Law and Order: SVU is the intellectual property of Dick Wolf. The use of the characters, settings, and plotlines is not malicious. This is a work of fiction.

"Damn it, Olivia," Elliot snapped, angrily tapping the call button on his phone again. He ran a hand down his face as he heard the ringing in his ear, and for the fifth time, an outgoing voicemail message. He growled under his breath and shoved the phone in his pocket. "Where the hell is she?" he asked himself, folding his arms and leaning up against the side of a black and white squad car. The flashing swirls of red and blue made his eyes hurt, but he was too pissed off to care. He checked his watch, huffed and curse gruffly, and whipped his phone out again. He was in the middle of dialing her number one more time, when a yellow cab pulled up to the curb. His eyes widened when he saw her get out of the taxi, and he ran over to her with a fierce expression on his face. "Where the fuck have you been? You didn't answer my texts! I called four times! Do you know how fucking..."

"Please," Olivia said with closed eyes, holding up one hand. "Don't, okay? I just had...the worst lunch break of my entire life." She stared off into an empty space for a moment and shuddered. "Even worse than that time in sixth grade when I ate lunch in the janitor's closet."

He squinted. "Yeah, we're talking about that later," he said, licking his lips. "Where the hell were you?" He paled as he looked her over, eyed her up and down. "Were you...were you on a date?"

"Ha!" she scoffed. "No. Definitely not. I just had something I needed to do, without you. That's all." She pulled a latex glove out of her pocket and shoved her right hand into it. "What have we got, here?"

"You...you don't do anything without me," he said, sounding hurt. "What did you..." he stopped, he saw the look on her face, the mix of guilt, anger, and pride in her eyes. "You were with Kathy, weren't you? What the hell! What did you say to her? You didn't hit her, did you?"

"Thought about it," she mumbled, crawling under the yellow crime-scene tape. "Don't worry about what I said, she deserved every fucking bit of it."

He caught her tone, understood a deeper meaning, and he grabbed her arm before she could get too far away from him and into the case. He moved closer to her and looked into her eyes. "Wait, then what did she say to you?"

She swallowed back hard and shook her head. "Forget it," she told him. "I'm trying to."

"No, what the hell did she say to you?" he asked a bit louder, more severe.

She took a breath and closed her eyes for a moment, and as she exhaled she said, "Nothing. We had a cup of coffee and a couple of burritos, and I gave her a piece of my mind. You know, it was all very civil."

"Bullshit," he said, frowning a bit.

She rolled her eyes. "It's fucking scary how well you know me," she said, half to herself. "After the coffee, she accused me of...you and me...she thought..." she blinked. "She told me I was being a bit hypocritical, since I was fucking you behind her back...and then she said she thought you honestly wouldn't give a shit if she had an affair because you were having one." There was a long pause, the vein in her neck throbbed and she snorted in irritation. "Then, she threw a tortilla chip at me."

"She said that?" he said with a bitter laugh. "I got that same exact shit, every night, for years. She's always been jealous of you, of my relationship with you."

"Yeah, well, after she called me a home-wrecking slut, I told her there was no relationship," she countered, narrowing her eyes and pulling her arm out of his hand. "There isn't, we're just partners. I told her you were nothing but faithful to her, even when you didn't have to be, and I told her...wow, I guess I was really loud. I'm probably never allowed in that Chipotle ever again," she shook the errant thoughts away and spoke again, leaving out exact words and specifics. "I told her she didn't realize what she was giving up. Then...I asked why."

He bit his lip and folded his arms. "Why what?"

"Why she lied to you. About everything." She combed her hair back with her nails. "She said...she really did realize what she was losing, what she'd already lost. She knew she made a mistake, but she...she thought if you never found out Eli wasn't your son, then you'd stay with her, and it would make you..." she rolled her eyes, both in disgusted loathing and an attempt to keep from crying. "She thought you'd fall in love with her all over again, and stay." She shrugged. "She said it almost worked, but his real father called her, threatened to sue...she knew she had to tell you."

He blinked, only once, and then he asked, "She called you a slut?"

Olivia gave him a blank and nonplussed stare. "Really? All of that, and that's your takeaway?"

He licked his lips and shook his head again. "No, I'm just...she called you a slut, and you didn't hit her?" He smirked. "You, uh...you lied to her."

She froze. She didn't tell him anything about the full-blown, ten-minute battle of blows where she got far too emotional, firmly denied having feelings for Elliot, called Kathy a lunatic, and almost arrested her for assaulting an officer. "What?"

He smiled at her, the smirk softening and warming. "We are not just partners. We never have been, and we never will be." A moment of silence passed, and then he said, "She had no right to treat you like that. I can't believe she called you a..."

"Don't say it again," she begged, both hands with palms out facing him. "I just really don't..."

"What aren't you telling me?" he asked, his voice low and his expression dark. "What else did she say to you? I mean, usually if someone calls you a bitch, we laugh about how you kind of are sometimes and imagine horrible things happening to them, you know? You shrug it off, we laugh about it, so what gives? Something got to you."

