Disclaimer: Law and Order: SVU is the property of Dick Wolf and NBC. I'm just having fun.

A/N: This is my first SVU fic everybody, so please, be gentle. Thank you Cusswords for being my beta. Thanks for the idea and I know we were supposed to share, but I got into it.

Anyhow, I hope you all enjoy. Feedback is appreciated, of course.

our lives are made
in these small hours
these little wonders,
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away,
but these small hours,
these small hours still remain

-Rob Thomas, Little Wonders, Meet the Robinsons Soundtrack

Chapter One

I became who I am today June 25th, 2008. I was eleven years old.

The coroner called it 'a sudden, fatal occurrence of coronary thrombosis'. I called it a miracle.

My father's death was quick and spontaneous, like a flash of lightening. Death is like that. You know where it is, you can feel it, you can grip it, touch it on your way out. When he sent me to the store for a pack of Newports and a quart of milk, I knew he wouldn't be alive to count his change.

The days after my father's death people stole in from all corners of the town. You get one, you get all of them, and 'all of them' were trying to figure out what to do with my little brothers and I. There was talk of looking for our mothers. However, there was consensus among delegates that any woman who took up with our father had absolutely no business caring for a child.

"What about you, Garland," Mr. Hampton, the town notary and owner of the only barbershop for six miles, turned his coal black eyes on the old man in the paint stained overalls. "They're your grandchildren after all."

Garland's only response was to spit on the tattered living room floor.

"It's all too trifling for me," Mrs. Millard huffed from the old rocker by the window. "Leaving these poor children without a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of. Your son ought to be ashamed, Garland, and so should you."

"Ashamed?" the old man laughed. "Shamed of what? I served my country, raised the babies I made, and I pay my goddamn taxes like the rest of you people. I've done all I'm supposed to do. I didn't ask that boy to lay up with any broad that batted her eyes and called him 'honey'. So it'll be a cold day in hell before I take on the mistakes that he made."

People knew better than to argue with him. When he got fixed in an idea, he stayed rooted in it and nobody our side of Georgia had the energy to pull him out of it.

"You don't have anybody else?" Ms. Annie-Faye asked desperately, her brown eyes sitting on my face. She was too young to be anybody's missus and too old to be a girl. She was a nurse over at the county hospital and she always smelled like gardenia. "Come on Nicky, is there anybody you can think of?"

I shook my head and dug up a smile, though it was a rueful one.

"Well you best conjure up somebody or they'll care ya'll off to a state home," One Eyed Ben Harbinger, the butcher, hissed between his woodened pipe. He lost his eye in the war, he said, but everybody knew his wife poked it out the night she caught him in bed with the church pianist.

"Maybe even separate ya," his not so little brother, Kirk, cosigned with a swift nod of his peanut head.

"There's no need to scare them," Annie-Faye cut her brown eyes at the Harbinger brothers before crossing the room. She kneeled in front of me and brushed her soft fingers against my cheek. I shuddered, praying Garland would drop dead. Maybe then she'd give me a kiss. "Your mama's people? Know any of them?"

"No. My mother died when I was little. Never knew her folks."

She turned her angelic face on my three brothers. "And you all? Come on, surely you've got somebody."

"They got nobody," I spoke for them.

"They've got mouths of their own," she frowned and I threw my eyes down to my shoes. "Frankie? Your mother had plenty of kin. I was at the wedding, I remember."

"No ma'am, got nobody," he muttered softly.

"Wally?" she spoke slowly and deliberately, her voice calm and tentative. "Honey, I know your mama's gone, but did she have anybody? A sister maybe, a brother or two, somebody that can take you all in until this gets straightened out?"

He just stared ahead, his brown eyes empty as a picked pocket.

"Wally," she pushed a little, laying her left hand on his shoulder.

He didn't even blink. Straight ahead, burning a hole through the dirty wallpaper.

"Walton!" Garland hissed through clenched teeth. "Boy, that lady's speaking to you."

