still seeing girls passed out on dirty mattresses. Hearing Sonny call for an ambulance when one girl wasn't responding at all. Her hands were shaking as they opened each door, terrified of what she would find each time. But then she had an arm wrapped around Ariel and was leading her out of the building, to the bus waiting outside. That was the part that made it worth it. That, and seeing the look on Ariel's face when she saw Martha again for the first time in years. Those were the things she could hold onto when the rest of it made her want to rip her body apart from the inside.Johnny D got remanded to a federal penitentiary pending trial. The small victory at the end of it all.But things never stopped moving in her life, not with enough time to really think. December in full force, snow and winds whipping outside Dani's apartment each night. And sometimes, still, outside of Sonny's. She wasn't ready to let go of him, not just let. Not when each night they spent together he would hold her close, her back pressed into his chest, his heartbeat matching her own.Things were good, fine, up until the Walter Briggs case. The novelist. The one whose books Dani had seen adorning Sonny's shelves. The one with two pretty daughters, the oldest, a blonde attending law school. Dani had narrowed her eyes at the sight of her. She had always known how to spot a threat ever since she had been saved. Like a sixth sense, a heightened awareness. And the way she looked at Sonny as she spoke had those alarm bells blaring in Dani's ears.When she gave Sonny an original copy of one of his books, Dani drew the line."I'm sorry," she said, staring out at the snow falling behind Sonny, instead of really looking at him. "I'm sorry, but I can't do this anymore. I just...I can't. I can't watch you go undercover with other women, I can't watch women on our cases flirt with you. I just...I don't think us being together is a good idea. I'm sorry. I just want things to go back to the way they were. I'm just...I'm sorry, I can't." She couldn't look at him, because she knew that she would cry. And Dani Danvers didn't cry. She could see his lips moving, but the buzzing in her ears kept her from being able to hear what he was saying. She wanted to run. She had to run. Had to get away from here, from standing outside of his home, from knowing she was killing him a little bit every word she said."Please, Sonny," she said quietly. "Please, just let me...let me go." She turned, not giving him another chance to speak. She turned on her heel, and before she could stop herself, she started running. Running like she would never stop. Running like there was something chasing her.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Hey, hey listen," Sonny said, pulling his younger sister into a tight hug, "I am happy for you. Really. You're going to get married, have a baby. It's really great. Truly." His words were still thick on his mouth, and it was hard to speak, to think of other people being happy when it had been three weeks since he and Dani had called things off. She moved around the office like a current of water was carrying her. She still spoke to him like a friend, didn't treat him unkindly, but there was this far away look in her eyes any time he tried to speak to her one on one, like she was shutting herself out. Like opening herself up to him would only cause her more pain. And seeing that...killed him a little bit every time it happened."Okay, okay," Bella said, pushing him back and staring up at him, hands on her hips. "Sonny I know you well enough right now to know when you're talkin' shit. Tell me what's goin' on." She narrowed her eyes at him - it wasn't a question, she wanted some answers. "Is it that girl you're seeing? The one you wouldn't tell me anything about other than the slight idea that she exists?""Girl that I was seeing," Sonny said with a sigh, running a hand over his hair. "She called things off about a month ago."Bella was instantly in his face, pushing his chest. "Sonny, you idiot! What'd you do?!" Sonny reached up grabbing her wrists so that she couldn't push him again. Even if her pushes felt like nothing, he didn't need it right now. "I've never seen you happier. Never seen you less stressed out. So what happened?" Bella put her hands on her hips, frowning now as she looked at her older brother."I just...I don't even know really, Bell. It was too much for her I guess, the pressure of it, the hiding, the gals on investigations flirting with me," Sonny rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. He didn't like reliving it, the moment Dani had said she couldn't do it anymore. Didn't like thinking about it. Since then, things had still been awkward, but she had never, ever, been unkind. Even when she easily could have. Even when she could have made him feel uncomfortable or made pointed remarks, she didn't."Sonny, I'm sorry," Bella said, pulling her brother into a hug, hand