She shot him a sharp-eyed look and turned her back on him, walking toward the medical examiner. "What have we got?" she called, ignoring Elliot's attempts to tug on her shirt and jacket, swatting him away.

Melinda looked over her shoulder. "First, tell me what Hot-Head Harry over there said to Detective Lake." She jutted her chin toward Elliot, but aimed the order at Olivia.

Elliot rolled his eyes. "I asked him a few simple questions, he gave me a few simple answers. And what's with the name-calling? I can technically arrest you for that."

Melinda gave an unamused and low expression. "I got an angry phone call, demanding I tell him how Fielding was killed, and he volunteered DNA."

Olivia tilted her head in confusion."We know he isn't a suspect, we told him he wasn't even on the..."

"He wants me to compare his DNA to the fetus," Melinda interrupted. "He's sure he's the father."

There was a terse moment, all three were quiet, looking at a patch of grass and not each other, until Elliot's voice broke the silence. "Damn."

Olivia felt a pang of sympathy and sorrow, and brushed the back of her hand discreetly against his arm. "Okay, well, yeah," she said, sighing and straightening up. "Makes sense. They were close."

Melinda grinned. "Not as close as you two, and unless there's something you're not telling me, he hasn't knocked you up." She laughed at her own chiding and then threw a thumb in the direction of the body at her feet. "Same guy," she said. "Mutilated her face, she was raped, but this woman isn't in the system." She looked back up at Olivia. "Officially, right now, she's a Jane Doe."

"Shit," Elliot breathed, running his hand across his forehead. "No, she's not." He turned to Olivia. "Look at the tattoo on her arm."

Her eyes shot to where Elliot pointed, and it took her a moment to realize. When she did, though, she gasped. "That's Cecilia Cruz, the girl Lake was trying to protect." She screwed her eyes shut for a moment. "I thought Immigration took her in."

"Are you sure?" Melinda asked, stunned.

Olivia and Elliot looked at each other and then nodded. "She told me the story," Olivia said, pointing to the small butterfly tattoo on the victim's arm. "She got that tat in memory of Alisa." She looked up and around, and then back at Elliot. "What the hell is going on here?"

"Someone's tying up loose ends," he told her. "Tell us everything you can, as soon as you can, huh?" he shouted to Warner, and then he grabbed Olivia's elbow and pulled her back toward the row of police cars. "We need to back off this case," he whispered to her.

"Are you high?" she cracked, ripping his arm from him and staring at him with wide eyes. "If anything, El, we are the only ones who can handle it!" She ran a hand through her hair. "Fin's not in the right state of mind for it, he's still processing his transfer, even though we tried to talk him out of it. Munch can't..."

"Liv," he said, stopping her, both of his hands on her shoulders keeping her still. He looked serious, almost domineering. "We stepped into some shit, here, and whoever is behind this...is going to be after us next. If you think I'm gonna let you work a case that's gonna get you killed..."

"Whoa, let me?" she interrupted, tilting her head just a bit, her lips pulling into an aporetic grin. "You don't have let me do my job, Elliot!"

He rolled his eyes. "Okay, not what I meant, but...until we know..."

"We don't know," she said. "Three people are dead, one of whom...never even got the chance to live. I'm not backing off, I'm nailing the son-of-a-bitch." There were tears in her eyes and she didn't really understand why.

He noticed, and his thumbs swooped up and brushed the thin skin under her eyes. "Hey," he barely breathed. He looked at her for a moment, watched her regain full composure, and he sighed. "Okay. We'll get the bastard." His voice fell a bit more, lower and softer. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

The way he was looking at her, seeming to bore into her soul through her eyes, gave her chills and made her believe there were more emotions beneath his eyes than there were. Her heart stopped when he moved, because for a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. "We should...go."

He nodded and opened the door to the burgundy car for her. He made sure she was settled and then closed her in, looked up at the darkening sky, and slapped an open palm against the center of his head. "Idiot," he mumbled to himself. He shook his head and brushed off the slight embarrassment, and then got in the driver's seat. He stuck the key in the ignition, turned it, and shifted the car into reverse. "We're good," he said, blinking once. "We got this."

She laughed softly, shaking her head at him, silently thanking him for breaking the tension. "Who do you think is..."

"If her prints didn't come up in the system," Elliot interrupted, "Then it wasn't Immigration who took her into their custody."

Olivia stared blankly at him. "WitPro."

Elliot nodded and poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue. "And there's still one person, one we didn't toss in the clink, whose life was ruined by this whole fucked up situation," he said, raising one eyebrow. "And she's got a lot of rage, enough to tear off a couple of faces."

"You think it's Kralik's wife," she said, not a question at all, but a firm statement. She watched him lick his lips, smirk at her, and nod once. It was all the answer she needed.

Peace and Love

Jo