Title: Reunion
Author: Fins-Best-Friend
Summary: Seventeen years ago, John Munch fell in love. He was happier than he had ever been – even considering his job working in the stressful world of homicide – until she was ripped from his life, resulting in the furtherance of his . . . well . . . search of love in all the wrong people. But in the waning months of 2003 (so he fell in love 17 years before 2003), that rip gets mended and brings with it the shock and – could it be – joy of one of our favorite detective's life. However, the rip has changed John – events of the past seventeen years have all but destroyed his chances to ever completely trust again and 'the shock' is hardly any more emotionally together herself. Will John break through his past to help 'the shock' and her mother or will he break down himself? Or both? JMOC Takes place right after Serendipity.
Yes, I know I'm Fin's best friend, and this is a Munch story. But there's plenty of Fin in this one, so I don't feel completely disloyal. First real shot at fanfiction. Don't hesitate to criticize, just keep the flames to yourselves . . .
Disclaimer: I do not own Law and Order: SVU or any other of the Law and Order spin-offs or any of their characters. They belong to Dick Wolf, who has enough money to own them. I own Bowan, Zita, and most, if not all, of the French-sounding names. FYI, I am not prejudice against the French, France, or brie. I just needed a foreign country whose language I, at least, partially spoke.
In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offences are considered especially heinous.
In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.
Prologue
They had made it. They were safe, at last. It felt good, except for a nagging feeling of dread in the pits of their stomachs.
Bowan and Zita Plouvin had been living in Paris until a week ago, when Bowan, Zita's mother had decided that enough was enough, took her daughter, and returned, finally, to Baltimore and then to New York City, Zita's birthplace. No more would they suffer under Pierre's heel. The past seventeen years for Bowan and the last seven years for Zita had been a nightmare. The rapes had been consistent, the suffering hidden, but perpetual. Of course the suffering had been hidden; Pierre would never have risen to such power in the French Parliament if his atrocities had been discovered.
But that was all going to change now. Bowan wondered if he would remember her. Of course he would. She had been his partner on the force in Baltimore nineteen years ago and his lover for the last two months she had spent in the US. She had been seventeen years younger than him, but love was love regardless of age. She had not changed that much, aside from the light wrinkles and slightly-graying hair she was sure she would not have had if not for her father, an Irish diplomat, arranging her marriage with Pierre. Political arranged marriages were hardly heard of phenomenons, but were alarmingly prevalent for those who knew what doors to listen through. He would remember her – he would have to be an amnesiac not to. Naturally, showing up at his new SVU precinct with the daughter she had never told him about would shock the conspiracy theories right out of him, but Zita would grow on him (and the lack of conspiracy theories would not hurt the concentration of any of his fellow detectives, either). They did not look the same, but their mannerisms and personalities were so much alike, apart from the paranoid conspiracy theories – the same sardonic grin, the same look-over-the-rims-of-the-glasses stare (when she actually wore her glasses instead of contacts), the same wit, same dry humor that made Bowan long for the love she had been forced to leave behind in Maryland. It had been that humor the morning after that brought Zita through the ordeal of each horrible night – waking up from unconsciousness, trying not to cry on the floor beside the master bedroom's four-poster bed, curled up in a ball from the pain, trying to forget what had happened. That and Etienne, her bodyguard, best friend, and main father-figure, even though he was only old enough to be her older brother. Not that Zita needed a bodyguard. She could easily fend for herself – she was a member of an elite French detective squad and had been a part of or led more undercover operations, often several at a time, than she cared to count, even some for Interpol. Her mother could not have been more proud. It pained the teenager, however, that she was this master detective – the youngest ever to be honored by the French police two years ago, at fifteen – who still could not change what she and Bowan went through. Why her mother was so proud, she would never risk a guess. She could fight off Pierre, maybe even his thugs if they came at her unarmed one at a time, but it would only make things worse. However, deep down, she always felt like a coward, something she had always despised. Her mother told her not to, that she could not help her situation, could not help that they were kept apart from each other, locked in rooms so they could not help each other, but words did nothing to halt her self-contempt or quell her anger at herself and Pierre and the friends he brought to his little "parties".
The elite squad Zita belonged to did not specialize in sex crimes – or any other crime, for that matter. They specialized in all crimes; it was what made them elite, able to do anything. No one in the squad knew what went on in the Plouvin homestead and there was no one she could tell anywhere else that would make any difference without causing innumerable problems for them and her mother. So she set about doing something about it on the side. She had not gotten into the French police because she was pretty, though she was, just like her mother. She had been accepted because she was smart – book and street. With an IQ of well over 175, it had been cake to get into online courses at Harvard Law. She would tackle Pierre on her own in a courtroom and show all of France, all of the world, what the man really looked like under the Armani suits and over-gelled hair.