running circles on his back. "You'll figure something out, you always do. And if she's not the one, then on to the next." Behind them, a door opened, and Bella pulled away, turning to smile at her fiancée.Tommy had never been Sonny's favorite person, but he was kind to his sister, and he had made efforts to do things right but proposing to her. But he was still a recovering addict, and Sonny had seen that path end badly too many times to count, so there was always a lingering worry there. A concern that Bella could get hurt in all of this. That his niece or nephew could get hurt in all of this."Sonny," Tommy greeted with a nod. "Didn't know you would be here.""Sonny's helping us get the room ready for the baby," Bella explained, stepping towards her partner, kissing him on the cheek, running a hand over his shoulder-length hair. "Get the junk out, put up some shelves, you know," she said casually, with a smile she knew Tommy usually couldn't resist."Bella, you know I can't help today," Tommy sighed, a sadness in his voice. "I have to go meet with my parole officer in a few." He looked to Sonny, then back to Bella, cheeks reddening at the subject.Sonny pursed his lips, feeling bad for the guy. Almost. Almost feeling bad. "Hey, how's all that going?" He asked, trying to hopefully give the sensitive topic a more positive spin. Tommy looked good, which means the program must be going good, too. He had seen enough burnouts to know."It's going great!" Bella chimed in, turning to grin at her brother. "Tommy just got a promotion at his job, too! He's got his own moving team now, isn't that awesome?" Tommy rolled his eyes and turned away, heading towards the entry way to put on his heavy brown boots."Hey that's great news," Sonny nodded. "Make sure to tell your PO. A raise and a promotion always looks extra good to them." He hoped it sounded good, sounded positive. He allowed Bella and Tommy to say their goodbyes. His fingers itched to pull out his phone, to text Dani, but he didn't. Even when they were together, she likely would have felt uncomfortable at something like this. At something with his family.And anyways, there was work to do. He would deal with his thoughts later. Maybe. Some other time.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dani was sitting at her desk, sipping a water and ignoring the donut on the napkin in front of her. Amanda had left it there, giving her a knowing look but not actually speaking anything. Amanda didn't know, about Sonny that is. She probably assumed that Dani had ended it with whoever her latest temporary fling was, recognizing all of her usual signs and mannerisms. Still, she didn't particularly want the donut, so she didn't plan on touching it. Water with ice was sufficient. Her stomach made a small grumbling sound, but she ignored it. She didn't deserve sweets, not when she was quite obviously putting Sonny through hell of her own needs.Suddenly, a woman with long, wavy blonde hair came stomping into the office, directly up to Sonny and Nick, who were going back and forth about some topic or another that she had tuned out. It was easier that way, imagining they weren't talking. "Sonny," she interjected, "Where have you been?? I've been texting you all morning!"He had class last night, Dani thought to herself, probably forgot to turn his notifications back on, since he's so paranoid about his phone going off in class.As if on que, Sonny replied nearly exactly what she had thought to herself. Shame burrowed deep in her chest and she had to close her eyes for a moment and take a deep breath. She could do this. She could get through another day in this room with him. She had to - there was no other choice. But then he said something that nearly jolted her out of her seat and out of the building."Everyone, meet my sister, Bella," the man she had just ended a relationship with said, wrapping his arm around the blonde's shoulder, pulling her close. She had heard plenty about them, his family, much larger than her own, loud, close, and loving. She had never known a world like that. Never really let herself imagine it. And now, here was one of the women from those stories she had heard. "This is Rollins, Amaro, and Danvers," he gestured to each of them in turn, his eyes not fully focusing in on Dani as he glanced her way. Instantly, he was back in his sister's apartment the day prior, explaining how their relationship wasn't really a thing anymore.He felt Bella tense beside him and turned, noticing the vacancy in her eyes. "Hey, sis, what's wrong? Everything okay?" Carefully, Sonny steered her by the arm over towards a slightly emptier set of desks, giving her some space from the others. From the look in her eyes, something was very clearly not okay.Dani glanced over her shoulder, watching them talk. It wasn't exactly in low voices, and it wasn't particularly difficult to overhear that Bella's boyfriend hadn't come home and still