"So why'd they call us in?"

Elliot walks up behind Olivia, holding two coffees in his hands. The sun has risen above the horizon, the morning light softening the red-and-blue glare colouring the scene.

"Nice of you to show up."

The brown haired detective accepts the coffee, pointedly ignoring her partner's question.

"Look, I'm sorry. I was meant to drop the kids off at school today. I wasn't even supposed to be in the office until 10 o'clock, but Cragen called us in."

Olivia smiles her forgiveness - not that she had really been upset - and begins to fill Elliot in on the situation.

"Victim is a white female, mid to late twenties. Our traffic cop Jerry here," she nods to a nauseous looking rookie standing awkwardly amongst the CSU techs, "found her floating in the Hudson a few hours ago and called us in. Vic was completely naked and the prelim seems to indicate severe trauma. We will have to wait for Warner's report to confirm whether that trauma includes sexual assault, but my gut says this girl got the works"

Elliot grimaced. No matter how often they handled this sort of case, it never got easier to see the scene of a murder. A glance at his partner's face confirmed to him that she was thinking the same. He noticed dark circles under her eyes, telling him she'd had a late night at the precinct again yesterday, but he knew better than to mention that. She still looked impressively put-together regardless, but he knew better than to mention that either. He switched into work gear and tried to catch up with what was going on.

"Our vic have a name?"

"Yeah. Jane Doe."

"No ID on the body then?"

"El, which part of 'completely naked in the Hudson'..."

"Hey, you could have found a bag or something as well… it's morning, give me a break!"

A brief smile crossed Olivia's face at his remark, but was quickly wiped away as she continued stepping him through the scene.

"Jane Doe is likely to remain a Jane Doe for a while as well. Guy took care to make sure we couldn't identify her."

"No fingerprints?"

"Fingerprints burned off, face mutilated beyond recognition, and teeth smashed so we wouldn't even have an accurate comparison for dental records."

Elliot frowned. "Let's hope Warner can find us something to work from. Anything else on the scene that could help us?"

Olivia shook her head. "If there had been anything, the river's washed it away."

The ride back to the precinct was mostly silent.

They gave an overview of the case to Cragen when they arrived, and busied themselves with paperwork while awaiting the ME report. Until then, they didn't have a lead to chase, so they decided they may as well make a dent in their backlog to free up the time they'd soon be needing.

Mid-way through the morning, Elliot felt his phone buzz with an SMS. Kathy was asking whether he would be able to make their dinner plans tonight. He knew that she knew the answer to that the moment he bailed on driving the kids this morning - after this many years of being with him, she could sense when he was about to be pulled deep into a case. Knowing that there was no way he would be getting out of the office on time, he texted back his apologies. This situation had played out so many times before that the text was easy to send, which made him feel a twinge of guilt. Elliot knew that he should really feel worse about not coming home to his wife, but he was comforted knowing he would be in good company here at the precinct.

Olivia was robotically filling in forms. Their last case - Alicia Harding - was still weighing on her mind; it always took some time when one of their own was lost. Her and Sonya had had their differences, but the ADA had been a good person, and deserved better than the end she got. The loss still hadn't quite sunk in. She couldn't help but think back to Alex's "death" a few years back; she had felt the oddest sense of deja vu when they found Sonya bleeding out in that bathroom, as she knew that it wasn't the first time she had tried to stop one of their ADA's from bleeding out in her arms. Tried and failed, an insidious little voice in her head told her.

"...Liv!"

Olivia looked up at Stabler with a start. It clearly wasn't the first time he had said her name, and she kicked herself internally for letting herself get lost in her head.

"Yeah?"

"You ok?" Elliot asked with a frown. He had known her long enough to know when something was off.

"Yeah, I'm fine, El."

Elliot gave her a pointed look. She conceded, "I still keep thinking back to Sonya, you know?"

It had barely been two weeks since that fateful evening, and Elliot knew how much that case had affected his partner. Having a victim bleed out in your arms was tough, and having that victim be someone you know was a hundred times worse. He had rarely seen Olivia as raw as she had been at the precinct that evening, and as much as he knew that it would not have made a difference, he hadn't quite forgiven himself for not being by her side throughout that case. It would take time - for the both of them - to really move past this, so he offered her a nod of sympathy.

"I know Liv, I miss her too."

"You were saying something?"

"Oh yeah - Warner just called. ME report's back, and she said we'd want to hear this."

The pair walked into the cool, sterile air of the morgue.

"Warner, I really don't get how you like staying down here in the cold and the gloom all day," Elliot greeted their medical examiner.

"Not all of us get to live the glamorous life of high speed chases and playing the hero, Detective," she smiled back.

"So what have you got for us?" the brown-haired detective chimed in, steering the conversation straight to the point.

"I'm glad at least one of you is down here to do your job, Olivia. Contusions to the wrist indicate that the victim was bound prior to being killed, the impressions on her skin showing that your perp used a wide strap, like you might find at a warehouse for packing down crates. A subdural hemorrhage indicates a heavy blow to the back of the head with a blunt object. Based on the amount of blood, I would say that this blow occurred maybe an hour before death - I would guess that this is how the victim was subdued. Vic also had a number of older bruises across her body, as well as cigarette dotting her stomach and chest."

"She was abused?"

Melinda nodded. "A classic battered woman. Though a beating gone bad is usually a crime of passion, while your killer was far more calculating. Her fingerprints were seared off, and her face has severe lacerations and contusions to hide her identity. Thankfully for our Jane Doe, lividity indicates this was all done post-mortem. A patch of skin around 3x5 inches wide around her upper spine is also missing. While you would not have seen this at the scene due to the way the face was mutilated,the cause of death was a single gunshot wound through the forehead."

The detectives glanced at each other. "She was executed," Olivia breathed. Melinda grimly nodded in response.

"Why remove that patch of skin? Identifying tattoo?" Stabler thought out loud.

"But why remove that one, and not any others?" Olivia gestured to the sprawling vines that remained inked across the victim's ribs.

Melinda took steer of the conversation again: "There is more you may want to hear. Your killer didn't steal that much time from this girl. Her days were already numbered."

Stabler frowned. "What do you mean - she's what 25? 27?"

"Thereabouts. But I found metastatic tumours in her lungs - the spreading of a malignant melanoma. I found scars from a punch biopsy on a mole on her upper arm, from at most earlier this week. On a hunch, I also ran some additional tests on her blood, and found remnants of contrast in her system. She would have had to get a scan to find the additional tumours, and based on the fact that those chemicals were still in her system when she died, I would guess that she got murdered on the same day that she got diagnosed with terminal cancer."

Elliot let out a low whistle. "Talk about a bad day…"

A/N: I haven't written fanfiction for a good 5 years, so please do feel free to give constructive criticism. Chapter 2 will be coming soon.