Author's Note: I own none of these characters and this story is based off of Salvador Late or Early. I made it into my own version for the purpose of Law and Order fanfiction.

Please please please please review! :)

Alex with blue eyes the color of the ocean, Alex of the neatly parted blonde hair and straight white teeth, Alex whose name the judges whisper about in their chambers is a woman who is no criminal's

friend, runs along somewhere in that Uptown Manhattan direction where homes are made of brownstones, lives on top of a luxurious condo, forces her sleep self awake, pulls on her pantyhose, fixes

herself a breakfast of pancakes and eggs in the dim dark of the morn.

Alex late or early but usually early arrives with her string of case notes ready.

Helps her detectives who are busy with the business of a rape victim.

Tugs the heartstrings of the jury because today, like yesterday, the defense attorney has concocted some crazy defense that seems to be working, and so she must cross-examine the witness until he

blunders.

Alex inside that black, dry-cleaned suit, inside the throat that demands attention and is the sound of power, inside that slender body of woman with its geography of scars, its history of hurt, limbs with

many adornments to hide the cuts on her wrist, in what part of the eyes, in what part of the heart, in what cage of the chest where something throbs with both fists and shows only what Alex knows,

inside the body that will never contain the hundreds of balloons of happiness, the single guitar of grief, is a woman unlike any other disappearing out the courtroom door into the vast hallways of the

New York Supreme Court where Olivia and Elliot must wait.

Collects her notecards and arguments scuttles of dodging the many colors of the city, the criss-crossing elbows and wrists, the shoes running.

Grows smaller and smaller to the eye, dissolves into the bright yellow of the cab that vanishes into the horizon, flutters in the air before disappearing like a memory of kites.