wasn't there in the morning. And...apparently she was pregnant. Sonny was going to be an uncle...a thought that made her turn back around and look at her computer screen once again. She didn't like picturing him with children, picturing how good at it he might be. It all just hurt.And yet, next thing Dani knew, she was in their company vehicle, driving Sonny down to the 11th Precinct. It hadn't taken long to look up Bella's boyfriend, figure out why exactly he hadn't come home. The car ride was slow, painful, and incredibly awkward. All the same, when Dani pulled the car into a parking spot and shut it down, she turned and looked to her partner. "Do you want me in there with you? Backup?" Considering they weren't particularly speaking these days, it was a nice gesture. And as good as it was going to get. "No, no I'm good," Sonny said, slightly distractedly, with a small nod. They locked eyes for just a moment, but then both quickly looked away and he was stepping out of the car. Dani waited until he was inside the building to step out herself, hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, fingers dancing over the cellophane on her unopened cigarettes. She had purchased a new set, the old one becoming too weak and wrinkled from her constant fiddling. This one wasn't even fully unwrapped yet. Surprising, given her anxiety as of late.The air was crisp and she walked over to the fence, standing near the gate, when her phone began to buzz. She pulled it out of her pocket, wondering if it would be Sonny changing his mind, asking for an assist.But no, it was an unknown number calling again. She had to get off whatever fucking sales list she had gotten on - it was becoming annoying and it was the kind of thing that made her want to pitch her cellphone into the river and be done with the whole thing."Hello?" she answered, ripping the packaging off of her cigarettes, flipping over the lid and then turning over a lucky. She tapped the box twice, then pulled out an unlit stick, tucking it between her lips, holding it there. Just the presence of it pulled some of the anxiety off of her. "Hey, I don't know who the hell this is, but I really think you need to take me off the list or whatever. I'm not buying whatever it is your selling so-" her rant was cut off by the sound of shouting behind her.Dani whirled around, cigarette falling to the ground as her mouth dropped open. She was pressing end on the call before she had a second thought, dashing towards Sonny and the man that must be his future brother-in-law. Sonny had him gripped by the collar of his jacket, shoved up against a car, and was yelling. She had never seen Sonny at this level of anger, cheeks red, eyes dark and narrowed. Whatever he was going to do, it was going to be stupid, the kind of thing that could get him in some permanent trouble. And she couldn't let that happen, regardless of everything else."Hey!" she shouted, barreling like a train in between them, grabbing Sonny's wrists and, with as much force as she could muster, ripping him away from the guy he currently had shoved against a car. "Hey. Sonny. Back up. Now." She forced him backwards with the pressure applied to his wrists, stepping in between the two men, making herself a physical barrier, their faces close to one another, chests practically pressing together with each heavy breath that he took. "Look at me," she said, dropping her voice, speaking so only the two of them could hear now. "You are about to do something incredibly stupid, but I'm just not going to let you, and you're going to have to be okay with that. I'm not letting you throw away your entire career. I'm just not gonna. I don't know what the hell is going on, but you're going to turn around, take a deep breath, and I'm going to find out. Alright?" She stared into his eyes, not breaking his gaze, watching his breathing slow slightly as he calmed himself. Good. At least he was listening. So Dani nodded, then turned around, giving Sonny the space to compose himself once again, and looked at the man before her. He had mid length hair that looked kinda greasy, but soft, kind blue eyes. It was a shame they were currently filled with fear. "Hey," Dani greeted, hands back in her pockets. "I'm Detective Danvers, but you can call me Dani. I'm guessing your Bella's boyfriend?""Yea," he nodded, running a hand over his thin beard. "Yea, my names Tommy. Uh...thanks, for all that.""No problem. Keeping Carisi in line is what I do best," she nodded, trying to sound humorous, trying to calm this guy down. He looked like he might shake right out of his boots. "So, how about you fill me in on what's got my partner over there so upset?" She thumbed over her shoulder, back towards where Sonny still stood.And that was when Tommy told her, albeit a little reluctantly, the horrible tale of what his female parole officer had made him do. What she had used her gun for. And by the end, Dani, too, was filled with rage. But not at him. For him.