A random one-shot story I had stuck in my head. Set in season four, shortly after Pandora.

It is my most unfortunate duty to inform you that I don't own anyone in this story. I hope you like it, and as always, all reviews are greatly appreciated!

"Are you sure that you're going to be okay with the kids for two weeks?" Kathy asked, last minute nerves taking over. "Because I can call my sister and get her to take one week and I can be here the other."

"I'll be fine," I repeated for the third time, lugging her suitcase out to the waiting taxi. "You go take care of your dad."

"Okay," she told me, giving me one last kiss goodbye. She was off to Florida to help her mom take care of her dad after breaking his hip. "Call me, okay?"

"I will," I assured her again. I watched her get into the cab and drive off, before the reality that I hadn't been alone with my kids for any extended period of time in years hit me. I closed the door and went into the kitchen to find a flyer for a pizza place that delivered.

"Hi dad," Kathleen murmured from the table where she was concentrating on some type of math equation. She quickly punched numbers into her calculator, then wrote them down and looked up at me. "You're not going to try cooking again, are you?" She wrinkled her nose.

"Hey, my lasagna wasn't that bad."

She put down her pencil and rolled her eyes. "You forgot to cook the pasta before you put it in. You used salsa instead of tomato sauce. And, you put cream cheese instead of ricotta. The only reason you didn't think it was that bad was because you only had a bite before you got called in to work."

"Okay, so it was that bad. I'll stick to microwaving dinner, how's that?"

She shrugged. I pulled out the pizza flyer and tried to figure out just how much we would need. "Is Maureen still off carbs?" I asked her.

"No, she started eating again. But she's gone vegetarian."

"Seriously?"

"It has to do with a boy."

"Well that explains it all. You still like pepperoni, mushroom and pineapple?"

"Yep."

"Glad to know you inherited something from me. Meat lovers for Dickie, plain cheese for Elizabeth?"

"Sounds right."

I called in my order, then got out the plates and cups to set the table. I wanted to at least pretend I was doing something right here. I piled them on the table, then started to place them at each seat, navigating around Kathleen's books. "What are you working on?"

"Quadratics. Oh, dad, there's a Valentine's Day dance on Friday, do you mind if I go?"

Friday. Valentine's Day. I dropped the glasses I was holding. They shattered, but I didn't even reach for them. I was frozen, staring at her.

"You okay?" she asked uneasily.

I blinked a couple of times. I put my hands on the chair back in front of me to steady myself, and tried to form something coherent.

"Kathleen, I'm sorry."

She looked up, surprised, and slammed her textbook shut. "Why not?"

"I. . . it's. . . I can't let you go."

"Why not?" She repeated, louder and angrier. I didn't respond. "This is so typical. What, you're on some kind of power trip because you're in charge for once?"

"Kathleen-"

"I'm not hungry. Screw you!" Without taking her books, she ran off upstairs. I looked at the broken glass at my feet, then up at the stairs. She needed time to cool off. I took out the dustpan and carefully swept it all up, then slowly made my way to Kathleen's room.

"Go away!" she shouted. I walked in anyways.

"Sweetheart, I'm sorry. I'd say yes if I could."

She took her head out of her pillow and glared at me. "All you have to do is say yes. It's pretty simple."

"It's not that simple. Will you just believe that there's a good reason for this?"

She shrugged. "Whatever."

The rest of the week, she carefully ignored me. At dinner, she kept her head down and made conversation with whoever sat beside her. She stayed in her room whenever she could, and refused to say anything when I came to talk to her. On Friday, I called Kathy to wish her a happy valentine's day.

"El. . . I didn't even think of that. I can get a last minute flight and be there this evening if you want."

"No," I assured her. "It's fine."

"Did you call the prison?"

"Yeah, it's all taken care of."

"Okay, good. You'll be okay?"

"Yeah." I said a quick goodbye and hung up. I checked my watch. It was still early enough in the evening. I just wanted the day to pass without any disaster. At midnight, I would be able to breathe again, knowing everything was okay. I just had to make it until then.

Twice- once on my regular Tuesday visit, and once in a follow up call this afternoon- I had called the correctional facility where my sister was housed to make sure that they had her on suicide watch. Without fail, for the ten years she had been there, she tried to kill herself every Valentine's Day. After the second year, I had taken to calling the guards to remind them. I had made good with them. Even though I was the relative of an inmate, I was a detective, and therefore one of the good guys. They were always good about my request. I once again ordered pizza for dinner, and everyone stayed fairly quiet around the table. Maureen was annoyed at me as well for not letting her go out with her boyfriend. I had rented a couple of movies, and Dickie and Elizabeth had half-heartedly sat with me to watch one, but had both given up halfway through. I couldn't blame them- I wasn't very good company. I cleaned up the ice cream bowls and sat down at the computer. Having four teenagers meant having four computers in the house, but no one was allowed one in their rooms, and no one was allowed on any website that hadn't gotten my or Kathy's approval. Too many internet predator cases had left me more than a little concerned, but I didn't feel bad about it. I was about to log into my department e-mail address to check for anything I may have missed since coming home, but was interrupted by the phone ringing.

"Dad!" Maureen yelled. "It's for you!"

A chill ran down my spine. I logged off the computer and picked up the phone.

"Stabler."

"Don't worry," Kathleen told me in a sarcastic tone, coming down the stairs. "I'm not going out anywhere, I'm just getting a glass of water."

