A/N: So a few weeks ago I suddenly realized that SVU/OUAT could be easily combined because Hook was arrested in New York City and where could he be taken to? And then I told this fic idea to Morrigan and it spiraled out of control and suddenly Olivia/Emma happened and here were are. For SVU, around season 12 even though the timelines don't match up. This is kind of a test first chapter, so please do tell me your thoughts!

"I don't know what's worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you've always wanted to be, and feel alone."

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

"She knew whose love she doubted. It wasn't her parents' and it wasn't her friends: It was her own."

Forever In Blue, Ann Brashares

i.

In Emma's world, people are more shadows than humans. Figures blocking bright, bright sunlight, too large or too small, or really just not there at all. Especially when you expect them, even though yeah, you knew they wouldn't be there.

When a person becomes a clear image, a smile, a comforting hand on your back, a voice with the abilities to heal and hurt and laugh with you, that's where the trouble begins.

ii.

This guy's particularly nasty perp and it took a hell of a lot of restraint not to punch him in the face as he tried to provoke her the entire ride over.

Even his smile is disconcerting, all yellow teeth and wide, too wide and eyes too focused to be anything kind. His lewd comments slide like grease over her skin, and she grits her teeth and white knuckles the steering wheel. She goddam hates sex crimes perps. She hates them the most, she thinks. This is the first one she's taken in New York City; usually she goes for white-collar crimes. Those people are slimy, oh definitely, but not this brand of it.

She pulls his constrained arm just a little more harshly than usual into the precinct, and hopes for a minute that her fingertips leave bruises on his bicep.

Emma thinks, tonight she'll be home by five. She'll make pasta tonight, the kind with the good homemade marinara. Henry will tell her every fact about his day and then he'll do his homework and then maybe they'll play video games. She'll try not to think about whatever dark shit has been consuming her lately, and Henry's smile will be enough because he's her family and she loves him more than anything.

She'll try not to think about how the last few months haven't felt real at all.

She hasn't been to this precinct before, the Special Victims Unit, but it's like any other. Phones ringing, people bustling in and out. The perp tries to wriggle out of her grasp, and she pushes him roughly forward in response.

Someone notices, a thin man with rectangular-rimmed glasses, and calls over to a woman in the desk unit over.

She looks up and her eyes are somehow familiarly brown, and her closed mouth smile hurts.

Emma's confused and breathless, like a pile of bricks has been hurled right at her chest.

It passes in a second.

The woman's voice is smooth and low and it makes Emma warm and jittery in her stomach, and oh hell that's dangerous.

"Detective Benson." The perp says, does that smile again. The woman doesn't bat an eyelid, just gives something like a shit eating grin, if those grins could be small and crooked at the side of her mouth.

"Mr. Samuels, welcome back. The city's not as hard to get lost him as you think, is it?" She cocks her head, and he snarls.

"Go to hell, bitch."

The man in the desk beside Detective Benson's rolls his eyes and gets up to lead the guy into the precinct's cell block. Emma notices he's not being careful not to rough him up either. The second she lets the bastard go, she feels like shivering from head to toe, to somehow dispel every part of him and his words and his sentence on his paperwork off of her, but suppresses it.

"If I haven't heard that one a thousand times." Detective Benson crosses her arms and leans against her desk.

Emma snorts. "At least twice a day from pieces of shit like him."

She laughs, but it's pretty humorless. "I was sure I've met all the bounty hunters who typically work this unit. Are you new?"

Emma shrugs. "I don't really work any particular unit, but yeah this is my first one here."

Detective Benson offers her hand and Emma takes it. It's warm and calloused and the feeling of safety and comfort is immediate. That's probably, she decides, why she's here in this unit. Not a lot of safety here.

"Detective Olivia Benson."

"Emma Swan."

They smile at each other, Emma's coming more easily than she expected. She sees creases formed next to Olivia's eyes and she knows it's more from stressing and worrying than those fabled laughter lines.

Emma blurts: "How do you it every day?"

Olivia blinks and seems to be taken aback and her hand becomes limp. She takes it back, stuffs her hands in her pockets. "I've been trying to answer that question for over a decade."

Emma wants to say, it's amazing what you do. Emma wonders how many rapists Olivia has collared, how many scumbags she's put away for good.

Instead she nods, because she understands.

They talk for a while, Olivia still leaned against her desk and eventually Emma has to lean against the one across. Emma mentions Henry and unlike many when offered talk of loved children, seems genuinely interested in the cozy little family Emma managed to create. They talk about the perp, they talked about Emma's arrest. (Damn he had a good right hook, got me in the stomach before I managed to pin him against his car.) (He got my partner too, had to take advil for the bruise, and that's damn rare for Elliot.) They laugh about how one of Emma's perps tried to hide in a dumpster full of chicken feathers from a butcher's shop, discuss good grocery stores around town because damn if Emma isn't getting sick of the one on her corner, and Emma feels the tension releasing knot after knot.

Her partner calls her in for an interrogation and Olivia stands up, stretches and Emma's eyes follow the stretch from the twist of her torso to her strong arms raising behind her.

And everything starts as everything typically starts: with a wave goodbye and a promise for coffee the next time Emma gets a case.

Henry will be proud of her, she thinks. He's been talking nonstop about how she needs friends in this city because it makes the city less lonely. She's starting to think he may be right because she leaves the precinct with a very genuine smile on her face and a bounce in her step, and isn't that just the strangest thing.