A/N: Muse has season six. I own nothing.
She comes back because there is not a choice.
In all honesty, there is nothing she would rather do more than stay holed up in that hole-in-the-map town in Wisconsin where her real self has given way to someone else and where she knows she's safe. But she can't do that. At least, not anymore, and it is a sense of duty that draws her back home to New York.
Hold on, Alex, hold on.
As she sits on the plane, she feels the onset of a panic attack coming on and is glad that somewhere along the line, she learned to close her eyes, take a breath and count to ten before freaking out.
This time, it doesn't work.
Even so, she doesn't get up and bolt off the plane, and her breathing doesn't slow and stop and her vision doesn't blur when she opens her eyes and stares out the window.
You are no longer Alexandra Cabot. You are now Emily Wilson and you are now in the Witness Protection Program. Any questions?
Oh, yes. There had been questions, many of them, some of them that she hadn't dared to ask, because she didn't really want to know.
Leaving New York had hurt a lot more than she thought it would. But by the time she woke up in the hospital, she still hadn't lost the fire that drove her as a prosecutor.
Yeah, I have a question. How much time do I have to say goodbye?
The plane lifts off and Alex is reminded by the federal agents sitting in the aisle and middle seats, leaving her to the window, that technically, she wasn't supposed to say goodbye.
But she did, and so Captain Cragen is there with them, because the NYPD insisted one of their own come along and Benson and Stabler are already in enough trouble as it is, because of her.
You're not supposed to say goodbye. They think you're dead.
That's your problem. I go nowhere until I talk to them and let them know I'm not.
A faint smile crosses Alex's face as she remembers this scene, and she turns to look out the window, knowing that she will stare until they're home again.
She falls asleep.
When she wakes up again, they have landed and are the last ones on the plane because no one that she's traveling with has moved, wanting to be the last ones off.
You will memorize all of your new information, and you will not let anyone know who you really are and what you used to do.
When it's safe for you to return, you will be notified.
She hadn't dared to ask what would happen if it didn't ever become safe for her to return. Instead of asking now, she pulls on an NYPD baseball cap and slides on a pair of sunglasses and prepares to go back to the DA's office.
Casey Novak has taken your place, Cragen says, on the way over there, Do you know her?
And Alex nods, because once upon a time, she and Casey used to be friends.
A lot of things have changed, that's for sure: the way Benson looks, the way Fin sounds, the fact that Munch has become the unofficial unit tech and the look in Elliot Stabler's eyes.
Once upon a time, they were her squad and she used to know them, but she doesn't anymore, and it almost bothers her.
…if ASAP can be tomorrow morning.
Breakfast, then.
The memories of her first few weeks with the Special Victims Unit make her want to cry. Somehow, she manages to hold it all back.
And then she ends up playing pinochle with Elliot and laughing at how incredibly bad she is at it.
This whole thing started out as a drug case, one that Arthur Branch warned her could blow up in her face, but she hadn't listened then, and she's not likely to now.
You know, a woman can say anything she wants about your performance in the bedroom and you aren't actually allowed to kill her.
A knock on the door interrupts the game just as Elliot manages to win, yet again, and he gets up, gun drawn, to answer it.
Alex muses over this line of hers, the one that pissed this guy off enough that he hired a man to try and kill her, and now this man is on trial and she is one of the two people in the world who can nail him now.
Of course, it's not going to be that easy and so she nitpicks on Casey and immediately apologizes, knowing that she wishes more than anything that she could be the one to prosecute the case.
You never know what you have until it's gone, and by then, it's too late to do anything about it.
What happens when there's something you can do?
It's still too late.
But it's not too late this time.
And so she tells Olivia about Emily and Wisconsin and the boyfriend she thinks she has there, and how she gets homesick.
When she falls silent, her thoughts take over.
Yeah, I hum the Mr. Softy song, but sometimes when it gets quiet enough I can hear Manhattan, and it makes me cry.
Imagine that. The hardnosed prosecutor crying over something she can't do anything about. Never thought you'd see the day, huh?
She doesn't realize that she's spoken all of this out loud until she hears Olivia say that if it hasn't broken her yet, it never will.
It takes Alex a moment to realize that she might just be right.
Of course, it is a small comfort, considering the fact that she knows, even if the SVU detectives do not, that when this is over, she will disappear again.
You know you can't stay here, Ms. Cabot. This is just temporary, to help with a case, and then you're gone again.
I thought I wasn't Ms. Cabot anymore.
You know what I mean.
The Feds are so cold sometimes, Alex says, then, to Olivia, who nods, silently, and continues to listen. They don't give a damn about what happens to you, so long as you don't actually end up dead, they don't want to hear it when you're hurting, they don't want to know if you're not happy where you are…
I want to come home, she says. I want to come home and I want to stay home and I want to put this guy away and make it happen, but it's not going to work that way.
Hard truths are always the worst ones to learn.
So when Casey calls her to the stand, startling the judge into staring as she testifies against this man who tried to kill her, she thinks of this and thinks of the unit.
This is for them.
The answers that she knows they have been looking for are finally in front of their faces. The conviction that Casey is looking for is within reach, if the jury believes what she has to say.
This is for Casey.
The explanation that she has always wanted from the Feds is coming from something else, from the unit she loved and the people she loves. The sense of closure she has wanted that she knew would only come from facing down the person who once tried to murder her is finally here, and it hurts because she knows that she'll have to leave again. But at the same time, it doesn't, because she knows that for these victims, justice is being served.
This is for me.
They can't break you, Casey told her, before the trial began, when they were sitting in the back where no one could see them. You're invincible, and they know it, and that's what scares them. But no one is invincible and both women know it, even though it is a nice thought.
She keeps it with her as the Feds whisk her and this child witness away again before she has the chance to dash off to the DA's office to see everyone that she's missed for so long. It is, at the moment, all she has until they come up with a new identity and somewhere else to put the two of them because the child has no family left and she is the only one who can take him on such short notice.
Emily is gone, left behind in that small house in Wisconsin, and in her place there is someone else, though Alex doesn't know who that someone else is going to be yet.
But she will find out soon enough and will move on, and will carry on until she can return to New York and take this child back with her to the streets they know and love.
Until then, however, she keeps Casey's words with her, close to her heart.
They can't break you. You're invincible.