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The next morning, Dani was at her desk when Tommy came in, quiet and shuffling, but with the bag of clothes that her boss had requested. Dani had already heard the story once, so she let Amanda and Nick take the statement. She stayed at her desk, quietly typing away. When he was leaving later, as Amanda lead Tommy back through their office, he paused, turning to look at her."Hey, Dani," he smiled sheepishly. "Thanks again, for yesterday."Dani offered what she hoped was a smile, but given the way her week had been going, she couldn't be certain. "Any time, Tommy. You call if you need anything, okay?"After he was gone, Liv called her into her office."Morning, Liv," Dani greeted, shutting the door and standing before her desk, hands laced behind her back. "Anything I can do for you?" Unless there was an active case, there usually wasn't much she'd get called in for."Yes, sort of," Liv began with a sigh, shuffling some papers on her desk, before looking up at her detective. "I think Tommy is going to move forward with the case. If that's true, Carisi can't be on it, which means, as his partner, you won't be either.""Alright," Dani said slowly, nodding. "That shouldn't be a problem." While she cared, she wouldn't meddle where she wasn't supposed to. Nick and Amanda had it, they'd figure everything out."For you, I'm sure it won't," Liv agreed with a quick nod. "But for Carisi? This is his family. I'm going to need you to keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't try to get too involved. His sister and her fiancé will probably need someone to walk them through next steps, what might happen. Can you guys do that for me, and then make sure Carisi doesn't try to go above the call of duty?""Absolutely," Dani replied with a thin-lipped smile. Sure, this wasn't the ideal assignment, spending even more time with Sonny and now his extended family as well...but what else was she supposed to do? She had her orders and she would have to follow them.Which was exactly how wound up in the apartment of Bella Carisi and Tommy, with Sonny no less, watching the two men try and explain this to Bella. Obviously, the blonde wasn't taking it very well."Does everyone know you slept with her but me?" Bella objected, hands gesticulating wildly in the air. "Come on Tommy, what the hell?"Sonny turned to Dani, who was sitting uncomfortably on the soft brown couch in front of the blank TV, watching from the side of her eyes. "Any help here?" he asked in a lower voice, but tone still plenty exasperated.Dani sighed and stood up, running her hands down the thighs of her dark jeans. She gave Sonny one nod, then stepped into the small kitchen, putting herself in the line of verbal fire. "Hey, Bella, I get it sounds crazy, alright?" Dani said, voice soft, head cocked just slightly to the side. "I mean, it's a lot to deal with and I'm not the one actually in the relationship. But things like this really can happen. And when you're in fight or flight, your body can take over and do what needs to be done to keep yourself alive, whether you want to or not."Bella narrowed her eyes, crossing her arms over her shoulder as she shot a dirty look towards Dani. "Why are you even here?"Dani shrugged. "Because Sonny's my partner. And yesterday I had to bust his ass before he beat up your fiancé, so I'm trying to keep him from throwing away his entire future. And, because Tommy deserves someone doing something about this piece of shit PO who thinks treating anyone like this is okay." Her tone was flat but honest. She didn't have any reason to be in this fight other than those she listed.Bella stared at her for a while, before opening her mouth to speak, when suddenly there was a strong series of knocks from the front door. "Tommy Sullivan, you better be in there!" A woman's voice shouted from outside.Dani whirled to look towards Tommy. "Did you have a planned check in tonight?" she asked, voice dropping words come out rapidly, her gaze shooting to Sonny for just a second."No, nothing!" Tommy objected, before quickly walking for the door, opening it slowly.A tall, blonde woman in heels, dark pants, and a puffer jacket entered through quickly, pulling on gloves as she did. Behind her were two other men. Badges hung around all of their necks. "This is a home inspect, Tommy. Stay where you're at while we look around." The blonde gave him a smile that was anything but nice.Dani hated her on principle, but even more on sight of the woman. This had to be his PO, no question. The woman turned, catching sight of Bella, Dani, and Sonny. Clearly she knew who Bella was, but her eyes narrowed on the two she could only consider to be strangers. "Who are you?" She asked, chewing gum in the side of one cheek as she did so."I'm her brother," Sonny nodded towards Bella. "And she's with me." He thumbed towards Dani as he said this, Dani