I didn't say anything. I held the tumbler of scotch I had managed to pour in my hand, but didn't drink it. I didn't move. I heard Kathleen finish in the kitchen and start back up the stairs, then stopped halfway. I didn't turn around to look at her.

"Who was on the phone?" she asked. Her version of an olive branch.

"It's. . . it was no one. Don't worry about it."The words were coming out of my mouth automatically.

Kathleen came back down the stairs and sat down on the sofa opposite me. She spotted the drink in my hand and studied my face. "Is grandpa okay?"

I finally looked up at her. "Yeah, yeah, he's fine. Don't worry."

"Then what's wrong?" she asked, ignoring my last request.

It was exactly what Emily would have done. She would have sat there and grilled me until I smartened up and told her what was going on. Emily's cross, the one that Kathleen still wore around her neck, despite having denounced all ties Catholicism, sparkled in the light.

"Dad?"

I took a long sip of my drink and put it down in front of me. "Do you remember when you found that cross?" I asked her.

She touched it. "Yeah. Why?"

"Do you remember asking me why I had it?"

"I guess."

"I told you that it belonged to my mother. It didn't."

She touched it again, a confused look crossing her face. "What do you mean?"

"It belonged to my sister."

"Aunt Eleanor or Aunt Alicia?"

"Neither. Your Aunt Emily."

"I don't remember her."

"You were only about a year old the last time you saw her."

"Oh." She sat there, not sure what to say or do next.

"Do you remember asking me why I work in SVU?"

She nodded. "You said you'd tell me when I was older."

"Emily's my older sister. And when we were teenagers, we were really close."

"Dad? You're not making any sense."

"I'm trying to." I sighed. "There's no good way to say this. When she was nineteen, she went out with her boyfriend on Valentine's Day. And he and two of his friends attacked her."

"Did they kill her?"

"No. But they. . . they sexually assaulted her." I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to use to word rape. This was my daughter I was talking to. I was supposed to protect her from truths like this, not inform her of them. "And after it happened, she was never the same. She dropped out of university and left home. She started using drugs. And the reason that you don't remember meeting her is because she's been in jail the past ten years for selling drugs."

"Is that why you didn't want me to go tonight?"

I nodded. "I know I've said this before, but it's not because I don't trust you. It's because I don't trust everyone else."

Kathleen had taken on an odd silence. She was processing everything that I had said. This was the type of thing that I wouldn't talk about with her when she asked about what I did all day. It was a surprise to hear me say anything about the subject, let alone with the story about my own sister.

"Do I remind you of her?"

"Her hair was darker."

"Was?"

I nodded. "That was the prison warden who called. Emily died this evening."

"How?"

I took another deep breath. "I don't know how it happened exactly but. . . she took her own life."

Kathleen's eyes filled with tears. It made me hurt even more than the news of Emily's death did. My daughter was crying over the death of someone she had never met. She had never even heard of before now.

"But. . . why?"

"I wish I could tell you," I told her honestly. "After this happened, she changed. She needed help and she wouldn't take it."

Unsuccessfully, Kathleen tried to stop crying. She tilted her head down, resulting in tears dripping off her nose. I got up from my chair and took a seat on the sofa beside her. She curled into me, resting her head on my shoulder.

"Is that why you decided to work in SVU?"

"Yeah. I thought that if I could help someone else, I might have been able to help her too. It doesn't work that way though."

"So," she said softly, lifting her head, "that's why you work so hard? So that someone else doesn't end up like her?"

"Yeah," I repeated.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah?"

"Will you do something for me?"

"Thanks Mark," I said to the night attendant at the prison morgue. A small, cold room in the basement of the building housed the bodies of prisoners, who usually died from fights. At this time of night on a Friday though, it was completely deserted.

"You sure about this?" he asked.

"Yeah," I assured him. "Ten minutes?"

"As long as you need. And Detective. . . I read the file. I'm sorry."

He took off to give us our privacy. "Are you sure about this?" I asked Kathleen.

She nodded. "Please?"

I walked over to the door he'd left slightly ajar and pulled the gurney out. There lay Emily. She looked much older than her years, but still resembled the girl I had grown up with. Kathleen squeezed my hand.

"We can go if you want," I assured her.

She shook her head and slowly walked over to her body.

"I wish I could have known you. I wish someone had been able to help you." She looked like she was going to reach out to the body, but changed her mind and stepped back.

I had managed to get the details from the night attendant. She had been having fainting spells recently, so the doctor had put her on medication to try and raise it. She had probably been saving the pills for a month. She had taken them all at once, causing a heart attack that had killed her, most likely instantly.

Despite having seen many dead bodies over the years, I still approached Emily's apprehensively. I brushed her hair out of her eyes and leaned down to kiss her forehead. "I'm sorry," I whispered. I wanted to say something more, but words had lost all meaning between us years ago. All I could manage was I'm sorry.

We left the building in silence. We both got into the car, but I didn't turn it on. An odd feeling of relief washed over me. Emily had been dying for so long, it felt like there was finally some closure. Unexpectedly, Kathleen wrapped her arms around me.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I wouldn't have gotten mad at you if I had known."

"I know, Sweetheart." Over her shoulder, I saw the time on the dashboard. 12:02.

It was over. It was finally over.

"Let's go home," I told her softly, not making any move to let her go. And in that moment, I would have given anything to never let her go again.