Title: Melted

Pairing: Alex/Olivia

Summary: Alex returns from the Congo briefly, and she reunites with the detectives of the 16th precinct. She seems like the same Alex, but Olivia sees something has changed. Olivia tries to get Alex to let her in before her experiences eat her alive.

This is my first SVU fic, and it's A/O! I hope you enjoy! I do not own any of the characters from Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

The sun peered in and illuminated the blonde strands that splayed across the thin, scratchy pillowcase. It was 6:30 AM, West Africa Time, and the person to whom the strands were attached had thirty minutes before she had to leave dream world and reenter the International Criminal Court station in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she'd lived for the past seven months. But as the brilliant light began to brighten her eyes behind the closed lids, she awoke anyway, brutally awakened from the most comforting dream, full of skyscrapers and Mister Softee trucks.

She rolled over, groaning, and opened her eyes to stare at the ceiling of the generic room she stayed in. White and plain.

Slowly she rose, her feet hitting the cool hard wood floor. She walked to the small chest of drawers to pull out some underwear and stockings to wear underneath yet another tight and stuffy suit, completely unfitting for the scorching temperature she knew waited for her outside. She looked in the mirror that sat against the wall at the back of the drawers and frowned at her appearance. She desperately needed a haircut. The strands reached almost down to her waist, but past her upper arms it was almost completely dead. If she could put it in a ponytail, that would be great, and her clients wouldn't give two shits. But her bosses would think it unprofessional.

So she washed the long locks under a warm stream of running water, slathering extra conditioner on the parched tips. She almost had to laugh at herself and the stupid things she cared about.

The first month she was here, she was so idealistic. Nardalee had sung her praises and led her to believe that she, Alexandra Cabot, could singlehandedly save the women of the Congo. She attacked every new case vigorously, putting everything she had into every single woman.

But she lost. A lot! Not because she was an incompetent prosecutor—she was among the most talented, possibly the most, that her boss had ever seen in the program. And not because she was ill-prepared for her trials—she rarely even slept with the amount of time she spent going over evidence and writing closing arguments. No, it was because her victims rarely agreed to testify.

She tried to get inside their heads, but it was impossible to place herself in their shoes. So she just tried to be someone they could trust, someone they could talk to, and even though she was good at that, the women still refused to recount their experience in front of a judge. And without their testimony, Alex's case was extremely weak no matter how many hours she spent preparing it.

She was getting really sick of losing. She worked with SVU for years—she was no stranger to how terrifying rape was. But they got their victims to testify. What was so different here? She had no idea.

At first.

It was a Tuesday night when Alexandra Cabot learned that even if you were a blonde haired, blue eyed white prosecutor here under the protection of the United Nations, you were not safe from crimes against humanity.

But she never told a single person.

After that, when she met with her prospective clients, she dropped the prosecutor act and learned to become their comrade. Slowly, more and more of them agreed to testify, and eventually somewhere close to seventy-five percent of her clients were telling their stories in court.

But there was still the last quarter that wouldn't say a thing. Most of them wouldn't explain themselves. There was only one girl, just fourteen years old, that would tell Alex why she wouldn't bother.

"Saadia, why don't you want to testify?" Alex asked gently.

The girl huffed and looked away.

"You could get justice for yourself and make the men who did this to you pay for hurting you."

Saadia lifted her sunken brown eyes to meet Alex's, and replied bitterly, "Yes, Ms. Cabot, but will that bring back my mother and sister? Will that give me the food I need to feed my baby? Will it stop the next girl from being raped?" She stared into Alex's eyes and scanned them for a minute before continuing. "And will it change what happened to you?"

Alex had been shocked at the perceptiveness of the girl—still a child!—and in a rare moment, had nothing to say.

Today, she toweled herself dry, careful not to irritate the slight sunburn that marked her lower arms. She pulled on a gray pair of slacks and a white blouse, noting the reading of the thermometer outside the bathroom window. Seven in the morning and already 93 degrees. She knew she'd be forced to put on a suit jacket at some point, but she figured she'd wait until someone yelled at her. She used to yell right back, but now it just didn't seem worth the trouble.

She didn't bother with makeup anymore, unless chapstick and sunscreen fell under that category. Those were the only things she put on before running out the door, figuring she'd have some extra time to eat some breakfast for once before she was expected in court.

"Good morning, Ms. Cabot," the doorman said, tipping his hat at Alex as she left the building. He was an older African gentleman with a huge white grin.

"I've told you several times, Richard, I'm Alex for you!" she replied with a small smile.

"Have a good day then, Alex," he said, knowing full well that the next time she passed she would be Ms. Cabot again.

"As good as it could ever be," she muttered under her breath, but luckily he didn't hear her so she didn't have to explain herself.

With a slice of toast and coffee in hand, she entered her supervisor's office to pick up today's case file. Normally she would just walk in, but the secretary, a twenty-something French girl, told her to sit.

"Dominique?"

"He's not here yet, Ms. Cabot. But he does expect you. Please wait here a few minutes," Dominique told Alex in her thick French accent.

Alex scoffed, but took a seat. Thomas Coughlin was her Irish supervisor, overseeing most of the rape prosecutions in her sector. He was a pleasant man, but often took his authority too far.

Six minutes later, Coughlin came through the doors, shutting a cell phone on the way in.

"Good morning, Alexandra. Please come in," he said motioning towards his office.

She rolled her eyes when he turned, wondering what the big show was about when they did this every morning.

"Have a seat, Alexandra." Coughlin pointed to a seat across the desk from his as he plopped down.

"Sir, I'm due in court in fifteen minutes so I really don't think I have the time right now to…"

"Alex, this is important. Sit, please."

Alex obliged.

"We're reassigning Michele's case to another prosecutor and the trial has been postponed," Coughlin began.

Alex shot up. "Sir, I assure you that I have handled this case with nothing but professionalism and I am extremely prepared. What on earth would give you cause for reassignment?"

"Goodness, Alexandra, SIT!"

She sat again, fuming.

"This has nothing to do with your competency as a prosecutor. I've told you multiple times what I think about your skills. I would assign you every case if it were possible. But you aren't going to be here for the trial."

"Sir?"

Coughlin sighed. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this Alex, but I received word yesterday that your father passed away."

Alex's face fell. "Oh," was all she could manage to say.

"We've booked a flight for you back to New York, leaving in four hours. We figured you'd want to be there for the funeral."

She thought about it. Even though she and her father had never really been close, she had no doubt that he loved her very much and pulled string after string to get her into the best schools and programs, without which she would never have gotten as far as she had. And when she found out she'd missed her mother's funeral in WITSEC, she'd been devastated.

"Yes sir," she replied. "Thank you."

Coughlin nodded. "I'm very sorry about your father."

"Me too," she said softly. "I should pack."

She left the office, nodding to Dominique on her way out.

In her seat on the private Task Force plane, she remembered how she felt the last time she was on a plane to New York. She had been returning to her life as Alexandra Cabot after two years as Sarah Lawson from Kansas. She came back to New York a different person for those two years, and she again was returning to New York a different person for these last seven months. She wondered if the people there she worked with for so long would even know this person.

She feared that the Alexandra Cabot of ten years ago was simply someone she could never have back, and it broke her heart. But she didn't cry on that last plane, and she wouldn't cry now. The Ice Princess doesn't cry.