fighting the urge to go stiff. She's with me, what the hell did that even mean. But she didn't move, didn't give anything away, just watched as this team of three began to riffle through the entire tiny apartment."Well, well, well, what do we have here?" The woman called out from another room, before stepping back into the kitchen, two large bags in either hand. "Looks like we've got Oxy, ready for retail. Get your hands behind your back," she practically spat the words at Tommy."Tommy..." Bella's voice dropped into a low, warning tone, as the taller man of the three approached him, cuffs out."I've never seen those before! There is no way those are mine, there just isn't," Tommy objected, even as the cuffs were snapped around his wrists."Yea, well, you're under arrest for the possession of illegal prescription drugs," the PO said, beginning to list his rights."Don't say anything else to them, Tommy. Not till you have a lawyer with you," Sonny instructed, his voice sharp and urgent as the team lead him out of the small apartment into the night.Dani didn't speak, not as Sonny explained to Bella why it wouldn't have been a good idea to say they were with the police. All she could do was stare at that shut door, yes narrowed. She had seen that look for horror in Tommy's eyes as he was lead away, knew that feeling of being trapped, of being forced.She knew they were going to go after her, hard, and bust the shit out of this woman. They would make sure she would pay, and none of this would ever happen again.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dani drove slowly behind Sonny and Bella as they power walked down the cold sidewalk. Her windows were rolled up, music playing so she couldn't hear them. She'd follow as long as she needed to, so that she didn't have to try and find him later. There were worse ways she could spend her day, she supposed."Oh come on Sonny, piss off with that," Bella shouted at him, one hand clenched tightly on her grocery bag, the other buried in her coat pocket. She didn't have time to listen to her brother try and convince her, again, that everything was going to be alright."No, listen," Sonny objected, taking a few quick strides with his long legs until he was at her side again. Finally she stopped, eyes glancing to the car idling on the street a few faces back, driver not exactly watching them, but not not watching them. She turned back to look at her brother. "DNA evidence is good," he explained again. "It lines up with Tommy's story, it's a step towards proving what happened.""All it proves is that he did have sex with that insane lady," Bella objected. "That's it, nothing else.""Look, she knew this was coming back around, ok? That Oxy wasn't his, she planted it to bust him and show him what happens when he tries to speak up. She wants to make him look bad," Sonny continued, hands in his pockets. Bella picked up on his quick glance towards the waiting car and driver, too."Yea, well, she succeeded," Bella sniped back, eyes narrowed. She was having this mans baby, and he had just slept with someone else. And now drugs, too? Seemed like a long string of bad things she had to try and believe weren't real. "I just can't do this any more Sonny. I can't. It's too much. I'm thinking of moving back in with Mom and Dad for a while.""On Staten Island? That's insane. You know that's insane right?" Sonny almost laughed, but this wasn't the time nor the place."I can't stay here Sonny, don't you get that! I have stood by Tommy's side through all of his shit. The drug busts, the prison, parole, and now this? No, no I'm putting my foot down. I won't be with a cheater." She shook her head, refusing to allow herself to cry out here on the street."But he wasn't cheating, Bella, that's the whole point," Sonny tried to explain again, for what must have been the tenth time."You think everyone's a victim now that you're in this job," Bella hissed. "Tommy fucked up, okay? He made a mistake. You don't have to jump in and save him...." She shook her head, looking away. "Gina and Teresa kept telling me I could do better. I should have just shut up and listened.""Oh my god," Sonny ran a hand over his face. "No, Bella, no. You know I love our sisters. But they're actually insane. They are crazy. They are not the people to look for towards relationship advice. I mean think of the people they've been with.""What, and you're the paramount of good relationship advice?" Bella fired back, nodding her heads towards the car that still sat there, idling, not moving until they did. "Your 'partner,' has followed us for, what, five blocks? At what I can only assume is less that five miles an hour? Maybe figure out your own shit before you mess in mine." Yea, that truth hit home for sure. Bella could see it on her brother's face like a hard slap. She let out a sigh, shaking her head. "Sorry. That was uncalled for. I just don't get why you're standing up for Tommy all of a