"Aww hell, leave the kid alone," Mr. Hampton waved his chubby hand through the air. "Everybody knows he ain't right in the head."

"Nothing wrong with that boy," One Eyed Ben narrowed his good eye at my brother.

"His daddy was too soft with him after his mama died is all," Kirk added.

"Nothing a few licks of this here belt won't cure," Garland moved to stand, but Mr. Hampton pushed him back down onto the couch. "Wait a second…"

"Can't you see those boys are grieving?" Mrs. Millard interrupted. She reached into her purse and produced a white handkerchief and dabbed at her beady eyes. "Shame on it all!"

"It's too bad," Mr. Hampton turned his foggy grey eyes on my baby brother, Jack. He was squirming in Frankie's lap, eager to crawl and drool all over our "guests". "Won't even remember his father."

Garland scoffed. "What's to remember?"

"I got it!" Annie-Faye bubbled, snapping her dainty little fingers soon as the idea bubbled into her mind. "What about…"

"Didn't you hear a word…?" Garland snapped. Then, suddenly, like a shot from a rifle: "No! No! Hell no!"

"What in the devil's gotten into you?" One Eyed Ben furrowed his ingrown yellow brow.

"No!" Garland went on before Kirk could agree with his brother. "There's no way in hell she's—"

"Who?" Mr. Hampton asked, his lips knitted together in an eager smirk. Then, like the sky before a twister, his face clouded and his eyes darkened. "Oh. I don't think that's a good a idea Annie-Faye."

"Oh, why not? The nurse put her hands on her hips and angled her lanky body toward Garland. "She's your daughter."

"The hell she is! She left this town, left me and her mother, on account of bein' too good for the likes of us…common folk. Well, I'll tell ya, she can keep her uppity little ass right where it is. 'She's your daughter'. So what? She ain't been here in over ten years. She doesn't give a damn about me or anybody else who got my blood in their veins."

"It's either her or foster care," Mrs. Millard whined.

"Well that's too damn bad!" Garland bellowed. His voice vibrated off the thin walls of our tiny house. Jack started to cry. Garland glared hotly at Frankie, who was bouncing him on his knee to quiet him. "Shut that kid up!"

"You're being unreasonable," Annie-Faye declared, stomping her foot. "Whatever problems you and Casey had, they're ancient history. This is about these boys and their future."

"I don't give a sheep's ass," Garland pulled himself up and threw himself toward the door. Hurling a communal look of disgust, his final words came in a grim clump: "That girl has no business being near those children. They'll be better off sitting in somebody's orphanage than having to lay up under a woman that thinks they're trash."

The crowd dissipated after that. Annie-Faye was the last to leave. She offered to make us something to eat, but I could manage. I'd been managing for a long time, but I kept that part a secret.

"You call me if you need anything, you hear me Nicky?"

I nodded, ducking my head.

She rewarded me with a smile and touched my cheek again before stepping off into the black night.

I tucked Frankie and Wally in, fed Jack, and sat in the living room. I wondered about Casey while a few people solved thousand dollar puzzles on Wheel of Fortune. I didn't even know my father had a sister. Nobody ever talked about her, not even Grandma. There weren't any pictures of her anywhere. She had completely erased herself from the family. I envied her already.

"It's ironic," she said to the man on her arm. "A man without a heart being attacked and killed by one."

The man laughed a little and kissed her cheek. "He was your brother."

"He was an asshole, though Hell's now without an Earth roaming ambassador. Pity."

She was as fiery as her hair, Aunt Casey. Almost as tall as the man on her arm, her classic features made her look like a walking clothes hanger. Her green eyes were hard as nails. Her mouth was a canon and her mind was ready to load it any time. Her voice was gravelly like an old record, her clothes unconventional and quirky.

Frankie and I were playing catch on our front lawn. Wally sat on the steps, staring onto oblivion, while Jack napped on a blanket on the porch. Frankie dropped the ball as soon as we heard their voices. I stood at attention, unsure and unprepared. Nobody told us she and her man friend were coming.