Pierre and his cronies were oblivious to any of this, of course. The only ones in on the secret were too loyal to Zita and Bowan to tell anyone what really went on during the seventeen-year-old's overnight "school trips" and "websurfing." She could take care of herself, but her tag-along bodyguard provided an ample and smokescreen for the ones who would punish Zita and Bowan for the teenager's night job, not to mention a welcomed and knowledgeable companion during the long, late stakeouts.
Bowan could feel her confidence returning. She had lived in New York City before moving to Maryland to work in the Baltimore Homicide Unit. Her beloved Big Apple had changed, certainly, as had she, but the city was welcoming her back. She had been born in Ireland but the metropolis had adopted her as its own. She could only hope John would do the same, now that he had started working here. She had promised him hundreds of times that she would never leave him, never make him cry. And she had gone right ahead and done it, regardless of whether or not her doing so had been of her own volition. Her father and Pierre had not allowed her to answer the phone until the caller ID had confirmed that it was an acceptable identity on the other end. She had not been allowed to receive or read, much less reply to, any letters that her father, Pierre, or his cronies had not looked through first. She was a prisoner in her own life. They had told John, after he had managed to get a contact number from a UN official that owed him a favor, that she had forgotten him and had fallen madly in love with and married a handsome, twenty-seven-year-old, strapping French diplomat from Paris named Pierre Plouvin that could give her everything she wanted, unlike a slightly-wrinkled, forty-two-year-old, skinny detective from Baltimore that could not afford a townhouse, much less diamond jewelry. It had broken her heart, as it had most likely (and had, by the way) broken his.
Butterflies began to flutter about in her stomach as she and her daughter walked silently, side by side, on the bustling sidewalk. What would he say when she strode in with a teenager in tow? He would probably be furious with her, though he would never show it in front of his colleagues. John hated few things more than a liar, which was exactly what her husband (in the loosest sense of the word) and father had made her out to be. They had made her hurt him and stab herself in the heart while she was at it. It was time to make amends and at least ask for forgiveness. But what if he would not give it?
No! Don't think about that! You need to get you and Zita to a safe place where Etienne and Xavier (Bowan's bodyguard) won't be at risk protecting you. They risked enough just coming with you. You need to get to the precinct, regardless of John's reaction. This is bigger than your past. Only a few more blocks, now. she told herself, picking up the pace slightly, eager to get out of the late fall chill. Leather keeps out wind, her eye.
Zita was absorbed in the feel of this magnificent city. It was more than she had ever dreamed. True, during her frequent visits to the UN with her mother and Pierre or with her numerous diplomatic friends, she had seen some of New York, but you could not get a real look at the city or its inhabitants from the back seat of a Bentley. Walking the streets of the city was an all-new experience. Paris was beautiful, sure, but New York was . . . New York! The Big Apple! The city nicknamed after a fruit! How cool was that?
Bowan had not told her daughter everything about where exactly they were going and why, but Zita had enough snooping and interrogations experience to have picked up on a few details her mother had unwittingly let slip. She had always known in her heart that a monster like Pierre could not be her father, and she, having listened to her mother moan in pain in her sleep about someone named John, begging him to forgive her and bring her back home. She searched through her mother's old diaries for clues to her parental history and had unearthed this John person as her main suspect. As it turned out, her mother had been dating (secretly, of course) her partner from the Baltimore Homicide Unit, a man by the name of, surprise suprise, John Munch. He seemed like a nice enough guy and he had obviously been very serious about Bowan (Zita had had to skip over many parts in Bowan's diary because they were just a little too info-laden). They had been together during the right time period for him to be her father, but Pierre had married Bowan during the right time as well, so she could not narrow her list down to just John. He was Jewish and Pierre was French. Zita's Jewish friends (and she had many) had always said that she looked too Jewish to be completely of Western European descent. More Jewish than French. She hoped with all her heart that they were right.
And it was because Bowan and Zita were absorbed in these thoughts that they did not see the man lurking under the cover of the shadows that they were walking past on their way through an alley until he grabbed them both and pulled them under the shadows with him.
The last thing Zita saw before blacking out was a horrifyingly familiar face.
The man's low, raspy whisper grated on the girl's eardrums as he spoke. "Tu peux course, mais tu ne peux pas cacher, petite souris."
Perhaps the dread in their stomachs had been justified, after all.
Enter Law and Order Theme
Cut to a commercial.
Translation: You can run, but you can't hide, little mouse.
Pronunciation: tyoo poh corse may tyoo nay poh pah cahsh, pooteet sooreese.