A/N: I'm still writing my other stories too. I just wanted to add this one.
Disclaimer: Law and Order: SVU and its characters belong Dick Wolf, Neal Baer, and NBC. All characters of the show belong to them, not me. However, Raine Cragen, and any other characters I decide to randomly add, does belong to me, so please do not use them without permission from me.
NCIS and its characters belong to Bellarius productions. It won't be a crossover until a little later, but believe me. It will be.
Raine Cragen was driving. She wasn't sure who to, only his name and where to find him. It's who she was left to in her mother's will. She'd never met him, but she had to get to him; he was all she had left. Thunder competed with the country music pounding out of her Ford F150's speakers, and lightening lit up the already bright sky. This was the first time she'd ever been to New York City. She was a small-town girl, born and raised in rural Indiana. Her high school had 200 students; her class had only 46. If her grandfather would take her under his wing for the next two years, she'd be in for a hell of a change.
She missed her home, her friends, normalcy, but most of all she missed her mom. To stop herself from crying her eyes out in guilt and loss, she turned up the radio as loud as it would go and started to sing along. It was all that was keeping her sane in those hours of endless driving and loneliness. As the sound of Martina McBride's "Independence Day" and Raine's voice with it filled the truck, everything else was blocked out. When the lyrics brought up certain thoughts of what she did, Raine would sing louder and louder until she didn't have the capacity to think of anything else, but singing.
***
She pulled up to the precinct. This is it; the big moment. Just get out of the truck, walk in, and introduce yourself. There's no easy way to do it, so just get it over with. Instead of getting right out of the truck, she pulled down the visor and checked herself out in the mirror. Oh, what a lovely sight, she thought sarcastically to herself as she grabbed her brush from her purse and pulled it through her long, dark brown hair. She outlined her now-puffy, bloodshot, green eyes in a little bit of eyeliner. She couldn't do much about the tear stains on her cheeks, so she just gave up on her appearance. Stepping into the sunlight with her purse on her shoulder and sunglasses on her face, she walked out of her truck and into her new life.
***
She walked into the precinct and the second she saw the only other woman in there she immediately felt underdressed. The woman was in dress slacks, heels, and a nice blouse. Raine was wearing distressed jeans, converse, a zebra print tee-shirt, and a fitted gray zip-up hoodie. The woman had pretty chestnut colored hair in a bob cut, while Raine had long, thick, dark brown hair. She always parted it on the right, and it was layered. Back home she was a normal kid. Here though, she could already tell she wouldn't blend in as well. The woman must have caught her staring because she looked up and smiled.
"Hi, I'm Detective Benson. Can I help you with something?" She asked sweetly, obviously thinking that Raine was here for help.
"Yeah…um, I'm Raine. Raine Cragen. Is Don Cragen around?"
The woman's mouth dropped for a second, but she quickly closed it.
"Uhmm. Yeah, he's in his office, straight through there," she said, pointing at a door straight back.
"Thanks, Benson."
***
Raine swiftly wrapped her knuckles on the office door three times.
"Come in," a man's voice sounded on the other side. She took a deep breath and opened the door. Back straight, march right up to him, and hand him the folder. She did exactly so, and sat down in the chair he pointed to as he read through the papers that included the newspaper, her mother's birth certificate, her mother's death certificate, and her mother's will. She was too young and not ready to be on her own, so she had been left in the care of Donald Elijah Cragen, her grandfather. He didn't know she existed, or that her mother, Samantha Marie Cragen, even existed. But now he did, and it was up to him to decide what to do with his grand-daughter. Raine had been left everything that was in her mother's name. She sat there quietly as he assessed everything that was happening.
"Just a minute, Raine," he said, stepping out of the room.
***
Don walked up to Olivia's desk, where she was waiting expectantly.
"I need you to do a criminal background check for me on Raine Elizabeth Cragen, Liv."
Olivia returned five minutes later.
"Squeaky clean, Captain. The only thing that showed up was cleared as self defense."
"And what exactly was that?!"
"She shot her mother's boyfriend, because he killed her mother with his bare hands right in front of her, and was going after Raine too."
He cursed under his breath.
"Thank you," he called over his shoulder as he walked back to his office.
***
He walked back into his office to find Raine right where he left her.
"What grade are you in?"
"Sophomore year, sir."
"Are you moving in?"
"Are you going to let me now that you've run a background check?" She smiled to show him that she understood why.
"How did you-?"
"My grandma always said criminal justice was in my blood. I just didn't know she was literal until I discovered her real occupation, and now you of course," she said. Her grandmother, Elizabeth Hugert, was a CIA agent. She was vibrant and younger than her age of 57. She refused to retire and was killed in a mission she wasn't planned to be apart of three years ago. She became pregnant with Raine's mother after a one night stand while on a mission in Manhattan thirty two years ago. She never married, claiming that she'd never forget the man she knew only for a night, but fell for anyways.