She flushed the color of her hair when she realized we'd heard their conversation. She licked her lips and glanced between Frankie and I.

"Nicholas?"

I nodded hesitantly, before opening the used to be white gate and waving them in. I offered her my hand as soon they were close enough. "Nick."

She smiled brightly and held onto my hand. "I suppose I'm your Aunt. Casey, Casey Novak, but I suppose that's a little on the obvious side. This is my husband, Elliot Stabler."

I met the man's blue eyes and I was surprised to see a raw kindness in them. He was a sturdy man with a nose curved like a rainbow. His closely-knit eyebrows seemed to dominate his face. His ruddy complexion and gentle smile contradicted the muscles oozing from his cotton shirt and his combative stance.

Casey leaned into Elliot's chest and he rested his chin on her forehead. She turned her jovial smile on Frankie, who had eased closer to me. "And you must be Franklin, though I assume you wanna be called something else."

"Frankie will do," he said more to the dead grass at his feet.

"Walton and Jackson," she looked past us. "Nicholas, Franklin, Walton, and Jackson. Gee, was it Jed's mission for you to hate him?"

Elliot gave her a soft nudge and she grinned sheepishly. "Sorry."

"Could be worse," I shrugged. "I could be Jed Junior."

Her face livened up and she turned to face the stairs, her eyes dulled when they met Wally's. A pair of green eyes stepped right over another. "Wally," she called softly.

No answer, no indication of a connection.

Casey looked at me for an explanation. Frankie answered for me. "He don't talk."

"He can't talk?" Elliot folded his arms, his brow an astonished line.

"No," Frankie emphasized the negative response. "He don't talk."

"Why?" Casey breathed.

Frankie looked at me. I shook my head slightly. "He just don't."

She and Elliot exchanged looks. She frowned. "Annie-Faye mentioned something about that."

"And your Aunt thinks she's an miracle worker," Elliot smiled at Frankie and I.

"It's like he isn't there," her voice was sad. She had yet to take her eyes off Wally.

Frankie shrugged. "He ain't."

Casey and Elliot met at work. They butted heads at first. Similitude breeds contempt, Casey had said with a smirk. Matrimony too, Elliot added. He was a detective and she was his unit's former assistant district attorney. When Frankie asked what happened, she cut him a look so sharp I thought she'd lacerated an artery.

They'd been married for three months. He had five children from his previous marriage, three girls and two boys. His youngest daughter and her twin brother lived with them part time and his youngest son, who was a few months older than Jack, visited on weekends. His older daughters were both away at college. One was a sophomore and the other would be graduating next summer.

We were to live with them in New York. I would get my own room, Frankie and Wally would share, and they would set up a crib for Jack in Eli's nursery. Casey would stay home with Jack until she found a new job. I would go to a nice neighborhood school.

"They have a great art program," Casey patted my shoulder. "Annie-Faye said you like to draw."

Frankie would go to 4th grade at the elementary school a few blocks away from their house. Lizzie and Dickie, Elliot's twins, would look after us until they got home from work. They glanced at Wally, who was sitting in the armchair, locked in his mind.

"Does he go to school?" she asked.

"Yes. He just sits there. They put him in the special class," I said, looking at him. "He isn't special. He knows how to read and write. He just doesn't want to. He isn't ready."

"How long has he been…" Elliot stopped, unsure of what to call Wally's way of life.

"Is it because of your father?" Casey offered.

"No. Since…can we not talk about this? It upsets him."

They both nodded and exchanged looks.

"Well," Elliot stood to his feet and stretched. "We'd better get back to the hotel. The service is tomorrow. We'll be helping you pack a few things before we leave. Annie-Faye offered to ship the rest to New York soon as we get back."

Frankie and I stood up and walked them to the door. One her way out, Casey rubbed her hand over Wally's brown curls. "You're safe now."