sudden. It's not like you've been his friend forever."Sonny shrugged. "I get it. Yea. Tommy has had a lot of screw ups. Probably more than I'm okay with, but trust me when I say this isn't one of them. I don't want to see you throw away something that makes you happy because some piece of shit thinks she can abuse her power over him, Bella."Bella took a deep breath, looking away then back to her brother. "I don't know Sonny. I need some time to think, okay? Just give me some time to think about all my options." She turned, making them pivot so she could buzz herself into her building. "And...for what it's worth, I think you should think about yours, too. Yea, I gave her shit for being in my house, and for following us for five blocks, but not just anyone would do that, alright?"Sonny's cheeks turned slightly pink, but he shook his head. "You tell her that, Bella. She's the one who called things off."Bella shrugged, pushing open her door. "I'm not saying she didn't. I'm just saying she definitely still cares. If you want to do something about that, that's up to you."-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dani sat in the courtroom, next to Bella and Amanda, watching as Sonny spoke on the stand. There was a moment when he had sat down where they had locked eyes, and Dani felt like electricity had run throughout her entire body.Overall, the case didn't seem to be going very well. And things got worse when the next witness went missing. And then....they found out that the defense had somehow swayed him to be their witness instead.So basically, it was all down to Barba doing what he did best. It was moments like this, when Dani wondered if she could ever pursue being a lawyer. He was...well, incredible was the polite way to say it. It was like watching an artist make art.When he had the witness, Jordan Dolphy, roll up he sleeves, showing off fresh needle marks on his arm despite having clean urine tests for three years, Dani found herself reaching over and squeezing Sonny's hand for just a second. Just for the briefest second, a reaction she hadn't even thought of. Neither of them made a sound, neither moved after, but both knew it had happened.The PO wouldn't go to jail - but the drug charges would go away. And she would go on the registry. She'd lose her job. It wasn't a perfect win, but it was a win all the same.As Dani was exiting the courtroom, she heard someone call her name. Pausing, hands clenched tightly around the box of cigarettes in her pocket, she turned. It was Sonny, taking the steps two at a time towards her, long tan jacket on over his suit. Of course it was. It always was. No matter how much she tried to separate herself from him, they seemed to be coming back to each other over and over again."What is it?" She asked curtly, breath fogging in the air between them. After grabbing his hand, that look they had exchanged, she didn't feel like being alone with him right now was a good idea. Not when just being this close had her heartbeat racing.He stopped before her, breathing hard, just staring at her. His gaze was dark and steady as he watched her, as if there were no one else around them, no one in the world. Nothing but just the two of them, everything else melting away."What, Sonny?" She asked again, trying to take a step away, but finding herself taking a step closer instead."Come home with me, Dani," he said then, reaching out and grabbing one of her hands, giving it a squeeze. Dani had a fleeting moment of worry, uncertain if any of her coworkers, anyone who mattered, might see the exchange, but it fell away as he kept speaking. "I don't know what's been going on these last few weeks, but I hate it, Dani. I hate waking up and knowing you're not there, or that there isn't going to be some smart ass text waiting for me on my phone. I hate going to the bar with my friends and not having you there. I hate not talking with you, every day, except for work. I hate all of it, and I think you do too. I think you don't really mean that you don't want this to work. I think you're feeling exactly the same things I am."Dani felt like her breath was caught in her throat, like she couldn't speak, as her eyes searched his."So what do you say, Dani? Come home, with me." Sonny said again, a slight smile tugging on his lips, that smile she loved so much."Okay," she said quietly after a moment of thinking, of her brain running at a thousand miles a minute. "Okay. I just need to go home first, alright? Plants to water and whatever, it's the only one I've kept alive for more than three months. I can come by later." She smiled then, a real one, even if it came on slowly."Okay," Sonny nodded in agreement, smile widening. His sister had been right. It was going to work out.Dani walked to her car, hands in her pockets, smile on her face. As she drove home, she felt better than she had in weeks. Everything was going to be good, it truly was.Until her phone began to ring.