"My cousin, Tony Dinozzo, works for NCIS too."
"Alright," he smiled, "get your things and follow me to the house then."
They walked out to the squad room to find Olivia's partner seated at his desk.
"Elliot, this is my grand daughter, Raine. Raine, this is Detective Elliot Stabler. You'll be going to school with his son and youngest daughter." Detective Stabler was handsome for his age, with short, dark brown hair. It was receding, but it worked for him. He was majorly built, and you can tell he was a mega hottie when he was younger. He had pretty blue eyes and a charming smile. Olivia was looking at him, trying desperately to hide the love on her face.
"Hey, Detective."
"Hey, I'll call Dicky and send him over to help out," he said picking up the phone and calling whoever Dicky was.
A few minutes later Elliot turned back to them.
"He said he'll meet you there," he said, turning back to his partner, an equal look of admiration on his face. Do they even realize how in love they are?! And how in love the other is with the other?! My God.
"Thanks, Elliot," Cragen called over his shoulder as the two of them walked out.
"My Volvo is in the garage. Just follow me when I pull out. It's black. I'll wave to you."
The two reached the house successfully to find a black Camero in the driveway with a handsome teenage boy lounging against it. He was about four inches taller than Raine's 5'3 build, had a prominent jaw line and shaggy brown hair. He was nicely built, but modestly so. In Raine's eyes he was absolutely perfect. She turned off the engine and gracefully stepped out of the truck.
He smiled at her as she walked towards him.
"Hey, I'm Richard Stabler," he said sticking out his hand when she reached him.
"Raine Cragen," she said back, shaking his hand.
"Well, listen to that accent. Where are you from, Miss Raine?"
"Listen to those manners. Bright, Indiana."
"Thanks, Dicky, for helping out," Don said coming up the driveway with a box in his hand. He had realized that the two were introducing themselves and opened the cab of her truck, starting what needed to be done.
"No problem, Captain," he said, letting go of her hand and heading for the truck.
Raine followed him, grabbed a box, and headed toward the house.
"Up here," Don yelled from upstairs. The pair followed his voice and found him in what appeared to be a guest bedroom, complete with a guest bathroom.
"Is this alright?" He asked as they set the boxes on the soft, queen sized bed.
"It's perfect," she said back, looking around. The room had boring white walls, but she could deal with that even if it was like an insane asylum, and a black comforter on the bed. The sheets and pillowcases were white. There were six huge pillows on the bed, which was extravagant compared to the single one that she had on her twin sized bed back home. There was a dark oak chest of drawers against one wall and a closet by it. The bathroom door was across the room from her bed, which had a night stand on either side of it. The floor was hard wood, with a rug underneath it so that part of it stuck out on either side of the bed.
"If you want, you can use this bed and store the one you brought in the attic, or vice versa. You can hang up a few posters if you want too. There's scotch tape in one of the drawers in the kitchen. Anything that needs to be hung up, you can do with my hammer and nails, which is in the tool box in the garage. There's a code to get into it. It's written on a piece of paper on the fridge. Make yourself at home, you're welcome to anything. If you have a television for your room, I'll call the cable guy later and get it set up for it."
"Thank you. That'd be great."
His phone rang.
"Cragen. What do you got?" He said into the receiver.
"Uh-huh. Alright. Be there in a sec," he said before hanging up and turning to the pair looking at him.
"Can you two handle-?"
"Yeah, go ahead, Cragen. I know how it works," Richard replied. This must happen often for cops and kids of cops.
"See you," he said heading down the stairs and out the front door.
Three hours later everything was upstairs and unpacked and the two were starving.
"Pepperoni ok with you?" Raine asked, looking through the phone book for a pizzeria.
"Yeah, that's cool with me," Richard replied, grabbing two cans of coke from the fridge and handing one to Raine.
"Thanks," she replied, dialing the number and ordering it.
"It should be here in about half an hour," she said, hanging up the phone.
"You shouldn't have wasted your money on a large. At least let me help pay for it."
"Oh trust me, we'll need a large; I haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday. And you're not helping me pay for something that was my idea to do."
"Fine then I'm paying for all of it."
"No you're not."
"One or the other. Take your pick."
Raine calculated him curiously, drumming her ringed fingers of her left hand on her crossed legs.
"Fine, you can pay for half," she said giving in.
"That was a lot easier than I thought," he said smiling.
"Only because I don't know you, and am therefore being nice," she shot back smirking.
Forty minutes later the doorbell rang. The two jumped to their feet and raced toward the door. When they got to it they were fighting over the door knob and trying to get in front of each other to pay for it. Raine, in the heat of the moment, elbowed him in the stomach, jumped in front of him, and started to hand the twenty dollars to the pizza guy. Richard grabbed her from behind, handed him the money, and shut the door in his face.
"I get beat up for paying for your dinner? Come on, Cragen."
"Told you, you weren't allowed to pay, Stabler."
********