He didn't flinch or move or give any other signals that he heard her. She sighed and followed Elliot to the door. She hugged Frankie and I and both she and Elliot expressed sorrow for our loss. We both resisted the urge to explain why we didn't share that sentiment.

On their way down the steps I heard her voice: "I don't know if I can do this."

"They're depending on you, Casey."

She nodded and they continued out the gate toward their shiny rental car.

Casey offered to cook dinner several times and Elliot suggested they stay with us, but I fended them off. We were okay. The four of us, we were good at being okay. Being okay was like breathing. Even Wally could be okay.

If we stopped pretending, even for a second, we would have probably went nuts.

I cooked, got our suits ready, tucked in my brothers, and sat by the window in the living room. I tried to remember what it was like to have somebody to depend on. I fell asleep five minutes later.

The service was quick. The minister said a few words and the choir sang a few hymns. Nobody had anything to say about Jed Alan Novak and since the funeral planner had allotted five minutes, the minister just allowed us to pray silently.

The church was packed, though nobody was there to view the body. They wanted a good look at my aunt, with her wayward clothes and Yankee accent. The church provided a small meal and folks sat at the tables, whispering among themselves.

Elliot proved to be popular with the ladies and I heard several graphic phrases from a few of the men. Southern etiquette strictly forbade probing questions and frowns, so people just nodded and smiled—only whispering when their backs were turned,

Garland surprised everybody when he came over to the house to say goodbye. He leaned stiffly against the gate, watching with slit eyes as Elliot stuffed our bags into the trunk. I was helping Casey with Wally's suitcase when she noticed him. She dropped her side and the extra weight almost sent me flying to my demise. She didn't notice. Father and daughter were staring each other down like wolves.

"What's the matter Casey June, cat got your tongue?" Garland spat on the ground. His green eyes were boiling with hostility.

"Daddy," she said evenly.

He glanced at the diamond ring on her finger. "Looks like you managed to sink your claws into one of them yanks."

She remained silent.

"Suppose Annie-Faye Abernathy told you about your brother."

"She did."

"They say his name's Stabler," Garland ran his fingers over his chin. "That's an Irish name, right?"

"It is."

"He Catholic?"

"Yep."

"Well good for you," he clapped. "You managed to do one thing right."

By then Elliot was by her side, his arm drawn protectively across her shoulders. He narrowed his eyes and flexed the muscles in his jaw. "You should be going now."

"That any way to talk to your father-in-law?"

Elliot's eyes seemed to widen in surprise. Garland Novak sneered.

"What's the matter, she didn't tell you she was white trash?"

"No," he shook his head slowly, a dark smile snaked its way onto his face. "I'm just surprised she lets you get away with announcing the unfortunate fact that the two of you share DNA."

Garland spat on the ground and glanced at me. "No goodbye for your granddaddy, Nicky?"

"Bye," I said blandly.

Frankie and Annie-Faye had taken that opportunity to make their entrance. Garland's frigid eyes billowed toward Anne-Faye and she seemed to shake a little. "You really ought to learn to mind your own business."

"Goodbye Mr. Novak," Elliot said darkly.

He laughed and waved goodbye to Frankie before gunning his old Chevy pickup down the road.

We were ready to go an hour later. Elliot placed the last bag in the trunk. Casey strapped Jack in and Frankie helped Wally with his seatbelt. He hugged Annie-Faye before Casey closed the backdoor behind him. She thanked Annie-Faye and shut herself up in the front seat. Elliot joined her, leaving me alone with Annie-Faye Abernathy.

She kissed my cheek and told me to be good for my aunt and uncle. She didn't like long goodbyes. They made her cry and she didn't like crying in front of children, even if they were little men.

As the car crept away, easing down the bumpy road. I stared ahead, keeping Annie-Faye's face in my mind. My old neighborhood, my town, my father, disappeared into a thick cloud of Georgia dust. I kept my hand on my cheek where Annie-Faye's lips had been.